I have been having problems with skype over the last few days, which means that several interviews that I have supposed to have been doing didn't get done. However, I finally caught up with the mightily talented Paul May of the Atkins/May project (together with original Judas Priest singer Al Atkins)...
JON: Start at the beginning.
PAUL: Me and Al have been working together
for the past 25 years in one guise or another.
We’ve recorded possibly….. I’ve played on all Al’s solo albums – there
was about five solo albums he did before and we got together… I was actually
playing at a local gig and he came to the gig and he asked me to come and guest
on his album and basically from there I’ve played on his albums since. What kind of happened is he went off doing
another project called The Holy Rage and I went into the Christian side of
things, doing metal and gospel and different kinds of stuff and then a few
years later we just kind of hooked up again and I just wrote some material and
put a new album together and asked Al to come and sing on it and he said yeah,
and most of the stuff – he was kind of
knocked out by it – and so I decided to write songs that were kind of
specifically for his voice, you know, his range and he’s turned out some
fabulous vocals. And we are good friends – we’ve been around for quite a while,
you know, and so we’ve got a bit of history you know.
JON: Christianity and heavy rock music are
things some people might think are strange bedfellows.
PAUL: <laughs> I don’t think so. I think if music is good enough people will
listen to it anyway. I mean as far as Christianity goes I haven’t always been a Christian, but I have generally always
been a musician – I’ve recorded maybe 15 or more albums now and I’ve sort of
spanned everything from metal, country to classical, you know, all different
stuff and I wasn’t a Christian then and I just see what I am doing now as a
Christian, as an extension doing kind of – I suppose you know – Christian world
view kind of stuff. It’s more erm… I
think it is very powerful. You can write
about all sorts of subjects, from that point of view without imposing, as long
as it’s good stuff. So I think it’s just an extension of who I am, because I do
all the writing and that kind of stuff, but I write about honest subjects. The
last album was pretty much about betrayal and that kind of thing and this album
is more along the lines of… it covers all sorts of things compared to the last
one, but I really think Al’s done a sterling job on it and I am really quite
pleased with some of the stuff I’ve done myself this time so it’s quite a nice thing
to do.
JON: By the way, I am a Christian as well –
I just suddenly realised as I said that that I could be coming from a totally
different viewpoint, but I’m not
PAUL: What kind of church do you go to? Do
you go to church?
JON: On and off, fairly ordinary Church of
England.
PAUL: What I found was that I … I’ll talk
to you as a Christian. I was working on this secular stuff doing quite a lot of
work with a lot of people and when I became a Christian it was a big thing like
– obviously people think you are a bit of a religious nut, and this and this
and this, and I thought ‘no’ and I stuck to my guns and I write from an honest point of view. On the new album I am
writing Valley of Shadows which is
basically that dark night of the soul, you know when you are really going through
the mill and things are rough and tough and really and and you are crying out
to go and say ‘ where are you?’ you know what I mean? ‘Help me through this’
you know and it’s a very honest and gritty song. And then there are tracks on
the album like Bitter Waters which is a very gritty kind of song about
bitterness, it could be about anything, relationship, politics….what I try to
do is write honestly as a Christian and not try to come over like a religious
nut. I am kind of writing in a way
that’s honest from me being a Christian.
A lot of people ask me like, ‘How can you
play heavy metal and be a Christian?’.
Well I think heavy metal lends itself to some of the – and rock music
lends itself to being, you know some great subjects, you play different
subjects from you know The Bible, about conflict I think it really lends itself.
JON: Well it’s in one of the psalms isn’t
it….make a joyful noise unto the Lord. Only make it joyful and much louder
noise.
PAUL: That’s right. Thou shalt praise Him with
Marshall
Well thing is, the only way I can
look upon it is like no matter….if what I am saying, or if what I am portraying
is a truthful point of view it’ll still be the truth whoever says it, you know
what I’m saying? Like Jesus says,
‘whoever is for us, isn’t against us’, you know. And I think using that kind of
thing like….. over the last 25 years or so I have kind of learnt with Al, what
he’s good at and what he isn’t good at, basically Al feels like he’s got to try
to push himself to be closer to like Rob Halford but he doesn’t need to be ‘cos
he’s a closer voice to Coverdale. He’s got a much lower range, a much grittier
thing, you know, but the thing I’ve found over the past few years is his voice
is getting harder and stronger with age which is really unusual, but knowing
that it has allowed me to push him in other areas and directing the vocals
where ….he’s come up with some cracking vocals on this album, I mean really
I’ve been absolutely knocked out. By doing it I’ve got no complaints – I
couldn’t sing it that good – I couldn’t sing it that well. I think he’s done a
great job to be honest with you.
Check them out at Gonzo
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