Many years ago I’d written someone at Aquarius Records for something unrelated to Teaze. In turn someone replied, and in subsequent exchanges, he wrote back and included a CD – The Best of TEAZE – Over 60 Minutes With. At that point I wasn’t familiar with the band at all, but dug the CD, and in time picked up.a few LPs. Fast forward 15, and there’s this new guy at work, Derek. We struck up conversation about music. He had been in radio, so he knows his classic rock bands, and lots of old Canadian bands. Years later, he brings up the name Teaze, and the news that they’re planning a reunion show. Teaze, as it turns out, is his favorite Canadian band. So, we made the trek to Windsor for that first show in 2019. (Checked out a record shops, where I spent hours in the local Dr Disc to Derek’s horror). Got to the show at the Walkerville Theater, sat right up front The band sounded great, energetic, and if this was their first show in nearly 40 years, one might not realize it at the time. We saw them again in 2022. (I had to pass on 2024), but then came the Live At Liege CD. A highly energy set of Teaze’ rockers, from.the band’s four studio albums. I should add that with the reunion shows, founding guitarist Chuck Price made an appearance at a few, but Charlie Lambrick was his replacement and then, with the band planning to.write and record new songs, drummer Mike Kozak bowed out

So…here we are – June, 2026, and TEAZE Has just released a new album – Rev Your Engines. This is getting great reviews. Highly recommended hard rock from Canada. I recently talked with guitarist Mark Bradac; we discussed the band’s initial break-up, their reunion, the new album, album covers, and more. Check it out! (*Links to songs and albums highlighted throughout, and check out the links below.)

I want to go back to when the band split. I imagine there was lots of reasons with the record company and how the last album did and kind of what the main reasons were and how frustrated were you, how did you guys feel about it back then…?

Well, we started in ’75 and the house crumbled in 1980. There was so many reasons; I guess first of all the music that was going on at that period of time – New Wave was really breaking strong; it was like a rocket and so was Disco. So, there was our two arch enemies. TEAZE, a lot of people said we were kind of the last band to get in the door with the big rock and roll budget, which I’ll get into in a minute, but bands like Foreigner – the big production the massive guitars. And we were signed to Capitol Records at the time, and this is what we worked up to for five or six years. This was such a pivotal moment, and we signed with Capitol and the album before (One Night Stands) probably cost us a couple hundred thousand bucks, and we were thinking about producers you know like Roy Thomas Baker, Jack Douglas and Ted Templeman – big Big money. That was that was the way it was done. And all of a sudden everything changed and then The Knack delivered “My Sharona”, the record for like 35 grand to Capitol, so instantly our budget was slashed. That was one of the main reasons. Another main reason was, the album before was done by Myles Goodwyn from April Wine, and you just can’t state enough how tremendous of a record he produced. And Body Shots was definitely – by far, our best writing, but the production ended up being a clam. Maybe Nick was trying to make us sound more New Wave and more contemporary, and trying to go with the times, but it didn’t work. And I don’t know how we would have achieved it with a lower budget and get the sound we got on One Night Stands, but that’s what we should have …

There was so many reasons, like the house of cards just went Whack!, you know!? And then we got into a little bit of a tiff with Capitol Records, with our producer, and that didn’t help things. When they heard the record they were not impressed; that’s when Capitol dumped us – when they got Body Shots. They had heard the demo, which the band had given to them. And they were really knocked out about it, and at that point they were saying “Wow you’re going to be the next greatest thing since you know (whatever) …The Police and “Roxanne”, even though they were kind of New Wave at the time. But at the drop of a hat, with all these things that happened, and then we delivered this album and it didn’t happen, and they dropped us.

At that point the money was kind of very strained, so for the first time in probably six years Aquarius said “You’re going to have to go home; you’re going to have to write a new album.” We were kind of like “What!?” We just wrote, as far as we were concerned – the best songs we had ever written in our lives; it didn’t happen on the record but we were just so like Wow! We couldn’t believe it, and we couldn’t believe that we were actually contemplating having to go home. But we did come home for a period, and at that point the final blow – Brian Danter had decided that this was not the road he wanted to go anymore, and that’s the fatal blow right there. We could have lived through anything; we could have lived through all the changes in music if we would have stuck together; we could live through the bad record production (the clam) that we delivered. And that record only came out in Canada, so everything just collapsed. We had lost the Japanese market, which was so important to us because that was a lot of our notoriety. We’d lost that because Capitol at the time wanted the rights to Japan, so we dropped our independent you know because uh of course you would for Capitol Records worldwide.

During those last couple of albums were you guys staying in Montreal or in Toronto?

We were in Montreal for now about well for histories like five years six years we were in Toronto for a year and then we were in Montreal for four or five years yeah that’s how that flew all right we started off in Toronto with another outfit, with that first record.

You look at all the Canadian bands that had those three or four albums and then they just kind of like you guys, went off – like A Foot In Coldwater, and then later on you had Coney Hatch and Santers….

We were we were really astonished. The band was meant to go. There was no question in anybody’s mind; it was just a matter of time. And when you lose Brian, I mean – that was it. And then in the record business things move fast, and there was people in the wings like Corey Hart already, staying close to Aquarius. And then everybody just kind of got deflated at the same time for so many reasons, because there’s so many reasons it takes for a band to make it and all those reasons came into play like timing, management, record company, producers… Everybody’s got to be in the same zone And then when you all are – you have good songs and you have a good band, then you’ve got to rely a bit on luck and the timing; so it’s just a crazy business.

One Night Stands is such a great album – great production. Are you surprised that didn’t take off further?

Yeah well, at that point it was all up to the States. EMI Capitol had paid for that record and it was just, again New Wave was breaking, it was right there and there’s pros and cons to being with an iconic label like the Capitol Records of the world, you can get lost in the shuffle, that’s what I call it right there’s positive points about signing with the greatest label on earth, and then there’s positive points about signing with the smallest label on eath because you get all the attention. And that’s what did happen with Corey Hart, who I just mentioned, because everybody wanted to sign that dude at the beginning but he went to Aquarius because he wanted to be with a small label because he was hip to the fact…and I think that’s what happened with Capitol – the machine never got rolling. Yeah it was a disappointment, definitely, because now we listen now, it’s 45 years later and One Night Stands just holds up; it’s a great record, it’s a great solid record from front to back.

I know through social media over the years you would kind of mention that you wanted to get it back as far as Teaze goes, and it finally happened starting in 2019. So, what was the whole path or the road back to getting everybody together.

I think it’s always been me Kev, I’ve been the instigator. Ever since we broke up, like I said we were a band that we’re supposed to make it. And then you read articles; there was an article in UK that came out, a monthly thing that comes out (or bi-monthly) and it kind of says “The bands that time forgot”. It was just too great of a project – the four of us, the rise and the songs And the people that believed in us, the fans. And you wanted it to happen, so I just never gave up on the fact.

There was a point in 1990 where we almost got back together which would have probably been a whole different story. Rock Candy Records in England reissued One Night Stands, and it hit the retro charts and went to like top 20 and at that point Rock Candy, Derek, had called me and we started chatting and I actually got Teaze to rehearse back then. Again, it was Brian – he just you know whether he was ready or not. Brian just chose a different path; he wanted to raise a family, he was a pastor, there’s no secret to that, and that’s cool. But not to doubt he didn’t like rock music or anything, he just got disillusioned with the whole business, because you’re always chasing that dream.

As far as when you guys first got together in 2019 to do the first show, what kind of led right to getting everybody in the same room?

We were always been in the same city. We were born here, raised here, and we’re all still here. We’re all still alive and healthy and we were all still friends. Brian and I didn’t speak that much; I mean we were friends but just didn’t have a day-to-day thing going or anything. And a guy got us back, a fan – Calvin Hood, from the west coast. He started talking to Brian and he started talking to me, and all of a sudden he started talking to the both of us and Brian was receptive. I’ve always been receptive, as I’ve been telling you in this interview. So I thought, Well this is going to be the time. And that’s what happened, we actually got the four original guys back together, which is unheard of these days. I mean anything goes these days, you don’t have to have anybody in the band as far as you know…

Yeah one guy puts out a whole new lineup…

So Chuck (Price), the other guitar player he had no interest in really going through the whole deal again. He did it for nostalgic’ sake. He wanted to get the band back together, and he wanted his grandkids to see the group which was all cool, so he did the reunion gig. And he did a couple reunion gigs, we played the Walkerville a couple times in the next years so he did those. Mike’s been here for the long haul, the drummer. You know everybody was as important as the other, but Mike he has recently gone, as this new record doesn’t have Mike. The record that we released in a couple years ago in Europe does have Mike. Mike, I guess he didn’t really have a vision for a new record. Again it was, I think nostalgia, he was revisiting the old days yeah and when it really came to push and shove he was happy with that, and he really wasn’t keen on writing any new music, and I knew that it was imperative to write new music – that’s our path forward .

It was so damn long since we had been together a lot of our base has gotten lost. I mean a lot of bands they might break up but they get back together or maybe they stay in the public eye somehow. But when we were cut at the knees, it was over it was gone and we were gone and that’s been a long time to try and bring that back. Now Charlie, the new Charlie, has been in the mix since day one. So now Charlie’s been in the group longer than the group was ever together back then because we’re together longer now you know we’re serious about this and we’re trying to make a go of it, but dude’s brilliant. He’s been there since day one, I’ve worked with him. Prior to that we’ve known him his whole life. He produced the record he wrote some of the songs, he plays multi-instruments… I just can’t overstate what his value has been to make this reunion happen.

There’s no there’s no old Teaze anymore – there’s Teaze, and it’s Charlie Lambrick, Brian Danter, myself, and now our new drummer Jimmy Bonventre. Jimmy B, he’s been around us all his life too. Charlie and Jimmy, they’re the other half of this Teaze group now. They’re kind of like a half a generation behind us, and they were all big fans. They are from Windsor, so they knew about the band. We grew up with the same kind of background with Detroit, Michigan and you know – Iggy and the Stooges, Alice Cooper, and the Detroit Rock City! The band now is solid. Rev Your Engines, wow! I don’t think there’s any clams on this record. People are arguably saying this is the best Teaze record.

I’ve heard that from a few people. One person said it’s so good and it shouldn’t be!

Sometimes I wish the nostalgia thing was out the window, the classic thing. I wish, if we could come out anonymous and the record could stand on it’s own and get the right push it needs then who knows. Sometimes people, I wonder whether you say “classic” to them and immediately they think ‘old’, and just some old crap.

I think it’s important for older bands that are still going, to make new music, otherwise you’re just going out and doing the same hits all the time.

A lot do Kevin! I took a poll – all these guys were doing the festival circuit, and I’m asking dudes “How come you don’t do a new record?” “Nobody wants to hear a new record they want to hear our old hits.” Some of these guys I’m talking to they’ve got a lot of hits so it makes life a lot easier when you got a lot of hits in your hip pocket. And then there’s the problem of trying to reach that bar, whether you’re going to reach it. So, a lot don’t. So how many percent do you think?

I don’t think it’s high, probably less than half but I mean a lot of the bands I still follow like Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, Alice Cooper – those guys are still putting out albums every few years. To me that’s why doesn’t

Why doesn’t one really break you know!? I talked to someone the other day and we were talking about classic songs being played on classic radio stations as opposed to contemporary radio stations and it doesn’t seem to cross over. It doesn’t even seem possible almost sometimes that a classic rock band can have a new song that can cross over away from classic and just be a good song on its own.

I think radio has kind of lost it’s purpose you know you don’t you can all the artists that put out albums you would never know if you had to listen to radio.

What have kind of been the highlights so far I saw you guys in 2019 and I think the second one um right after COVID and then I missed the third one. So what have been the highlights since other the Windsor shows?

Europe! We’d never been to Europe. We got some phone calls from people that – luckily for us, were guys that grew up right listening to Teaze, and then we’re in a in a situation where they could say sure let’s book you on this festival. Much like the Anvil story; they were kind of snookered too, and before the documentary. And this guy shows up that does the documentary, that grew up with them and loved them and then does this doc that’s just brilliant. It puts them right back in. So these are these kind of cats in Europe and I kind of always felt in the back of my head ever since we’ve been doing this that that maybe we have to come in through the back door to get accepted over here more, that Europe would be a really great market for Teaze. We could slog it out there.

Canada is so tough to tour in. I mean it’s so big, so expensive. The tours really aren’t happening, and there’s so many bands that the arena is crowded; everybody’s coming back, and a lot of bands maybe should be doing it before us because they’ve got a lot of hit songs. So, Europe – that was really a highlight. Then I thought, “if we go to Europe we’ve got to tape it, we’ve got to do a live record there”, and maybe reintroduce everybody to the old Teaze songs from all those years ago. Because again, the length of time was just ridiculous and the base – how many people grew up never heard of the group(?), so that really helped. And then it helped us psychologically; when we had heard the live tracks for that Live at Liège, in Belgium – we were astounded on how good it sounded and how strong the band really was.

It’s a good intro to the band even for people that don’t have many of the old albums. And it’s up to date, so it doesn’t sound like it was recorded 50 years ago.

That’s the other funny thing going with Charlie Lambrick – the producer and guitar player in this band, Everybody keeps commenting on “it’s a retro sound with such a fresh production” I don’t know quite how to analyze that because I’m just, “what do you mean by fresh production(?)” – It sounds good, sounds the way it should. We went back more to two guitars, then again Euro-style. We went back to four piece. You know back in the day we had the fluff with the saxophone and stuff like that, and we were trying to…there was pressure to make hit records and maybe that was our idea to get away from that raw sound. But we went back to it full force and we’re going to stick there. I’m liking it. It’s more like our roots, for sure.

How long have these songs kind of been in the process for and have some of them been lingering around for years?

Well Mike Kozak who was so important, the old drummer, he’s on three of these songs because him and I wrote a lot of songs over the years. He was my principal lyric writer, and Kozak’s brilliant at it. I really wanted his footprint to be on the record, regardless. So one song all the way back, “Gotta Rock”, and that was recorded and denied to be on the record – it was supposed to be on Body Shots. And then it got released by our classic label in Canada, Unidisc, on a Best Of record and called it “Don’t Talk”. It’s one of these songs that was just.. it was horrendous but it’s out there, nobody knows it right now but it’s out there. So “Gotta Rock”, that was one, Mike wrote three songs.

Most of the songs are brand new. I started the ball rolling again right I said “we’re not going to wait, I’m not waiting we’ve got to do this record!” So I did, I brought five cuts to the table and we recorded them, and that’s when everybody jumped in because they thought I was just going to hog the whole record. Charlie brought a couple songs and then Brian brought his songs. Brian’s singing is killer! How about the vocals!?

For being away so long are like wow that’s kind of the one of the highlights…

He’s been singing over the years, he didn’t quit singing. He definitely didn’t over-do it, and there’s something to be said that if he’s been singing for the last 40 years in the arena circuit singing rock that he would have lost a little bit, but he’s in great shape. And Brian writes classic easy, rock, hooky songs. He wrote the most poppy song on the record called “Can’t Stop Loving You”, which is getting a lot of attention when I speak to people, so it’s classic Brian. We all shared in the writing, and including Mike, we brought one outside writer in now a new lyricist named Jojo Garrisi. Jojo’s originally from Windsor, and this guy’s a steamroller. He wrote ” Rev Your Engines”, our newest single.

I like that one a lot and I like “Wonder”, and “Man of Vision”, which to me can sit up there with “Heartless World”.

It’s kind of an extension of that.

I want to ask about the cover of “Man on the Silver Mountain”. There’s this extended guitar intro, and I’m like When’s the riff going come in(?)

When’s the riff going to come(?) Lol. Really, you thought it was a little long!?

I didn’t think it was long, it’s just to me when I hear that song I think of the riff right away.

It throws you off, puts you in a whole different vibe. In Europe, I got to talk about who’s doing this record too in the company so don’t let me forget… but in Europe, Khalil at Escape Music (our Pres), he didn’t know we were doing “Man On The Silver Mountain”, and obviously he’s been around it forever and he knows all these cats, he knew Ronnie James Dio, and stuff. And when he seen it – I sent him the list of songs, and he says “You can’t do that song.” “What do you mean?” “That’s my beloved Rainbow, nobody can do that song better.” So, very dangerous trying that song, it’s so iconic. But what we did was, I think the mid-eastern guitar intro is pretty cool, it sets up a vibe, and then when the drums come in.. So what we did was put a whole new flair on the production, again Charlie Lambrick. He wrote that intro, a whole new fresh production on the guitars and maybe a little quicker. And Brian sang it just like Dio because you can’t sing it any better than Dio, but he did sing it really well.

That stands out for him because to me it’s like a trademark Dio/Rainbow song, you’ve almost got to do something a little different.

It’s a crap-shoot. People could have said “No this is shite”, but they didn’t so that’s cool. And we got a thumbs up from the music from the record company. By the way the record has worldwide distribution; it’s really promising. We’re on Escape Music in Europe, the UK, and in southeast Asia. and we’re on the Deko / Warner label in North America.

Deco’s got a lot of good stuff on there.

They’re doing a hell of a job. The president at Deko is Charlie Calv, he plays in Angel. He knows what to do and how to do it and he’s on board, and I can’t thank him enough.

Unidisc is a Canadian company. They’ve picked up all the catalogs of Aquarius and a bunch of others from the early seventies. They reissue all this stuff.

I’m not in contact with them a lot. They do a nice job on the remastering and all that kind of thing, but they really don’t get involved with the bands at all.

So, you guys don’t get anything out of that obviously, right?

Well, we get a little bit, we get a lot of paperwork! (Lol), You seem to see very little checks in there, but there’s a lot of paperwork telling you where all the money went.

Who knows what happened back in the day, but when we broke up back in the day, we owed quite a bit of money to the company. There was an argument on where we owed it because we were kind of, for the company itself, they were sitting on so many fences, I don’t even know how legal it was. They were our management company. they were our record company and they were our promoters and it was all in-house. At the end of the day, I think the records always made money, the catalog that Unidisc owns now, but the managers were still pouring money into the band, which were kind of the same people sitting on other sides, both sides of the fence. So, I think when it came to push and shove at the end and the band was finished, I think maybe that management, that management debt kind of snuck over to the record debt where they could recoup it against royalties. That’s my theory.

Would you ever consider doing what Blue Oyster Cult and Asia have done, where each band has done special nights and played the first album in full, the second album in full, the third…and they’ve recorded and released them?

Well, why not? Yeah, for sure.

It would give you guys something to gain out of.

I have tried. Some of the songs, like the songs on On the Loose, the really heavy songs, and people conceive them as heavy, but when I hear them, I don’t hear them exactly how; they should have been heavier. George (Lagios) really wasn’t a rock producer, so there was a point in time where I was trying to put a compilation record together of all the heaviest songs Teaze did., that we wanted to re-do, put them on one record and put it out in Europe. It didn’t come to fruition, but I thought it would be a pretty cool idea. If you want to know what I mean, you would listen to Live at Liège and listen to “Ready to Move”, the opener, and then listen to the On The Loose version, and then you would know exactly what I’m talking about – how much heavier and how much energy it has than the On the Loose cut, you know!? Probably the On the Loose cut has lost a little bit of energy, because it was probably our 50th take or something, who knows!? We weren’t virtuosos in the studio at that time, we were kids.

That’d be a cool idea for sure.

I’ve told Derek before, “tell Mark to play a full album, record it, and put it out.”

Well, the Live at Liège record was kind of the same thing. But it was all this, the idea was to reintroduce the band, because it had been so long, kind of the same principle, but yeah, I would love to be able to do that for sure – the more records, the better.

Do you think back then that, when you mentioned that it could have been heavier, that maybe the label wanted something that they could see as being radio-friendly during that time?

Absolutely. You know, a Teaze record always consisted of a few components, and one of them definitely is the harder edge, the faster rock that was ready to move, “Lady Killer”, “Boys Night Out”, “Flames Keep Growing”. There’s a million songs, and even on Body Shots, there was very heavy songs like “Calling All Nurses”, but it never was heavy because they kind of ripped the guitars out of that whole production. And that was probably the whole problem with Body Shots, our sound had changed so drastically.

You guys redid “Sweet Misery” on this album. Why is that? Obviously, it was the one that was a hit.

I think nostalgia. I think it’s a 50-50 so far on that one. That one has the most controversy, I think. Some people think it just doesn’t fit because the record is so heavy. Some other critics probably have said, “why do you want to relive that experience?” There was so much contention with the single when it first came out with Teaze, and it being so different than what we were, but it still was our most popular song. We were definitely happy. It was our hit song, and it was a terrific song. It just wasn’t really, it didn’t represent the band the way we wanted, and this was kind of a good idea to revisit it. Nostalgic, people know it, and put a different slant on it that maybe, you know, we just wanted to put a different slant on it, a little more melodic, not so bouncy, really a true ballad, and it’s kind of cool to end the record that way. That was the idea, to not put it in between other songs because we really wanted to kick butt on this record, and then at the end have a little nostalgic moment, a little kumbaya thing going on there, “Oh yeah, I remember that song by Teaze!? Now it’s really a ballad, and it was cool because Brian sang it with his daughter, and that was a seller too, to hear the two sing together, so that was important to us.

At the time you guys recorded that one, way back, how natural did that come for you guys, or was there pressure to put on something like a ballad or something that could be a single?

Well, that song came about for that exact reason. We kind of were sitting there and it was getting close to the end of the record, we were probably 80 percent through, and the record company was listening to it and said, “I just don’t know if there’s a hit.” And then I’m sure that happens with a lot of bands, so in the 11th hour, Chuck brought this lick for “Sweet Misery”, which was very rough and kind of scatterbrained, and we put it together and it kind of ended up in the studio, and there really wasn’t an idea for it. It was a song that was born in the studio, besides Chuck wrote it and Mike helped finish it, but it was born in the studio, and hence all of a sudden we’re putting in a piano, and all the back-up vocals with the girl backup singers, and then it just took on a life of its own, and it was such a cool song, we couldn’t deny it, so we kind of just shoved it to the side, “well, it’s really not like Teaze,

One of our biggest mistakes we ever made was when we went out on our first tour with April Wine, which was one of our biggest, probably 35-40 cities of all the big arenas across Canada, we never played our hit song, which was really weird. That’s kind of a story I tell now, but we were just so adamant on rock, and then we kind of felt it was interfering with the show, because we were a high-energy rock band, so it was weird. I think a lot of bands have that kind of song. Yeah, that was the hit. As soon as it was released to CHUM, at that time, CHUM radio had probably 10 or 12 stations across the country, and as soon as they turned it on, it was, Wow! it just took off, so what do you do!?

Did you guys get much radio play with “Heartless World”?

Well, “Heartless World” is our next biggest tune. In those days, there was AM and FM, everything’s just generic now, everything’s the same, but “Sweet Misery” was an AM hit, and “Heartless World” was the FM hit. “Heartless World” is such a, you know, the vocal that Brian achieved on that song is just so – it’s for the ages. There’s just only certain songs like that, when “Child In Time” by Deep Purple, when Ian Gillan sings that. Songs like that, that put Brian into a whole different category with all them guys, Ronnie James Dio, And today he’s still got that voice, it’s incredible! We’re blessed that Brian still has that ability.

Well, that’s probably my favorite in the catalog, and obviously, because of that vocal and the strings you got in there and that….

The strings are funny. That song started on the On The Loose sessions, that’s “Sweet Misery”, and “Stay Here”, and that started there with George, and George was the one that brought in the strings, and we probably spent like 10 or 20 grand just on bringing in a section of the Montreal Symphony. And then when Myles finished that song, and it was on One Night Stands, and he was against all that, “You’re a guitar band, you’re going to be a guitar band, no keyboards, we’ll simulate keyboard parts on guitars.” And it was brilliant, because that’s what we were, we were a guitar band. But you do hear the strings in “Heartless World”, but they’re kind of buried, but at the end of the day, I guess when you spend 20k on some strings, you’ve got to put them somewhere.

They were also on that song, “Loose Change”, on One Night Stands, and you hear all those pizzicato, and those violins plucking and stuff, yeah, crazy, I don’t know, we were experimenting, the band was changing from album to album, we were growing, and yeah, we were still experimenting, we didn’t really have a handle on it, didn’t know exactly where we were going.

Did you guys have much input into the album covers back then?

And why so!? (ha)

Well, they’re not bad, I’m just saying, I know Aquarius had their own in-house…

Well, let’s start with the first one; the first one is crazy. The first one was done with a different company; that was the only album not done with Aquarius. That’s the one that was a demo, was done out of Toronto. We had our own label called Force One, it was distributed through London Records at the time, that went belly up. But that one – No, we had no say. It was pretty funny, because the guy who drew that record cover was a kind of a medical artist; he was drawing human body parts in for medical journals. And it’s a true story – he was dying at the time, and I think he was just really sedated, and it was one of the last things he ever did in his life, was do that album cover for our management. And when when people seen it, you know, we took a lot of bullying for that cover. People were calling us the Bay City, and I remember Brian seeing it for the first time, and his hair was black, and he had blonde hair, and he was just so devastated that his hair was black.

The rest of the covers, there was an art department at Aquarius Records, and Bob Lemm was an equal partner in Aquarius Records, and he did all the album covers for Teaze, and he did all of the Frank Marino-Mahogany Rush album covers, and many more covers for them…April Wine, of course. So yeah, we had a say. On The Loose, the cartoon thing, I don’t know how that came about. The first two albums are both kind of cartoony. On The Loose – see where that is kind of like a billboard picture(?). That was supposed to pop out at the time, and they were going to make it like a hang up thing for marketing, and you’d hang it in your room, but it was too much money, and we never ended up doing it, and ended up with that.

One Night Stands – our idea, Body Shots was weird; we were playing with this idea about mannequins. We were going to take this cover of all these mannequins that were in this warehouse, or something, but it looked so gruesome, and it was kind of like death. I think the Beatles almost did something like that once too. We always used the mannequins, that was the idea about Body Shots; we were trying to make it our brand. And on stage we wanted to have mannequin light stands, and mannequin guitar stands, and they were cool, it was just an idea, a branding kind of thing that we were going to use.

They didn’t use the logo on Body Shots either.

No, because it was meant to look like that magazine, like it was a Playboy or something. We changed up the logo a few times over the years. There’s definitely that one, I think the Japanese came up with the one that that’s mostly used, the most famous one.

The art on the last one, how much input did you guys have in that?

Oh, that’s all us. Actually, that thing on Live at Liège came up by our drummer, Mike Kozak, and he had the idea of it being a tattoo, that’s what it’s supposed to be, and it’s very cool. If somebody got a Teaze tattoo. That was the whole idea behind it. It was ours, and then he found a graphic artist who would draw it up, someone that did tattoos, and very cool, I liked it.

And then we were going to continue on with it on the new record, Rev Your Engines, the front cover was the back cover, and then we were going to continue using that tattoo. I think Queen did it one time, they put their brand – their coat of arms, on three records in a row. And that was the idea, just to stick with that tattoo, that brand, but that didn’t fly either, and the back cover ended up the front cover. I have a very good friend I’ve got to give a shout out to, his name is Chris Edwards, and he’s doing all this, and he’s kind of in the book business, and he’s got a Walkerville Publishing. He also did the videos with me, “Man of Vision”, and he did “Rev Your Engines”. We’ve done both videos together. He’s done both CDs, Big props to him, he’s really, really helped us out. Chris did the new one, Chris did Live at Liège. We’re working together. We’ve got a good little thing going on with this band. We’ve got everything happening. right, we’ve got people, I’m taking care of the managing, kind of, Charlie’s taking care of the production, the music, the arranging, we’re all writing songs.. I mean, it’s just a really complete band at this point. We have some fresh ideas with Jimmy and Charlie, and then we got Brian and me holding up the old school.

How much of the new album do you guys think you’re going to be playing live?

That’s interesting, we’re just getting there now. The old set – the Live at Liège show, as much as it’s strong from front to back, not all bona fide hits. Teaze just didn’t have that in our catalog. I’m talking to you before I’m even talking to the band about this. I’m almost feeling like we should play the whole new record, and just go for it, and not be classic, just be mainstream, do what we’re doing now, and then maybe throw in the couple obvious ones, like “Heartless World”, or whatever. Play the whole damn record! It might be an idea to consider. It’s not something a band would usually do, but in our case, with the 45 years, and the old catalog not all being bona fide hits, I’m thinking we have nothing to lose, all our path forward is with the new record. It might work; it could work.

It’s interesting, because these old bands that come out with new albums, and they go out and play one or two songs…

Well, that’s the conundrum. People don’t want to hear the new songs, some do, maybe you do, but in general, I think the majority just want to hear the hits. And if they’re getting chiseled on hearing some of their favorites for a new song, they might be pissed off because they want to hear all the old songs. And obviously, a lot of bands don’t have time to play all the songs that they’re known for. But I think it’s a strong album, just the way it sits, the sequence. If we did a show just with all that, and maybe throw in a couple like “Boy’s Night Out” and “Heartless World”, it might be a smoking show.

Do you have a bunch of shows lined up for the summer?

No, we took time off to do the record. The reason for doing the record is because the shows, we need more shows, obviously. We’ve been playing sporadically ever since we’ve been back together. That’s the long haul right there, we need to get out and work more. And it’s a crowded field; there’s a lot of deserving bands out there that are coming back, too, from our era, and there’s more coming back from even more recent eras. It’s getting more crowded, and the gigs are becoming less. The gigs are becoming more expensive, so for a place like Canada – it’s tough, to get from city to city. There’s not a lot of tours anymore, that is definitely the exception to the rule, there’s just a lot of weekends. There’s festivals, but when you fly into a festival, you just got to fly home, so anywhere you fly in Canada is like six grand for a band or something, and that’s economy, if you’re willing to fly economy, and we are, obviously, because we’re willing to do what it takes. But that’s the idea, we need to work more, a pivotal moment right now for the group, because the record really has to come through, the phones have to start ringing more. Thank God for Bernie at the Canadian Classic Rock Agency, he’s believed in us, he’s booked us, he’s put us on some great festivals, he got the ball rolling, and then the albums… Going to Europe for the first time was tremendous. Hopefully Europe, it’s a very easy place to play; you can keep the price down, you can go from country to country, and everything’s 100 kilometers from each other. You can just go there and kick it out, and maybe you make some noise. Then hopefully come back to Canada and tour, and everything will happen in 2026, because everything’s already done. So there’s going to be sporadic dates here and there, but…

What do you still listen to, do you still follow, keep up on new stuff or old stuff, and what did you kind of grow up on?

Well, you try to keep up, but there’s just so much now, and you’re so busy with your own. We’re constantly busy now. Writing new songs, and I’m saying we need the next record in the can; we don’t have it yet, it’s kind of premature, but I don’t want to wait till someone says, “Hey, you did pretty good, but you need another record.” I like to be able to say, “Here it is!” Let’s go fast, let’s just keep pumping them out, that’s what you got to do.

In my day, well, all the Detroit bands, mostly. That’s the whole energy of Teaze, is Detroit, Michigan. That’s how we grew up; that’s our mentality on stage, that’s our mentality when we’re recording. My favorites were like Johnny Winter, Ronnie Montrose, Leslie West, and I loved the Allman Brothers. I love melodic stuff, and Teaze is very melodic in a lot of ways, in the harmony leads and all that, so that’s probably where that came from. Used to really love Dickie Betts and Dwayne Allman, which is kind of off the beaten path, and my all-time favorite was Johnny Winter as a rock and roll star. Johnny Winter had two lives – for a moment he was a rock and roll star, and for 80 percent of the career, he was just a blues man, and I loved his blues, but I loved his blues when it was rock and roll style, and he was just so cool and so flamboyant, I couldn’t get enough of the guy – especially when he was with Rick Derringer, they were kicking out some great rock, man, wow, yeah, I know,

I interviewed, what’s the name, Mark Farner there a couple months ago,

That’s one of Brian’s heroes. Grand Funk – definitely! Alice Cooper, Ted Nugent, MC5, Brownsville Station, even goes back farther…

So, what’s next on the agenda as far as promoting?

Just going to get a feel for what’s going on, I really haven’t sat down with the record companies yet to see what they’re hearing, I know the interviews have been fantastic and the phones are ringing, so that’s the most important thing. I don’t know if it’s possible to get on mainstream radio, I’m not sure, but I’m hoping. It’s an important record for the future of the band, definitely. Got to get working, that’s the only way bands make money these days, you sure don’t make money on streaming.

Has there been discussion of a vinyl issue for this album?

Yeah, I’m always pushing for it. I guess they just got to see if it’s worthy. depends on the sales, the interest. Like I said, I didn’t talk to the company yet, but a lot of people refuse to buy CD, they want it on vinyl. They’re adamant about it, which is cool, I love to have vinyl, I love looking at that big thing, it’s a very cool to have, I’m always pushing for it. I would like to see a limited print for sure, but we’re not there yet.

*TEAZE play a Free show, August 22nd, in Leamington, Ontario https://www.facebook.com/events/2032039390753157

LINKS:

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61584334695250

https://www.dekoentertainment.com/inthesquare/teaze

https://www.escape-music.com/newrelease.htm

https://citizenfreak.com/artists/104026-teaze

https://www.canadianclassicrock.com/artist-roster/teaze

*Photos (galleries), from Windsor, Ontario, 2022, courtesy of Stay Vibrant Photography. https://www.instagram.com/cheeziethechiweenie/

APRIL WINE – ‘On Record: The April Wine Album Review’, a new book from Tim Durling

June 11, 2026 KJ 1 Comment

Canadian rock writer, music podcaster, and on-air radio host from New Brunswick has penned a new book on legendary Canadian band APRIL WINE. On Record: The April Wine Album Review follows in similar style to Tim’s books on Night Ranger, Y & T, and Kansas, with input from fellow fans discussing the band and each of their albums.

There are not a lot of books on April Wine (see Myles Goodwyn’s Just Between You And Me, and Ritchie Henman’s High Adventure), so as a fan (and honored to be a contributor), I am really looking forward to this.

You can order On Record: The April Wine Album Review HERE.

LOCKHART – An interview with Devon Kerr

June 10, 2026 KJ Leave a comment

Canadian rockers LOCKART are set to release their debut album! The band consisting of Devon Kerr, Jason Junop, and Fabio Alasandrini, play a classic 80s style high energy AOR/Metal, but with the synths up front. If you like that 80s AOR sound, you’ll want to check out City Pulse, which comes out in various formats through High Roller Records. I spoke with frontman Devon Kerr a few weeks back, where we discussed the band and the new album, as well as talked music in general, record collecting, favorite bands, etc… Check it out. *Also check out the videos (included), and the links below…..

You guys had an EP out in 2022…

Yes.

What led up to getting a full album out in that time?

So up until that point, 2022, we only had those three songs written. I had no idea how the reception was going to be at the time. The songs were 10 years old, even in 2022 or ‘23.

We started writing those in like 2014. They came out and just kind of feeling it out. And people seem to really take to it, considering we don’t have any marketing. We don’t have any. We got nothing at that time. We just put songs out to the world and saw what happened.

And the support and the number of people that actually enjoyed was overly positive. So it made sense to hit back into the studio and start writing some new songs and making an album. And so that’s basically how it happened.

It was done by us, but because of the reception from the EP from fans.

There seems to be a lot of a bit of an uptake or whatever in 80s AOR and hard rock influenced and inspired bands. Some of them are a little more satirical in that. I don’t know how you got on to that direction and how deliberate and serious it is as opposed to, like, say, Steel Panther.

I’ve always loved this music.

Same with Jay, same with Fabio. It’s definitely not a joke. I mean, this music from the 70s all the way through into the 90s is just top quality music, in my opinion.

The songwriting that goes into bands from the 70s, like Journey and Boston into the 90s, like what Mark Free was doing at that time. It speaks to me. It always has.

So we wanted to do that for real. I know that there’s a resurgence of this type of music or maybe even just a continuation, in Europe. But it seems like, Canadian listeners might understand this and, it seems to be like out on the other continents that a lot of AOR music is like their Nickelback, you know, they’re just kind of generic rock music.

It’s they just fall on to it falls into AOR, where here we got that kind of like country, infused, you know – butt rock stuff. I’m talking about like, it’s kind of like whatever grunge turned into. So we’re trying to stay away from that ‘music by numbers’, generic AOR that’s all digital, nothing’s recorded with amps, none of the artwork’s done by artists – It’s just computers.

We want to stay away from that. But we also want to stay away from any sort of idea that we’re joking around. I know that we’re crazy looking and we do everything to an extent that, some people might think “Are these guys for real?” But we’re just trying to be authentic. We’re trying to do it exactly the way that it’s always been done. It’s just people started getting self-conscious maybe in the ‘90s about the way they looked in bands. We’re trying to get rid of that. Let’s be crazy again, right!? More is more.

I’ve had criticism from family members, they’re like – “What the hell are you doing?” And “Dial it back maybe a little bit!?” And I go, “No, no, no. Turn it up!”

That’s the whole point of this. Let’s go nuts.

The rock star image seemed to have taken a beating over the years. But there’s obviously like watching the video. I mean, you guys get it with the dress and that. There’s a band in Sweden, are you familiar with called Nestor?

Yeah. I listen to them a lot.

And there’s a band from Brazil called Creatures.

Yeah. They’re also on High Roller.

I wonder if we can talk a bit about some of the songs. Do you guys all write or is it mainly you?

I don’t want to sound…I don’t know the word. But yes, it’s primarily my writing. Ninety nine percent.

Jason did write the song “Together As None.” That’s his work. And I just “LockHart-ized” it with keyboards and big vocal choirs and all that. But this project kind of emerged because of I’m feeling sort of in a corner with my other band Axxion. Vocally, I wanted to do something that really showcased what I could do as a singer. So I just went off on my own for this stuff, and this is this is what came of it. I’m still loving playing an Axxion, I’m still doing that. I just wanted to showcase my other abilities as an artist and bring in guys like Fabio and Jay to who are pros. And to leave their signature on it as well. I don’t control any of Jason’s writing or playing. And Fabio’s drum work is entirely him.

I just gave him the music and he, in studio recorded all the drum parts for whatever was in his head. And then we went from there. I never sent him back into the studio to change anything. We used exactly what he heard.

What sort of what sort of things do you influences or inspires your writing lyrically, musically, whatever, like songs like “City Pulse” or “Can’t Shake It”?

They all come from different either experiences or “Can’t Shake It” is just a story about young love. I’m sure almost everyone’s got something similar when they’re in their teens and they’re infatuated with somebody and that experience of either just meeting up, and the second verse, you end up, you’re actually driving around town in the car together, going to the beach. It’s kind of like seeing things come together.

And then we’ve got songs like “City Pulse”, which is finally going to make sense. I can’t tell you how many interviews I’ve done with international interviewers, but you’ll probably remember City Pulse – the news program in Toronto. That’s what we named the album after.

But the song was written about Robert Pickton, the guy out in Vancouver that was the serial killer. I didn’t write about Pickton, it’s about – there was a detective, Kim Rossmo, at the time, who kept being like, “It’s Pickton” to the Vancouver Police Department. And they kept being like, “It’s not Pickton, leave him alone.” And he just kept killing and killing, and it drove this detective, Kim, crazy to the point where he had to leave the police department. And that’s what “City Pulse” is about – Detective Kim Rossmo, my perceived frustration that he must have felt like trying to catch this guy. And in turn, City Pulse, a news program and a true crime story, they kind of come together. I wrote the music for that before the lyrics, I had no idea and I was listening to a podcast about Canadian true crime, and I thought, “This is an interesting story…. And it’s Canadian.”

So, finally, I get to talk about City Pulse – the news program, and someone knows what I’m talking about!

I’ve spent a lot of time on those YouTube channels watching true crime and cold cases.

I actually reached out to Detective Kim Rossmo. I found him on Facebook. He’s just a guy, he’s not famous or anything. And I sent him the song. I said, “I wrote a song that was kind of inspired by a podcast. I’m not a police enthusiast by any means; I just thought it was an interesting story…and maybe you’d be interested in hearing this and letting me know like, do the lyrics speak to you at all?” And he said that it made sense. He actually ended up buying the single – digitally, and I sent him the record. So somewhere out there in the world, this guy, I got a chance to speak with the detective behind the Picton case, which was interesting.

Another song that caught my attention was “You Wouldn’t Know Love”. It kind of reminds me of Heart in places.

Well, that’s a cover song. That’s the one cover we have on the album. You have to read into the liner notes. We didn’t make it obvious because, this record is here; it’s on High Roller Records. It’s not like we’re trying to sell and push the record on people, but this record is being presented to a crowd of metal fans. All three of us are metal guys that are playing AOR – ‘80s pop rock style music. I’m really trying not to use that word because it discourages people from listening, but that’s what it is. But it’s a Michael Bolton song. He wrote it; he did record it. It’s also featured on Cher’s Heart Of Stone album. We wanted to get a song that we thought was kind of groovy and heavy in there, that was by someone like Michael Bolton or Cher, which metalheads would never give a chance to.

Not only that, but we got Nick from Municipal Waste and Vulture to play the guitar solo on it. We found the heaviest guitar player we knew; I asked him on his tour bus if he was interested in doing the solo on this particularly interesting song on the record. And he was all over it. So, that’s the story behind that one.

It’s interesting when you say like ‘metal’ because the songs are pretty synth keyboard led songs. And then you get the big solos. I don’t think there’s any big guitar riffs on the album as far as opening.

No, it’s like a ‘lead synth’ band, right!? The synth sits forward in the mix. The guitars are primarily rhythm guitars. I do dual guitar solos throughout the record there. And I mean, that’s something that you find in traditional heavy metal bands everywhere. There’s some guitar parts that I’m playing lightning fast, like the end of the solo in “Under Fire”, it’s some of the fastest playing that I was able to even pull off.

So, my solos are from metal, and the chord progressions that we use, a lot of them are classic metal chord progressions, but they’re flooded with analog and old FM synthesizers, and big vocal parts that take four singers to pull off.

It’s interesting when I think of like a keyboard led band that it has the more of the metal image and the guitar. The one band that comes to mind is Guffria with Greg Guffria.

Yeah, exactly. That’s a good comparison. We don’t sound like them, but I definitely appreciate what they did and how the keyboardist was actually at the forefront of that band.

In all the bands you’ve been in, aside from being a singer, are you usually on guitar or usually on keyboards?

I’m always just been a lead singer. Now, I play guitar as my first instrument; that’s what I learned how to play music on. But I almost exclusively write music on a piano and then bring guitars into it. I’m sure people hear that in Lockhart, because you listen to the beginning of “Just Can’t Wait”, and it’s a keyboard melody, and then the guitars come in and they’re just chugging along, supporting that keyboard riff. All the vocal parts are written on a keyboard or on a piano.

I’m not an amazing keyboardist, I’m not like Jens Johansson from Yngwie Malmsteen or anything like that, shredding the keyboards the way I do guitar, but I write on the keyboard and I create all the vocal parts. It’s definitely my most expressive instrument. I would say, though I’m a more proficient guitar player, playing keyboard is more like having two guitars in your hands because you’ve got 10 notes you can play.

I assume you guys are going to play live at some point!?

That’s the goal. We’re currently assembling a live band because at our core here we’re a rhythm section, a bass and a drum kit and a lead singer. So, we are currently working with a guitar player, Johnny Nesta, and we’re working with a keyboardist. There’s actually been a few guys who have reached out about getting involved with keyboards, which is good because those are hard to find. But really, everyone needs to be proficient singers. They all need to be able to be lead singers, essentially, in this band. That’s kind of the determining factor of who we’re going to end up going with. We’re going to need a five man band and three, at least, are going to have to be strong singers.

Is it harder in Ontario finding those live shows or are you looking at going elsewhere?

You’ve got to go to like Detroit or you got to go to Toronto, at least for me. I’m similar to you, I’m living in a city that’s kind of in the middle of nowhere. You’d think that London would have an independent (from the rest of the province) kind of music scene because there’s nothing around here. We’re not like attached to another city or anything like Oakville would be. But yeah, it seems that here it’s cover bands, tribute bands all the time. And it seems like anytime I want to see an original act, they’re always touring through Toronto or the Toronto bands that are able to hold enough people to justify a show with original music they have to play in a big city like that. So, me being right square between Toronto and Detroit, I just fluctuate between the two cities.

About the album cover. Who did that? And is there a little bit of a story behind it or anything?

It was a guy, I believe his name’s Julian Elias. (Sorry, Julian, if I screwed your name up,) but he was an artist I found, funny enough I was just looking for a screen saver on my phone, (something that was better than whatever comes with the phone) and I found this Vinnie Vincent Invasion fan artwork on Google. And I was like, man, whoever did that’s awesome. I clicked the image to save it, and it was actually an Instagram page. It took me to his artwork, and he’s an airbrush artist. So I reached out to him – “We’re recording an album. I’m looking for an artist, and I really like what you’re doing.” I sent him a few of his pieces that he’d already done, and said, “If you could do something like this, we’d be all over that.”

He worked with us for months, back and forth, putting different pictures of us together in the sky, finding the right set, finding where to put our logo and the city-scape and everything. And the most difficult part is he was from Argentina, so he spoke Spanish as his first language. And a lot of the things that I would say, I had to make sure I wasn’t using slang, or things that you and I would take for granted because he would take it literally. And then we’d get something that said ‘The City’, the album would be called ‘Night Pulse’. You know, the album is literally called ‘City Pulse’, if you’re supposed to draw a city. So, there was a few times where we would get kind of lost in translation. But yeah – awesome dude! We’re going to give him a shout out once the album is released, and people have actually seen the album cover, because the guy deserves some recognition.

Is the album coming out on vinyl as well?

Yeah, it comes out on black vinyl. And tt comes out on a splatter vinyl through High Roller Records and us. It comes out on a night sky sparkle version. So, it kind of looks like the night sky vinyl we’re currently sold out of that one already in the pre sale. And but that’s available through High Roller. And then it comes out on CD through High Roller and us directly. But we are the only ones who are selling the cassette tape.

The City Pulse cassette is available through our Bandcamp page.

Do you still buy a lot of vinyl?

I do. I buy records. I buy cassettes. I’ve got a whole hi-fi system set up inside. Well, yeah.

I’ve got a big collection, but I’m kind of a little more careful, cautious with what I buy nowadays, with the prices.

Well, now it’s a lot more expensive. Like, I started collecting records in 2008 or something like that. I could buy Malmsteen’s Odyssey for $1.75, and now I see the same record for $35. If I knew that I could invest in these records back then, I’d be a billionaire.

(I relay my story of picking up the entire Kansas catalogue at a flea market 30 years ago for $2 a piece).

What sort of stuff did you grow up on? As far as what do you listen to the most favorite albums and artists and stuff?

My favorite artist, my favorite band of all time is Survivor. Jim Peterik and Frankie Sullivan, I think they’re amazing songwriters. Jamison was an incredible singer…and Dave Bickler, I mean, the passion in his voice when he sings almost makes me emotional. But those guys from top to bottom, from their first record to their last is nothing but top quality stuff. So I’ve been listening to those guys for years and years to the point where I know everything inside and out. Kansas was a band I was really into growing up (that’s one you just mentioned). I got into Iron Maiden and Judas Priest and all exactly what you’d expect a young metal head to be into. And it kind of grew into like more of a Macauley-Schenker Group, where you’ve got the UFO guitar player, but playing in a hard rock/AOR style of band, where you still get that metal in there as well. It’s completely different than Survivor where it’s all AOR.

That’s kind of what I’ve grown up listening to. It started with your, like I said, Iron Maidens and Kansas and developed into stuff like Survivor within the last 15 years. And then I’ve just stayed there. So maybe it’s a slow change now than it used to be between the first 15 years of my life. But if someone can find me a band that can top Survivor, I’m waiting.

Have you heard the Cobra album Jimi Jameson did?

Yes, I have.

I’ve got that, and I’ve got the Target albums he did.

Oh, okay. I haven’t even heard those. I’ll have to check that out.

Any other newer Canadian bands that you listen to, or would recommend?

I would say, you should check out Cauldron, (I want to say check out Axxion, my other band); Manacle, from Toronto – they’re a new band. Amo, from Toronto – another metal band; Spell from out on the Westcoast. I haven’t heard of anything coming out of the Metalian side of things, but back when we were playing all the time, Metalian was a huge one. Right now there’s not as much going on as there used to be. Funny, when people ask me what my favorite Canadian guitar players are, I start by saying Bobby Orr, and then just start(lol) naming off random hockey players. But they can’t be Canadian, it’s got to be from some guy halfway across the world. Gordie Howe is my favorite keyboardist, I told someone once, because I couldn’t think of one. And they just go “Oh yeah…” But, for Canadian bands, I’m still waiting on some more AOR bands. But I would say, If you haven’t heard Cauldron – give them a listen. They’re one of my favorites. Goat Horn is the predecessor band to Cauldron, an amazing band; a little darker than Cauldron, doomy, more like growly vocals. Those are like our sister bands, Jay plays in Cauldron, and Ian – who did the guitar solo on “Can’t Shake It”, plays in Cauldron.

I’ve got the new Spell and new Crown Lands on order.

That new Spell video and single, “Lilac” is pretty sweet; I love it. The video is totally “Time Stand Still” – Rush, but the sound is very unique; kind of gothic, awesome keyboards…

LINKS:

https://www.instagram.com/listentolockhart/?hl=en

https://www.facebook.com/Listentolockhart

https://www.hrrecords.de

https://listentolockhart.bandcamp.com

GENTLE GIANT – ‘In A Glass House’, remixed and remastered

June 3, 2026 KJ 1 Comment

Gentle Giant’s In a Glass House Returns in Newly Remixed and Remastered Edition to Be Released on July 31st

One of progressive rock’s most daring and influential albums, In a Glass House by Gentle Giant returns in a powerful new form, newly remixed and remastered by Grammy Award-winning producer Eber Pinheiro alongside the band’s own Derek Shulman.

Originally released in 1973, In a Glass House stands as a bold artistic statement that pushed the boundaries of composition, musicianship, and studio experimentation. With its intricate arrangements, shifting time signatures, and thought-provoking themes, the album remains a cornerstone of progressive rock and one of Gentle Giant’s most celebrated works. The album features some of the band’s most enduring compositions, including “The Runaway,” “Experience,” and the epic closing title track “In a Glass House.”

For the first time ever, In a Glass House has been newly mixed and made available in both 5.1 surround sound and Dolby Atmos, opening up the album’s dense arrangements and intricate performances in an entirely new way.

“When we made In a Glass House, we were pushing ourselves musically and creatively in every direction,” said Derek Shulman. “Hearing the recordings again and being able to remix them with today’s technology has revealed details and textures that were always there but never fully heard. We wanted to present In a Glass House the way we always hoped it could sound, clearer, more dynamic, and true to the original vision. The detail in the performances really comes through in this new mix.”

“The Dolby Atmos and surround mixes really allow the listener to step inside the music,” Shulman added. “It’s incredibly rewarding to hear the album take on a new life while still staying completely true to what we created in 1973.”

For longtime fans and new listeners alike, this new edition of In a Glass House presents the album with greater power, depth, and transparency than ever before, reaffirming its place as one of the defining recordings of the progressive rock era.

The release will be available in multiple formats, including a standard 180g vinyl LP, limited edition clear vinyl, CD, and a deluxe CD/Blu-ray edition featuring stereo, 5.1 surround sound, and Dolby Atmos mixes.

Gentle Giant ‘In a Glass House’

Track Listing:
1. The Runaway (7:24)
2.An Inmates Lullaby (4:28)
3. Way of Life (7:52)
4. Experience (7:48)
5. A Reunion (2:11)
6. In a Glass House (7:39)
7. Index (1:20)

Pre-Order: https://linktr.ee/gentlegiantband

ASHLEY HOWE – An interview with British recording engineer, producer

June 1, 2026 KJ Leave a comment

ASHLEY HOWE began his career in 1970, and more recently retired. I had the pleasure of interviewing him this time about his career, where he began as tape operator, and becoming an recording engineer and producer, before relocating to the US to work in television & film sound (where he’s picked up a few EMMY Awards!). Although many Uriah Heep albums will recognize Ashley’s name for the many Heep albums he’s credited on (including producing Abominog & Head First), we discussed a number of other bands Ashley worked with in the 70s and 80s, as well as what he got up to when he left the UK. Ashley has a lot of great stories, and I’m sure (and yes, I did ask!) they could make for an entertaining book someday!. Although Ashley might play it down, but I would say the man’s had a legendary career in the recording business, having been connected to many classic bands and big albums.

We started off this conversation bringing up his recent appearance on Rock DayDream Nation‘s Youtube show, which was a ‘reunion’ show….

Enjoy the read. All photos were kindly sent by Ashley. I have also included images of albums he worked on over the years (click on the images too!).

You had a reunion recently!?

I had a little reunion with the wonderful Uriah Heep. I do want to just say one thing, a mutual friend of ours, Peter Goalby, that gentleman deserves so much respect, and so much acknowledgement, and the stuff he’s putting out now is just as good as it was 40 years ago.

Yeah, there’s a lot of what-ifs there with that stuff, right? There’s a lot of Wow – if this had come out, what it should have.

Yeah, should have. But just a wonderful gentleman, and one of the best singers I ever worked with, and I was lucky enough to work with some great singers, Freddie Mercury and people like that. Peter’s just, he’s just way up there….

To kick off, I started when I was 16 and three quarters, or 17, in late 1969, with Uriah Heep, and the first project I worked on, and that has a history to it, 15 albums later, and et cetera, et cetera, …but there’s a few stories along the line that people might find interesting.

How did you get into all the, to the technical end of the music stuff?

Well, actually, it’s a good situation. I was in a school group with a guy called Peter Coleman and Richard Dodd. Richard Dodd is a very famous engineer, very accredited, Peter went in first of all, and he became famous very quickly, and he was working at CBS, and I went to CBS to record our little band and snuck in after the Hollies, and decided that this is something I’d like to do.

I actually applied to the BBC, because they were advertising for school leavers in the south, so I went there, and I got my interview, and the guy said, “Oh, absolutely fantastic. How many years experience have you had in television and recording?” I said, “Well, I’m still at school”. He said, “Well, we can put you in the accounting department, and when you’re 32, we’ll re-review you”.

Well, straight from that interview, I went to a studio, and I was greeted by the studio manager, who turned up about 20 minutes late. The receptionist had told me to sit down and have a cup of tea, so eventually he came down, and as he came off the elevator, he saidHi don’t get up , and he said, “What’s your name?” I said, Ashley Howe, and he said, “Don’t F……g talk to me while you’re sitting down. Let me just tell you that I fire people in 30 seconds.” And this is the first interview at a real studio.

I then went from that interview to Lansdowne, and at that point, I was feeling a little uncomfortable, and I walked in, and the gentleman that I met Adrian Kerridge, very famous, and he’s sitting behind his desk with his suit on and everything, and I just, he said to me, “What exams do you have? And I said, well, actually, I’m pretty ignorant, really. I don’t really have A-levels or O-levels, but I’m really willing to start at the bottom, be a tea-boy, and put everything into it.” and then I said, “but I think I need to leave, because I feel so intimidated with you behind that big desk.”

And so I’ll never forget this, he took his tie off, took his jacket off, came down, pulled the chair up next to me, and he said, “What are your interests?”, I said, “Everything”, He said, “What are your hobbies?” I said, “I don’t have hobbies. I’m just interested in music.” And that was it, then I started at Lansdowne. Just to cap this story off, years later, I was chief engineer. The guy that was nasty to me turned up to get a job at the place. I turned around to him, I said, “Don’t F….g talk to me while you’re sitting down

That’s quite the beginning. There was an interview posted with Alan Parsons, and he had a similar where he just showed up and took anything type of job.

So, what was the first album you worked on, the first Uriah Heep album!?

That was the first one I worked on. In those days, you worked on a lot of different clients that were coming in through the door, left, right, and center. You’d be doing four or five sessions a day. Yes, that was the first one I worked on. And I have some interesting stories about Lansdowne, some funny stories, but if you want band stories.

Ashley on the right, w/ Bob Buttersworth, taken1970, while working on the first Uriah Heep record

Yeah, a bit of both. Lansdowne, is that where you were primarily?

That’s where I started off, and then I eventually moved over to the Roundhouse Studios, which Gerry Bron bought, and then took myself and Peter Gallen, the two engineers that pretty much worked on all of his projects, over to there.

When I went over to the Roundhouse, I became an in-house producer as well. I worked with bands like Hawkwind and Motorhead. I did Overkill with Motorhead, Overkill, and there’s some fun stories from those sessions

When we started to do the album, we were using a drum riser, because the studio was a little dead. We brought in a wooden platform, but Phil was hitting the drums so hard, they kept moving off of it. We tried bricks and everything else. In the end, Phil got two nine-inch nails, and hammered them through his bass drums and into the platform. Another story happened during the first playback. They came upstairs, and Lemmy said “Stop the tape! stop the tape!” So, I stopped it. Lemmy said “There’s something wrong.” And I’m thinking, well, I’m not that bad an engineer. There’s only bass drums, guitar, and vocals. He said, “No, no, I can hear my bass.” And I said, “Well, of course you can, you’re playing it.” He said, “I don’t want to hear it.” I said, “Well, I really don’t want to hear it either.”

The last thing was that I used to have to wake up Fast Eddie with a broom because he’d fall asleep on the couch. He’d wake up very violently, throwing punches, so I’d poke him in the stomach with a broom, and he’d wake up swinging.

One day I made the mistake of cleaning Lemmy’s bass guitar, because it was so sweaty. When he came in, he couldn’t play it anymore, so he had to go out and get some axle grease.

What music did you grow up on? Before you got involved, what were you listening to, and what bands were you going to see and such?

I was listening to everything on radio. In that era, there was so much great music, but more importantly, great songs. I always thought of myself as a song person.

I didn’t really stick to one genre. There was a lot of American music, a lot of Quincy Jones, a lot of jazz, and of course Led Zeppelin. But really, all the commercial stuff.

Are you familiar with Discogs, the website?

I’ve seen it.

I went into that because it’ll have a listing of everything you’re credited on. It’s quite a thorough listing. A lot of the bands you worked with, I wasn’t familiar with. I had to go back and listen to a few things that were kind of interesting, like Capability Brown, Rare Bird. You did a lot of different bands over there.

What were some of your favorite lesser known artists, that you worked with?

I loved working with Rare Bird. I actually did a little bit of percussion on one of their records. I thought they were very good.

One of my favorite projects was one of the first things I engineered – a band called Spiteri. I think they’re still getting recognition for it today. They very Santana-esque.

I also enjoyed working on Spencer Davis. That was an interesting experience because I was actually told not to bother recording him. I recorded him anyway.

I had a very diverse engineering background. One day I’d be working on the Pink Panther movie, another day with Colosseum. Colosseum was another great band that I worked with.

Ashley in the studio with Venezuelan band Spiteri, 1973

That was the one with Mike Starrs on it, right?

Right. It was a lovely album to record because they all wanted to make an album that genuinely reflected what they sounded like. They told me that most engineers would start EQ’ing things before even listening properly to the drums. Nowadays, some people don’t even record drums—they fabricate them.

John Hiseman and Gary Moore both said it was the first album where they felt it truly sounded like them. In fact, I don’t think I used any EQ on John’s drums. It was a great collaboration between very talented people who wanted to make a record and connect with one another. That was a lot of fun.

Hawkwind was fun too, especially with Ginger Baker. There was plenty of drama. We recorded an entire album and then Hawkwind – who had a habit of firing people – fired the drummer! We had to replace the drum tracks. I think we were working on 16 tracks or 24 tracks, and I didn’t have a way of preserving the original drums. So, we brought the new drummer in and he played the entire album in one go. One take. I had to wake him up between takes.(haha) But it was that was a good experience.

Babe Ruth were an interesting band. Very good. They never really got their due. I know they had some following in parts of Canada and UK and that.

Yes, good band.

A little story from those sessions: the producer would often want the guitar tracked six or eight times. We knew after two or three takes it was already huge and wasn’t getting any bigger, so we’d just pretend to keep recording.

It’s interesting because the last one is where they had a lot of change in the band and new singer. I imagine that one probably gets forgotten the most. But you had a lot of name guys in that band that went on to other things.

Well, a lot of these groups—including Heep—went through many different people, eras, and styles. It was a learning experience for everyone at the time.

Thank God for Led Zeppelin not conforming and not following the norm. If you wanted “Whole Lotta Love,” you had to buy the album.

I’ve often wondered, like Zeppelin obviously is the biggest band of the 70s, but all these other bands that, like Deep Purple, even Black Sabbath, they end up going through so many changes. You kind of think that the whole thing about Zeppelin being so popular still is the fact that they just left it where it was.

And that’s the key.

I hate to make the comparison, but it’s a bit like the mafia. You’ve got everybody together, things are working great, and then everyone wants to be the boss. They can’t stay in their own lane, and eventually they all get whacked.

There are very few people who can leave a successful entity and make it on their own. Rod Stewart is one example. He had Faces and then branched off successfully. People can branch out, but in the end, many should stay as they are.

You’ve got to admire bands like The Rolling Stones. They simply are what they are. They do what they do, they’ve got their own clique and there’s a reason those things work.

You should never try to change something that works, because most of the time it won’t.

You did the first Angel Witch album, a little more metal there.

I think I was kind of branded, not branded, but nicely mentioned as the “man of metal” at one point. I could tell you a few stories about the Nugent album.

Yeah, you did Ted Nugent, Penetrator. You had Brian Howe on that album. Is it true you asked Peter (Goalby) about doing that album?

At one point, I’d asked Peter when I was doing it, and I think Peter was not free. And in actual fact, when I was trying to come up with a different person to do that, I was walking in the Atlantic and I used to go to Atlantic Studios a lot to get demos and that sort of stuff, and I heard a demo going on with Brian’s voice. And I said, “That’s it. That’s the guy!”

It was difficult to convince Ted to use someone. In fact, one of the reasons I did the album is I said, “Ted, if I’m doing this, I’m not even using anybody you know as musicians. I’m going to bring in outside guys, get an outside singer, and use some outside songs.

The reason we arrived at that point was that John Kalodner had heard the Heep albums and stuff. I believe he was a very good friend of Ted’s—whatever the situation was—and he told him that he should give it a shot because of the way I did things at that time.

So I went in with Ted, and we sat down. I went to meet him, and he said, “I’ve got to tell you, I was just with a very big-name producer, and he told me all my songs were fantastic.”

He played them all to me, and I said, “Well, then you should use them because you’re going to be paying a lot of money, and you’ll have an album. But it’s not going to be what I think you should do. But that’s OK.”

I thought I’d blown it. As a matter of fact, I came back straight into the Uriah Heep album that I was doing in the middle of, got a call, and he said, “When do we start?”

He was the most wonderful man to work with. Huge—biggest ego ever. (Laughs)

On the first day, I had Billy Squier’s band in New York for a week rehearsing, and I brought in six outside songs that we were working on.

Funnily enough, Ozzy was next door. I went to Ozzy and said, “I’m going to be doing Ted next door. Do you want to meet him?” He’s like, “I don’t want to meet him—he’s crazy!”

But Ted was nothing like you’d imagine. I mean, he’s got a big ego, there’s no doubt about it. Long story short, he comes into the rehearsals after a week off. Everybody’s a little intimidated because he comes in with a big presence—no doubt about it.

I needed to know that I was controlling the band because I knew he’d be difficult to control. So he comes in, and I tell him to start the first song. He starts playing, and I stop everybody, but he carries on playing. I said, “Ted—stop, stop, stop, stop.” In the end, I went over and pulled the guitar out of his hands. “We need to have communication. That was me trying you out.”

So he said, “Well, I’m deaf in one ear.” I said, “Which ear?” He said, “Well, I always put my good ear to the amp.” It was a 200-watt Marshall.

So, I got the roadies to put the amp on the other side. And I said, “OK, put your bad ear to the amp and your good ear to me.” And that’s how we started off.

I think there was a lot of respect between the two of us. He spent four days on the album. But on the first day that he went down to do the overdubs, he comes in and he didn’t talk to me at all. I recorded his guitar in the control room . He started playing a song and I stopped him because it was a little out of tune.

So I said, “Could you tune the guitar, please?” He took his pistol out of his bag, dropped the bullets out, put them back in one by one. The assistant was now ducked under the desk. He flicked it around, rolled it in his hand, and held it up.

I said, “OK, asshole, you can load a gun. Can you tune a guitar?” He said, “Nobody speaks to the Nuge like this.” And I said, “I’m getting divorced—I don’t care.”

We got on great after that. It was really good. He did everything.At the end of it, he went away and came back three months later to hear the finished album.

He said, “I’ve got to tell you, it doesn’t sound like me. Nobody wanted me anymore.” It was a calculated album, and it did him good. He was very impressed with that.

“Draw the Line” was a big hit. And that was, I interviewed Jim Vallance there last year or earlier this year, and that was one of his. That song got done by quite a few people.

Yeah, well, it was an interesting era at that time. And I was starting to get a bit of a reputation for taking outside songs into the situations, which I’d like to point out was not done because of the inadequacy of the people I was working with.

It was done because I think there are very few artists nowadays who can come up with ten or twelve songs that are all great. Adele can pull it off, but most people are always going to have four or five brilliant songs.

I kind of wanted to give everybody their best shot. And I think because of that album, his career took off again. It wasn’t a massive album—it might have gone gold, I’m not sure—but it was designed that way.

What I also found was that using outside songs increased the playing level and improved their own material because you’re trying to prove something. I actually prefer a couple of Ted’s songs to anything else because I think it made him try harder. It certainly didn’t do him any harm.

“Draw The Line” certainly suits him, it doesn’t come off as a cover.

It shows his brilliance as a guitar player, which is another thing.

I’d never really heard Ted before. I’d heard “Cat Scratch Fever.” It’s like when I worked with Yes—I hadn’t really heard Yes before.

But I didn’t think that made any difference because it’s about what you’re doing at the time. It may even have helped in a way to change the model a little bit or give him a different direction.

My opinion of a producer is that he shouldn’t be telling everybody what to do. He should be capturing the performances.

That’s what’s difficult about being both an engineer and a producer. If you’re a self-critical engineer, you shouldn’t be worried about every little pop. There are pops everywhere and all that sort of stuff. But if you clean those up, you can lose performance.

Anyway, that’s my idea. Production should be about encouragement and then telling people when to stop.

I think Freddie Mercury, who was a perfectionist, would still be doing “Bohemian Rhapsody” over and over again if someone had let him. But he nailed it. You won’t get it better than what’s on the record. I don’t care how many melodic changes you make—that’s the best it will ever be.

To me, a producer needs to tell someone when to stop. At least in my career.

What about Brian Howe?

Well, I discovered him and insisted that we put him on the Penetrator album. And the way I work is always kind of one-on-one.

The way I work is always kind of one-on-one. I don’t have other people in there because I find it’s difficult to put someone in a situation where they have to perform. And it’s even more difficult if you’ve got a bunch of people standing around waiting for them to perform. So I like to work one-on-one.

Anyway, on the first day of recording, we were at the Record Plant. I took Brian in, gave him the song, and we started going through it.

He absolutely would not cooperate with any of the ideas I had.

So I said, “Brian, you’re only here because of me. We can fire you and bring someone else in, but I really think we can make this work.”

And he said, “Well, I don’t want to sing it that way.” I said, “In that case, this is the way I want you to do it. If you don’t do it, then it’s not going to work.”

I got a little belligerent, and I actually locked him in the studio. I turned all the lights out and left.

I came back two hours later and said, “Are we ready now?”

He said, “No.”

So I turned the lights out again.

I think I came back about ten hours later. I turned the lights on and said, “Now are we going to do it?”

So we did it. He was a little reluctant, but I think he started to get into it.

To cut a long story short, we played it to Nugent the next day, and he went absolutely bananas.

He said, “Oh my God, this is fantastic!”

From that point on, Brian and I got on. Well, we didn’t really get on, but we got on well enough to make it through.

Years later, I saw on his website that he complimented me for doing it, and we became really good friends.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see him before he died. Over the years, we became friends.

I kind of kept that story back because I had a call from his sister and she wanted to know what had happened. To be honest, I didn’t tell her about that because I didn’t see any need to. But it was the truth.

And from that album, he got into Bad Company, which was not a bad move at all.

Now, the other album I thought was interesting was the Wishbone Ash Twin Barrels Burning. But there’s two versions of it. The remix, I don’t know why.

Oh, I didn’t know there was another version. I didn’t know there was a remix.

Yeah, there was a different mix for the U.S., I guess.

Yeah, the U.S. tends to do that. I really didn’t agree with Abominog being rearranged in the U.S. because it was a concept album. It had a meaning, and I really put it together for a reason.

It started off with the old “Too Scared to Run,” which was like, “Yeah, this is the ’70s Heep,” and then it went into “Chasing Shadows” and stuff like that—“Now we’re going to be the new Heep.”

Then the end of it was “Think It Over,” which was really kind of a message to the fans saying, “Okay, I’m not sure if I like this because I love what they used to be.” And to the new people: “Hey, you haven’t heard the old stuff, but this is a mixture.”

But they mucked it up, in my opinion, when they reformatted it.

There’s a few albums like that in the 70s and 80s, where they just, you know, between the US. and the UK, they changed the running order on that.

Yeah, A&R people. In my opinion, there was only one great A&R person, and that was John Kalodner.

I’ll tell you a little story. I was at Atlantic, and they commissioned me to do an album with Lita Ford. We went in, and she didn’t want to be produced by anybody. So I was about three weeks into rehearsals, and she wasn’t cooperating at all.

I got paid by the record company and everything, and I said to them, “Well, now I’ve got time on my hands.”

They said, “Okay, we’ve got this other band called Malice.”

I said, “Okay, great!”

So I went into Pasha Studios and started recording Malice. To make a long story short, I kept sending them rough mixes—“Take a look at this…”—and they kept saying, “No, don’t worry about it. Carry on.”

So I carried on and finished the album.

Quiet Riot was next door doing the remake of “Cum On Feel the Noize” and that sort of stuff.

I went to play back the album for the A&R guy, and he said, “Oh, crap, I didn’t realize this was heavy metal!”

I said, “What are you talking about? It’s called Malice! I mean, it’s not going to be called Mary, you know.”

And he said, “Well, we didn’t sign this, did we?”

I said, “Apparently you did, because you gave it to me.” (Laughs)

That was a classic example of an A&R guy. And he was actually at my wedding.

I wanted to ask you, last time you had mentioned that Twin Barrels Burning had started out as a different title.

Yes.

Well, what happened there was that it was originally called The Nature of the Beast—“It’s Just the Nature of the Beast.”

I’m trying to remember what it was… There was the April Wine album The Nature of the Beast.

So at the last minute, they changed the lyrics and everything to “You Make My Engine Overheat,” which, to me, kind of ruined the whole point of it. It changed the whole thing.

But yeah, that was the decision they made because they thought it would be too comparable to the April Wine album.

I know they still have the line in the song, “Nature of the Beast”, but obviously they took, they changed the title.

And that was another interesting little situation.

We were recording at The Sol, which was Jimmy Page’s studio. We were working away one night, and all of a sudden the roadies or security guards came over and said, “We’ve got this guy trying to get into the studio.”

I thought, “Who is it?”

So we looked at the camera, and it was Jimmy Page—the guy who owned the place.

I said, “I think you should let him in.”

He came in, and I was trying to get him to do a little cameo, but he just spent a few hours talking and hanging out.

I learned something from that. I learned that you can have the same guitar with a different player and it’s totally different. Clapton could play a note on his guitar, and I could play the same note, and it just wouldn’t be the same.

So it was very interesting.

It was a fun album to work on. The studio was so dead-sounding that Trevor Bolder and I went to another studio in the middle of the night, and I recorded all the bass parts in one night because I just couldn’t get a bass sound there. Not to say someone else couldn’t have, but I couldn’t.

It ended up fine.

I didn’t end up mixing that album. I think I had to move on to another project because we’d overrun at some point.

I grew up on that band, so I loved it. Having the opportunity to work on a Wishbone Ash album was a lot of fun.

Yeah, it’s a good album. It’s kind of more of a straight forward rock album for them. The song Trevor wrote, “Hold On”, was probably the standout track for me.

I thought it was a good rock album, I think it stands up. I don’t remember, but as you know, with these recordings there’s always some drama going on somewhere. I don’t believe there was any drama on that album at all. It was kind of fun, and we did it as quick as we could because it was a limited budget.

Speaking of ‘Drama‘, you were credited on that album as well! Was that a strange atmosphere with that line-up of Yes?

Very strange.

Again, I wasn’t that familiar with Yes beyond Fragile and that sort of stuff. Steve Howe is an amazing guitarist.

I did all the guitars on the album. They had four studios running at the same time. One person was doing keyboards, and they had six slave rooms.

It was obviously going to be the end of the band because it should have been five solo albums.

Funnily enough, the first time I met Chris Squire, I’d just been working on, I think, a Pink Panther movie or something. Peter Sellers was an absolutely wonderful person.

I said to him, “Would you like a cup of tea?”

And he said, “Actually, I’ll go make you a cup of tea.”

The next day, Chris Squire comes in and says, “I want a cup of tea.”

I said, “Okay, well, the kitchen’s that way,” because I was busy mixing.

And he said, “Well, I’m Chris Squire.”

I said, “Okay, I’m Ashley Howe. The kitchen’s that way.”

The drummer turned around to me and said, “Wow!”

But Steve was just a wonderful person.

I’ll never forget: he was in the control room working out a part, so I put the tape at half speed. He was doing this part with a lot of finger work.

They said, “Okay, let’s record it.”

So he goes downstairs, and I leave the tape at half speed, thinking we’re going to record it at half speed and then speed it up afterward.

He said, “Oh no, put it back to full speed.”

Now we’re twice as fast.

He transposed the entire thing and then said, “Now let’s do a harmony.”

I thought, okay, you might not like the guitar tone, but you can’t fail to admire the technique.

He was wonderful.

He brought in thirteen amps, and we tried about a hundred different guitars for every overdub. In the end, we wound up using the same guitar and the same AC30 combination we’d started with.

But he always said, “I need to try this.”

Unfortunately, it should have been a Steve Howe album because a lot of the guitar work was taken away. When everybody came together, they all played over each other. They literally let the keyboard player play over the guitar parts.

You had to take a lot of stuff out just to make room.

So it was obviously an attempt to solve a difficult situation.

I don’t know if it was one of their worst albums. It was certainly a pleasure to work on.

It’s different, obviously. I kind of like it for being a little more modern…

“Machine Messiah”…There’s a couple of great tracks on there.

But yeah, you got a lot of great things out of it. I mean, in time, you got the next Yes album and it’s a different lineup, and you got Asia and all that.

One other thing I’ve got to show you, I picked this up a couple years ago, a very strange album, Mike Maran.

I recognize this, Mike Maran. He was a fantastic session keyboard player. In fact, he was very instrumental in a stage-show called Time, for Dave Clark. We had Freddie Mercury on it, Laurence Olivier, Ashford and Simpson, and a lot of other people involved. Mike was very much an instigator of most of the arrangements, and we recorded a lot of stuff in his studio.

At what point did you kind of get out of the kind of the rock producing in the UK and then coming over to moving over to America in that?

Well, between 1980 and ’85 or ’86, I was still doing a few bands. I worked with a band in Australia called The Angels, and I did a few other albums during that period.

But around 1986, I basically stopped doing as much.

To be honest, I was getting a little disenchanted with the way the music business was going. People weren’t using big studios anymore.

A little example of that is that I did an album with John Sinclair and a band called Estrella in 2010.

All done on Pro Tools. In fact, he would send me the files and the overdubs, and in the end I mixed the album on my MacBook—128 tracks.

The big studios weren’t being used anymore. It was becoming too easy for people to do this stuff. Then the age of plug-ins came in. We used to spend all that time trying to work out sounds and tape phasing with our hands, and suddenly it just became too easy.

I didn’t want to get into the disco era and that sort of stuff. I did a few disco records, but to me the music business was changing.

So, what actually happened was that I got married.

I did Time, got married, then came back and worked on the Time project, which involved doing all the films and mixing the double album with all the different artists for Dave Clark back at Lansdowne. That was a lot of fun.

Then I actually went into television on the post-production side. I was fairly successful. I won eight Emmys for post-production work—various long-form shows and things like that.

I also did a lot of live television. By moving into post-production, we ended up working on the Massenburg console, so I still got to do some good audio work. It was just a different genre and a different approach.

I went from 128 faders to five.

What exactly will you be doing as far as the sound goes?

Well, it depended. I actually ended up doing a lot of soap operas, where I’d be editing dialogue, adding sound effects and music, and balancing the entire show.

I also did a lot of live post-production for Monday Night Football, for example, where we’d do the opening segments.

I worked on a lot of 20/20 broadcasts and Primetime Live, along with various news broadcasts. Those were live post-production situations where material was constantly being brought in, and I was putting it all together and either airing it immediately or balancing it while it aired.

It was challenging. It was a smaller use of the skills I had, but it still incorporated many of the same processes. I think I managed to change things a little bit, and it eventually made me the highest-paid audio engineer in television, which was great.

I had a separate contract above the union contract. I won eight Emmys doing it, and it was a lot of fun.

With some of the long-form shows, I developed a reputation where producers would simply bring me the tapes, leave me alone, and I’d mix everything overnight by myself and hand back the finished program.

I developed a reputation where, if a project came to me—and I’m not trying to be big-headed; that’s just how it was—there were five other engineers, but they kept booking me. So I was highly paid, working constantly, and enjoying it.

Then, when Disney decided to shut down a lot of its operations, I moved out of post-production and into the live production area.

That wasn’t nearly as much fun. It’s like air-traffic control, but without the rewards.

At that point, they were trying to get rid of people through pure attrition. They even employed people whose job was essentially to watch for your mistakes.

There’s nothing quite like doing a live broadcast to 60 million people with someone standing over your shoulder waiting for you to open the wrong fader so they can write a report about it.

It wasn’t a very pleasant atmosphere, but I wasn’t going to let them use that as an excuse to deny me a full pension. I ended up with lifetime entrance privileges to Disney and things like that. So, I stayed with it.

I’d lost a little bit of enthusiasm—not interest, because I still loved what was going on—but I didn’t totally agree with the methods being used nowadays.

Maybe that’s because I’m old-fashioned. As engineers, we grew up with no second chances. Now you’ve got three million tries. Back then, if you screwed up, you screwed up.

The early Heep stuff was done on eight tracks. We’d be dropping in a bass solo on the backing vocal tracks, and if you didn’t come out of the punch-in at exactly the right moment, there were no more backing vocals.

There was no margin for error. I think that forced everybody to work differently.

You didn’t have computer mixing. You’d mark the tape with a Chinagraph wax pencil, and that would be your base level—not bass as in bass guitar, but your starting point.

You’d move the mix around manually. If you pushed the drums up, you’d probably have to push the guitar up a little too because the balance had changed.

You played the mix like an instrument. Once everything became computerized, it just became too easy.

And speaking of engineers, in those days we cut tape and spliced tape. I was taught by a guy called John Mackswith, an incredible engineer. He made me edit using bent scissors that looked like this.

Once you learned to edit like that, it wasn’t anything like using a splicing block. I kept saying, “Can I buy a pair of straight scissors? I don’t want to make a mistake.” And he said, “Just don’t make a mistake.”

That was the way I was trained. And I didn’t make a mistake. But it’s all changed now. To be honest, it’s become too easy.

And you moved into movies as well?

Yeah, I did soundtracks to a couple of the Pink Panther movies. And I did the recording to Time. Are you familiar with Time?

No.

Okay, well, it was a theatrical production—a musical theatre project—with Cliff Richard and, as I mentioned before, Burt Bacharach, Ashford & Simpson, Freddie Mercury, and a lot of other major artists who appeared on the album.

The production itself was staged at the Dominion Theatre in England, which seated about 5,000 people. We had a live recording studio underneath the theatre, which was fantastic.

Richard Dodd, who is my best friend—we’ve been friends since we were five years old—worked on it with me. Richard and I later got to do Raging Silence together for Uriah Heep, which was great.

So Time was a concept project that Dave Clark put together. It ran in the theatre for years and featured Laurence Olivier.

We had to record Laurence Olivier, who was suffering from Parkinson’s disease at the time, so we literally had to help him into a chair.

I’ve got a lovely story about him. His image was being projected onto a 15-foot holographic head that flew around the theatre.

A guy named Simon Napier-Bell was heavily involved with the theatrical side of things. At that point in time, the biggest productions had maybe fifteen hydraulic systems. His show had something like sixty.

The stage would actually tilt up vertically with performers standing on it. The amount of technology involved was incredible.

I also went to Laurence Olivier’s house to record him personally for some overdubs. Later, we needed him in the studio for filming.

Because of the Parkinson’s, we had to physically secure him in position. Even the slightest movement would become exaggerated on the giant holographic projection. A small shake could move his nose halfway across his face on the screen.

One day, a mailroom boy came in with a message for him. He looked downstairs and realized, “That’s Laurence Olivier.” He was completely starstruck.

Laurence noticed him standing there and said, “Please excuse me. I’m working at the moment, but I need to come upstairs.” He walked up to the kid and said, “Hello, I’m Sir Laurence Olivier.” The poor kid was practically shaking. Then Olivier said, “I’m very sorry to have kept you waiting.” What a wonderful man. What a great human being.

That was the technology we were working with at the time, and it was a lot of fun.

I started out doing the first few performances live. We recorded the raw performances, and once the production got going, I think it ran for four or five years.

That was another collaboration with Richard Dodd because he’d already done half of the double album. Richard and I were fortunate enough to work together several times over the years, and it was always a lot of fun.

Were you on like set for a lot of any of the movies and stuff that you’d meet a lot of people over the years?

The movie work was mostly recording the music—a couple of songs here and there for each production. Even that has a nice story attached to it.

You had to be heavily unionized to work on those sessions, and I wasn’t part of the union. Dave Clark pulled a few strings because he wanted me to do the work. I said, “Great, I’d love to do it.”

But there were all kinds of restrictions. I wasn’t allowed to speak directly to the person operating the recording machine. I had to tell another guy what I wanted, and he would relay the message.

At one point I went out to mic up the musicians and tripped over a microphone cable, pulling the connector out of the wall. I went to plug it back in and they immediately said, “Oh no, don’t touch that!”

So we had to wait fifteen minutes for an electrician to come and plug it back in. Meanwhile, we only had about thirty-five seconds available to record a thirty-second piece of music.

I said to the guy, “Put it into record.” He replied, “You can’t talk to him. You have to talk to me.” I said, “Okay. Don’t put it into record.” He then turned to the operator and said, “The engineer in charge of the session would like you to place the machine into record status.” We just barely got the take recorded.

Afterward I asked, “What would have happened if we hadn’t gotten that?” And the answer was, “You’d have to book another twelve-hour minimum session.”

Then the same person proceeded to tell me, “I don’t understand why we’re losing all our recording business in England.” Dave Clark turned around and said, “Next time I’ll just record in Germany. It would be cheaper to fly all the musicians there. Why the hell do you think you’re losing business?”

It was a very strange atmosphere. But despite all the bureaucracy and obstacles, we got it done.

Are you still active?

Not really, to be honest. Retired…Well, I say retired. I was let go—or they tried to fire me—from ABC, but I was a little smarter than they were. So I ended up with a pension.

I went back and did something with John Sinclair. I’m always open to doing things; I just don’t really need to do it anymore. And I don’t want to spend too many more days in studios. I mean, I spent most of my life in studios.

Have you considered putting some of your stories down in a book?

Well, it’s funny you should say that. I have a lady who contacted me. I believe she’s interviewed a lot of engineers—Richard has been one of them. I think she’s interviewing a bunch of engineers and putting them into some sort of “top” category or collection. So she’s going to come and talk to me.

I would love to do it. I don’t know. I mean, I tell people these stories, and they’re mostly nostalgic, but they also take me back to those moments. A lot of people have said, “You should share them because…”

There’s some interesting stories, not even just with the Heep stuff, but obviously like Motorhead and Yes.

Well, I think I’ve got enough stories to make at least a couple of pages interesting. So, in answer to your question, and ironically enough, she sent me a text yesterday saying, “I’m coming back up your way. Let’s get together.” I know she’s interviewed a lot of very, very accomplished people. I don’t consider myself a big name, but I think I’ve contributed something.

I’ve probably got my name on a couple of million records, but that’s not really the point. I think I actually helped some people, and I think that’s important. So yes, hopefully I’ll have something worthwhile to say and eventually make it into a book somewhere.

And then I’ve got the Uriah Heep stories. I used to be a bit of an idiot. (Laughs) Well, I’d always try to make everybody laugh.

There’s a story from when we were recording “The Wizard.” I’d set Ken up at Lansdowne under a spotlight with a chair in the middle of the room while he was doing his acoustic part. I’d also found a great big cardboard box and written “10 Tons” on it. I positioned it above him where nobody could see it.

As he started playing the intro, I dropped it onto him and covered him with a ten-pound weight, which was very Monty Python. Gerry Bron got pissed off at me and fired me—then rehired me.

I used to do silly stuff like that.

Gerry was one person I never got to interview.

He was an interesting man. I have to say, he looked after the people who looked after him. At the ripe old age of nineteen, he bought me a BMW, gave me a separate contract, and did things like that.

I was doing a lot of engineering work for him, and later Peter Gallen and I worked on the solo albums by David Byron and Ken Hensley. Then Gerry gave me projects with Hawkwind, Sally Oldfield, Motörhead, and various other artists.

So he was very supportive, and I certainly owe him a lot.

LINKS:

https://www.discogs.com/artist/81045-Ashley-Howe

https://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/roundhouse-studios/6629

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0397777

Emmy Award Winner Sets Oktoberfest Record

NIGHTWING: Long Hard Road 5 CD box

May 28, 2026 KJ Leave a comment

British band NIGHTWING existed in the ’80s, releasing a number of albums. Another band that had oppportunities and connections during the NWOBHM, but never quite made it big. They did have some great fantasy art album covers, recorded a few interesting cover versions, as well as a couple of songs penned by Uriah Heep’s Peter Goalby – guitarist Alec Johnson and drummer Steve Bartley having been part of Goalby’s project ‘Destiny’). Nightwing also included singer Max Bacon on a couple of album. who went on to the bands Bronz and GTR, keyboard player Kenny Newton (ex Nutz), bass player Gordon Rowley (ex Strife), and on the live album – singer Dave Evans (ex AC/DC). This set covers the bands period up til 1985, though the band did record a few albums beyond this period (w/ Evans on vocals). *For ordering and full tracklist check out the link below. Due out at the end of August.

Nightwing formed in 1978 in time to take full advantage of the burgeoning New Wave Of British Heavy Metal scene sweeping the UK in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Formed by ex-Strife bassist Gordon Rowley, with keyboard player Kenny Newton, guitarists Eric Percival and Alec Johnson with Steve Bartley on drums, they released four studio albums and one live album between 1980 and 1985. This set kicks off with debut album ‘Something In The Air’ (CD1). With a sound that mixed boogie with elements of prog rock against a core hard rock sound, ‘Something In The Air’ features the single ‘Barrel Of Pain’ (Graham Nash), plus a cover of ‘You Keep Me Hanging On’.

Developing a cult following between tours with the band Gillan, and important appearances at the Reading Rock Festival, Nightwing released their second album ‘Black Summer’ (1982) on Gull Records (originally home to Judas Priest). The album is notable for its iconic cover art by famed fantasy artist Melvyn Grant (Iron Maiden, Judas Priest). Recorded at Amazon Studios in Liverpool and Morgan Studios in London, it was mixed at Spindletop Recorders, Los Angeles, and features eight songs written by guitarist Alec Johnson.

Gull released their third album, ‘Stand Up And Be Counted’ (CD3), in 1983. Featuring the single ‘Treading Water’, the band still featured bassist Gordon Rowley, Steve Bartley, Alec Johnson with Kenny Newton on organ and synthesiser, but now with lead vocals from Max Bacon.

Their fourth studio album ‘My Kingdom Come’ (CD4) was released in 1984, once again featuring an iconic album cover, this time illustrated by famed artist Roger Dean (Yes, Asia). The album featured a cover of Steve Hackett’s ‘Cell 151’.

Nightwing enlisted Dave Evans on vocals and Glynn Porrino on lead guitar following the departure of Max Bacon and Alec Johnson, leading them to record their first and only live album, ‘Night Of Mystery – Alive! Alive!’ (CD5) taken from concerts in Yugoslavia and West Germany.

https://www.cherryred.co.uk/nightwing-long-hard-road-1980-1985-5cd-box-set

TEAZE – new video for new album title track

May 21, 2026 KJ Leave a comment

Canadian rockers TEAZE have a new video for the rockin’ title track to their new album Rev Your Engines. This one is written for the live show. The album (on CD) can be ordered HERE! and HERE*

Rev Your Engines is the band’s first new studio album in 45+ years, with songs written by the band, and produced by guitarist Charlie Lambrick. Teaze also includes founding members Mark Bradac, Brian Danter, and new drummer Jim Boventre.

CREATURES – issue new ‘live’ video

May 21, 2026 KJ Leave a comment

Brazilian metal band CREATURES have released a new live video for the song “Nothing Lasts Forever”. The song appeared on the band’s debut album in 2022 (Creatures), being a standout, but when the band changed line-up (save for founder, guitarist, songriter Mateus Cantaleano) including new singer Marc Brito, it was re-recorded in 2024, given a major upgrade in sound and production, as well as an official video. This version was included on the band’s latest album Creatures II, which is something I’ve been playing a lot of. Creatures have recently put out a live version of “Nothing Lasts Forever”, recorded in Sao Paulo, Brazil. A great rocker, with shades of Maiden, Priest, Dokken…as well as being an anthem that works with the audience.

*Check out all 3 versions below, and check out Creatures II.

https://www.facebook.com/creaturesheavymetal

https://creaturesheavymetal.bandcamp.com

https://www.instagram.com/creaturesheavymetal

https://thenwothm.com/2026/01/01/interview-creatures-brazil-2

LOCKHART release new video/single

May 21, 2026 KJ Leave a comment

Canadian band LOCKHART released a video for the track “Can’t Shake It” yesterday. A heavily inspired ’80s video (outfits, hair, and camera shoots). An excellent ’80s synth heavy pop rocker, that kinda reminds me of the Christopher Cross hit “All Right” (1981). Imagine if this song and video came out over 40 years ago!? The song comes from the band’s first full album City Pulse, coming out on June 12, on High Roller Records. Pre-order HERE

https://www.facebook.com/Listentolockhart

https://listentolockhart.bandcamp.com

NIGHT RANGER – announce new ‘Best of’ album

May 21, 2026 KJ Leave a comment

Hard rock legends NIGHT RANGER are proud to announce their new ‘Best Of’ album, set for release on August 28th via Frontiers Music Srl. The album features newly remixed & remastered versions of classic hits spanning NIGHT RANGER’s illustrious career, alongside some standout tracks from the band’s more recent releases.

To give fans a taste of what’s to come, the band shares a fresh remaster of their 1982 hit, “Don’t Tell Me You Love Me (2026).” The track arrives alongside an official visualizer video, linked below. This album will be released on both CD and Vinyl. The double LP is available in 3 different colors: black, gold, & orange splatter.

Few bands have defined the sound of American melodic rock quite like NIGHT RANGER. From the soaring anthem of “Sister Christian” to the thunderous riffs of “Don’t Tell Me You Love Me,” and fan favorites like “You Can Still) Rock in America” this album’s ‘Best Of’ collection captures the very essence of their decades-long career — now refreshed for 2026.

Featuring the classic hits alongside standout tracks from their more recent albums, this compilation spans the full spectrum of NIGHT RANGER’s signature sound: anthemic choruses, blazing guitar solos, and unforgettable melodies. Highlights include the power-pop perfection of “(You Can Still) Rock in America,” the heartfelt balladry of “When You Close Your Eyes,” and the cinematic sweep of “Four in the Morning.”

But the ‘Best Of’ is not just a look back. It also celebrates the band’s creative output over the last 20 years, spotlighting tracks like “Time of Our Lives,” “High Road,” “No Time to Lose,” “Somehow Someway,” and “Truth,” proving that NIGHT RANGER’s energy, songwriting, and musicianship have only grown stronger with time. These songs show that the band continues to innovate while staying true to the melodic rock roots that made them legendary.

The band — Jack Blades (bass and vocals), Kelly Keagy (drums and vocals), Brad Gillis (guitars), Eric Levy (keyboards), and Keri Kelli (guitars) — delivers every track with the energy and precision that have kept NIGHT RANGER at the forefront of rock for more than four decades.

This ‘Best Of” album also features two bonus tracks that make this collection of songs truly special: a fresh take on “Wasted Time” recorded live off the floor at Sweetwater Studios, also accompanied by an exclusive music video, and a festive live performance of “Feliz Navidad” that showcases the band’s playful side.

Perfectly timed ahead of their summer 2026 tour, this ‘Best Of’ album serves as both a definitive introduction for new fans and a must-have collection for longtime followers. Whether revisiting the classics or discovering the new 2026 remasters, NIGHT RANGER’s ‘Best Of’ is a celebration of enduring melodies, electrifying performances, and the unforgettable spirit of one of rock’s most iconic bands.

Pre-Order HERE

‘Best Of’ Track List:

1. Don’t Tell Me You Love Me (2026)

2. (You Can Still) Rock in America (2026)

3. Sister Christian (2026)

4. When You Close Your Eyes (2026)

5. Four in the Morning (2026)

6. Breakout

7. Tomorrow

8. Growin’ Up in California

9. Time of Our Lives

10. High Road

11. No Time to Lose

12. Somehow Someway

13. Truth

14. Don’t Let Up

15. Only for You Only

16. Wasted Time (Sweetwater Studios) (Bonus Track)

17. Feliz Navidad (Live) (Bonus Track)

18. Hole In The Sun (Bonus Track Japan)

NIGHT RANGER:

Jack Blades: lead vocals, bass guitar

Brad Gillis: lead guitars

Kelly Keagy: lead vocals, drums

Keri Kelly: lead guitars

Eric Levy: keyboards

Home

https://www.facebook.com/nightranger

Outsider Rock

New Releases & Last of 2016

TEAZE – Rev Your Engines! Interview with Mark Bradac

APRIL WINE – ‘On Record: The April Wine Album Review’, a new book from Tim Durling

LOCKHART – An interview with Devon Kerr

GENTLE GIANT – ‘In A Glass House’, remixed and remastered

ASHLEY HOWE – An interview with British recording engineer, producer

NIGHTWING: Long Hard Road 5 CD box

TEAZE – new video for new album title track

CREATURES – issue new ‘live’ video

LOCKHART release new video/single

NIGHT RANGER – announce new ‘Best of’ album

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Rock, reviews, news, interviews, & more.