No matter how long you live, you will never be as cool as the dudes in Saxon.
If I told you about a band that utilized the cutting-edge music technologies of the Kemper Profiling Amp, Evertune bridges, and True Temperament frets, there’s a very low likelihood that you would guess it was a band that was started in 1976 with most of its members hovering around the age of 60. I can tell you right now without shame in my heart that I was expecting these guys to be the ultimate in #daditude, and they legitimately put me in my place.
Any band that’s as influential and long lived as Saxon has probably played just about every piece of gear that you can imagine, and even after nearly 40 years of trial and error, they’re still striving to get the best sound they can. Even in this interview they were questioning their rigs, thinking of things they could be improving.
They were also incredibly cool and funny dudes. If I am even one damn quarter as cool as them when I hit that age, I will consider my whole life a success. We had one of the more interesting gear interviews I’ve done thus far, which involved bass player Nibbs insisting that Alex and I join him in front of the camera, and ended with one of the sweetest moments of my life (which you can see at the end of the video) when Nibbs declared the interview to be over and we followed him upstairs to watch Motorhead’s set from backstage.
From the tip of the spear of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal to your computer screen, I give you the mighty SAXON:
Check Saxon out on tour with Motorhead and Crobot here, and pre-order their new Andy Sneap-produced anthemic new album Battering Ram now.
