TOKYO BLADE - UK
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Members Vocals Guitar Bass Drum |
History & Biography Reviews TOKYO BLADE - Same - POWERSTATION TOKYO BLADE - NIGHT OF THE BLADE - POWERSTATION TOKYO BLADE - BLACKHEARTS & JADED SPADES - BANZAI TOKYO BLADE - AIN'T MISBEHAVIN'...... - SCRATCH TOKYO BLADE - NO REMORSE - HOT BLOOD/GAMA TOKYO BLADE - BURNING DOWN PARADISE - FRESH FRUIT/SPV TOKYO BLADE - PUMPHOUSE - ZOOM CLUB TOKYO BLADE - THOUSAND MEN STRONG - FASTBALL TOKYO BLADE - UNBROKEN - 3MS TOKYO BLADE - DARK REVOLUTION - DISSONANCE TOKYO BLADE - FURY - DISSONANCE TOKYO BLADE - TIME IS THE FIRE - DISSONANCE Interviews  This was awkward. We will instead host Andy here on location at Metallian Towers next time. Andy being guitarist Andy Boulton of veteran NWOBHM band Tokyo Blade with whom Ali "The Metallian" was speaking on the occasion of the release of the Time Is The Fire album. Without getting into too much detail it was slightly challenging figuring the logistics of the interview out. With that settled, and out of the way, a video connection is established with the interviewee holding his device diligently in front of his mouth, while the interviewer had his ear mere centimeters away from his speakers the entire time. It was not quite Benny Hill, but it probably was Mr. Bean. Gratifyingly, Andy was a gentleman and a gracious interview partner and the result was productive. The guitarist was happy to answer any and all questions, be candid, take positions and the result is below for you to read. The band is Alan Marsh (vocals), Andy and John Wiggins (guitars), Andy Wrighton (bass) and drummer Steve Pierce. - 22.02.2025 METALLIAN: Do you recall the 12 Commandments In Metal compilation? ANDY: I do remember it. Yeah. I think I've got a copy of it somewhere on vinyl, I think. METALLIAN: I believe it only came out on vinyl. It was back in 1985-ish. The reason I bring it up is that is where I first heard Tokyo Blade. I got this compilation and came across Tokyo Blade. ANDY: What was the song? METALLIAN: Tokyo Blade's contribution was the song Fever. That was my introduction to the band and I still have the LP. With that said, I want to get to the current songs and music, but since I have you, I cannot resist but ask several questions that I've been asking myself for years. ANDY: Okay. No problem. METALLIAN: Andy, looking at Tokyoblade.com one sees a mention of the band having started out with the Killer monicker. Yet, there was a band called White Diamond before. What's the distinction? ANDY: White Diamond was more of a covers' band. We really started writing our own stuff when we changed the name to Killer. METALLIAN: What was the line-up for White Diamond? ANDY: Oh, god. Well, Alan was in it, myself, Steve Pierce, Andy Robbins on bass and Ray Dismore on guitar, I think. METALLIAN: That clarifies that. Where did the name Tokyo Blade come from? In conjunction, where did your Japanese influence come from because, right now in this scene, Japan is very trendy. Many people use Japan and samurai, etcetera as motifs nowadays. I know there was, Woman From Tokyo by Deep Purple and Midnight In Tokyo from Y&T, etc. Yet, regarding 'Tokyo Blade' where did this name and this fascination with samurai of Japan come from? ANDY: It wasn't really down to a fascination with Japanese culture as such. We were trying to… we were sitting around trying to decide, we wanted to change the name of the band and we were trying to decide what to do. I wanted to call the band just Tokyo. Alan came up with the tie-in with the name Blade Runner, but, obviously, Blade Runner was a film, so I suggested Tokyo Blade because Alan liked double barreled names. So I suggested Tokyo Blade, and everybody went sort of quiet and thought about it and said, 'what does it mean?' I said, 'I don't know. It doesn't mean anything.' And that was it. That was how it came about. METALLIAN: There's more to it than that because, obviously, you ran with the imagery, right? ANDY: Well, we ran with the imagery because of the name that we'd come up with, but it wasn't initially, it wasn't really any sort of fascination with Japan per se. It was just that we came up with the name of Tokyo Blade. We just then went off on that Japanese culture thing, you know, purely because of the name of the band. It wasn't sort of done the other way round. It wasn't like we were really into Japanese culture and we decided to call the band Tokyo anything or Japanese anything. It was just that was how it came about. 
METALLIAN: Did the band ever receive any outsized Japanese fandom or a reaction?ANDY: Yeah. We were very well-known in Japan, but we never ended up playing there. Something happened everytime we were supposed to play there. Something went wrong and we never got to play there. So, I don't really know. I mean, I know that we were often in the big Japanese magazines like Burrn! and stuff like that. Other than that, I can't really gauge how big we were in Japan. METALLIAN: Are you a fan of Blade Runner? ANDY: It's not in my top ten movies, but it is a good movie. METALLIAN: Andy, I want to get to the new album, but one more question first is about the line-up, the group. How did this line-up of Tokyo Blade, you guys, survive intact? I know there have been many members in the interim. People have come and gone, but you five back together is quite an achievement in a world where people come and go on an almost daily basis. I mean, Iron Maiden aside, even with Judas Priest there's just two of them left. ANDY: Well, there was a time when the band wasn't the current line-up. As you say, there were line-up changes. When we got back together, whenever it was, it was just that everybody was still… everybody wanted to, we've never, really had any sort of big falling outs. We've never had any massive disagreements or anything like that. So, we were just sort of happy to work together again and that's how it came about really. You know, you're right in what you say. There are very, very few bands… In fact, I think we're one of the very few with the original line-up. If you take a band like Tygers Of Pan Tang, for example, there's only the rhythm guitarist left as an original member of the band, which I think is a bit weird because I don't really see how you can still go out as the Tygers Of Pan Tang if there's nobody in it except for the rhythm guitarist. But, hey, you know, they're doing it. So, best of luck to them. METALLIAN: So, it's just a matter of you guys never being estranged. ANDY: Yes. We all sort of stayed in touch and it just seemed right to do a sort of comeback and do a new album. I think when we did the comeback thing, we didn't realize that we had so many fans. We thought that it would just be a flash in the pan. It's just a one-off thing, but I'm happy to say that we're still making albums. We've still got a record company. We've got fans, worldwide, who love the band. So, you know, our attitude… whilst we can still make albums, let's do it, you know? METALLIAN: Is the band going to tour or play festivals? Are you remaining active? Do you guys live close to each other and have that cohesion? ANDY: Well, Alan and I are the songwriters of the band, obviously, and we live very close together. So, it's easy for us to carry on writing. The rest of the band, unfortunately, are sort of split up. Most of them live quite a long distance from us. We've got no immediate plans for touring anymore or festivals. We have been asked, but, there's a lot of problems with that at the moment, which I won't go into too many of them. But, you know, one of the big problems is that we had a shit government that, you know, caused us to suffer Brexit, which means that Europe is a pain in the ass to play now. And there's other personal issues that mean that touring and playing live is very difficult now. METALLIAN: When you said "shit government," you were referring to the previous Conservative government. ANDY: The previous Conservative government, definitely. It's still early days for the new government. We haven't felt… I don't think we've felt much of a change in the new government at the moment. Time will tell. Obviously, the political arena at the moment is really weird. You've got that maniac Trump. The man's a fucking idiot, doing his thing over there and just generally pissing everybody off. Our government, the current government, it's too early to tell whether they're gonna… the country was left in such a state, after the Conservative government, that it's a monumental task to try to get the country back on its feet. So as usual, it's the poorer people that suffer, as is the case in most countries. it's always the poorer people that suffer. METALLIAN: I am not sure why you are insulting fucking idiots when you refer to Trump as a "fucking idiot". ANDY: Definitely. And, obviously, he's managed to upset your government and your country, which again, the man's a fool. I mean, I was really totally amazed when he got back in again. I could not believe that the American people are that stupid but, I don't know I guess he's popular with people, I don't know who but, he must be popular with somebody. So it's just like watching a car crash. I mean, every day the news comes on and the man's done something with his little puppet that he's got by his side there, which is, Elon Musk. It's remarkable. It is absolutely remarkable. You would never have foreseen that amount of nonsense and just abuse of power. It's incredible. METALLIAN: Seeing is believing. Seeing that they reelected him, I have no kind words left for those people. ANDY: No. No. Definitely not. It's literally beyond me. I can't begin to work out why they thought that he was the best. There's been a succession of American presidents that, you know, Joe Biden was okay, but, you know, he was old and losing the plot. So they needed to get Joe replaced, but replace him with Trump? I mean, that's a massive step backwards.. That's crazy. That's literally crazy. I guess enough people want the twat back so we're stuck with him. METALLIAN: Something about the inmates taking over. ANDY: Yes. Yes. The inmates taking over the asylum. Absolutely. That's what's happened there for sure. Hundred percent. METALLIAN: Your prime minister is over there next week. ANDY: Yeah, we'll see what happens there. The trouble with our current prime minister is that he doesn't really know what to do. He flip flopped. He's not strong. He's very characterless and ineffectual. He's not an ideal choice for a prime minister at all. Again, it was because the last lot was so bad that people just voted them in, just voted Labour in just to get rid of the last lot, which would have been alright if we'd have had a powerful figure to lead the Labour party. But Keir Starmer just goes with the wind, you know, whichever way. One minute he's gonna do this and then he's gonna do that, and you know he spends his entire time just trying to keep everybody happy and you can't do that. You're gonna piss off somebody and he just spends his time trying to just keep everybody happy which is weird. But there we are. METALLIAN: You're calling him wishy-washy. ANDY: Very, very, extremely. METALLIAN: Seems we agree on a couple of things here, but let's talk about the album and a couple of the songs. What I realized as I was writing a review for the album is that no one in this band is phoning it in. This is not an album written by people who are saying, 'We've been around forty plus years. We're just gonna write another album and put something out there.' Where does this come from? After all these years and so many songs, you should be a little more blase about it. ANDY: Well, I'm very lucky as I have my own studio set up here, which means it's very easy for Alan and I to write ideas and demo ideas. Even our record company says, 'you guys are so prolific.' You know, 'where do you find the time to do it?' So, we are very prolific. We are also very picky about what songs make it to the album. We've got dozens of songs that possibly might never see the light of day because we've listened to them and said, 'no, it's not good enough.' The main thing is that Alan and I have been writing for so long now that we've pretty much got it off to quite a fine art where we know what we wanna do, but at the same time, we don't want to just sit on past laurels. We don't wanna just sit there and write the same album twenty times. We're always looking to do something a little bit different, a little bit new. When you're in a sort of a hard rock or heavy metal band, whatever you want to call it, you can't stray too far out of the genre without everybody getting pissed off. So you can't start putting Country & Western songs on there or anything like that. But, we do like to experiment and push things a little bit without coming out of the genre too far if that makes sense. We've been doing this for so long now, writing together, that it is weird because people have often asked, 'where did the idea for this come from?' or 'where did the idea for that come from?' and I honestly don't know. I don't know where it comes from. It's very strange. When you just sit there in front of your gear and then the next thing you come up with is a riff or a chord sequence then, right. Okay! Before you know it you've got a song together. Then I'll shoot that idea over to Alan. He's a very great lyricist and obviously a great singer. He will listen to the idea. He will quite often change things. So we'll come up with one idea and we'll record that and see what we think. Alan will quite often come back and say, 'no. I've got a better idea for the vocals than that.' So a lot of work goes into it, but it's something that we both enjoy. We're both very creative people and it's something that we enjoy doing. That's kind of all I can say on it really. I suppose that's about it. METALLIAN: The album is longer than average. Are you saying that the number of songs is owing to the fact that you own your studio? ANDY: It's partly down to that because it's much easier to to put songs together and get a good idea of what the song is gonna sound like when you can actually record it properly and listen back to it properly. So that does make life a lot easier. Back in the old days, we had a cassette player and that was it. And we didn't have a drum machine or anything. We just had the cassette player and we just had to just put ideas down and try to remember a week later what that idea was actually all about and where we were going with it. The stuff is really mostly written by Alan and I. The other guys do have some input occasionally, but they are basically quite happy to leave it up to us. We've got one particular fan, one particular French fan, who continually slags off every album that we do and only wants to talk about the first album and the second album. He's very much in a minority. I think he's very much on his own in his opinion. We've sort of said a thousand times, well, why would we want to… you know, Night Of The Blade was written about forty, I think, forty five years ago. Why would we want to be doing it in February 2025? I would be bored witless if that was all we were going to do! We wouldn't be doing it. We would be like, 'if we weren't capable of writing songs better than the stuff we did back then, then really we might as well give up.' We don't want to keep writing the same album. As I say, we want Tokyo Blade to have a distinctive sound as a band, which is obviously largely to do with Alan. he's got a very unique voice. You get a lot of these singers these days and you can't tell who's singing. It could be anybody. So because of Alan, we've got a very distinctive sound and, why not use all the tools that you have at your disposal to craft the best songs that you can? That's kind of where we are with it really. METALLIAN: Is this French person simply a lone fan or are you referring to some institution? ANDY: No. It's just a lone fan who pops up on our Facebook page every so often and just comes out with stuff like 'oh, they've got a new album coming out. I won't be buying it and all the rest of it.' We're like, well well, don't.' You know, nobody's asking you to! The thing with people that criticize stuff is, as I've always said, I don't care. If you don't like it, the answer is simple.Don't listen to it. If you like it, great. If you don't, fine. Just don't listen to it. Go and listen to something else. There's no point in just sitting there slagging off somebody that's put a lot of work into something. Just leave it. Just say, 'I don't particularly like it' and that's the end of it. Yet, you get people that seem to… there are people out there that seem to think that we should be writing the same album that we wrote forty, forty five years ago, in 2025. Well, no, sorry, we're not interested in that. Carry on listening to the first and second albums if that's what you want to do, but other than that we're just gonna carry on doing what we wanna do. METALLIAN: I identify with your fan, in a sense, because there are many bands where I only like their first or second album or first and second album. That's fine as you're saying, because as a fan, I notice there are bands that completely wimp out. Metallica is a perfect example. Yet, it's not like you guys, as you said, are Country & Western today. ANDY: You get some people that say - the guy from the record company for example - he said that he thought that this album was more aggressive than Fury (of 2022). Well, I don't think it is and Alan doesn't think it is. Everybody's entitled to their opinion. Everybody's entitled to a view and everybody's entitled to listen to stuff they want to do. And I agree with you normally, with a lot of bands, you get the first couple of albums that are good and then it kind of just tails off. You get bands like AC/DC that have written the same album fifteen times, which again it's I don't have a problem with that because there's only so much you can do with the the type of music that AC/DC play, which is sort of power of blues really, there's only so much you can can do with that and the fans expect the next AC/DC album to sound like AC/DC so they kind of, in a way, painted themselves into a little bit of a corner. Whereas the bands that I really admire, the bands from the old days were the bands that broke the mold. So, Queen, for example, the first two albums are very heavy. The next album started going off a little bit. Then they started doing all sorts of stuff, but basically they were like, 'we're just gonna do what we wanna do. And hopefully people will like it.' People obviously did. And Led Zeppelin, the first first two albums were… the third album was quite different from the first two. So, I don't think there's anything wrong with pushing the boundaries a little bit and saying well let's do something new, let's try something new, which is what we try to do, but we try to keep it in that pocket to a certain extent so we don't we don't release many ballads or stuff that. It isn't us. We don't try to be too commercial. I think we just write what we wanna write. It's as simple as that. There's no game plan. There's never a game plan! METALLIAN: You mentioned proximity. Do you and Alan still live in the Salisbury area? ANDY: Well, we live in Salisbury or just outside Salisbury in Wiltshire, which is sort of South Southwest. Sure. METALLIAN: Sure, I've been there. I've been to Salisbury, the cathedral, Stonehenge and the Cheddar Gorge. ANDY: Alright. Okay. Well, Stonehenge is about, from where I live, Stonehenge is about two miles, two or three miles. I've been here all my life. METALLIAN: I noticed that the Time Is The Fire and Fury album covers are related. Are they AI imagery? Is that something that you've created via AI? ANDY: No. If it's… well, I say no. It was given to whoever the record company used to do the artwork and whether there's AI being used in it or not I don't know. I think AI is really good for that kind of thing. I don't know much about AI so I don't know how specific you can be. Since the album was called Time Is The Fire, we wanted the same character that was on the cover of Fury, which is the robot kind of terminator samurai thing. we needed the clock of time in the background. I guess you can do that with AI. I don't know. I mean Fury definitely wasn't done with AI. That was done by our old art guy that used to do all our artwork, but he doesn't do it anymore. So, we were left sort of to find somebody that could do it and the record company got a guy, but I wouldn't have a problem using AI. 
METALLIAN: Alright. Let's get to a couple of specific songs I want to ask you about.
Perhaps my favourite is Man On The Stairs. This one is a little mysterious and creepy. What is this song about?ANDY: Yeah. Sure. It's based on a quite well-known poem. And the poem is Yesterday, Upon The stairs, I Met A Man Who Wasn't There, He Wasn't There Again Today. I Wish, I Wish He'd Go Away. It is creepy. It sounds very creepy, but the original poem is about a guy who, it kind of looks not so much as himself on the stairs, but looks in the mirror and doesn't recognize himself because time and age have taken their toll. So that's really what that's about. We just made it sound ultra creepy and dark. METALLIAN: Who's the female vocalist? ANDY: They're two girls that are friends of mine who live fairly close by and I asked them if they would come and do the vocals on the album, which they kindly agreed to do. METALLIAN: So they are not professionals. These are just friends. ANDY: They are professionals and have their own band, which is called Miller's Daughter. They're both very good musicians. They both play guitar and sing very well and harmonize together. Completely different stuff than what we do. Their stuff is country oriented. They are called Miller's daughter. METALLIAN: Let's talk about Are You Happy Now. ANDY: I think that is about… it stems from a thing that our mothers say. It's an English thing. It's a thing that our mothers used to say. So if, for example, when you're a child and you tend to do things that children do, which is stuff that you shouldn't be doing; for example, if you were messing around with something at home and your mum said to you, 'if you keep doing that, you're gonna break it' and then eventually you break it your mother would say, 'are you happy now?' Meaning, basically, right you've now gone and done what I've told you not to do, but now it is broken, and you can't mess around with it anymore because you've broken it. METALLIAN: What about The Six Hundred, which is about the same topic as Maiden's The Trooper? ANDY: It is. It's about the Charge Of The Light Brigade at the Battle Of Balaclava, which is based on a famous poem written about it. I think our take on it was a little bit different because our take on it was more the fact that those men were sent to their deaths because they were governed by idiots. You know, the usual old saying that generals sit at the back of the battlefield, out of the way, out of harm's way and order the men to their deaths. Then shit happens. So many people die because of the stupidity of their leaders. METALLIAN: There is a line from Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon about the general in the back, "Forward he cried from the rear/And the front rank died…" ANDY: Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Exactly. It rings a bell. And War Pigs by Black Sabbath. METALLIAN: Did you have any hesitation picking the topic given that The Trooper is so famous? ANDY: No. We don't worry about what other bands do. We don't really take much notice of other bands. We just do what we want to do. It was just an inspiration from watching, from watching a movie, about that very thing. That's where we draw a lot of our inspiration from. Alan writes the lyrics, but he draws his inspiration from films, from current events, from politics; his political views of what's going on in the world. We're not the sort of band to say, 'oh, we better not write that because somebody else has done it.' There are plenty of bands that have written about plenty of things. You're going to get a crossover where somebody writes something. For example, Ramesses on the album, again, you could say, 'oh, well Dio wrote a song called The Chains Are On, which was about Egypt.' METALLIAN: There's Iron Maiden's Powerslave. ANDY: Yeah. Powerslave. Our take on it was about Rameses because he was a very well-known pharaoh, who had a tendency to get his name put on all sorts of things that he didn't actually have anything to do with. So if he saw something that was wonderful the workers were instructed to put his cartouche on there and put his name on it. METALLIAN: Was he Donald Trump? ANDY: Yes, yeah very very similar… Donald Trump of his day. And again, that's based on the poem by (Percy) Shelley, which is a famous poem. The inspiration for that came because I was watching Alien: Covenant. METALLIAN: The alien sequel. ANDY: Yeah. Yeah. At the beginning, in one of the scenes, he talks about, David, he talks about the statue of Ramesses and Ramesses had this great big statue built and said this will live and will make me immortal. I'll live forevermore because of this statue, but nothing lives forever. Nothing stays the same. Statues get broken, they get torn down; they get worn away. You know, everything's got an ending to it. Ramesses believed that that particular statue would make him immortal. METALLIAN: A couple of minutes ago you mentioned that the band does not sound like anyone else. I mostly agree with you, but there's one song I want to draw your attention to which made me think of another band. That song was Soldier On, which made me think vocally and musically of Thin Lizzy. ANDY: It's funny you should say that because there are a few people that have drawn that comparison. It's a comparison that we're really happy with because Alan and I were both Thin Lizzy fans. Phil Lynott (of Thin Lizzy) actually died in at Salisbury Hospital. So did Paul Di'Anno, actually. He died in Salisbury. We've had a few famous people that have died here. Phil was a fantastic lyricist and Lizzy was a great band and a big influence on Alan and I. They were a massive influence on Iron Maiden. People forget that. You know, people think that Iron Maiden is very original. They're actually not. They were influenced by the same people as we were, which was UFO and Thin Lizzy. If you look back to the early UFO days and you see Pete Way with his stripy trousers on, you know, really as a front man on the bass show up there with the vocalist, you can see where that's that's come from. The twin guitars, that was a Lizzy thing, a Thin Lizzy thing. Lizzy didn't start it. They weren't the first band to use harmony guitars, but they were certainly the first band to really popularize that style of playing. The song did come out sounding very much like Thin Lizzy, which again, we could have said, 'oh, you know, that sounds a bit like Thin Lizzy,' but we're like, 'fuck it. It's a great song. It sounds good. Fuck it. We don't care.' You can call it a tribute if you like. It doesn't bother us at all. METALLIAN: Did you know Phil Lynott by any chance? Did you ever meet him? ANDY: I did meet him, but very, very briefly. That was when he was in another band called Grand Slam. They played at a local venue in London where one of the guys that was connected with us was sort of in charge of booking the bands. It was a very brief… it was not really a conversation. It was just kind of 'hello' and that was it. Lynott was very drunk. So famously so, right? Yeah. He was on his way out. He actually looked like… it wasn't long after that that he passed away. He looked really bad. He was probably drugged up as well. So it's a shame. It was a real real shame to see your heroes when they're in that kind of condition. A lot of people get addicted to drink and drugs and all that shit. METALLIAN: Speaking of which, did you know or meet Paul Di'Anno? ANDY: Yes. Yeah. A couple of times. To me, as far as I'm concerned, the best album that Iron Maiden ever did was Killers. METALLIAN: That's my opinion as well. ANDY: Yeah. I think that's the best album they ever did. It was a great album. The sound was great. The songs were great. Paul had, again, a difference to his voice. He didn't sound like anybody else. And when Bruce came in there's so many people now that sound like Bruce. I'm just not really a fan. I'm not really a fan of Maiden at all, but the early albums, particularly Killers… That was, to me, that was a great album. In actual fact, if I do listen to Maiden, which is very rare, but if I do listen to them it would be Killers. Yes. That's definitely my favourite. METALLIAN: It's a wilder album in my opinion. Earlier, your signature pointed to a website that, by the way, doesn't exist anymore and is defunct, about native progress Could you tell me about that? ANDY: Well, I've always been, I've always had a real empathy towards native Americans. I ended up getting involved in that charity, which still exists. The charity still exists. Maybe the link's changed now. I ended up marrying. I spent a lot of time in America and ended up marrying an Apache and then really got really involved before I ever even met her. I was involved with the charity because it's a classic example of an entire race of people being bullied into giving up their land and giving up their ways and their way of life by white settlers. Again, all over it's all about money, well, all about religion and money. You know, unfortunately, America hasn't really changed very much. It's still very much a nation obsessed by money and how much everything is worth and what they can get out of it. It's just a very sad thing; very sad state of affairs. METALLIAN: Which years were you living in The US? ANDY: Well, I was back and forth a lot. So it would have been, oh god, probably kicked off about ten years ago and I was back and forth. I spent a lot of time over there. Then I was back over there again and then back for a bit. So, I wasn't an official resident. I spent a lot of time there. METALLIAN: Andy, is there any news to bring to the attention of the readers? ANDY: We're currently, Alan and I, currently working on the next album. We're about six or seven songs into it already! There is talk, which is a possibility at the moment as nothing has been finalized, but there is talk of an interim album coming out, which would feature some unreleased stuff that we've done, including a couple of ballads funnily enough. That came about because our record company said that they wanted to do something and did we have anything kicking about as far as unreleased material? I sent them the unreleased material, and they said they'd like to do an album. One of the bits of material that I've got is actually a live recording from back in 1984 of us at the Earthquake Festival. The first big festival we did was the Aardschok festival. That was with Metallica and Venom. That was the first big one we did and then we did the Earthquake festival. It's quite rough because, obviously, it was recorded from the crowd by somebody probably with a cassette player. So, the quality isn't great, but it's one of the few live recordings of us that exists. METALLIAN: Is this before or after the Night Of The Blade album? ANDY: This is after Night Of The Blade. METALLIAN: Okay, and the rare material, the unreleased materials, and the two ballads, which era are they from? ANDY: Oh, they've been kicking around for probably five years. METALLIAN: Is there a timeline potentially for such a release? ANDY: We've got nothing confirmed yet. It is an idea the record company is kicking around. METALLIAN: Andy, why is Metallian the very best site for heavy metal? ANDY: It's the very, very best site for heavy metal because Tokyo Blade says it is. The 2025 album by Tokyo Blade is called Time Is The Fire and available through Dissonance Productions. The band's website is here.  My first encounter with Tokyo Blade's music occurred in the mid-1980s when a compilation called 12 Commandments In Metal had a rendezvous with me at a record shop. Tokyo Blade was featured on the sampler with the song Fever, marking a personal introduction to the NWOBHM band via my record player. Years, and indeed decades, have passed since then and Tokyo Blade has been through peaks and troughs, released albums with both sharp edges and others with disappointingly dull ones and has had more member changes than a well-used sword has been forged, reforged, sharpened and re-sharpened. Tokyo Blade recently released its 2025 album, Time Is The Fire, which to these ears is the band's best. This suggests that a band known for having one of the more convoluted biographies in hard rock and heavy metal remains also a valid one to this day. That gave Ali "The Metallian" two good reasons to sit down with guitarist Andy Boulton to discuss the quintet's history. There are many years to review, many members to count and many albums to discuss and this conversation is meant to shed biographical light on all of them. The guitarist was not exactly effusive truth be told and was probably weighed down by his busy life, other commitments, concerns about dredging up the past and, at a guess, awed himself by the monumental task of trying to condense Tokyo Blade's history into a couple of hours of conversation. Nevertheless, Boulton is a gentleman and gave his time to this long chat. Good thing too; much information was shared and dissected, trivia abounded and there were even a couple of updates, including how an album described as being similar to Time Is The Fire is en route! There is a separate interview regarding that 2025 album here as well, but in this conversation, the focus is on the past and the story of a band whose biography makes Zeppelin, the Sabs and Deep Purple seem straightforward in comparison! This is one interview worth reading. - 17.05.2025. METALLIAN: Andy, to start, how did you first get into guitar and music as a child? Did your parents support your interest? ANDY: My mother and father were both musical, but my mother was a very, very gifted and fantastic pianist who was blessed with the perfect pitch. She could hear something and then immediately play it. They were both very supportive. My mother, especially, and when I decided that I wanted to learn guitar - we were very poor - she made the sacrifice of putting in more hours of work and saving money to buy me my first guitar. That was it. METALLIAN: Why did you decide to play the guitar? ANDY: I decided to play the guitar after hearing a track called Ogre Battle by Queen on the band's second album, and that was it. That was when I decided I wanted to play guitar. METALLIAN: So, Tokyo Blade in a way exists because of Queen. ANDY: Yes. METALLIAN: How old were you at this point? ANDY: 15. METALLIAN: Did you have a guitar teacher? Was there a guitar school you went to? ANDY: No. METALLIAN: Moving forward, the first band I'm aware of was the covers' band White Diamond. Was there any bands prior to that? ANDY: No, that was pretty much the first one. METALLIAN: Where did the name come from and which covers did you play? ANDY: I honestly can't remember where the name came from! It's too long ago. So, we did some Thin Lizzy covers and some covers by The Cars. I think we did a couple of numbers by The Police. That's about all I can remember. METALLIAN: You changed the name when you started doing originals to Killer. Why was the name changed? Why not just drift into originals with White Diamond? ANDY: I can't remember. That's too long ago. METALLIAN: Do you remember why the name Killer was chosen? ANDY: No. I can't remember who came up with the name or why we changed it. It's just too long ago. METALLIAN: Then there was Genghis Khan. Do you know why that transition happened? ANDY: … because Alan Marsh used to be in a band called Genghis Khan. We all liked the name and so we changed the name to Genghis Khan. METALLIAN: So, you just borrowed from the past? ANDY: From Alan's past, yeah. Yes, correct. 
METALLIAN: Then the name changed again. And I'm wondering why again and again, and this time to Mádäme Guillotine.ANDY: That was… we were only called that for a very short time. METALLIAN: Then it was changed to Tokyo Blade. Any reason you kept changing names? ANDY: We were initially happy to stay with Genghis Khan, but Alan's former band-mates didn't like us using it, even though the band wasn't together anymore. They all lived locally. Alan didn't want to upset anybody so that was it. METALLIAN: Now, this is all building up into a theme, which is Tokyo Blade has managed to confuse many people over the years. It's convoluted. Andy, I know there were a couple of very obscure - no disrespect to anyone - members, but let's talk select members and how you guys met - especially because not everyone came from your corner of the UK. To start, where did you and singer Alan Marsh meet? ANDY: We didn't meet. We just, we just heard about, we were looking for a singer and we heard about Alan. We found out where he lived and we just tipped up his door and asked if he wanted to join the band. METALLIAN: Funny. Do you remember how you heard about him? ANDY: No. METALLIAN: You just heard about him and you approached him. He was local, obviously, right? ANDY: Yeah! METALLIAN: What about drummer Steve Pierce? ANDY: Steve Pierce and I were at school together since we were six years old. METALLIAN: What was the name of the school? ANDY: It was St. Martin's in Salisbury. METALLIAN: What about guitarist John Wiggins? ANDY: John Wiggins, we came across John after we put an advert in Melody Maker… a 'guitarist wanted.' John had come out of Paul Di'Anno's band Lonewolf, was looking for a band and that was when he joined. METALLIAN: Were you guys headquartered in Salisbury or in London at that point? ANDY: Salisbury. METALLIAN: Okay. And what about guitarist Ray Dismore? ANDY: Well, John Wiggins replaced Ray. It wasn't really working out that well with Ray. John was a much, much better guitar player. METALLIAN: Bassist Andy Robbins. ANDY: Andy, I was at school with Andy, again, since about the age of six years old. Andy wasn't exactly, uh, Andy wasn't exactly welcome. It didn't work out great. Andy Wrighton, um, was suggested, obviously by John (note: they were both formerly of Deep Machine). And so we changed from Andy Robbins to Andy Wright. METALLIAN: Are you hinting at or implying personal differences like clash of personalities or something else? ANDY: No, not particularly (Note: Andy Boulton looks uncomfortable at this point). No. To be honest, I don't, it's something I didn't really want to talk about. It's, it's better just, it's better to say he just left. We just got, you know, we just… Andy just went and the other Andy came in. METALLIAN: Alright. The last time we spoke, you mentioned that you came up with 'Tokyo' as part of your band name. Then double-barrelled names were preferred; it became Tokyo Blade thanks to Blade Runner. Reverting to earlier times, however, where did 'Tokyo' come from? Then there are related bands like Genghis Khan, Shogun, etc. ANDY: I just like the sound of the word. METALLIAN: You guys ran with the theme, but every album had a song about Japan and Orient going forward. Is that a deliberate act on your part over the years? ANDY: Alan wrote the lyrics and the song titles. I don't have anything to do with that. So, I don't know. Alan obviously must have some interest in the Orient because, you know, after Tokyo Blade, he went and named his next band Shogun. So, he's obviously got more than a passing interest in the Orient, but that's something that you need to ask him. METALLIAN: Let's go through the albums, Andy. much of it is shrouded in the mists of time at this point. Tell me what you think about them and give me some context. Is that possible? ANDY: We can try. METALLIAN: There's more than a couple. Tell me about Tokyo Blade, the debut. ANDY: Okay. So it was recorded in four days. It was engineered by a guy who wasn't actually an engineer. He was just the guy in the studio that made the tea. So that was pretty dreadful. And it's all… it's the only thing that the record company would pay for. We had four days to do it. And that was it. Some of the songs were pretty, pretty good. The production is awful. The sound of everything is awful. It was done under very rushed circumstances. So that's about it. METALLIAN: This album that you recorded in four days under rushed circumstances, as you put it, has become a classic. ANDY: Yeah, weirdly. Yeah. METALLIAN: How did you find Powerstation Records? ANDY: A bunch of crooks. 
METALLIAN: How did you find the bunch of crooks?ANDY: Oh, how did we, how did we come to work with them, you mean? So our first demo single, which was four tracks, was played on Radio One, which is the national radio station here. Powerstation heard it and asked us to sign a contract with them, which we unfortunately did. And that was that. METALLIAN: Just staying with Powerstation, there is a very old interview in Metal Forces where you were singing their praises; saying that they are investing in the band and they do not interfere with you artistically, et cetera. Was that true? Did they flip on you or were you were just being political in that interview? ANDY: No. Originally they were behind the band and we thought that they were going to be a decent bunch of guys. They promised us this, that and the other and didn't deliver on any of it. Eventually, we realized that they were a bunch of crooks. METALLIAN: Okay. Just staying with the Tokyo Blade album, how did the track Blue Ridge Mountains Of Virginia appear on the album? Is that like a joke? ANDY: Alan and I are massive fans of Laurel And Hardy. We were just mucking around in the studio, somebody recorded it and said we should put it on the album. That's it. There was no… there's no hidden meaning to any of our stuff. We're not that deep! METALLIAN: Did you, this is the wrong word Andy, my vocabulary fails me, but did you become ashamed of having the song on the album later on because subsequent versions omit it? ANDY: We're not responsible for which territory the album goes out to. If they choose to remove tracks, we're not responsible for that. So it wasn't anything that we did. It would have been something that they decided they didn't want on there for whatever reason. METALLIAN: Night Of The Blade comes out and this was announced as supposedly still being on Powerstation. You moved to Roadrunner and the French label, I forget its name… ANDY: Bernett. METALLIAN: Thank-you. So what happened here? And I know that you had a version with Alan on it. So please tell us what happened here. ANDY: So Powerstation, licensed our album to various different record companies throughout the world. So we were on JVC in Japan, we were on Bernett Records in France, we were like blah, blah. The songs were all written by myself and Alan. Alan sang on the original recording. Whilst before that was released, we did a gig at Aardschok day in Holland where the record company announced that they weren't happy with Alan. They wanted to put their own guy in. We went along with that. So the guy they wanted to put in butted out and didn't turn up! So we were left without a vocalist. We had a big tour coming up, which was already booked. We had to find a vocalist. We found Vic (Wright). He did the, he came in, learnt the songs, did the tour on incredibly short notice. And after we completed the tour, we went back into the studio and then overdubbed Alan's vocals with Vic's. Alan still had a copy of his vocals on cassette. And so we used the cassette when somebody asked if we could put out the version with Alan. So we used the cassette version to do that. METALLIAN: Is it true that Alan's backing vocals are on the first version? ANDY: Yes. METALLIAN: The singer who just didn't show up… ANDY: He came down from Yorkshire, which is a long trip down to London. We were rehearsing in London. We did most of our rehearsals and stuff in London. He arrived on the train from Yorkshire, left John's house to buy cigarettes and never came back! So that was that. METALLIAN: Is there a name? ANDY: I don't even remember his name or who he was. METALLIAN: Is it true that you opened for Van Halen at this stage? ANDY: No. METALLIAN: Was there a gig that was supposed to be? ANDY: Apparently, yeah. METALLIAN: And it never transpired. ANDY: No. METALLIAN: Could you tell us a little more about how Vic Wright came into the picture? ANDY: Again, it was an ad in Melody Maker. He responded to it. He was the best of the bunch that responded to it. We were desperate to get somebody as quickly as possible. So that was it. METALLIAN: At this stage, you really start to confuse people. I mean, people change vocalists and singers and members come and go in every band. Yet, at this point, you have an album called Midnight Rendezvous. You put out an EP called Madame Guillotine. One needs a PhD to figure it all out. What was going on within the band or management? ANDY: We were just struggling to keep the band going. All the rereleases and stuff, It's all to do with the record company. Nothing to do with us at all. So that was all decisions made by the companies. I mean, more often than not, they put out something and we wouldn't know about it. One of our fans told us, 'oh, by the way, you know, such and such is out now.' And we were like, 'Oh, really?' That's the way it is. That's the way it was. METALLIAN: So, you were dealt a bad hand. Was Blackhearts & Jaded Spades basically a demo? Was that your own label? ANDY: Yeah, it was. It was more a collection of demo songs. The record company got their hands on it and put it out again. Nothing to do with us. That's what they did. METALLIAN: Which record company is this? ANDY: This is Powerstation. METALLIAN: This is still Powerstation! Tell me about what's now billed as Andy Boulton's Tokyo Blade and Ain't Misbehavin'...... and how did you find Scratch Records? By the way, the logo changes again. ANDY: Yeah. Okay. I can't remember why the logo changed. The reason for the name change or the reason why it was called Andy Boulton's Tokyo Blade was because the band after Misbehavin' had basically split up. So there was no Tokyo Blade other than myself. My manager wanted me to keep going and put out another album. I did so and called it Andy Boulton's Tokyo Blade so that if the record company again tried to put that album out, or do anything with it, we didn't have a contract with them because it was Andy Boulton's Tokyo Blade, not Tokyo blade. But by then they screwed enough money out of us. But anyway, Ain't Misbehavin' came out. It was done with a bunch of guys who were all local. To me, they weren't really up to the job, but it was just a case of keeping it going. METALLIAN: How did you find Scratch? ANDY: I can't remember. Honestly, I can't remember. It's too long ago. METALLIAN: What you said earlier is a big deal. Everybody left. Why did everybody leave and abandon the band? ANDY: Because we didn't get any money out of the record company. And we just couldn't fund the band anymore. We just couldn't continue. We lost an awful lot of support, fan support after Blackhearts & Jaded Spades. And Vic had also left the band, of course, after Blackhearts And Jaded Spades. So the band was pretty much washed up really. METALLIAN: I'm jumping ahead a little here on purpose because you said something important, which is that you called the band Andy Boulton's band. Yet, years later, the same courtesy was not extended on Pumphouse, which was really Alan's band. ANDY: No, Pumphouse has nothing to do with Tokyo Blade. But it's released as a Tokyo Blade album. Yeah, that's just people jumping on the bandwagon. They weren't going to get noticed by being called Pumphouse. I mean, they'd just be another band, but using the Tokyo Blade name, it gave them some credence. METALLIAN: Did Alan, at that point, to the best of your knowledge, object or try to release it as a solo outing? ANDY: No, he didn't object to it. It was just that again, I can't remember. It was either their management or their record company. They were just trying to grab a free ride on the back of the name! METALLIAN: Okay. A couple of words about the No Remorse album please. ANDY: No Remorse, I was under contract to do one more album for the German record company. So I'd done Ain't Misbehavin'. I was contracted to do one more album. The record company said, we don't want you using the musicians you've used on the Ain't Misbehavin'...... album. By that time, I was just completely disinterested in the whole thing. So I said, 'I'll do an album.' I said, 'fuck it, I'll do an album. Find me some musicians.' That was it. I hopped over to Germany. There were four German musicians. We just jammed out some tracks and then went straight into the studio! No Remorse came out. And that was it. My contract with them was finished. And so was Tokyo Blade as far as I was concerned. METALLIAN: Now, if you look at the CD liner notes, they say, or you say, that you met these people two days before. Is that hyperbole or a metaphor for something? Or did you really meet them two days before? ANDY: I really met them two days before. METALLIAN: How were they found? Was it a record company introduction? ANDY: The record company said, 'we found you four musicians.' So I said, 'okay.' That was it. METALLIAN: Name for the cover model? Address or phone number? ANDY: (Laughingly) yeah, the cover… shouldn't have been that cover either. The guy that did the first two albums did an album cover and it wasn't called… I'm sorry, no, beg my pardon, no. So that was the record company thing. And again, the first time I saw it was when they sent me a copy! I didn't get it. I didn't approve it. I went, 'right, okay!' Then, as I said, as far as I was concerned, that was the end of Tokyo Blade. Good riddance. Let's move on and just drop it. METALLIAN: There was a song called Fever here, which was the same title as an earlier song. Did you forget you had a song by that name already or you didn't care? ANDY: I didn't care (laughs). METALLIAN: There's another version of No Remorse that has a kanji character on it. ANDY: I have seen pictures of that. I don't know what happened there (shakes his head). No idea. METALLIAN: I love it when one interviews a band and - this never happens - the members say, 'I have no idea' (Andy is laughing here). Andy, I wanted to point out that the kanji is meaningless. It's just a drawing. It's actually not a character. I wanted to ask you whether you knew that the character is a meaningless kanji and they just drew something. ANDY: No (laughs again)! METALLIAN: You said that it was the end of Tokyo Blade earlier. Except we get Burning Down Paradise several years later. It arrives on Fresh Fruit, which I believe was actually Steamhammer. The early line-up is back. So how did that happen? ANDY: Alan approached me and said that he'd still like to do an album. John was interested in doing it as well. So, there were the three of us. I wasn't doing anything at the time at all. I just said, 'yeah, okay.' That was it. We got together and wrote the songs and recorded the album. The other two guys (bassist Colin Riggs and drummer Marc Angel) were on the album. They were friends of Alan, or people that Alan had met, or something to do with Pumphouse. I don't know. But we got together and did the album. To be fair, I think it was a pretty good album. It was taking it into another direction, I think, but it was an album that wasn't released at the right time. You couldn't get arrested playing heavy metal in that time period. So it didn't come out at the right time, but I thought it was a pretty good album. METALLIAN: Do you know how you guys found Steamhammer? ANDY: (Shakes his head) I can't remember. METALLIAN: Have you listened to Pumphouse? ANDY: No, I haven't listened to it. METALLIAN: An artist should play exactly what he wants. That's obvious, but that album is also very in tune with its times. It's 'Red Hot Chili Peppers' and 'Primus.' That's very hip to the times for sure. ANDY: Yeah, I did hear from a few people who had said that to me… that it was that kind of thing, which anyway isn't my kind of thing at all. I'm not into Chili Peppers or Primus or anything. So, I never actually listened to it. METALLIAN: You famously quit the band in the middle of, or just before, a 2009 tour. There was a European tour and you decided to throw in the towel and say, 'continue on without me'? ANDY: Yes. I can't remember very much about that period. I was doing other things then. So I can't remember a lot about it, but I do remember this tour coming up. Well, I do remember saying that I'm not interested. I don't want to do it anymore. METALLIAN: What I'm getting at, or implying, here is musicians leave and become disenchanted or the industry wrestles them down. What I'm wondering about is, how could this band continue without you? You were the mainstay at that point. And there's a bunch of people, Lorenzo Gonzalez or Chris Gillen, and they just continue without you or any original members. Why did you allow that? ANDY: Well, I couldn't stop it. I mean, I went to America. There was a prick called Bryan Holland. He's like a weird stalker, really. He is. He really is. He's like a fucked up guy. He's a stalker. He's a weirdo, but of course, I didn't know that. He asked me if I would go to America and stay at his house in Michigan under the pretext that he was interested in doing something over there with a solo album, which I'd done and which wasn't even really an album, but it's six tracks. He was going to pay for everything. So I thought, 'fuck it, why not?' You know, I went over there. Then the guy starts driving me, you know, I get that and he's driving me around and he's going, 'oh, that place over there, that used to be a record store. That's where I bought the first Tokyo Blade Album.' It was really intense. He was a real fucking weirdo, real stalker and he asked about putting Tokyo Blade back together with him on guitar. So, Live In Germany. I'll come to that in a minute. So with him on guitar, blah, blah, blah, we got a tour lined up, a tour of Europe lined up. Okay! We went over to Detroit and that's where Gillen was rehearsing with his band. I heard him sing and this guy is really good. 'Yeah, I'd like to work with him.' So I agreed to do it. So we did the first tour and did a couple of big festivals. We did the Leyendas Del Rock Festival in Spain. I was just blown away by the number of fans that we had. I literally staggered. I mean, I didn't expect anybody to even know who the fuck Tokyo Blade was. I mean, this is a fucking '80s' band. And then all of a sudden I'm doing this big festival. I saw these guys there and at the end, I mean, we were literally swamped with people wanting autographs. I was like, 'what the fuck? So they must think we're somebody, I'm somebody else or something!' Then I realized what a weirdo and what a crook he is. I just don't want anything else to do with this guy, you know? I just got married to my girlfriend who also was a native American. She was Apache and we got married. I just didn't want anything else to do with him. So they went and did this live album, which is just hilarious. It's like a cover band and they're like a tribute band because there are no members of Tokyo Blade in it. I mean, these days, it's… it is pretty tenuous these days. I find you get things like the Tygers of Pan Tang that is still going with one guy in it. It was the rhythm guitar player. You know, if it were John Sykes or even John Deverill you could think, well, okay, but yeah, it's kind of weird. So that was that. So they wanted me to do this tour and I was just telling them to fuck off. I said, no, I'm not doing it. So they went ahead and did the tour. And from that tour came that stupid album (Live In Germany) of which people said to me, 'what do you think about it?' And I said, 'well, it's a tribute album. It's a tribute band. There's nobody in it.' You know, I don't think the album's bad. I don't think they did a bad job, but it's not Tokyo Blade. 
METALLIAN: How is it that you did not have the permission to stop that?ANDY: It's quite easy. You need money. You need money for a lawyer. There was no way that I was going to fight to stop them doing some stupid little tour in Europe. The feedback that came back to me was that people were turning up at the gigs going, 'where's the band? Where's Andy?' And they were going, 'oh, you know, he's not in it anymore,' and they were like, everybody was like, 'well, there's no Tokyo Blade. This isn't Tokyo Blade. It's a cover band.' Well, that's obvious, right? But this is Bryan Holland. He's weird. He's a fucking weird guy. METALLIAN: Could you elaborate more? Why is he a rip off or a scam? Did he steal money? What is the story? ANDY: No, I don't think I'll touch on it. No, respectfully. I don't really want to talk about that. I don't really want to try to catch up with the past. Suffice to say that he's a crook. He's not a nice person. And he's somebody that I didn't want to be associated with. So that's that. METALLIAN: Okay. So the story that you gave permission for this tour to happen is also false by implication. They did it on their own. ANDY: They did it on their own. METALLIAN: You mentioned that you had a girlfriend and had moved to the US at that point. Were you living there or did you guys move back to the UK or were you an American? ANDY: We were backwards and forwards. I didn't officially live there. I'd stay until my visa ran out and then we'd come back here and then we go back over there. So it was a lot of to and fro. METALLIAN: Thousand Men Strong. The attack of obscure labels continues. You're on a label called Fastball. ANDY: Yeah (chuckles). METALLIAN: I don't know who they are. Could you comment on the album? ANDY: The band got back together again. We were without a vocalist however. So we found Nicolaj Ruhnow, a German guy. He had some connection with the guy who ran the record company and he got involved with them. That's it, really. METALLIAN: Why is there a version of the song Night Of The Blade on Thousand Men Strong? ANDY: We just thought it'd be nice to hark back to the past and put something on there from our past, really. METALLIAN: I'm going to put this delicately because reports be believed you did not like the singer and there was a personal issue. ANDY: Yeah. He's very difficult to work with. Nick is a prima donna. He's very, very difficult to work with. I've had emails from him and stuff. I don't even respond. I don't see… I'm not a negative person. I don't really get drawn into this thing where some bands get into where somebody slags somebody off and then somebody slags them off back and you get all this bullshit and all this negative bullshit. I don't do that. I'm not interested. As far as I'm concerned, if somebody thinks I'm a prick, fair enough, if somebody likes me, fair enough, even better. My answer to it is, well, if you think I'm a prick, don't work with me. It's really easy to do. And Nick, by his own admission, when he joined the band, said that his last band called him the little princess. And that was, that's what he admitted to. And he really is a little princess. It just wasn't working. It was just hard work. There were so many stories that I wouldn't get into here. METALLIAN: (Smiling) there are two things to be said about that. One is to remind myself never to manage you because bands nowadays don't sell based on music. They sell based on stupid social media tiffs and controversies. You have to keep posting daily rubbish on Facebook. That's what you need. It's not about musicianship. The second thing I'll say is, I don't know how this guy could not be the nicest person on the planet because apparently he was frank and candid about himself and also self-aware. He told you exactly who he is! ANDY: He's… he is almost… he is not impossible to work with, but everything with Nick, everything is a problem. He never, ever travelled with the bands when we did shows. He travelled separately. He very rarely wanted to stay in the same hotel as the rest of the band. So although we tried to sort of integrate into the band, he just didn't want to know. There was a wall between us and him. I don't know. I think he saw himself as far superior to the rest of us. I don't know. He just, he was just really hard to work with. Then the lads said, 'what should we do? Do you think Alan would come back?' I said, 'well, I'll ask him and, if he does, then he does,' So that was that. METALLIAN: So Nicolaj's other name was Axl Rose. By the way, Andy, could you comment on the cover artwork? It's confusing because in my perception, it's a figure in Western garb with a Japanese sword. I looked at it and asked myself 'why is this Western person holding an East Asian sword?' ANDY: So the sword would be, again, I don't really know. I mean, the cover art was done and it was too late to change it. The guy in the, in the garb is supposed to be Jack The Ripper. Why does he have a Japanese sword? I guess it's just to tie in with the name Tokyo Blade, but that's all I know. METALLIAN: Okay. At least there's a logic to it. ANDY: It's a kind of logic because the Night Of The Blade was on that album and the song is basically about Jack The Ripper. That's kind of how that went. METALLIAN: Could you say a couple of words about Unbroken please? The band is back, the traditional sound is back and it's heavy. ANDY: Once the band had got back, I was back in the band, Alan and myself, actually, have always been the main songwriter for the band. So it was the original line-up with Alan and I writing the songs. It was going to sound like Tokyo Blade again. Perhaps a little bit more modern, better production, arguably. METALLIAN: The obscure labels continue. Do you know anything about 3ms? ANDY: 3ms was a company that I was involved with whom I had done a little side-project with. They expressed an interest in doing an album or two with Tokyo Blade. So that's why we went with 3ms. METALLIAN: Which band of yours was involved with them? ANDY: It would never come to anything. It was an obscure band. It never came to anything. METALLIAN: Let's talk about the Dark Revolution where things really pick up. You're on a decent and bigger label. The album's rocking or whatever the word is. ANDY: Yeah, but it was on a different label because the label that Unbroken was on sold out to this label (Cherry Red Records). Again, not a lot to say about it. It's the same thing. We, Alan and I, write songs and if we think they're good enough, they go to an album. METALLIAN: What is this title about? ANDY: Alan comes up with the title. So, I've no idea. Unbroken was because the band was back together again and one of the guys suggested that we should call it Unbroken because the band was back together again. We were 'unbroken.' Dark Revolution, I think, was largely a reflection of how Alan was seeing the world from his point-of-view. One of the tracks obviously was called Dark Revolution. One of the other guys suggested that for the title. So I said, 'yeah, that's fine.' So we went with that. It wasn't really until Fury that I started getting much more involved in stuff really. Then by the time it got to Fury, I was really acting almost as manager and sort of decision-maker on a lot of things that I didn't get involved in before. Purely because there was nobody else to do it. So I just went to do it. I got involved and I did stuff. METALLIAN: Donald Trump makes an appearance in the video clip. ANDY: On Dark Revolution? Does he? METALLIAN: Yes. He does. ANDY: Yeah, because the man is a fucking idiot. METALLIAN: To say the least, to be polite. ANDY: Yeah, to be polite. He's a complete, I mean, where'd you stop? Fascist, idiot, egomaniac, spoilt, petulant, idiot. You could go on and on. The man is an absolute prick. So yeah, I guess he found his way out of the video somewhere. It's very contemporary. METALLIAN: Fury? ANDY: Andy Wright actually came up with the title for Fury because when Andy came down to do his bass parts, he commented that the lyrics were really angry on many songs. He said, 'I think we should call the album Fury because Marsh is angry about something.' So we just decided, yeah, Fury was a great title. The album cover for that came because I spoke to Andy Batchelor, who'd done several album covers for us at the time and I said… I think a lot of people have asked why we've moved away from the Japanese thing. Perhaps we should make a bit of a return to that. So I said, but I'd like to do the samurai thing again. I said, but I don't want it looking like Night Of The Blade. It needs to be brought up to date. It needs to be a dystopian background and kind of sci-fi samurai type thing. Andy came up with that, which we all loved. So we used that. Then we moved on, obviously, then to the last album, Time Is The Fire, which is where we've sort of continued the theme a little bit. The next album is already written and pretty much recorded. We haven't got a title for that yet. It follows on from Time Is The Fire. I would say it's quite similar in some ways. That brings us up to where we are today. METALLIAN: Since we are up-to-date, what's the name for your cover band (that you are playing with tonight)? ANDY: I'm actually in two cover bands. But I'm finishing this year. At the end of this year, that will be me finishing with live work altogether. The band I'm in tonight is called Jetback. We do AC/DC, Led Zeppelin… rock stuff. And the other cover band I'm in is called Saigon. That's with Alan on vocals in that band. Alan and myself. There is Mark Palmer, known as Harry who's on bass. He's actually the brother of Robert Palmer. Then we got a guy called Ben on drums. Really, really great drummer. And then Neil Parsons, an old friend of mine from 30 years back who I was with before in a band called Saigon. So we kind of reformed! But tonight is Jetback. METALLIAN: What is the reason Tokyo Blade is not playing live anymore? ANDY: It's a combination of factors. Alan and I decided we didn't want to do it anymore. We didn't want to travel anymore. And also because of our stupid government's decision to take us into Brexit, it's difficult for us to work in Europe now, which was our main area. Also, we're just getting too old for it now. I don't want Tokyo Blade's legacy to be four or five guys staggering around on stage looking like old men. So I'm happy to carry on recording. That's my thing. And the same with Alan. He's keen on the creative side of being in a band and not the playing live side of being in a band. METALLIAN: What would you say if I invoked the Rolling Stones. ANDY: I can give you a little, let me give you a little taste of that one because people constantly come out with this sort of stuff and say, 'well, the Rolling Stones are still doing it and they're in their 80s and all the rest of it. One of the last things we did, we got up at two o'clock in the morning to drive two hours to Heathrow Airport, to get on the aeroplane to get to Rotterdam and then to be told that the gig was two hours away. So we couldn't go to the hotel room because that was at the airport. So the best we could do was sit in some crummy backstage room with a few sandwiches and a couple of beers having been up since two o'clock in the morning. Getting to the venue, going on at 10 o'clock at night, coming off the stage, being driven back to the hotel. Alright, at last we can get some sleep? Not really, because your flight is at five in the morning. You've got to be at the airport two hours earlier. The Rolling Stones, however, I don't believe, travel like that. If somebody said that they travelled like that, I'd be quite surprised. I think it would be more like they've got a gig in Paris, Jagger and Keith Richards have got apartments there. The rest of them will be staying at some five-star hotel. They'll book in five days before the gig. Do some nice sightseeing. So every time somebody mentions Rolling Stones, I don't know what they come up with. I said, well, if you think that a bunch of guys in the mid-60s can keep doing this and get to a venue and perform well, not like five guys that are old and really tired because they've had no fucking sleep. Anybody that can do that, good luck to them. METALLIAN: Andy, I've got two minutes and three band names for you. First, the band Skin. ANDY: I don't know anything about them. No, never been in the band. Andy Robbins was in a band called Skin. METALLIAN: Jagged Edge. ANDY: That was Myke Gray. There was a guitar player called Myke Gray, who was in a band called Jagged Edge, who then changed the name of the band to Skin and Andy Robbins joined that band. But none of that's got anything to do with me at all. METALLIAN: So Andy Robbins was in both those bands? ANDY: Yes. METALLIAN: Mr. Ice. ANDY: That was a little project that we kicked off. And then I kicked that off. That was just, I think that was prior to Burning Down Paradise. We did an album, but it was, I don't think it was on any label or such. It didn't really go anywhere. METALLIAN: Andy, 45 years have passed and your music is alive. What odds would you have given this back when you started out? ANDY: Oh, I would have definitely said there would be no chance of doing this at my age. I would have been finished a long time here. I'm very proud of what Tokyo Blade achieved and what we've achieved as a band. I'm very, very proud of that because we had so much bad luck and the odds have always been against us 100%. So even to survive, I'm very proud that we've done that. Yeah (ponders a bit at this point), it comes down to where your priorities are. My priorities these days are writing and recording new material. That's where I'm at now. METALLIAN: Andy, thanks for your time and patience. Thank you for the music. ANDY: Thank you very much, Ali. It's always a pleasure to talk to you my friend. Hard rock, heavy metal and NWOBHM fans have a lot to explore and discover with Tokyo Blade. To begin, head over to here.
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Tokyo Blade