First of all we need to know about your history, when and at what age did you found the band? Did you have the same line up as on the first 7" from the beginning on?

Mark Newbold: From the age of seven, I knew Mike who was then five, and in my brother, Martyn’s class. All of us attended the same local primary school, with our family homes only about 150 metres apart. By the time we were old enough to go out and play on our own, we spent a lot of the school holidays playing football and generally exploring and playing in the local woods with friends etc. We were all into music from an early age and my brother and I sang in the local church choir and, whilst listening to Nazareth’s ‘Razamanaz’, Bowie’s ‘Aladdin Sane’ and Black Sabbath’s ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’ usually over and over again, decided for fun to experiment with Mike’s bontempi organ, some crude percussion and our father’s reel-to-reel tape recorder.

Our first attempts at recording were rather long, meandering instrumental compositions, which could only be compared, (somewhat loosely) to Tangerine Dream and, we basically just made it up as we went along, without any formal musical training to hinder our style! Later, with the addition of a Stylophone, a piano and some very basic drums, Mike’s father made for us, our compositions became a little more adventurous, but were still usually without any vocals.

The more we experimented, the more fun we had, and it just snowballed from there really, as Mike was given a semi-acoustic electric guitar for his 12th birthday in November 1972, and then a small 10 watt amplifier at Christmas. I managed to break the guitar after a day or two by pushing the tremolo arm so far down, it forced the small holding screws out of the guitar’s surface with a nice ‘twang’. But once it was fixed, Mike would practice daily, teaching himself chords and simple musical structures in his parents’ front room, which directly overlooked our small town’s High Street. By this age we were mainly listening to so called ‘Progressive’ bands including, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Genesis, Black Sabbath, Rush and Kiss amongst others, rather than the ‘pop’ bands of the day, who concentrated mainly on having hit singles.

With our basic musical set-up, we became reasonably proficient, mainly due to practicing for hours on end in the evenings in the small room, with the occasional passer-by stopping and listening to our efforts. The first ‘loose’ line-up was Martyn on our crude drums, me playing various keyboards and percussion and Mike playing guitar and doing some vocals (even with our vocal training in the choir, my brother and I weren’t particularly keen to sing). Around the same time, there were a few other local bands who had formed at schools. They were musically more advanced than us, but while we concentrated on writing original material, they churned out cover versions of songs like Hawkwind's ‘Master of the Universe'.

After a while, Martyn lost interest, so I took over drums and we recruited various friends on piano and guitar and vocals, whilst trying our hand at various musical styles, usually to suit the latest new member. As we neither had the vast array of equipment nor musical aptitude to write songs written in a progressive vein, our composing and song writing conundrum was soon rectified by the explosive introduction of Punk and New Wave, which quickly made a huge impact on our lives in 1976. Then, we were told by the leaders of this musical revolution (in no uncertain terms) that we didn’t need any lavish musical equipment or formal training to be musicians, and Mike started writing guitar orientated pop songs, often with a smattering of keyboards.

The first true incarnation of Triarchy was me on drums, Mike on bass/vocals and Derek Lomas on guitar (who had jumped ship from one of our local competitors). After about six months rehearsing, we hired our local church hall and gave out free tickets, which were taken up by over 50 people. The support (Derek’s old band) completed their set and we were ready to hit the stage with our pop/rock extravaganza which included using two, brilliant white flash and mushroom cloud producing pyrotechnics. With the stage curtain closed, our roadies (mates) began exchanging the drum kits and amplifiers of the support band to ours, whilst I started to wire up these dazzling flash explosions to a switch under my drum seat, later to be unleashed on our grand finale, Hiroshima. Unfortunately in my haste, I had left the mains power on, and as I bent over to wire up one of the flash pots, it exploded in a blinding burst in my face. As the Queen song goes “…the show must go on” and the support band’s drummer stepped in to help us out, while I was whisked away to the local hospital with burns to my face and arms. The gig went down well with our first audience, and I fully recovered from the experience enough to suggest using the explosive ‘show stoppers’ again in the future!

Our early gigs were often eventful. For example, with our punk influence and interest, we also decided to create a comedy band specifically to open the show, which we called Pete Pus & the Scabs. These consisted of Martyn my brother (Pete Pus) on drums, myself (Viv Vomit) on bass, Steve Foord-Divers (Stevie Stench) and Mike (Micky Mucus) on guitars, and Doug Moss (Duggie Durex Jnr) on vocals.

With this relatively ‘poppish’ line-up of Triarchy, we acquired a young female lead singer. The band was leaning more towards Blondie than Bad Company and, as Mike and I were heavily into Ultravox, Stranglers and the Clash, we only took the unlikely course of heavy rock after sacking the female singer, whom we didn’t think had a strong enough voice, and after our rather lightweight guitarist had decided to call it a day.

The decision to take a hard rock musical trajectory over pop or new wave (despite the fact that I had a wide blonde streak down the right side of my hair!) was made after a short discussion one evening, and the search was on to find a ‘shit hot’ guitarist to accompany us, with Mike on bass/vocals and me on drums. We advertised in a local shop window. Whilst at secondary school, I had seen a guy named Brian Galibardy play guitar in the school band, and had told Mike he was outrageously good for his age. It was Brian who answered our advertisement. Brian was very shy, and walked up and down outside the front of Mike’s house for ages before coming in to ‘jam’. He was unique, in that you could sit him in front of a record player, play him a track and within minutes, he’d have picked it up on his guitar. We jammed ‘Green Grass and High Tides’ by The Outlaws, with Brian seemingly playing rhythm and lead simultaneously! Brian joined, but the line up didn’t last long. However, as we’ll see, Brian was to rejoin the band later, at a crucial stage in our history.

After auditioning several guys who reckoned they were in Ted Nugent’s league, we plumped for Graeme Legg who seemed to fit our requirements and who had a fairly relaxed personality (very desirable in a trio). Mike and I had been saving up for a van to lug all the gear around (although neither of us could drive!) but once we had about £600, rashly decided to blow it all on a single, thereby providing physical proof of our short musical careers which we could look back on later in life, if we advanced no further. ‘Save the Khan’ and ‘Juliet’s Tomb’ were recorded and mixed down by Jeff Dewhurst at Airport studios in one 12 hour day in 1979, and we had 1,000 copies pressed by an independent record manufacturer. Mike had bought one of the very new Wasp synthesizers for £200 (a lot of money in those days) which whilst only being monophonic, was about as close as we would come to producing the sound Keith Emerson or Ultravox were making.

Mike played the synth solo on ‘Save the Khan’ note perfect in the studio, only to find, that for some strange reason, it hadn’t recorded onto tape, so Mike ended up having to ‘drop it in’ afterwards.

We sent out copies of ‘Save the Khan’ to the major music papers of the day including, Melody Maker, Sounds, NME and Record Mirror, radio stations and, anyone else we thought might be able to help our career. ‘Save the Khan’ made Geoff Barton’s weekly ‘Heavy Rock’ playlist in Sounds and was also used as a clue in their weekly crossword, much to our surprise and joy. We sold the single at gigs and sent about 800 to an independent record distributor, Bullet Records, who sold it wholesale to various independent shops and via mail order throughout the country. They then re-pressed the single on their own label. Save the Khan made it to number 30 in the Sounds Alternative charts rubbing shoulders with the likes of Stiff Little Fingers and Joy Division, whilst in the same week was number 8 in the Sounds Heavy Metal Chart ahead of Judas Priest and Def Leppard. Impressively, the Heavy Metal chart was based on requests made at The Coach House Club in Huddersfield, where we had never played or advertised, and so the chart position was based solely on the strength of the music. Some months after recording ‘Save the Khan’, we decided to expand the line-up to include a second guitarist, and we convinced Brian to rejoin. Unfortunately, this immediately prompted Graeme to leave (we think he found Brian’s considerable talent somewhat intimidating), so we were down to one guitarist again. Fortunately that guitarist was Brian, and the best chapter in the history of the band began.

Whilst having no management and arranging gigs ourselves, we were approached by the guys at Bullet, who could see the potential of this new wave of heavy rock bands, and who were trying to sign us and two other bands. Unfortunately for us, these other bands both decided to sign for bigger labels elsewhere, leaving us in the lurch, and feeling rather aggrieved that a good opportunity was going to be missed. However, the company suggested that if we paid for a recording session, they would pay for it to be pressed and distributed, and so we booked ourselves into the Enid’s, Lodge Studio in Hertfordshire with the intention of recording ‘Metal Messiah’ and ‘Sweet Alcohol’ as a sort of double ‘A’ side. Whilst in the studio we literally had a spare half hour in the afternoon and decided to see if we could get a quick version of ‘Hellhound on my Trail’ down in one, or possibly two takes. As it was, apart from one bum chord from Brian, the first take was perfect, so we left it alone and Brian then only had to record the slide guitar solo over the top, to complete the recording of the track.

Like Save the Khan, the use of keyboards set ‘Metal Messiah’ apart from most releases by other NWOBHM bands of the day, and again charted in the music paper Sounds Independent chart. ‘Hellhound on my Trail’ was played by the very influential and respected Tommy Vance, on his Radio One ‘Rock Show’, who said afterwards that “…this band were going places”. At this time we mainly gigged around Kent and South East London, at venues such as The Red Lion (Gravesend), Kent University (Canterbury), The White Swan (Blackheath), The Ruskin Arms (East Ham) and the Dartford YMCA. We also played some bigger gigs at places such as Chatham Town Hall, supporting the likes of Vardis. To put into context what the band was earning at the time (even with a recently released EP in the charts and an earlier independent hit with ‘Save the Khan’), one night’s profit from The Red Lion was six Crispy Pancake Rolls and chips from the local Chinese take-away, for the band and mates, who helped haul the gear from Mike’s front room to the pub’s stage approximately five miles away, and back again.

One of the band’s favourite tricks, was for after a show in The Red Lion, once we’d finished our set and left the stage, to see if we could get all the equipment loaded, receive any sort of pay, and high-tail it back to our local pub The One Bell, before last orders rang at 10.50pm. It was difficult, but with the incentive of a decent pint of beer at the end of it, well worth the effort and often achieved by the band and supporters.

Whilst our gigs were pretty sporadic, usually two or three in a two week period followed by none for the next month or so, we thought we’d hit the big time when we secured a headlining slot at the famous Soundhouse, with the then famous ‘metal’ DJ, Neil Kay. After hiring a huge PA and truck to take the band to north London, no one at the venue had informed us that Neil had recently quit and moved onto another venue, taking the heavy metal fans with him in the process. We arrived early, set the PA up, sound checked and waited for the hordes we’d read about in the music press to turn up, and make it a night to remember. Unfortunately, by the time we hit the stage, there were only about 25 people in the cavernous venue and 20 of those were friends, so it was a huge disappointment for the band as well as our fans that had made the journey.

By 1981 Brian had become increasingly despondent, and had grown tired of gigging and playing live, and so after much hand wringing and debate, decided to quit the band. As Mike and I felt that it was still possible to gain some further recognition for Triarchy, after seeing Iron Maiden given a record contract and play in much larger venues, we recruited another guitarist (who we only remember as Justin), and cut a track called Rockchild with him, for inclusion onto a local bands’ rock compilation album. Justin promptly disappeared, leaving us pretty desperate to keep the momentum of the interest in the band going.

We then decided to advertise for two guitarists rather than one, which was a compliment to Brian’s style of play and shows the sort of ‘full’ sound he produced live on stage. In response to our adverts in the Melody Maker, Eddie Webb and Pete ‘tabby’ Moore were auditioned and given the jobs of guitarist (both played solo and rhythm), and as luck would have it, Eddie drove a huge transit van which was perfect in size for all our gear and any mates who didn’t mind a bumpy ride to a gig in the back.

Whilst the press coverage and chart success of both ‘Save the Khan’ and ‘Metal Messiah’ was starting to wane, we still gigged locally on a regular basis and occasionally tried our luck further afield. One great place we found to play was on the Kent coast in a hotel called The Royal Norfolk in the small seaside resort of Sandgate, which soon became a regular and raucous weekend away, culminating in much drinking and partying by our friends and locals. We would hit the road on a Saturday morning, followed by about twenty friends in a cavalcade of cars and on motorbikes, and roll up at lunchtime ready to ‘party hard’. We’d set the bands gear up and generally idle the afternoon away in the bar playing pool, looning around on the beach, and hanging out in various café’s dotted around town before the serious business of playing heavy metal started in the evening.

The Royal Norfolk had a reputation for putting on good live bands and we’d hit the stage (well a floor area at the front of the pub) at about 9pm, play our hearts out for an hour or so for our mates and the local rock fans, before falling (usually drunk) into our beds upstairs in the small hours. Vicious hangovers would be dealt with the following morning by a large fried breakfast before the drive home, but never before booking our next gig there, usually about three months later in the year.

The band’s gigs became more sporadic and I was gradually losing interest in playing drums, so after much thought, I told Mike I was going to quit, but would still help out as general roadie and with the lighting/pyrotechnics, which we were still occasionally using depending on the size of the venue. Mike quickly sought a new drummer and again, the next Triarchy member was lured from another local band, that we had now overtaken in terms of gigging and recording success. With Mark Annal now in the drummer’s seat, Mike set about arranging more gigs including the Electric Stadium in Essex where Triarchy supported acts such as Roy Weard’s Last Post (a truly excellent band, now lost in the mists of time) and The EF Band from Sweden. The EF Band support was particularly memorable. A great set of hard rock from Triarchy, accompanied by some theatrical lighting and pyrotechnics, literally blew the Scandinavian headliners offstage. Bluntly put, they were not too amused at being usurped and upstaged, as their comments to the audience later suggested!

Another new venue the band found to play was The Horseshoe in Tottenham Court Road in the West End of London. Supporting Overkill (not the 90’s band seen in Kerrang) was always a night to remember as they were just into playing rock and weren’t weighed down by huge egos, and consequently, always made the band and our group of followers welcome. Whilst their egos were small, their guitarist ‘Big Stuff’ and a roadie were the opposite, being nearly 20st each. Their party trick was to challenge any other crew, or support band member, who were on the large size, to see who had the larger beer gut. Between the guitarist and roadie would lay ‘the challenger’ and all would be on their backs on the changing room floor, whilst a board of wood was placed over their stomachs. It was then up to their latest opponent to literally try and raise the plank of wood, with his beer gut, above theirs. Needless to say they I don’t think that they were beaten very often.

The final, Wheeler-Annal-Moore-Webb line-up of Triarchy lurched on for a while, but it soon became clear that things just weren’t working. Although some good new songs were written at this time – notably ‘Orange and Green’, a track which combined a kind of Thin Lizzy dual guitar feel with socialist commentary on the sectarian divide in Northern Ireland (an unusual topic for a heavy rock band) – the band came to rely increasingly on well-chosen cover versions (such as the MC5’s Kick out the Jams, and Iggy Pop’s Search and Destroy). It was time for Triarchy to call it a day …

… well, almost. Mike proceeded to hook up with guitarist Mark Dawson, from Legend, another local Kent band, and Paul Gunn, who had been in an early incarnation of Squeeze, to form a then-unnamed three piece which spent months on end working on highly polished demos in Mark Dawson’s recording studio. (The studio, called Golddust, is still going strong, with Mark still at its helm.) Three of these demos later turned up as Triarchy tracks on the band’s posthumously released Before Your Very Ears album.

At the time you got together as a band, what was the situation for hard rock and metal bands alike in England?

Mark Newbold: The New Wave of British Heavy Metal was a surge of hard rock/heavy bands that were releasing singles (many independently, like their punk counterparts) and gigging in small local venues. Def Leppard played their first gigs in small working men’s clubs in the north of England and Iron Maiden made the Ruskin Arms in Essex famous, as the place where they began their musical career. Although considerably far fewer in number than the Punk & New Wave bands, that seemed to spawn numerous sub-standard copies, the occasional heavy band were hitting the front page of Sounds in between weeks of the Simple Minds and The Boomtown Rats, and were being given rave reviews by young and excitable journalists, including metal fanatics, Geoff Barton of Sounds and Malcolm Dome of the Record Mirror.

Iron Maiden, who after pulling sizeable crowds in their local haunt, went on quickly to headline The Marquee shortly after, basically from having a large local following, and some deft management who could see their possible huge potential. Def Leppard slowly gravitated towards London from their humble northern origins, released a much praised single ‘Get yer Rocks Off’ whilst being touted as the ‘next big thing’, and throughout the country, various nightclubs were initiating Heavy Metal nights on a Thursday or Friday, whilst continuing with their regular Disco slots on Saturday and other evenings.

The Soundhouse in north London though was the place to be on a Friday night during the birth of the NWOBHM, and play (if your band were lucky – we weren’t!), at the height of its fame with DJ Neil Kay spinning the discs, regularly drew hundreds of hard rock fans along with special guest appearances by members of Judas Priest or Iron Maiden. Live music was thriving, with punk and new wave bands playing numerous small venues across the land, and other bands that straddled across both punk & hard rock like Motorhead, would regularly play The Roundhouse, a sizeable and uniquely circular venue in north London. Compared to today, the number of pubs/clubs and other venues open to hard rock bands, was fairly considerable then, unlike now, and is probably reflected in the number of fewer live bands that create and hone their act playing on the much smaller live circuit today.

Did you ever feel like being part of the movement called New Wave of British Heavy Metal? What does this term mean to you? What memories do you have about these days? What role did you play in that movement and what role in heavy metal history did the whole movement play in your opinion?

Mark Newbold: The NWOBHM has far more meaning for me now after 20 or so years than it did when bands such as us, Angelwitch, Vardis and Diamond Head, were emerging in the wake of Iron Maiden and Def Leppard. We never really looked upon Triarchy as being part of a particular musical movement, but were just hoping to gain recognition for the records and gigs, which were sporadic, apart from the regular local ones, and without any management to help, difficult to come by. The term NWOBHM has a kind of nostalgic ring to it now and I suppose as Iron Maiden and Def Leppard are established worldwide acts, and now possibly approaching retirement (if that’s possible in a rock band!) it seems an awful long time ago.

Without doubt, during this period for me personally, there were both very exciting and disappointing aspects for the band. When we supported bigger bands e.g., Vardis at Chatham Town Hall and Dedringer at Kent University, we were getting a great reception at gigs, but in hindsight, it is fairly obvious that if we’d had a manager back then, we could have gained far more recognition as a 80’s heavy rock act rather than now, over 20 years later. In retrospect, the lowest point of the band was when we thought we had been booked to play the Marquee as support, only to be told on the night by the headlining band that they already had one, and didn’t even know about our booking. As Mike and I regularly attended the Marquee to see new wave/punk and heavy bands i.e. Ultravox and the Pink Fairies, it would really have been the ‘icing on the cake’ in our musical careers. However, our gigs at The Red Lion pub, which was much smaller in comparison, and had a genuinely exciting atmosphere, whilst host to members of the Kent chapter of Hells Angels, were without doubt, fantastic to watch, and brilliant to play.

From our inclusion in the Record Mirror article published on 20 September 1980, we were assured a place in the NWOBHM movement, in part due to the uniqueness of the synthesizers and keyboards on our recordings, and I think that whilst only a handful of the bands really went on to much bigger things (e.g., Def Leppard, Saxon, Iron Maiden), the lesser lights (e.g., Triarchy, Tygers of Pang Tang, Angelwitch) are now being acknowledged around the world for the impact they caused, and the part they played. This is well captured in Malc Macmillan’s excellent book, The New Wave of British Heavy Metal Encyclopedia.

What were your musical and lyrical influences when you started the band? You had those great atmospheric synthesizer passages in some of the songs, what drove you to include them into your compositions? Which were your favourite bands that you listened to (Top 10)?

Mark Newbold: The synthesizer and keyboards were what really set us apart from the rest of the bands at the time, as most were writing guitar ‘riff’ orientated tracks and, few if any, were using keyboards. I guess we were influenced somewhat after listening to years of ELP and later Ultravox and Japan, and a particular sound that springs to mind to compare the solo in ‘Save the Khan’ to, would be Van Halen’s ‘Jump’, which was released in 1984, four years after our first single. Maybe Eddie Van Halen had heard the single and liked the sound!

A ‘Top 10’ list of bands from that period would be very diverse as we’d moved on (but were still listening to) progressive bands, punk bands and what you’d call new wave bands who were being lumped in with the revolution, whilst really being straight rock acts, i.e. Tom Petty. But, in no particular order, my favourite bands at the time were many American acts including Kiss, Starz, Journey, Angel, Van Halen, Blackfoot, the Canadian band Rush, Aussie rockers AC/DC and British bands, like Ultravox, Japan, Black Sabbath, Jethro Tull, ELP, Stranglers, Buzzcocks, Radio Stars etc. Mike was a big Ultravox, Sabbath and AC/DC fan too, but he was more into bands like The Clash and The Ramones than he was “pretty-boy US soft metal” (as Mike would call it). Brian, our principal guitarist, was into Eric Clapton, Ry Cooder and The Eagles. Put all these bands into a melting pot, and you get the influences that made the best line-up of Triarchy what it was.

You released two nowadays sacredly rare 7"s! How many copies of each 7" were made and do you have any idea about their current value? And does your second 7" "Metal Messiah" have an edition with picture sleeve?

Mark Newbold: SRT records initially pressed 1,000 copies of ‘Save the Khan’ and Mike’s dad made up a silk-screened, cardboard picture sleeve, which is now very rare as only 100 or so were made, and these were mostly given to friends, family and sold very early on locally so, these would be extremely scarce and expensive to buy. The private SRT pressing without picture sleeve (CUS599) is listed on Vinyl Tap’s website (vtmusic.co.uk) at GB £120, whilst the later pressing by Direct (NEON1) is for sale at GB £30. ‘Metal Messiah’ didn’t have a picture sleeve and was produced in conjunction with Bullet Records, who distributed it via Pinnacle after we paid the cost of the recording. There are various websites where you can get hold of the singles, including www.alternativemusic.com which has ‘Metal Messiah’ for sale at $60 and the Japanese site, backtrip.co.jp, has ‘Save the Khan’ advertised.

Where did you record your stuff back then? What were the engineers like? Were they familiar with your music and metal in general? How did you finance the recordings? Did you have any outside support?

Mark Newbold: ‘Save the Khan’ and ‘Juliet’s Tomb’ were recorded at Airport Studio in December 1979 and released in 1980, although we had been in a cheap, four track studio in south London to record a demo with Derek Lomas earlier, this was more of an ‘upmarket’ 12 track studio, which we could both afford, and would do the songs justice when they were finally pressed. We recorded both songs and mixed them down to the final masters in about (12 hours) which is unheard of nowadays, and which we actually bettered when recording ‘Metal Messiah’.

The studios we used at the time were really ‘one man shows’ as they owned the whole set up and took charge of recording as well as having their input in the production and possible arrangements. Basically the engineer would suggest ideas ranging from the sound of the drums, to the special effects we could use on the vocals that might make the compositions sound stronger and consequently better. A day in the studio was both a lot of fun, and much hard work, culminating in listening to the final, mixed down cut of a song you had probably heard repeatedly over 20 times during the day, which you’d then eagerly race home and play to your family and mates on cassette.

The studio would be hired out usually by the day, at an hourly rate and would record any band that paid them the going rate, they didn’t specialise in hard rock or any particular style of music, so we were lucky on the ‘Save the Khan’ recording to come across a pretty decent and experienced engineer who helped us put it together. As I said earlier, the recordings were financed by us just saving up over probably six months to get the necessary money to pay the approx £12 per hour studio fee (bear in mind this was quite a bit in 1979!) and for a run of 1,000 copies, which was usually the minimum amount a pressing plant would produce.

‘Metal Messiah’ was recorded at The Enid’s ‘Lodge’ studio near Northampton, which was set in a huge country house and was ran by one or two of the band’s members. Steve Stewart, engineered ‘Metal Messiah’ and who, with his long hair and laid back attitude, we felt comfortable in using and taking his advice. Although it was intended as a double ‘A’ side, ‘Metal Messiah’ was recorded first, followed by ‘Sweet Alcohol’ and with about half an hour of free time left in the afternoon, we decided to see if we could get a version of ‘Hellhound on my Trail’ down.

As the studio engineers like to leave at least an hour or two at the end of a daily session to properly mix down the tracks they had recorded earlier, we really had to get it right first time. And, apart from one ‘bum’ chord, mentioned earlier, it was recorded in one take with the slide guitar solo added straight after. Ask any band today to go in and record, then mix down three tracks in a day and they would think you were insane but, it gave the tracks a real ‘live sound’ and still sounds fresh today as it did on the studio monitors.

Tell us something about your songwriting? How did you create your songs back then? Did they come to birth through endless jam sessions in your rehearsal room or did you have concrete ideas and arrangements when you came up with the songs at a rehearsal? How many times a week did you rehearse and for how long each time?

Mark Newbold: Typically, Mike would write the songs, bringing them to the band in a raw form, ready to be arranged and improved through the inputs of the other band members. There were, however, exceptions to this rule. Sweet Alcohol, for example, came out of a rehearsal jam.

Our rehearsals were mostly performed in Mike’s parents’ front room which was no more than about 12’x 8’ in size, and so once the band were set up with full drum kit, three amps and speakers, (plus we usually had friends that would drop in to listen), it was extremely cramped and loud. I think the record attendance for a full rehearsal was 10, comprising Brian, Mike and myself and seven friends sitting on the sideboard, perched on the windowsill or uncomfortably positioned on the floor.

Traditionally Mike’s mum made us all tea about half way through (real Rock ‘n’ roll eh?) and by the time we’d finished, the room would feel like a sauna. There was an old man who lived next door (no-one lived the other side of the terrace house) and he knew that every Tuesday and Thursday between the hours of 7pm and 10pm, noise levels would be raised to that of a jumbo jet taking off. Mike’s parents would have the television turned up but were really cool about us playing in the next room, and because of the convenience, and that it didn’t cost us a penny, we were pretty considerate, usually stopping every practice near to 10pm or shortly thereafter.

Only rarely did we hire out a large rehearsal studio, which primarily was for the occasional photo shoot, in order to produce some promotional pictures etc. Conveniently for us there was a large rehearsal complex in Greenwich, right on the Thames, south London, where Kate Bush would rehearse before touring the UK and Europe and which had huge, soundproofed rooms for use.

You did a cover version of "Hellhound on your trail", originally written and played by Robert Johnson who already died in 1938. How did this connection turn up?

Mark Newbold: Brian and Mike were big Robert Johnson fans (as well as being fans of other delta bluesmen such as Skip James and Son House), and fancied covering one of his songs. Hellhound on my Trail is a great title for a heavy metal song, but Johnson’s original isn’t exactly metal in style, so we had to spice it up a little!

In 1995 you got a CD Release including all songs from your 7"s and some previously unreleased bonus tracks. What lead to the reissue of your old songs on CD and when did Vinyl Tap come up with this idea? Are there anymore unreleased songs that did not find their way to the CD?

Mark Newbold: The guys from Vinyl Tap had seen a gap in the market. People were paying large amounts of money for original New Wave of Heavy Metal singles, so why not track down some of the bands to see if they had enough unreleased material that could be added to their hard-to-get singles to generate new albums? That’s what they suggested to us, so we put together the five tracks from our singles with some material that Mike had recorded with Mark Dawson and Paul Gunn, and completed the album with a newly recorded version of Hiroshima, our old stage favourite.

There is one unreleased track, a ‘live’ version of Rockchild, which was the song we recorded with Justin (see earlier). The track was to have featured on ‘Kent Rocks’, a compilation album of unsigned local bands, and we had gladly handed over the master tape to an unbeknown and unscrupulous marketing guy who disappeared to Holland, with a further dozen other master tapes, from unsuspecting bands like ourselves. Unfortunately after the track was recorded, Justin literally just sort of disappeared, and after having the cassette copy (which had been slowly deteriorating in quality after 20 years) I decided to get it converted to CD. For a little fun I had it mixed with a ‘live audience’ backing track, by Fairview Studio’s up in the north of England, who then produced a only half a dozen copies for the band.

There was a change in your style from doomy and gloomy hard rocking songs to a more sophisticated but less heavy writing, how did this happen? Did you want to gain more commercial success through those softer songs?

Mark Newbold: The change you mention is between Triarchy ‘proper’ and the material that Mike recorded with Mark Dawson and Paul Gunn. This wasn’t a deliberate ploy, aimed at commercial success. It was simply what happened when Mike, Mark and Paul played together with almost limitless studio time at their disposal!

Back in 1995 I think I read something about reunion plans? Did you have concrete plans for a new Triarchy back then? How did the CD help in spreading your name all over the world?

Mark Newbold: Brian, Mike and I still keep in regular contact, and usually meet up in the summer and around Christmas and, after a few beers, the subject of a reunion or getting together for a ‘one-off’ gig invariably arises. However, presently, it would be rather difficult to arrange due to family commitments and geographical locations, (Mike lives in Scotland, about 500 miles north of Brian and myself.) But I guess that if there were enough feedback via a web site or e-mail etc, we might be stirred on to arranging a one-off gig, which could then be recorded.

I would imagine that Triarchy’s name and music has been spread around the world over the past 10 years primarily through the Internet, via interest in the NWOBHM; specialist record shops, i.e. Vinyl Tap; and other outlets based in Japan where there has always been a keen interest in hard rock/heavy/metal bands. Another method is that of sharing information, maybe on heavy rock or obscure bands, via the chat rooms of various music websites.

The World Wide Web is bringing a lot of supporters and old bands together now, even if it is to ask some questions that they would have only been able to via a fan club etc when they were in existence, but due to the massive advancement in electronic communications, it seems that discovering all kinds of information on any musician or band is now possible. There is also a completely new breed of fan who was too young at the time of the NWOBHM but who can relate to the bands and songs of that period, and I suspect that with the ease of electronic communication this small, but enthusiastic band of followers will grow, as ‘the word spreads’.

You had a connection with the Kent based hard rock outfit Legend that also released a CD on Vinyl Tap back in 1994/95. Tell us more about it, please.

Mark Newbold: I guess this has already been explained. The connection really only happened after Triarchy ‘proper’ and Legend had both split, and Mike and Mark Dawson started working together. The bands knew of each other previously of course, but as rivals rather than as collaborators!

What was the live situation like for Triarchy? With whom did you play very often? Who was your dream band to play with? Describe your shows, did you have any special stage clothing or did you go on stage in your all days outfit?

Mark Newbold: The Triarchy line-up with Brian, Mike and myself played some exciting and thrilling gigs together, from those to small-ish audiences in the Red Lion Gravesend, to those supporting bands like Vardis and Dedringer, where we played in front of 100’s of fans. Being heavily into punk and new wave at the time, I bleached a bright blonde streak down the right-hand side of my hair, wore two earrings in each ear and loved wacky, fluorescent coloured T-shirts. I would change the appearance of my drum kit every six months out of boredom, using paint, tape and stencils, as well as wrap ‘feather boas’ around my drumsticks for effect.

On stage I always believed that we should try and put on a show and thought that the visual side of the band was a very important way of getting us noticed along with the music we were making. Later on I started wearing a shirt and tie on stage as a sort of rebellious statement against all the denim, plastic and leather gear that most of the hard rock bands wore at the time. Mike had a leopard skin jacket that he bought in Carnaby Street, which he used to wear for some gigs (which can be seen on the inside pull-out of ‘Before your very ears’) and which got us into a lot of trouble one Friday evening in the centre of London with some skinheads! Brain, well, he just wasn’t into dressing up!

What makes up the timeless atmosphere of your material? What is so special about Triarchy that even after more than 20 years real fans still remember your name and speak about it with respect?

Mark Newbold: I believe that the synthesizer and keyboards plus the often simple, but memorable compositions, help keep many of the tracks alive and prevents them from sounding too dated. Also, Graeme and Brian’s recorded guitar work sounded vastly different from that of their contemporaries, which avoided similarity, and the possibility of the songs sounding run-of-the-mill, and again this probably adds to their timeless qualities. Basically a great track should stand the test of time over a couple of decades, and the bands that may have fallen by the wayside, in terms of any latent popularity today, were never that original anyway in their heyday.

Until we were told of the current worldwide interest in Triarchy, my biggest ‘kick’ from the band was on a Saturday afternoon whilst out wandering around in a nearby local town in 1981 and hearing ‘Save the Khan’ being played on a small ‘ghetto blaster’ by a teenager. I thought to myself, someone actually likes this (that I helped write) enough to play it for other people to hear as he strolled around a shopping centre. It was as though this piece of music was having an important impact on his life, just through its enjoyment and, just as Emerson Lake and Palmer or Blackfoot had on mine. It’s a nice feeling to have.

Are you still involved in any bands?

Mark Newbold: When I quit Triarchy, I stopped drumming, sold my kit and took up photography. I helped out loading up the bands gear, sorting out the lighting and pyrotechnics, which they occasionally still used, and with my new Pentax camera, photographed them playing. Probably the best band shot I took is on the back of ‘Before your very ears’ and shows the kind of pyrotechnic that went off prematurely in my face at Triarchy’s inaugural gig. After I quit, people would often ask whether I missed playing and whilst I probably don’t, my life still revolves around listening to music and I’m quite happy to watch other bands (even close friends) play. Still, if the opportunity arose where Triarchy could put on one last show or, if I stumbled across a lonely drum kit deserted somewhere, just try and stop me from having a quick bash! In 1984 Mike teamed up with good friend and Dylan-esque vocalist Doug (Durex Jr!, see above) and drummer Matthew Williams in a pop-rock outfit called first The Verse, and then Night at the Opera. This musical project, which also involved, among others, guitarist Steve Rawlings and bassist Dave Benn (Mike mostly played keyboards), lasted until 1989, when Mike finally threw in the musical towel and went to University to study Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence (He’s now a lecturer in Philosophy). Night at the Opera released one self-financed single, Tough Times, which is sort of Big Audio Dynamite meets Graceland era Paul Simon. Mike’s very proud of what he achieved with this band, although the material was never as popular as, and probably hasn’t worn quite as well as, the Triarchy stuff.

Do you still listen to music privately nowadays? What style do you prefer if so?

Mark Newbold: I still listen to a lot of the music I grew up with and am still (at 44) into Ozzy, Blackfoot, Starz, ELP, and most older heavy ‘riff’ orientated rock bands. Additionally I like more recent bands such as Foo Fighters, Terrorvision, Offspring, Hellacopters, Feeder and amongst others Duran Duran. Mike stopped listening to heavy rock altogether for many years, preferring dance music such as De La Soul, and noisy pop such as Carter USM. However, he’s recently become a lover of new rock bands like Queens of the Stone Age, Sum 41, and Bowling for Soup. These days he’s most likely to be caught listening to Portishead, The Flaming Lips, Rage Against the Machine or alt-country acts such as Jay Farrar and his bands (Son Volt and Uncle Tupelo), The Handsome Family, the Willard Grant Conspiracy, and Noahjohn.

Describe your feelings about heavy metal, what does this term mean to you and how did your opinion about this music and movement develop within the last 20 years?

Mark Newbold: I suppose the first time I came across the term Heavy Metal would be in the early 70’s after Black Sabbath released their second album, Paranoid, and who in my opinion, were the original purveyors of this brand of rock music. The first heavy band I saw live were Judas Priest, who had just released ‘Sad Wings of Destiny’ and whilst in the flesh, they were true heavy metal they, like many similar hard/heavy rock bands, were usually just lumped into the Progressive genre along with anyone who didn’t produce singles and didn’t play on Top of the Pops. In 1974 whilst at school, for example, there would be the first year students (11 years old) who were listening to the singles charts and/or disco bands, whilst the fifth and six formers (16 years old) were clearly into Floyd/Genesis/Sabbath plus few who might straddle across both, including 10cc, Slade or Mott the Hoople etc.

By the mid 70’s bands like Kiss, Journey, Starz, Ted Nugent were exporting their hard rock to compete with the UK’s Deep Purple, Free and Uriah Heep but the guitar ‘riff’ orientated bands like Thin Lizzy whilst being considered Progressive, wouldn’t have been considered metal or heavy. Most probably, the next true Heavy Metal act from the UK were Motorhead who arrived with punk in 1976, as Judas Priest spent an ever increasing amount of time touring abroad, in an effort to crack the American market.

To be honest, many of the Metal bands around today like Sepultura, My Vitriol and Opeth, I find really lacking in any originality – they seem to have one concept that they all seem to adhere to, ie the need for speed, and gravel throated vocals, and most of these particular band’s tracks, could effectively have been written by the same person. Even bands that have incorporated rap with metal are beginning to sound similar, and so I think that maybe that is why fans of hard rock/metal, are looking to the past to find inspiration, and the NWOBHM is a good place to start the search.

What were your lyrics all about? Is there any way to get them somehow? Would you please tell us the story behind each song on your CD?

Mark Newbold: ‘Hiroshima’

What more can I say. The fan’s favourite, the song we always closed the set with, and the track that caused me to ‘blow myself up’, during the interval of our opening gig! A treat to play live and always left the crowd calling for more. The lyrics, which concern nuclear war, sound a bit twee now, but when Mike wrote it, in 1975-ish, young people really were scared that an atomic world war would happen.

‘Save the Khan’

It was the title of one of my parent’s books, which after reading I thought would make a good rock song. I wrote the lyrics fairly easily and Mike wrote the music. My belief in why it propelled the band from being a bunch of guys playing in the singer’s mum’s front room, to gaining a place in the NWOBHM movement, was really down to the original and unique sounding synthesizer introduction, and later solo. It basically set us apart from all the guitar ‘riff’ orientated bands that were beginning to sound too similar, plus the title and lyrics didn’t reflect the other songs of the day, which were mainly about either the occult, drinking, drugs or motorbikes etc.

‘Metal Messiah’

The lyrics concern what, in 1980, looked like the danger of an increasing and all-encompassing influence of computers in human life. It’s ironic, given that Mike went off to study Artificial Intelligence, that the song’s got a kind of anti-computer slant. Again, with the benefit of almost 20 years technological and social development, the lyrics sound more than a little naïve – and Mike loves computers now! Nevertheless, the music stands the test of time. The track could be hard work live, from a drumming point of view, due to the up-beat tempo we usually reached on stage (slightly faster than the recorded version). The recording has a lot of force from the opening keyboard and guitar power chords to the dynamic force of the bass and drums, and my hands and arms always felt they had really endured a ‘heavy metal workout’ after it had ended.

‘Hellhound on my Trail’

This is the Robert Johnson song discussed earlier. From Brian’s opening riff to the explosive intro, this was just a great song to play drums on, and one of my all-time favourite tracks to play live. The music just bounds along with a driving bass and great riff from Brian, plus his ‘scraping’ slide guitar middle-eight. It took only one take to record it in the studio, which has essentially captured the spontaneity and energy of the arrangement.

‘Sweet Alcohol’

A song that, unusually, came out of a rehearsal jam. The best thing about it is Brian’s fantastic blending of electric and acoustic guitar parts, especially the acoustic slide. The lyrics are about using alcohol to dull the awfulness of unrequited love. We’ve all been there, right?

‘Juliet’s Tomb’

This has a sort of quirky feel to it (even with the buzz saw guitar sound) and many people asked us what the lyrics were all about after it was released as the ‘B’-side to Save the Khan in 1980. The answer, according to Mike, is that they were about the transition from innocence to knowledge, and what gets lost and damaged along the way. The title refers to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and there’s a line from the play in the final verse. Not your typical sound with the woolly synth intro and ‘elephant cry’ guitar riff from Graeme for each verse, but both of which, gave it an incomparable sound. There were no other bands in the NWOBHM at that time, who were writing similar songs or had similar ideas, and this could be as a result of our deep interest in punk and new wave.

‘Ghost of an Emotion’, ‘Marionette’, and ‘Before your Very Eyes’

These are the three tracks that Mike recorded with Mark Dawson and Paul Gunn. They all emerged from jam sessions in Mark’s studio, but Mike wrote the words. Mike says the first is about the traces of past relationships that we all carry around with us, the second tries to capture the desolate feeling that you’re being exploited, manipulated and undermined by the one you love the most, while the last is a satire on the British media coverage of the Falklands War.

Do you still get mails from people showing interest in Triarchy?

Mark Newbold: No, I haven’t personally, although as we seem to be generating a lot of latent interest after 20 years, we really should try and put a website together, and that is something that we could investigate. It would be really nice to hear from Triarchy fans (both old and new) to hear their opinions on why they liked us, and what some of the tracks mean personally to them, like the young fan I saw back in the early 80’s with his ‘ghetto blaster’ in the shopping centre.

OK, that's it! Thank you so much for answers! Now we leave the famous last words to you!

Mark Newbold: PLEASE, NO MORE QUESTIONS!

Questions: 2003 by Tobi , Sascha & Shige
Answers:  2003 by Mark Newbold