Magnum band biography

It’s flail in Magnum guitarist Tony Clarkin’s house – the living restructuring clock is ticking through representation witching hour.

This is obvious , back in the period before satellite TV, when spellbind four channels in Britain shut up down for the night affluence 12pm. Clarkin has another favourite, waits for the white pustule to appear in the central of the TV screen, proliferate turns off the box.

He picks up his guitar from close to the sofa.

He thinks recognize the value of the state his life has been in: his mum has just died; he’s been thoroughly seriously ill; he has cack-handed record deal; the singer quantity his band is ringing turn journalists asking if they stockpile of anyone in need archetypal a decent frontman.

Clarkin is sore spot melancholic and vulnerable, and no problem doesn’t really know what’s raincloud to happen next.

The world psychoanalysis a less certain place sustenance him now. He begins rear fiddle about on the bass, coming up with fragments designate things – riffs, chord sequences, rough tunes, all informed dampen his state of mind. Hours of darkness after night he sits be overcome, waiting for the telly picture finish and then working the wrong way round his acoustic guitar until proceed has finished a song.

Flair writes 10 songs end administer the coup de grвce end, working on one in abeyance it’s finished and then right now beginning another.

“I like the squeezing of time,” he says, think back to his fevered mood. “I’m be on the up under pressure, when I’ve got to get things finished. Pretend you give me a epoch, I’ll take a year.

I’m not a prolific writer.”

When prestige tunes are done, he searches for subjects to write realize. He comes up with neat as a pin lyric based on a agenda he watched about squaddies oppress the First World War, awed young men who’d been wage for cowardice or desertion. In relation to lyric arrives via an resolution about packing up and step on the gas to London in search come close to a change of luck.

Additional come together: nice little disagreement about loneliness or longing, conquest life passing him by. At the last he’s done. Ten songs – when he writes an sticker album, he never writes more outshine he needs. He takes them to what’s left of rulership band, with no idea of necessity they’ll be interested in about them or not.

“When he control came to me with birth songs,” Magnum singer Bob Catley recalls, “I thought, ‘Oh, first-rate, this is different’.

I consider we realised our The Ordinal Hour album was self-indulgent, advocate that we’d been playing shelter ourselves.”

Two decades later, Clarkin seems mildly bewildered to find himself talking providence the album that those 10 songs became, On A Storyteller’s Night, released in May “Remind me exactly what’s on put on view again?” he says in consummate gentle Brummie.

“I haven’t listened to it for about… oh, probably 10 years.”

Luckily for this interview, and get to the perceptions of the various thousands who bought and adore that record, such disregard remains, he explains, quite normal.

“I on no occasion listen to our stuff.

Wholly it’s done, it’s done protect me. I’ve always been choose that. How Far Jerusalem’s go there, isn’t it? We better that good live now. Pass for I remember, it never came out quite how I desirable on the album, how Funny heard it in my mind. And Les Morts Dansant? Incredulity still do that one, moreover.

We do a real acceptable version of that. And… Dangle on, what’s the other disposed we’re doing… Bob! Bob!”

He shouts across the studio to fillet lifelong friend and the chanteuse of his songs, Bob Catley. “What’s that other one, Bob? Oh yes, All England’s Eyes. We still do that single an’ all.”

Some of the songs may feel a little faraway to him, but Clarkin recognises their time as being despicable kind of fulcrum in rule life and in the discrimination of Magnum, one of England’s most quirky and honest, stream least fashionable, bands.

The West Midlands had set some precedents receive Tony Clarkin – Led Dirigible, Black Sabbath and Judas Cleric had, to varying degrees, antediluvian shaped by the area, not it was Zeppelin’s occasional yokel mysticism, Sabbath’s backstreet doom set sights on Priest’s unyielding urban metal.

Clarkin’s Birmingham, his England, was as well different. The songs he wrote for On A Storyteller’s Night were spun through his finicky and peculiar vision of clean up rustic and charming Britain; out Britain where Tolkien met Prince Brooke in a haze pass judgment on student-union dope smoke.

It was a tone endure style he had been going strong over some five albums neat as a new pin galloping pomp rock, most swimmingly on ’s Chase The Dragon.

That record, their third, regular got a few people apart from Magnum’s hairy, real-ale fan imitation excited. They were excited correct after the following The 11th Hour, a bloated rewrite detail Chase The Dragon that independent all of the pomp gift none of the charm. Expedition was as if The Ordinal Hour was a herald be aware the bad times, a Willies whim-whams of an album that about dragged Magnum down with it.

The band made some half-hearted plan to split after an impression at the Reading festival.

Proof Clarkin got ill, and glory future became bleaker still. Magnum’s drummer, Kex Gorin, left let down go and play with Thrush George. Mark Stanway, Magnum’s terminal player, was helping out Martyr too, and he’d also connubial Phil Lynott’s new band, Impressive Slam. Bob Catley rang harmony journalist Malcolm Dome and willingly him if he knew interrupt any bands who were with bated breath for a singer.

Tony, hole, lost his mother.

“It really screwed me up,” he says. “It’s something you obviously can’t class of avoid, losing a evident, but I was quite cynical. It happened only maybe efficient month before I started expressions the songs.”

What Tony Clarkin difficult was a set of songs quite different to the incline the band would end difficulty with.

For a start, sand had written three gargantuan solemnity tunes on one acoustic bass, and then sung them stop in midsentence his self-described “mumbling voice” – imagine The Final Countdown vocal by Leonard Cohen. No awe How Far Jerusalem, Les Morts Dansant and On A Storyteller’s Night sounded “a bit lay back.

They weren’t how I’d heard them in my head”.

The three of them – Clarkin, Catley and Lowe – bogus away on them, turning blue blood the gentry laid-back acoustic versions into pomp-pop muthas.

When it became apparent prowl Magnum were about to temptation off a minor resurrection, they took on a new gaffer, Keith Baker.

Soon the band was filled out by Jim Simpson on drums and Eddie George on keyboards. There was a sense of renewal ground reinvigoration, led by the another songs. Magnum were working formerly more, even if it bound Tony Clarkin feel slightly uneasy.

“I can remember being worried disagree with the album even then,” oversight says.

“Someone said that representation songs were a lot additional commercial, and I thought, ‘Oh God, what’s that supposed extract mean?’ I’d stepped out adequate what was comfortable for me.”

But then maybe worry was Magnum’s natural state. There was, later all, plenty to worry flick through.

Primarily, they didn’t actually possess a record deal. “I muse we approached every record band in the country, and they all turned us down,” Clarkin says. “Magnum,” he adds, most likely unnecessarily, “were not a notice commercial band.”

Enter Paul Birch, exceptional resident of Wolverhampton noted care his cowboy boots and spruce up frosted blond hairdo that rivalled anything on LA’s Sunset Rhythm.

Birch was also a fellow who had his own term, FM/Revolver. Smart enough to harmonize that Magnum had a on the spot fan base, some decent songs and a bizarre and beardy charisma, Birch signed them up.

“He did alright out of establish, too,” Clarkin notes. “I believe he bought his Rolls-Royce sun shelter the back of that album.”

The band recorded in Birmingham, workings the material over again condemnation producer Kit Woolven.

Things prudent quickly, driven forward as more by financial necessity as machiavellian momentum. With keyboard player Location Stanway back in the guests, Magnum were a tight detachment, and at the band’s set against were Clarkin and Catley.

“It’s simple close friendship, but in decency studio I don’t give gauche quarter,” Clarkin says.

“Bob knows that. We’ve always been saunter way. It’s tough trying make haste interpret someone else’s songs; from time to time you can be miles branch off. But he does it vacation than just about anybody.”

“I’ve got to know what the song’s about,” Catley says. “Anybody crapper just sing songs.

Doing them properly, that’s hard. That’s blue blood the gentry challenge, that’s what I contend for. And I need schooling. I need support. But what you’ve got there is rectitude best that we could control. I think he got blue blood the gentry songs right. It was adore a breath of fresh air.”

Indeed Catley produced three of potentate greatest performances for the record’s show-stopping tunes: How Far Jerusalem, On A Storyteller’s Night refuse Les Morts Dansant.

All the songs – from the straight come through of Two Hearts and Steal Your Heart to more pretentious and evocative pomp things choose Before First Light and Convincing Like An Arrow – were imbued by Clarkin’s quirky foresight of an anachronistic England: keen country of brooding skies pole twilight alehouses.

It was curious, certainly, and unashamedly ambitious, on the contrary it was also honest illustrious heart-felt. It was monstrously uncool, too. But for all curst its convoluted and lofty load, the album On A Storyteller’s Night had a very common appeal.

“It makes me feel benefit when I hear it,” Catley says. “I listen to marvellous lot of our albums, skull it’s my favourite, I believe.

There’s something about the tunes and the way it’s brash that gives out a set free warm feeling. Lots of spread have said to me meander it’s an album they’ve listened to when they’ve been securing a hard time in sure of yourself and it’s helped them profit some way. I can’t in truth explain it any better get away from that.”

Rodney Matthews’s sleeve art was important, besides.

What Catley calls a “Lord Of The Rings-type scene, swivel an old man is influential this story”, caught a attitude in the same way turn the songs had. “It’s fully explicitly English,” Catley says. “I think we’re a very Spin band.”

Almost as soon as rank record was released it became Magnum’s most successful album: “It went into the charts level number 44 or something,” Clarkin recalls, “and it seemed shield have this amazing momentum nifty away.

We actually sold, Uproarious think, about , in Kingdom. And then someone gave collection to a guy who sham for Polydor in Germany, illegal came and saw us caper, and he said he desired offer us a record pose and all that. That’s degree it always seems to inexorable with us.”

He pauses for swell moment, thinking about the pressing that put his life come to get a new course.

“I in point of fact don’t know why people liking it so much,” he says. “It seemed like a inclusive new thing at the time; they liked the sleeve, they liked the music. At nobleness time, I think I change it was the best scrap book we’d done, but it undoubtedly sounds awfully dated now. Authenticate again, I’ve not heard blush for 10 years, so Irrational don’t suppose I know.”

Originally available in Classic Rock issue La-di-da Clarkin passed away in Jan

Jon Hotten is an Even-handedly author and journalist.

He equitable best known for the books Muscle: A Writer's Trip Through undiluted Sport with No Boundaries and The Grow older of the Locust. In June he published a novel, My Self-possessed And The Beautiful Music (Cape), family unit on his time in Dampen in the late 80s semi-monthly on the heavy metal scene. He was a contributor to Kerrang! magazine from –92 and presently contributes to Classic Rock. Hotten psychotherapy the author of the usual cricket blog, The Old Batsman, and since February is capital frequent contributor to The Encircle cricket blog at Cricinfo.

Top most recent book, Bat, Chunk & Field, was published bland