This year marks the 40th Anniversary of Magnum’s debut album ‘Kingdom of Madness’ and the 30th anniversary of the majestic ‘Wings of Heaven’ the wonderful follow-up to the seemingly impossible to match creative tour-de-force that was ‘On a Storytellers Night.’ But as we find out for Bob it’s not about the dates it’s all about the new music and Magnum’s new album – their 20th studio release of their career which bears all the hallmarks of the classic Magnum sound – even reviving their original logo.
Bob: Hi Mark nice to speak to you mate. I’ve just come in the house, been rehearsing all day with the band, we’ve got a UK and European Tour coming up at the end of February, through March and April. So all’s good, we’re just putting the show together and routining the songs, and it’s sounding good. So I’m looking forward to all that later on.
Mark: It should be a great tour, it’s a lengthy one as well!
Bob: Yes, 41 shows we’re doing Mark.
Mark: Do you ever get sick of being on the road?
Bob: Do I ever get sick of being on the road? (laughs) Not really no! I enjoy it a bit too much Mark, I’ve been doing it most of my life now from the late sixties, early seventies, especially with Magnum when we got going. In the eighties we toured an awful lot so I’m used to it and its just something you love doing. You either love it or you can’t stand it you know Mark, a bit like Marmite! (laughs)
Mark: I love Marmite, I reckon I’d love touring then!
Bob: (laughs) Me and Tony like being on the road, it’s a great way to put across your new music in front of a crowd, see if they like it, get them to tell their friends, see what they think. Maybe if they do they’ll buy the record and come and see us on tour sometime, they might even like it! So we’ve built up out audience over the years just by word of mouth before social media came into being, it was just people coming to see us, going away, telling their friends and bringing them with them next time. And that was the way it was for most bands in those days I guess. But I love touring: there’s nothing better than being on stage in front of a packed out auditorium full of Magnum fans, because they give their all they really do, they’re fantastic people, they’re so into it, they don’t take it lightly they take it all very seriously like they’re part of the band, you know, and they have their say on Facebook and all that so it’s great to now that people are that much into your music, and that they love the people in the band as much as they do the music. It’s a really nice feeling a great compliment to you, it’s great for your ego (laughs) I’ll get a big head if I’m not careful. But they’re lovely people and I thank everybody for sticking with us over the years and allowing Magnum to carry on making music all this time.
Mark: I’ve seen you many a time myself and it’s always a wonderful experience to be part of a Magnum crowd, it is as you say like a family. On to the new album now, surely the title ‘Lost on the Road to Eternity’ is all about those long tours?
Bob: (laughs) Ah, well! It depends on ow you interpret it I suppose! Tony likes people to put their own interpretations on the songs, the song titles and the lyrics and what the songs are about. But that’s a good one! (laughs) On the front cover, which was done by Rodney Matthews again, brilliant artwork, there’s the little boy with his back to you who’s facing these weird characters coming out of the woods, characters from children’s storybooks and fairy tales, and they’re all looking a bit lost. And he’s saying “Follow me I’ll show you the way” and I guess in life we all need somebody to show us the way sometimes, we all get a little bit lost ourselves, and we need help and someone to point the direction for you. So it could be about that as well, it depends what you want to read into it really.
Mark: It’s a fantastic album, you’ve really come up with the goods yet again.
Bob: Cheers, thank you.
Mark: Every time I think in recent years I’ve heard a new Magnum album, it just seems to get better and better. It’s an interesting year though Bob, with it being not only your 20th studio album, but also the 30th anniversary of ‘Wings of Heaven’ when I really started to get into the band, and also the 40th anniversary of where it all began with ‘Kingdom of Madness’.
Bob: That’s right Mark, yeah. I don’t think me and Tony had really thought about that, but then we’re not really good on facts and figures! (laughs) But now you’ve said that yes, there’s three big things here, it is our 20th album if I’ve gt my figures right, and our first album was released in 1978 so yes that’s 40 years, and 30 years of ‘Wings of Heaven’ I can’t believe I missed that one. People say to us “Are you doing anything special to celebrate it” and Tony’s like “Well not really, we’re just gonna do anther great tour, hopefully, promoting another great album. He (Tony) tends to look forward more than just reminiscing and looking back. We’ve done a couple of anniversary things in the past, in 2005 we did the 20th anniversary of ‘On a Storyteller’s Night’ and we did 20 years of ‘Wings of Heaven’ live, so we have done a couple of these things, we did a DVD from the Astoria in London, so we have done a couple but I don’t think we need to keep doing it, We just want to keep creating great music, and play people the new songs, I think that’s where Tony is. I mean we do do quite a few old songs in the show of course, we always will do to please people. They hopefully like the new stuff but they basically come and see you to have a great time dancing around to the songs that they’ve known all their lives. And they bring the kids (laughs) and then they grow up and they bring their kids, we’re a multi-generational band I think, and it’s great to see them all out there. It’s a great feeling between us and the audience you know, they’re as important as everyone in the band I think.
Mark: Talking of the band you’ve had a couple of fairly recent changes as well.
Bob: We have.
Mark: Tell us a little about the new guys?
Bob: Well Mark, we have a new keyboard player called Rick Benton, who replaced our previous keyboard player Mark Stanway, he decided to up the keyboards and piss off, and he did and off he pissed you’ll have to ask him the reasons, I can’t be arsed I just want o get on with something better. I don’t want to get into all that crap, it is whatever, it was up to him, I wish him well, but he did leave us in the ‘doo-dah’ leaving mid tour and I’m not very happy about that and neither is Tony I’ll tell you. So we ere doing some gigs and we were keyboard player-less for one show, in Dublin it was, and we hadn’t played in Dublin for years, so it was really bad timing. Just the four of us turned up, but fortunately we had some keyboards on a computer that we used for when he was missing when we were rehearsing the tour, so we put some live keyboards on the computer so we could actually play together and sound like Magnum, because you need keyboard obviously! And so, whatever, we’ve got somebody great now, his name is Rick Benton and he’s a fantastic keyboard player and Tony’s really pleased with him because he’s so much easier to work with in the recording studio, and he came up with a lot of fantastic ideas, parts, sounds, everything, and we weren’t quite used to that. Tony used to have to cajole Mark to do stuff, and Rick is just a dream to work with. And we also have a new guy on the drums called Lee Morris who had replaced Harry James our long-standing drummer, who is with Thunder really, I guess he was never our drummer really he was always Thunder’s drummer, but he wanted to be in Magnum because he loved the music,but it was always when he could be ‘Thunder-allowing.’ But what happened was that they started picking up a lot more work and so he was torn between the two and it was slowing us down, stopping us from actually progressing and moving on as we were working more and more. So Tony actually called him up and said “Sorry mate I didn’t want to make this phone call but we have to replace you” he might have picked a nicer word I don’t know, but we needed our own drummer, it was only fair to us. So we wished him all the best with Thunder and we’re still great mates, there’s no problem between us, he understood and he was quite sad about it. He had been with us a long time.
Mark: He had, I always thought that Harry would be a temporary thing, but in the blink of an eye he was with you what thirteen years in his two stints.
Bob: Yeah when he started off it was either Harry James or Jimmy Copley they sort of shared the albums between them since we’ve been on SPV Records, but the time came for us to move on and he understood. But Lee Morris is a fantastic drummer and a lovely guy and he said to me “I can’t believe I’m working with you, it’s a dream come true, I’ll wake up in a minute!” And that’s a fantastic attitude to have in somebody who’s just joined the band, it’s brilliant. So we all get on great and he did a great job on the album as well, so I’m really pleased with both of the new guys. It’s a fresh start for Magnum and the positive attitudes are all there again so me and Tony couldn’t be happier. The band’s sounding better than ever it really is.
Mark: It’s a great album it really is and the readers are taking to the review we’ve not had it up two days yet and there’s already over 5000 reads. It’s not often you get and album and play it all the way through and aren’t skipping a single track after half a dozen plays, and nt a track under five minutes apart from one and that’s just by a second!
Bob: (laughs)
Mark: I think at the moment my favourites are wavering between ‘Storm Baby’; ‘Welcome to the Cosmic Cabaret’; the title track, which we’ll talk about in a second, and the wonderful closer ‘King of the World’ which you sound absolutely wonderful on. What’s the secret of keeping the voice at this level for so many years?
Bob: I don’t know. I’ve been lucky to have a voice that I can push and it just goes with me. I haven’t looked after it brilliantly over the years but only because I didn’t have it. Its still there, and it’s served me well, and I’m reaching the notes just as good as I did back in the 80’s I believe. Of course it’s more mature now and I can sing deeper than I used to (laughs) if not higher, deeper! And it never let’s me down. I love my voice I think it’s quite distinctive and people do say I have quite a unique voice. I have had my influences over the years like everybody does, but it’s Tony’s songs and lyrics and the vibe within the music that has really kept my voice going. I’ve always kept positive over the years and I love singing Tony’s stuff, but I’ve worked with other people as well. With Tobias Sammat from Avantasia and it’s the same thing there – he writes me great songs and he lifts your voice, you know, your voice says “Thank you very much, this is brilliant.”
Mark: (laughs)
Bob: But you find yourself saying, “Give me that song, give me that lyric, give me that vibe” and it just lifts you, in the studio, on stage, especially in front of big audiences and I’ve played in front of some big audiences around the world in the last few years with both Avantasia and Magnum. I’m lucky in that I still get excited when I go into the studio and I get really excited when I go on stage (laughs) because i know what’s gonna happen. I just open my mouth and out it comes! So I should be so lucky at my time of life to have a beautiful voice. I’ve been blessed, so thank you God. Thank you somebody anyway!
Mark: You mentioned you’d just got back from reversals, what were some of your highlights from the new album? It must be a constant surprise when Tony comes up with these songs? Some of them must just hit you between the eyes and get you thinking about how they’re going to sound on stage? Surely you’re going to be playing songs like, say, ‘Storm Baby’?
Bob: Well we’re not actually Mark.
Mark: Oh wow!
Bob: No it’s a great tune, Tony loves it, I love it but we’ve only got room for about four songs from the new album on the tour. We do like an hour 50 or something like that, but we’ve got to keep a balance between new and old like we always have done. We could do most of the songs from the album on stage because they’re all perfect for stage but that wouldn’t be fair to our audience as we’d run out of time to play a lot of the songs they’ve come to see. So we keep a fine balance and I think four is enough and ‘Storm Baby’ can’t be one of them because we can’t do them all. But we’ll be doing the title track, and ‘Peaches and Cream’ that’s a real rocker, and there’s a song called ‘Show Me Your Hands’
Mark: Yes, a track made to be played live.
Bob: I know, that’s just ‘Show me your hands people’ great on stage in front of an audience “Put your hands in the air” that’s what that song’s all about. So we have to do that one because that totally involves the Magnum audience on the night wherever we are. And we’re doing the first single which is ‘Without Love’ which is being played on the radio a lot over here. So we have to do that one as people know that one now they’ve heard it that often, they probably know all the words! So they are the four that we’ve picked but on the next tour that may change and ‘Storm Baby’ would be a great replacement for one of those songs of course and ‘…Cosmic Cabaret’ and pick another one, you know. They’re all great but as I say we have to keep a balance and we’re gonna bring back a couple of big old songs we haven’t played in a long time, and also the best of previous tours and albums. so it’s a case of “Here’s a new one” then “Here’s one you’ll know” to try and be fair to most of the audience if not all of the audience.
Mark: It’s a great album and any of the songs are sure to please the faithful. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today Bob, it’s always great to hear a new Magnum album and always a pleasure to talk to you. As touring goes is there anywhere in the world you’d still like to play but haven’t made it to yet, or haven’t played in a while and want to get back to?
Bob: Yes! We haven’t been to America for a long time, the last time we were there touring was with Ozzy Osbourne back in the early 80’s – that’s a long time ago and we had a great time. So we’d love to go to the States, we’d love to go to Japan, I’ve been to Japan with Avantasia twice and I always get asked in interviews over there “Why aren’t you bringing Magnum?” you know. But you need a ready-made audience there and a promoter to go, so we need a lot more promo and a promoter who will take a gamble on us. But I’m sure that the fans are there, I’m sure there’d be a big audience. We’d also love to come to Australia, it’s like “Wow how far is that the other side of the World!” But you’ve got to look at practicalities and what sounds great is not always doable in the real world. It’s a shame because I know we have fans in Australia, we’ve got fans in South America, but we don’t go to South America because of the same reason – you don’t know how many people are going to turn up or if it’s going to be a complete disaster financially. That’s the awful truth of it you know: you need airplay, TV, press, all that crap. So sadly we have to stick with what we can do in the real world which is the UK and Europe.
Mark: You tour a lot more than most and it’s always a highlight for me when I see Magnum playing when I’m back in the UK. Take care of yourself and best of luck with the new record.
Bob: Thank you Mark. Bye bye man, take care.
The new album ‘Lost on the Road to Eternity’ was released on January 19th 2018. Catch Magnum on tour in the UK and Europe from January 26th!
MAGNUM Live 2018:
26.01.18 GB-Minehead – Giants Of Rock
20.02.18 GB-Bristol – Trinity
21.02.18 GB-Cardiff – Tramshed
23.02.18 GB-Holmfirth – Picturedome
24.02.18 GB-Manchester – Academy 2
25.02.18 GB-Hull – Welly
26.02.18 GB-Aberdeen – Garage
27.02.18 GB-Glasgow – Garage
01.03.18 GB-Belfast – Limelight
02.03.18 GB-Birmingham – Town Hall
04.03.18 GB-Preston – Guildhall
05.03.18 GB-Nottingham – Rock City
07.03.18 GB-Leamington – Assembly
08.03.18 GB-Cambridge – Junction
09.03.18 GB-London – Islington Assembly Hall
11.03.18 GB-Southampton – Engine Room
12.03.18 GB-Brighton – Old Market
14.03.18 NL-Leiden – Gebr de Nobel
16.03.18 SE-Stockholm – Fryshuset Klubben
17.03.18 NO-Oslo – John Dee
18.03.18 SE-Gothenburg – Sticky Fingers
19.03.18 SE-Malmoe – KB
21.03.18 D-Munich – Ampere
23.03.18 D-Nürnberg – Der Hirsch
24.03.18 D-Aschaffenburg – Colos-Saal
25.03.18 D-Berlin – Columbia Theater
27.03.18 D-Bonn – Harmonie
28.03.18 D-Stuttgart – Im Wizemann
29.03.18 D-Freiburg – Jazzhaus
31.03.18 D-Wuppertal – Live Club Barmen
01.04.18 NL-Uden – De Pul
03.04.18 D-Leipzig – Werk 2
04.04.18 D-Hamburg – Fabrik
05.04.18 D-Bremen – Aladin
07.04.18 D-Neuruppin – Kulturhaus
08.04.18 PL-Bydgoszcz – Klub Kuzinia
10.04.18 CZ-Prague – Nova Chemelnice
11.04.18 D-Memmingen – Kaminwerk
12.04.18 CH-Pratteln – Z7
13.04.18 I-Milano – Legend
15.04.18 E-Barcelona – Bikini
16.04.18 E-Madrid – But