Hear the Music

SOME OF THE GREATEST MUSIC I EVER RECORDED, AND SOME OF THE GREATEST HANGOVERS I EVER SUFFERED, HAPPENED WHEN I WAS WITH THUNDER.

To produce a Thunder album, as I did with their first record back in 1990, you need to be pretty fit; you need to have a large liver; and you need to have a deep love of rock. You can’t fake rock music: it’s not pop. The rock audience won’t let you off that easy. It’s about trust: you’re not marketing to them. They’ve either got you, or they ain’t.

Thunder achieved what most people never, ever get to achieve. They’ve got something out of this business and it hasn’t left them potless and fucked up. That’s what I always admired about Thunder: they were smart guys, not cokeheads who messed about. They were professionals, and that professionalism is what’s carrying them now. They were mates, too: the bond between them goes back a long, long way, and nothing will break that. They have an unbreakable friendship and respect for each other. It’s who they are, and where they come from.

Hand on heart, working with those guys was the most fun I ever had recording a band in the UK. Look what we created … and the fuckers are still going. Thunder are playing arenas – I’m not. (Then again, I don’t have to!)

Andy Taylor

Producer, songwriter, sometime Duran Duran guitarist, lighter thief and bon vivant

WRITING THUNDER’S OFFICIAL MEMOIR IS VERY MUCH LIKE MAKING LOVE TO A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN, AS SWISS TONI WOULD HAVE IT. YOU LISTEN TO THEM DRONE ON FOR HOURS AND HOURS BEFORE THEY LET YOU ENTER THEIR INNER SANCTUM (THE MANAGEMENT OFFICE), WHIP OUT YOUR SAMSUNG (A DICTAPHONE) AND SQUEEZE THE ESSENTIAL INFORMATION INTO A TIGHT SPACE (THE PAGES OF THIS BOOK … WHICH COULD EASILY HAVE BEEN TWICE AS LONG).

It’s been fun. In fact it’s been a lot of fun. Over the months of interviews that went into Giving The Game Away: The Official Biography, I’ve heard tales from the horse’s mouth that would make your nose-hair curl. In the three decades and more that the various members, ex-members and associates of Thunder have been making music and generally avoiding getting a haircut and a proper job, they’ve worked their way through lakes of booze and armies of ‘post-gig companions’, butting heads with a vivid crowd of music-industry types of varying levels of trustworthiness along the way. Most of these gory episodes have made it into this book, although some of the sauciest revelations have been omitted in the interests of good taste, and also because I don’t want to wake up with a horse’s head on my pillow.

What a cast of characters. There’s Danny Bowes, the gimlet-eyed strategist; Luke Morley, the thinker, who laughs exactly like Chris Tarrant; Ben Matthews, the forthright comedian, and a man of courage; Chris Childs, the sensible one (all bass players are); and Harry James, the butt of most of the intra-band piss-taking, and also the man most built to take it (and give it back).

It kills me how the stories in this book vary slightly from member to member. That’s what 30 years of drinking and falling over does for you. The tone of this book is generally irreverent, as you’d expect from this bunch of south-east London chancers, but then again there’s been no fluffing of the facts and absolutely no lying. Despite the band members’ love of a jape and a quip, they’ve been through tribulations that would leave any other band weeping in the corner, and when those moments come, they address them head-on. Thunder are all about self-belief and facing the enemy down. As Danny says when you ask him what the name of their record label, STC, stands for: “It’s Straight Talk Company. I give you the news the same way; whether it’s good or bad, I give it to you straight.”

So it’s hats off to Danny, Luke, Ben, Chris, Harry, Andy Taylor, Mark ‘Snake’ Luckhurst, Mikael ‘Micke’ Höglund, Nick Linden, Malcolm McKenzie, Mark Harris, Martin Burke, Roger Searle, Rod Smallwood, Ross Halfin and Mick Wall for their time and patience when it came to digging deep into the old memory banks for scurrilous tales about Thunder’s past. Thanks to Lisa Bardsley for coming up with the idea of a Thunder book, David Barraclough for asking me to write it, and Matt Coulson at Thunder HQ for the cups of tea.

I think you’re going to enjoy this book. I certainly loved writing it. I might put all the unforgivably rude stories in another book in a few years, unless Danny pays me a lot of money not to.

Joel McIver, 2016

Luke demonstrating his artistic temperament with a Magic Marker.

Danny Bowes So there we were, in front of 80,000 people, at the biggest rock and metal festival on the planet. My voice was fucked. I hadn’t been able to speak, let alone sing, for five days. If I couldn’t sing these songs, everything we’d worked for would be wasted. No pressure, then …

Luke Morley I was terrified. It was the size of the crowd that got me. How do you play with 80,000 people watching you?

Mark ‘Snake’ Luckhurst I was crapping myself. I thought we were going to get buckets of piss thrown at us. And Danny literally couldn’t speak. He would open his mouth and nothing would come out.

Harry James That was squeaky-bum time. I had serious stage fright. I wasn’t sure how this massive gig was going to pan out for us.

Ben Matthews We were terrified that Danny wouldn’t be able to sing. I still remember, half an hour before stage time, that there was a stony silence in our dressing room.

Harry The first note that came out of Danny’s mouth was fantastic. I still remember the relief and elation I felt at that moment.

Ben If you find the footage online, you can actually see the moment when we realised that the gig was going to be good: it’s when Danny hits a high note in the middle of the first song, ‘She’s So Fine’. Before that, I dropped my plectrum three times, I was so nervous. Once we knew that Danny’s voice was OK, we nailed that gig. We looked good, we sounded good and we knew we were good.

Danny So how the fuck did a bunch of idiots from south-east London get to this point?