From recording a new album with Tank and playing a triumphant gig at The Cart & Horses before hitting the Hell’s Heroes Festival in Texas, the awesome Karl Wilcox was a busy drummer last year. Karl is looking good. His enthusiasm is infectious, and his recovery from quadruple heart bypass surgery is progressing well. This is an inspiring look at a drummer’s unstoppable passion.
We covered Tank and Karl’s health problems in an earlier piece here and delved into the history of Diamond Head and working with Sean Harris and Brian Tatler here.
Today, we finish with Part Three and our MetalTalk’s version of Wikipedia True Or False and look into the Karl Wilcox crystal ball for 2025.
When Diamond Head set of on the longest North American tour in their illustrious and lengthy history in 2016, Dave Bonney hosted the Official 2016 Tour Diary at MetalTalk. This was for the band’s seventh studio album, Diamond Head, and the first to feature Rasmus Bom Andersen. Brian Tatler said the tour would be full of “HEAVYOSITY”.
Eschewing the overused Wikipedia True Or False section, naturally, we turned to Two Questions From Dave Bonney.
Does Karl Wilcox still have the titanium rods in his back and do they cause any issues going through airport security?
“They’re still there,” Karl smiles. “It doesn’t cause me any issues going through airport security. It just causes issues on a daily basis. Having a lower spine injury I am having to tweak my drums more or less all the time. Sometimes I sit close, sometimes I sit further back.”
Karl shows how he has to arrange his floor toms differently at times “because I can only twist a certain amount. But sometimes, everything is relaxed. Travelling on an airline for a long period of time brings pain. I had my internal bleeding issue last year from all the medication that I’ve taken for my injury, which happened in 1997. There are daily issues, and there are some days when it really lets you know and you’re in some pain.
“But pain is a negative word, so you use ‘discomfort’. But I don’t take any of the opiates which I’m supposed to take. I just deal with it. You learn to deal with it at the end of the day. That’s what you have to do.”
What can Karl Wilcox tell us about the project you had in Africa?
“The Gambia. That was The Wonder Years Centre Of Excellence (WYCE). This was a village set up by the mother and stepfather of Dodge Turner, who is my writing partner for my solo thing, Too Close For Missiles. They invited me out to go to the Gambia. Myself and Dodge went out, and we did some writing.
“It’s a village that they helped develop to teach youngsters and help them become more self-sufficient. They put in a system for them to actually get fresh water out of the ground and be more aware of things like malaria. Things that they would naturally do, like collecting water and leaving the water close to them, well, that’s the breeding ground for mosquitoes. So the development of a fresh water education to the children.
“For myself, we set up a music program and I invested money where we had locally made instruments for the children to start to become involved in music. Later on, I sent over a drum kit. The school is now well developed. It’s almost like a small town now.
“It was great to be involved with it. It was great to see these kids wanting to be involved in music and learn more and more about Western music. But also, for me personally, it is just the value of a piece of string. You don’t throw a piece of string away because when you tie it to something else, you make it longer. Whereas we say we had cut that wrong, get rid of it.
“All the little things like that suddenly make you aware of how lucky we really are on many things in the Western developed world. Doing your laundry by hand in a bucket? Little things like that.
“I met some wonderful people. I met a Djembe player Lammy who gave me three lessons on the Djembe. This cat could easily have been playing with people like Sting or Paul Simon. He is that talented. Djembes are made with goat skins. So, if you want one made, you choose a goat.
“No, no, no,” Karl laughs. “It’s OK. I’ll have a couple that are already made. But it was a wonderful, wonderful experience. It was great to see boys and girls getting involved in music, using their own instruments. All handmade, you know. Nothing off-the-shelf kind of vibe. I really enjoyed that.”
Recently, Karl Wilcox has been working on the Seven Witches project with Jack Frost. “I’ve never classed myself as a Metal drummer,” he says. “For me, I’ve always been a rock drummer. For Seven Witches thing, there was a fucking track that we did fucking stupid speed on the fucking kick pedal. I’m going for it. I just felt like I pushed the fucking bass from down the stairs when I first tried it. I did Brothers In Arms, and we are working on the next one. I didn’t know Keith St John was going to be on a couple of the tracks.”
Recording remotely does have its challenges, as Karl is certainly not a click-track drummer. “I hate being put on the grid,” he smiles. The songs have been built over time, and a video has been made. “I understand what Jack wanted to do,” Karl says. “Bring that kind of ’80s vibe back. I know some folks will probably say, well, that’s a bit bloody lame, dude, move on. There’s a good vibe about about that genre of music, and I enjoyed doing it.”
Karl took inspiration for Seven Witches from when he would watch some of the drum kings in action. “I got into Tommy Aldridge when he was with Pat Travers,” he says. “I saw Pat Travers at Wolverhampton Civic Hall and Diamond Head were supporting. A double edged sword kind of vibe there. So I’m thinking, well, how would Tommy approach this, with him obviously being in Whitesnake? I listened to Denny Carmassi and thought, let’s go for it.
“Jack wants to do another one. Obviously, he’s tied up with Aldo Nova. Hopefully, we get everybody’s schedules together. I know at the moment he’s trying to get the Seven Witches EP done.”
The early part of 2025 is all about Karl getting up to speed after the operation. “A big influence on my playing was the jazz cat, Buddy Rich,” Karl says. “I read the book called One Of A Kind. He had a quadruple bypass in 1983. He was back out playing after eight weeks. I saw him at the Birmingham Odeon on that tour. There was a part [in the book] where he was saying that he picked the sticks up, and it wasn’t happening. He thought it was all over. I just thought, OK. So that was 5 or 6 weeks. I’m gonna wait.
“One of the things they explain to you when you’ve had this kind of procedure is you have to be aware of the potential for depression to set in. Because whilst your heart may be functioning and pumping and doing what it’s doing, there are things that you are just gonna have to say, I can’t do that now.
“That can be a little difficult for folks, especially if you’re in a relationship. You’ve seen your partner do everything because, at the moment, you can’t get involved in doing that. You think, yeah, but I feel great and I wanna go and do this. It’s like, no, you can’t at this particular moment in time.”
It is a case of pacing yourself, I suggest. “Yes,” Karl is enthusiastic. “We know as human beings, we’re not fucking clever at doing that. As you know, men, chaps, it’s like fuck that shit, dude. I’m fucking feeling great. I’m gonna go out and fucking fight, wrestle the bull. So that was explained to me.”
In addition to reading Buddy Rich, Karl says he read about the experiences of others who had had quadruple heart bypass surgery. “I just took it all on board,” he says.
Karl had a practice pad with him before he had the surgery but realised that he did not need to focus on drumming at that point. “There’ll be time for me to do that,” he thought. “What is more important, and what was explained to me, is that you have to walk every day of the week. You’ve got to do good 30 minutes to 45 minutes of good walking. The weather’s been atrocious for me to actually go out and do any cycling. You gotta make sure your heart is functioning. Otherwise, all that wonderful stuff that you’ve worked on will just go down.”
Karl has changed his diet, and you sense he is on the road to recovery, and you feel he will smash it. Tank released Live In Texas, their thunderous new live EP from the Hell’s Heroes Festival and the news of the release date for their new studio album should be out very soon.
Karl says he will be ready for Jack Frost, and there are Tank plans this year, too. “Tank is front and centre,” he says. “There’s a lot more double kick with Tank than there is in a Diamond Head show, and some of them are quite up-tempo. So I need to be able to make sure I’ve got the stamina and the strength to be able to do all the arm waving and all that’s involved in who I am as a player.
“I remember meeting Cozy Powell once at Rich Bitch Studios in Birmingham when he was with Black Sabbath. I put my head round the door, and he’s like, come on in. I thought, Holy shit, no wonder that mother is loud. Drumsticks like three drums. We got two fucking 26-inch bass drums, two 15-inch rack toms and the floors. I thought, no wonder he’s loud.
“But I had the chance to meet him and he said you gotta do this because the geezer’s at the back can’t see this. You gotta put a bit more into it and all that caper. Whilst the folks down the front can see your energy, the people at the back can’t.
“I got a good, I wouldn’t say lecture, but a good lesson. That’s what I want to be able to do when I go on the road and play with Tank and for Diamond Head or whoever I’m playing with. Because that’s who I am as a player.”
It seems we only touched the surface of Karl’s career. We did not cover forming Requiem with Steve Slater in the early new wave days. Karl mentioned Notorious with Sean Harris and Robin George. But Geffen put a load of money into that and then caned the album after three weeks. Karl then went to New York to hang out with the jazz dudes.
We need another two or three interviews. Karl has been considering writing the book.
We’ve not talked about Karl Wilcox’s dad having his own 16-piece dance band or Karl working his way up the competitive orchestra trumpet hierarchy. Or how the drummer of the orchestra left, so Karl took drums. “I was absolutely a load of bollocks,” Karl says of that first rehearsal. “I was all over the shop.” But this would be a big turning point.
“Slade were a huge influence on me, and I’ve been very fortunate to work with Jimmy Lee,” Karl says. “Then I started to go see bands at the school, at the Wolverhampton Civic Hall or Birmingham Odeon or Du Montfort Hall or Derby Assembly rooms. I just thought I wonder if I could do that for a living. I just wondered if that is a possibility.”
We should know more about Requiem. “One of the beauties of that New Wave Of British Heavy Metal period of time was the do-it-yourself attitude,” Karl Wilcox says. “I was working at a supermarket in the receiving area. I got four of these GKN blue pallets, fucking weight a torn and nine beer crates. That’s the drum riser, with black cloth over the front. I used to carry that shit around. Now, on some of these stages, drummers have to share drum kits. You can’t even get two drum kits on the stage. My dad was right. You gotta have a big car.”
For now, Karl Wilcox is very thankful to everyone who wrote to him and offered support as he went through his operation. “I just want to thank everybody, whether they be a Diamond Head fan, a Tank fan, a drumming fan, a Metal fan, or just a regular person. It meant a lot to me because, when the surgeon came after my initial exam, he said, look, here’s your heart. All four chambers are 80 to 85% blocked. If you don’t do this now, then you’re on borrowed time.”
There was indeed a lot to process for Karl Wilcox, but he had people helping him. “Dave Bonny? He’s got to be one of the best fucking people on the planet. He’s done so much for me. Not only as a friend and a human being, setting my drums up, taking them down, introducing myself to people, and helping set this up.
“I didn’t really want to put out there what I was going through,” Karl says. “Dave sent me a text saying Karl, folks have found out. Everybody’s sending you best wishes. So I did a message.”
For Tank, Karl Wilcox is looking forward to getting out there and powering the band along. “Mick, Cliff, Marcus, Gav, all have been very, very supportive. The new album sounds great. There’s some fucking kick ass songs.”
Karl’s message for the Diamond Head Crew is to have some patience. “Hopefully, we can make the 50th anniversary happen,” he says.
“I just want to wish everybody well. Take care of yourselves because you really do not know what is around the corner. Let’s keep Metal and rock alive, regardless of whether folks say rock is dead. Bullshit to that. As long as we can go ahead and keep playing, folks can keep coming out and seeing the shows, and then bands will keep going out and playing.
“I just wish everybody a hopefully peaceful, prosperous, healthy, happy 2025.”
It is inspiring to hear Karl Wilcox talk, especially after what he has gone through. I’m sure the whole Heavy Metal world wishes him the best of health and a bright and busy 2025.
