Armageddon’s First and Last Stand (Part 2 of 3)

Continued from Part One…

Martin Pugh: So I called Aynsley Dunbar, who I had known from England; he had actually tried to get me to join his band, Retaliation. I said, “You know what we’re doing; we’d love you to come down.” And he said, “Man, I wish you’d called me earlier, but I’ve just signed a deal with a band called Journey.” But he said, “Anyway, here’s the number of a guy in in L.A. who you might want to call.” And it was Bobby.

I called Bobby; he came down and we kind of auditioned him, but it was just a no-brainer. After we played three or four songs, it just fit right in. We were playing “Buzzard,” which is obviously not in 4/4 time signature. A lot of drummers had been playing it in four, but Bobby just hit it straight off; he was right there in the pocket.

We carried on rehearsing at the soundstage at A&M, and after a short period of time, Bob Garcia came in one day with Jerry Moss. They stood at the back of the soundstage listening for probably four minutes, and then they walked out. And we were like, “Oh, dear. I guess we’ve offended somebody with our playing!” And then Bob came back in and said, “Jerry wants to see you in his office.” We went in there and he said, “We would like you to join A&M Records.”

We had already had a thumbs-up from Peter Frampton, who was also on A&M. Louis knew Peter quite well, and I knew him fairly well. When my Les Paul was stolen after a Lyceum gig, we were playing the Marquee Club the next day. Peter loaned me his Black Beauty to play that night.

(A weird story: About four or five months later, we were playing the Lyceum again. And this plainclothes English police officer walked into the dressing room and said, “Martin Pugh, I believe this belongs to you,” and gave me my Les Paul back. What happened is that I had initially bought the Les Paul from Orange Music on Shaftesbury Avenue, and the guy who stole it tried to hock it there. They said, “We don’t want to buy it, but Sound City down on Shaftesbury Avenue, they’ll buy it from you.” He took it down there, and the police were waiting for him. But the fact that a CID guy would come to the gig with my guitar, it’s unheard of these days! Anyway, I got it back.)

When Armageddon started, did you compose songs ahead of time, or did the songs grow out of improvisation as they had done in Steamhammer?

A little bit of both. I come up with things all the time in practice; I’d come up with something, and say, “Oh, that kind of sounds good.” And then I’d throw it at the other band members. The beauty of that – as opposed to now where you send files around and wait months to see if you got something right – is that you’d play it, and the drummer would go like this, and you’d go, “Oh, yeah; that’s great.” And then the bass player would [do something]. That’s how it came about a lot of times. And Keith would have his book of lyrics; either he’d come up with fresh lyrics or he would take something out of the book.

The first time I heard “Buzzard,” it made me think of the new wave of British heavy metal, something that wouldn’t come along until five or six years later. The song sounds well ahead of its time. Who are some of the guitarists who inspired the approach that you were using in those days?

Earlier on, it would have been the three Kings [Albert, B.B., and Freddie]. With Steamhammer, I was fortunate enough to back Freddie King on two UK tours. Kieran and I would play a song, and then we would walk off stage and sit in the front row. Freddie would come on and play with the rest of the band. So during the tour, I had a front seat watching Freddie every night. He was a character!

I have a story I’ve told a lot of times. When I first met Freddie, I had a [Gibson] Firebird. What we used to do was buy a banjo string and put all the other strings down from there. So we had essentially an early set of Slinkies. And that’s what I had on my Firebird. Freddy comes in with his [Gibson ES-] 335 and says, “Here.” [I try to play it but I can’t bend the strings. He plays my guitar and says] “Damn, you’ve got rubber bands on here!” And then he said, “I’ll give you my secret. You want to know the secret of bending those strings? Piss on your fingers.” And then he said, “Nice to meet you,” and held out his hand to shake mine.

But it was two tours of watching Freddy. He’d be playing the Bag O’ Nails, and there would be Jimi Hendrix sitting in the table next to us, watching him. At that point, Freddie was in his early 30s; we were in our early 20s, just cutting our teeth. He had been playing in Chicago, and he was a seasoned bluesman. It was amazing watching him.

So that’s an early influence of mine. Even earlier than that, it would be skiffle groups, Lonnie Donegan, the Shadows, the Ventures.

We actually opened for Lifetime – which was John McLaughlin, Tony Williams and Larry Young – in Switzerland. That changed us quite a bit; at least me and Mick Bradley. It was an eye opener; they went down an absolute storm, and after they finished playing, the audience were just dumbstruck. They didn’t know what to think of it. John McLaughlin was playing through a 100 watt amp.

Mick Bradley had this massive double drum kit; he was one of the best drummers in England – or in Europe, for that matter – at the time. But Tony Williams had this kit that looked like a little child was going to sit down at it! And he would be doing this double bass drum thing with one bass drum, with one pedal. We were at the side of the stage going, “Oh my God, these guys are amazing!” I think that started our transition into what ended up being Speech.

There’s so many great guitar players. And I’ve always liked the gypsy violin sound of [a guitar] and the way it flows and sings. I’ve always tried to get the guitar to do a little bit more of that. For the “Buzzard” riff, in practicing I would do a lot of paradiddles – a drumming technique – with my pick: up strokes, down strokes. And the riff came out of that. I started playing it one day; it began to be like a guitar exercise. [Steamhammer] started playing it in a little different manner, and then it followed us over to the States with Armageddon.

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