Lionheart are just about to release their new album ‘The Reality of Miracles’ and it is something rather special. The band which is made up of Iron Maiden’s first guitarist Dennis Stratton, Steve Mann (Michael Schenker Fest), Rocky Newton (ex-MSG), Clive Edwards (ex-UFO) and Lee Small (ex-Shy, Sweet) have really hit a home run with this one if you’re a fan of classy Melodic Rock and AOR with a little bite. We caught up with Lee Small to find out all about it and lift the lid on some of his other projects too.
Mark: Hi Lee how are you, Australia calling!
Lee: I’m good mate, it looks pretty dark there!
Mark: Pretty dark, but on the bright side we’ve almost cracked coronavirus in the West.
Lee: How is it over there?
Mark: I think we’ve had about three cases in the last month
Lee: Hopefully it stays like that! (laughs). It’s been a nightmare over here, we didn’t see this one coming.
Mark: I know, all my mates in the UK are having it hard, we closed our borders at the right time but also closed the west Australian border, so we’re locked tight, on the down side no one can come in and see us. What that means though is that live shows are already back in Perth.
Lee: It’s on the way back, that’s good to hear. We can only dream of that over here at the moment. We’re moving to another stage over here today, I think people can stand a metre apart and stuff like that, and some shops are opening. I think the problem is that some people are thinking it’s all over already and it’s all forgotten. They’re in a world of their own, just walking straight past you, it’s driving me nuts.
Mark: They eased stuff up in Melbourne the other week and had a spike in cases, so it looks like they’ll be going back.
Lee: That is what will happen here, I’m expecting another wave of it, but hopefully not.
Mark: And even though people reading might wonder why we’re opening talking about coronavirus, people need to understand that if we want music back then we need to get this right. Let’s talk music now though! I think I’ve seen you on stage not that long ago. You’ve been to Australia recently haven’t you?
Lee: Yeah I was there not that long back with Sweet.
Mark: Very sad news the other day about the other version of Sweet with Steve Priest passing. I was talking to Mitch, his guitarist the other day and he said he’d lost weight he’d been crying that much.
Lee: Very sad.
Mark: Were you a fan back in the day Lee?
Lee: Yeah I was a big fan as I kid growing up, I remember staying up to watch reruns of The Beat Club and stuff like that and it was great, that’s where I got my education you know, musically.
Mark: And it doesn’t hurt being from a part of the Country (The Black Country) with a rich musical heritage either?
Lee: Absolutely it’s certainly in the water there. There’s been some great musician from The Black Country.
Mark: I must admit I got to Lionheart a bit late – I missed the first album as no one sent me it, but I’ve been playing ‘The Reality of Miracles’ since it arrived, it’s up for album of the year so far and we’re almost halfway there. I think what I loved most of all though was your voice?
Lee: It’s great to hear you enjoyed it.
Mark: Enough to check out your website and find that you have three solo albums out that I have to catch up on! (laughs)
Lee: I’ve been around a bit. I have done a few albums on top of those, people used to think I couldn’t hold a gig down as I’d done so many albums, but people just kept hiring me for projects, so I guess I’ve done a lot of project albums that have come out and there’s maybe just been the one album, but if it’s a good album I can’t turn it down, and it keeps me working.
Mark: If you’re working consistently in this day and age in music that’s an achievement in itself.
Lee: It’s been good. Ironically over the years I think I’ve done lead vocals on 20 albums and on the back of that I’ve travelled the world, it’s bizarre. But Lionheart is a band and it’s nice to be part of a band rather than on another project album. We pick it up as and when we can because everybody’s always busy with other things – Steve is out with Michael Schenker a lot, and I’m out with Sweet and Dennis is here there and everywhere doing this that and the other. So it is really difficult to tie ourselves down half the time, hence the last album was 2017, we managed to get out and do some live shows, get to Sweden and Japan and it’s took two years really to get this new album finished really. And that’s the only really positive thing to come out of corona – it’s given us time to finish the record!
Mark: (laughs).
Mark: I love pretty much everything on there but I think my favourite at the moment is ‘All I Want is You’ – what can you tell me about that song?
Lee: That one came from Dennis really – the way we all write is that everyone just brings ideas to the table and then we work on them, there’s twists and turns and then things get thrown out or changed and stuff like that. With that one Dennis had got the chorus line and the main chord structure and everything just kind of built from that really. It’s one of those great summer ‘top down’ anthems isn’t it?
Mark: Exactly, I think that’s how I described it!
Lee: To me there’s a couple on there like that that have that same sort of feel – the other one that springs to mind is ‘Overdrive’ – just feel good summer tunes!
Mark: And there’s a great mix on there too that I didn’t necessarily expect after playing that first track, I thought OK this sounds like it’s going to be a great AOR record, but it does mix it up. I was just playing ‘Kingdom of the East’ which is something different entirely. I thought it had a bit of ‘Rainbow’ about it.
Lee: Absolutely yeah, you’re the first person to have said that but I can really hear where you’re coming from.
Mark: And I love ‘The First Man’ now that is a storming track, but you do the ballads so well too. Do you have any favourites?
Lee: Well I’m caught really, I like so many! You mentioned ‘The First Man’ and I do like to get my teeth into a good story and I don’t know if you’ve seen it but there was an old movie based on the H.G. Wells novel called ‘The First Men in The Moon’.
Mark: I remember that one, where Victorians land on the moon and Ray Harryhausen did the stop-motion animation!
Lee: That’s the one, it’s got Edward Judd in it, it’s a great movie and based on the story line that a mad Victorian scientist was the first man to land on the moon way before the moon landing in 1969, in 1899 or whatever. I kind of went down that road lyrically, I love playing with words and once I’ve got my teeth into a good story I’m off. So I suppose that is one of my favourites. But I love that Pop stuff like ’Overdrive’ and songs like that too.
Mark: I was looking at your website just this morning jotting down a few notes and I saw that you have one of my favourite singers as a fan – Mr. Glenn Hughes?
Lee: Yes, Glenn, I had the pleasure to work with him some years back. We both did a Phenomena album together. It’s a few years ago though now, round about 2005 so 15 years now. So got to meet him a few times then and what was brilliant was just being in the studio with him and seeing how he did stuff – at one point we were in the vocal booth together and being one of my idols, it was a ‘pinch myself’ moment. I think he saw that we had similar influences like Stevie Wonder, and it’s nice to know he liked my voice.
Mark: He was last over when he started doing his Deep Purple stuff again. It was a great show.
Lee: I’ve not seen him do that stuff, I bet it’s a great show.
Mark: A sell-out. He has got a golden voice though and a lovely guy too. Not sure how he’ll go with the Dead Daisies, but we’ll see.
Lee: Yeah, I was surprised with that one, but he doesn’t normally make bum decisions though, he normally makes great moves. He must have seen something in there that made him feel it was right for him.
Mark: Well he’s certainly got a lot going on.
Lee: Last time I heard from him was just before Black Country Communion telling me he was putting it together. But he looks after that voice, it just gets better with age.
Mark: So what were the plans for Lionheart re-corona, was the plan to release the album then hit the road?
Lee: Yes definitely we were going to do some shows this year to promote the release but everything of course is all on the back-burner now so it will be 2021 now before we can get out and play any dates to support the record. But there will be some. We’re talking Spain at the moment and possibly Sweden Rock again, and Japan would be lovely again.
Mark: That’s a real double edged sword isn’t it – corona gave you the time to finish the album but now you’ve got to wait six months to do anything!
Lee: This is the thing.
Mark: Plenty of time to get listeners though.
Lee: Yes, it’s nice to be part of the Metalville team, they’re very supportive and really believe in what we’re doing. They’re supporting the record well and we seem to have hit it off.
Mark: It’s interesting how it came to me though, it was framed as a Dennis project, Maiden and NWOBHN mane-checked but it’s nothing like that is it?
Lee: No, not at all, even though the band was born out of NWOBHM after Dennis left Iron Maiden and ironically it was classed as the original ‘super-group’ because of the members that were there back in the day. But it didn’t stay like that, they moved to L.A. and stayed there for ’84 – ’86 and the album they put out then was a real commercial American sounding record. So nothing really like the NWOBHM stuff they were doing. But when we picked the band back up and I joined them in 2016 and we did the ‘Second Nature’ album there were a couple of songs that paid tribute to that NWOBHM sound but as you said it was more AOR.
Mark: There is some heavier stuff on the new record that makes you think of early Maiden though like ‘Five Tribes’?
Lee: Yeah that’s definitely a nod to that.
Mark: But still very Melodic too. So Lee let’s take it all the way back, when did you know that music was going to be such a big part of your life – how far back does that moment go?
Lee: Do you know what mate, it actually goes back to when I was at school. I’ve always been into music and stuff like that, always had that connection and was always in school bands. And I remember when the Job people, the career advisors, used to come to your school – I remember them saying what do you want to be when you leave school and I remember telling her that I wanted to be a Rock star and she told me to go out and come back in when I was serious (laughs), I remember that clear as day. I guess back then where I was from there were usually two choices – you went to work in a factory, or you got a job in a shop. There was nothing else really and everyone really stayed in the near, no one really moved away. So from school really I always knew I wanted to do something. When I was at school there were bands like Musical Youth from Birmingham and they made it and they were kids! And we thought “If they can do it we can do it” (laughs).
Mark: I wonder what they’re up to now? (laughs)
Lee: I think you have to try and make the best of what you’ve got and try and make a life out of it the best you can. I’m not sure there was a defining moment, just when I was a kid and I used to stay up late and watch the films late at night and I remember watching Woodstock and that was definitely something I remember. I would have been about 14 and I remember there being a double bill – Woodstock was on but before that there was Alice’s Restaurant.
Mark: With Arlo Guthrie! I think I was up watching that night too.
Lee: (laughs) I remember loving the life style and the culture and the next day at school I was telling my mates at school who were all rockers that I was a Hippy! I was sold on all that sort of stuff! But that was it, I fell in love with the time and the era and that whole retro aspect of Rock music then introduced me to a lot of bands like The Who, and Alice Cooper and Yes and all the great bands that were around at that time. I loved Deep Purple with Glenn and the Mark II, Mark III Purple I really got into. Then later on I discovered bands like Journey in ’81 when ‘Escape’ came out – I’d never heard anything as commercial or catchy in Rock music and that in turn introduced me to Boston, and Kansas and it just went from there.
Mark: You know what, there’s a lot of Journey I get in the Lionheart album.
Lee: That’s nice to hear.
Mark: If you could have been a fly on the wall for the creation of any great album, just to see how the magic happened in the studio, what would you have liked to have seen being put together?
Lee: ‘Blizzard of Oz’ Ozzy Osbourne that first album- I would have to because when I was a kid I was so influenced by Ozzy and I used to love Randy Rhodes too, I’d listen to that all the time with the headphones on and I think just to be in the studio with that guy and see him lay down his guitars would have been amazing. Just out of shot my other half is going, “How come you didn’t pick The Doobie Brothers”. I’m a massive Doobie Brothers fan so maybe I could sit in with them too!
Mark: And the final question – the easy one – What is the meaning of life?
Lee: It’s just what you make it mate, it means different things to other people but just be happy and be safe. It’s there to make of it what you want.
Mark: I think you’re right it can be that simple. We will have to chat again tough and next time about your solo albums, which I am about to pick upon the website now!
Lee: Thank you mate it’s been a pleasure, we will.
