Going out at the top of their game with a No.1 album and a sold out show at London's Royal Albert Hall in 1994, Little Angels burned brightly for a short time. The changing musical landscape, as well as changes in their own personal lives put the band on ice for over two decades, aside from a brief reunion in 2012. All that has changed with the announcement of the 'Big Bad & Back' tour, which kicks off in Dublin in November 2026. "We're enjoying it so much", says guitarist Bruce John Dickinson as we sit down for a chat. We spoke to Bruce about the tour, why he's a sucker for old school gear, and his iconic Gibson Les Paul. Product of the working class; Eamon O'Neill.
Photo; Ray Burmiston
Today on eonmusic, I am joined by Bruce John Dickinson from Little Angels; I bet you never heard thought you'd hear that phrase used again.
Well, thanks for having me. Yeah, it's funny actually, it's like living in parallel universes; I've got one for running the music colleges, and then the other foot involved in the whole Little Angels stuff. But, you know, it all comes back. We seem to have reverted to the same dynamic we had when we were kids at school, the way we're working and the level of enthusiasm. When a band works well, there's that chemistry and it becomes a little unit, and we've definitely got that feeling again, so it's just great. The response has been amazing. It's very unexpected and very appreciated as well. I thought we'd maybe sell 400 tickets in each show, so for people to be so interested is an amazing thing. I think all of us are just taken aback by it really, and a bit humbled by it.
You do all seem genuinely excited; what is it about this time around that has got you all so fired up?
It's probably the age we're all at, and the audience. You realise that life's fairly finite, and you also realise how precious these things are. You also get a little bit better at working out what's important in life and what isn't, so I think it's that, and it's just the fact that you can do it. Imagine looking at sixty, being on the runway to sixty, and being able to get your old band out of retirement and go and do gigs like we do; it's an amazing privilege.
Have you played together yet?
Not yet. The last time we played together would have been the Isle of Wight festival [2013]. That would be the last show we did. I've played with Mark [Richardson, drums] a bit. It's just getting us all in one place, because I live in the Shetland Islands, Mark Plunkett [bass] is all over the world, and people are dotted about. Grant [Kirkhope]'s in L.A., the trumpet player. We've got all the rehearsals scheduled though, and we do a lot of stuff, just figuring things out. We've got a set list planned out, and we buy in gear for the tour, so it's an excuse to be buying amps. I've got a big weakness for amps, and not so much for guitars really, because, you can only play one guitar at a time, and you can't really beat the guitars I've got, so I'd only be buying another version of a guitar that I've got. But amps is endless variation, and they're always just the old '60s and '70s style ones I like.
What's it been like for you to sit down and go through the songs; does it come easy, or do you have to relearn it all?
I like to really get under the skin of a song and the part so I can forget about it. So I like to get it to a point where, if I want to go off-piste, I can. For me personally, I like to have a very solid foundation so I'll learn the records as they are, and then I'll see if I can put a bit of how I'm feeling at the moment into it. I've reverted back to a more aggressive playing style, like the album one ['Don't Prey For Me', 1989]. People forget how by album three ['Jam', 1993], the whole grunge thing meant it was very difficult to do any guitar solos, as such. You were trying to exist in a post grunge world, and we couldn't really make the album like we did with the first album. That's a bit more post-Van Halen, post-New Wave of British Heavy Metal. That's where we were born, and then we had to try and survive through all the changes. So I've reverted back to that; a bit more aggressive, a few more notes.
Guitar players styles do change over the years, and you've come a long, long way; you had b.l.o.w, and obviously you've been teaching for many years.
Yeah, I had 12 years I didn't have a guitar in the house and didn't touch it. I was still teaching because I was operating like a tennis coach. I'm a bit all or nothing, so I don't like to pick a guitar up every three days and play for an hour, so I either commit to doing it properly, or I just don't do it at all, which is a failing, really. It's just not a healthy way of doing it really, but certainly, there's been a few pivotal things. We worked with an engineer called Ian Taylor, an amazing producer, and he's best known for 'Still Got the Blues' by Gary Moore, but before that record he was engineering some Little Angels stuff, and Gary Moore is a big influence on me. I come from that line of that British Blues as a style. I get told off for calling Gary Moore a "British Blues player" because of his Irish roots, but what I'm talking about is British Blues as a style. It starts with Clapton's and Peter Green's interpretation of people like Freddie King. Now the Americans, the closer you get to Texas, the more they seem to swing, and I think when an English player does that, it's always a Steve Ray Vaughan quote, so I tried to not do that, because I come from York, Scarborough, and the English playing style, which I would like to be in the line of, which is Clapton, Peter Green, Jimmy Page, Gary Moore, then souping it up.
So those influences, but more contemporary?
Yeah, then John Sykes souping it up further, but for me, the minute you lose the blues, I'm gone. I'm out. I'm not interested. So that's why I can really see the appeal of Iron Maiden; I really like it, I love the concept, the guy's are fantastic, and it's an amazing thing, but for me I'd always air to Sabbath because of the blues, because of 'War Pigs', and I just need to feel that rooted connection into the earth a little bit, rather than what mode someone's learned on YouTube that day.
So it's all about the feel?
Peter Green spent one year playing single notes and listening to the sound as the pick. It's the string, so the angle of my pick, I hold the pick weird. It's very bad for technique. I hold it with two fingers and I get the string very flat, like ninety degrees, because that's where you get the mid frequencies, which I need to cut through from the horns and the hi-hats and the keyboards; my space is there. My pick tilts, and I'll get into the hi-hat area and the horn section. So that playing one note for a year, just for hours at a time, was trying to get the balance, like George Harrison. And I'd stopped shredding, so my hand position went from that to that, the Hendrix one, and you could only get a big Gary Moore sound with that leverage.
That's a fascinating amount of attention to detail.
Predominantly it's about that hand position, and then I lost the use of a hand like eighteen months ago, with nerve damage from my neck. If you look at some of the Little Angels clips I'm always flinging my head about, and it caused nerve compression, and I got into real trouble with it in the late '80s. Quite a lot of it affects down my arms, and managing it's been fine, and then it flared up and I lost the use of my hand eighteen months ago. I did a lot of work to relearn guitar. My mate, Martin Goulden, who's very much an absolute shred monster, he gave me this routine to put my playing back together, which was much more disciplined and more Paul Gilbert style, so I got a bit of that, and that was fun. So that's the component part. So essentially, I just want to be Mick Ronson, and I want that woody cello through a jet engine sound. I just want to do what Gary Moore did with Peter Green; I want to do that with Mick Ronson.
Well, thanks for having me. Yeah, it's funny actually, it's like living in parallel universes; I've got one for running the music colleges, and then the other foot involved in the whole Little Angels stuff. But, you know, it all comes back. We seem to have reverted to the same dynamic we had when we were kids at school, the way we're working and the level of enthusiasm. When a band works well, there's that chemistry and it becomes a little unit, and we've definitely got that feeling again, so it's just great. The response has been amazing. It's very unexpected and very appreciated as well. I thought we'd maybe sell 400 tickets in each show, so for people to be so interested is an amazing thing. I think all of us are just taken aback by it really, and a bit humbled by it.
You do all seem genuinely excited; what is it about this time around that has got you all so fired up?
It's probably the age we're all at, and the audience. You realise that life's fairly finite, and you also realise how precious these things are. You also get a little bit better at working out what's important in life and what isn't, so I think it's that, and it's just the fact that you can do it. Imagine looking at sixty, being on the runway to sixty, and being able to get your old band out of retirement and go and do gigs like we do; it's an amazing privilege.
Have you played together yet?
Not yet. The last time we played together would have been the Isle of Wight festival [2013]. That would be the last show we did. I've played with Mark [Richardson, drums] a bit. It's just getting us all in one place, because I live in the Shetland Islands, Mark Plunkett [bass] is all over the world, and people are dotted about. Grant [Kirkhope]'s in L.A., the trumpet player. We've got all the rehearsals scheduled though, and we do a lot of stuff, just figuring things out. We've got a set list planned out, and we buy in gear for the tour, so it's an excuse to be buying amps. I've got a big weakness for amps, and not so much for guitars really, because, you can only play one guitar at a time, and you can't really beat the guitars I've got, so I'd only be buying another version of a guitar that I've got. But amps is endless variation, and they're always just the old '60s and '70s style ones I like.
What's it been like for you to sit down and go through the songs; does it come easy, or do you have to relearn it all?
I like to really get under the skin of a song and the part so I can forget about it. So I like to get it to a point where, if I want to go off-piste, I can. For me personally, I like to have a very solid foundation so I'll learn the records as they are, and then I'll see if I can put a bit of how I'm feeling at the moment into it. I've reverted back to a more aggressive playing style, like the album one ['Don't Prey For Me', 1989]. People forget how by album three ['Jam', 1993], the whole grunge thing meant it was very difficult to do any guitar solos, as such. You were trying to exist in a post grunge world, and we couldn't really make the album like we did with the first album. That's a bit more post-Van Halen, post-New Wave of British Heavy Metal. That's where we were born, and then we had to try and survive through all the changes. So I've reverted back to that; a bit more aggressive, a few more notes.
Guitar players styles do change over the years, and you've come a long, long way; you had b.l.o.w, and obviously you've been teaching for many years.
Yeah, I had 12 years I didn't have a guitar in the house and didn't touch it. I was still teaching because I was operating like a tennis coach. I'm a bit all or nothing, so I don't like to pick a guitar up every three days and play for an hour, so I either commit to doing it properly, or I just don't do it at all, which is a failing, really. It's just not a healthy way of doing it really, but certainly, there's been a few pivotal things. We worked with an engineer called Ian Taylor, an amazing producer, and he's best known for 'Still Got the Blues' by Gary Moore, but before that record he was engineering some Little Angels stuff, and Gary Moore is a big influence on me. I come from that line of that British Blues as a style. I get told off for calling Gary Moore a "British Blues player" because of his Irish roots, but what I'm talking about is British Blues as a style. It starts with Clapton's and Peter Green's interpretation of people like Freddie King. Now the Americans, the closer you get to Texas, the more they seem to swing, and I think when an English player does that, it's always a Steve Ray Vaughan quote, so I tried to not do that, because I come from York, Scarborough, and the English playing style, which I would like to be in the line of, which is Clapton, Peter Green, Jimmy Page, Gary Moore, then souping it up.
So those influences, but more contemporary?
Yeah, then John Sykes souping it up further, but for me, the minute you lose the blues, I'm gone. I'm out. I'm not interested. So that's why I can really see the appeal of Iron Maiden; I really like it, I love the concept, the guy's are fantastic, and it's an amazing thing, but for me I'd always air to Sabbath because of the blues, because of 'War Pigs', and I just need to feel that rooted connection into the earth a little bit, rather than what mode someone's learned on YouTube that day.
So it's all about the feel?
Peter Green spent one year playing single notes and listening to the sound as the pick. It's the string, so the angle of my pick, I hold the pick weird. It's very bad for technique. I hold it with two fingers and I get the string very flat, like ninety degrees, because that's where you get the mid frequencies, which I need to cut through from the horns and the hi-hats and the keyboards; my space is there. My pick tilts, and I'll get into the hi-hat area and the horn section. So that playing one note for a year, just for hours at a time, was trying to get the balance, like George Harrison. And I'd stopped shredding, so my hand position went from that to that, the Hendrix one, and you could only get a big Gary Moore sound with that leverage.
That's a fascinating amount of attention to detail.
Predominantly it's about that hand position, and then I lost the use of a hand like eighteen months ago, with nerve damage from my neck. If you look at some of the Little Angels clips I'm always flinging my head about, and it caused nerve compression, and I got into real trouble with it in the late '80s. Quite a lot of it affects down my arms, and managing it's been fine, and then it flared up and I lost the use of my hand eighteen months ago. I did a lot of work to relearn guitar. My mate, Martin Goulden, who's very much an absolute shred monster, he gave me this routine to put my playing back together, which was much more disciplined and more Paul Gilbert style, so I got a bit of that, and that was fun. So that's the component part. So essentially, I just want to be Mick Ronson, and I want that woody cello through a jet engine sound. I just want to do what Gary Moore did with Peter Green; I want to do that with Mick Ronson.
I've always been fascinated with your signature 'Eat My Dust' Gibson Les Paul. Tell me the story about that.
I had a belt sander to that one because I don't like finish on guitars. They sound better without it, and I would never have modern Les Pauls. I've used Gibsons all my life. Never buy a modern one; the woods different. It's farmed wood most of the time, and they can't cut down rainforests anymore. It's fair enough, but the use of PVA based glue, it doesn't work, it doesn't resonate properly, and thick, gloopy finishes, you've just got to get them removed. So these are all nitro finishes on the old ones.
What year is that guitar? When did you make those modifications? Why the skull? I want to hear all about that guitar.
It's a '78 Les Paul Custom, and I found it in Unit Four, which is an amazing little second hand shop in Scarborough, and it's still there. It's called something else now, and I should know it, but Chris at Unit Four had it in the back. Les Pauls were really out of fashion as it was before Guns and Roses really, and everyone was playing stuff like super Strats, which I was playing this at the time. Anyway, I found it, and it was just because of Thin Lizzy, really. I really, really love Brian Robertson, and his sound and his taste and his use of wah is quite similar to how I like it. It just reminded me also a bit of Peter Frampton. I just wanted to pretend to be in Thin Lizzy, so I bought it, and it had an awful metal nut that someone had put so it couldn't stay in tune, so I sorted that out
When did you get it?
I must have got it in '89 or something like that, but the paint had already started to chip off a little bit within a few gigs, and the back was going, and the neck paint was coming off because I was playing eight hours a day then, so it was all just wearing off. And then Charlie Cutforth did the designs; he's the artist who did all the devil logos on the band's artwork. So we were around his house, we were doing all this stuff, and it was just an afterthought. He just used a pointy screwdriver and he just did it; no sketches or anything. I think I'd seen some patch in a hippie shop with a skeleton riding a Harley Davidson, and it said 'Eat My Dust', and I just thought it was funny, so we put that on. My other thing is fishing for wild fish, so the fish bones just sort of came out of that. But there was no thinking behind it. We just did it, and it became a thing.
It's so iconic, and this is an odd one, but fast forward maybe five years after Little Angels split, and on this Saturday morning kids TV show I'm sure I spied sone guy plying that guitar; what's the story there?!
So that's Chris Leonard. He was a guitar student back in the '90s, and he got that TV gig, and I think he was on some kids TV morning show in the house band, and he didn't really have a great guitar so I sold him that for £300 quid. And then his mum rang me up and told me off for selling him an old guitar, even though it would be worth a couple of grand even then, probably! Anyway, Chris went on to be in a band called Son of Dork, which is an offshoot of Busted or McFly or something, and then eventually it came back to me. I had to pay a bit more than £300 quid to get it back.
It's funny you should mention that because I was flicking through an old copy of Classic Rock from 2002 and in it you say that there was a point where you were selling guitars every week.
It's the life of a musician. We had an award-winning album and then we owed a big tax bill, and that's that roller coaster thing. It's one of the things that you have to confront head on if you want this life; everyone wants to play music for a living, but you've got to take the other side of it, which is you might not know where your mortgage is coming from in two days. You've got to hustle a bit. So I was doing that, but I've got no reverence for material things, really. I love that guitar, and there's a lot of sentimentality about that one in particular, but if the house burned down, I'd just get another old one. They are tools, and I think that's why '70s instruments work for me, but '60s don't, because the minute you refresh them you lose so much money, so you can't chop them about, and I like to have that relationship with the gear. That guitar is not easy to play; you've got to fight it, and I don't like guitars that are easy to play, like a PRS. A PRS is always lovely, in tune, the intonation is better, it's more solid, it's more consistent, but it doesn't have that character and the mojo.
I had a belt sander to that one because I don't like finish on guitars. They sound better without it, and I would never have modern Les Pauls. I've used Gibsons all my life. Never buy a modern one; the woods different. It's farmed wood most of the time, and they can't cut down rainforests anymore. It's fair enough, but the use of PVA based glue, it doesn't work, it doesn't resonate properly, and thick, gloopy finishes, you've just got to get them removed. So these are all nitro finishes on the old ones.
What year is that guitar? When did you make those modifications? Why the skull? I want to hear all about that guitar.
It's a '78 Les Paul Custom, and I found it in Unit Four, which is an amazing little second hand shop in Scarborough, and it's still there. It's called something else now, and I should know it, but Chris at Unit Four had it in the back. Les Pauls were really out of fashion as it was before Guns and Roses really, and everyone was playing stuff like super Strats, which I was playing this at the time. Anyway, I found it, and it was just because of Thin Lizzy, really. I really, really love Brian Robertson, and his sound and his taste and his use of wah is quite similar to how I like it. It just reminded me also a bit of Peter Frampton. I just wanted to pretend to be in Thin Lizzy, so I bought it, and it had an awful metal nut that someone had put so it couldn't stay in tune, so I sorted that out
When did you get it?
I must have got it in '89 or something like that, but the paint had already started to chip off a little bit within a few gigs, and the back was going, and the neck paint was coming off because I was playing eight hours a day then, so it was all just wearing off. And then Charlie Cutforth did the designs; he's the artist who did all the devil logos on the band's artwork. So we were around his house, we were doing all this stuff, and it was just an afterthought. He just used a pointy screwdriver and he just did it; no sketches or anything. I think I'd seen some patch in a hippie shop with a skeleton riding a Harley Davidson, and it said 'Eat My Dust', and I just thought it was funny, so we put that on. My other thing is fishing for wild fish, so the fish bones just sort of came out of that. But there was no thinking behind it. We just did it, and it became a thing.
It's so iconic, and this is an odd one, but fast forward maybe five years after Little Angels split, and on this Saturday morning kids TV show I'm sure I spied sone guy plying that guitar; what's the story there?!
So that's Chris Leonard. He was a guitar student back in the '90s, and he got that TV gig, and I think he was on some kids TV morning show in the house band, and he didn't really have a great guitar so I sold him that for £300 quid. And then his mum rang me up and told me off for selling him an old guitar, even though it would be worth a couple of grand even then, probably! Anyway, Chris went on to be in a band called Son of Dork, which is an offshoot of Busted or McFly or something, and then eventually it came back to me. I had to pay a bit more than £300 quid to get it back.
It's funny you should mention that because I was flicking through an old copy of Classic Rock from 2002 and in it you say that there was a point where you were selling guitars every week.
It's the life of a musician. We had an award-winning album and then we owed a big tax bill, and that's that roller coaster thing. It's one of the things that you have to confront head on if you want this life; everyone wants to play music for a living, but you've got to take the other side of it, which is you might not know where your mortgage is coming from in two days. You've got to hustle a bit. So I was doing that, but I've got no reverence for material things, really. I love that guitar, and there's a lot of sentimentality about that one in particular, but if the house burned down, I'd just get another old one. They are tools, and I think that's why '70s instruments work for me, but '60s don't, because the minute you refresh them you lose so much money, so you can't chop them about, and I like to have that relationship with the gear. That guitar is not easy to play; you've got to fight it, and I don't like guitars that are easy to play, like a PRS. A PRS is always lovely, in tune, the intonation is better, it's more solid, it's more consistent, but it doesn't have that character and the mojo.
As a guitar scholar, it must have been amazing to get to tour with Van Halen in 1993; did you get to hang with Eddie?
Well, I mean, that tour, you don't forget stuff like that. I stopped tapping for that tour because I thought it was disrespectful. I'd still do quite a lot of my version of it, but I changed my playing style as I felt it'd be disrespectful with me doing that. The first gig, we were late, got lost. There was no sat navs in them days, so we all puffing and panting getting there. Then from the moment we started we had a very close relationship with Eddie, and looking back, it was partially because he was still partying quite a lot. The rest of the band were all going the gym and being sober, and Eddie wasn't. We were young and daft, and if Eddie Van Halen wants to party with you, what are you going to do? So it was really wild, and it was just fantastic.
It sounds like a lot of fun.
It culminated with Wembley, and underneath the stage on both sides, there's a big walkway that Sammy Hagar would run around on, and there's lots of guitar solo moments with Eddie, and Michael Anthony had a bar built into the stage, so every night we would go to Michael Anthony's bar, and he would be the barman, so he would do you Jack and Coke, and it would be half pint of Jack Daniels and half pint of coke. That was the times we were living in, and it had become fairly normal by then. So I'd had one of these Jack and Cokes and then suddenly got pushed out on the stage to play 'Alright Now 'with Eddie Van Halen, which was great. Now, the weird thing is, I'd never learned that tune particularly, but looking back, to my horror, the version is not quite right, so I would have liked to really nailed it, but we sailed through, and it was great.
I wanted to clear up the whole 'Spitfire' thing; was the album title really changed to 'Young Gods' so as not to cause offence due to the Gulf war?
It was. No, I'll tell you exactly what happened. There's two things happened. One, the nervousness around the title actually came from the record label. Corporate entities tend to be very risk averse, and I think it was nonsense, really. I don't think there was enough of a connection to the Gulf war to be a problem, but they were really sensitive about the way it would be displayed in HMV or whatever, so they kind of vetoed it. And you've got to be careful pushing that stuff through, because we didn't feel strongly enough about the title 'Spitfire' to really fight for it, because what if you'd have got it wrong and record hadn't been displayed, kind of thing? So that why the title had to change, and 'Young Gods' was probably one of the pivotal songs on the record, so 'Young Gods' it became.
And then 'Boneyard', there was a story at the time that it was banned by Radio One because of the "we're all going down to the boneyard" thing and the war happening, but in reality, I think it probably just didn't get on the playlist. They didn't like it, so they didn't play it. It's not really a Radio One record. It's probably a bit heavy for them. I think the record company and probably us just thought it was easier to say it's been banned, than it didn't get on the playlist.
Listening back to 'Boneyard', and it's a real shred fest for you; you're soloing all over it!
Yeah, sorry about that! I think that it's really good not to think in terms of rhythm and lead. I did a lot of listening to Jimi Hendrix, and the minute you start going; "this is rhythm; this is lead", it's less excited. I think a lot of those leads are incidental little bits around the rhythm. It certainly is live, but that record was made in a period when you would run 48 tracks, so you had two tape machines, two, two-inch tapes synced up, running together, in the days before computers, and put a lot of attention to detail. it's kind of lost art now of, if you did an edit, it was a razor blade and tape. So generally, you had to play, and you didn't want to be chopping up the tape too often, With Mike Lee, he was such a virtuoso drummer that he never really made mistakes, and everything he did was a keeper, which is very, very rare, so you had such a solid foundation, and it's very easy to play guitar if you've got an amazing drummer. You sound better than you are.
What are your favourite songs to play, and what is the key Little Angels album for you?
'Young Gods' is great. I mean, just looking at the set, and everything in that set I enjoy playing. There isn't anything that I wince about. I do play some things slightly differently. The one that I regret is, I don't like the solo on 'Kicking Up Dust', which of course, has become the one that Planet Rock play all the time. It was a bit disjointed. I did it, and it sounded good on the day, and then we moved on, and it's always a bit clunky to me, that one. So I've tried to redeem it with something more coherent live. But yeah, I think I like them all. If I just pick one, it'd be 'Young Gods'.
Well, I mean, that tour, you don't forget stuff like that. I stopped tapping for that tour because I thought it was disrespectful. I'd still do quite a lot of my version of it, but I changed my playing style as I felt it'd be disrespectful with me doing that. The first gig, we were late, got lost. There was no sat navs in them days, so we all puffing and panting getting there. Then from the moment we started we had a very close relationship with Eddie, and looking back, it was partially because he was still partying quite a lot. The rest of the band were all going the gym and being sober, and Eddie wasn't. We were young and daft, and if Eddie Van Halen wants to party with you, what are you going to do? So it was really wild, and it was just fantastic.
It sounds like a lot of fun.
It culminated with Wembley, and underneath the stage on both sides, there's a big walkway that Sammy Hagar would run around on, and there's lots of guitar solo moments with Eddie, and Michael Anthony had a bar built into the stage, so every night we would go to Michael Anthony's bar, and he would be the barman, so he would do you Jack and Coke, and it would be half pint of Jack Daniels and half pint of coke. That was the times we were living in, and it had become fairly normal by then. So I'd had one of these Jack and Cokes and then suddenly got pushed out on the stage to play 'Alright Now 'with Eddie Van Halen, which was great. Now, the weird thing is, I'd never learned that tune particularly, but looking back, to my horror, the version is not quite right, so I would have liked to really nailed it, but we sailed through, and it was great.
I wanted to clear up the whole 'Spitfire' thing; was the album title really changed to 'Young Gods' so as not to cause offence due to the Gulf war?
It was. No, I'll tell you exactly what happened. There's two things happened. One, the nervousness around the title actually came from the record label. Corporate entities tend to be very risk averse, and I think it was nonsense, really. I don't think there was enough of a connection to the Gulf war to be a problem, but they were really sensitive about the way it would be displayed in HMV or whatever, so they kind of vetoed it. And you've got to be careful pushing that stuff through, because we didn't feel strongly enough about the title 'Spitfire' to really fight for it, because what if you'd have got it wrong and record hadn't been displayed, kind of thing? So that why the title had to change, and 'Young Gods' was probably one of the pivotal songs on the record, so 'Young Gods' it became.
And then 'Boneyard', there was a story at the time that it was banned by Radio One because of the "we're all going down to the boneyard" thing and the war happening, but in reality, I think it probably just didn't get on the playlist. They didn't like it, so they didn't play it. It's not really a Radio One record. It's probably a bit heavy for them. I think the record company and probably us just thought it was easier to say it's been banned, than it didn't get on the playlist.
Listening back to 'Boneyard', and it's a real shred fest for you; you're soloing all over it!
Yeah, sorry about that! I think that it's really good not to think in terms of rhythm and lead. I did a lot of listening to Jimi Hendrix, and the minute you start going; "this is rhythm; this is lead", it's less excited. I think a lot of those leads are incidental little bits around the rhythm. It certainly is live, but that record was made in a period when you would run 48 tracks, so you had two tape machines, two, two-inch tapes synced up, running together, in the days before computers, and put a lot of attention to detail. it's kind of lost art now of, if you did an edit, it was a razor blade and tape. So generally, you had to play, and you didn't want to be chopping up the tape too often, With Mike Lee, he was such a virtuoso drummer that he never really made mistakes, and everything he did was a keeper, which is very, very rare, so you had such a solid foundation, and it's very easy to play guitar if you've got an amazing drummer. You sound better than you are.
What are your favourite songs to play, and what is the key Little Angels album for you?
'Young Gods' is great. I mean, just looking at the set, and everything in that set I enjoy playing. There isn't anything that I wince about. I do play some things slightly differently. The one that I regret is, I don't like the solo on 'Kicking Up Dust', which of course, has become the one that Planet Rock play all the time. It was a bit disjointed. I did it, and it sounded good on the day, and then we moved on, and it's always a bit clunky to me, that one. So I've tried to redeem it with something more coherent live. But yeah, I think I like them all. If I just pick one, it'd be 'Young Gods'.
I didn't realise how the change in the musical landscape had been a factor in your splitting, given that you'd had a No.1 album with 'Jam' and sold out the Royal Albert Hall at that time.
There was a few things going on. So Toby [Jepson}'s got a slightly different view, but I think people forget how utterly fundamental [Nirvana's] 'Nevermind' was in changing the face of the music industry completely, and it made it very difficult to exist in a rock band. Bands like Bon Jovi were struggling, Mötley Crüe was struggling, Motörhead could barely do a pub gig. People forget that the whole New Wave of British Heavy Metal, it wasn't cool. Suddenly people were cutting their hair off. If you had long hair, little kids would point at you and shout; "eighties' metaler!" and laugh and run away stuff like this. Everything was so changed that you the only way to survive it would be to ride it out for ten years and then reinvent yourself, as Thunder did, for example.
So did that, in part lead to your decision to split up?
Yes, but also we were apart; personally and creatively. I wasn't really having any influence on the writing. I think Toby needed to make some solo records, and it was great that he did. It wasn't in me to contribute, and I think a big factor was lyrically, Little Angels was all about being young and getting out of a small town, and once we'd done that, we all had separate lives with families and stuff emerging, and when you get us back together, there wasn't a single thing to say, whereas I think there is now we've all got back. So it's funny, at the beginning of your adult life, and towards this stage, which is the more mature end, all our lives are in a similar place. Our kids have grown up, and we're celebrating this, really, but in that intervening bit after 'Jam', I mean, we made that record, which I don't like, 'Ten Miles High', everyone's trying to put suits on and trying to work out way of being, after the grunge event, and it was a struggle, whereas before, we didn't need to discuss anything like that because we just did our thing. Suddenly our thing didn't exist or work anymore. So that's it really, and it was to finish at the Albert Hall.
You went on to form b.l.o.w. which was completely different.
It was, musically. No overdubs. I like the sound of it. In fact, I didn't keep all the records, and I've been buying them all off eBay again to learn them, and someone sent me a copy of 'Man and Goat Alike' [1995], and it's a great sounding record. It's very done in a '60s style, and we used a producer, Ken Thomas, and he'd done a lot of the Peter Green stuff, so I was in my element. It was very free, creatively, but it got a bit too free by the end. We made a record called 'Pigs' [1996], and probably 30% of it's really good, I'd say, but at the end of that second album, it was such a crazy lifestyle I just needed a bit more structure in my life, really.
Little Angels did reform once before, in 2012; how come that one didn't last?
Because we all had other stuff to do, I think we just sort of parked it. We had a great, great time, and it was amazing. The Download performance was weird because we nearly didn't do it, because Europe were on before us, and they missed their slot. We got there with about an hour to spare, and then I got a call from the lads and they were stuck in the traffic, so I was pacing about, and I think they got there with no more than five minutes to go, so they had to just walk straight on the stage. I think that probably helped the nerves because no one had time to get nervous for that show. It's a funny thing to walk out in front of 80,000 or 90,000 people if you've not been doing gigs for twenty years, but the muscle memory kicks in and the dynamics. We did a lot of gigs in the old days, so it just all came back.
You're doing a lot of gigs this time around, and the tour has been extended; what are your feelings now that it's all in place?
I'm just really looking forward to it. The thing I love more than anything else is that sound thing, so, I've got a little like micro rig at home, and I want to get the big heads out and go into a rehearsal room and get going before we get there with a band. I know it sounds daft, but there's not many guitar players or musicians who get a chance to really do it properly these days, so we're planning the tour, and it's proper old school; there's no in-ear monitoring, and we're going to have a spotlight. I've missed that, gig spotlights, and it's backdrops; the rock and roll stuff! There's zero concession to it being 2026, so we've got an old school sound man who can mix exactly the same as we used to, and wedges at the front of stage and all that.
Are you in for the long haul?
I think very possibly, because we're enjoying it so much and there's none of the kind of pressures that you get with being on a major label, and the expectation to get on Radio One. I always say god bless Planet Rock, who keep the dream alive for all of us. And as long as people want us and we're having a good time, I think we were very keen to keep looking at what's possible.
So is there going to be new material?
I think the big question mark is on new music. We've got some songs that were lurking around from the old days, and some of them are really good, so we might revisit them. I've always got a bundle of riffs and song titles, and Toby's always got song titles, and Jimmy [Dickinson]'s very prolific, but the thing that we've got to do is maintain the standard of what we did back in the day. I mean, for me, I have to record on tape. I'm not interested in Pro Tools [digital recording software]. I don't mind dumping it onto Pro Tools after being on tape - that's fine - but I'm not interested in recording using a Mac. I want a proper desk, and proper outboard gear and all that. And a lot of those great engineers are still around and have still got those skills, so there may well be some new music, but it depends on the chemistry in the room when we get together.
Little Angels hit the road in November on their 'Big Bad & Back' tour. For dates and tickets, visit www.littleangelsofficial.com
There was a few things going on. So Toby [Jepson}'s got a slightly different view, but I think people forget how utterly fundamental [Nirvana's] 'Nevermind' was in changing the face of the music industry completely, and it made it very difficult to exist in a rock band. Bands like Bon Jovi were struggling, Mötley Crüe was struggling, Motörhead could barely do a pub gig. People forget that the whole New Wave of British Heavy Metal, it wasn't cool. Suddenly people were cutting their hair off. If you had long hair, little kids would point at you and shout; "eighties' metaler!" and laugh and run away stuff like this. Everything was so changed that you the only way to survive it would be to ride it out for ten years and then reinvent yourself, as Thunder did, for example.
So did that, in part lead to your decision to split up?
Yes, but also we were apart; personally and creatively. I wasn't really having any influence on the writing. I think Toby needed to make some solo records, and it was great that he did. It wasn't in me to contribute, and I think a big factor was lyrically, Little Angels was all about being young and getting out of a small town, and once we'd done that, we all had separate lives with families and stuff emerging, and when you get us back together, there wasn't a single thing to say, whereas I think there is now we've all got back. So it's funny, at the beginning of your adult life, and towards this stage, which is the more mature end, all our lives are in a similar place. Our kids have grown up, and we're celebrating this, really, but in that intervening bit after 'Jam', I mean, we made that record, which I don't like, 'Ten Miles High', everyone's trying to put suits on and trying to work out way of being, after the grunge event, and it was a struggle, whereas before, we didn't need to discuss anything like that because we just did our thing. Suddenly our thing didn't exist or work anymore. So that's it really, and it was to finish at the Albert Hall.
You went on to form b.l.o.w. which was completely different.
It was, musically. No overdubs. I like the sound of it. In fact, I didn't keep all the records, and I've been buying them all off eBay again to learn them, and someone sent me a copy of 'Man and Goat Alike' [1995], and it's a great sounding record. It's very done in a '60s style, and we used a producer, Ken Thomas, and he'd done a lot of the Peter Green stuff, so I was in my element. It was very free, creatively, but it got a bit too free by the end. We made a record called 'Pigs' [1996], and probably 30% of it's really good, I'd say, but at the end of that second album, it was such a crazy lifestyle I just needed a bit more structure in my life, really.
Little Angels did reform once before, in 2012; how come that one didn't last?
Because we all had other stuff to do, I think we just sort of parked it. We had a great, great time, and it was amazing. The Download performance was weird because we nearly didn't do it, because Europe were on before us, and they missed their slot. We got there with about an hour to spare, and then I got a call from the lads and they were stuck in the traffic, so I was pacing about, and I think they got there with no more than five minutes to go, so they had to just walk straight on the stage. I think that probably helped the nerves because no one had time to get nervous for that show. It's a funny thing to walk out in front of 80,000 or 90,000 people if you've not been doing gigs for twenty years, but the muscle memory kicks in and the dynamics. We did a lot of gigs in the old days, so it just all came back.
You're doing a lot of gigs this time around, and the tour has been extended; what are your feelings now that it's all in place?
I'm just really looking forward to it. The thing I love more than anything else is that sound thing, so, I've got a little like micro rig at home, and I want to get the big heads out and go into a rehearsal room and get going before we get there with a band. I know it sounds daft, but there's not many guitar players or musicians who get a chance to really do it properly these days, so we're planning the tour, and it's proper old school; there's no in-ear monitoring, and we're going to have a spotlight. I've missed that, gig spotlights, and it's backdrops; the rock and roll stuff! There's zero concession to it being 2026, so we've got an old school sound man who can mix exactly the same as we used to, and wedges at the front of stage and all that.
Are you in for the long haul?
I think very possibly, because we're enjoying it so much and there's none of the kind of pressures that you get with being on a major label, and the expectation to get on Radio One. I always say god bless Planet Rock, who keep the dream alive for all of us. And as long as people want us and we're having a good time, I think we were very keen to keep looking at what's possible.
So is there going to be new material?
I think the big question mark is on new music. We've got some songs that were lurking around from the old days, and some of them are really good, so we might revisit them. I've always got a bundle of riffs and song titles, and Toby's always got song titles, and Jimmy [Dickinson]'s very prolific, but the thing that we've got to do is maintain the standard of what we did back in the day. I mean, for me, I have to record on tape. I'm not interested in Pro Tools [digital recording software]. I don't mind dumping it onto Pro Tools after being on tape - that's fine - but I'm not interested in recording using a Mac. I want a proper desk, and proper outboard gear and all that. And a lot of those great engineers are still around and have still got those skills, so there may well be some new music, but it depends on the chemistry in the room when we get together.
Little Angels hit the road in November on their 'Big Bad & Back' tour. For dates and tickets, visit www.littleangelsofficial.com
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