Since releasing their last album in 2016 the Tygers have had a successful two years equalling or maybe bettering the NWOBHM days back in the ’80s.

2018 has seen them playing gigs around the UK and Europe with Kiss, Ozzy and the Dead Daisies plus a recent headline show in Japan. Can they add more to the well oiled machine?

With a new live album release ‘Hellbound-Spellbound ‘81’ from the line up of Jon Deverill (vocals), John Sykes (guitar), Brian Dick (drums), Rocky (bass) and Robb Weir (guitar) I asked Robb was this a recording of that line up at its peak?

Yes absolutely. John Sykes played on the Wildcat tour in September ’80, but not on the Wildcat album and Jon Deverill joined us just before Christmas 1980.

We were writing for the next album and with the ‘new blood’ in the line-up the sound changed a little bit because those two great guys brought a different edge to the Tygers, more melodic, I think.

Wildcat had a heavier feel to it and a bit of a punky element to it as well. I played it in its entirety a while ago and didn’t realise how much punk music had influenced me.

The opening track on this live album, ‘Take It’ was written by John Sykes and me. When John first joined the Tygers he came round to my house to learn the songs for the then, upcoming Wildcat tour.

During these sessions John said I’ve got an idea for a new song. He played me the front end, (opening) of ‘Take It’ I liked it, added in something I had, played it together and added a chorus and ‘Take It’ was born.

Unfortunately, it was the only song that John and I wrote together. I was used to writing by myself, John and Jon Deverill lived in the same flat, so they worked on songs together.

As for both Spellbound and Crazy Nights the song writing guitar riff ideas were 50/50 between John and me. Then we would put them in the pot and they become everybody’s adding drum parts and bass.

What were the nuts and bolts of making this live album ?

We were on the UK part of the Spellbound tour in 1981, it was the second show of the tour at the Nottingham Rock City venue. Normally you would record a live performance on the last day of a major tour when you’ve had 30 odd dates to have a bit of a practice!

But the Tygers never do anything easy, always back to front and upside down, we’re at the front of the queue for that (laughs).

Our record company at the time MCA hired the Rolling Stones mobile recording unit. Which was quite revolutionary in those days, it was an articulated lorry with an amazing recording studio inside of it and was owned by The Rolling Stones.

It was a business venture for them, and they hired it for location recording.

This mobile studio was made very famous in the seventies when it went to Montreux to record Deep Purple and ‘Smoke on the Water!’ It was state of the art at the time.

It parked outside Nottingham Rock City running all the recording lines inside so effectively all your equipment was double mic’d. One mic for the live sound in the hall, and one mic that ran back out to the truck for recording purposes.

Who was engineer on the recording?

Chris Tsangarides who had produced both the Wildcat and Spellbound albums had come out on the road with us to do our front of house sound. However, on this special night he couldn’t be in two places at once so he did our sound check for us and set the sound up.

The guy who came with the huge sound system that we took on the road with us did front of house sound mix that night.

In those days you took your show on the road with you. It wasn’t like in Academy’s these days where everything like lights and sound system are already in house, and all you need is your backline.

In those days when you went into a hall it was empty. So, you had to put your sound system and lighting rig in.

Consequently, touring then was a lot more expensive. When you did a big tour with a big production, you almost lost money, but you did it to promote your album hoping next day people would go to the record shop and buy it. That’s where you would recoup your money for the tour.

On the day of recording Chris Tsangarides set the sound up and then went into the mobile where he did the sound check again so he could set the levels and tones on the recording desk. When we were playing live Chris did what you call an ‘on the fly’ mix as well.

What was the set up as far as sound equipment and crew for the Spellbound tour?

On the Spellbound tour we had two 40-foot articulated tractor pulled trailers, and a night liner bus for the crew. We had a 16 man crew working for us.

It was quite a big do as they say and in ’82 when we did The Cage tour that was an even bigger production, both productions cost a lot of money.

Of course, you hope to get bums on seats to recoup a bit of that back. Support bands would pay to come out on the road with you because that’s the way it was done. That money all went towards the headline bands costs.

As far as I remember when we went out, we took the Malcolm Hill rig out which was famed for AC/DC using it. I’m pretty sure it was a 35,000-watt rig, which was a lot of noise coming out the front of the system at you!

Then on stage we had about 12,000 watts of monitors. I used to have two 1,000-watt wedges in front of me and they were on full tilt. We used to play loud, really loud (laughs).

The live recording was at Nottingham Rock City. Was that a memorable day in the Tygers history?

Actually, there was a prequel to this show. We were staying at The Holiday Inn in Nottingham and we were all absolutely laden with flu apart from John Sykes. We were so bad our Tour Manager called for medical advice.

A doctor came out and said we shouldn’t be playing, particularly Brian our drummer because he was an asthmatic. He had an array of inhalers which he used to take in-between smoking his Embassy regals (laughs).

The doctor actually wrote us out a sick note to excuse us from playing, I don’t know who we were going to show it to! Maybe Tom our manager has still the sick note? (Laughs).

But there was no way we weren’t playing, the gig was sold out and we were recording it.

After the gig did you hear the recording played back?

At the end of the show John Sykes, who was as bubbly as ever, went to see Chris in the Rolling Stones recording mobile, they had a discussion and John came back and said Chris doesn’t think it’s very good.

I can’t remember whether he had said we had made some mistakes, maybe not played very well, or something had gone wrong in the recording process, I honestly can’t remember.

Nothing more was said and I guess the record company (MCA) who paid for the whole deal must have been gutted. Again there wasn’t an inquisition about it, it was just left.

It was all recorded on 2-inch Ampex tape and our manager Tom Noble took them away and they lived under a bed in his spare bedroom for years. It was only Chris and John who had heard anything from the tapes. Brian, Rocky, Jon Deverill and myself hadn’t heard anything.

The life of the band moved on until 2000 when I said to Tom the Tygers manager, ‘you know those live tapes from ‘81 should we have a listen to them?’  He said, ‘yes, they’re under the bed in the spare room.’

So, we asked Fred Purser who replaced John Sykes in 1982 and recorded The Cage album, then toured with the Tygers.

When Fred left the band, he went into the production side of the music business. Fred now has a wonderful studio called Trinity Heights in Newcastle.

He agreed to do it, but we had to hire a machine to play the tapes on because they were outdated. There was nothing in the North East so we had to ring down to London and hire a 24 track Ampex tape playing machine.

Fred took delivery and transferred the tapes to digital format but because of the age of them we were told we probably would only get one chance to copy them as the Ampex tape could disintegrate! Luckily we did it.

What did the recording sound like?

Fantastic, Tom and I couldn’t understand why the tapes hadn’t been used? The only thing that was wrong was because of time, the first four tracks on my guitar had ‘fallen off’ the tape.

So, I sourced the same pick up I had on my Gibson Explorer at the time, put it on a suitable guitar and went in the studio and recorded my guitar part’s again for the first four tracks.

That is the only thing that has ever been touched so this is a complete live album with no overdubs, unlike a lot of live albums back in the day!

It has now come out years later that on some live albums back then maybe only a snare drum was live, and the band went back into the studio to record most of it again– a bit naughty, but I understand band’s want their best work recorded.

But if you can’t play live, should you really be in the business? I’m very proud that ours IS live.

Why the re-release now? Well Fred mixed it, and it came out in 2000 on general release. Three years ago, when we signed with Target Records the C.E.O Michael Anderson, asked whether we would be interested in putting out a remixed version by Soren Anderson, who mixed our current album.

So, it’s been on the back burner for a while. It just so happened the timing was perfect because Soren started a mix on the album and two weeks later, he appeared in Newcastle playing with former Deep Purple bass player, Glenn Hughes.

I went to see them at the Academy here in Newcastle and met Soren, he said he had a day off the next day in Newcastle. Michael McCrystal (Tygers guitarist) managed to get us some studio time at Blast Studios, through his academy of music connections. This is where we recorded all the backing tracks for our current album.

So we went into Blast, he put the album up and listened to some of the mixes that Soren had done and I suggested some things.

All that’s happened is the tones of the instruments have been sharpened up, levels have been changed, we found backing vocals which were too low in the original mix, it’s come out really well, it’s a huge sounding live album now to be fair.

The record company are bringing it out on various formats, CD, vinyl and a box set including a signed tour poster and a ticket to Nordic Noise Festival next year in Copenhagen. It’s a great package. There’s also a tour pass from 1981.

‘Hellbound – Spellbound 81’ is available 21^st  December 2018 via the official Target Records website and in the shops 25^th January 2019.

Interview by Gary Alikivi December  2018.

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