The saying goes ‘Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story’. But some stories don’t need any embillishment, if it makes you laugh or even smile its job done. ‘

Have You Heard This One’ is 10 stories that have appeared on this blog since starting in February 2017.

First up is Lou Taylor (Blind Fury, Rock the Knight part one February 26th) ‘When we were rehearsing in London Bridge Studios we were visited by the boys from Metallica and went on a couple of binges with them.

One night our guitarist Russ Tippins went out drinking in London with their guitarist James Hetfield. We received a phone call from the police saying can you come and collect them because they are locked up in West End Central police station.

They had been playing guitar on top of the canopy of Piccadilly Theatre’.

Mond Cowie (ex-Angelic Upstarts, Angels of the North March 12th) ‘In 1981 we went on our first American tour. We got there a few days early to acclimatize and The Clash were staying in the same hotel so we used to meet them every night for the happy hour.

Happy hours are class in America you don’t just get nuts and crisps you get chicken wings and pizzas and all sorts. We used to starve ourselves all day just waiting for the happy hour.

It was a great laugh with them and I remember Joe Strummer saying ‘we’re coming to your gig tonight do you mind if I bring Iggy Pop?’ We said ‘Aye go on then’ haha.

The gig was in New York but I can’t remember if it was Radio City or Civic Hall but we walked on stage, the lights blazed on and Mensi screamed “We’re the Angelic Upstarts, We’re from England, 1,2,3,4” then just as I strummed my guitar there was an almighty bang, it all went dark then nothing!

There was a huge power cut. They couldn’t get it sorted out quickly so we jumped off stage and went to the bar at the back where The Clash were standing and I ordered a Jack and Coke and said to Iggy Pop “It’ll be sorted in a minute, this sort of thing happens to us all the time”.

Neil Wilkinson (Spartan Warrior, Chain Reaction May 21st) ’I remember in 1984 things were really looking up for the band, we had a record deal, and the night we were due to record our second album we had a gig in our hometown at Sunderland Mayfair.

The bands future couldn’t look any brighter. We turned up at the gig, sound checked, and went backstage to get ready.

For stage wear I used to have these tight red spandex pants, looked good I thought. I remember the intro tape playing while I was standing at the side of the stage waiting to go on. You know ready to fuckin’ rock.

The stage bouncer stood next to me, slowly looked me up and down and said ‘what are you playing tonight like ? Fucking Swan Lake’..What can I say ? totally burned on that one’.

Andy Boulton (Tokyo Blade, Under the Blade May 26th) ‘The 1983 European support tour with Mamas Boys had been set up and dates arranged and confirmed.

But we had no money for hotels or food, and only a small amount for diesel. We slept in the van.

The money that we were to receive from the shows would only just cover our diesel to the next show, so our saving grace was to be two boxes of Tokyo Blade T-shirts which our manager said we would need to sell in order to get cash for food.

We eventually got on the road down to Calais where the charming French Customs Officers searched the van finding two cardboard boxes full of T-shirts.

This being pre-EU days we had no license to sell anything in Europe. Oh how we laughed as they deprived us of the T-shirts and they also added a lovely little fine which took care of most of our diesel money.

Anyway we still had all our duty free fags, until that is when we decided to stop and cheer ourselves up with a beer and in the very short time it takes to down one small beer some friend of humanity decided to smash the van window and nick all our duty free and my Sony Walkman which our new singer had conveniently left for them on the front seat’.

Lee Wright (Crashed Out, Guns, Maggotts & Street Punk July 6th) ‘There’s always funny stories when traveling abroad with the band, trouble is it’s always a blur because of the alcohol!

I remember on one of our first trip’s abroad we decided to go by ferry. We got absolutely plastered on the way over and one of the lads passed out drunk on the floor.

Someone decided to pour a carton full of boiled rice down the back of his underpants while he slept. It wasn’t hot by the way.

Anyway, morning came and we forgot about the various antics that had went on the previous night. As we left our cabin we joined the queue of people near the exit waiting to leave the ferry, when suddenly our mate starting screaming and grabbing at his arse.

He was dancing round as if he was on fire, pulling rice out of his pants, he thought he had maggots coming out of his arse. With the added hangover he was really panicking, you should have seen the look on his face. I can still remember it now haha’.

Ged Wolf (Atomkraft, Running with the Pack August 14th) ‘The London Marquee stage was so small I had to arrange the drums with Slayers drummer Dave Lambardo and see what was the best way to do it.

We were supporting them and he played drums facing the side of the stage which was a bit awkward, but we sorted it out.

In the end he said ‘can you lend me a pair of drumsticks I haven’t got any ?’ I said ‘yes it’s the least I can do’.

Well we’re on stage but after only three songs the whole backline goes off. Even though we had 14 roadies not one of them knew what they were doing.

We found it was the guitar that had gone off so me and Tony (bass) played along then after 30 seconds I just smashed my whole drum kit and threw it into the crowd. I’d just bought a new kit so I thought, fuck it, smash this one up !

We went off stage everyone is howling, funnily enough it went down great. We got some great press off it. Anyway stage is cleared and ready for Slayer to go on. Dave Lombardo says to me ‘have you got them drumsticks?’

I’d hoyed everything into the crowd so my drum roadie had to go out and get some back for him !’.

Danny McCormack (The Main Grains, Death or Glory September 8th) ‘For the ‘I Wanna Go Where the People Go’ video we filmed that in New York.

We went there for five days to do the video and ended up living there for a couple of month in a house in Brooklyn it was great fun.

For the first month we were in The Chelsea Hotel. One night after drinking in CBGB’s we jumped in the taxi and told the driver to take us to the nearest drug dealer. ’No problem get in guy’s’.

We shot off and soon the taxi was quickly surrounded by them. The deal was done and we returned to The Chelsea.

We laid the drugs out on the bed and looking through them – we managed to score some salt and some pencil shavings… they must have seen us coming’

Gary Young (Avenger, Young Blood September 17th) ‘Another time playing in Holland when we were young lads. During the terrible winter of 1985 two Dutch girls asked me and one of the lads ‘do you fancy coming back to ours ?’.

Being 18 at the time we said yeah. We got a taxi and ended up in a freezing cold rat-infested basement under the student hall of residence. ‘Wait here we will see if the night Porter is about because we can’t have visitors after 23.00’ they said.

We waited and waited…Ahhhh it was a set up !…they left us in the freezing basement. It was broad daylight when our Dutch friends found us’.

Robb Weir (Tygers of Pan Tang, Doctor Rock November 5th 2017) talking about playing on live UK TV show The Tube… ‘Yes it was Christmas ’82. I remember the crew had just loaded our backline of 18 4×12’s, stacked three high in cages, onto the stage in the tv studio.

We were in our dressing room and in the distance heard our track Gangland, what’s going on here we thought, it was getting louder and louder.

Then all of a sudden our dressing room door burst open and standing in the doorway was this huge, blonde, bare chested monster. We were all shocked. He had a big cassette player on his shoulder playing at full volume…

’You guy’s fuckin’ rock I love you guy’s’. He turned around and walked back out.

We looked at each other… ‘Wasn’t that Dee Snider of Twisted Sister?’ I’ll never forget that.

We talked with the band afterwards and they were fantastic, really brilliant. I got what they were all about, the dressing up and make up you know. Dee was really clever writing those songs, you know the big shouty anthems’.

Bodo Schopf (Pendulum of Fortune, Bodo Swings December 2018) ‘One story I have to tell, because I love the British humour. We were with Michael Schenker Group on tour with Def Leppard, their drummer Rick Allen, who had only one arm left after his car accident asked me if I would go out with him having a beer.

So we went to a pub and drank more than one beer. Rick stared constantly at my jacket, on it I had a drummer made from foam material with a safety pin attaching it to the jacket. It was a gift from a fan.

Rick said ‘Bodo there is something wrong with your jacket’. I looked at my jacket and asked what is wrong.

Rick said ‘Can I have a closer look at the little drummer on your jacket ? I replied ‘yes why not’.

So he tore the drummer’s arm off and said with a grin… ‘Now it`s right’.

Thanks to everyone who has shared their stories and read the blog this year have a Happy Christmas and a successfull 2018.

Gary Alikivi

On their world tours American rock band Kiss would go to huge lengths to put on an explosive show. But not when I saw them at Newcastle City Hall in October ’83.

The band had unmasked and cut back. Apart from fire ’n’ blood spurted out by Gene Simmons, there were no stage effects. The full circus hadn’t turned up.

Kiss, Newcastle City Hall, 29th October 1983. pic by Stephen ‘Winst’ Wilson.

The late ’70s and early ’80s saw bands on this blog putting on a show. To add atmosphere there would be dry ice and smoke, and for dramatic effect, explosions at the beginning/end of a song.

But they didn’t all go to plan. Here’s 10 stories about bombs that didn’t stick to the script and smoke machines with a mind of their own.

Dave Dawson (Warrior, The Hunger April 12th) ‘One time our manager Ken Booth hired someone to do some flash bombs. We thought yes this will look good.

But when they went off, they blew me forward, all the gear turned off and ripped a gash in the ceiling. It made the local papers, but that might have been the only time we were in them like !

Danny Hynes (Weapon UK, All Fired Up May 6th) ‘Now we liked having a few explosions going off during our set you know, flashes, smoke bombs the whole lot.

Well we just got on stage in Newquay, first few bars of our opener and a pyro went off between my legs…I almost became Danielle haha.

Once we were playing a gig in Stoke and the stage was very low, I walked towards it through the dry ice, tripped and went head first into the drum kit… Happy daze!

Paul Macnamara (Salem, To Hull and Back April 6th) ‘We used to experiment with pyrotechnics, thinking back, if the Health and Safety Executive had known we would have been in a lot of bother.

I remember one gig we played in Sheffield there was so much smoke from the flash bomb it just hung around on stage so we couldn’t see anything at all!

Our ‘flash bombs’ comprised an old camera flash bulb wired to the mains electric, then flash powder poured on top and as we made our dramatic entrance to the Hall of the Mountain King one of our faithful roadies would throw the switch and BOOOM!! The crowd didn’t expect a mini nuclear mushroom cloud!

Mandora, South Shields Ampitheatre, July 1987. Video still by Craig Elliott.

Duncan Binnie (Mandora, Let the Music Do the Talking July 25th) ‘During summer ’87 we’re playing an outdoor gig at the Amphitheatre down South Shields seafront at one of the biggest crowds that’s been down there.

Council wouldn’t give us any lights so it was an absolute disaster ‘cos halfway through the gig it was dark. But we had the fireworks and the stage was pretty good at that point.

We had a few unpaid roadies one of them was called Joe and its unbelievable what effort he’s putting in for nowt.

Well during a song he’s crawled onstage sorting a drum out or something when one of our explosions went off and the poor guy gets blown up.

I remember seeing him afterwards and he was standing there, his coat was all burnt, the whole top of it was fringed up and he had no eyebrows left’.
Watch the full interview and footage (start at 50mins) in the music documentary ’We Sold Our Soul for Rock n Roll’ on You Tube.

Maurice Bates (Mythra, Just A Mo’ May 12) ‘We once played the Old 29 in Sunderland and our friend Lou Taylor was the lighting guru. To his mothers dismay he made all the lighting rigs for our shows in his garage and bedroom.

On this particular gig he let off a smoke bomb which gave off so much smoke the pub had to be emptied. Another time I managed to get hold of an aircraft landing spotlight. When it was turned on and pointed at the audience it was so powerful it blinded everyone in the room, it was like looking into the sun haha’.

Tygers of Pan Tang, Newcastle Mayfair, September 1980. pic by John Edward Spence.

Richard Laws (Tygers of Pan Tang original bassist) ‘My hand is bandaged in these photos because we used to keep our pyrotechnics in a cool box and they had leaked and the box had a load of magnesium powder at the bottom.

I thought it would be fun to put a match to it and it nearly blew my hand off ! I had second degree burns and it was agony!

When it happened you can imagine I disappeared in an enormous flash and cloud of smoke and when I came to my senses my hand had swollen to twice its normal size.

It was so painful I had to keep my hand in a bucket of water until I got to the doctor and got the bandages on. Luckily, even though it was quite a serious burn I could still hold a pick.

They were old pyros from when we did the clubs which we would put on tables at the front of the stage. There was a theatrical shop in Newcastle where you could buy the cartridges and the electric firing mechanism.

When I first got them, I set them off in the back garden to see what they were like, and they were pretty spectacular.

I remember a few times at gigs people sitting at the tables we put them on and despite being warned, refusing to move until the bombs went off – then they moved pretty quick!

By the time the 1980 UK tour started I was still bandaged but I could at least play’.

Howard Baker, Warbeck/Nightwalker (Howard’s Way, August 17th) ‘We had some pyro to put on a bit of a show. We used to put the bombs in two small wastepaper bins, but at one gig we forgot them so went outside in the backlane and got a big bin.

We put both bombs in there and set it up behind the drummer. End of the first set the roadies set it off and a big boom ! But they never cleaned the bin out first so there was rubbish, banana skins all sorts all over the stage, haha.

Another time we were playing Usworth Social Club and we forgot to bring smoke flares. We liked a bit of smoke around the stage. So we went out and bought some flares nearby. These were for boats, like distress flares.

Again they were set up behind the drums and were set off just as we played Smoke on the Water. Well at first they didn’t look much but the smoke coming out of them just kept on coming until it filled the concert room.

The concert chairman was up in arms. There was so much smoke we couldn’t see a thing, our eyes started streaming. They rang the fire brigade who eventually found the bin and hoyed it outside.

But the worst thing was the smoke was orange. The concert room was covered in orange stains, all over the chairs, everywhere. Ended up we never got paid for that gig, just a massive cleaning bill’.

Saracen, 1980.

Glenn S. Howes, Blitzkreig/Fist/Saracen roadie (Metal Health, December 1st) ‘Working for Saracen at the Legion Club in South Shields in the early 80’s I was put on smoke machine duty.

Saracen are on stage rocking away. I pushed the button to put a little smoke on stage however Les the bass player kept shouting more, more ! I was only a bairn at the time so I did as I was told.

Before you knew it the whole concert room was full of stage smoke. You couldn’t see the band at all. We had to open all the doors and windows to get rid of it. I got a right royal telling off from the vocalist Louie Taylor. Les never told him it was his fault’.

Ged Wolf, Atomkraft/Venom drum roadie (Running with the Pack, August 14th) ‘The first gig in New York, USA was memorable, we had made some huge bomb pots the size of footballs, you know Venom was all about the show.

Well the guy in charge of the pyro was out of his head on something and he ended up loading the pots twice. The bombs went off at the start of their first song Witching Hour, one of the bombs went down through the stage creating a big hole.

The other one went up over the crowd, past the balcony and embedded into the back wall. There is a plaque there now, Venom 1983 haha.

But the explosion blew the whole backline so for the second gig we had to get all new equipment. I’ve never had to work so hard in all my life it was 24 hours non stop.

I was that tired I was asleep under the drum riser when Metallica were playing. It was the only place I could stretch out haha’.

Tony Bray, Venom (Hebburn or Hell, July 28th) ‘We were putting all the money back into Venom, buying the pyro, all the stage effects.

We got our drumriser built for us in the shipyards, the whole scissor lift, it was just one big thing it never came apart. It was huge, they couldn’t get it out of the doors haha.

But when we started out we played a gig at a heavy metal disco at the Quay club in Hebburn. Eric Cook (later Venom manager) ran the disco and he arranged to put Venom on.

We bought our stage effects from Sound & Lights store in Newcastle where former Blind Fury vocalist Louie Taylor was working. He ended up doing some pyro for us, we were big on that haha.

Louie was all about the safety aspect and I was all about let’s chuck some more powder in and see what happens. Well that gig we fused the building, lights went off right through the whole club, the bingo mafia downstairs went mad haha’.

Interviews by Gary Alikivi 2017.

The love for vinyl has always been there and many stories are attached to your favourite records. There are whispers in some quarters that vinyl is back, and they are getting louder.

Not in the same numbers that it was in the pre-cd day’s of the 70’s and 80’s, but the records are up on display in record shop’s.

There is hundred’s of reasons why we like a certain song. Vinyl Junkies is looking for the stories behind them.

Vince High is lead singer with North East UK heavy metal band Mythra. They are one of the original New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands and have been cited as an early influence by Lars Ulrich of Metallica.

They formed in the second half of the 1970’s and released their legendary ‘Death & Destiny EP’ in 1979.  

After reforming in 2014 Mythra are still active on the current international Metal scene. In October 2017 they made their triumphant first appearance in the United States at California’s ‘Frost & Fire III’ Festival. 

Introductions over, here are 7 songs that shaped Vince’s world.

1.  ‘Black Night’ by Deep Purple was one of the first singles I ever bought. Probably my first encounter with Heavy Rock. Some of my mates’ older brothers used to play their records when we were hanging around and I can remember loving this single and ‘Strange Kind Of Woman’ too.

I think it was the guitar riffs and the energy that moved me. Purple were the first band I ever saw live at Newcastle City Hall in February 1973.  Life changing experience for sure and sparked a lifelong love of Hard Rock and Heavy Metal.

2. ‘Paranoid‘ by Black Sabbath is another big single for me.  The guitar riff and the vocal effects sounded amazing at the time of release and still do. It was one of the first songs I ever sang when me and my mates put our first band together. It’s a classic!

3.  I used to buy second hand records from a shop just off Frederick Street in South Shields when I was a kid in the early 1970’s.  I think it was called The Handy Shop but I might be wrong as it was so long ago haha.

I remember buying a sampler album called ‘The Age Of Atlantic’ which had, amongst other tracks, ‘Communication Breakdown’ from Led Zeppelin. That prompted me to buy Zeppelin 1 which remains one of my favourite albums of all time.

4.  ‘Radar Love’ by Dutch band Golden Earring is another single I absolutely loved at the time it was released and still do.  I saw them at Newcastle City Hall around 1974 and they were amazing.

Bought the album ‘Moontan’ which, once again, remains one of my favourites to this day.  I think that was probably their only big record in the UK.  However, those guys are still going strong, still playing live and still sounding great!

5.  Wishbone Ash had a massive album ‘Argus‘ which me and my mates went crazy for as kids.  More melodic than the band’s mentioned above but wow those twin lead guitars were amazing.

‘Blowin’ Free’ is regarded as the classic track which every club band copied at the time but the whole album is superb.

6.  Also liked a bit of Progressive Rock as a kid and I remember the album ‘Fragile’ by Yes. Me and my classmates at school used to swap albums and I remember swapping my ‘Tarkus’ by ELP for ‘Fragile’.

So many great tracks including ‘Roundabout’ which I absolutely love. Yes were a supergroup…all amazing musicians.

7.  I started buying American imports when I went to Newcastle on Saturday afternoons with my girlfriend around the mid 70’s.  They were a little bit more expensive but worth it.

I remember going to the Mayfair on a Friday night and the DJ playing ‘Carry On Wayward Son’ by Kansas.  I had to have the album ‘Leftoverture’. It’s sheer class from start to finish.

Intro Gary Alikivi November 2017.

Recommended:

Mythra: Still Burning, 13th February 2017.

John Roach, Still Got the Fire, 27th April 2017.

Maurice Bates, Just A Mo’, 12th May 2017.

VINYL JUNKIES:

Will Binks July 7th 2017 – Martin Popoff July 12th 2017

John Heston August 3rd 2017 – Neil Armstrong August 11th 2017 

Colin Smoult  August 29th 2017 -– Neil Newton September 12th 2017 

Tony Higgins October 11th 2017.