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Baker's Dozen

(13 On The) Wheels Of Steel: Biff Byford Of Saxon's Favourite LPs
Michael Hann , February 13th, 2020 10:48

Biff Byford guides Michael Hann through the 13 records of riff-heavy magic that shaped Saxon

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The Sensational Alex Harvey Band – Next
They were a fantastic live band and I saw them loads of times. Watching the way Alex was onstage taught me to let things flow and not be so tight-arsed. He improvised a lot. The Sensational Alex Harvey Band had a sense of threat – this feeling that he was a gangster, a bit of a hard guy, a bit shifty. There was a sense of menace in their stage performance, with Zal Cleminson dressed as this wacky clown, which was unnerving. We went through a phase like that – Paul used to get made up, half his face white and half black – when we did a lot of theatrics and a lot of that comes from Alex Harvey. I used to nail Steve Dawson’s DMs to the stage and he’d lean forward because he was nailed to the floor at the back.