It has been 41 years since something wild stirred in Tamworth. Yes, I’m talking about the formation of Wolfsbane, one of the most loved UK hard rock bands. The band who signed with Def American, who had Rick Rubin produce their first album, Live Fast, Die Fast, and who earned a reputation for crazy stage fun and an overall great time.
Thirty-six years since their debut, the band have re-recorded that debut as Live Faster and are embarking on tour dates across Europe and the UK, festival appearances and a retro support slot with The Almighty.
MetalTalk’s Paul Hutchings caught up with Blaze Bayley to chat about all things Wolfsbane.
“I’ve got my strength back. I just need to get my fitness going now,” Blaze tells me when I check on how he is doing. You may recall he had a heart attack and quadruple bypass in March 2023.
A knee injury early in his recovery has put him further back than he would have wanted, but the man who always has a positive outlook is as energised as ever. “It hasn’t stopped me touring,” he says, “and we’re really very excited about these shows coming up.”
Blaze is someone who seems to me to always be on the go. Is he someone that can’t sit still? “I don’t feel like that,” he says. “It was quieter at the start of the year, so we had plenty of rehearsal time, which we don’t normally get, and that was a lot of fun. When it came to the last three shows, well, the last two shows, we were well rehearsed.
“It just felt absolutely great. So, it’s a thing where everything’s come in the same part of the year. I’m doing the Wolfsbane things, we’ve got the new album, and we’re bringing out the final version of it as well. Then I will go off and do the Silicon Messiah 25th anniversary stuff. And then we come back and do some more Wolfsbane with The Almighty at the end of the year.
“It’s 1989 again,” Blaze laughs.
Of course, having been in the business as long as Blaze Bayley has, there are anniversaries for different things every year. “You know, that’s weird that you should say that, because it does seem that I had an anniversary of my Silicon Messiah album a long time ago. It didn’t strike me then, but that was the 15th anniversary.
“Then we have the 25th, and now it’s 30 years. But, well, we did this album, Live Fast, Die Fast in 1989. I think it’s 40 years of Wolfsbane, something like that. It’s mad. Absolutely mad. I thought, well, I didn’t think I’d be around now. I’ve just had to keep going.”
When Wolfsbane were formed, Blaze tells me his aim was to live on a tour bus. “Our ambition was to just keep going and get a little bit bigger, the same as everybody else that we saw. We had a lot of friends who got bigger as well. It was not so much about being big as filling up the shows that you played and playing to a full venue. If that was 300 or 3000, we weren’t really worried.”
Part of their reputation was as a live band, and Blaze suggests that people did not initially think of them so much as a recording band. “But we were very serious about recording after Live Fast, Die Fast,” he says.
“That’s when it really came together. We made demos and working with a producer for the first time really gave us a different outlook. Then, our next album, All Hell’s Breaking Lose Down at Little Kathy Wilson’s Place, we worked with Brendan O’Brien. He’s an incredible producer, wonderful musician, great guitar player, and wonderful singer.
“He composed many great songs himself. He was just the right producer for us, and we learned so much from that experience. I think that really made us then want to be a great band in the studio as well.
“We were always looking to write songs that were passionate, catchy, that meant something. Sometimes, things were very dark and very serious. And we did them with the soundtrack. That was perhaps a little bit more fun, but they were darker subjects.”
It’s no secret that Wolfsbane fans are extremely dedicated. In fact, I would say some of the most loyal and committed. Blaze is certainly appreciative of the following that Wolfsbane have. “We’re very, very lucky,” he says. “In the beginning, there was no such thing as a meet and greet. We just hung around. We had our own T-shirts that we had made ourselves and our own demos that we had copied ourselves.
“We sold those demos and the T-shirts after gigs, and that that was it, really. We always connected and tried to connect with our fans. Then our fan club had a name, The Howling Mad Shitheads.
“I think we were a group of people that were just living for music and day-to-day. Really. I think we’re very, very lucky that people have stayed with us, and the attitude that we came out with at that time really struck a chord with people.
“When we do gigs now and you see fans from back then, they will all look so old in comparison to how we did that. And everybody knows the words, to Live Fast, Die Fast.”
Blaze’s amazement that the fans can still sing all the words is probably to do with the time and the place. Back in 1989, as Blaze and I discuss, there was no internet, no mobiles, and you spent more time focused on the music.
“They’ve lived it, you know, it’s never left them,” he says. “So, it’s been very humbling for all of us to get to this stage of our life and still have that support. It’s very humbling. Maybe that’s something that, for new bands, it’s more difficult to get there because there are more things that separate you than bring you together now.
“There was no online, there was no Internet when we started, there were no mobile phones, there were no flying cars, and there were no laptops. That was it. It was just the early days of that and everything was on paper. Everything was post.
“It was just a different world with different values. Not saying that it’s any better, but the connection that we had. We used to have fans drop by our house because they knew our address from the people who used to drop by. Alright, could you get this signed? It was just madness.”
If you have been to gigs anywhere from Bristol to Manchester, you will likely have seen Blaze in the audience. He is not someone to shy away from the fans, but as we chat about privacy and how the world has changed, we touch on the more sinister side of things.
As someone who never shies away from speaking to the fans, if someone dropped around his house these days, would Blaze treat them the same?
“There are a bunch of fans over from Chile [for the Iron Maiden show in Birmingham]. Me and my partner Kate organised a little meet and greet, but we went into Birmingham and met them in a Wetherspoons. We did a bit of a signing and everything.
“So yeah, yeah, I’m a bit more protective of it because, of course, it’s not just fans who want a photo, have something signed and then just go off.
“There’s a whole other bunch of people there that the Internet has opened us up to. All these scammers and everybody else. There’s a lot of horrible things. So, you don’t really know.
“Back in the day, if somebody knocked on the door and they were a fan. That’s what they were. Now somebody knocks on the door and says they’re a fan. You don’t really know. That’s the difference.”
When Blaze got back with Wolfsbane in 2007, he tells me that there was a change in the way they approached things. In fact, the approach was very different to how it was in 1989.
“One of the things that was very, very cool,” Blaze says, “and that none of us predicted, was we’re all so much more chilled out than we were before. We’d all lived a lot, been through a lot. So musically, in the old days, when young men were angry, they were ambitious. When you’re trying to write a song, it was ‘is that Metal enough’ or ‘I think it should be faster’.
“Whereas when we got back together and we started writing again, it was ‘Oh, that sounds good. Yeah, and do you think it could be faster?’ Why didn’t we try it? We were very chilled out about things.
“So, it was a lot easier to write together than it was back in the day because everybody was a lot more patient. And it’s like, well, this album isn’t the end of the world, is it? So, this song isn’t the end of the world.
“Whereas back in the day, everything felt like it was the end of the world. Oh, this must be the absolutely the best thing ever. Instead, it was well, if the four of us have written it, or we’re all together on it, it’s a Wolfsbane song and it’s gonna sound like us.
“You used to worry if it would sound like us and we don’t worry at all now. If we do anything together, then it just sounds like Wolfsbane. That’s it. Because if you get those four people in a room together, that’s some kind of magic. There’s some fairy dust that happens when we’re all together in a room that gives it that edge. And I think with Live Faster, that’s one of the things that happened.”
Wolfsbane have been playing those songs for a long time. ‘We’ve been together longer now than when we were the first time around,” Blaze says. “We’ve done more. You know, it’s incredible. We’ve played all these songs live so often, and a couple of things have changed a little bit just naturally.
“There is no first album. It’s not on Spotify. There are no masters. Nobody really owns it. Now, why don’t we do our own version of it? And that was it.”
Blaze explains that there was some stress about destroying a memory or damaging the legacy of Live Fast, Die Fast, as a lot of fans loved that album. But he is happy that the band have now put life into the album.
“We kept checking has this wandered too far from the original,” Blaze says. “Or is it the original but a bit shinier and yummier? So that’s what we would do. We were so nervous.”
But as Blaze explains, with it not being on Spotify, new fans had no access to the album. “We wanted to do a new version of it,” he says. “We’ve got our own little studio. Jace Edwards is a full-time music producer. So why not do it since we’ve got the opportunity?
“When we got the reaction from those first few fans who heard it, and they didn’t hate it, and people said, I really like it, and I think it might be a bit better, it was such a relief. We were so nervous about it. We wanted to do it, and we didn’t want to be too precious.
“We wanted to put all the feelings that we have, the passion that we have now, and my voice has changed so much in a positive way over all these years. I’m not that angry, young man that I was. I’ve learned so much from all the different people I’ve worked with. The albums I’ve made, everything.
“I have a lot more control over my voice. I know what my voice is. I know my instrument now, and I was able to bring that to bear on the new album. There are little nuances and subtleties I just wasn’t capable of before on this record in the vocal performance.
“Jace, he is incredible with what he does. He is my favourite guitarist. I think with the crazy things he does and our bassist, well, it’s not really a bass guitar at all. It’s just this noise Jeff Hatley makes that suits Wolfsbane.
“When we go out live, and I see the soundman having a listen and making sure things are kind of going in the right direction, he’ll go, what’s that? I go, that’s our bass sound. You put those things together, and it’s just very cool. It’s a bass guitar played as a rhythm guitar with attitude.”
It’s also been a journey that Blaze has embraced regarding looking after his own voice, and he explains that he now sees himself as a singer as much as a frontman. “I was a frontman, and I learned to sing because I love to sing. Now I have learned to sing. I’ve developed my own technique over these 40 years.
“Making different albums and doing different gigs, I can use my voice much better now. The voice that I have and what I have available, I can use that much better now than what I had back then. Back then, it was mostly loud, and you could get the high notes.
“Now it’s can you bring the lyric to life? Can you get to the listener’s heart through their ear, and then can you bring them on the journey of the song? I think I’m more able to do that now than I ever was in 1984.”
Amongst the raft of shows that are in the Wolfsbane diary is a trip to the Steelhouse Festival and getting up the mountain. Blaze has been warned!
“It’s our first time there,” he says. “I was at Planet Rockstock, and we were leaving on the Sunday, and I looked across the car park. And there’s this magnificent Land Rover Defender all decked out with absolutely everything that you can get on it. It’s my ideal car.
“I know I sound like a nerdy geek. I don’t want a Lamborghini or a Ferrari or a Jag. I want a Land Rover Defender trick. That and I said to the chap, that’s nice. How long you had that? I’ve had it a while, he said. You need it to get up the mountain at Steelhouse.
“He was one of the organisers. He said, oh, yeah, you could smell the clutches burning out on the cars as they go up there.”
He is not wrong.
“Everybody that I’ve spoken to says it’s a great festival. We are so excited. Wolfsbane, The Wildhearts, W.A.S.P., The Treatment, Those Damn Crows, it’s just gonna be a great festival. Very, very excited.”
It turns out that Blaze and the band are planning to stay for the weekend, although he has not arranged the camping yet. Having warned him to pack for every weather, we touch on the support slot to The Almighty that comes at the end of the year.
“It’s 1989 again,” Blaze laughs “, and we don’t have to play so long either! It’s gonna be fantastic, man. We’re very, very excited. I’m seeing The Almighty at Stonedead, and I’m very excited about that. Then we get to do these shows together. Man, it’s just gonna be so much fun. Very, very, very excited about doing that.”
As we close, I ask Blaze about the future for Wolfsbane and what they want to do. “We’ve had more time together this year,” he says, “and that’s it. Whenever the four of us can, we all have different grown-up lives.
“But whenever we can get together, then we love to make music together. We love to do it. The Genius album, I really think, is the best thing that we’ve ever done as a complete album. We all feel that, as a whole album, that’s the best album that we’ve got.
“Because, if you take it from start to finish, all the songs make sense next to each other. They’re all good. Whilst Saves The World was a good album, and We Did It For The Money was decent, Genius, there’s just something about it that makes sense.
“So we think, well, that’s one of our newest things. We just can’t wait really. We’ve got ideas. We can’t wait to get in the studio and do some things together. It’s always a lot of fun to do it. It’s never a chore. So, we’re excited about it. It’s just making the time to do it.”
Live Faster is available to stream now via linktr.ee/wolfsbanehms. There is a CD and other merch available from wolfsbaneband.com/webshop. A vinyl version will be released in July to coincide with the Wolverhampton and Wakefield show.
For full details of Wolfsbane on tour, including their November dates with The Almighty, keep an eye on wolfsbaneband.com/live.
