Since their reformation back in 2015 and the subsequent release of ‘Wonder Days’, British rocker Thunder have gone from strength to strength, releasing some of their finest work since their 1990 debut album ‘Back Street Symphony’. March 12 sees the release for their thirteenth studio album ‘All The Right Noises’ through BMG and once again it shows a maturity from a band intent on not going anywhere just yet. Songwriter Luke Morley tackles subjects such as mental health, Brexit, Donald Trump & immigration, the album was recorded over three sessions and delayed for release due to the global pandemic, Thunder are now running full steam ahead with one of their heaviest promo pushes ever seen on any previous album launches.
The Rockpit managed to squeeze in some talk-time with lead vocalist Danny Bowes to discuss the writing & recording of ‘All The Right Noises’, Danny’s toughest vocal challenge to date as well as just how eager the band are to return to Australia after their 2017 whirlwind four-date tour…
Danny: Well, hello.
Sean: A very good afternoon, Danny. How are you? Or good morning, wherever you are?
Danny: I am in… uh… in sunny, no, no it’s misty and grey and horrible where I am in Swanley in Kent.
Sean: Ah, I’m from Kent.
Danny: Where are you from?
Sean: Deal.
Danny: Deal? That’s on the coast, a bit further out than me. Yeah. I just live just inside the M25.
Sean: We used to see you regularly down at Folkestone at the Lees Cliff Hall.
Danny: We used to love it down there. How long have you been in Australia?
Sean: 11 years now. In fact, funnily enough, one of the last shows that I saw before I left England was yours at Hammersmith for the 20 years and Out show.
Danny: Frightened you away did we? [laughs]
Sean: I got put away on a ship for going to that gig and they sent me to the colonies.
Danny: Sorry mate.
Sean: That’s all right. I’ll let you off, Danny. It’s fantastic to speak to you and thank you so much for chatting to us at The Rockpit. Mark’s chatted to you so many times, but I nicked this one off him today [laughs]
Danny: Oh, well, I can only hope I don’t disappoint.
Sean: It’s quite odd here, we’ve had the most fantastic summer here, but the last two days since your album dropped in my inbox, Perth has been covered with thunderstorms. So, there’s been Thunder blaring out from inside my house and there’s Thunder blaring around outside as well.
Danny: That’s really bizarre. Very bizarre. Yeah, we are usually pretty lucky with the weather, so I don’t know what’s gone wrong there.
Sean: Well, congratulations on this album. As a diehard fan, this ticks every box and more and I’m going to say it… It’s going to be my Album of the Year. What a wonderful, wonderful album ‘All The Right Noises’ are… is…
Danny: Is? Are? I’ll take it. Thank you very much.
Sean: Certainly, it’s got that normal Thunder feeling but there’s so much that is different on here too. Obviously, the world was a lot different a place when Luke wrote it.
Danny: There’s a lot of social commentary so clearly there was a lot of stuff that was getting on Luke’s nerves when he wrote this album. You know what I mean? You’ve got stuff about Donald Trump. You’ve got stuff about populism. You’ve got, you know, the UK government making a complete pig’s ear of Brexit and everything to do with that. Uh, social intolerance. Uh, did I say that? I don’t know, but I’ll say it again anyway. Um, you know, immigration… there’s all kinds on this album and I’ve actually said to him (Luke), you know, before you make the next record, before you start writing it, could you take some happy tablets, please? I don’t have any trouble with being angry, but you know I want to smile a bit, you know, so testimony to the man though, he’s very, very clever. He can write a song about a miserable subject and still somehow make it catchy and make you want to tap your foot. He’s a clever boy. There’s no doubt about that. Really clever.
Sean: Well, there’s going to be plenty of material for the next album because Trump I saw was at a press conference recently? So, Luke will be rubbing his hands together.
Danny: Yeah, I imagine that depends whether it, well, I think he might have moved on from that. I think it’s a good record. We’re very happy with the record. We finished it a year ago and it was mixed in March. I think we had to wait a little while, while Mike Fraser, who’s is an old mate of ours… Mick of legendary repute… We couldn’t get him straight away. We finished the album in January, but we couldn’t get him until March because he was working on… It was that band… It was a little band… No one’s ever heard of them… AC/DC. It might be AC/DC. I think they’ll never get anywhere. [laughs] But, he was mixing them, so we waited and it was finished in March and we were thrilled to pieces. Then the whole kind of pandemic hit and then we thought, ah, we’re just going to have to wait now since we finished it, but it’s finally here, the album is finally coming out. We can finally play it to people and hope that they get some enjoyment out of it because it’s been very frustrating sitting about for a year, waiting for people to hear it.
Sean: Yeah. Well, what’s more frustrating for us fans is when you drop the announcement about three months ago, and by the time it comes out, we can’t actually open the wrapping cause we’ve chewed our fingernails off seeing the teaser videos and hearing the first two singles. I mean with ‘Last One Out Turn Out The Lights’ I think some of us were a little bit nervous that that was a subliminal message, that this could be the last album, but obviously I’ve read a couple of interviews that Luke’s already writing for the next one, which is fantastic news.
Danny: Yeah. I mean, there’s no danger of us going anywhere. Not for the time being we’re steaming, the way things are going. When we came back with the ‘Wonder Days’ album, we made a conscious decision, based on a realization, we realized that we probably had more years behind us than we had in front so it was very important that we kind of shaped up and gave ourselves opportunities to make the best records we could. We’re working on the assumption that, you know, none of us are getting any younger, you know, we’re not spring chickens, so we have to take it seriously because you’re only as good as your last record. And if your last record happens to be your last record, because something bad happens, then you want to make sure it’s a bloody good one.
So, because of that, if you take that and you take that as almost like a kind of an ethos, you realize you’ve got a load of boxes that you haven’t ticked yet. Um, we never made a sit-down album. So, we did that. Luke and I had never done a two-man show together. So, we did that. Luke and I had never performed with an orchestra before. So, we did that… admitted we only did five out of the fourteen shows in Germany last spring, because the pandemic killed it. But you know, the five shows we did were amazing, and I’d like to go back and finish that tour another time. The most important thing is that we’re raising the bar each time. We’re pushing ourselves harder and we’re having a great time doing it. And I think we really enjoying the fact that we’re in a good place. We can do pretty much what we like. We’ve got to love what we do and providing everything is good, solid music and good live performances when we get a chance to play we’ll… I think we’re in good, good shape. Well, I think we feel very happy generally it’s got to be said.
Sean: Wonderful. Well, the album reflects that. It’s certainly, for me, some of the strongest material you’ve done. I’m still hunting for Ben’s cow bell (Chucky). Does it appear anywhere in the album?
Danny: I don’t know whether it is on this time, actually. No, I’m not sure if it is. I mean, Harry plays the anvil at one point in ‘The Smoking Gun’. When I first heard it, I thought, ah, Luke’s giving it the old ‘Blaze of Glory’ here. I see what’s going on here. We’ve got a bit of a Western thing going, and then next thing you know, is this feels a bit like Clint Eastwood, you know. This could be High Plains Drifter going on here. It feels like a Western. And then the next thing, you know, he starts playing a voice box in the demo and I’m thinking, hang on, the last time somebody did this was Steely Dan, you know, or Joe Walsh. What on earth is going on? And I think that for me is what’s exciting about it. The fact that we’ve been together, as long as we have, he’s written so many songs and I’ve sung so many of his songs, he can play me a new song and it blows my hair back and surprises me. I mean, the fact that he can surprise me after all these years, I mean, that leaves me agog, you know, I’m staggered by his abilities. I genuinely am.
Sean: Well, ‘Destruction’ is another example of that. It starts off with that kind of nice feel and then suddenly this really… probably some of the heaviest grooves have heard from you guys for a while. It’s got a real thump to it.
Danny: Yeah, it’s dark. It’s very, very dark. It’s a dark subject and written about mental health. His (Luke) mother-in-law was going through the early onset of dementia and as we know, that’s a huge time bomb around the world, dementia. I mean, that’s going to be one of the biggest, biggest challenges I think that developed nations are going to face. I’ve been through it, my family, I’ve got loads of family members who’ve struggled with Alzheimer’s and dementia and it’s an awful, awful insidious thing. The fact that you can write a song about it and you can publicize it and talk about it and, you know, call out for more funding for research and, you know, I think it’s a privilege to be in a position where you can do it. Strange thing though, mental illness, very strange. You know, you fall over, you break your arm, you chop your leg off or whatever it is, you know, people know what’s happened and there’s a little missing. With mental health, unless you do something completely nutty, nobody knows whether you’re suffering, you know, and I think it’s a very insidious and difficult problem to solve.
Sean: Yeah, it’s also still a very much a taboo subject for people that are suffering to talk about it, so it’s great to see groups now sort of helping in that way where people can actually, you know, even men can say, yeah, I’m not feeling great. That brings me to your ballad on the album. Every time I go through a low patch in my life, you pull out a new album and the ballad just sets me off and ‘I’ll Be The One’ is just possibly for me, one of the best ballads you guys have ever done.
Danny: I would agree with you 100%. When he first played me the demo, I thought to myself, well, he sounds like he’s falling down the stairs in his attempt to sing it, but I know what he means. And you know that he’s pretty much nailed all the best bits of all the ballads ever written and put them all in this one song. And I told him that and he looked at me slightly blankly when I told him, but, um, I meant it and I still mean it now. I also think it’s one of the best guitar solos he’s ever played. I’m very, very excited about it. Weirdly when he did the demo, the solo he did pretty much in freefall and just kind of made it up as he went. He kept some of it when we recorded the song properly. I think it was because we did the album in three sessions and I think on the second session he decided he would change the back half of the solo. He said, “Well, its’s just kind of made it up before. I’ve had a chance to think about, put some notes together, a little bit more structured.” And I kind of left the room, came back in a bit later, and he’d done the solo. And when I heard it, I said to him, “Goodbye To Love”. He said, “What do you mean?” I said, “It just sounds like the solo at the end of the Carpenters record “Goodbye To Love”. You know, it’s one of the best guitar solos ever, and he nailed it right on the end. “I didn’t do that on purpose,” he said, “but I’ll take it.”
Read the review of “All The Right Noises”
Sean: And of course, it was quite a challenge for the normally unflappable, Mr Bowes as well, I believe.
Danny: Oh my God. Yeah. I mean the hardest song ever for me to sing, I’m not used to singing quiet you see. You know, he writes the tunes, I show up and shout over the top. I mean, that’s pretty much the way I describe it, but in this instance, you know, the verses are very gentle. They’re very soft, quite low, and that’s kind of the area that I have to work at it so the fact that he kind of made me have to sing it that way. I was looking forward to it, really looking forward to it. I mean, I was beside myself. I was chomping at the bit to get in there and sing it. But when I started, I just thought I didn’t know what I’m doing it. I didn’t know where to pull this from, you know, but you’ve got all these areas within your voice that you can use. It’s almost like kind of like a brush if you’re using a kind of a canvas and a paintbrush set, but you just pull different areas out to use, but I just didn’t seem to have the right brush, you know, to pull out my voice.
So, I think I failed miserably. The first session I just abandoned it. I walked away, beat myself up with a stick afterwards. The second session I said, I would like another go at this tune if you don’t mind. So, I go for it. We worked on various bits and it was a bit better, but still wasn’t happy. So then when we got to the final session and I said, “I’ve got it. Now I know I’m doing this bloody song for months, and I’m going to nail it.” And he said, “Great, go for it.” And it was still shit. I felt I’m never going to be able to sing this bloody song, and I was desperate to sing it, you know? Because I loved it. It’s been a year since we did it and it’s really only been the last couple of months where I’ve listened to it and felt that I can accept it for being what it is rather than all the bits that I didn’t get right, and I feel a bit more comfortable with it now than I did before. So, you know, no doubt about it in my head, the worst and the best in one, all at the same time.
Sean: Well, I don’t know what the problem was. I nail it in the car every time. I mean, obviously, no one is sat next to me [laughs]
Danny: We should have got you in the studio, mate. Would have saved me a lot of grief mate.
Sean: I mime when I’m at one of your gigs, just so no one can hear me.
Danny: I’ll let you into a little secret. I’m miming too.
Sean: I wondered why you always sound no different from Donington 1990 [laughs]
Danny: It’s all on tape mate [laughs]
Sean: Another real cool thing about you guys, which I love is the marketing of your albums. Every time, you know, you can buy the one with the tea towel and the four copies of the album signed with this and that. And I love all that because I spend about a month trying to decide what I’m going to buy from the online shop. I think I bought the double album, which I’m really intrigued to know about because on disc two, there’s some live versions of the tracks.
Danny: Sure. Yeah. I mean, basically we recorded the album first and then the record label would ask, what have you got left over that you didn’t use because we need a bonus disc. And we said, “Ah, now that’s a bit of a problem because we’ve only got four tunes that we recorded during the session that didn’t make it”. We call them the “kind of also ran tracks”, you know, so we had four of them. And they said, “Well, that’s not much of a bonus disc at it.” So, we said, no, what should we do? And there weren’t any real opportunities to do anything else. So, in between lockdown one and two, we went back into Rockfield and recorded eight of the songs live. We brought in a couple of backing vocalists and I asked, Stan who plays keys and sings a bit too. We brought them all in and so the eight of us just smashed the tunes around until we came up with the live arrangements.
And then we just recorded them one by one, back-to-back. And we’re old school so there was no chance to overdub. No, we would just go back and do it again. You know, if anybody mucked up, we had to do the whole song again, which was pressure because you don’t want to be the one who makes everyone else have to do it again, because you suddenly start being looked at like, “Oh, okay. Right. So, you’re actually not very good at what we do?” Right. And it’s a kind of weird dynamic that takes over but we smashed out the eight tunes. And we gave them over to the label and they say, great. And we filmed them while we were doing it and you know, we’ll just use all these and that’s where the teasers came from. All those little 15 second clips, we felt they were being a bit stingy with the 15 seconds. We said, why can’t we have it about a minute or something? They said, “No, no, 15 seconds is enough. That will be enough to give them then maybe they’ll will want the album.” So, there’s 11 on the album. There’s 12 on the bonus disc, eight live and four also-rans as I call them.
Sean: I’m looking forward to it. I can’t wait for it to arrive. Now I just hope Australia post isn’t bloody slow.
Danny: Oh, well, you know, if you’re anything like the UK Posties mate, you know, you’d be waiting a while.
Sean: I’ve just got a couple of regular ones I’d love to finish with. If I booked you into a restaurant for a couple of hours and you could have three guests from the music world dead or alive, who would you have join you?
Danny: Oh, okay. I think Ozzy Osborne I would have to have there. Yep, good value. I think Jimmy Hendrix, I think he would be great. He might be able to set something up while we were there. That would be good. And I think we would need someone sensible. So, I recommend Leonard Cohen. Yeah. He might just kind of take the mood down so we weren’t just laughing our heads off the whole time so we could get a balanced chat.
Sean: Wonderful. Well, the very final question, Danny, before I let you go, you’ve sung some amazing covers you guys, but if you could be credited with writing any song ever written, what song would you pick?
Danny: Superstition, Stevie Wonder.
Sean: Oh, what a track. I’ll put that on the playlist.
Danny: One of my favourite tunes. And whenever I hear it, I can’t stop dancing. I have to dance. I don’t care where I am. I’m dancing in the car if I’m driving, it comes on. I love it.
Sean: Danny. Thank you ever so much for your time and we wish you all the best with this album. I can’t wait to have the physical copy in my hand and as soon as I hang up, I plan to play the album again, because my wife’s gone out so I can play it very loud.
Danny: I love that.
Sean: Well, it’s only taken me since you were last here in 2017 to hang my red Strat up, that you all signed at the gig in Perth. It was very scary because when I handed it to Luke, he said, “I’ve never seen an Epiphone Strat before” and I said, “Oh, is this some rare prototype?” “Anyway,” he said, “Too late. I’ve signed it now.” So, it’s up on the wall in the bar and I’m very proud of it. It’s my pride and joy.
Danny: Uh, well, unfortunately we’ve probably now made it worthless in terms of you.
Sean: Well, I wish you all the best and we hope we get to see you come back here one day, because I was there that night in Perth, and it was a magical night there and we’d love to have you back here one day.
Danny: As soon as we can get back to Australia, we will. It was a bit of a whistle-stop tour and I aged 40 years over the course of the week, but I have to tell you, we absolutely loved it. We loved every second and the first chance we get back to Australia, I guarantee you, we will be there.
Sean: Well, I’ll be at the front of the stage, miming all your songs along with you.
Danny: And I’ll be on stage miming too.
Sean: Danny. Thank you ever so much and regards to all the guys, we wish you all the best for the album. We look forward to catching up again sometime.
Danny: Thank you very much, indeed. All the best mate.
