Just over a week ago, Airforce, SNOG, and Hi-On Maiden got together to perform a memorial show for our fallen comrade Paul Di’Anno at The Underworld. With a friendship of over 50 years, the Airforce were the first name on the list and celebrated the late Iron Maiden vocalist’s legacy in style on what would have been his 67th birthday.
“It’s a little bit different for me,” Flavio Lino (Van Cleef) told MetalTalk of the relationship with Paul, “because they have known Paul since childhood. I met Paul a few years back, and I only have good things to say about him. He always supported me in Airforce, so it’s an honour being here paying our respects to him.”
For Chop Pitman, the memories of Paul Di’Anno go back to when he was 17. “I’ve known Paul a lot longer than I’ve known Doug [Sampson],” Chop says. “Over 50 years. Paul was a nice geezer. He always had a great voice since the early days.
“I remember Paul trying to get in punk bands, down Alan Gordon Studios. He was just a funny guy. But he always had this great voice. When he joined Iron Maiden, that made Maiden go from here [hands low] to there [hands high] ’cause he had amazing vocals. As you can hear on Soundhouse Tapes, and what he had done with Doug. He also did the first two [Maiden] albums and did a fantastic job. Paul was just a larger-than-life character. I loved him.”
Airforce are currently promoting their new album Acts Of Madness, which is a Heavy Metal tour de force. “We started it a couple of years ago,” Doug says. “We had released Strike Hard and started working on this one. We were in lockdown when Strike Hard came out, so we were working on this one. It’s just been a long process, and we’ve had some hiccups on the way. But we’ve got there in the end.
“We’ve got some fantastic songs on there. A couple of my favourites are on there, and they’ve really come out well. As I say, it wasn’t easy. We had some hiccups, what with Pete Franklin passing away. We had to get another producer in [Jezz Coad] who luckily enough, we knew from years ago. He recorded a few things for us back in 1987.
“We kept in touch with him. Chop had a word with him and said, ‘Would you be willing to take the project on and more or less finish it for us?’. Do a couple of new songs, but more or less finish it. Jezz said yes. He’s been working with Simple Minds and some big American acts. He was pleased to come on board and said it’s just like old times, really coming in on the act after all these years.”
“Jezz was like a really good mate coming back on the scene,” Tony Hatton said. “After we lost Pete, who was a good friend, it was hard to find someone who was within the friendship centre. Not someone just doing it for a job. Someone who had an interest in the band. So that’s where Jezz came in, and that’s what made it complete again. Someone we knew from old, worked with us before and was a long-term friend.”
Acts Of Madness took several years, on and off, to record. “One song’s done at a time,” Tony said. “This was producing songs over a period of time. When we were happy with a song, we kept it and put that forward for the album. There’s songs that don’t always make it. Songs that we sometimes get nearly all the way with. Some songs only just started, so the album is a long-term process. We don’t like to rush.”
Of course, there was also the pandemic. “We had a lot of problems with the pandemic,” Chop says. “Then Pete got ill, we didn’t even know how ill he was. So that put us back a lot when he died. All our stuff was locked onto his hard drive.” There were a lot of Doug Sampson’s drums on the hard drive, especially, but Jezz managed to save that. “He’s like a star,” Chop says. “He’s an amazing geezer.”
There were also issues around the record label. “We were waiting for the album to be released,” Tony says, “but taking a long time to get there. We had a release date, I think it was August 2024. Then they suddenly said they’re merging with RPM Records, and it all got put on hold again for another six months. So now the record label is RPM Raw, but that’s how it finally came out in February this year.”
Moving forward, Airforce are already working on new material. “Me, Tony, Doug and Lino are writing new stuff now,” Chop says. “We’ve got about five basic tracks done already. Hopefully, we’ll get hold of Jezz. Lino has started writing a lot of lyrics now. But me, Doug and Tony come up with the riffs and the ideas and then send them over to Lino in Portugal. He pulls them apart, and then we do them again. We’ve got about five done for the new album.”
“Five basic songs,” Tony says. “They’re not complete songs yet, so they could change. They may not change much, they may change a lot, but we’ve at least five good ideas going.”
So could we be looking forward to a new album maybe next year?
“No, about 5 years’ time,” Doug laughs.
“Hopefully later on next year,” Tony says. “That would be the aim.”
“But it will eventually come,” Chop says, “cos we’re a bit picky. We get a track, and then all of a sudden, we don’t like it anymore. So we bin it. We have a bit of a nightmare.
“But it’s good ‘cos Tony comes round to my house. I’ve got my own studio. Me and Tony write it, send it to Doug. He does the drums, and then it’s just going round and round in circles. Put it in the pot, stir it up and see what comes out. That’s what we usually do.”
It sounds like the best way to write a song or write an album anyway. 
