Danny Bowes, frontman of British rock band Thunder, recently opened up to MetalTalk about his harrowing stroke recovery and the overwhelming support from fans that helped him through the darkest period of his life. His story is not only one of resilience and healing but also a heartfelt tribute to the unwavering loyalty of Thunder’s fanbase. As Danny Bowes prepares for his Maximum Chat tour, we examine the journey from Terraplane to Thunder and the 1990 Donington success.
It was a rollercoaster journey from Terraplane’s painful misfires to Thunder’s triumphant rise, but these frustrations birthed a new resolve to make music on their own terms. It was a rebellious spark that ignited Thunder, leading to their iconic debut, Backstreet Symphony, and career-defining moments like Donington 1990.
“I think Terraplane was a really, really, really great example of how a band can make every mistake it’s possible to make and be so hurt, disappointed, but ultimately filled with the need for revenge,” Danny Bowes told MetalTalk. “That’s what happened to us. We made every mistake a band could make.
“You name it, we thought we were going to be famous because we had a great manager who knew his onions. We were with a really big record company, and we thought that was it. Next year we’ll be famous. How wrong we were.”
“Honestly, everything that could go wrong did go wrong. We were always out of step. We never really had a plan. Our manager was great, but he was a man out of his time. His ideas were all about 10 years ago. The record company thought we were a pop band because Luke could write a pop tune. He’s always a musicologist. He’s always had an ear for tunes, hooks, choruses and everything.
“Because he could do that, they kind of pushed us towards that area and we were governed by our heads rather than our hearts. We felt we were making mistakes. But we couldn’t do anything about it because we’d gone along with it, and the manager was a bit weak.
“When you add it all up, it was like the perfect storm. It was only having gone through all of that and come out the other side… I remember Luke and I went to America just on a fact-finding trip.
“I don’t know how, but we had some meetings with some record companies, and the record companies all basically said the same thing. Nice idea, but off you go. We went out on the Sunset Strip, and we saw all these bands playing. They were prettier than the girls in the audience. They had better hair, better makeup. It was unbelievable.
“I remember when we were coming home, we said to ourselves, we need to do it like that, but without all the makeup ‘cos that’s not really us. But we basically decided we’re gonna make the records that we want to make, and sod everyone else. We’ll probably be OK.
“To be honest with you, out of that conversation came the basic plan for Thunder. We never looked back, really. We just kind of ignored everyone. Every time anybody said, I think you should do this, we said, yeah, yeah, thanks very much, sod off and that was it really. It was no more complicated than that.”
“We were in the right place at the right time by that point, I think. The fact that we had a bit of a celebrity fan club really helped. I mean Axl Rose tried to sign us to his record label. David Coverdale loved it. He loved us.
“Over the years, he’s always been really, really nice to us, very charming, “Danny darling. He always says that. How are you? I said, I’m alright, Dave. He said no, no, no, never, Dave, always David. I can’t help it, I just ripped the mickey.
“Aerosmith loved us. We were very fortunate that we had that celebrity fan club, and they just bought into what we did. I think there’s a lot to be said about it takes one to know one. A good player can recommend or recognise another one. Maybe that was it. But we never had any trouble getting opportunities at the get-go. It was brilliant.”
The first time I saw Thunder was supporting Heart. I was more excited to see Thunder, and I loved Heart. That was at Wembley. Thunder came back on at the end to play Rock And Roll with Heart in their encore. But when I heard that chiming riff for Backstreet Symphony earlier in the day, it called me immediately.
“It was one of those last songs Luke wrote for the album,” Danny Bowes said. “I remember he was still writing away, and we were scheduled to go into the studio. We said to him, we were probably about 3 or 4 songs light here matey. No pressure, but can you just not go out for a bit and write some songs? He did. That one was one of the last songs we recorded. The moment he started playing it, we thought, ‘Hello, we’ve got it here.’ It ended up being the title track. It’s been in the live set ever since. It’s a big, big song.”
It has been 35 years since the Thunder debut was released. There has been a lot of water under the bridge since, but it was just such a classic debut. Does it seem that long ago?
“Yeah, it’s funny,” Danny Bowes smiles. “Because in some ways, yes, in some ways no. It’s really hard to put yourself in the position of remembering how it was. Luke’s got a much better memory for that kind of thing than me. He’d be sitting there at the desk with the producer and the engineer, poring over the perfect snare drum and the perfect guitar solo, and I’m looking out the window, thinking I could be playing football now.
“I could be doing anything now. That was always the way I was in the studio. I used to let them get on with it. Luckily for me, they did a good job of it.”
From the album cover to the songs, Backstreet Symphony is such an iconic album with so many great tracks. For my money, it’s probably one of the best rock debut albums of all time. That year, Danny and Thunder had the 1990 Donington appearance, which really broke the band and pushed them to another level.
It was all kind of building up prior to that,” Danny says, “but that really was the thing that just made it go pop.”
Thunder were the first band on, but they really made it their own that day.
“I think some of that is just sheer relief,” Danny Bowes says, “because it could have gone so really badly wrong. I’d lost my voice in the run-up to it. We did the warm-up shows. We had three scheduled. I wrecked it on the first one. We had a new bus driver with air conditioning on, and it killed my voice. I had no idea why.
“So, being the idiot I am, I decided to kind of sing through it, which was the wrong thing to do. We got to the second show and I had nothing left. We were opening for Poison at Rock City in Nottingham. I couldn’t do it. I ended up bursting into tears. The first three rows were bursting into tears as well.
“It was just horrendous. Luckily, we had a tour manager, a very, very wise old boy, who took me back to London and took me to a doctor. He gave me a whole bunch of steroids and said, right, shut up for the next three days.
“Very hard for me to do, as you can imagine, as I do like a rabbit. In those days, they [Donington] did the sound check in an empty field the day before, and the band got to play it. They were in Nottingham and I was at home. I didn’t go up until the night before.
“Luke rang me and he said I know you can’t speak. I just wanted to let you know that it all sounds great here. So we’ll see you tomorrow night, and everything will be well.
“I said great, alright, thank you, and I got off the phone. I didn’t speak for too long. I went there the night before. They were all lying on the floor, drunk in the bar when I got there. I went up to my room like a good boy and went to bed. I don’t think I slept very much. I think I was too worried.
“The next day we got to the site eventually, and there were rumours flying around that we weren’t gonna play because they had all the drama with Guns N’ Roses and the kids who got crushed. It was cancelled in ’89.”
With Donington 1989 cancelled and Thunder up first in 1990, Danny Bowes says there was a lot of expectation. “Everything was bubbling under. We had been playing some things, had a couple of singles out that had done quite well, and it was looking like it was all hinging on that.
“I wasn’t allowed to do any promotion. I couldn’t do any interviews, and then the rumours just got worse and worse and worse. Are they gonna show up? Are they gonna play? Are they gonna cancel?
“It was just so much pressure. It was terrifying. Then the promoter came in. He was the promoter of Monsters of Rock. But he was also our promoter. He said, if this goes well, on Monday, we’re going to announce three nights of Hammersmith Odeon.
“You can imagine our little bottoms. Mine more than theirs, you know. It was just terrifying. We went on stage, and the doctor got it right. He said, if you don’t say anything between now and the gig, the gig will be fine. You’ll be shot afterwards, but the gig will be fine. He was absolutely right.
“You can see my face in the video. The first note in She’s So Fine where I had to push a little bit. I got it, and my face changed. You can see the relief. I think part of the reason we had such a good gig was because everybody else was so terrified it was gonna be horrendous.
“The collective release of adrenaline and just relief in general was so strong. We started running around the stage like maniacs. I’m sure that was what caused it. But you know, I’ll use it, I’ll take it, I don’t care. It worked out all right for me, so job done.”
I know Luke came off stage and he just thought, fuck me, that was good.
“Our tour manager at the time, the same guy who took me down to Harley Street, as we came off, he was standing there, sweating. He was there with a towel. He slipped it over my shoulders as we walked off. We went down the stairs, and he said, I think you had that away there. I said, really? And he went, oh yeah, yeah. You’ve nicked it big time.
“Everybody else is gonna really have to go for it to be better than that. I don’t know how it worked out, but the rest of it was all a bit of a blur. I was just so relieved that it went well. I never really had a chance to process it.”
As Danny Bowes gears up for his Maximum Chat tour, we reflected on the two tours with Ben Matthews and the two tours with Luke Morley. “I didn’t think it was gonna be as good with Luke,” Danny says, “because Luke is a very different character to Benny. Benny is like a very naughty schoolboy. It was a bit like trying to be Morecambe and Wise. I was trying to be Ernie Wise and keep it all on track, and Benny was doing his best to scupper the whole thing every night.
“With Luke, he’s a much more serious character, and I wasn’t sure he’d get it. The two-man thing very much relies on you being able to hold the audience, entertain the audience, and not just musically. I talk to them and get them to relate to what you’re talking about and make sure the stories are funny, or poignant or whatever. You want people to go along with you.
“I wasn’t sure whether Luke would embrace it. But I was very wrong cos he loved it and he was brilliant at it as well. I’ve always known as a human being he’s very, very funny. But when it comes to music, because he creates it, I think, he treats it a bit like it’s his baby. I don’t do that cos I don’t create it.
“I have to give that to him because that’s what he does. He makes music. I’m quite social. All I do is stand out in the front and sing the bloody thing. It’s very different for me than it is for him. So it’s inevitable that he would feel more protective of it than I do.
“But he did love the format, and he really, really enjoyed it. I can’t say I’m not terrified at the idea of doing it on my own. I’ve never done anything like this on my own before. If it comes to a choice of not doing it or doing it and being scared, I’ll take the second one.”
Danny Bowes is incredibly positive. He is a fighter, taking each day as it comes and rolling forward.
“I think you have to work on the assumption that you’ve always got two choices. The first one is roll over, and the other one is to say I’m not having it. I’m afraid I have no choice. I can only do the second one.
“I’ve probably made my life quite difficult. I know I’ve done it to myself over the years, certainly singing in a band. Live shows… the band would say to me, don’t hit that note.
“You know what it’s like if you sing songs and they’re all absolutely horrendously difficult to sing. If you’ve only got one album, it’s all right. Once you get to 14 albums, ones that everybody wants you to sing are all the real bastards. So it just gets harder and harder and harder. And then not only that, you’ve got older and older and older as time has gone by.
“But when I was a kid, I spent all my money on records and going to live shows. If the singer in the band didn’t hit the note, I used to go away feeling like I’d been robbed. Honestly.
“When I got into a band, I’m pathologically driven to hit the note, because somewhere I believe in the audience is that kid like me, and I don’t want to send him away unhappy. So I’ve got to hit the note or die trying, one or the other.
“That’s made my life really, really hard. But I don’t care. I’m being as honest as I can. I just do not want to dip out. I see other people dip out, and I understand why they do it. I understand why they do ‘cos they’ve got other songs to sing. They’ve got a tour to do. They’ve got all those things.
“I don’t care. I would rather worry about tomorrow and make sure that today is fantastic.”
Tickets for Danny Bowes Maximum Chat are available from the Thunder website here. You can read Part One of our interview with Danny Bowes here.
