Songwriter Steve Thompson has written for some of the biggest artists in the music business. But only now is his releasing his debut LP, an album 50 years in the making. Dave Hill speaks to Steve to find out why it’s taken a half century to produce.
Since your Strange Brew interview, you’ve lost most of your band! How did that affect your plans for future ‘Steve Thompson, Songwriter’ activities?
It all went kinda crazy. We had just done a fantastic sold-out show at the Georgian Theatre in Stockton, the band was on fire, we had more dates and we talked about cutting an album. Everyone was well up for it. The guys in the band were great players and consequently very busy. Then something broke and the drummer quit. Then they all started to fall like dominoes. I reached the point where all I had left was a girl singer (Jen) and a bass player (John). What the hell could I do with that line-up? But the main thing was that Jen (Normandale) and John (Dawson) made it clear that they weren’t about to quit. They remained fiercely loyal to the “project” and we looked at ways to regroup. Clearly we could not carry out the shows that were booked. The show consists of us doing the songs I’ve written for various people and me telling stories and projecting video. More theatre than a gig really. But I needed a full band to do it justice. I did continue doing the show as a one man show where I tell the stories and show the videos but without the band. I take that around Women’s Institutes and Ladies Luncheon Clubs. This may sound rather genteel but I can tell you those gigs are more rock and roll that anything I’ve ever done! The three of us remaining members talked about the project and a way forward. We did actually do some recording, just the three of us and one song “Still Standing Still” as a trio is slated for our forthcoming album “The Long Fade”. Then we found a drummer, Ian Halford who was well into the project and the material. We went into the studio last summer and recorded a number of songs. There were just 4 of us so I was obliged to overdub the Keyboard parts. We ended up sounding like a country rock outfit with a weird kind of punk surf thing going on. Many of these recordings have gone forward to the “Long Fade” album but they have morphed quite considerably. At this point in time we were re-recording my songs that had been cut by other artists. But I was taking back ownership of the songs and eradicating those little changes that artists are wont to make. Also we threw the idea of commercialism out the window and ignored the 3 minute pop song concept.
Meanwhile someone picked up on one of my “talk shows” at a ladies luncheon club and asked me to take it to a town called Consett in County Durham. Consett is my home town where I played my first gig 50 years ago so I readily agreed. I also suggested following a series of talks with a full band show. They took me up on it so back on November 2018 I committed to a show I had not got the personnel to deliver. I was quite relaxed about it and by the time the show in Consett came round I did indeed have the capacity to deliver it. As it turned out the show in Consett was incredible and they’re still talking about it.
You have some impressive guests on ‘The Long Fade’, including members of three seminal New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands. How did each of them become involved?
To answer this I have to go back a little further. The Summer recordings were in the can but I don’t think we knew what to do with them. Towards the end of 2018 I was recording some new songs and they started out as demos. I had recently moved my catalogue to new administration with Fairwood Music International. They were managing all my old copyrights that were out there but they were also keen to hear new material. Also as I intimated earlier I’d been approached by a fairly major artist for new material so I was in the process of writing and laying down some new songs. I still have a little production studio which is based in the Georgian Theatre / Tees Music Alliance / Green Dragon Studios complex but I decided to use my own base just for pre and post production and to get out to other studios for the bulk of the recording work. So rather than self engineer and either program or play all the parts myself as I had done for years I decided to involve other musicians. I obviously I drew upon my immediate band members but I also augmented that by bringing in other musicians that I’d known for years. Jen Normandale handled a lot of the vocals but I also brought in a guy called Ross Kerr that the guys in my band recommended. He drove all the way over from Cumbria one night and sang a couple of songs. A young woman called Kerrianne Covell sang a song I’d written specially for her. Kerrianne had made it all the way to Judges Houses on X Factor (I didn’t watch) and her mum tracked me down and asked me to write a song for her. Then for a couple of other songs I brought in a contemporary of mine from the 70’s, Dave Ditchburn. Whilst cutting these songs I was enthusiastically unconcerned about turning out another hit. I was just having fun making music and most of the time we were doing it the wrong way round, often adding the drums last in the recording process.
Dave Ditchburn (left) and Steve Thompson (right)
On one session I pulled up at the Custom Space Studios and there on the street corner were three old blokes shooting the breeze. I suddenly realised that the “old blokes” were my musicians for the session. They’d each arrived separately and hooked up as the all knew each other. There was Jim Hornsby, there to play lap steel and dobro. I’ve known Jim Hornsby for years. He’s a specialist and plays almost anything with strings on. He has a band called Diesel Therapy and was formally a member of Prelude. He’s into Americana and rootsy earthy playing. I felt he would bring something special to the recordings and he did. Steve Dolder was there to play drums and Dave Ditchburn to do some vocals. None of these guys were regulars in my band, in fact Steve Dolder was the dummer in my last line up who’s departure had caused all the dominoes to fall. I’d become aware of an interesting kit Steve had made up largely of wooden boxes and I wanted to try that out on a new song that Dave was going to sing called “Turn The Number ‘Round”. Jim was to play dobro on that one and it really worked well. Prior to that session it largely consisted of programmed synths and samples. It was during that session that it began to feel like we were making an album. We were all telling stories and having a great laugh. Inevitably, the subject of our respective mortality came up we all had a laugh about our autumn years and speculated on which of us would pop their clogs first. Dave quoted a phrase “These boots will see me out” that almost became the album title.
Jim Hornsby
Another song we worked on was “Like My Father’s Father” which was a bit of a throw away number from our live set. Dave was to sing and Jim to play lap steel but all I had laid down so far was a keyboard and a programmed drum loop. To give the guys more to work to I laid down a couple of acoustic guitars and I asked Steve to lay down something on his wooden box drum kit. After Dave added his vocal we realised we had something special and I determined there and then that when I added my regular guys John and Ian on drums and bass I’d ask them not to come in until the second chorus and when they did it was to be huge!
Now, all of this activity was happening in the full glare of social media and two things will probably have become apparent to onlookers 1) I was making a career defining album and 2) I was having a ball doing so!
Around Christmas 2018 I got a message from John Gallagher of Raven. He was over visiting friends and family for Christmas and he wondered if I’d like him to guest on my new album. You betcha I would. We had just a two week window to get it together before he flew back home to Florida. I already had two versions in the can of the song I wrote for Tygers of Pan Tang: Paris By Air. I’d previously asked Steve Lamb formerly of the Tygers to play on the recording and/or the gigs. Steve had been unable to fit any sessions or gigs into his schedule but then he contacted me out of the blue and said that if I’d be happy for him to record the guitar parts in his own studio then he could find the time to do it. Naturally I was happy with that as I was already using several different studios myself. So Steve sent me his parts for Paris By Air plus an instrumental version. I asked John Gallagher to play bass on the Instrumental version of Paris By Air: a Tyger and a Raven on the same track! Then I needed something for him to sing. There was no time to write anything but I remembered a song I’d recorded with Alvin Stardust in 1994. I written and produced an entire album with Alvin at Lynx studios in Newcastle when it was owned by Brian Johnson with whom I’d set up a publishing company. There was one song I’d done with Alvin I thought would suit John: “Behind The Wheel”. I sent it to John and he loved it. So over the Christmas holidays I put together an arrangement of the song and laid down programmed drums, bass and keyboards in my pre-production studio in Stockton. Then right after Christmas I picked John up in the West end of Newcastle. He marched out of the house with a naked bass (no case) that his girl friend had given him for Christmas. We arrived at the studio and he laid down the bass parts for Paris By Air and Behind the Wheel. The latter was difficult as I had made changes to the Alvin arrangement and John had very little to work to. I knocked up a quick chord chart and we got it done. Then it was time for John to lay the vocals and a good deal of mayhem and insanity ensued. My regular bass player, John Dawson was there too as he had some bass parts to do himself.
John Dawson (left) and John Gallagher (right)
What I had not realised was that when we recorded Raven’s Rock Until You Drop album John D was a a mere lad and had gone out and bought the album. With John G on one side of the studio glass in front of the vocal mic and me in the control room on the talkback mic we both slipped though a time portal to 38 years ago when we cut that album. There was zany crazyness, piss taking and gags aplenty. John D freaked and said it was just how he imagined the Rock Until You Drop album being recorded (there is lots of between track chatter and crazy stuff on that album) When I came to mix that track I made sure stayed true to the Neat Records NWOBHM crazyness and so the track starts with a revving lamborghini and ends with John barking like a dog.
I’ve since told John Gallagher that his career will be in the toilet when word gets out that he’s sung a glam rock track, playing a bass he got off Santa and supported by Chick Backing Vocalists. Oh yes, Chick BV’s! That’s Jen Normandale my regular singer, plus Elizabeth Liddle a young singer songwriter who opens the shows for us and Jayne Mackenzie. Yes Jayne, the very same girl I produced Neat 02 with when she was just 11 years old. Neat 02: just one serial number off Tygers of Pan Tang and the birth of the NWOBHM. The Chick BV group (The Stevettes) are on a total of 3 tracks on the album.
The Stevettes
I then asked Steve Lamb to do some guitar parts for John’s Behind The Wheel which he did. The track sounds amazing and its incredible to think that every part on the track was recorded at different time in different studios. It sounds like everyone has their heads down kicking ass in one sweaty room.
Next I got a message from John Verity formerly of Argent who I’d cut a couple of albums with. John was up for guesting too if I had a spare song. I had a think and hit upon “Looking For Love In A Stranger” which I wrote for Chris Farlowe. It seemed to fit perfectly seeing as John comes from the same British blues/rock roots as Farlowe. We laid the track down and sent it all down South for John to add his vocals and some guitar. Again this track was recorded entirely the wrong way round. Guitars first, drums last and bass in between.
Then I found myself chatting online with Tony Bray of Venom and I happened to say “do you still play drums”. He said “do I detect the beginning of a cunning plan”. Now it may seem strange to ask Tony if he still played drums, of course he does. But I’m a bit of a recluse and I don’t keep up with things. Plus I always see Tony as a bit of a music management type person, an entrepreneur. Late 90’s he and Venom’s first manager Eric Cooke asked me to go see them at Lynx Studios, Newcastle (where I recorded Alvin Stardust). They had recently purchased the studio from Brian Johnson. Tony offered me enough free studio time to record an album. I said “that’s very generous and I’m touched but why would you do that”? Tony replied “you gave us a career man, we owe you that much”. As I say, I was touched but right then I did not have an album to make. However, fast forward to 2019 and I do indeed have an album to make. So my cunning plan was to put Tony on drums on the instrumental version of Paris By Air along with Steve Lamb. The unholy Trinity! The three main acts I produced during NWOBHM. So Tony introduced me to Steve Hoggart who has a studio near where I live. Steve and Tony have a recording and gigging project underway: Abbadon. We laid the drums at Steve’s 27D Msuic Productions Studio. It worked a treat and it was mayhem. Again it was like no time had passed and the stories and laughter was flying around. So after a passage of roughly 37 years Tony finally owned up to me. He said “you know when you produced In League With Satan with us I had not really learned to play the drums yet”. I replied “I kinda guessed that Tony, no big secret there”. Tony asked if I was still writing songs. “Aha”, I said ” do I detect the beginnings of a cunning plan”. Tony told me about a 20 yr old singer/guitarist he’d kinda taken under his wing, Jack Mylchreest. He wondered if I’d be interested in working up a project with him. Of course I said yes.
A key song on the album is ‘My Fathers Father’. What is the story behind that?
The song was written for a musical I wrote with Tom Kelly called “Steel Town”. The musical is built around the story of my home town, a former steel making community: Consett. The script grew out of anecdotes I had been telling playwright Tom Kelly. Unbeknown to me he had been memorizing them all and writing them down. One day he handed me the synopsis “a young man dreams of escaping the steel works into the music industry”. Guess who that was folks? There are two key factors to the song’s inspiration. It speaks of a time when sons (and daughters) followed their fathers into the same industries for generation after generation. Ship building, coal mining, and of course steel making. Also it was inspired by an image. In my very early digital experiments I had compiled an image consisting of me standing with my red Stratocaster guitar. To my left stands my father holding a huge spanner in a very similar pose to my guitar. To his left stands his father, my grandfather. This continues on and in total we have five generations of Thompsons consisting of me, my father, my grandfather, my great grandfather and my great great grandfather. We all worked at some time in our lives at Consett steel works. It is a striking image and we project it to a screen behind the band when we perform the song live. I had the image made into a calling card for my father and he would give it out to people he met. I used to order 500 prints a year for him. Sadly he’s no longer with us but I issue the calling card now: like my father’s father!
The song has been in the band’s show since the outset as it sets the scene well as I tell my story through anecdotes, screen projections and, of course songs. It’s a fun song, a kind of blues chant. As I said earlier, it took on a new life in the recording studio. Jim Hornsby added some great lap steel. As a matter of convenience I had asked Steve Dolder to add a part on his wooden box drum kit played with brushes. I decided to keep Steve’s temporary part as it had a nice languid feel that would set the scene for Ian Halford coming in later with a full on kick ass drum part. However, that was to come later. In the first session we also added Dave Ditchburn on vocals and it sounded fantastic. Dave added a gravelly “lived in” vocal that made you believe he had lived the story, which come to think of it, he has. I decided there and then that “Like My Father’s Father” would be released as a single off the album to coincide with our upcoming live show in Consett. This was for a number of reasons. Firstly it sounded fantastic and secondly it is a “Consett” song. I also loved the fact it was NOT a pop song, it was 5 minutes long and the very antithesis of a commercial radio play offering. It was rebellious.
I decided that we should have just the light brush strokes from Steve Dolder through verse one, chorus one and verse two but then we cut a one bar of silence before chorus two intending to add a humongous drum fill from Ian Halford before all hell breaks loose. I wanted to beef up the chorus chant with as many voices as possible. The “Stevettes” are on there: Jen, Elizabeth and Jayne. John Gallagher, now back home in Florida emailed me a voice file. There are about ten people in the “Industrial Chorus Chant” and they’re all listed on the CD sleeve notes.A session was arranged at Green Dragon Studios in Stockton to add Ian Halford’s drums to 4 new recordings one of them being “Father’s Father”. I asked Ian to come up with a really big fill in that one bar gap before chorus two and explained that he could have two bars if he needed it. Ian and I had done some pre-production on those four songs and also Ian had obviously given it a lot of thought. He called me up one day describing the fill he was going to play. Then came the session. When he actually played the fill it blew my head off. I was astonished. I said “how earth did you fit that into one bar”. The trick of it is that the fill is five beats long. He’s stealing a beat from the bar before the one bar of silence we had cut in for him.
With the song slated to be the single from the album and launched at the Consett show I had asked Dave Ditchburn to guest on the show. However, as time went by and Dave got added to more songs on the album he kinda morphed from a guest on the album to a full on band member. This made us a five-piece but still lacking a key member – a keyboard player (pardon the pun) I had played keyboards on the album and it was OK. I’m no virtuoso but I can play supportive to the song and I have played keys on several commercially released albums in the past. However, about half the songs needed the touch of an accomplished keyboard player and the live shows definitely needed one. Martin Trollope the main engineer on the album suggested Richard Naisbett. Richard is a fantastic keyboard player with a terrific touch and brings something really special to the album. When I first met him at his first rehearsal with us he seemed very quiet and introspective. Granted he was meeting everyone for the first time. Perhaps I should mention that our rehearsals are pretty full on. We rehearse with enthusiasm and passion as if there is an audience of thousands there. A little later when Richard had come out of his shell a bit he told me a story about that first rehearsal. When it came to “Like My Father’s Father” he had a musical score in front of him so he knew what to play and where and what was coming next. However, he told me when that five beat drum fill came in he nearly shit his pants!
Richard Naisbett
It must be quite ‘poetic’ that you reunited with a member of your band Bullfrog for the first time since 1969 and were able to include him on the album, too how was that made possible?
Indeed. I had recently remade my acquaintance with Mick Glancy who was the original singer with my first band Bullfrog formed in 1969. I mentioned that I was packing up the choruses in “Like My Father’s Father” with as many voices as I could muster. I thought it would be great if Mick could join in with that chorus. Mick was totally up for it so we had to find a way to do it as Mick now lives in Exmouth. Dave Hill of Tenacity Music PR who handle the bands publicity came up with the solution. Dave found a radio station right on Mick’s doorstep – Exmouth AiR. He liased with the station manager and they agreed to have Mick come in one day and record Mick’s vocal parts. Now, a radio station is not a multi track recording studio so I gather they had to use quite a convoluted system if Mick listening to the track on headphones whilst singing into the stations hand held recording device. But it worked great though and Nigel Tant Of Exmouth AiR sent me Mick’s audio files that same day. We mix Mick in with the rest of the voices and he joined the “Father’s Father Industrial Choir”. What an amazing thing to be making music with Mick Glancy again 50 years later and 340 miles apart.
Mick Glancy
Given your experiences as a musician, then Producer and songwriter, what do you feel your current role might be?
Well I’ve always been a back room boy but now I’m taking up the role of frontman and loving it. I couldn’t do it without the guys who have my back, John, Richard and Ian and my two amazing singers Jen and Dave. They give me the platform to bring my songs to a new audience and to tell my story. That’s what I’ve always been I guess, even as a songwriter: a story teller. I’ve reached a point where I’m all the things I’ve ever been musician, songwriter, producer, story teller except now all at once. I used to handle A&R duties at Neat Records and arrange for artwork and pressings. Now I’m doing all that stuff, a veritable cottage industry. I publish my own copyrights on ST Music, ably administered worldwide by Fairwood Music International. The band is building a fan base and the album is eagerly awaited so maybe I’ve become what I set out to be in 1969: a rock star !!!! (Just kidding folks)
Its been an incredibly busy period for you. After the album release and launch at The Cluny in Newcastle on 30th May, whats next for you?
I’m really looking forward to the launch gig – everyone involved in the making of the album is invited although not all can make it. What used to happen after a show was three days of recovery. It’s such an intense experience for me, fronting the show, telling the stories, playing guitar, projecting the images and holding it all together. It’s important that I present this in an easy going relaxed manner but to do this I have to be so incredibly “in the zone”. I have developed a bunch of strategies and psychologies to help me get into that zone. Perhaps this is what all front men on a show have to do. I don’t know, I’ve spent most of the past 50 years being a backroom boy. I’ve taken up cycling to keep myself fit. It works for me both mentally and physically. I’ve even created a persona behind my cycling – “Iron Man of Norton” so I’m storytelling on that level too. I was even asked recently to do a solo show as Iron Man of Norton.
So after the Cluny album launch show I will rest up for a day and then it will all kick in again. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve committed to a writing and recording project for Tony Bray and Steve Hoggart with a young artist Jack Mylchreest and I’ll be getting onto that. Tony wants to play kit on the project and I’ve put forward my guys, Richard on keys and John on bass. It could be an incredible cross generational meeting of talent.
I’ll also do more shows. There will probably be another in Teesside in October. It is a very hybrid show, specifically for Arts Centres and Theatres and I can probably only roll it out four to six times a year. I’m considering a version of the show without the stories or multimedia and just the music – we may be able to go out to other venues with that.
I’ll continue my solo talks and I have bookings way into 2020 on that. The audiences at my talks are largely the same age and background to my live shows. I’m looking at ways to combine these two things.
I’m also writing a book: the stories behind my musical adventure and my songs and productions. Once again it’s me as a storyteller. The NWOBHM guests on my album have reminded me of hair raising stories I’d either forgotten or chosen to expunge from my memory.
And we could start recording the next album almost immediately. There are songs from the live set that we wish we had recorded. New songs are also emerging from this songwriters pen. Jen has asked for songs for separate but related project. Dave has been plundering my back catalogue and has cited a bunch of songs he’d like to record. These include some quite complex and sophisticated songs but he wants to do them so who am I to demur, I’m just a story teller.
For more information see The Steve Thompson Band Facebook page.
