Of the bands that made it out of the ‘70s alive, few can claim to be leaders of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Joining the ranks of bands such as Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, and even Motörhead, we have Saxon.

Interview with Saxon’s Guitarist Doug Scarratt

With a library of over 20 studio albums and countless tours, Saxon has cemented themselves within the annals of rock history. Just like many other bands, they have been through the gauntlet of member changes with its current lineup being the longest-running (not accounting for Brian Tatler replacing Paul Quinn for touring) in the band’s history with Doug Scarratt being the “newest” of the members having joined nearly 30 years ago in 1995.

Doug Scarratt had no problem fitting in with Saxon especially with long-time friend and bandmate Nigel Glockler already in the band. No hate or drama was filling in for Graham Oliver with Scarratt feeling nearly instantly at home and with family.

He brings a style of playing that melds seamlessly into Quinn’s as Doug’s blues and rock mixes with Paul’s metal and heavy metal to get a new generation of prog-rock heavy metal mastery. Much like the musical shift of metal and glam to grunge and punk in the 90s, the hair metal and glam scene that was so prevalent in the ‘80s had nearly laid waste to NWOBHM that came out of the ‘70s before it.

Today, Saxon stands as a force not to be reckoned with a regular tour schedule and over 13 million albums sold worldwide with no plans on stopping or slowing down.

In this interview with Metalshout.com, we talked with Doug Scarratt about his upbringing in the music scene that surrounded him in his childhood, his introduction to Saxon, and everything in between. (metalshout.com special interview)

Let’s jump right into the beginning; what made you choose guitar over other instruments?

Answer: When I was about 10 or 12 watching watching the Top of the Pops show thinking that guitars were cool. Once I started to like more serious music I discovered bands like Procol Harum with Robin Trower, a kind of bluesy rock. He’s a Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix kind of style Guitar player, made a name for himself and I saw him when I was 13 and I thought to myself “That’s what I want to do, I’m going to get a guitar and see if I can learn to play.”

Do you remember your first guitar?

It was a cheap rubbish Raver from a mail-order catalog. But that’s what set me on the road. My first decent guitar was a Fender Strat copy which looked like the guitars of my heroes; as soon as I got my hands on one of those, the others disappeared quickly.

What was the East Sussex music scene like growing up? What were you exposed to?

When I was 13 or 14 a bunch of friends and I were massive fans of a TV show that was called The Old Grey Whistle Test hosted by Bob Harris who loved rock and prog rock. The show had soul, reggae, rock and more, it was a cross-section of music, really, but it was rock/guitar oriented so I discovered a lot of bands through that show.

In Brighton there is a famous venue called The Dome and we’d just go and see anything because it was exciting. Anything from David Bowie, Weather Report, and Pink Floyd when they did their first Dark Side of the Moon tour there. The music scene for the bigger bands was just amazing and I was still just a kid trying to learn how to play guitar so there was tons of inspiration, but ultimately, my roots come from some of the more obvious like Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin. I also couldn’t resist 70s funk.

Your formative years were filled with your work as a session musician with funk and pop groups. Can you take us through some of your more interesting credits and what led you to metal?

Some might see my session career as a bit embarrassing, I suppose. At the time I was doing anything for money and I worked with these songwriters that had a studio here where they were demoing for different artists.

I did play on the David Hasselhoff album and one of the songs was on Baywatch for weeks. There’s a ballad and also quite a big guitar solo on it. There were loads of things I was working on, one with one of the girls from Janet Jackson’s dance troupe that was making an album. I was in a cover band for a club here playing 3 nights a week that was playing anything chic and cool at the time, just fun music, really.

So you were really just a music sponge and consumed anything you could listen to and whatever was available…

Definitely, I liked a lot of early funk like Tower of Power and kind of more jazzy funk. Mahavishnu Orchestra, I quite liked the trippy stuff as well, Zappa tool. Besides Hendrix, this was all before the emergence of the “super guitarist” like Satriani and Van Halen. This was kind of all before the sort of super guitarist emerged, if you know what I mean.

Can you take us through your initial joining of Saxon in the 90s? Nigel Glockler had a vital part in that role of your joining.

I played in a local blues band and Nigel was in a jazz-rock cover band. We lived in the same town and got to know each other and this band I was in would cover lots of songs, anything we wanted, really. We had different drummers and sometimes we would see who was just available so sometimes Nigel would be playing with us.

We were drinking and talking, we discovered we were into a lot the same bands and became friends, started jamming together often and did extended versions of songs live and one day, he literally phoned saying they were having issues with Graham (Oliver) and they were going to sack him and if I was interested in the gig. Obviously, I was.

So it was more of an invitation rather than an audition?

There was an audition, Nigel (Glockler) recommended me, obviously, and Paul (Quinn) came down, Nibbs (Carter) wasn’t around. We were set up in this extremely large country house that some friends of mine had with a music room, Nigel knew these friends as well and they let us use this room for the audition.

They sent me a bunch of Saxon CDs and I had to learn to play the songs, I had a couple of weeks to learn before their tour started and I would spend a few days at Nibb’s house and a few at Paul’s. I was able to play about 90% of the songs just from listening to these CDs but I needed some guidance to make sure I was doing everything correctly. I literally had one rehearsal with the full band before the first show in Munich and it was an amazing day!

Did you have any difficulties replacing Graham Oliver?

I tried not to think about it, honestly. When I first started doing shows with them there were a lot of people that only loved the first three albums and the original lineup, that’s just natural. Unleash the Beast was very well liked and that being my first album with Saxon was a very positive thing and that became my breaking point so there was hardly and negative comments of me replacing Graham.

Graham and I are very different types of guitar players and I didn’t want to copy his style and make a name for myself and do my own thing with Saxon. I love improvising, even if it means flying by the seat of your pants and fucking up sometimes, for me, that’s the exciting bit of the game.

How did your first show go with only the one rehearsal?

It was extremely stressful. I didn’t know anybody except for Nigel. So you know, I’m the new guy when it came to all the crew and the band. I had pretty much met everyone on the tour bus. It was quite a long tour as well. Seven weeks I think, so I left home with a couple of guitars and my big rack of gear and off we went.

The first few weeks were I think the hardest thing, one of the hardest things about it really was as mainly a session player I was playing in smaller venues, but I’ve never really had to be any kind of frontman. Suddenly going from that into a kind of high-profile gig was definitely a learning curve. There was lots of different information coming from everywhere from the members and from the manager at the time like “You need to be doing this, you need to look like this.” and so on.
After that first tour, we made a live album, that was pretty scary. Once we started to write together I felt like a member of the band, then about a year later I was actually working on co-writing an album and recording at which point I was going to be judged by our fans because it was my first album working with the guys.

What were your first impressions of Biff (Byford)?

He’s a big character, you know when he’s in the room. My first impressions were kind of what I expected, really. He’s got a very strong presence, always have. When I got hired he said, “I’ll give you the job then, but, I’ll probably fucking regret it.”. I’m sure he said that. He says he didn’t but I’m sure he did.

Unleash the Beast was your first studio album with Saxon, what were your specific contributions to this record?

I had quite a large part in all of the tracks. We’re all in the same room throwing ideas around so pretty much everyone had a say in each song. I think the riff in “The Thin Red Line” was mine, as well as the riff in “Circle of Light” I think most of that track was me. But having said that everyone’s throwing stuff around.

I had a riff in “Cut out the Disease” as well, although the main riff at the beginning was Nigel, working with what he had come up with on the keyboard, and I transposed it from keyboard to guitar. The way he played the keyboard it was just not doable on guitar so we kind of found a way around it.

Speaking of Nigel, you two recorded Mad Men and English Dogs in 2001, you two have been pretty much inseparable, can you expand on the chemistry that you two share?

We were both quite into fusion rock and wanted to do something that could be expanded upon other than metal. This was a very basic recording we did in his living room. There’s no amplifiers involved in that at all, it’s really early computer stuff. I don’t think we thought it would go as far as it did, but we ended up with an album. There were a lot of ideas between us two that were rock orientated but not suitable for Saxon.

Nigel had a lot of keyboard oriented tracks, almost like Genesis and I had a lot of riffs that I hadn’t done anything with, but we knocked it all together rather fast. It was really done more for the fun of it and that we, well, just could. There was a lot of music that was sitting around doing nothing so this is what came of it.

In 2004, Lionheart came out and was universally considered the proverbial return to form for Saxon by fans and critics. What can you tell us about the recording of Lionheart?

For me, Lionheart was probably when I was at my creative peak. I had written basically all of the riffs and most of the stuff for the song “Lionheart”. Paul came down and stayed with me for a few days and Nigel still wasn’t in the band, but we went around to Nigel’s and recorded some demos of “Witchfinder General” with Nigel. We wrote three tracks that night, Nigel, Paul and I. “Witchfinder General”, “Searching for Atlantis and “Justice”.

We were having a lot fun making this album because we wanted Nigel to double up the guitar riffs with double bass drums so there was some more modern syncopated riffs, particularly in “Justice”. It was great fun making that album, those were the days where you could actually afford to be in a studio, to work and live there, it’s not so easy to do that now

Hitting on Inspirations, is it safe to say that was a result of lockdowns?

Absolutely, Inspirations was a chance to do something in lockdown and we’d already recorded all the rhythm guitars for Carpe Diem. There were no vocals or guitar solos, but all of the songs were arranged and basically finished musically. Byford got the basic outline of the songs but hadn’t finished the lyrics and we didn’t really want to do anything until we could tour it properly so we worked on Inspirations. We kind of wanted something to do during lockdown. So this came up with the idea of a covers album, I know quite a few other bands were doing that which influenced us to do the same. We had a lot of fun with Inspirations.

On Carpe Diem, how do you and Paul Quinn find balance in songwriting, riffs and soloing?

We’ve actually got fairly different styles, but we do sometimes morph into each other. We’ve been playing together for a long time and I can only speak for myself, but I think Paul feels the same that there’s enough room for both of us and neither of us are particularly egocentric. There’s no friction between us We may split solos or even share them and it actually makes it more interesting. Sometimes you want the solo to stay in a certain vein of whoever’s performing it so we don’t split them all but we do split quite a lot of them.

The current incarnation of Saxon is the band’s longest-running and perhaps the most cohesive, what would you say is the secret that keeps you guys running like the well-oiled machine you are?

Creativity. We’re musicians and artists and we want to keep creating new and fresh stuff. It would get old and stunt our creativity if we just played the hits live all the time. We play the new stuff just as much as the old. The hits definitely come to life with a great crowd but our new songs get just as much love from us and the fans.

Saxon seems very well positioned as ever for long-term success, what’s next for you and the band?

More Inspirations is finished and out now and we are starting to write riffs and continue what we do. We’re already talking about working on new material, so over the next few months I would imagine we would be writing and touring and as long as we can keep on doing that, we will.

What are your thoughts on Doug Scarratt‘s interview about the band and his relationship with Saxon? Let us know in the comment section!

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