ELIXIR – Having fun…

Eternal Terror’s Helle Stenkløv had the pleasure of meeting ELIXIR for an interview during this year’s Metal Merchants in Oslo. ELIXIR is a British heavy metal band that has been around since 1983 and has retained the same lineup since 1984. The chat was long and the content of this interview, likewise, so please…have fun.

Please tell us: Who are you?

Paul Taylor, singer with Elixir.

Norman Gordon, guitarist.

Phil Denton, guitarist.

I’m Nigel, the best looking man in the band, and I play drums.

Kevin Dobbs, bass.

You were playing at Metal Merchants Festival yesterday. How did it go?

Norman: I thought it went fantastic. Eeh, great crowd. Once we got assigned sort of, it was fantastic. We’re in business and the crowd lifted us. And we had a great gig.

Phil: Yeah, the crowd were great. Good crowd.

I was standing in the front line myself, hehe. Could you tell us about the formation of Elixir? It started in 1983?

Phil: The two brothers, Kevin and Nigel.

Nigel: We sort of formed the band, me and my brother with another guitarist that was a friend of ours called Steve. And then we were looking for another guitarist, so we put out a few ads and…

Phil: Looking for a good one.

Nigel: Yeah, we were looking for a good one, and along came Phil. Hehe, yeah, along came Phil, so we started writing material with the other guitarist, but then he decided to call it a day. So just the three of us, and then we looked for a singer, and then Paul came along. And eventually to find one more guitarist in the band so, we made a few ads and then we found Norman, so. And that was the line-up then!

Phil: We did have a female singer for a while.

Nigel: Oh, yeah! Well.

Phil: Yeah, there was Steve and the two Dobbs brothers, then me, and then we looked for a singer, we’d a girl called Sally, and we did one demo tape with that line-up. But we played that demo tape to Neil Kay (?), he was a DJ at the local place where we used to play, and he liked Sally and he said… He was putting together a girl band in America which she’d like to join, so she went off to, to do that. So we were without a singer again. But then we got Paul.

What do you think about girl singers in metal bands? You went from having a girl to a guy. What’s the story behind this.

Paul: It has to do with tuning, I think. Hahaha.

Nigel: Sally was more in tune!

Norman: I think of… If they can sing and they can do the business, why not?  You know, if they can step up to the mic and you know, belt it out. Then why not?

Not opera, but more heavy metal?

Phil: Yeah, definitely, yeah.

Norman: Crystal Viper and they’ve got a fantastic singer. She’s not just fantastic, but…

Phil: Back in the day when we were around there was Warlock flying the flag with Doro as a female singer. We wouldn’t have minded being in a band like Warlock. That style, Doro was okay with it.

You are having an anniversary these days for the "Son of Odin" album. 25 years ago?

Norman: We can’t, we can’t believe it. Hehehe.

Paul: We look so, yeah.

Nigel: We was only five at the time, hahaha.

You’re still very good looking. Could you tell us about the "Son of Odin" album. That’s kind of a legendary album in the heavy metal world.

Norman: I’ll tell you one thing that happened that’s not often known: The first day I caught my finger in the door. And I had to do all the rhythm with three fingers in stead of four, haha.

Phil: And do the lead solos in the last day.

Norman: I was in agony, I did all the leads and I was in agony, haha.

That’s Django Reinhardt style?

Norman: Yeah! Hahaha! Big amassmounts of blood vessel blistered came out. I got this stuff from the chemises spreadening, were trying to harden it up and evereything, that was… (Laughing a lot)

Still, it sounds good!

Phil: The first solo on The Star of Beshaan…           

Norman: Yeah, I couldn’t believe it. The first, the first time I went in the studio properly recording an album, hahaha. But hey!

Paul: As usually musicians take so long. I think I got about three quarters of a day to record all the vocals. Didn’t use much more than that.

Norman: We knocked it all out in four or five days, didn’t we?

Phil: There was nine days because…

Norman: The mixing was four days?

Phil: We went, we had a week of work. Because we worked. We went down on the Friday night, so on Saturday, Sunday, the week in between, Saturday and Sunday, came home Sunday. We got the nine tracks all so finished by, mixed by the Sunday lunch time, so we had a couple of hours left so we quickly did "Chariot of the Gods", an instrumental one, which we sort of kept as a temp track for our B-side of a single or something (which we never got to release). So that song came to light when "Son of Odin" came out on CD. They asked if we had any extra tracks and we did have "Chariot of the Gods", so.

Norman: Instrumental, yeah.

Phil: Yeah, but that was just done quickly and Norman put another solo in great pain. And mixed it quick and that was it.

Do you think albums get better when they are recorded in just a few days? Nowadays often use over a year, taking long time, perfectionism… Is it more of a nerve in the albums that are recorded in a short time?

Norman: I think if you can get it done within the first couple of takes, it still feels fresh, still excited. I guess at a point, you can’t keep it up. Stamina, you start getting tired and you can’t do the same. So if you can get it knocked, laid down in the first couple of takes, I think it catches the energy more. The longer you try and perfect it I think it loses a bit of the soul.

Paul: But against that… I mean, there is plenty of things in "Son of Odin" album that we would like to have gone back and re-recorded and touched up and made a little bit better. But we just didn’t have the time to do it.

Phil: …or the money!

Paul: Or the money, hehe, yeah, exactly.

Phil: Couldn’t afford to be in the studio for months, you know, years.

What would you like to change then?

Phil: It’s the same with every album, except for our new, latest one. You record an album and you get it mixed in the studio, and you get the tape. Then you play the tape at home a week later and you think "Aah, that bit was a bit… I could have done the lead a bit better or… This could have sounded a bit…"

Norman: Probably more done with the mixing and everything, you know, sound a way with proper master, sweet to get it mastered.

Phil: The vocals are too loud or the guitar is too quiet on a certain place. Just silly little things like that. Whereas the new album we did ourselves. So we could spend months mixing it.

So "All Hallows Eve" is the perfect album in your opinion?

Phil: Well, in mine, yeah (everyone laughs)

Paul: I would have liked to record "Midnight Messiah" again. I don’t think the vocals were captured right.

Phil: Yeah, "Midnight Messiah" was just the first song on the album that we wrote, and we, it was already played live a couple of times. So we knew that song better than all the others, so the others were new. But when we come to record it… I don’t know, it just seemed the hardest one to do.

Paul: It’s just the feel on it for some reason, but I mean it’s not bad, but…

Norman: It’s different problems on it. It’s just… Yeah, we didn’t have a proper studio and we were made doing it in the rehearsal place. Eeh, and even the guitars were different. This time we didn’t really… It’s more through…

Paul: Doing the vocals in Phil’s back garden is never great, haha.

Phil: Yeah, it’s just that we, we sort of take along where we had… Our studio, spend a couple of thousand pounds on a proper recording, get a record deal with the release, and then we got the money to record the next one. But Majestic Rock released our album in 2006, but they were bust, couldn’t pay us any money, so we paid out for a studio recording, but we didn’t have any money. We didn’t have any option, really, but to record ourselves or wait years to we got the money to do a new album.

Norman: Yeah, couldn’t take a risk again.

Phil: Bought a multitrack desk and just recorded ourselves at home. Rehearsal room some of it, and some of it back home, my place. But… I liked doing that, myself.

Norman: It gives us more time experimenting.

After you started as a band, you played concerts and everything went well. But I read about this incident. What happened Friday 13^th in February 1987? This was supposed to be a specially disastrous day?

Phil: Why, it’s a long list.

Norman: Long list. Everything went wrong.

Phil: Yeah, it was Bournemouth. We were playing in Bournemouth.

Kevin (?): I got locked off stage.

Phil: And before that we went to a service station (talking in each others mouth)

Paul: We had two cars, we were passing each other, and I was going like where is Nigel (?) and the car? And we said "No, he’s with you" and they said "No, he’s with you" and, hehe. We’d left him and the drum roadie.

Phil: Yeah, that’s one accident. But Kev couldn’t travel with us because you had to work. Kev couldn’t get a day off work, wouldn’t let him have it, so he just came down with the train after.

Kevin: I was really late. During the gig I wanted to go to the toilet.

Phil: In a big drum solo!

Kevin: Didn’t have much time doing it. So I said to Nigel: "Do a longer drum solo". So i was going out upstairs and after a while I came down…

Phil: …still playing his bass…

Kevin: And, haha, the door shut!

Everyone: The door shut, the door shut!

Phil: You were still playing, you shure came in on queue behind a locked door.

Kevin: …the dodgy keyboard.

Phil: I think it was the dodgy keyboard.

Kevin: Oh, yeah-yeah.

Phil: We were going to do the "Son of Odin" intro which is just like two notes on the keyboard. And it goes…

Kevin: No, it was the "New visions of Darkness".

Phil: Oh, right, very well. It was one or two notes or a chord.

Kevin: With this new keyboard, just…

Phil: Push that button and go! So… And then the lights went out! So I pressed the button, and started off the automatic drum machine instead! (everyone laughing, making drum rhythms, telling stories at the same time).

Paul: Over the piano it was like! Duttu-du-tu,, duttu-du-tu!

Sounds like an american sit-com!

Norman: Hahahaha!

Phil: It was just one of them days where everything went wrong.

Is this why you gave up touring when you gave out "Lethal Potion" in 1990?

Phil: No…

Kevin: No, no, it was… At that time it got to the fact wher we couldn’t get, you know, any descent audiences because people weren’t going out. So, you know, they didn’t listen to gigs anymore. Just wanted to…

Norman: Scene had changed, really. Grunge and all come in, and… I think it was when me and you left and all that? And I just said to Paul, I think: "We’ll just call it a day, you know, while there still had a bit of respectability by the name?" and that was that. We just called it a day after one gig that didn’t happen. That was another day that didn’t go very good, hahaha!

Kevin: Oh yeah, a day with disasters. We had one gig at Astoria that the drummer couldn’t make, Stevie couldn’t make it. So we asked Nigel to come back and do that for us – which he did. Which went ok. I think.

Nigel: Yeah.

Kevin: Maybe, maybe not. We tried to get it back, but it didn’t work. Elixir works as a five piece band, with this five piece. If it’s not us five doing it, it doesn’t seem to work. So that’s why we’ve been so happy playing together for the last ten years. ‘Cause we’re being the original unit playing the original material.

You are one of the very, very few bands that still has the original line-up after the comeback. The comeback was at Norman’s birthday, wasn’t it?

Norman: Yeah, it was my, it was my 40^th birthday.

Phil: It was the first time we met up for a while.

Norman: I was having like a party and a few bands playing in it. And the guys all showed up, and said it would be fun to play "Treachery". And I said "Could you remember that stuff? I haven’t seen some of you guys in years?" and "Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ll get up, we’re real happy to get up!" and we got up and we just rolled it out. And then afterwards it was talking to Phil, and we realized we got an album with material sitting around that we never recorded properly.

Phil: Yeah, I realized it in the afternoon, because after that Norm said about playing "Treachery", I not playing it for years. So i couldn’t, I didn’t have a record player, so I couldn’t play the single. So I had to find a tape of "Treachery" and learn it after that. And I found this old live tape that we recorded in 1985, and as I played, there would be songs coming out, and "Oh, I remember that!". We never released it, but…

Norman: And… Do you fancy recording this stuff?

Phil: So we got a proper recording of it. Not to release it, but just for old times sake, really. We just go back and record it.

So this was the new album you made?

Phil: Eh, "The Idol"

Norman: It ended up being "The Idol" album…

Phil: Yeah, but first of all, The Cult Metal Classics in Greece contacted me through the Internet about a week or so after Norman’s birthday.

Norman: Just after that.

Phil: And they said that "We want to release ‘The Son of Odin’ on CD!" because it never came out on CD. And they said "Are you interested?" and first of all I said "I don’t think anyone wants to hear that, it’s fifteen years old now," and they said it had become a cult album in Greece and you can’t get it because it’s on vinyl. And I said why not, so they did a thousand copies and sold out in a month. And then we guys got back together and played a heavy metal festival in Athens. So we’re like "Ok, we’ll just do it and see how it goes,"

Norman: We thought we’d be the first band on, playing about half nine, but they said you’re the headliners! Shit! Hahaha! We better get our ass in the gear and do some practicing!

Phil: We did a gig in London first, in a pub. And that went okay. And then, when we got to Athens, everything was running really late. We got on about one in the morning. And the band before us, Sacred Steel, was warm. We were a bit worried. The intro went first and we started with "The Idol", they didn’t notice that, but as soon as we started with "Trial by Fire", the second song which was from "Son of Odin" album, everyone makes this big massive roar. And they were singing all the words and chanting along the riffs, and we, we just were taken back because… Last time we played in…

Norman: …anybody knew us over there…

So you had a ten year sleep, and then you came back – almost by accident – and everyone were suddenly chanting your "Son of Odin" album!

Phil: Yeah, and singing all the words and we played about two and a half hours that night. They just kept saying "More, more!". We played everything that we had and got out about half three in the morning. It was great. And from that, some guy saw the video, and put us, asked to play Keep it True, and from Keep it True we did Headbangers Open Air and Heavy Metal Maniacs in Holland. And it just carried on from there, so we just sort of said "We just do this one gig and have fun and that’s it," but it just kept on being fun, really. So, then, Cult Metal Classics said "If you got any old material," we remembered the old tape I found after Norman’s birthday. So we recorded the old songs first, like re-learnt them, and recorded that, released that. But then we said it would be a proper reform once we write new songs and do a new album, so we did that as "Mindcreeper" in 2006, was whole new songs. And then we got to do "All Hallows Eve".

Your success just has continued after this Greek gig?

Phil: Yeah, it just kept going.

Norman: People heard about us and the festival we’d just done and "how good they still are live and that they still do stuff" and so we bounced around the world doing festivals.

Phil: Yeah, so as you’re playing festivals you bump into other bands from the 80s doing and saying the same thing: People want to hear us again, it seemed to be a bit of a demand, so it’s a bit of a surprise for the fall-out bands really. And then we used to say "Why isn’t there any festivals like this in Northern England, Denton, England?" so… There wasn’t, so I did my own: British Steel Festival. So we do that now with mere 80s bands like us, one coming up in a few weeks.

Tell us a bit more about the British Steel Festival! Which bands do you book?

Phil: Well, right. This one, this one coming up is Pagan Altar, Steve Grimmet’s Grim Reaper, us, a band called Saracen that were around in the 80s and a band called Agincourt which are a NWOBHM band that has reformed recently. Eeh, we’ve had, the first one we had Demon, Tygers of Pan Tang, Jaguar…

Norman: Chariot.

Phil: Chariot, Ye Handsome Beasts,

Norman: Cloven Hoof.

Phil: Witchfynde, Praying Mantis, that was on the third… Bands like that, yeah, new wave of british heavy metal bands really. British bands. Because we just want, I mean, because of the costs, you know. Like, I don’t know how these festivals do fly bands in and make money. We got a crowd of about 250 people, and that about 50 from England, we got 200 from Germany, Greece and everywhere else. So, it’s still, it’s hard work to get any…

Kevin: As years go on, there’s not so many bands that play, you know, it’s just.

Paul: Yeah, we have a strict policy that we, we insist on playing. That’s only fair. And we haven’t really got any particular running order. Everyone gets the same length.

Norman: Yeah, we all have the same length.

Paul: And nobody gets paid fees.

Phil: We just share the profits between us.

Paul: Of what comes in. We have to hire the venue, we have to pay the lighting guy, the sound guy, the bar staff.

Phil: Yeah, but after that we split the money.

Paul: Between the five bands, so.

Phil: And we have one top back line, so there’s no band with full stuff like with support bands, the gear, like the headline band having gear all over the stage with two inches of space in front. We’ve just one backline and we share, and we got the same stage space. So we try and make it as equal as possible.

Paul: It’s been really good for the bands. The risk and come down to London and play a gig, knowing they’re not going to cover their costs.

Phil: Hammerhead’ve come for miles.

Paul: And then people see them playing and realize they’re still alive and playing and…

Phil: …they get booked for things, yeah.

Paul: …around the world from there.

I see the NWOBHM scene is growing these days.

Phil: You think so?

Yeah, I there are more and more festivals booking the old bands. Metal Merchants is pretty new, just three years old. Then we have Keep it True, British Steel… There are small festivals popping up all over Europe.

Kevin: Nothing in England, though, we’re the only… So there’s more so in Europe, so it’s still, well, more popular.

Paul: I think it’s popular because at that time people were still writing songs. It wasn’t particularly a type of "how fast can I play a guitar riff" and… growl at people. It was more melodic music, but still heavy. And that still shows. I mean people do appreciate a good song as well as good musicians.

But isn’t it weird that in the cradle of heavy metal, as in England, Great Britain, it’s still so small there, but in Germany, Greece and the Nordic countries – it’s big?

Norman: Yeah, that is really surprising.

Phil: The troubles in England, in England you got a program called the X Factor. And the front pages of all the newspapers every day is "Sheryl Crowe this and Sheryl Crowe that", and the main, people in England just false fed by the medias and the TV and the papers… That’s all they know, probably 99 % of the people just let that up and that’s what they think music is. But there is still 1 % of people that want something different, that go out and find rock. Although from my experience of like, the young kids now, they, they, they play computer games these days, not records. Guitar Hero and stuff like that. My two sons, they like listening to Mercyful Fate and stuff because they’ve heard King Diamond and the Metallica and stuff like that, and they got into, and sometimes they surprise me. We was playing with Diamond Head in Italy in November, and I said I left to go and get a Diamond Head album, and my son goes "I got one here, dad!" and I just ah, thanks, you know. And so. Listening to heavy metal bands and surprising me sometimes. They bought me an Accept album for Christmas.

Yesterday was the first day you played "Son of Odin" in its whole.

Phil: No, we’ve done it before in Greece.

Norman: It was in Greece, but.

Yeah, but you have given out more albums than "Son of Odin", but right now you’re playing mostly songs from that album because of the anniversary. How does it feel when people appreciate that album so much more than your newer releases?

Paul: It is strange, but we’re not quite sure why, hehe, it’s because people have grown up with it and like it, and they feel happy and comfortable with it. I mean, that’s good. We’re very honored that they do.

Norman: We think the new album is as good as anything we’ve done.

Phil: But in 25 years time people are liking the new album.

Paul: So left together and altogether.

Phil: We’re a small band and we haven’t got 2000 pounds to put out big adverts in Classic Rock Magazine in England and we can’t promote it on the radio since that we haven’t got that money to promote the album. So all we can do is sell it on our website and slowly the trick of our album goes out, and someone hopefully likes and tell their friends and they buy it and the word has spread. It just takes a lot longer than the big bands. Like Maiden, they put a new album out and they run and get it straight away.

Norman: Oh, it happens with every band. I mean, you know, Deep Purple. I always said "Machine Head" is their best album, "Fireball" is a great album, "In Rock" is a great album you know and "Burn" is not bad, so people have to have faith, maybe that’s… People that haven’t got that much cash to go around buying albums and spec, so everyone, you know, has heard of that one, so they go for that one first and make sure they like it.

What’s the difference between 1986 Elixir and 2011 Elixir?

Phil: 20 stone? Haha! And a lot less hair.

You’re just as tough.

Norman: I think we’re a bit more accomplish players, and dynamics. First time we’d be all flat and now we can lift, you know, get the mood of a song, much better crafted at that. Eeh, I think the song writing is better, although some people will probably disagree, haha. But there’s no pressure. Before it was a case of "Why can’t we get signed, why can’t we make…" you know.

Phil: We wanted a record deal, picking our jobs and go professional. That’s what our goal was, making a deal, main thing, you know.

Norman: I, I, I think we’re a bit heavier? Hahaha.

Phil: These days we just set, when we got back together we just do it for fun. If we stopped enjoying it we’d stop doing it, but we haven’t stopped enjoying it, you know. When we get on stage we just turn up the volume and, you know, rock it out. It’s great, it’s just, the feeling is still there, the passion is still there.

Norman: On the last two albums if… Experimented a bit. Eeh, we dropped tune, you know, the drop D, so there was different tunes that we never did before. Eeh, so we’ve been, we did a few songs with that sort of thing, which is new for us. It turned out really well, got some cracking songs out of that.

Phil: On the new album we’ve done a fourteen, fourteen minutes, fifteen seconds song, the epic, which we probably couldn’t do when we were in the studio. It’d cost a fortune because it took time to put it together. But recording ourselves we could do that.

Paul: I think we worried too much about what people’d think if we’d do it, so we wouldn’t do it. So now we write things that we like, and if we think it sounds good and the production sounds good, and hopefully the people we want to like it will like it.

So you’re more confident.

Paul: Yeah, less stressed I think, more… You know, we hope everyone like it, but…

Phil: As long as we know there’s going to be an audience there.

But where do you get the inspiration from? As you still play old school metal, do you go back in the old archives, or do you just take things from your head.

Norman: It’s all different. Some of it’s, some of it’s worked on quite a lot, like the long song. That took quite a lot of working on. Some of it just comes straight out of the top of your head, and Nigel might be blasting away doing the drums and I just come in a riff and, ah, like the sound of that (snaps) – and we’re on a roll. Within a couple of minutes we almost got a song. Sometimes it just happens like that.

Nigel: There’s a couple of songs on the album that we haven’t even played as a band when we recorded it. We did afterwards.

Phil: The question was what, about inspiration from, I mean, couple of these boys listen to the more modern music, but I don’t. I still listen, I’ve just got CDs instead of, and I still listen to Black Sabbath most of the time. Heaven and Hell.

Norman: You would be horrified by my record collection.

Phil: Deep Purple, Thin Lizzy… I still listen to the old school rock, mostly. I like Black Country Communion. Have you heard of Black Country Communion?

No, I haven’t.

Phil: It’s Glenn Hughes from Deep Purple and Joe Bonamassa, Jason Bonham.

Oh, it’s a new project!

Phil: Yeah. They’ve just done a new album, but it’s, it’s like 70s old school rock really, so I like it. But most of the time I’m listening to old albums still.

What about you, Paul? You said we’d be frightened of your collection.

Paul: It’s gay.

Like U2 and…?

Paul: No, no, no, no. Captain Beyond. You heard of it?

Phil: Madame Butterfly.

Paul: Yeah, Madame Butterfly, Vanilla Fudge.

Phil: Late 60s rock bands.

Norman: Modern shit, hahaha!

Paul: And so and so, you know, funky stuff. Like Joan Martyn, Nick Drake and stuff like that. I don’t know. Jim Morrison, The Doors.

Phil: My big time is probably, 1980 was a good year. Michael Schenker Group’s first album and Judas Priest, British Steel, those albums were, that was the big influence on my playing and style of thing. And I still listen to that kind of stuff. Mercyful Fate, first two albums, 1983 and -4.

Paul: It does show that we do listen or have listened to older stuff. Because when Phil came out with the, on the "Mindcreeper" album there was the "Iron Hawk" which, Phil came on with the main riff of that, and just said "Well that’s the riff, the main part of that song is the riff," I thought well, hang on a minute. Budgy can get away with playing a riff, one riff for about ten minutes in a song and get away with it quite nicely, so we did that. And that made him do the song. And it worked out brilliantly, I think.

Phil: Norm’s come up with that verse part, chord, verse part. When Dobbs reverse the original and it was sort of like, oh, put it in a new direction there and we carried on.

Paul: We know what we’re good at. So if Phil comes up with a riff he’ll say: "I got this killer riff, it’s good, it’s good introduction thing, pretty easy for a verse, but I need a chorus," and one of us will try and chip him with a chorus for it. I forgot something, I say it’s lacking something, we give it to Phil, and Phil will say "Okay, we need to drop another section and put another little panel in,"

Norman: I mean, progressive, progressive metal. You know, I like Rush, Dream Theater and that sort of stuff, which is just a whole other side of playing like, so…

Phil: When we started as well, early influences were Mercyful Fate albums and Queen’s first albums, and that was like complicated, technical time changes and things.

Norman: Probably Queen and Mercyful Fate were probably some of our biggest influences really in the early days, really.

Phil: Yeah. Paul sort of moved out of there, when we put all the time changes, you know, did songs like "Deftoes" (?) which was songs with great big changes, moved us out and did the songs more vocal friendly and…

Paul: Yeah. Definitely. Hehehe.

What are your future plans after all these festivals and the new album? Are you going to write a new one?

Phil: We’re really working on ideas for a new album, yeah. ‘Cause we’ve got a recorder now. Nothing is holding us back, you know. I’ve got, I’ve been demo capping the last few weeks putting a few riffs down to demo form, but we haven’t started working on that until… We’ve got a few festivals and gigs coming up till April, and then after that…

Paul: We’ll see what comes in, if anything…

Phil: Yeah, in between time we’re thinking of some new ideas for an album. But we’re, I quite fancy doing a whole concept album next time. Whole album. If… We’ll se how it works, if it works, then we’ll go with it. If we get a few songs and everything, then no, then.

Paul: We’ll see, we’re definitely working on more stuff, and we’re not gonna give up now. It might take us a year or two, depending on what we have to do.

Phil: Depends what we have to do between, yeah. If we got no gigs and et back to writing.

Paul: But as far as I’m concerned as long as we’re still alive we might as well keep doing it. So, you know, you’re long time dead so you might as well leave stuff behind that somebody hopefully will like.

That sounds really good. Now we’ve actually talked for 40 minutes, so is there anything you’d like to add in the end?

Paul: Well, just really to thank all the fans that are out there for giving us such great welcomes.

Phil: Fans, promoters…

Norman: First time we’ve been to Oslo, we’ve never been in Norway before, so thanks to the people in Norway, thanks to the audience last night.

Phil: Yeah, Metal Merchants Festival.

Paul: The organization of the festival has been really good and we’ve been looked after and the stage was good. Really enjoyed it. And it goes for the rest of the guys in Europe. You know, the fans that won’t make it. If they still like it, we’ll still make it.

http://www.coldtown.com/elixir/