Del Bromham, the driving force behind Stray, is a true survivor. He and his band continue to keep the flame burning with their new release, About Time. In this extract of Jason Barnard’s extensive interview, Del covers his friendship with Steve Harris of Iron Maiden.
About Time, has a usual mix of acoustic songs and tracks with a harder edge – that variation in feel that Stray are known for.
Yeah, I’ve always been a song man, a verses and choruses man. I think everyone has a different approach to doing these things. You may feel that there are some similarities with the old albums to this one. I think it’s partly to do with the fact that Simon Rinaldo, for example, who plays keys and produced it, and well, all the other members of the band were, if you like, fans of the old band. It wasn’t anything where we thought, this is what we’re going to do. It just came naturally. And we realised, oh, hang on a minute. This won’t alienate the ones who used to come and listen to us years ago. As you know, it’s been quite a gap since the last studio album to this one. But it just feels that we’ve got back on track again. And the band, when we’re playing live, it’s probably the best it’s ever sounded. With Simon as well, in the old days, I used to play keys on the albums. But unless I was ambidextrous, I couldn’t do two things at once. So he’s adding that extra colour to the paint box, as it were, live. In the way he’s come in, not only as keyboard player, but as producer, he’s actually seen things in a slightly different way without actually detracting from what we were aiming to do.
When did you become aware of Steve Harris and Iron Maiden’s love for Stray?
I was sitting at home one night, and I’ve got a bunch of friends, and we always take the mickey out of each other. You never know if someone’s gonna phone up, tell you it’s Jimi Hendrix on the phone. I was sitting in my house one evening, and my phone rang, and my wife picked the phone up, and she said “It’s Steve Harris on the phone, from Iron Maiden”, I said “Yeah, of course it is!” So I went over to the phone, I said, hello, thinking it was my mate. And he said, “It’s Steve Harris here.” I thought, oh, I think it really is Steve Harris. And he said, I just thought I’d give you a call. We’ve got a new single coming out called Holy Smoke, and if it’s alright with you if we record All In Your Mind?” Then he started to tell me what a big fan he was of the band, and how he and his mates used to come along to all our gigs when we were in London, and see us play. Not long after that, it was the first show they did, I think with Janick Gers playing. Steve invited me along. I said, “I didn’t realise you’re looking for a new guitarist, I said, you should have phoned me!” He said, “I didn’t know your number at the time.” We’ve had a little joke that I was the Iron Maiden guitarist that never was, because he didn’t have my number. Whether that’s true or not I don’t know, but it’s a little running joke we’ve got.
But I’ve become very good friends with him, and various members of his family, and it’s quite humbling. I have chats with people at the merch, and quite often you meet young guys in bands who are playing. I just tell them, you never know who’s in the audience. I’ve met so many well known people now, who used to come and see Stray play, and you just have no idea what’s going on. But Steve, he’s a lovely guy. He came to one of our shows actually, we did Leos at Gravesend a couple of weeks ago, and he came along to that. He loves the new album as well, so that’s good to know, I’m still keeping it in the family. We have talked about possibly in the future doing something together. So, you’re the first to hear that, that’s an exclusive. But I don’t know if and when that’s going to come about, because he’s busy with the Iron Maiden shows that are coming to an end. I don’t know what’s happening there, but he’s very busy with British Lion. We actually did play a couple of shows with British Lion, it went really well. But it’s just a really good friendship that we’ve developed. It’s very humbling to know that someone like that is a fan. I think he knows more about my albums than I do. [laughs]
Further information
Full interview with Del Bromham – Stray
Stray’s new album About Time and Del Bromham’s autobiography Rock and Roll Survivor are out now. Details can be found on the Stray and Del Bromham websites.
