Interview: Sean Harris, "Diamond Head"

HEAD GAMES...

DIAMOND HEAD were one of the better NWOBHM bands to emerge in the early 1980s, but sadly, didn't achieve the giddy heights of some of their contemporaries. But now they are back, determined to carry on where they left off. I spoke to Sean Harris and asked him why he feels the time is right to reform.

Sean explains:

"Both Brian (Tatler) and myself have always felt an affinity to Diamond Head, even when we were off doing other things, and never really felt that we wouldn't do something with it at some point in time. Because we never really felt that we'd finished what we'd started. So, we just fell together really at a point where me and Brian wanted to write the same sorta songs. We went out as DEAD RECKONING first, as we weren't convinced if anybody wanted Diamond Head again, or whether we would want it. So things just went forward, y'know. Just positive one step after another, the Diamond Head domino theory."

So what about the new members, who basically are they?

"Eddie Chaos and Karl Wilcox. We know Karl from a long time back. He played in RADIO MOSCOW with Brian, and we always had him in mind. Eddie sent Brian a tape so we started rehearsing."

So how does this band compare to the previous Diamond Head line-ups?

"I am the most happy I've been with it. I think we've managed to have the same firepower as the first line-up, and the same spirit, 'cos Karl in particular was a real Diamond Head fan, and he's really kicked us up the arse and made us realise what was good about us. And the late line-ups which we toured with, but didn't actually record with, I was never that comfortable with them."

There seems to be a revival of interest in the NWOBHM. Why do you think that is?

"It's strange, innit? A bit of nostalgia, a bit of the fact that the harder rock music has been going around for the last 10 years or so, and I think people need to find the roots of bands like METALLICA. Everybody is influenced by everybody else. The NWOBHM came out of punk really, a sense of it, the urgency."

It must have been a really interesting time to be involved in the music business then.

"Well, we were just outside the music biz, which made it even more interesting, because the music biz never really had a handle on it. Except to make IRON MAIDEN into Iron Maiden and DEF LEPPARD into Def Leppard. It was a good time to be in a rock band. But the problem was that not many of the British bands did much."

You think that more bands from that era should have had more success?

"Yes, there was a lot of talent about, but there wasn't the focus, and I think the music biz as per usual didn't take it seriously enough. They got a couple of big bands out of it and were happy. When you get involved in the corporate thing, a lot of the bands lose their spirit."

Is that what happened to Diamond Head?

"By the third album, yes. The first one we did ourselves, the second one the record company did good by us. But the third one, they were trying to make us aware of ourselves in a way that we didn't understand. We were caught between a rock and a hard place, y'know."

What did you think of Metallica's version of "Am I Evil?"?

"I only heard it once or twice, so I can't really remember. I can't believe they could possibly do a version as good as ours, in my own humble opinion. It justifies what we did then and shows that we could be influential, and I hope we will be just as influential again. I'd like to think it's what we're all about."

People were predicting big things for you and NOTORIOUS. But it all went wrong. What happened?

"Well, if you really want to know. The album had just come out in America and we did the video for the single. It broke the top 100 in America. Then the album was deleted after three weeks. It never came out here, so we were left twiddling our thumbs. I mean, if the album isn't gonna come out here, then I really didn't know what we were going to do. We'd put a lot of time and effort and I wanted a positive attitude. But nothing was happening. The record company wasn't interested. It, like, cut off our oxygen supply. We didn't decide to split up, it just stopped doing anything. the money ran out basically."

That brought things up to date, so a new single from Diamond Head.

"Amazing, isn't it? We are reasonably pleased with what we've done, we did it by ourselves with the producer. We like it. It's a limited edition, only 15,000, they are going to be individually numbered. We are not aiming to impress the charts, they are all shit. Passed its sell by date, the chart idea, innit? We want to sidestep the industry side of it. Just go out to our fans not really being concerned as to our image in the record charts. Really going for the glory of being this or being that, just getting out there and doing it."

So, you'll be touring soon, then?

"We will be out on the road soon. Just in Britain to start with, build it up nicely. We have a mini album coming out soon so it will set it all up."

Will you be playing much old stuff like "Am I Evil?" and "Borrowed Time"?

"We rehearse everything and pick out randomly what we want to play live. It's a new band, just fired up with the old spirit. I've got to the point where you can't do it for what ends you want out of it. You've just got to do it and I think, 'We're good enough.' There's a lot of good bands around now and I happen to think we're one of them. After all, we Britishers like our British bands, don't we?"

Billy Kulke
Riff Raff
January 1992

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