Russ Saxton relates his "not so brief history of time within Headstrong".

Headstrong began life back in 1988 as my project to form a band that played the sort of music I liked to listen to. I was (and still am if the truth be told) heavily into the classic heavy rock of the 70s and 80s, particularly the NWOBHM and I did not much care for the way the rock scene was becoming increasingly polarised into unlistenable thrash or talentless glam bands.

Teaming up with my old bandmate from Taras Bulba Guitarist Steve "Gilly" Gilbert and bassist Paul "Podge" Morley, we had the basis of a band and started to write ideas, learn covers that we all liked and search for a drummer and a singer. We tried loads of drummers, we even took a couple on, but the drumstool was not permanently filled until October 88 when we recruited Derby drummer "Simple" Simon Timms. Much writing and rehearsing on an instrumental basis took place, mainly at Subway studios in Radford, which the band had been introduced to by one of the drummers briefly in the band, Rick Chandler from Stapleford, a man of phenomenal ability for his tender years (17) but perhaps best remembered for living next door to a woman who made her own "candid" videos and brought them round for the band to watch.

The search for a singer was to be even more of an arse ache, many were auditioned but most were thrash metal grunters, incapable of carrying a tune in a bucket or prospective members of Motley Crue, enough said really. All the band were feeling frustrated by the situation, but the problem was about to be solved. Just before Christmas 88, I went to the Old Wine Vaults at Ilkeston to see the reunion gig of local heroes New World Asylum. All the ex members of the band were to perform and former lead vocalist Dean Harrison stepped up to sing a couple of numbers, impressed me enough to invite him to audition for the band, which he did on Feb 5 1989 and was promptly offered the gig.

A fair amount of material had been put together by the band, but Dean came armed with a vast folder of lyrics and several musical ideas of his own, so it was not long before the band had enough completed material to play live. Dean had also brought his keyboard skills, adding another dimension to the power riffing style of the still nameless outfit. Gilly suggested that the band be named "Headstrong" after a song of that name whose riff had been "borrowed" for a song that fortunately never saw the light of day. Now with a name and a live set almost ready all that was needed was a gig and Headstrong were offered the support slot with Mick Wilson's (Podge's brother) band Torque at the Queen's Head, Riddings, near Alfreton, a legendary local venue for Heavy metal bands. There were plenty of friends of the new band, ex members of previous outfits, other local rock bands curious to check them out and, with metal still being big business at this time, enough young rockers to give us a fair audience right from the off, and the Queens Head's small upstairs gig room was jammed solid for the debut performance on April 15th 1989.

Onstage room was very limited but we were undeterred and, introduced by Rob "GD" Shaw, blasted through a raw but enthusiastic set of all original stuff to a great reception. Torque did not fare so well, the audience simply melted away during their set and, by the end, there were just three people left in the room. The gig was reviewed by the local fanzine Molten Metal as Headstrong 1, Torque 0. Obviously not one to bear a grudge, Torques vocalist Mick Wilson gave Headstrong their second gig as well, this time he was acting as the promoter for "An Evening of Metal" at the Co op hall, Langley Mill on June 16th, featuring the female fronted Victim and magazine faves Metal Messiah. Headstrong had by now enough material to do a full set but being bottom of the bill we only performed 9 songs, among the set played that night were future live faves "Settle the score", "Lady big dreamer" and "Days of darkness".

Another local show followed on 27th June at the Wine Vaults in Ilkeston, scene of the Asylum gig, supporting Angel Heart, which consisted of half of Asylum's members and Jailhouse featuring the legendary Trapper, a man described as being capable of "falling over whilst lying down". As if to prove the point Trapper later fell down the stairs outside the pub and broke his arm. We felt that there was enough interest in us locally to warrant a headline show and we set up a gig at the Red Lion in Heanor for 31st August, the deal being, as was standard in those days, that the band would pay for their own PA and lights and promote the gig out of any takings on the door. This was not the commercial suicide in the late 80s that it would be today for a local band, but we were pleasantly surprised at just how many fans turned up just to see us, as there was no support act. The small venue was packed solid and stayed full to the end, even so we played it safe and broke up the set of originals with three covers, the classic Maiden song "The Trooper", Kingdom Come's "Do you like it" and as an encore Y&T's "Mean Streak". The abiding memory of this gig is the hour or so that we spent prior to the gig trying to locate the source of the loud buzzing coming from the PA, going as far as to unplug every single piece of gear bit by bit before we realised that it was the pub's illuminated sign that was the culprit.

We had got talking to a band called APB (use your imagination as to what it might stand for) down at Subway and agreed to do a swap headline gig, them to support us in Ilkeston and us to support them at their home gig at the Grey Goose in Gedling, which we did, there encountering several characters that we would run into many times over the years, such as Greggo, Matt and Ian, two Londoners in a band called Turbulence that had for some reason relocated to Notts, God knows why, Garry Sharpe the writer from Metal Forces, Punky Wayne and many other local music figures, some we were glad we met, others I am not so sure about.

We were also starting to cast the net further afield gig wise, by ringing up the venues in the Kerrang gig listings, trying to get on anywhere that would have us. The first fruit of this was a slot at the Lyric Hall, Dinnington, Yorks on a three band bill. Here we met the promoter Barry Holmes, who was a real enthusiast for rock music. He was wearing a sling on his arm at the time because a band he hadn't been able to pay had broke his collarbone, poor sod. Dunno where you are now Barry, but if you should ever read this, all the best. We also lined up a gig in Chapeltown, Sheffield but when we arrived the promised PA system turned out to be two speakers that would have been blown up by a walkman, and one mike. We were thinking about pissing off home when another band walked in and we got chatting. They were called Bedlam Choir and they were on their way to a gig at Barnsley Toby Jug. Ever the shy one I asked if we could support them instead of doing this gig. They looked dubious until we said that we did not want paying and being true Yorkshiremen they immediately agreed. We did the gig, went down OK, and struck up a lasting friendship with the band. One thing that struck me as odd was that although we drove miles around Barnsley, we couldn't find a single chippy, this in Yorkshire, the capital of fish and chip shops.

By now we had accrued enough spare cash from gig profits to finance a demo tape which we badly needed, few venues are willing to book you without one and every gig there were requests for recorded material, so we booked some recording time at Subway for 1st and 2nd of March 1990, and in the limited time recorded four stage favourites Settle the Score, Days of Darkness, Miss Issippi Missed and Out in the Cold, releasing them as the "Days of Darkness" tape on 31st March, a day on which we played our biggest gig to date to around 250 people at Kimberley Church Hall, a gig for charity with all proceeds going to a local handicapped club. No more gigs were lined up until June, as we were concentrating on writing, waiting lists for gigs out of the area were lengthy and we were reluctant to over expose the band locally, that was the plan at any rate. It didn't work either, as when we returned to live work on 21st June at Ripley Red Lion with Bedlam Choir as support (returning the favour from Barnsley) there weren't all that many in, probably just as well as this gig was definitely the loudest gig we ever played, I was deaf for about three days. My wife still is. Mind you it was pissing it down which wouldn't have helped any, though you couldn't say that about the next gig five days later at the Wine Vaults, Ilkeston. It was absolutely boiling hot, the concert room was packed, the main bar was solid with non rock types watching the World cup qualifying round so all in all it added up to a bloody hot gig.

Holidays and stuff out the way, we had a number of gigs lined up, one at Huddersfield Bogies, which I was phoning round PA companies to hire a rig for out of Scarborough call boxes whilst on holiday, one in Bedford where the promoter had done a runner and we played to about six people, (actually, at one point there was nobody at all in the gig room) and a stab at the Derbyshire Times Band of theYear contest at Chesterfield Winding Wheel, which was the biggest audience we ever played to, about 600 people, which made us feel all the worse when we did the first song without a bassist, Podge breaking a string on the first note of the first song. Needless to say, we didn't win. We did a few other gigs around our home patch at Heanor Nags Head, Derby Duke of York and the Rocket at Basford, Nottingham, where we told that we would get 20% of the bar takings as our fee. I asked if we would get £40 as that was the PA cost, the reply was to the point. "You've got no fucking chance." However, thanks in part to a huge poster and flyer campaign and in a much greater part to having as support "Turbulence", the band featuring the two Londoners Matt and Ian who we had met at the Grey Goose, we became the first band ever to pay its PA hire costs out of the bar take.

In the November of that year we did a short 4 gig run around the local venues that was probably the best local tour we ever did, the four gigs being the Nags Head at Heanor, Long Eaton Silver Prize, Nottingham Narrowboat and the Rutland, Ilkeston. All the gigs were well attended, and we sold loads of demos, these gigs were probably our high water mark locally. Into the new year we carried on gigging regularly, picking up live reviews in the local papers and demo reviews in one or two of the national glossy rock mags, which produced considerable interest from Europe, but little or nothing in the UK. We did do a couple of big local gigs around this time, one supporting Excalibur at Ripley leisure centre, along with Taurea, and the next day at Kimberley church hall, with Bedlam Choir and Steam Kittens with a couple of hundred each night. We also did a few swap gigs with Bedlam Choir around Sheffield and Rotherham and one surreal gig at the Dora Phillips Hall, Eastwood as a 40th (!) birthday party gig for a woman we knew. The audience of grannies, aunt Maud from Eastbourne and assorted middle aged to pension age family and friends clapped politely, god knows what they thought to blasting versions of Days of Darkness, The Hunger and so on played at full bore. One audience member at least was impressed and that was the 12 year old daughter of the birthday girl, who got all wet knickered over Simple, going as far as to write an essay for school, comparing him to a horse running through a field, with his mane flowing in the wind. Naturally we did not take the piss….

Another oddity at this time was a gig at Hucknall, which Dean couldn't do at the last minute due to illness. Rather than cancel with a few hours notice we did the gig instrumentally, with Mick Calladine from another local band singing three songs after about an hours practice, reading the lyrics off a sheet of paper. To my great surprise we went down a storm, and we got rebooked for later that year.

We realised that we had gone as far as we could without big changes and decided to try a shit or bust approach of recording an album length demo and touring the country to try and get noticed as there had been no interest from UK record labels to any of the demos we had sent out or reviews we had got, although they were all good. We took 3 months off gigging, booked into Subway studio for a week of recording and I got on the phone to every venue I could find to arrange a tour. Bear in mind that this tour had to be fitted in with everybody's day job, which limited how far we could go in the week and the fact that most venues only book unknowns for gigs in the week you can see the problems I faced, but we managed to line up a fairly impressive schedule. As ever, two days before the recording sessions began, the studio flooded and we had to find somewhere else quickly, which turned out to be the vastly more expensive Square Dance in Nottingham. We recorded nine tracks for the album, which was to be called "Head First" and, with a few days to spare got the whole thing packaged and ready to roll. But we weren't too happy with the results, there was nothing like the level of power that we got on "Days of Darkness" and although I felt that the material on this tape was better, it just had no bollocks, nobody in the band seemed to have much enthusiasm for it, and didn't try to push it at gigs like they had with "Days." Well I did, but I just don't know when to quit.

The tour kicked off at the Byron, Hucknall on October 13th and over the next few weeks took in places as far afield as Stoke, Preston, Oxford, Stafford, Sheffield and Cannock with a few local gigs chucked in. Some of these gigs were really good, some were OK and one or two, such as Cardiff were absolutely shit. Probably the worst was Cannock Wheatsheaf on October 20th where, despite the place being full of rockers playing pool and posing, only 3 paid a quid to get in to the gig room. After a bit we opened the doors free, but still no one came in. If you were there, bollocks to you, you posing wankers. Queen Mary the first said "When I die you will find Calais engraved on my heart", well, you'll find Cannock on mine. There were plenty of good moments on the tour to compensate though, such as getting a great response from a mixed crowd of metallers, students and assorted trendies at the Old Fire Station, Oxford, which charged £4.50 entrance fee, that would have got you in to see Maiden in those days, (mind you, we only got £120) and several good piss ups around the UKs rock piss holes. I even played one gig with flu and a temperature of 102, and still enjoyed it.

All was not well within the band, though. We were squabbling amongst ourselves constantly, over real or imagined differences, new material was being written that I didn't much care for as I felt it was not what we were all about and there was a supposedly humorous edge creeping in to the publicity stuff that I didn't like, I felt we were losing our identity. We carried on gigging intermittently into 1992, playing as support to XL at Mansfield Arts Centre, who were the band that we nicked the title "Headstrong" from, travelling all the way to Weymouth for one gig in March, yet it was warm enough to go on the beach at midnight, and a couple of shows at the Grey Goose, featuring a lot of the new stuff that I wasn't over keen on in the main, and an attempt to be contemporary with the inclusion of covers such as "Enter Sandman" not yet then the corny old classic it is today. I knew we had had it when we played the Salutation in Nottingham and they didn't pay us a fee, and advised us not to charge on the door as no one came in if they had to pay. After all the gigs we had done and we were still playing for free.

A curiosity to me was being told to keep the volume down at a gig at Derby Rock Island club because "the punters don't like it loud". Result; one set at tea room quintet volume to silence, so we thought "Bollocks to it" and played the second set at amplified train wreck volume to crazed adulation. You work it out. I still smile when I think about telling the rest of the band at this gig that the first set would be "ten, to eleven", them disappearing and returning at 10.50pm (think about it) A last ditch attempt to restore the former glories was made at our last gig, a four band bill at Heanor Leisure Centre on September 12th with us headlining. The attendance was reasonable, but nothing to inspire confidence in our future.

We stayed together for a few more weeks but one night at a practice Dean announced he was quitting, and when I got back home and thought about it, I went as well. I had lined us up a support slot to Skyclad at Kimberley at another of my charity rock nights but we didn't get to play it, Clownhouse stepping in instead. The week after we split "Head First" was reviewed in Kerrang, complete with a photo of another band, just to rub salt into the wound. It got three Ks, and for weeks after I kept getting orders for demos and invites to do gigs in Italy. I felt it was a pity that we never played a proper farewell gig and it is something I have always regretted. It now seems, though, that I may get my chance as we have decided to get together for a reunion gig, and have released the old tapes on CD, complete with live recordings of all the songs that never made it onto the official tapes. It will be good to put the band to bed properly at long last. See you down the front, and mines a pint.

Russ Saxton

Steve, Simon and Paul stayed together, recruited a new vocalist "Gray" and went out under the name Resist the Force. A couple of months later Dean was recruited by Bob Young to join the remains of Shock Split (formerly Savage whose song Let it Loose was covered by Metallica) to form a new band called Freakzone, ironically when Dean left Freakzone in 1994 he was again replaced by "Gray". Also ironic was that Dean's farewell gig was supporting Skyclad, after which Freakzone were asked if they were interested in signing for Noise Records, until they realised Dean had left, at which point they cooled off. Resist the Force eventually became Blood Orange, with Steve and Simon forming the core of the new band, Paul retired from live music, but has recently joined Blood Orange reunited 3 out of 5 of Headstrong.

Russ eventually formed a new band called Hostile, which gigged a couple of times but didn't seem to have any drive, Russ then moved on to join Stadia which then became Sideline and neither project is now in existence. In the meantime Dean had sold the lighting rig and Steamhead became this website to help promote local bands for a while, now it's just a personal site.

New CD versions of Days of Darkness and Head First became available in 2000, and Headstrong did rehearse together for the first time in 7 and a half years, with the possibility of a one-off reunion gig in December 2000. However the venue we were due to play at burned to the ground, and we took it as a sign.

Dean and Russ are now working together again, originally writing some new material with a view to gigging with Malc and Chris from Taurea, and Graham from Stadia and Saigon Kiss in a band that became known as Sub-Xero. This band never took off, but Dean and Russ could be seen gigging in Black Sabbath tribute band - Sack Sabbath for around 3 years but Dean had to leave in 2006 as his new job had him travelling a lot and couldn't guarantee being in the country for gigs.

However moves are afoot to do something else...

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