 really, whatever happens, happens. I've done a lot of these things really. So just relax and enjoy myself really. Absolutely. Here we are live, live my friends live on the metal voice and who do we have today? Well, we have a legendary DJ manager. I don't know. He's done it all. He's been there from the rise of hard rock to heavy metal to the new wave of British heavy metal to the rise of iron maiden and so on and so on and so on. Neil Kay, a pleasure to have you on and of course, Stefan Uras from Croatia, author, major Iron Maider historian, we should say, right? Written so many books on Iron Maiden, different flavors, but he's got a new book. It's the bio and I just remember the title, the biography of Neil Kay, correct? And and this time it is official. Official, official forward by none other than Steve Harris of Iron Maiden. You can't get a better stamp of approval than that. Neil, it's a true pleasure, my friend. It's a true pleasure to have you on. The book is called Recollections of a Rock DJ. And because, well, I've always been that is a sort of starting point in my working life for everything I've done, more or less. I've always been an entertainer. You know, that's what I am. It runs in my family. That's where it comes from. I'm more, I consider myself an entertainer rather than just a guy who played records. You know, my my grandfather was a, what do you call them over there? A vaudeville artist. Yeah, he was a musical artist in the 1920s. Davey was a song and dance man. And my own mother and her brother also were on the boards in the 40s. Brother, before he got called up into the Royal Air Force, had a big swing band. My mother used to go on stage with him, you know, as a very little girl. And entertainment on that side of my family is right the way through. So, you know, the characterization that I have or whoever I am, wherever it comes from, I believe that's where it started. But I never knew my grandfather. He died in 1952 when I was just over two years old. So I never really met him. But my mother's stories about him have stayed with me forever. He was an artist, a great one. You know, Neil, I want to talk about you and Stefan, how you connected first and we'll get into your background and you know about the book. How did you guys connect and Stefan, maybe you want to just speak? Yeah, I can tell a little first excuse me for my bad English. You speak better English than I do. So I started many years ago to write some kind of biography of Steve Harris, but it is not biography. It is a book about him told by many friends, family members. And when you start to write the book about Steve Harris, Neil Kai is the first person in mind. And I tried to find him everywhere on the internet. And finally I found him. And we had, we spent many hours on chat. I remember it was a new year Eve. So everyone's celebrating outside fireworks. But we talk about Steve Harris and their friendship. And that's it. And after that, everything starts. So Neil can tell you more. Well, I think it was about 10 years went by Stefan between being interviewed by you for that book. And then suddenly contacting me again with a view to doing my own biography. You do remember, and I have to tell everyone out there listening, I was not very happy with the idea of a biography of mine coming out. And the truth is that it took Stefan maybe three months even to persuade me that it would be a good thing. You see, I never considered myself that worthy of having a biography. I always assumed in fairness that people who play in very large bands are worthy of having their story told after all their international rock stars and heroes. I have never really ever thought of myself in any way like that. What I apparently did to me way back then was so everyday and normal and we just like did it. It wasn't for fame. It certainly wasn't for fortune, that's for sure. And I never considered it special to be honest with you. I did not in any way. And I thought it presumptuous that somebody offered, you know, that I could have my own biography out there. What? I've got anything to say. Who am I? Nothing really. I was just a little DJ. That was it. The fact I got involved in a whole load of other stuff never occurred to me that anyone would even be interested. And this is a great segue here, right here, Neil. How you were shaped. Go ahead, sorry. The truth is that Neil is living legend among many, many hero heads all around the world. And that's what I tried. Have you been drinking some of this again? Well, Neil, you know, and we'll go into what shaped you to become, you know, or to sort of inspire you to do what you did, right? Well, let's go back a bit, right? You talked about your family, right? But you grew up in, you know, I guess post World War II, right? As they're picking up the pieces, there was no heavy metal. There was no hard rock. It was a dream. Look, I was actually born four and a half years after the end of the Second World War into a post war period of total austerity. You know, the results of the German Luftwaffe were still there for everybody to see bombed out buildings, bomb sites, temporary accommodation put up by the government. Those that had nowhere to live as a direct result of the Germans bombing nearly all our major cities and doing their damages to destroy everything over the course of the winter of 1940-41. That's when the blitzes they called it happened. When they couldn't subdue us, they ran off and started with Russia. Thankfully, that gave us a breathing space. But by the end of the war, we owed a huge amount of money to America. In fact, the war debt was only paid off, I believe, about 10 years ago, maybe 15. Wow, that's crazy. It was billions. Look, the Americans and they, for them, the Second World War started on the 8th of December, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor. We've been at it since the 3rd of September, 1939. If you speak to the Poles or the Czechs, they'll tell you it was even earlier than that. But the fact is that although obviously the Allies won, what we did was kind of lose the peace because we were in a very bad way. There was rationing when I was very small. You've got coupons in books. You're only allowed to have so much sugar, so much bacon if you could find it. Fuel, petrol was definitely rationing. And later on in my life as well, with all the problems and strikes and stuff, I've still got petrol coupons. The early 1950s in my country, how can I say best like this? Living in America is in technicolor. Living back then in the United Kingdom is in black and white. There was no television for a start. They had experimented with it before the war. But of course, it stopped immediately. There were no real transmissions anyway. Nobody had a television set. They were unheard of. The technicians that were behind it, most of them went into what was then called radio direction findings, simply become radar. In the post-war world in 1951, two, three, four, there was no television. We listened to radio on Sunday lunch times. There was nothing else. There wasn't. And that was that. The music you had back then was what I call Mummy, Daddy music. There was no real teenage popular passion. There was no real teenage popular music. We all had what Mum and Dad had basically. And they think, you know, it was life was like that. It was a pre-war mentality that the kids of that time had to put up with. Me included. You know, you dressed, they dressed you, your Mum and Dad, like them. You had camel coats, like them. You know, you lived like them. You came home from school and you went to bed at half six, seven o'clock at night. That's it. That was life back then. Now until you were about nine or 10 years old maybe, you went to bed at half six, seven o'clock. Tea was at five o'clock and you hadn't played out in the garden. You know, you might have gone out on the street and played with the other kids, which I do. And Saturdays, we had Saturday morning cinema where Mum and Dad got rid of all the kids for a couple of hours. That cost nine old pennies, I think. And there were about 240 pennies to a pound back then. You know, we were predestinal. It was a transport. Steam locomotives. There were no electric trains at that time. There were no real diesel locomotives at that time. Everything was steam-driven. The railways of Europe were totally destroyed by the Allies during the war, the Americans and the British Air Forces. That had to be done to stop the Germans resupplying themselves at the various fronts. Consequently after the war, all their railways were rebuilt in a more modern way with electric power. But our railways kept running through the blitz and everything else and they never ever got rebuilt after the war immediately. It was cheaper they discovered to use steam locomotives than it was to electrify all our major lines. So, you know, we had all the smoke up in the air, power stations were coal-fired. There were no supermarkets of any sort, hadn't even been heard of. You went shopping to your local grocers and then you'd go to the butcher and you'd do them all. And if you wanted the shoes repaired, you went to see, you know, the cobbler down the road who fixed your shoes, leather soles. And your shoes looked like dad shoes, only smaller versions. I think looking back, it was terrible. There wasn't one ounce of freedom to any kid back then. None, none, none, none. It was dead conformity, just like you never spoke unless you were spoken to. If you did speak out a term, you were told to be quiet and go to your room. It was an awful life looking back on it. But it's what was accepted and it's what was known. I think they call this millennial hell. Okay, go ahead. Oh, it was that all right. But of course, we didn't know any better. You know, we might go over to the park when we've got a bit older and play together in the park until, I don't know, in summer, six, six, thirty, come home, supper, then go to bed. Yeah, I used to play tennis with my friends in the park. You know, we do stuff and we spend Saturday all day over there. We all got push bikes in the end. And I used to ride with my friends, maybe 40, 50 miles on a Saturday, just out and about getting some air. Because there's nothing else to do. Television in the United Kingdom didn't even start until 1955. And even then, they came up with like puppet programs for little children. But the teenager hadn't yet been born. Things only started to change when the American rock and roll bands, the first generation of, finally came over. Bill Haley was probably one of the first, in fact. Rock around the clock. Yeah, but it was, yeah, but they were films as well. They made, they made sort of films that involved these rock and roll bands. And like the American teenager to be, they were always at school. They were always, you know, jiving at school with the band on stage and the kids would, you know, be there. It was in the very beginnings of something we saw. As a teenager, what were you drawn to musically? Like Bill Haley? Was it swing? Was it jazz? Like, what was it? I only heard what my parents heard. I mean, the radio played rock and roll. I mean, in actual fact, some of it stayed with me through the years. And as I moved into becoming a producer rather than just a DJ and started getting involved in music, I have to admit that, freely, that I love Glenn Miller. His arrangements in brass are fantastic. You know, he was one of the few that came up with the idea of harmonising brass sections and also within the sections in root thirds and fifths. And up until then, it had rarely been done. You know, he was a fantastic musician and writer himself. You know, we just had pop music, well, popular, popular music of the early fifties. It wasn't our music. It was mum and dad's music. As soon as the guitar was heard for the first time, mummy and daddy withdrew. They didn't know what it was. They thought it was, ah, you know, that was the face of my father. By the way, Loupy says hi. Loupy says hi, Neil. Hey, Loupy. How you doing? Welcome. It ain't my show, but, you know, I'm honored to be here really. Thanks to Jimmy. And my biographer sitting in the background there, by the way, is Steph-Anne Giudapps, who is, well, co-writes in my biography with me. And he joins us tonight from Croatia, which is a very long way from Canada. Yes, it is. About seven hours. Yes, I was probably more than that, actually. Well, anyway, yes, so, you know, it was a weird start. What music did I used to listen to? Um, wartime entertainers on radio survived into the fifties. But that's what we had. We had all these different comedians, big bands, singers, you know, Sinatra, you had on the radio, Big Crogby. On the, from Home Shortland, you had Billy Cotton's band show, stuff like that. And there were a bunch. The goons. Yeah, we did have the goons, and that was the only. Thank you, Loupy. That was the only difference. What was the tipping point now? What was the tipping point? So now you're listening to Mommy and Daddy's music on the radio and there really is controlled and very little of it. But then there was a tipping point where it was because basically what happened was things started to open up with the arrival of the American fifties rock and roll bands. You know, the radio could ignore it for only so long. Um, there were no pirate ships in the fifties. That didn't happen until the sixties. And that was because the BBC still refused to acknowledge rock and roll music, teenagers, or anything other than Mommy and Daddy. And the growing movement of teenagers got so sick of it that a very smart guy one day said, look, we can get outside, you know, the 12 mile limit down the coast. So we'll put transmitters on these old boats, these ships. The pirate ships. We'll transmit outside. And then we can do what we bloody well like, and they did. Um, and, you know, that really, that really woke up the nation. But that didn't happen until the sixties. What happened in the fifties, we became more conscious of something different coming from the States. Bill Haley was one of the first. Um, you know, my own, my own fifties hero, if you like his buddy Holly, because he was more than just a musician singer, he he invented a huge amount of what became everyday usage in recording studio. He had techniques and he was the very first, you know, to be allowed to actually play and sing and write and perform in studio, his own stuff. Up until then, you wrote a song, they might have you in to sing it, but you would have session musicians, not your band, and you'd have an idiot producer telling you how it should be done. And they took buddy Holly's number, that will be the day. And they put him into a studio down in Texas somewhere or wherever. And they got a country and Western producer who came along and told buddy Holly that nah, it has to sound like it comes from Western number. And he proceeded to show them how to cowboy it, literally. And then he finished up with a black eye. And Mr. Holly walked out the studio because we're not having it. And it's always been a problem rock and roll has throughout all the years everywhere. You know, it's counterculture stuff is what it is. It's telling mommy and daddy, we ain't listening to you anymore. And anybody else, we're not listening. And we got the message in the midst of late fifties started. You know, when young kids came back from the war. And over here, 18 was the age. You know, they came back, they started getting jobs in city street. And for the first time ever, they obtained independence by earning money. As they earn money and went into shops to buy clothes, they didn't like what was there because it was some money and daddy. And in the end, teenage fashion came along because of this. And of course, when you have a teenage fashion, you've got to have teenage music. The Americans are very much first off the block. You know, we didn't have many rock and roll stars from England or Britain. Very, very few. Johnny Kidd in the Pirates, Marty Wilde. Well, Cliff Richard's question mark don't really know where that is. I'm not sure about that. He very quickly moved on, you know, into films and all sorts of things. The main man that everybody makes such a fuss about is of course Elvis Presley. But for me, it never was. But he never went out of the U.S. for my understanding. Well, he did when he was in the army. He went to Germany. I never saw him in the same in the same league as Buddy Holly. You know, I didn't. I didn't. He was manufactured by Colonel Tom Parker. It was a brilliant handling in management of producing something from just a basic thing to a mega star. That's all about business. I wouldn't call that music. That was manipulation by management. In my view, I mean, others are going to shout and scream. Yeah, I would have said he was a musician, but he was being held back and sort of like pushed back by Colonel Tom Parker, you know, that I was thinking. I think it's kind of like the reverse of that. But I guess it's the same and it's the same end result. I mean, musicians back then were not free to do as they please in any way. You know, it was it was always control. You know, I mean, there was no there was nothing set up for, you know, bands, performers. There was no industry. There was no touring industry. It all yet to come. The Beatles are the ones really who kind of initiated that because of their needs. Even when they came to America for the first time 60s and played Shade Stadium. There wasn't even a PA there. There was no, you know, they used the stadium system. Their backline probably Vox AC 30s. You know, I mean, they couldn't be heard over the screaming of the kids, but the touring industry had to come from that because bands started moving out and getting around, you know, and especially at high level, you needed to have the support that just wasn't there. So I became aware. I mean, I listened to a lot of music back then. We had Italian stuff and God knows all sorts of weird things. They also had an awful lot of film soundtrack that was played on radio as well. And that kind of caught my attention, orchestrated music an awful lot. You know, I mean, the war epics were still very prevalent in the early 50s. Billy Cotney band did the Dan Buster's March. That was a hit parade, you know, number one. You know, we had all these things. You know, Neil, it's interesting that you're mentioning all these things. The picture that you're putting in my brain is basically the wall by Roger Waters, the way he sort of he puts that up from Vera Lynn to, you know, bring the boys back home. The whole post war dream gone to, you know, crap. It's amazing how all these, you know, you're talking about basically everything Roger Waters used to sing about. Right. So well, that's right. I mean, we never had any input. Nobody ever listened to young people. Those in those that walk the corridors of power, both socially in politics, in government, they were all wartime brought up military ex military people. They were perhaps in the city. They strolled with rolled up umbrellas. They were very stiff back. They ran the BBC. They ran the radio. They ran the music business. They ran bloody well everything. And you couldn't get past it. I want to ask the founder question here, because I know we're kind of like out here a bit. What was the first big band to break out of Croatia? And you're talking about a country that sort of, you know, again, it was a little slower than most countries to bring in the rock and roll and such, right? Believe it or not, in Croatia, everything started with the first band, I think rock and roll wikas. Let me kill me there. Yeah. He was first bigger band. Because you had the whole communist thing happen, right? You have the whole communist era. And I'm sure the bands weren't really coming over as much. As you saw, the Republic was on the border of iron curtain. So we connected, we were connected with east and west. So in the 80s, after rock and roll, vikars came the purple after that queen, after that rolling stones. And Iron Maiden also in the early 80s. So we started with hard rock and helmet. And let me ask you this. Where was the radio and the TV play this, or was it all tape training underground? It was more underground. Yeah, on the radio here then, but more underground, the word of mouth, and growing, cooking behind, boiling. And after that big bang, everyone loves that rock and roll. And there's a song of Twisted Sister, You Can't Stop Rock and Roll, because you know, you can stop, you can try to stop. But as Neil said, yeah, if young people have the power inside, rock and roll can be stopped. And now we are in position to spread rock and roll again, because there's a difficult time for music for everything. And now we are the people who need to do that, who need to push everything. So Neil, let's continue on your journey here. A little bit of Croatia sidestep. I just want to continue. So yes, go ahead, go ahead. People need, if we want to push everything, people need to know past, people need to know the way how rock and roll started, how everything started, how metal started, which people push over the boundaries. So a story of Neil, maybe thought that he was non-popular or non-important, but his story is crucial for birth of heavy metal in the United Kingdom, and need to be spread around. You bet. Exactly. A very, very kind of you to say so, I have to say. You know, Neil, you can have a great band, but that great band just going to sit there unless somebody promotes it, manages it, and records it, right? And that's where you fall in. It's called synchronicity. Sure. And synchronicity usually refers to the line that's drawn when all the planets line up together. Synchronicity. But what that also means in rock and roll is that if you've got a great band, it's not enough. If you've got a great singer, it's not enough. If you've got a great bunch of backline musicians, it's not enough. If you've got a record company, it's still not enough. If you've got followers, it's still not enough. You need every single thing to be right in line, and the last of all is lady luck. And you need the person more than ever with the right ears that can hear what it is you're doing. I took Maiden's tape around as I have done many others to the... Please, please, please, please show him. I want to show him. All right, let's do the tape. You want me to go show the tape? Sure, let's go see the tape. All right, hold on, guys. Don't worry, me and Neil. Yeah. Do you have your book there, Stefan? Do you have the book? Do you have the Neil K book there? Show it. No, Neil K book is almost done, and it will be ready in September, I think. Okay, so it's going to be released. Let me see. Okay, look at that. Proud. This is the original Iron Maiden's demo tape with the date on the top, as you can see. Look at that. Full background, but there it is. This is the tape that Steve gave to me at the bandwagon, and it's the tape I use to take rounds of the recording industry to let them hear what Maiden worked. That's the one, and there aren't many left. Steve has one, I have one, and maybe a couple of others. I know this thing is priceless. That I understand, but it is a direct family heirloom to me, and it's more important to me than any gold album, which I also have. But this is what started something immense, truly wonderful world-beating to this very date. You don't get any better than that, and that's the little thing that did it. That is the little thing that did it. But let's go back a step. Let's go back a step before we go into Maiden. Before we go into Maiden, we're just going to build it right up to Maiden, all right? That's cool. The fifties, the Beatles. Well, the Beatles turned around. First of all, look, by the end of the end, towards the end of the fifties, we had this steady flow of rock and roll music coming in from America. We weren't really ready for it to tour, but it did. But he only played cinemas with, I don't know, very poor sound systems, mainly AC30 boxes and backline. But the thing that it did was it unleashed the excitement factor in the youth. Up until then, parents used to go to concerts. Occasionally, people might even get up and jive or dance to Glenn Miller and some of the other big bands like him. They did, wartime, absolutely. But nothing released the animal within until rock and roll turned up. And so those that caught fire, I was probably one of them. We had little Richard. We had Jerry Lee Lewis. Some of the legendary DJs of the day, their names reached us, but a bit later, we weren't aware of what they were doing and how they were doing it. We realized that the American government and all the others that are in control of everything would probably not like rock and roll very much. In fact, it turned out that they hated it. It was turning our kids into animals, I recall hearing. They tried to stop rock and roll because they were afraid it would bring down the government. And that's what it was. They thought that the youth of America would turn against all authority and pull everything to pieces. And these performances for a while, kids went crazy to rock and roll. And I understand why. And in the words of Jim Morrison, it was five to one, the generation outnumbered the parents five to one. That's right. That is great. That scared them even more because the numbers were not on their side. That's right. Not only that, but rising from the masses at that time in the States to what I consider to be maybe two or three of the most powerful broadcasters in rock and roll America at the time. My own hero Alan Freed. He's the guy that actually invented the term rock and roll. That's what he called it. He was the first. Over on the West Coast, you had Wolfman Jack. And Wolfman Jack, he's the dog like this baby. He invented this this brilliant character. And he was he played great rock and roll. And he was listened to far and wide. There was also a guy called Murray the cave. And he was like the third. I mean, there's obviously others, but they're the ones that I was particularly interested in, because Alan Freed worked with bands. He he was like an early example of me in a way. Unlike a later example of him, he didn't just play records. He put on shows. He did. And he went and found some of the great 50s rock and roll acts, not just bands, but singing groups as well. You know, Dion and the Belmonts was one of his. He found them. They were called that because they lived off Belmont Avenue. You know, I mean, it was multiracial back then as well. That's another thing to remember about rock and roll. It's very, very important, I think, because it's one of the earliest examples when there were problems elsewhere in the country, where whites couldn't go into black clubs and vice versa. Even on a Buddy Holly tour that he did with black artists. Once they got down south, Holly wasn't even allowed in the same hotel the others where he had to pretend that he was he was like a porter, a lonely Batman for one of the black acts, carrying his cases into the hotel. But rock and roll did actually break the barriers, because it didn't matter about the color once once you played or sang. No one gave two shits about whether you were black, white or purple. The only thing that mattered was the music. It mattered to those that were promoting the show, those, you know, straight people that just hadn't got a clue in their head. It mattered to them. But in the rock and roll fraternity of the day, they didn't matter at all. When Buddy and the boys got called up to New York for their first show, which was a theater in Harlem, no one actually believed that they were a white band. They thought they were a black act. When they turned up at the theater, they were amazed. It was a black theater. It was. It was like for a black audience and the boys walked in. Oh, my God, don't tell me they're a white band, for Christ's sake. They're going to get bullied later. You know, it was that sort of a thing. But out onto, you know, you had a mixed bunch of black, whites, whatever. And the record companies were putting together these brilliant tours of all different kinds. They only do a couple of songs each, maybe, you know, it wasn't like it was today, where you get major concerts and the one band and the support. You had a load of different artists going out and they do tour through their own songs. And then maybe the guitar players would stay on stage and help to back the singer that was coming on next. But let's fast forward a little bit because yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll go. Okay. Then Jimi Hendrix. Just Jimi Hendrix. Yes. You know, he comes on the scene and he sort of breaks in the UK, right? And just it's just a game changer from everybody in the UK to the United States to everywhere in the world. It was complete racial plus guitar player. It's just. Yeah, but we'd already had Chuck Berry and he was black and rock and roll. That's right, too. They forgot about Chuck Berry. There you go. That's right. I mean, I love Chuck Berry. Always did. He had a unique way of presenting it. But even, but even, even stinging from the police, you know, the night he saw Jimi Hendrix, it was game over for him. He wanted to be a musician, right? I mean, it inspired generations and generations. Well, Hendrix had a very unique way of, of, you know, presenting guitar, guitar. He discovered his own way of doing it, which was completely unique at the time. He was very heavy, had a huge, heavy sound. I mean, really truly, Jimi started out in the sixties. It wasn't the seventies. He was dead. He was definitely after the turn of the seventies. I mean, his, his major works were all done in the mid to late sixties, really over here. Hey, Joe was his first single. Actually, you know, we had, we had various others as well. He took Bob Dylan's watch tower all along the watch tower and turned it into his own major track. It was great. Very nice. And then go ahead, sorry. Oh, and Jimmy, it's all right. And then just, just for the sake of time, now we're moving into, wait a second, 1971, the first Black Sabbath album. Now we're talking. 69 actually. Oh, sorry, sorry, 69. 69. First Black Sabbath, Led Zepp album, both 69. Yes. And, and now, wait a second, hold on, now the game has changed. Now we're getting into the deeper, darker stuff, right? Well, I'd seen it. I mean, there was a steady movement upwards towards all this. My late, great friend, broadcaster, and journalist Malcolm Doe. He had this imaginary line that he drew between what was pop music and what became rock music. And a definitive line of change with which I concur completely. And that was 1967 with the release of Sargent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album by the Beakers. We consider that to be one of the major changing points. It's not just the musicians left pop groups and wanted to progress further and further. It was also coupled up with the development of equipment. Yeah, fuzzy, fuzzy battle. Yeah, not, not just that, but the, you know, the heavier fuzz sound amplifiers becoming separated from their speaker units finally. You know, you get ahead, you get a Marshall, Jim, Jim Marshall. I mean, his contribution to rock is absolutely immense. They're factoring stuff here at Milton Keynes. I know someone that worked in there actually. The world would be a sadder place without Jim Marshall. And that's a fact. I know there's various other great manufacturers around today. We're doing all sorts of great, great tabs heads and all the rest of it. But Jim Marshall is the man who developed the four to 12, the guitar speaker of speakers and the valve amp to go with it. Not solid state valve amp. If you want that crunch and you want that aggression, then that's what it has to be. And so this very day they're valve amps, they are, I think the output valves of KC-88s for those of you that might be interested. And I don't think that's changed these years. So, so we went, so Black Sabbath, you know, be a Tony Aomey had to like lower the tone of the, you know, the drop D, right, because of his fingers and because of his handicap. He creates this sort of deeper sound, you know, darker sound. And then you had, I'm just fast forwarding to this sort of, we could go talk forever about this. We go in transition to the punk revolution because things started getting a little too not for me. That hasn't happened. Sorry. That has not happened. It's like, I'm still waiting for JC to come back. And that has never happened. Not in my life. Sorry. I completely disagree with every, every single aspect and angle of it. And I won't have it in my life. It's a destroyer, a destructor of music. Do you don't think punk pushed it back a bit? Sort of being too big? No. If you are Steve Harris or any of the others of that era, what drove them? It certainly wasn't punk. They just had a great little pub band. That's what they had. They didn't get two shits about punk. And Steve still doesn't. I know that for a fact. He doesn't. Neither do I. I won't play it. I won't get involved in it. I won't even acknowledge its existence. It's shit. And that's that. Sorry. Fair enough. And that's how I feel about it. And I always have. I won't play it. I won't get involved in it. It's imperfect. So all the, so all the sort of mythology of made in sort of borrowing a little bit of the punk sound, that's just myth. There's no facts to it. I didn't even hear that. When I heard that tape that I just showed you, Steve brought it to me, probably with Dave Murray and maybe called Deanna. I'm not sure. What they did, they brought it to me at the bandwagon one night, very early on in 1979. What Steve's idea about it was that he wanted me just to organize some gigs for them. Actually, made in themselves, I think Steve has had some sort of a band or whatever, going since about, I don't know, 1974 or five or six, somewhere around there. It didn't start with me that they already, you know, they had this band. They went to Spacewood Studios in Cambridge. Ironically, I don't do very far away from there at all. That's weird. I never knew they were there until I moved in here. That was the idea. It was Loopy saying it was Steve, Paul and Loopy who brought you the tape. Loopy? Now, Loopy was the road. Loopy's trying to get in there. Oh, wait a minute. Maybe it was. Loopy. Yeah, Steve Loopy. Which Loopy is this? Steve Loopy, part of the roadcuffer. Oh, right. I didn't even know it was him. Hey, I'll be damned. I didn't know he was even on. Steve, Paul and Loopy. Well, I didn't acknowledge or even remember him being there. I thought it was Steve, Steve Murray and one other. I thought it was Paul. I wasn't sure. It is Paul. Steve, Paul and Loopy. And he goes, he was there and Neil called me. I don't remember. I was there and you'll call me. Well, we've got a little bit of history here. Well, I never knew that. I don't remember that. I remember Steve. I know damn well the idea was that he wanted to get some gigs at the bandwagon. That's why he brought me the tape to Delway listen to it. And I was very rude at the time. There's no question that I was. I said, yes, Steve, you and about half a million others. And to this day, just recently, Steve and I were talking together and we both laughed about that point. I'm sorry, man. I'm really sorry. So I took the tape home, like I did with all the others. And suddenly it just jumped out and hit me. This one was completely different. For a start, it was very well recorded by someone who knew what they were doing with rock. And back then, demo tapes were much of a much. Some of them, some of them are so poor in quality and also just musicianship. This one was sparkling, shining. It was absolutely brilliant. Everything about it was fine. The construction of the songs, chord progressions, key changes. There's just everything about it. I couldn't fault it compared to what else I had to listen to every day back then. I mean, the songs were complete. They were exciting. They were powerful. They were pretty fast. And the melodies were fantastic. The whole thing for me was complete. There it was. That's what I thought at the time. And that's what I felt. And I phoned Steve up and told him that I had to do something about it, you know, because it deserved. It was just so great. And besides which all fed up with the bloody industry, not listening to anyone, usual situation, because they never know what they're doing. And they still don't. So I know I phoned up Steve probably the next day might have. And I did tell him, I said, this is great, fantastic, this stuff going to make you very well known. Probably you'll never have to look back, Steve, and you're going to become a very wealthy man. And he just laughed. He laughed, he laughed, he laughed. I mean, at that time, I think he was living in his grandmother's house in East London in Plastote, East Ham. No one had any money back then, not me, not them, not anyone. We were all impoverished at the end of the day. So it seemed a very long stretch to believe that. But I fervently believed it completely 100%. The big problem came when you start taking it around. You know what I find interesting? You had a club, the bandwagon. Well, not your club, but it was a club where you DJed. You would play music at that club, like new music, correct? It was always like new music people haven't heard before. Which was kind of unheard of at least growing up in my time, probably in Stifan's time too, like a club just playing new music all the time. No, we played known tracks as well. Known tracks is mixed in as well, right? I get it. But I'm going to tell you, growing up in Canada, you wouldn't have clubs just playing completely new music, or sort of mixing it in either, right? We entertained Ted Nugent as the first A-Lister visitor to the bandwagon. Not to play, just to visit. I lined it all up. And he said to me that he couldn't think of any place in the States that was doing at that time, what you're doing here. It's a hell of a place. Is it 500 people used to show up and just... Yeah, well, the main room had legally held about 350, 400. We had a back bar as well that we could add. And I mean, we could take in about 800 right away across. And when Moteg came to visit the kids, there was more than that hanging around. But yeah, 500 was a good number. So create the scene here. People used to play the regular metal songs or hard rock songs, the heavier stuff. No, we did lighter stuff too. I mean, the thing is, I know that everyone continually names it as the heavy metal sound health, which I did. And the reason I did that was because I hate the word discotech. I was a London Club DJ before any of this ever happened. I was in West Berlin for a nine month season at the Playboy Club before any of this happened. I was a very, very professional and seasoned DJ. And I found the love of my life in music right at this place. And I was damned if I was going to use the word discotech. I hate it. Heavy metal disco. Heavy metal disco. Yeah, it sucks to me. What I came up with was this title of a house and sound, you see. And I thought, but turn it around. And the name of the actual venue was the bandwagon, the Publisher Prince of Wales. And the bandwagon was a side hall attached to it. So all I did was add the name bandwagon and then heavy metal sound health. So I didn't have to call it a disco because our sound system was immense. It was huge. It was very, very, very big and it was band equipped. And one of the reasons why it works so well. I know we're living out there. This is this is some connected story because some house was something different before. But I think you need to tell him story about the judge and how everything started to be yeah, all right. This is this is hardly believable, Jimmy. If you listen to go on all night, do you realize this? I can go on all night. Get some coffee, take a couple of pee breaks. Go ahead. Yeah, more details. If you're okay for it all night, man, it's been a while. That's for sure. Go ahead. Sorry. Look, originally the format of the wagon was like this. First of all, the pub itself didn't run the entertainment. They were subcontractors called steeples discotheques. I was hired by them. They played heavy rock as it was known once a week on a Wednesday night. A trucking buddy of mine said to me, listen, I know this place in Kingsbury that you're just going to love and once we finish trucking and I've had a bath or whatever, why don't you meet me and I'm going to take you down there to this place because I think it's going to be heaven for you. And I was pretty knackered. I just said, oh, all right, we'll go out for a beer. That night, we met outside the Prince of Wales. He took me into the van wagon for the first time. The place was absolutely packed. On stage, there's a couple of guys spinning some rock sounds, right? They don't particularly look rock. One of them is wearing a shirt and trousers, very boring, you know, the usual thing. But the thing that got my attention was the goddamn sound system. Fucking great Altec Lansing horns as wide as anything you want. There was some mid-band sort of shavers. There was some seriously big scoop sort of bass bins in there. And it was like a band PA big, big band PA part of and it was fucking loud as hell. And it was quality and it didn't distort and it roared. And I'd never ever even seen a system like this in any of the clubs that I had worked in, either in Germany or in London or anywhere. It was an absolute animal. I thought, fuck, someone knows not more than what they're doing. They know everything. This is how you play rock. And the other thing that interested me was this. I noticed that their DJ mixer, the console, with the decks and the mixer in the middle, it was being flown on chains from rafters in the roof. And the reason for that was the system was so loud that the pickups on the cartridges were feeding back on the bottom end. It was picking up vibration. Everything was so loud and it would hum. It would feed back. So they had to fly the thing free like a ship's compass. I thought, fuck, what is all this? The next minute I know they put out an announcement. Is there anybody in the place tonight that fancies joining the team up here to play this sort of music as a DJ? If you're down there, come up and make yourself known to us on stage. How could I refuse? I was so very experienced as a DJ, unquestionable. I knew what I was doing. And I just loved the music. It was in my heart and in my soul. So I went up there and within two records, I got the job. But it was still only once a week. The other nights, it was mixed bag. They made me play this, that, and the other. Because I worked for Steve Walsh Disject. They were the subcontractors at the bandwagon, not the Prince of Wales or Charrington Breweries. They didn't organize anything. Then they were on other nights playing commercial music of the day, pop music, you might call it. And the police had been watching the bandwagon for a long time because there was underage drinking going on. Because most of the kids, they're not 18. No kids that go into clubs to listen to that music are ever 18. They're 14, 15. It goes on all the time, some of them are 13. Those that can get away with it. And it, through the years, it's been everywhere worldwide. Anyway, this particular local police inspector had some sort of a grudge against the wagon for some reason or other in times before my time. And he mounted a raid on the bandwagon one of these commercial music nights. And the license was coming up for renewal, the music and entertainment license. And he caught them red-handed and he stopped the music and he took names and addresses and he turns out most of the kids were well under 18. And he was determined to close the wagon. That's what he wanted to do. He wanted to shut down the bandwagon because he was a miserable bastard. And he was, I don't even remember his name, but I can tell you for sure he was a miserable bastard. That's right, I said bastard. Anyway, so who cares? So it's like this. The governor of the park, the manager of the Prince of Wales, together with the governors from Steeples Disputex approached me and said, look, we've got a real problem here. We stand to lose everything. We have to go to court and oppose the police action. We want you to go to court because you speak well. You know what you're saying, you know what you're doing. Go to court, stand up and speak for us when the time comes and the judge allows anybody else with any comments. We want you to represent us. And I said, all right, I'll do it, but there's no guarantee I can do anything. You know, I mean, hey, I'm up against the police here. And the day came, Wembley magistrates actually, the magistrates court, not far from the famous football stadium actually. We went there. The judge seemed like a decent, a decent old stick. My nemesis, the police inspector was there with a whole host of others. And he stood up and said, yes, we oppose the license because of the trouble there, the fights there, the underage drinking there. Didn't mention drug-taking because at the time, I don't think there was any. But he definitely, and he said, you know, complaints from the neighbors with people leaving the premises after hours, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then the magistrate, the judge, you know, he said, is there anybody here which is to speak in defense of the, of the premises? And I stood up and said, yes, sir, me, I would wish to talk, which surprised the police. They weren't expecting any opposition at all. The inspector sat down and the magistrate asked me, you know, well, what is this about? I said, look, sir, on my nights, which is once all, we played different kinds of music. It attracts older people, usually in couples. There are no fights outside. We don't have any, any, anything other than harmony. And people leave quietly and they enjoy the evening. There are no underage drinkers on my nights. And that's a Wednesday night. And he called the police inspector back up and he said, is this true? Do you have any reports of any disturbances or any underage drinking reported on the Wednesday nights? The police had to say, no, not at all. And the neighbors complained about noisy departures and rowdy kids after hours outside on a Wednesday night. And he again said, no. The magistrate turned around, he said, right, he said, this is what I'm going to do. I am not going to take away your license. I'm going to give you a six month trial, but this is what you have to do. First of all, you must establish a legal membership on the door. Everyone has to prove that they are over 18 by birth certificate, passport, some means or other. And everyone has a membership card. Okay, that's what you must do now by law. The second thing is that you have to play your sort of music every night. The other form of music that brings in the young element is gone. There's only your kind of music every night of the week that you're open. And I'll give you six months to prove that you can re establish order and run the place correctly. So by order of law, I was given the bandwagon six nights a week. Thank you from my one pop music, dance music and all the other shit left by the left by the stage door backwards and never turned up again. In one foul swoop, the law gave me what I want to. So much for breaking the law, right? It was almost the Judas Priest moment, but officially. So in actual fact, God bless the magistrate. What can I say? That immediately opened up everything. I had a wagon every night. That's amazing. Okay, so the popularity began this even April wine, right? From Montreal, Canada. Yeah, I did their tour with them. They're from here and they had a, you know, huge success over there. Oh, they were lovely. What a bunch of guys. We entertain them at the bandwagon. Well, basically what happened was I realized now that I had to really work because I had all these nights to fill and I can't do the same thing every night. So fortune always smiled on the brave, you know, Jimmy. The next thing that happened, we got Jeff Barton from Sounds. I needed the media to, you know, expose what we had. We were in the midst of the punk revolution and everywhere that was the fashion, the music. He didn't like that. He didn't like that at all. No, I didn't like it at all. I wouldn't have it there. Quite rightly so. It had done enough damage to real musicians as it was. I certainly didn't have to say the idea of that being there. No way. I know that I needed the help of the industry. I needed exposure. I needed the media. I needed the records as well. I want albums, white labels from them, all the new stuff. And I'm not paying for it. But in order not to pay for it, I have to make the name of the sound house. No. And in order to do that, I needed to press down there. And in order to do that, considering you weren't in London, over about 14 miles northwest of London, how the hell do I do this? And then it came to me. Personal appearances never been done before. Hence, Aaron Maiden with DJ Neil Kay. No, no, no. This is before Maiden never showed up. And Neil, with Ted Nugent. I can remind you, Neil, we talked last time about visitors of Ben Wagen. And, you know, all we who live in other countries think that people from London, the London is full of metalheads. But yeah, you have different. I should explain that. Explain them about visitors. Yeah, very good point, Stefan. Jimmy, what Stefan's talking about actually is quite right. I didn't realise, I never knew. He said that people that read about the Wagen or, you know, or London, always assumed that there was a big residential crowd of metalers there. There's none. They don't live in London. No one lives in central London. His office buildings and railway stations. Everybody that follows, well, most want to music live outside. They travel in and go home again. No one lives in London. No one. Are we talking about back then or has it always been like that? No, it's always been like that. You can live in camp in town, maybe, if you've got the money. You know, there's a few residential places and normally they're very expensive. The people that follow, you know, popular music or metal or rock or whatever, they don't live in London. They come in from the suburbs and outside tubes, you know, buses. That's it. There's no resident audience in London. There's no one lives there. You know, when I was a kid, Neil, strange enough, the cardboard guitars actually came all the way here. Oh my God, no. Oh my God, no. So actually, I even have a picture somewhere of myself with one of those. So for the people who don't know, back then, back in the day. It was all a business thing in the end. I know that I needed the media. I needed to make a bandwagon famous. I was looking at ways always of doing that. The cardboard or hardwood guitar thing wasn't one of my invention. Rob Loonhouse did it. But first of all, we've got people high listed from our own area of music to come meet the kids. Lemmy did, Motorhead did. Well, Judas Priest did. They came. The first one was Ted Nugent. He came and then I got Roger Glover and Cozy Powell at the time, Rain Bowers. They came. Whenever I put on a special like this, the press came. I made sure of it. I invited the press because up until then no one had ever done this before. A lot of them didn't believe I could do it. The first one with Ted Nugent was dead nervous. It was a Tuesday night, worst night of the week. Ted only had that night free. I arranged it with a contact at CBS and their guest list was inspirational. Even Muff Winwood was on it, the boss of CBS London. I was looking at my watch and looking at my watch when the time came, late, late, are they coming? Then suddenly they swept in the whole band. Ted bought the whole band. He bought everyone. We had the wildest nights. For those that didn't believe I could do it, they were very sorry because the next night when the wagon met on a more normal evening, nothing was being talked about except the last night when Ted Nugent came to the bandwagon, melody maker covered it, sounds covered it, all the journalists were there and it was right there. There's an important point about doing that. Once I've done that, how could any other record companies turn me down? If Ted Nugent could do it, why the hell can't you? I'm not interested in excuses. The press you'll get out of it is well worth the effort. We all do well. You'll get the publicity. I'll get the media for the club and we'll sell. The kids want to meet their stars, but not on the stage at Hammersmith Odeon or Wembley. They want to meet them one-to-one like this in a little club. We did. We got Sammy Hager. He came. There was a lot. I actually had ACDC lined up to appear when Bob Scott went and died and because of that, I missed that actually. We missed that one, but loads did come. Yeah, I remember in the book. So we should say the book is coming out in September to tell everybody the autobiography of Neil Kaye, The Journey, The Recollections. In the book, you told me something about ACDC and that of Bob Scott that you contacted the management and you got some kind of rude message about that. That's right actually. The night before Bond died had been one of my own shows at the music machine and I'd had my usual lineup of three bands myself or whatever, but we hung over because Lemmy was there and Bond was there. Right into the early hours of the morning, right up the back upstairs is the pool room and we were playing pool and having a beer or two ourselves and we all left, I don't know, what time exactly, maybe half two, three. Nick Parker, the manager there, wanted to lock up and we went out our separate ways. I got home, I went to bed and about eight o'clock in the morning, my wife, my first wife, shook me awake and said, Bond's dead. I said, don't be ridiculous. I was playing pool with him, you know, just less than four or five hours ago. He can't be, don't be stupid. And she said, he is. Put the news on. And he died in his car of something, you know, swallowing vomit or something. I was absolutely flabbergasted. I had Peter Menchie's numbers because we were dealing with him anyway to try and get ACDC to visit the wagon. And also, we knew, we knew because of something else that was going on. What did you think of Bond? Like, I mean, He was rock and roll. He was rock and roll, just the finish. I phoned up Peter Mench, you know, and said, is it true that Bond's dead? I can't hardly believe it. He said, yes it is. He said, the king is dead, long live the king. What? And I, at that moment in time, I guess I was still too soft because I understand these days exactly what he meant. With a big band like that, you have to go on. Somehow you must go on. And Bond Scott was the leading light up front of ACDC. And he was revered and loved by millions. And he was, Mr Rock and Roll, to me, one of them. He was. But hard-bitten, Mr Mench, had already decided that the band goes on. So Bond's dead. Who's the next one? And that's what, that's kind of what I got down the phone, you know. Well, it's kind of cold right away, right? It's cool to say something like that. Absolutely. Absolutely. But that's the only attitude to take. You know, I mean, what else do you do? Yeah, they had, you know, the fans were in mourning. The music papers did everything. The band released back in black as a tribute, of course, which was right. The right thing to do with the bell, tolling the first number and all that. But that was dead right. It was me that was wrong. I was too sappy, you know. You've got to develop this hardness about you if you're going to be successful, haven't you? You know, there's a time and a place. But for those that are inquiring, there's no question the band must go on. Here's also another story with Peter Mench and his business partner. They visited Neil and they try to take Iron Maiden. So imagine Iron Maiden in this management. So you can tell them the story about Maiden, about praying mantis, about... Yeah, it had to be. Definitely. Well, I mean, this is one of the weirdest stories give me, but it's dead true. Absolutely true. One night about half past 10, I'm in my little apartment with my first wife in Coalindale, north-west London. Half 10 is a knock on the door. I'm not expecting anyone. It's a night off. I've gone downstairs, opened the door, and Peter Mench is standing there with Cliff Bernstein, who was at that time head of A&R for Final Gram, Los Angeles at that time. I didn't know either of them. I'd never heard of them. I didn't recognize them. I didn't know them at all. And Peter says, hi, Neil. He's the same name like that, so draggy. He said, can we come in? We know about you. We've heard about you. We know what to do. We wanted to check out some of your other demo tapes, because for us, it's too late now for Iron Maiden to get them. Mench came representing the international management company that he was attached to at the time, Leverkrebs. His buddy, Bernstein, was with Final Gram, and they came hunting for bands, one to sign to management, one to sign to record company. That's what they were doing over. And they were too late to get Iron Maiden. They'd already gone. And I'd had Frank Mantis' demo tape around me for a while. It was absolutely brilliant. More commercial than Iron Maiden, different style, not really metal, good rock, very melodic, and great performances, vocally, vocal harmonies, very nice songs, very accessible for rock radio, or any radio. They had some terrific balance as well. I had tried with the industry in England, because it was obvious to me, but of course it wasn't obvious to them. There's a bunch of boneheads, and they can't hear anything, and they're deaf. And I can assure you I used to get so mad listening to their feeble excuses. I heard them with Maiden. I got laughed out the door from a couple of record companies and told, I don't know what I'm doing. And that was by BloodyCVS Records as well, who had Judith Priest. They couldn't hear it. So I've used all these rejections and nonsensical comments. Anyway, I had the Mantis tape, and it was very good. It was equally as good as Maiden's. It's not a little clearer. But they recorded it at Spacewood Studios too, with the engineer that knew what he was doing. Guitar sounds were good. The mix was good. It was very clear and quite powerful. So I got the tape out and played it to them. I said, listen lads, I've got something here you might be interested in. It is good. It's commercial. And if ever it was meant for America, this has to be it. So I put it on, I played it to them in my little lounge. It was a right mess. My first wife was going crazy because it was a shitty at the time. And they jumped up. They loved it. They absolutely loved it. And they said, look, we want you to make an arrangement for a meeting between Frank Mantis, the two brothers, Chris and Tino Troy, and ourselves. And we do it at the bandwagon. Can you get them up there? Because we want to start talking business. But I've phoned up Tino and said, listen, I think your boat's coming in. I don't want to put too fine a point on it, but Lady Luck seems to be shining down on your head right now, old boy. And if I was you, I'd get you and your brother to the bandwagon on such and such a date. Peter Bench and Cliff Bernstein want to meet you. And they are from blah, blah, blah. Right. The night came. I'm in the middle of my stage trying to play music to the pumpers. On one side of me, I have Chris and Tino Troy. On the other side, I've got Peter Bench and Cliff Bernstein, and they're talking across me about deals and what to do coming to America. Sorry, Eddie Murphy. And, you know, there's this sort of cross chatter going on. In the meantime, I'm just trying to play sounds and keep an audience happy. Anyway, I gather there's a little bit of disharmony accruing on one side here. And what it is, is this. Bench said to the boys, look, we will take you to America. We will agency you. We will record you. We will make you big. You will never have to look back again. Everything that you have ever desired or wanted out of rock and roll, we will give you. We love your songs. But we feel you need a frontman, a separate singer and a keyboard player. You get that and we'll take it. There is the carrot, big red carrot. And they said, no. They said, no. Tino said, we don't think we need another singer. We don't really need a keyboard. Oh, no, no, no. At the end of the night, our buttonhole Tino. Never mind about Chris. I said, listen, this is an unbelievable opportunity. You have done clean over all the British recording industry, all the management, all the agency. You have got the top notch. Libra Krebs are fucking huge, man. They have Boston, Ted Newsom, ACDC. They've got the whole raft of everybody that's anybody and you will join them. And Bernstein out on the West Coast will give you anything you need in the studio. But Christ said to their photograph LA, can't you see it? He said, I can see it. He said, but we don't agree that we need a singer. And I don't really need keyboards, having two guitars. I said, sing those. I said, just don't, don't, don't, don't, just don't. Anyway, I said, look, think it over. And then outside Menchie and Bernstein got older me as well and said, listen, we want you to pressurize them for every ounce of weight you've got on them to sign with us and get, get a frontman, get a keyboard player. And for 10 days, the battle of wits went on. My phone was red hot. There were no mobiles in those days. It was just fun. Menchie would phone me up. I'd phone Tino up and then it went back down the line again. After the 10th day, Menchie and Bernstein went elsewhere. The offer was shut. It never happened. And the big irony is that years later, when I toured to Japan with Mantis and even before then, they had a separate frontman and a keyboard player. And even recently when I spoke with Tino and got his permission to tell this story, I felt I did, you know. He said, yeah, he said it was stupidity of you completely. You know, school well, what they turned down. And basically what happened was I lost contact with Peter Menchie and Bernstein. Suddenly, I'd be notes to me and I did make this point. I did not know. They had hooked up with Death Leopard. I had brought Death Leopard down to London for their very first London show. It was at my venue, the music machine. They were kids at the time. I believe one was only just 14, the other 15, maybe 16. The next thing I know, the phone rings, it's Peter again. And this I'm going to tell you, Jimmy, in absolute truth. I know Joe Elliott doesn't believe it. And I've had feedback from it. He thinks it's a load of old bollocks. That's Canadian footballs. I know that. I've learned that over the years. Yeah, well, that's the language I use and I reticent about it. Basically, what happened was this. Menchie said to me, we'd like you to come down the phone to Grand London, because we are close to signing a band called Death Leopard. I said, yeah, I know of them. He said, but they're very, very young. Their parents have to sign for them. And the fact is that they are very reticent about signing to strangers who would take them across the pond to America when they're so very young. What we want you to do is persuade them that the band would be better off with us rather than their current manager, Frank Stewart Brown, who runs a record store in Sheffield. You know, like the Beatles manager had Nems' record store in Liverpool. Now, I knew Frank Stewart Brown. He was a decent guy. His brown suits and wide lapels left a bit of comment. But he was a very nice guy. But there's no question that he could ever reach the heights of management and agency that those two guys could. Anyway, I went down to phone to Grand. They paid me. I can't remember exactly how much, but they did. Independently confirmed by my ex-wife, who also remembers all this. I was let into a room in the building where the parents and maybe grandparents perhaps were. And I was asked to talk to them for half an hour and answer their questions, which I did. I did. And then they rejoined the other guys and I had done my bit and I left. As the world now knows, they signed up to the phone of Grand and Peter Bench. And so it went on its way. Now, Joe Elliott says blatantly that I'm lying about that, that it never happened. And if it didn't happen at all, it must be one of the most bizarre lies that's ever been told. Do they ever put that one together? Why would he say it didn't happen? But why would he say exactly? Well, why would he say it is giving an interview to a journalist in Germany? I was interviewed as well about it. And I don't know, maybe it's because he was being interviewed about their beginnings. And he didn't want, he just didn't want it known that they had outside help. I don't know. But I know one thing that anybody that could actually concoct such a bizarre story as that should himself be given a recorded deal. I don't know that. Why would I anyway? Did you spend time with the band afterwards? Like, did you do any sort of guest appearances? No, not at all. I had them on my show at the Music Machine. It was their first London date. They came down to Sheffield about 300 miles away. And I never even ever rated them because that little vinyl EP there, that's what I got. I didn't have a demo tape. I had that little 45 vinyl with three songs on it. And left overture, I think one track was called. And when I compared that to Pyromania, it's like two different bands completely. The EP is nothing more or less than I would have expected from, you know, a young vinyl Pro Tem metal band, pub band from the north of England. That is what it was. That's what I got. I always wondered, where the heck is Pete Willis? That's what I always wondered. Like, where'd he go? Where did he go? He must be around your neck of the woods somewhere. I don't know. You'll have to phone up Joe earlier and ask him. I haven't got the foggiest clue. I've never been, I was never associated as friends with them. I didn't. I mean, there's still been a secret about this, but I've not bothered telling anyone. Well, how's it going to benefit me? I'm 72 years old. I've had a career. All I want to do is grow roses and flowers in my garden. There's this amount of alcohol. And that's not a crime, not where I come from. A lot of people as well, you know. Too bad. I get a lot of messages about Iron Maiden. All right. So you're sort of the organic changes and transitions of Iron Maiden, you know, since you're a friend with Steve, you know, Paul Deanna is in the band. Personally, I love the first two albums, you know, the Soundhouse tapes. Well, I did Two Maiden Tourists. Steve mentions that in his foreword in the book. I did do Four Two Maiden Tourists. And besides that, look, I, there was a, there's this kind of native linguistic connection from East London to me. My parents grew up in East London as well. I was born in Essex, but although Steve says he sees me as the rich cousin because I went to a public school, a British public school. We know, British public school means private school in the North America. Oh, yeah, you have to explain that. It's the other way around. Yeah, yeah. Explain that to your people. So private school in England is actually called a public school and vice versa. Go ahead. Well, you know, I speak, I've given the speech voice, couldn't say my life, but I have a good speaking voice, the broadcast voice. I know all that. And because I lived in Northwest London in Stanmore, that's, you know, kind of Snoopyville for some of them. So I became, you know, Lord Snooty for the Maiden Boys because they're from the East side. You're on two tours. I mean, is Paul gelling with the band, you know, like to me? Yeah, I'll give you the lowdown from what, up from my aspect, my point of view. First of all. And it all comes from love with Paul. I mean, I love. Yeah, look, I was a good friend with all of them at that time. Steve, Dave, Paul. I mean, the first drama was Dougie White when I first met them. There wasn't a second guitar. It's when I first met them. There wasn't. Others came and went and so on. And, you know, blah, blah, blah. But I was great friends with all of them. We had good times. They played the wagon. You know, we've gone out and done the heavy metal crusade together as well. You know, that was run by Samson's manager, Alistair Primrose, to the idiotically named Ram Cup Promotions. Ram Cup. I'm saying that deliberately slowly, so your listeners don't get the wrong idea. It's nothing to do with that. It's Ram Cup, right? Good. So, you know, we, we, we, and we did private gigs, Samson, Iron Maiden, myself. Oh, and Urchin. We did an American Air Base for the July job, Upper Hayford, the American Air Force book, privately. So, so Urchin with, Urchin with Adrian Smith, Samson with Bruce Dickinson fronting, and then the rest of the guys in Iron Maiden. Yeah. Yeah, Neil, we did that gig as well. I mean, yeah, Neil, you need to tell the story about phone call to Bruce Dickinson. People need to know that as well. Well, that's another one I've never really mentioned, but it's true. It's absolutely true. Yeah. You see, Jimmy, when somebody like me is around. Look, I'm no accredited artist. I'm just a, I'm just a detail. I'm a go-between. You know, people use me all the time in the industry as a go-between or instigator or whatever. I feel the same way sometimes too. Well, you will be because you're a DJ. You see, you're not looking for a recording career. You don't want to join, you know, you're not touring whatever. You're just a DJ. They can't cripple you. If you do something wrong as a band, they can stop you playing everywhere if they want. The industry could. So they can't stop a DJ. You're in, you're in violet, mate. You can't be touched. And that means you're very, very useful. So I was very useful. So I got a phone call from Steve one day, soon after Paul was out the band for the last time. And Steve said to me, you know, what do you think of Bruce Dickinson? And I said, well, I think he's with the wrong band. I think that was my comment. He's with the wrong band. Steve said, yeah, he's an animal. He said, listen, I want you to contact him. And I want you to ask him to meet you at your next gig over in East London at the Green Man Layton Stone. Getting down there, I want you to give him this phone number and tell him to phone me. I can't obviously do it myself because I'm in Iron Maiden. You know, they're Samson and I already had enough trouble with Bloody Paul Samson. Unbelievable trouble. You wouldn't believe it. And he said, it's like a delicate situation. Right. So anyway, I phoned up Bruce. I said, listen, Bruce, I've got a message for you from Steve. I want you to come down and meet me at my show. The Green Man, Layton Stone, Thursday night, whatever, whatever. Well, I'd be there. I've got a message for you. So he did. He turned up and sat down. I remember it clearly. I said, there's a phone number here. Steve wants you to phone him privately. Right. Because I think I've got a funny to you and that your life is about to change. I ain't making any guarantees nor promises that really between the lines, if you don't do this, you'll be missing out on a great future. Do it. Do it. Do it. Okay. And I gave him the phone number. And of course, the rest is history. Whatever happened to that sort of that story where Smallwood was talking to Bruce on the side, hey, do you want to join Iron Maiden? And then I guess that really was a precursor. Your story was a precursor to that. I never heard about it. I don't know. I never heard about it. It was Smallwood saying, yeah, yeah, you took him to the side. Rod and I were friends in the very early days. I had him on the back of my motorcycle once. We went down to Twickenham or what the rugby match. He was a member of a rugby team that were based at Twickenham. It was either the Harlequins or the Wasps. And I'd played rugby football at school like he did. He was at university. I don't know if it was Oxford or Cambridge. I think it was Cambridge. That's where he met Andy Taylor. But Ron and I were very close friends at that stage. And I picked him up once. I'm on my motorbike and we rode down to Twickenham to watch the rugby match. So I knew Rod well, but I don't know anything about that. I'm unsure. So I'm going to say to him, don't know. It probably led. It was probably your conversation. It was Steve that called me. It wasn't Rod, it was Steve that called me about it. And I did do that. What about the tensions with Paul and made in sort of... I witnessed Paul's behaviour on two tours. And the trouble occasionally that he did actually cause. On the first tour when we did Newcastle, there was something about Paul that didn't quite add up in as much that he seemed to owe part of his allegiance to a different kind of social movement. I don't know. He wasn't so much punk, but he used to wear the weird gear that scar followers do. He had this pork pie hat that had been worn in the 60s by mobs. And the precursor of reggae was actually called scar. Madness played a little bit of scar in their set, you know, bagging pants and all that. But they used to do a bit of scar. And Paul Diano used to wear a pork pie hat such as they used to wear. And Steve must have told him a million times, don't go on stage with that hat. And of course he did. And he went on stage with that hat and a biking leather, which I found totally ridiculous. But who am I? It's not up to me to say anything. Duck him out, Mr. K. It's not your problem. I was there as link man compare and DJ. And the year of 1980 was good to me. I'd been voted four top DJ of my country in one of the music paper polls. And I was the only non radio DJ to get that far. And that's because I've been touring and going around and meeting the kids. So I was, you know, I was enjoying touring and stuff. I loved it. And every night the band would, you know, go on, do their thing and everything. And Paul, Paul had this problem. He didn't have a problem. After the shows, back at the hotels where we might entertain, followers, fans, whatever. Paul would be talking about his fleet of helicopters that we had, or he was about to buy. And every night he had more helicopters. Steve just laughed it off, you know, but I thought, oh, dear, as you do, right? You know, and he sort of tripped the light. Fantastic. I mean, Paul and I never had a cross. Well, I do the friends. We laughed a lot. But as time progressed, with a musical aspect, and I always hear music as a musician, although I'm a DJ, allowing me to work in production and arrangement over the last 25, 30 years. It's that hearing I have that I separate instruments instantly in my head. I do. And the trouble was that I saw that the back line, Maiden's back line, the plane, was outstripping the front line. They were better than the singer. They needed somebody out front, in my belief at the time, that had a bit more power and a bit more control, so that the balance was maintained. Not back line here and singer here. You have to have a balance. You know, you need to keep it right in balance, where one is as good as the other. So the overall delivery is supreme. Yeah. Yeah. You told me a story about argument with Judas Priest on the tour, an incident. You know, much better. I mean, in the book, you will read much more details, but you can tell in short. I think I always liked that about Paul. He was just like, you know, he was like the rebel of Ari Maiden. I always enjoyed that. That's what I always liked about him. His voice was on the level to start with. He was in balance. They were a young raw band, and he was full of life and vigor and fun. And, you know, on power, he was a good frontman. He knew how to run the band. He was excellent at all those things. But as time went by, he became a problem in other ways. When we did Newcastle that first time, when you go to Newcastle in the north of England, the one thing you don't do is talk about football. That would be a very stupid thing to do. Unfortunately, Paul walked on stage that night and told everybody how West Ham was going to beat the shit out of Newcastle United. And I'm afraid to say that I did the headline spot that night at the request of Steve and the others. They had to leave the stage in rather a hurry. And I did the last 45 minutes myself. Unbelievable. They said, can you? Of course I can. But I can only play records. I can't sing or dance, if you know. But I did. I finished it because Paul upset them. He said the wrong thing to the wrong audience. And he was very good at that. He also managed a real photo on the Deuter Street surf. I mean, I was managed by Deuter Street's manager, Mike Dolan, for Armacarta Management, for about, I don't know, 18, 19, 20 months maybe. Because I was already under pressure from Japanese magazines and record companies to put together what became known as metal for mothers. And they wanted their own and they wanted me to do it. And I needed, I was, I was so under pressure, Jimmy. I was doing absolutely everything myself. I had no company. I had nobody working for me. I had nobody to do anything for me. I was doing everything myself. And I was slowly driving myself into the ground. I just, I mean, we were, and the wagon we were busy, it got even worse after we got bummed out of there. And I had my own roadshow. I had a seven-ton truck with gear, four-man road crew. I was managing Samurai for Jim White, Nazareth Manager for rehearsal and recording complex. I was doing a million different things and there was only me. And I needed help. And then this offer from Japan came along as well. And I was naive about negotiating a deal at the time. And Mike Dolan called me up one day. He knew me. He said, I've been reading all about you in the press. He said, listen, I understand you've been offered a recording deal from a Japanese record company via, I think it was music like the Japanese Mag. He said, I'd be very interested in signing you up for management as a one-off, which you are. And I'll handle negotiations for this deal and everything else. And he's the one who got me the first Monsters of Rock, Donnington. That's how I got it through Mike Dolan. Anyway, I've been on tour with April Wine. The last night was either Manchester or Sheffield somewhere around there. Maiden with Priest, with you on there the night after. And I decided to stay on because I knew April Wine. They were, you know, good, good friends. We'd done the Donnington thing. It was good. And of course Maiden were the home team and Judas Priest. Well, I was managed by them. I knew the boys and Priest because of that. Anyway, I decided to stay over, you know, one day and then go to their, the theater that night and go say hello to everyone. Because to me, they were all friends. I mean friends, you know. Anyway, I went out to the kiosk in the afternoon to get some cigarettes at the theater where they were soundchecking in. The next thing I know, someone's bounced me from behind and hit me hard on the head. And I swung round and it's Kenny Downing. I said, Kenny, what are you doing? It's me, Neil. He said, ah, he said, I'm sorry, man. Yeah, he said, I thought you were Dave Murray from behind. And I thought, yeah, I suppose we'll do a little bit long, blonde hair, same shape. I said, why, why, why? Well, you know, what the hell's going on? He said, you better come backstage with me and talk to Mike. And he took me backstage to the priest dressing room and my manager was there. Mike told him with the band. I said, Mike, what is going on? Kenny nearly killed me. He said, yeah, I'm sorry. He said, look, we've got a problem with Paul and the maidens and the band ain't talking to him at the moment. And unless we get this result, we may have to take them off the tour, you know? And I said, well, I don't understand. You're the best of mates. I mean, you've done so much for them on this tour and everything. I just thought when you left, you know, you were buzzing buddies like he said, yeah. He said, we were until Paul went out on stage and calmly announced that the maidens were going to blow the priest off stage. And I thought, oh, I heard all this before. Here we go. I said, he didn't. He said he did. And that's kind of rather upset the men in the room. I think I've been, it has. He said, we can go and talk to Rob and Steve and say that we need an apology. That's the only thing that's going to turn us around. He said, all right, I'll do it. Mike, oh, look, you're my manager anyway. I just want to help smooth things out. So I did go next door. I explained to Steve and Rob what they'd say. I wasn't there. I didn't witness whatever it was. It happened on a night when I wasn't around that tour. I said, look, they're saying this. And this is what they're saying. And you know, because you were there, I wasn't. And Steve and Rob had a chat for a few minutes on their own, I think. And then they got older Paul and they went to a priest dressing room and dealt with it. And later on that night or the next night, I can't remember which I believe there was a birthday celebration in both camps. And they threw a joint party that I think made this hotel actually. And things were smoothed over. And everything proceeded. But I mean, I walked into that one and that was apparently Paul as well. Well, you know what? That was actually documented also in KK's book. Was it? Yeah. It was documented in KK's book. He kind of speaks to it, maybe not in depth as you do, right? But it's kind of mentioned that, you know, that was a big, it's kind of like a legendary sort of story now. You know, it's sort of, you know, I'd never heard of it from anybody else. Obviously, it's not at all. The cockiness of youth. That's the cockiness of youth, right? You know, it's like, I'm gonna blow it. There's similar stories, not that way, but Neil, can you maybe tell the story about, let me approach you and ask you why you're doing so much for Iron Maiden, not for me. And the other story about Paul Samson, who told you sabotage him with some things. See, you know, Jimmy, the trouble is that when you're an entrepreneur, DJ, you know, and you do things with people in bands and you help people and you promote and do stuff, the ones that miss out are the first ones to point the finger at you and blame you. They always did. You know, I never set out to, you know, make friends in the industry. I set out to do a job. It was always a business and a job for me at the end of the day. I enjoyed it all immensely. I did. It was great fun, a great life, but at the end of the day, it had to be successful to make money because rock and roll costs money. You can't do it for nothing. You can be a great pub band and star happily, but in order to reach the heights of stadium level, you have to be that good where you can earn that money and then you can afford to pay for it all. So Paul Samson was a good friend. He and his wife were good friends of my first wife and I. I got in gigs at the bandwagon. We used to put him on, but Paul had a musical thing. He didn't recognise the new wave of British heavy metal. For him, nothing had changed. It never went away. It just got ignored. Paul was not of the modern rising. His heroes were like Frank Marino, Jimmy Hendrix, the Doors. Frank Marino's from here. Yeah, I know. Favourite track, talking about a feeling. Lies. Okay. Next. Juck or not. Go ahead. Two DJs having a private battle on air here. This is very cool, Jimmy. The power of rock and roll. Oh, I love it. You're a hero and a half to me now. So Paul. Frank has been on the show, by the way. Frank Marino has been on the show. Oh, that's great. I used to love Frank Marino and Mahogany Rush. Yeah, loved him. Great band. But Paul, as younger men, he played this older material. He used to go down at the wagon, but he was under the auspices of a blues thing. He played great blues. You know, he did Frank Marino numbers. He did Hendrix numbers. He did Doors numbers. He was entertaining that he was never going to reach anywhere with it. It was good value. He put bums on seats. I like listening to them. He was a very good guitarist. He really was. Couldn't sing. Bruce wasn't with him at the time. That's right. But they were a dream piece. But they were good. But they were never going to hit the heights with what they were doing. It's all been heard before. It wasn't new music. Anyway, they became friends. I gave them gigs. We went down to his place in South London often, and, you know, they came up to us. We used to talk a few, as they used to say, through the words of Teacher Chong. And, you know, we were good mates. But things got out of hand when their looting drummer joined the band. Thunderstik? No, war a rapist must. Barry. Yeah, Barry Perkis. Yeah. And it's going to stop in a cage. You mean Thunderstik? Thunderstik, yeah. And then just to top it. He's been on the show too. But the thing was, he didn't go down with a crowd. Not my crowds. They weren't binding to it. And to stack it up double, Paul absolutely surrounded the stage with pyros and explosions of confessing cannons and fuck knows what else, right? Anyway, I used to do two or three band shows at the music machine. My choice of lineup as well. Nick Parker, the manager, gave me the night to, you know, use as I wanted. And came the night when I had Iron Maiden on and Samson. I don't know who the opener was. It may have been someone like Toad de Wet's Prophet, one of the little bands from Mothers. Anyway, oh, they were good. They were kids. So they could turn out a mean blue. Very good. Anyway, Maiden were not high and not headlining the show. Samson was. And I'm afraid that my crowd ceased to be amused by the antics of the animal in the cage and all the explosions. They just weren't amused anymore. They were fed up with it and tired. There was nothing to do with music. It was all show. At the end of the set, not one person clapped. Not once. My crew, the Soundhouse crowd, had given in the silent treatment. Paul came off stage fusion. He was really mad. He said, you organize that, didn't you? You told him not to clap. I said, I did not. You brought that on yourself, mate. By your insistence on all this other shit and not the music. I've told you before anyway, that what you play is not of today. You're yesterday's hero, Paul. And if you don't wake up to the fact, you ain't going anywhere. That's the truth. And he was really livid, man. He was furious. And then, of course, subsequently, my name became even bigger, Mudd, because we half inch Clive Burr away from him, eventually. And then we got Bruce out of there as well. But, you know, who gets to blame for it all, me, because I know them all and I'm sitting in the middle, even though Clive Burr was nothing to do with me. Him joining, I made it. I had absolutely nothing to do with. Nothing. Steve must have done it or some of the others. I don't know how it worked. There was nothing to do with me. But to Samson, I'd done irreparable damage. You know, and he really believed that my crowd they had been organized by me to do that, not to give any applause. That's fucking crazy, man. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can't stop a crowd from loving a band or not loving the band. There's no way. There's no way. Well, I used to have a system with the audience at the wagon anyway. You know, when I used to play something new, which is very often, I had a time on a system with them. I'd say, listen, guys, I'm going to play a demo tape now from another band, a new band called blah, blah, blah. I want you to tell me in the usual manner after it, if you like it or not. If you like it, you can make a noise with sort of a stick your thumbs up and tell me it's okay. If you don't like it, don't make any noise at all. And then I know and that's how we'll, you know, deal with it. And I used to have this system with them, because I played an awful lot of new things at the wagon, obviously. For sure, for sure. So, you know, here, you know what, we have four minutes because I have to wrap it up in four minutes. Oh, really? We could do a part two. Don't worry about it. We could do a part two. We have too many stories to tell, so we really can do part two. Yeah, yeah, we're going to do a part two. We'll get more into the, you know, the Samson made in later years, too. But I noticed that Croatia, it's really late now. It's, what do you like, one o'clock there? Almost, yeah. You're going to keep your baby up. What was I going to say? I just lost my, the maiden crowd. Lupi says the maiden crowd had gone home. It was done through Dennis Stratton. Did Dennis Stratton have that much influence to like bring everybody home after Maiden performed? I know nothing about it. I know absolutely nothing about it. On that note, we will do a part two, because I think we might actually have to do like a three-parter than this. How long have I gone? We've gone for two hours. We have many interesting stories about bank robbery, which changed your life, and we have a story about medium, about Steve Carr's wedding. No, I think we're going to wrap it up and we're going to do a part two like another day. That's what I mean. Oh, another day. Yes, yes. No intermission here. The intermission is the final. That's it. Yeah, no, it's all good. I decided to say that I hope your listeners are your viewers. We're finding it all interesting. I have no way of knowing how it's going down. You know what? Yeah. If any of them have any questions for the second part, then if I can answer them, I will. Yeah, no, absolutely. Look, I think two hours is, we need a break. I think everybody to absorb all of this is a lot of information. It's a lot of great quality. Yeah, maybe it's good information to tell the people when they can order the book. Okay. So let's get it. Tell him this is, so Tom says, tell him this is very good. Austin's saying part two can't wait. Tell him this is very good. So I'm getting a lot of, and then Kyren is saying, please love this, please keep going. And then we're getting all these thumbs up. There's a chat going on. That's why I keep looking this way because then I'm looking at the people chat. And I'm really pleased that somebody's finding this interesting because, I mean, to us, it was nothing special. It just like happened. You rolled with, you know, you rolled the dice and played with the punches and nobody went out of their way to do anything special. It was, it was the working life, the job. It was the job. You know, I'm going to, okay, I'm going to let, sorry to cut you off. I'm going to let this fan just talk about the book, where to pick it up. I'm going to show a picture of the book. Neil K, Recollections of a Rock DJ, forward by Steve Harris of our inmate. And where can people get this pre-order this? What's going on there, Stefan? Yeah, people can pre-order this book in www.MadeInCreatia.com slash Chi, K-A-Y, simple. And they will get some very cool and very special version of the book dedicated directly with Neil K and something special inside the, inside the book. So they can click their link and read everything about that. So this, what Neil told us is just a little, because little. Oh my God, this is like so much more. Yes. We talk 100 and something hours on Skype. So you can believe how many pages and pages, few hundred, three, four, five hundred pages of text. So I need to see how to produce this book. This book will be big, really, really big and heavy. So go pre-order it. We'll talk again as a part two of another show. We'll do another show. We'll do it again. And you know, guys, it's been a pleasure, Neil. And just so everybody knows, Neil's my older cousin. That ain't true. That ain't true. But I got friends in Canada separately. The vice president of my bike club, Monzi, somewhere over there as well. Oh, Monzi. Monzi in Canada? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He got me great some years ago. We all rode together in a Cullindale motorcycle club, the CMCC. And that has a connection to the sound house as well. Big time. Very. You have to welcome me about the bike club. I was president for two years. Yes. Yes. We could talk about that. We could talk about more maiden. We could talk more. Even the new wave of British heavy metal we'd even get into Portugal. Portugal story with the legendary Manuda Silva and many, many stories. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Guys, it's been a pleasure. It has. Thanks, Jimmy. You know, guys, it's always fun. Stefan, thank you so much for putting this all together. We will talk soon, everybody. Yeah. I was some kind of moderator. You were the Neil Kaye of this. I'm pleased, Stefan, you were there. You job my memory and I need that these days. Yeah. You've got to remember, fellas, I'm 293 years old. It takes a while now to recall anything.