Interview with guitarist Paul 'Blute' Quinn and Peter 'Biff' Byford, the man with 140,000 watts coming outta his mouth!

It might be considered surprising to hear you're playing to such young audiences
Blute: "To be frank it is surprising to see such young kids - like at last night - but then I guess they've heard about us from their older brothers. Or even from bands like Pantera who are big fans of ours and then the kids go and search for our stuff.

Saxon's changed its sound several times in its career, so what does the future hold for Saxon fans?
Biff: "We're trying to mix classic rock with a more modern style. If you look at our previous albums like Solid Ball of Rock it was more rock n roll whereas in the last few years we seem to have got a lot more darker. So now its gonna be a mixture of the highly melodic classical stuff with the darker, more mystical things that we've been getting into. We've been playing these big festivals in Europe and we've got a new audience there that's into Dogs of War and Unleash the Beast but they'll also be into Wheels of Steel. I think the secret is longevity, to have old audiences buying the new albums and new audiences buying Strong Arm of the Law - that's the only way bands like us can stay alive so long and its the same with Iron Maiden or Motorhead. If some kid buys the new album We Are Motorhead and wants more, he may just check out Ace of Spades also. As audiences get older, they lose their enthusiasm of being fans - musicians don't cos they're kids anyway ha ha - so you have to have that turnover, although it must be said that we still get a lot of older fans still coming to the shows like you ha ha (thanks-SS)! People might think we're a novelty but we've got the lineage that goes from 1979 to now to prove that we're still a serious rock act. We've evolved with the times so we're not a shadow of our former selves so all these people that take the piss outta the 80's can go fuck themselves!"

But when you look at the way that some of your NWOBHM peers like Iron Maiden and Def Leppard went to astronomical levels does it ever make you wonder what might have been?
Biff: "I think our music in America at the time was considered far too heavy for the radio. I mean, Leppard sold their souls to radio but I guess they were never really a metal band anyway once they were taken down that path. And that's something they still have to live with whereas I don't. With Maiden I think they had a great manager - for them - in Rod Smallwood and I don't think we ever had a manager for us that was that brilliant. We also had a shit load of problems with our French label (Carrere) and although we outsold both Leppard and Maiden together in Europe in the early days, in America the brakes were always coming on and money was never arriving or someone on that side didn't like someone here or some bullshit. Whilst it didn't slow us down it took the edge off the US tours in the early years. But don't forget that we still play massive shows in some US cities like in San Antonio where we had 29,000 people - and that's there we did get the radio airplay and they're still playing us today! Its great cos if they liked you then, they'll play you forever!"
Blute: "I think it was fated that we'd never work out in England. We had to go to France to get our first signing. Ok, we got EMI the second time round but with the third - SPV - we ended up in Germany. It was easy to get signed once the NWOBHM thing had started but we had to start the fucking thing! You disagree.....? Well, maybe I'm overstating my case but we were the first to get signed and also to get into the charts."

There appear to be a coupla Saxons going around at the moment...
Biff: "Well, there's sad Saxon and the real Saxon ha ha! There's a coupla guys...well, one guy - and you know who it is (Graham Oliver) - who we sacked in 1994 who along with a coupla guys who hadn't been in the band for 14 years (Steven Dawson and Pete Gill), who released an album as Son of a Bitch and obviously it didn't work out so they keep trying to do Oliver/Dawson Saxon, Graham Oliver Saxon, the Sound of Saxon - anything that's got fuckin 'Saxon' in it! You can laugh but the reality is that it costs us a fortune with the lawyers. We've had the other guys posting stuff on the net which is just not true and we're putting a stop to that too but as I said its difficult and expensive. We've had injunctions served on them in Belgium and Germany but in England the process is slow but we'll get there and I'm determined to cos its the principal that he's ripping off the fans. I mean, they're doing a show this week in Italy as Oliver/Dawson Saxon but they've got our picture - the picture of this band - on the fucking posters! To be frank, they can call themselves what they want as long as they aren't ripping off the fans. Its just not fair to some kid who's driven 300 miles to see us and then some berk playing his version of '747' shows up instead!"
Blute: "Me and Biff go back further than Son of a Bitch. We had a three piece that he played bass in and I shared some of the vocals. In fact Biff came to actually poach me for his band but we ended up in our own 3 piece writing our own material. SOB were around and we were in competition cos we both had biggish PAs and when both bands lost members we ended up merging the two bands together with this ridiculous amount of PA equipment that allowed us to blow places apart. We played one place and the fucking ceiling tiles came down!"
Biff: "He (Graham) has this concept of a war that he has to get a gig as Saxon to beat us. Its all very small minded and really very dodgy sorta like a used car salesman. I suppose they'll be selling old albums and T shirts next from the back of a van next..."
Blute: "It's over the band name. I really can't understand how people who were sacked can come back and say "I'd really like the name please". I guess their rational is that there's 3 of them so that's a majority but the law goes with who keeps the record contract."

But who originally came out with the band name?
Blute: "Back then it was considered too extreme to have a name like SOB, especially for America so we had a think about our image. We all liked the fantasy album covers done by Frank Frazetta for Molly Hatchet so we got someone local to come out with something similar and arrived at Saxon cos it had warrior connotations and it was English."

As we're on the subject of previous members, what happened to the other previous members of Saxon like Pete Gill and Steve Dawson?
Blute: "Well, Gill sacked himself really. He showed up half way thru the Denim & Leather tour expecting to get back into the band. He said he had a tendon injury and then showed up in Sheffield City Hall to carry on. But we already had Nigel (Glockner), who joined us just 3 days before the tour - that's how long Pete gave us - and the thing was that he was then seen taking off his 'bandage' so everyone's like "whaaat? Does he really wanna tour?". So I guess he fell outta the band rather than was dropped. Steve...his attitude went crazy. Its hard to describe these things and it sounds so petty but to sum it all up Steve and Graham were sacked for both musical and personal reasons."

I guess a re-union's outta the question then!?
Biff: "Not now. No. I would've done it if they'd been fair but not after all this."

Are you limited to what you can play to not infringe any copyright on the songs?
Biff: "We can play all Saxon's songs, but they're limited to a certain range. This is just the rubbish you've been reading that they've been putting out. I don't think any of them wrote one Saxon lyric on an album ever. What rights should they have?"

Hey, I've just been thinking, why the hell are you called 'Biff' - and better still, why are you called Blute?!?!
Biff: "Ha ha, it just goes with my surname - Byford. At school Byford got shortened to Biff. There's nothing mystical about it...mind you, my older brother was also called Biff and he was a hard hitter so mebbe....ha ha."
Blute: "Blute comes from Bluto, y'know the Disney dog. Dreaming of playing in a rock band and doodling guitars at school - it didn't get me good grades ha ha!"

And what about the legends of the tea drinking and your collection of bikes?
Biff: "Nah, the tea drinking was all part of the publicity machine at the time but yeah, I do still like bikes but nowadays (looking at his wife beside him - SS) I'm into having babies. I do still crave my bikes occasionally but it's sorta like a chocolate craving ha ha! And no, you can't interview the wife as well ha ha ha ha!"