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-Shan
Siva
Kevin: I formed Angelwitch
in 1977 because there was a lack of music going around at the time. The
punk thing was going but really there was a stagnant period in rock. There
was Deep Purple, ZZ Top and Sabbath, of whom I was a big big fan, but nothing
new. It was really timing with the NWOBHM thing you mention. Samson happened
to be there, English Rogues were there. Maiden were already on the circuit
but had reformed with Dennis Stratton. The actual term 'NWOBHM' came from
this one night at (the legendary) Neal Kay's Heavy Metal Bandwagon when
Angelwitch and Samson played and some journalist wrote in Sounds that 'it
was a new wave of British HM' hence NWOBHM.
I only remember it from the
1980 3 piece with yourself , 'Skids' Riddles and Dayvog (in joke).
Who else has been in the
band?
ok, if its easier why don't
you run us thru the history of 'Witch?
Anyway, after doing the club circuit, we signed to Bronze and were actually one of the last NWOBHM bands to get signed, although we were one of the first on the scene. We played the Reading Festival in '81 and the (infamous) Heavy Metal Barndance at Bingley Hall in Stafford with Motorhead and Girlschool which was amazing cos Lemmy was so nervous that when I saw him it made me feel better (laughing)! After the first album, Bronze wanted a commercial single so I wrote Loser - in a couple hours. Then I split the band up (laughing)! 3 pieces are always a little funny cos theres always someone stuck in the middle and when it came to royalties time I'd been writing fuckin songs for years but the rest of the band wanted their cut and thats why you've got Suffer and Dr Phibes which are highly commercial. It wasn't so much a bust up but everyone was pissed off with what was going on so we played 2 gigs at the Marquee and that was it. I was also fed up with singing and I wanted to do my thing as a guitarist in a band, so I had a break....until '82, when I reformed 'Witch (laughter) with a couple of guys from Deep Machine, which lasted a year. Then I hooked up with Lou Taylor (ex- Satan vocalist) in 1983 and formed Blind Fury which was a soft rock band which I had wanted to do but even that wasn't satisfying enough for me. In '84 I refomed 'Witch yet again with a previous bassist, Pete, and got in touch with Dave Hogg, who had cleaned himself up by then, and we got a vocalist cos I started to lose my voice. We released 2 albums under Kilowatt, one of which was Screaming and Bleeding and then that line up fell apart as well. Its been hard finding the right sort of people - thats why there's been so many line ups, as you've noticed!! By 1985, things were getting a lot softer here and people, be it the press or labels, weren't listening to this kind of stuff so again the band got disbanded until 1989 which was when I moved to America and got John Torres and Tom Hunting, did a demo...and got deported (laughter) because I was supposed to marry this girl, who pulled out at the last minute, and I ended up overstaying. I phoned up my manager, who I didn't want to work with anymore, and he said "well, that's your reality" and that was my reality: deportation. Back here I just bummed around for a while, doing demos until now really. I worked as a tree surgeon for a while (laughter)...I phoned Scott (Higham - drummer) who had been drumming for Samson and he knew Keith (on guitars) and we jammed around cos we still had John Torres. He went back to the States recently and Scott and Keith both knew Richard so he was in and here we are. I've gotta say this is probably the tightest line up I've had as everbody's so keen and talented - Keith and Rich can both sing as well so potentially 'Witch has 3 vocalists! Rich: Its been amazing cos the three of us (pointing to Scott and Rich) all have massive record collections and we are aware of 'Witch's history and to be able to fit this all into our lifestyles... So what
are your lifestyles? |