Hi fellas - please introduce the band members to us, and tell us a bit about the band, its timeline, and who does what, etc.
The current line up of Hammerhead includes the two founder members of the band Steve Archer and Brian Hodgson, along with myself (Buzz Elliott), and Tony Steel.
Brian Hodgson – Guitar & Vocals
Buzz Elliott – Guitar, Keyboards & Vocals
Steve Archer – Bass
Tony Steel – Drums
The band was formed as a 3 piece around 1977/8 by Steve and Brian, and I joined up in 1979. We've gone through a few line up changes over the years, including several drummers along the way, but our regular drummer since re-forming in 2005 (after around 15 years apart), has been Tony Steel.
Tony also plays alongside myself and Mark Coles (bass) in a classic rock covers band called Slagbank. Fans of UFO will be pleased to know our set list at the moment includes: ‘Only You Can Rock Me' and ‘Doctor Doctor’. Mark is a long standing fan of UFO, and I’m sure he would be happy if our whole set consisted of all their songs!

What's been the best gig you've ever played, and what made it so?
With Hammerhead my most memorable night would be the first time we supported Budgie in the Carnegie Theatre in our hometown of Workington. I think it was around 1979. I was 19 and Budgie were one of my favourite bands at the time - Napoleon Bonaparte is still one of my favorite songs. It was the first time I'd played through a very large professional PA system, and their monitors were better than our PA at the time! I loved every minute of it! The crew on the sound desk recorded our set for us to use as a demo to try and get us some record label interest. I would love to hear that tape again, but unfortunately it has gone astray. If anyone out there knows where it is, please write and let us know!
Hammerhead had never really planned to reform, but in 2005 we got back together to play at a friend's 40th birthday party and just ended up staying together. I never dreamed that this would lead on to us getting so many amazing opportunities. Supporting the Michael Schenker Group would have to be one of the highlights. I know that he’s had a few ups and downs during his career, (even on that tour!), but he was amazing in Workington that night, and you can’t take away the fact that he’s a genius on the guitar - and he looks so cool! I wondered if he remembered coming to Workington the first time around in 1974 when UFO played at the Slypt Disc club? I also wondered if he was going to totally lose it and throw his guitar across the stage at a roadie, as he had done a few nights earlier somewhere in Wales - but thankfully he was on his best behaviour!
Aside from Hammerhead, the favorite moments in my entire playing career would be getting to play the guitar on Up the Junction by Squeeze live on stage with Glen Tilbrook in 2004. One of my bands was supporting him, and he came in to see us - he joined us on stage and we played Up the Junction and also a couple of Beatles songs. For me it was a magical moment. And I once got to jam with Chicken Shack in a small club in Carlisle in 1979, when Stan Webb handed me his guitar in exchange for a pint of bitter. He just stood there and drank my pint, while I rattled off a bluesy solo in the key of E with the band, then casually handed him the guitar back. Some of the crowd thought it was planned, but it just happened spontaneously after he wandered into the crowd using an extra long guitar lead - aerial systems hadn’t been invented back then!

You're based in Workington up in Cumbria - maybe not the first town that comes to mind as a hotbed of heavy metal. What's happening on the rock/metal scene in Cumbria, and how does it compare now with what it was like in the 70s and 80s?
Up here in Cumbria we have always been better known for our rock scenery than our rock scene! Most bands I see now aren’t playing old-school rock anymore, and would fit more into the indie category, and the majority seem to prefer playing covers than writing their own material. It Bites are probably the most successful band to come out of the whole county, Black Axe from Carlisle had a brush with success many moons ago, and Ian Toomey of Bitches Sin is still out there with a worldwide fan base. Despite being one of the last stops on the road to nowhere, Workington and the surrounding area has attracted some very interesting artists over the years, even the mighty Quo were just eight miles down the road in Whitehaven last summer, supported by local lads It Bites at an open air event.

There's also a wealth of information on us and many other Cumbrian bands from the 60s and the 70s on this website. Black Sabbath played in and around Cumbria many times during their formative years. Check out the book How Black Was Our Sabbath by Dave Tangye and Graham Wright - it's very entertaining and includes many stories of their exploits around Cumbria, and of their friendship with one of the greatest bands never to make it, legendary Cumbrian band Necromandus.
Their guitarist Baz Dunnery (brother of Frankie from It Bites), was playing stuff in 1972 that would have many of today's top guitarist baffled - check out the albums Orexis Of Death or Necrothology for an example of what Baz could do with a guitar, and his live work was even better! He was a very unique talent, and the world is a much sadder place without him. The whole band were world class musicians, and their drummer Frank Hall went on to join Hammerhead for a brief period in the mid 80s. we went into the studio to record two songs with Frank on the drums and also Necromandus vocalist Billy Branch - these songs can be heard on our Will to Survive album.

A copy of your 1981 single Time Will Tell was up for sale on Ebay recently at £70. Seventy quid!
If only we’d known this was going to happen, we wouldn’t have parted with the last few hundred singles for next to nothing! The other guitarist, Brian, decided that as no one was interested in them any more he would have them melted down into Guinness (if you know what I mean!), and they were duly sold to a mystery enquirer - possibly even Vinyl Tap.
At one point Vinyl Tap were selling them for around £100 each, I have no idea why it commands such a high fee, perhaps because only 1000 were ever made, making it quite rare.
We got a very favorable two page write up in The NWOBHM Encyclopedia compiled by Malc Macmillan and produced by Iron Pages in Germany, which may have helped raise our profile to some degree, and maybe caused readers to become curious about us.

To anyone with an interest in bands from the NWOBHM era, this book is THE HOLY BIBLE! But I have to add that we never really considered ourselves to be part of that movement, we are a 70s Heavy Rock band, just playing the type of music that we like to listen to, with little regard for what anyone may think of it. I suppose that’s one of the advantages of not being tied to a record label, you can just do what you want, take it or leave it!
Back to the single…. the A-side Time will Tell is an up-tempo twin guitar driven song, I think it's okay, but personally I’ve always preferred the B-side Lonely Man. It shifts through a few different styles and moods culminating with a very heavy slow riff that is quite Doomy and similar to early Sabbath, who have always been a big influence on us. We recorded the songs at Linden Sounds recording studio near Penrith in 1981 - the engineer was Guy Forrester, and the singles were pressed in France at a cost of £450 for 1000. The studio costs were also a few hundred quid on top of that. We were desperate to get into the recording studio, but we had no money. Brian's dad wasn’t well off, but he loved listening to our songs, in particular a song called Lochinvar, so he offered to help out. He put the money up for us to go into the studio. If he hadn’t done so, nothing would have ever been recorded, and the fact that any of this happened is his legacy.

Bands such as Saxon are still touring regularly, and full-on heavy metal festivals are still going strong. There's a prestigious gig coming up for you in December when you play the NWOBHM Stage at Hard Rock Hell III. How does it feel meeting up with all the old faces (bands and fans) again? Is the vibe still the same and is the head-banging still as vigorous?

Since re-forming in 2005 we have also played at The British Steel Festival and the Metal Mayhem Festival, we have also supported Diamond Head, M3 Whitesnake and the Michael Schenker Group, and some footage of these gigs can be found on Youtube.
We've made some very good new friends since we started playing again, in particular, the guys from Elixir have been very helpful to us - we've shared the stage with them a few times now, and I admire their enthusiasm to keep gigging and writing etc. They are a great bunch of down to earth guys with no ego troubles!

Who are your own favorite bands, and what were the best gigs you've ever been to, and why?
I've always had a very wide taste in music - Rock, 60s beat bands, Blues, indie, Jazz Rock, even some classical. When it comes to playing, I do prefer 70s style Rock, and the bands that inspired me the most were acts such as Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, UFO, early Genesis, and Atomic Rooster, plus great guitarists such as Rory Gallagher, Mick Ronson, Roy Buchanan, & Ritchie Blackmore, Jimmy Page, Michael Schenker, and more recently Joe Satriani, I’ve learned a lot of ‘tricks’ from these guys over the years, and my own style is a blend of these people who inspire me.
A few of the most memorable gigs that spring to mind would be seeing Jaco Pastorious with Weather Report in 1978 at Newcastle City Hall. I still rate him as the best bass player of all time, brilliant player, and a great showman, it was tragic when he was killed.

I was at the front of the UFO gig at Carlisle Market Hall in the late 70s when Paul Chapman received an electric shock, disappeared for 20 minutes, and then agreed to come back out to an almighty cheer. The venue wasn’t great for sound, it was like a huge aircraft hangar, but we had some great nights in there; Rory Gallagher, The Stranglers, and the night Ian Gillan played there, I got mistaken for him in the Kings Head pub by a gang of Gillan fans, which was rather nice for a life-long Purple fan!
I was only 14 when I first saw Rory Gallagher at Lancaster University, that night left a lasting impression on me, Rory was one of the most naturally gifted guitar players I have ever seen. I saw him many times over the years and he never played anything exactly the same twice. He inspired me to think that way, and it's something I always try to do when rehearsing a song, I like to leave some space in there for improvisation, and just play from the heart!

Which new and upcoming bands do you feel have the energy and strength to pick up the heavy metal baton and carry it into the next decade?
I’ve heard some great tracks by Black Stone Cherry and The Answer, I do like what I have heard, but I wonder if these new bands will have the staying power of bands such as Deep Purple, Queen, Thin Lizzy, or UFO, I remember when buying an album in the 70s, every track on an album was a joy to behold, and then less than a year later another gem of an album would be released, there seemed to be very little in the way of ‘filler’ on those records, I don’t think the same can be said of many modern rock albums.

Where can we find out more about Hammerhead and hear what you do? (Weblinks, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter etc). Talking of which... how useful are these networking sites to Hammerhead as regards getting gigs, getting feedback, raising the band's profile etc? And where do you get your most valuable feedback from?
The internet has been an invaluable tool in connecting us with fans around the world, and most importantly, the people who had enough faith in our music to invest their money in us, and get our material released.
I have been selling our CDs on eBay since 2005, and all the feedback has been very positive. Some fans of Hammerhead have been especially helpful to us over the last few years - Mario Corbella in Italy, Fred Dronsart in France, Jim Coyles in America, Ronnie Santens in Belgium, Marcin (Heavyman) in Poland, Mike Grindstaff (Grinder), and last but not least, Phil Denton (Elixir) in London UK, all these people have helped us to get to where we are now... CHEERS!
The internet has also made it possible for us to contact all the right people, and has led on to us getting our material released officially by small independent record labels in other countries where our brand of 70s style heavy rock is still very popular. Both of our albums - Will To Survive and Headonizm - have been released on vinyl by High Roller Records in Germany, and the official CD of Will To Survive is available from Sonic Age Records in Greece, on their Cult Metal Classics label, and it's also possible to buy both of our albums directly from me via eBay.
I would like to get Headonizm released officially on CD at some point, it's only available on CDr from me or on vinyl from High Roller Records in Germany at the moment, so... if there are any interested parties out there, please write in!
There are a number of internet radio stations that still regularly play our music, along with many other underground bands from back in the day, check out The Old School Metal Show for example, it is run by Mike Grindstaff (Grinder) USA, and it is the next best thing to Tommy Vance's Friday Rock Show.

Any funny or embarrassing Spinal Tap moments?
Like most bands, there is not enough space to list all of our stupid exploits, but the highlights would have to include... the time we travelled about a hundred miles to a gig in a pub in Byker on the east side of Newcastle. We had a very faithful local following and I had organised a coach for any fans that wanted to come and support us. We got to the gig a couple of hours before the coachload of fans were due to arrive, only to find that because of some confusion with the arrangements, the venue hadn’t actually realised that the gig was on... and they hadn’t advertised it at all. The building was completely empty apart from two really old geezers at the bar. They certainly didn’t look like the type that would enjoy Hammerhead playing at full tilt! The landlord said that there was no point in us playing until we explained to him that there were around fifty people about to arrive in a coach from Workington. We had no choice but to set up anyway and play to the fans that had traveled over a hundred miles from our hometown to see us. We might as well have played in our own local pub and saved ourselves all the bloody hassle!
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the snow was about a foot deep that night, and everyone had to get out and push the coach when it was stuck in a drift. Anyone who needed to answer the call of nature was asked to pee on the ground around the coach tyres to help melt the snow so that the wheels could get a grip on the road!
Then there was a gig at Barrow Civic Hall where all of our guitar straps were stolen by a prankster just minutes before we were due on stage. The other band on the bill wouldn’t lend us theirs, making them the prime suspects, and with only a few minutes to go I had no choice but to quickly make new ones out of black gaffer tape. Mine kept slipping off throughout the entire gig, not that it mattered, I was so stoned at the time that I don’t think I really knew where I was…. but that’s actually not a bad thing when you’re in Barrow!
On another occasion Tony and myself were playing in another of our bands called The Bullfrogs, and we had a gig at a very large posh hotel in the middle of the countryside, near Kendal. Our notoriously mischievous keyboard player 'Stig' sneaked into the dining room, which had already been prepared for breakfast, and spent half an hour going around all the tables putting the salt into the sugar bowls, and the sugar back into the salt pots! We left the venue at about 2am to travel home, so we never did get to see all the breakfast fun, but I imagine there would have been utter chaos!
The icing on the cake as far as Hammerhead is concerned, was when one of our roadies had a sex-change operation. He/she was a very close friend of Brian's, even long before the band, and they were drinking buddies as far back as I can ever remember. I think Brian has found it hard to come to terms with the situation and doesn’t really talk much about it, but it doesn’t bother me, I don’t care what anyone does as long as they’re happy, I know that Alex, or Caroline as s/he is now known, wanted us all to talk to her as if nothing was any different, but you try and do that, believe me, its not easy! p.s. I’ve never seen them, but apparently s/he does have really great boobs!

What would you like Hammerhead to be doing in five years time?
Bearing in mind that our founder member Brian is nearly 60, and he still likes a pint of Guinness (or twenty), just being alive would be good for a start! Steve Archer and myself have written a few new songs in the old style, and it would be good to get these recorded properly. I would like to do another album if we can produce enough decent quality material, but it does cost a lot to do these things.
Time is also the enemy - I have a full time day job, I play in three different bands, and I also do solo acoustic gigs as well. We have no manager, and since re-forming I have taken it upon myself to organise things as much as I can.

I recently watched the Story of Anvil on DVD, and there are a lot of comparisons between their situation and what we’ve been through. I could really sympathise with ‘Lips’ having to put up with an endlessly mundane job to pay the bills, when all you really want is to Rock Out & Party!
I thought their film was fantastic, and very well made, and I’m sure it will be a turning point for them. I’m pleased to see that they are touring over here in the UK, and I am going to see them supporting Saxon at Whitehaven Civic Hall later this year.
Realistically, I think it may be too late for the original line up of Hammerhead to think as far ahead as five years, I'm ten years younger than Brian and there have been times when I have considered continuing to play our songs with a different line up in the future, but I’m not sure it’s the right thing to do, although plenty other bands out there do so with varying degrees of success. Most bands that I've seen from the 70s recently have different line ups now, I saw Jethro Tull a few weeks ago without Martin Barre. They still sounded great with a young German guitarist standing in. I also travelled over to the o2 Acadamy in Newcastle in June 2009 along with Mark Coles to see UFO playing, it was the first time I had seen them with Vinnie Moore, but there was no need to worry, the band were firing on all cylinders that night, and Vinnie made it look so easy! A great night was had by all! But on the other hand, I read in Classic Rock that Welsh rockers MAN are still on the go, without any of the original members!  Surely that’s taking the piss?
Perhaps in five years time the Polar ice caps will have melted sufficiently to have completely submerged Southern England, and Cumbria will be the new epicentre of the UK's continuing Heavy Rock scene - ya never know what the future holds!

© Get Ready To Roll - 24th August 2009