INTERVIEW - Thunder by James Ellaby

UK rock legends Thunder have been back with a bang this year, continuing their remarkable comeback with a Top 40 single and one of their best albums yet in The Magnificent Seventh. With another album in the pipeworks and a tour early next year with former Little Angels singer Toby Jepson supporting, we caught up with front-man Danny Bowes and spoke to him about learning Portuguese, The Darkness and why he doesn't like people who stand at the back of Thunder gigs...

Q - What can we expect from the tour next year?

A - I think it's going to be an explosive mix of Thunder songs, old and new. It's going to be a very jolly occasion, and a Thunder show is a very interactive experience, so we'll be expecting the audience to be bringing their best dancing shoes and be jumping about throughout the gig. We don't want anyone coming desperate to stand at the back and have a look. (That might be my girlfriend in trouble then...) Well, you might have to tell her to come and stand at the front, so I can keep an eye on her!

Q - Toby Jepson will be supporting, were you a fan of Little Angels?

A - Not really, to be honest. Little Angels were already well established by the time Thunder came on the scene. I can remember looking at a lot of what they were doing even before we got a record deal. We always got on well with the guys from Little Angels, and we played a few shows with them over the years, so I've known Toby on and off for about 15 years I guess. I've always been very keen to try and get him to open for us, this is the second time and I've finally managed to arrange it. I think it's a shame that someone as good as Toby would be out of the game.

Q - In your years with Terraplane and Thunder, do you have any specific memories of Manchester gigs?

A - They've always been mental! They've certainly always been very good, it doesn't matter where you play there. I remember, many many years ago, playing at the International and the International 2. These were great venues, real sticky down-to-earth places, and even there the audience was great. I remember playing there a long time ago and twisting my knee the night before we were supposed to be London and there was loads of drama. But the audiences are always very very warm, very excitable and always up for it, always noisy and that's why it's always a pleasure to come back to Manchester because you know what it's going to be like.

Q - You'll be playing at the Hammersmith Apollo at the end of this tour for the first time since the early 90s. How do you explain this resurgence in popularity?

A - Freddie Mercury said it all: "Quality will out"! (laughs) At the end of the day, I think it comes back to the fact that music is universal and good music never really goes out of fashion. In our case, we never really were IN fashion, I mean we had our days with the media early on, but they came and went and then came back and went again. The band has always been good, we've always tried to make the best albums we could make. We've been at it now in this band for 15 years, and we had two years away, so when we came back we weren't really sure whether it was going to work. The signs were very good and since we took control of our own record label, we've seen a steady increase in record sales and also interest. The ticket sales have got better over the last four tours and they are very good for that show, so I'm very pleased. I just think it comes down to the quality of the band, the audience know what they're going to get when they come to see us. They know it's going to be a rowdy evening and it's not going to be like just watching a band play an album - that's never been Thunder's way and I think bands that do that sort of thing just make bands like us look better! (laughs)

Q - When you did take a break back at the turn of the Millennium, what did you think you'd be doing now?

A - I never really thought about it that deeply to be honest. All I knew was that towards the end of '99, I was getting a bit twitchy. Most of it was to do with record companies. It was never to do with the fans and never to do with the band. It's always been a great band to be in because we're all good mates, we get on well and we love doing what we do. It's very easy for us, we get in a room, make some noise and everyone jumps up and down, it's great! But the politics with the record labels is hard, that's what got wearing. We had ten years on the road with three record companies and were feeling like we were increasingly being lied to all the time. It doesn't matter how good the record is in the end, it doesn't matter if you make a really good record or play a really good tour; if the record company aren't doing their thing it becomes soul-destroying because you put so much effort into every record. So that was kind of what destroyed it, and we went away and all had a few years off doing other stuff. When we got back together, originally it was never with a view to getting back together and forming our own record label, but that tour we did with Alice Cooper was such a success and we sold so many EPs, we thought maybe we should make an album. So then the record companies got interested again and we had to think, do we really want to go through all that again? That was the reason we stopped doing it, so maybe we should just do it ourselves, can't be that hard! A foolish thought that was! It's unbelievably hard, but it's worthwhile because we can see the fruits of our labour and there's no-one lying to us. But in terms of did I think we'd be doing all this now? God no, but I never thought the band would last more than a few minutes anyway...

Q - You're in the process of putting together a new album at the moment, how's that going?

A - The writing process is going on. Luke's been beavering away since about August I think, and Chris the bass player has been writing a few songs too. He's always been very involved, but never really contributed in that sense. Luke's very self-sufficient, so I think it's quite daunting to dig into that progress. But Chris has been chucking ideas at him all summer and I know they've written at least one song together, so hopefully that will continue as it gives us a bit of variation in the music, which is good. We'll be going into the studio at the end of the month just for the first session, and we'll take it from there, but we're in no massive rush. We're not looking to release another record till about next September.

Q - What music are you listening to at the moment?

A - I'm listening to the latest Foo Fighters album, In Your Honour, a lot recently, I can't stop playing it! I've got a major thing about playing that really loud; it's driving everyone else mad. So there's that on pretty much non-stop and there's also Learning To Talk Portuguese, which is driving ME mad! (laughs)

Q - You've said that when you started out, you and Luke (Morley, guitarist) decided that you didn't want to keep on playing when you were getting old. Is that still the plan?

A - We're here aren't we?! Nah, I never really wanted to end up like the Rolling Stones, I always thought there must be more to it than that, but to be honest, the older I get, the more I understand why they're still doing it. There are very few things in life that give you the same kind of buzz as standing in front of an audience who love what you're doing. So, if you enjoy doing it, you're only limited by the physicalilty. I was thinking about it this morning, actually, and sooner or later I suppose we'll have to call a day, we'll be too old to do it anymore, and the moment someone tells me a need a zimmer frame - that'll be when I decide to hang up my microphone! In the meantime, as long as I feel physically capable of doing it and the audience is still there, I don't see any reason why we'd stop.

Q - You hit the charts earlier this year with I Love You More Than Rock 'n' Roll. Is there really anything you love more than rock 'n' roll?

A - Oh yeah, yeah! That song is very tongue-in-cheek. When he wrote the song and told me the title, I thought to myself 'My god, he's either very brave or very stupid!' But it's a very infectious tune and it's not meant to be a serious tune. It works very well live and all the fans love it, so it's a good way to introduce people to what Thunder do. It's been a very good tune for us...

Q - Speaking of tongue-in-cheek, The Darkness have got their second album coming out soon, what do you make of them?

A - I think they're really good. They've single-handedly helped bands like us get our popularity back. I think the fact that they were so overting taking the mickey helped them a lot, opening the doors to the media. I don't think the media would have been interested had they not been taking the mickey. At the end of the day, 'there are no diagrams on the scorecard' as the old geezer who plays golf said; it doesn't matter how you get there, as long as you get there. I suppose there's a lot of purists who'd say that they aren't actually very good and the guy's got a very strange-sounding voice, but the tunes are the tunes and if the kids like the tunes - and there's a lot of middle-aged guys who like The Darkness - so I'm not going to knock it. They've helped the likes of us get more popular again and made rock acceptable. I think rock needs to be entertaining and The Darkness certainly do that.

Thunder will play the Manchester Academy on 2nd February 2006...