Interview: Diamond Head
Metallica die-hards and keen NWOBHM fans need no introducing to Diamond Head, the band which Sounds' editor Geoff Barton lauded, writing, “There are more good riffs in your average single Diamond Head song than there are in the first four Black Sabbath albums.” On the band's debut, Lightning To The Nations, now released 36 years ago, the group bridged the gap between 70s and 80s metal with an aggressive 41-and-a-half minutes of riff-based heavy metal.
The melodic metal of the title-track remains a sing-along favourite to this day. Elsewhere, 'It's Electric' stood firm with a heavy groove, whilst closer 'Helpless' provided a no-holds-barred barrage of metal with riffs that steamroll along like a slightly more clean-cut Motörhead. Most impressive, though, was 'Am I Evil?', the band's pièce de résistance; an epic track that took the heaviness of Black Sabbath's 'Symptom Of The Universe' up a notch with a gloriously menacing riff and a towering chorus. 'Am I Evil?' has since been covered numerous times, most famously by metal heavyweights Metallica, who have also covered three other Diamond Head tracks.
Many have commented on how Diamond Head have been under-appreciated for their contribution to the world of rock and metal, but with their new self-titled album proving that they are still capable of the well-crafted heavy metal for which they became known, critics and fans alike have begun to take notice once again. Nine years on from their previous album, the new release sees new singer Rasmus Born Anderson bring a fresh new energy to combine with the riff-writing expertise of Diamond Head's sole remaining founding member, Brian Tatler. A guitar maestro, Tatler has been the star of Diamond Head since its inception, and ahead of the group's show at Southampton's The Brook, we spoke to him about the band's history, the new album, Metallica and more.
The new album is very much a Diamond Head album, as in it could have been released in the 80s and no one would bat an eyelid, production aside.
A couple of people have said that, they’ve said it’s like the album we should have made after Borrowed Time, it’s an interesting comment.
Did you aim to make it much like a classic Diamond Head album?
Not really, I think what Ras [Rasmus Born Anderson, Diamond Head singer] wanted to do was not piss the fans off really, because he’s come in fresh. Ras studied all the back catalogue, and I said, “If there’s any songs from our back catalogue that you’d like to do that we’re not doing, shout them out and we might say “okay then, we’ll do that one””. Of course, we have a set with favourites and all that but Ras went through all of them and sent me a great big list of about 25 songs and said “I’m happy with any of these”. I think by Ras taking that overview of all the Diamond Head songs, and all six albums, he figured out what was good about Diamond Head and how he’d like the album to sound.
We had a brief in rehearsal where we said “it should sound like Diamond Head”, and that was a leveller. If someone was precious about their idea but it didn’t sound like Diamond Head, we’d reject it and you’d not get too “oh but I liked that,” and accept that “okay, it’s not Diamond Head.” It’s easy to be too modern or go off on a tangent or do something a bit like Metallica, for example, but really Diamond Head has got to have a style, and we just have to hone it really. I didn’t realise it actually, until it has come out and we’ve had a chance to read the press, but it seems to be exactly what people were expecting.
Did that impact on going with the self-titled album name?
A lot of the titles we had were, I thought, stupid or pretentious. We had a big list, and people would write names on it and they were stupid names. A lot were just awful and I couldn’t find the right title, none of the song titles fit either. Our bass player suggested calling it Diamond Head, and I lived with it for a bit and after a while thought, “Yeah that’s the best title, and unless someone comes up with a better name, that’s what it is."
How has Ras coming in influenced the sound?
Well he writes the lyrics, I’ve never written lyrics. He’s in a different generation to me and he’s Danish and I think they’re into their saving the world, environment and ecology and all that. So he’s brought that into the mix, which gives it an extra modern angst. It’s not just about fantasy or storytelling in that respect, and of course because he sings his own lyrics it’s more passionate.
On the other hand, you’ve been with Karl and Eddie since ‘91, how does that companionship help a band?
It’s great, you know because you know each other and you’re not going to fall out. You can have ups and downs - me and Karl argue about stuff, ‘cause he does a lot of the background work like bookings, ferries, vans, hotels and all that. We’ve had ups and downs but we all love this band and we just want it to do well and get it as high up the ladder as we can. It’s been a long time, but I still care about [the band], I’ve always cared about it ever since it started back in the day. So I still look after it, and protect it.
"We've just got to the crux of what's good about Diamond Head"
A lot of writers have mentioned how Diamond Head have been an unappreciated group in the history of rock, but the new album has had a lot of good press, why do you think this is? Do you think it stems simply from the album standing on its own merits as a good album?
“It’s gotta be. We did two albums with Nick [Tart, previous singer] and the press was okay, I mean nobody attacked us but also nobody stood up and said, “This is brilliant, this is 5/5, this is 10/10. Go buy this album”. You can’t make people say that, so something’s changed, and the only thing I can think of is Ras has come in and made a big difference. We’ve just got to the crux of what’s good about Diamond Head.
I’ve had a lot of material that I’ve been saving since the last album and I’ve been working on bits and bobs at home. I didn’t really think of doing another album but I practised and I’d come up with a riff and I’ll think “oh that’s good” and I’ll record it, so I’ve constantly made demos. When Ras joined, I was able to give him about 45 pieces of music to listen to and see if we could make a start, and he picked some out in rehearsal and they built from there. Sometimes it would simply be one riff and the whole song would have to build in rehearsal from that.”
The previous album came out nine years ago, will there be a shorter gap between now and the next one?
“Probably. We’ve talked about it and we’ve got a few ideas already as well as a few ideas that we didn’t pursue on the last album that we can make a start on. Some stuff didn’t make the cut really, so with a bit of work [it could]. A couple of times we’d say “this one hasn’t got a chorus” or something, so we’d leave it or say “I’ll come back to that.” We just finished eleven [tracks] that we thought were good. Then there’s other things in the back of my mind, like we would like the verse of a song but not like the chorus for example. There’s a couple where we only like the intro, then it doesn’t really go anywhere from there, and I’ll just start again with that and see what I can create on the back of that start, so that it flows. It has to flow, I don’t like jerky bits that are stuck together, I like it all to sound like it’s part of the same song musically, before it even gets a melody.”
Many have discussed your influence on other groups, especially Metallica, but originally, what were your influences?
“The classic 70s bands, I’m a 70s guy really. So Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and
all those bands. A lot of other bands I grew up listening to I got from my older brother [David], he’s six years older than me. He was heavily into music as well and played the guitar and he’s probably one of the main reasons I started, because he played guitar and I could watch him play and have a go on his guitar. He would buy albums by Genesis and Gentle Giant and Cream and Jethro Tull and tons of stuff that I was exposed to. I think it all went into the pot and gave Diamond Head a bit of a different sound. We didn’t just sound like one band, we had lots of different flavours going in and I think that helped. We weren’t afraid to try things and to experiment and push the boundary a little bit.
To still be making albums 35+ years on from Lightening To The Nations is an impressive accomplishment and a showcase of your loyal fans, but do you think it is also a testament to the longevity of rock and metal?
Yeah, I would not have predicted that it would still be around, and yet it gets bigger and bigger, it’s fantastic. I’ve always thought rock fans are very loyal. It seems to me if you like [a band], like how I like AC/DC for example, you’ve gotta have every album. Even if it’s not particularly good, I’ll buy it. It’s there in your rack and you go “well I don’t play that one much, but I’ve got it!" That doesn’t happen with pop, does it? Pop is transient, you get into an artist for a couple of years, they have a few hits and then there’s somebody else, another fresh face. Pop is kind of aimed at teenagers, and young girls in particular, whereas with rock, you could be into rock from a kid to 70, couldn’t you? You do get older guys at gigs with their arms folded as well as the young guys at the front in the mosh pit. So yeah, rock has been around 50 years or something like that, it probably started late 60s with Cream and Hendrix and Vanilla Fudge and it’s still going strong, I love it.
And it’s evolved over time.
It’s evolved a lot! Like nine-string guitars and [imitates screaming], who’d have thought that would come from Elvis! The difference between Elvis and Slipknot is quite drastic. Who knows where it’s gonna go next? Just when you think it’s gone as fast and deep as it can [it keeps going].
"People like good songs and good singers and that’s what we do"
Even with that evolution, there’s always a market for the classics with groups like Black Sabbath still selling out arenas. Why do you think that is?
Oh yeah, people wanna see it. I think ultimately, people like good songs and good singers and that’s what we do. We’ve got a great singer and the classic Diamond Head catalogue of songs. We’re not gonna try and compete with Gojira or Mastodon, there’s no point, we’re doing our thing really, and people like it or they don’t. There’s no point in us following trends after this long in the game.
Yeah, some bands have tried it and it seldom works.
Yeah, it doesn’t work. It seems fake.
With a lot of material to go through, do you find putting setlists together hard?
No, because there’s a [consistent] style, so the new songs sound fine against the old stuff. It’s all riff-based and the old songs don’t sound dated, we’re still going strong and people wanna hear those old songs so we just mix it all in with stuff from [over] the years. There’s a couple of songs from Borrowed Time, we do one song off Canterbury, although we’re not doing it tonight, and we’ve put a couple in the set from Death and Progress. I work hard on the set, and I’ll play the whole set at home on my own and think “oh that song works better there” or “that song should be there” and I’ll do that and if something sticks out I’ll try and tweak it. We’ve been tweaking the set since April, and we’ll keep tweaking it and keep putting a song in here and there. Tomorrow, we’re doing a song called ‘Knight Of The Swords’ that we’ve only played once since 1984. Our other guitarist Abbz isn’t here tonight, so we’re down to a four-piece tonight and we can’t do it as he plays a 12-string on the song. We’re gonna do it tomorrow and Saturday.
Does the good reception to the new album help with putting together setlists, as you can put new tracks in and know it’ll work?
Yeah, we’ve probably [played] seven or eight [songs] off the new album already. There’s three in at the moment that work really well. We’re doing ‘Diamonds’, ‘Bones’ and ‘Shout At The Devil’, but we’ve also done ‘Our Time Is Now’, ‘Set My Soul On Fire’, ‘All The Reasons You Live’ and ‘Speed’.
How does it feel to have tracks like ‘Am I Evil?’ covered so often, like one of those classic tracks such as MC5’s ‘Kick Out The Jams’?
Lucky. It’s become one of those [classics]. I mean, we’re just grateful for it really. [‘Am I Evil?’] is just kinda out there in the world and it’s become bigger than any one member of the band. It’s very flattering when people cover your songs, it’s kinda like they wish they had written it and they want to take something from it and say, “How have you done that song? How has it been created? What can I learn from its structure or parts?”. ‘Am I Evil?’ has got a lot of dynamics, it’s seven minutes and forty seconds long. It’s hard to write a long song and keep the interest, I think it goes up and down three of four times in time signature. We just got it right with that one, it’s a great riff and it struck a chord I think with its big chorus. We always play it, you have to play it. It’s like our ‘Smoke On The Water’.
Do you get bored of playing it?
No, it’s great! And you know the crowd’s gonna enjoy it. Sometimes the crowd is going mad and I think, “Blimey! Wait till we get to ‘Am I Evil?’, it’s gonna be dangerous, there’ll be bodies flying everywhere”.
Probably the most famous cover is Metallica’s, was it interesting to see them rise to such a huge band? Presumably you didn’t know that would happen when you first heard them?
Nobody knew, I heard it in ‘84, and it was the b-side of their ‘Creeping Death’ 12’’ single on [label] Music for Nations. To me, it was still Lars’ [Ulrich, Metallica drummer] band, they were on an indie label and nobody knew it was gonna take off the way it did - this is pre-Master Of Puppets. I was flattered that they’d worked it so well with the solo and got the arrangement right, it was great to hear it work. Their version was tougher and more aggressive than ours but yeah they were young and it was great to hear. We knew Lars, we’d spent time with him, but it was still great and very flattering. He’d got in touch and asked for permission - you don’t have to ask for permission but he wanted to and wanted a copy of the lyrics. Anybody can cover a song as long as you don’t change it too much. Like if you change the lyrics, you can run into trouble. I mean, you wouldn’t have to go to Paul McCartney and say “can we cover The Beatles?”. He wouldn’t have time to cope with it! As long as you credit the publisher [then it’s okay].
And he’d get royalties of course.
Well, he [McCartney] would get his, and I get mine. It’ll say, “Originally recorded by Diamond Head: Harris, Tatler.” Royalties from those four Metallica covers have kept me alive.
You mentioned how you knew Lars before Metallica became big, did you ever think he could become a successful musician at that time?
No, well when we met him he was 17 and hadn’t formed Metallica. He never mentioned playing the drums, or forming a band. The first I heard of it was in a letter in 1981, he was enquiring about Diamond Head and how [the band] was going and he said “thank you for putting me up” and all that kind of thing. Then he would rave on about having met Ritchie Blackmore at the Whisky [a Go Go] or something, and then he said, “We’ve got a band, and it’s called Metallica and we rehearse six nights a week, six hours a day,” and I thought, “Bloody hell, that’s commitment, that’s more than we rehearse. We’ve never done six days a week!” So I did think, “Okay, let’s see,” but I didn’t think “hallelujah! And the heavens opened." I just thought “oh that’s nice, innit? Lars has got a band”.
"I’ve met hundreds of people who’ve been in bands but nobody I know has become anything like as successful as Metallica"
Then you don’t think [much of it] and it goes bigger and bigger and at some point you think, “Woah, it’s way bigger than Diamond Head ever were,” and it just grew to the biggest heavy metal band of all time! Incredible. I’ve never seen anyone go from that [small] to that [big]. I’ve met hundreds of people who’ve been in bands, and some might even make an album, but nobody I know has become anything like as successful as Metallica. It’s amazing, he did exactly what I always wanted to do and I know how hard it is. I mean we’re still trying!
