BATTLEAXE

LOOKING FOR LIZZY – Search on for Guardian demo tapes info.

/ Alikivi

An interesting message has been sent in by Douglas Sharp from Hanover in the north of Germany…

“I have a demo tape with the song ‘Doot Doot’ recorded by the band Freur at Guardian studios in 1983 for Tyne Tees TV. Producer and Engineer T. Gav. 15ips master with the note RESTRICTED”.

“Do you know anything about the session? It would be interesting to find out more about the demo tape”.

Douglas Sharp was born in 1952 in Leeds, Yorkshire, and started out as a trainee geophysicist for a German company in London in 1972 when the North Sea oil boom was in full swing. He moved back with them to their German headquarters in Hanover in July 1974.


“The firm closed down in 2004, after that I decided to start up my own translation business here, which is still going strong”.

Guardian Studio was based in the Durham village Pity Me, and features heavily on this site. In the 80s cult NWOBHM compilation album Roksnax was recorded there along with a host of North East bands including Spartan Warrior, Mythra, Hollow Ground, Saracen, Battleaxe, Toy Dolls and Satan.

Tygers of Pan Tang recorded demo tapes for their record company MCA, plus ‘The Audition Tapes’ with guitarist John Sykes and vocalist Jon Deverill.

Where did you come across the Guardian tape?
“It was sometime around the late 90s when I found it in a skip just down the road from Tyne Tees TV – along with a Thin Lizzy demo – while I was on holiday in Cullercoats where my sister used to live. I hope no one accuses me of nicking them!” explained Douglas.

Have you found any info on the Lizzy tape?
“The tape was recorded at Wessex Sound Studios in London, and is now in the hands of the Thin Lizzy fan club in Oswestry. They are trying to find someone with a reel-to-reel tape deck to play it on and discover whether it’s a “legendary lost recording!”

Douglas added “My sister worked as a researcher at Tyne Tees TV, her boyfriend was a film maker, Derek Smith, I helped him out with the German end of researching and translating bits and pieces for one of his films about artists interned on the Isle of Man 1940. It won RTS best documentary award 1990”.

The research sounds interesting…

“To be honest – I love it! Derek asked me to see what I could find out about the exiled Germans, so I started trawling all the sources I could find here. He said he was going to mention me by name in the credits, but maybe he forgot!

Any other projects that you are working on?
“Together with a retired miner and dowser from Huddersfield, I worked for a couple of years on finding locations of all the former fireclay and coal mines, pits and shafts in the West Riding of Yorkshire and turned the data into a map, which has since been shown during presentations at places like the National Coal Mining Museum”.

“In the same vein I’m currently helping a YouTuber in the Leeds area who’s working on the history of a no longer existent late 19th early 20th century mineral railway in the village of New Farnley, near Leeds, where I was born. Digging out old photos, maps – including my own and family histories”.

“But yeah It would be interesting to find out about the Tyne Tees demo tapes. I’ll get back to you if I hear anything new”.

If you have any info on the tapes leave a message on here or drop a line to garyalikivi@yahoo.com and I’ll pass it on to Douglas.

Alikivi   February 2024

THE HISTORY OF ROADRUNNER RECORDS – with Film Maker Bill Saxton

/ Alikivi

Launched in Holland in 1981 and focused on releasing  Heavy Metal records, the label then expanded and opened offices around the world including UK, USA, Germany, Japan and Australia.

A documentary about the company is currently in production, the idea for the project started during lockdown when 34 year old Bill and his friend from Leeds started a podcast called Temple of Bleh.

The idea for the podcast was for the pair of us to reconnect with heavy music in a more meaningful way explained Bill.

This would be done through projects such as The Hunt for the Secret Channel 4 Metalhead, then we finally arrived at looking at The History of Roadrunner Records.

Being a metal guy of my age, I noticed a thread that connected my favourite bands – Trivium, Killswitch Engage, Sepultura, then the likes of Mercyful Fate and Type O Negative. So I toyed with the idea of a book on the subject.

After writing a brief report on the topic for the podcast, by complete chance, I crossed paths with former PR for Roadrunner UK, Michelle Kerr. She told me she’d like to see the finished product.

This was a sign to take this project to an academically accurate standard – so as not to look a complete twat in front of Michelle, who had kindly taken an interest.

I spent about a month creating a monster spreadsheet, detailing every original Roadrunner release since its formation in 1981 – conventional wisdom says Roadrunner formed in 1980, this is a lie.

After finishing this, I set about contacting every band, with mixed success, for a Zoom interview – which would be put up on the Temple of Bleh podcast and You Tube channel.

Then the idea was to roll them up into three documentaries of 60-75 mins each and detailing the three core ‘eras’ of the record label – 1981-1986, 1987-2001 and 2002-2012 explained Bill.

Andreas Kisser of Sepultura, pic Bill Saxton, 4th November 2022, at KK’s Steel Mill, Wolverhampton.

Research can always bring up a number of unusual stories, and Bill found a few about Roadrunner.

A good story I found is that Roadrunner’s first Gold single wasn’t metal at all – it was a 1995 gabba song called I Wanna Be a Hippie by Technohead. 

Also, in this period Roadrunner was trying to edge away from heavy metal, and in the UK specifically were trying its hand at Britpop.

If you were to ask Franz Ferdinand singer Alex Kapranos who first signed him, he’d say Roadrunner, with his early outfit The Karelia.

Another story is the range of artists Roadrunner licensed to Europe from the rest of the world. There are albums from Sinead O’Connor and Cliff Richard bearing the Roadrunner label.

Bill emphasised that the main point of the documentary is to illustrate that once upon a time, death metal hit the top of the Billboard charts, and had a seat at the table with the perceived top industry ‘players’.

It’s important to my generation to understand exactly how that came about. Who better to ask than those responsible at Roadrunner Records.

It’s also insanely convenient that you can’t answer the ‘how’ question without showcasing the stories and legacies of the key artists on the label such as Mercyful Fate, Type O Negative, and Slipknot – as well as the less mainstream bands like Deicide, Gruntruck and Blue Mountain.

Madball being interviewed, pic by TheFinalCut, 7th February 2023, at Manchester Club Academy.

After six months, 150 hours of interviews, one mini and one full documentary complete, Bill was contacted by Mrs X – who would prefer to remain anonymous.

She favoured the project so much she came up with the finance to form a production company and elevate the quality to broadcast standard.

Big thanks to our Mrs X where would I be without her! said Bill. So far I’ve filmed 32 interviews for the project, across six countries, both artist and Roadrunner personnel alike. I’ve still got a lot to go before I can call this thing even close to complete.

Bands from North East UK are represented by stories from Battleaxe and Dark Heart. It’s a dense mix of music business learnings, interwoven with rock n roll regalia.

As it stands at this moment, ‘The History of Roadrunner Records’ has no distributor or broadcaster interest as yet– so this will likely be hitting YouTube.

The documentary is being exclusively filmed in the UK and I’m managing the time with my day job, so I can’t put a final deadline on the production. I’m considering crowdfunding to quicken it up.

For more info or if you dealt with the Roadrunner label contact Bill at templeofbleh@gmail.com or @HistoryOfRoadrunnerRecords on Instagram.

Alikivi   July 2023