Promotion for Spirit Of Man album 2005

Bob Catley Interview November 25th 2005,Kåren,Gothenburg,Sweden

Why did you pick the title Spirit Of Man for your forthcoming solo album? (Release date Jan 27th 2006)

It sounded like a good title to me. There’s quite a few titles I could have picked like In The Name Of The Cause, Blinded By A Lie.
I thought Spirit Of Man was the best one.
It sounds a bit Magnum-ish maybe that’s what sold it to me. The whole idea’ was to make a commercial album.
It’s kind of catchy not so heavy metal or epic. I can’t be doing the epic stuff all time but one song is and it’s called End Of The Story.
But the album has it’s epic moments of course that’s typical me.
I think it’s going to do well, I hope so. It’s on Frontiers that are doing a good job for me.
I have a lot of good people around and I’m very pleased with the outcome.

Will there be any singles released from it?

You better ask Frontiers. I haven’t heard anything about a single.

Are there any songs left that didn’t make the album?

There’s a couple of tracks left. But I think they are going to be for Japan as bonus tracks.
One song is called Temptation, which is a song I would have like on the album but everyone agreed that it should be left for Japan.
It’s very good, very rocky. It would have fitted great but you can’t have them all on there.
You gotta have some bonus tracks. The Japanese labels always ask what else you got.

Both Spirit Of Man & When Empires Burn have some more hardrock/metal tracks on them.
Is that something you would like go deeper into on a future album maybe more in the style of Judas Priest & Iron Maiden?

I don’t mind. Whatever that feels good for me to sing. I like the old heavy metal stuff as well as the melodic and the ballads.
Maybe I’m at the wrong age of doing that. There were a few songs on When Empires Burn that were metal indeed. Written by Paul Hodson.

Are there any plans for solo shows in Sweden 2006?

Well it’s a little early to say. Next year Tony Clarkin will be recording the next Magnum album
and I will be with him on occasion sometimes. But I’m mainly promoting Spirit Of Man as such
as I can throughout the year including festivals and whatever my agent/tour manager Annie can get me.
And Tony’s fine with that, it’s all very good. Tony knows I have to promote stuff outside of Magnum as well.
I would love to do Sweden Rock. Magnum did it this year, which was very good.
We’ll see the world is my oyster next year and we’ll see what happens.
I will be doing a British tour in April and hopefully some European slots depending on whom I can get on with as the opening act.
I will be headlining in the UK but supporting in Europe. Which is fine by me. Put me on any stage and
I’ll kick up a storm. I got a very good band at the moment. So I look forward to that, Sweden hopefully.
Sweden Rock of course if I can get it

Who would you like to work with on future solo albums?

It would probably be down to Frontiers and say we would like you to record with this person.
There are a lot of people I would like to work with like my friend Tobias Sammet from Edguy.
I got and idea that might going to write me some songs next year but I don’t know if it’s going to be a whole album. Next time, two years time.

You have surrounded yourself with great writers over the years. How come we haven’t seen any credits to Bob Catley?

All my life I’ve been working with Tony Clarkin who writes brilliant songs. Who can compete with that?
I just sing them. I can do that. I’m all right. But I let someone else do the song writing.
Arranging and maybe change a lyric here and there if it needs to be changed.
But that’s it and that’s not writing a song now is it. It’s all been done for me.

Next year is the 20th anniversary of Vigilante. Will there be a similar tour and album as with On A Storytellers Night?

Oh! Here we go! Well we’ll take a view on that one. I mean when this was first mentioned we said no the 20th anniversary of On A Storytellers Night is anybody interested?
But then people went yeah, come on. It was a good thing to be doing. We didn’t think of it, somebody else did.
And the more we thought about it we thought it wasn’t such a stupid idea.
I don’t know if we will carry on with this on Vigilante and then there’s 20 years of Wings of Heaven.
There’s no end to it. So I feel this is a one off thing. It’s been great and has brought us back into the limelight again.
We’re still promoting our latest album Brand new Morning and our Dvd Livin’ The Dream,
which Storytellers is a big part of. I don’t know if we’ll be doing this again but then stranger things have happened.

What is your favourite Magnum album?

Beside On A Storytellers Night. Sleepwalking. It’s different and I think it’s great.
People don’t mention Sleepwalking in the same breath as Storytellers or Wings Of Heaven,
which was our biggest sell to date. We also did an acoustic album called Keeping The Nite Light Burning
it’s another one of my favourites.

Is Keeping The Nite Light Burning something you would like to do again?

Yes. I don’t see why not. It’s something very different. It’s a softer approach to everything and there are so many songs to choose from.
There’s so many that you can do acoustically.
I think it’s a great album. Lots of people have missed this album.

What is your favourite Magnum song?

I don’t know. Hard to pick one I love them all. But I’ll say Don’t Wake The Lion.
But it could have been How Far Jerusalem or Broken Wheel. It could have been many songs.

It must be hard to pick the setlist with all these great songs?

We listen to people’s ideas but we can’t please everybody. So we have to go with what we think would go down the best.
But certain songs pick themselves like How Far Jerusalem, Les Morts Dansant,
Kingdom Of Madness & Vigilante they all have to be in there somewhere. You just have to try to fill in the gaps.
With some songs we haven’t done in ages but we can’t do it to different then people would go:
Where is that song or that song. We try to please your fans with whatever we play.
We got such a big back catalog now so there are so many songs to choose from.
We want to please everybody as well as ourselves.

Thank you very much.

Interview by Andy Flash for Artrock webzine.