PRAYING MANTIS... This journey never ends! - Interview with Chris Troy

Praying Mantis is among the best and most unique bands that ever came out of England. The band is about to give some gigs during summer, while working on new material and I took the chance to have a couple of words with Chris Troy...

So here we are again. This is the third interview in the last years, this time for my personal blog/site. I’ve told you that Mantis' music always meant a lot for me. These melodies and lyrics made me wanted to be a better person, so thank you for that.

That is such a kind thing to say and it is very much appreciated.

“A chance we had, to cry for the new world”. So, do you think there is hope in the next years and what do you believe we, the people, should cry out?

Yes I do think that we will emerge and everything will return to a better level. Sometimes I look at the thousands of people as they disappear out of the cars, trains, buses, etc and head towards their jobs or things that they need to do. It all seems so such an intricate finely balanced economic model but in reality it only takes a very slight shift and everything can suddenly go off-balance which it has and it seems to have rippled everywhere. Some countries more affected than others! Cry out for more good music! :-)

“Time has no meaning, time tells no lies. Man has evolved as a predator in disguise”. So, is it all in man’s nature? 

I think it is. I wrote those lyrics in 1976!!! …And the theme seemed so very pertinent even back then. Around that time the population was under 4 billion and now it has gone over 7 billion in what is actually a very short interval in terms of the life of the planet. Yet we carry on unabated and if we continue down this incredibly blind and utterly ignorant path. Who knows what the future will hold. Man of course is the predator, maybe now, no longer in disguise..!

“Welcome to my childhood dream; reliving what I’ve missed before, time and time over again”. In July 27, Praying Mantis will play live in Cyprus at Power of the Night festival. How do you feel returning to the land of your father and which are your strongest memories from Cyprus?

I am hoping it will be a fantastic experience. My father unfortunately passed away around 16 years ago, and Tino and myself took him to Cyprus to see his family before he really became ill. So I have some very sad memories of the place but I also remember the fantastic people that we met… Everyone seemed so warm and friendly. We are so looking forward to it.

“Running for tomorrow, hiding from today. Running for tomorrow, can’t look back on yesterday”. But yesterdays define who we are, right? So, from all these past years of Praying Mantis, what do you believe you finally achieve? 

Well after all these years we are somehow still going as a band and this makes me incredibly proud. There is no doubt we have gone through some very difficult times but in addition there have also been some amazing moments. I feel so privileged to have been provided with a position to get our music and lyrics in a form that can be conveyed into people’s lives. And if they relate to the lyrics and interpret them how they feel the theme , then that is even better!!! There can always be more, but to the same degree we could always be richer! …i.e. I cannot complain, we have left our mark in history.
 
“Hide me from my memories, part me from my soul, but the pendulum of life will carry on”. You never quit music - thanks for us! – and that shows that this is something that you love doing. What music means for you?

No doubt it is a lifeblood. It is also a drug that sometimes you think you can live without, but then you realize you need it again and again, to have another fix! …Yes I am a music junkie!

“Hallowed and be thy name; seeking the road of redemption. Reach for the Gods in vain; guilty of love and temptation”. Which are the mistakes of your past that you would change if you knew the future?

Making mistakes is part of life. Some of those will inevitably be big and involve aspects that we may always regret. Yes there are certain stages at the beginning of our history where I think if we had ventured down that alternative road then we could have been where Iron Maiden are today! And in truth it was really that close! But you learn to be philosophical about these things and quite simply it wasn’t meant to be!

Back in Mantis, which are the songs that characterize your personality and your music?

That is a difficult one. Personally I love writing using minor chords as they conjure up darkness and a depth which consequently one can associate with equally dark and deep lyrics. That is me, I don’t think I have ever written a straightforward love song and I don’t think I am capable of doing that. :-)

After your last studio album, “Sanctuary”, you released “Metalmorphosis” with remakes of older classics. What’s the next step?

As you have stated “Sanctuary” was indeed the last studio album and any of the fans really did like it. “Metalmorphosis” offered us the chance to play some of the old classics with the current band line up. For the next stage, the cliche answer would be that we are working on a new studio album, and actually we are :-) … We will make every endeavor to make it the best album ever, but time will tell!

Give me a couple of words for each of the following names:

New Wave of British Heavy Metal – Great time. It was fantastic to be part of it.
Dennis Stratton – Fantastic guy and an amazing character. I will always fondly remember the time he was in Mantis.
Iron Maiden - Who? :-)
Diamond Head - Yes I think that they were a very good band; should have been bigger than they were.
Stratus – Sad in many ways. The key element of Stratus is that Clive Burr was in the band. I did actually really enjoy the rather brief period when that band existed.
Time Tells No Lies – It was the beginning for Mantis and people will always compare whatever we do to that album. Many fans/critics call it a classic now which is an honour.
Sanctuary – Most fans believe that album now stands up against Time Tells No Lies and hence hopefully we still have the formula to continue for the years we have ahead.

And close as you wish.

Thank you for putting together some of the most interestingly structured questions that I have ever been given to answer!!! :-)

Looking very much forward to playing Cyprus and playing to these amazing people. It will be an honour!

Praying Mantis will play live at 
Power Of The Night Metal Festival 
in Cyprus, along with other great bands, at 27/28 July 2012

7" Singles

Captured City - The Soundhouse Tapes pt.2 (1979) - also released as 12" single

Praying Mantis (1980)

All Day And All Of The Night (1980)

Cheated (1981)

Turn The Tables (1982)

Discography

Time Tells No Lies (1981)

Live At Last (1990 live album)

Predator In Disguise (1991)

A Cry For The New World (1993)

Only The Children Cry EP (1994)

To The Power Of Ten (1995)

Captured Alive In Tokyo City (1996 live album)

Forever In Time (1998)

Demorabilia (1999 compilation)

Nowhere To Hide (2000)

The Journey Goes On (2003)

The Best of Praying Mantis (2004 compilation)

Sanctuary (2009)

Metalmorphosis (2011 re-recordings)

  

 

Praying Mantis official site

with Praying Mantis in Athens 2010 
(Up The Hammers Festival)

Dennis Stratton interview - British words of Iron & Harmony

Dennis Stratton is a legendary British guitarist known to many from his appearance in the first IRON MAIDEN album and for the few, by his long great course with PRAYING MANTIS. The last years he is active bringing the spirit of early Maiden in the new generations and he was kind enough to talk with us about his life in music all over the years.

How did you start playing music? Did you have any influence from your parents on that?

No, I didn’t have any influences from my parents. I started playing because a friend of mine who was in a band decided to sell a guitar, so I bought the guitar and started to learn the basics notes and chords. I used to go and watch in a pub a band called Power Pack, in the early days, at the age of 17. So I learned different notes and chords and then I joined the little band were I bought the guitar from. We were all friends, it wasn’t much of a band, and we just did a couple of rehearsals in a hall upstairs in a pub.

Which ones are the first albums and bands you’ve heard and loved back in the 70s?

The first bands I listened to, have to be The Beatles and Led Zeppelin. I was sitting in the bedroom playing “Whole Lotta Love”. So that’s how it all started, staying in the bedroom playing Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple albums.

Most people don’t know that you played music since the early 70s. With Harvest from 1970, with Wedgewood from 1972 and Remus Down Boulevard until the Iron Maiden days. What do you recall from that decade? How were things for music in England back then?

Yea, you’re right. Most people didn’t know that I played in different bands before Maiden. Harvest and Wedgewood were sort of pub bands that did mainly covers, and that’s how we did get improved, by going at the pubs and playing for hardly any money, next to nothing. And then around ’73 we finally got a gig at the Bridge House (where we first watched Power Pack) with Wedgewood and there was another band playing there, with Dave Edwards, and we decided to get together and join forces and then came along Remus Down Boulevard (RDB). There were great times. Remus Down Boulevard started playing bigger gigs and we were signed by Quarry management which managed Status Quo and Rory Gallagher. We played in the Marquee and Jonathan King signed us who had a record company at that time and we recorded a live album at the Marquee around 1975. The biggest step was to go on a tour with Status Quo, because we were signed to the same management and we did a huge European/Scandinavian tour. That was unbelievable and we learned a lot in a short space and time, going from the clubs to a huge tour. And then, when we came back we had a line-up change. We had a different drummer and bass guitarist. We kept playing, but punk scene came along and there wasn’t many bands signed at that time…  

So, in 1980 you joined Iron Maiden. How did this happen and what the Stratton’s diary writes for that year?

Steve Harris and Dave Murray used to come every week and watched RDB at the Bridge House. I didn’t know they were in Iron Maiden, but they were familiar faces. Then I got a telegram that they were looking for a guitarist that would also do backing vocals. Someone with a recording experience and also a touring experience, so I fitted straight in. When I met Steve, Dave and Rod we had a little chat and they gave me a cassette and said to listen to them. I think it was a bit of a surprise to Steve and Rod, because being in a two guitar line-up for most of the bands I’ve worked with and listening to Wishbone Ash and other harmony guitar players, it just came natural for me to pull harmony guitars unto the early Maiden stuff, “The Soundhouse Tapes”, or whatever I was listening to the cassette, “Phantom of the Opera”, “Iron Maiden”, “Prowler”. It just came natural for me to fill out the guitar parts with harmonies. I think it took them by surprise because the harmonies did seem to work. Well, it did work, ‘cause they still using them now!  

It went very well and they asked me to join the band. At the time there were only three of them who signed to EMI because they didn’t have a drummer. I knew Clive from the early days and we were mates. I told him I joined Maiden and took him to the studio where he did a few rehearsals and then they asked Clive to join, so the band was then complete.

I worked only in the earliest stuff because that’s what we wanted to record. Signing to EMI lifted Iron Maiden out of the run of the mill bands that played in England at that time. You know, it was very hard for bands at these days, especially with the punk era coming in, a lot of independent labels opened up and put all these punk bands into singles, EPs and 4-track EPs, so Maiden signing to EMI lifted them out of that and became bigger. With the album coming out, the fan base of Iron Maiden was huge. They’ve done their homework, they did their groundwork, they constantly giged in the early days, so they did have a big fan base. In 1979 I was working with Maiden and in 1980 we carried on. We did some tours, with Judas Priest, Metal for Muthas tour – that’s where I met Tino and Chris from Praying Mantis where in the later days I ended up join them. It was a great year. The biggest thing was when we went to do the KISS tour.

What kind of man was Steve Harris back then?

Steve always knew what he wanted and he run the band with an iron fist. He knew exactly what he wanted – right or wrong - and he always knew that Iron Maiden will be big.   

  

How were things during the recording of the first Iron Maiden album? I know that Steve hates the production of that record but it has a few of the best maiden songs ever, like “Remember Tomorrow” and “Prowler”.

Steve didn’t like the production but you know, in them days it was all a big rush. The album was recorded very quickly. Luckily, I already had recording experience, so I did many guitar parts on my own with the engineers. It was recorded very quickly because there was the Judas Priest and KISS tour waiting. The KISS tour was very good and there I met Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley. That’s were the crack started…  

So, why did you part ways with Iron Maiden?

It was just musical taste differences. I like to listen to soft songs when I’m not playing. The best way to relax is to listen easy listening songs and Rod seem to think when I was listening to The Eagles or David Coverdale singing “Soldier Of Fortune”, one of my favourite tracks, that I wasn’t into Heavy Metal or Iron Maiden and the argument started. He tried to keep the whole band together all the time, but everyone needs a bit of space. So the crack started to appear… 

How important do you consider the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement?

You already had Heavy Metal bands like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath, but what the New Wave of British Heavy Metal did, was to bring out younger bands that were watching all these big bands all their lives, grow up, got their guitars, they rehearsed, recorded, doing the pub scene and it just gave them the opportunity to show what they can do. Unfortunately a lot of the bands didn’t get through and somehow disappeared after fighting a while. But other bands like Saxon and Def Leppard really make it. With Lionheart we did some amazing gigs with Def Leppard. So, some bands make it, some not.      

Do you remember Rob Loonhouse? The photographer of Iron Maiden and Praying Mantis? The “myth” says that he was the one who invented “air guitar”.

I remember Rob Loonhouse, he wasn’t a photographer, he use to dance around the dance floor with an imaginary guitar and he use to have competitions of who could do the best air guitar and Rob used to win a lot…

Which bands back then in England stayed in obscurity and deserved more popularity?

As I said before, the good bands made it, but there were some bands that I thought they had bad timing. One typical example of that was Lionheart…

You played with Lionheart, so give us a brief bio of that time.

Those were great times. Me, Steve Mann and Rocky Newton we wrote loads of songs. We used to do lots of sessions for people who couldn’t play or couldn’t sing. Unfortunately we did all the hard work but we did never deal, so that was how we use to earn their money. Lionheart recorded the album in Los Angeles and it took us 4 years of hard work to get us a deal with CBS. In these days, in the 80s, in 1984 you know, the AOR stuff… I thought Lionheart was a great band. It was a shame that when we came back from America, everything we were promised like tours, they all seemed to fell through. Bad timing, I don’t know, but Lionheart wasn’t given a chance after the album was recorded, to go on a tour for that album. We could go on a tour with Kansas, Journey, Foreigner, any other band alike.

From that time and on, you always had a more melodic approach in music, despite the raw Heavy Metal of early Iron Maiden. Which are the things that influence you in music?

I’ve always been in heavy rock bands and not so much into heavy metal. By joining Praying Mantis, that gave me the chance to show more of the harmony guitars and harmony vocals that I like doing.

In 1989 Paul DiAnno, while he was in Battlezone, he was approached by a Japanese contact to put on a show to celebrate 10 years of NWOBHM. So, if I am not wrong, then he contacted you and Tino Troy. “Live At Last” is the live album that followed under the name Praying Mantis & Paul DiAnno, Dennis Stratton. That whole thing had big success in Japan and Praying Mantis was established again as a band, and you became a full member, along with Bruce Bisland on drums, Chris (bass) and Tino Troy (guitars), while you and Chris shared vocal duties in the new (back then)  Praying Mantis album “Predator In Disguise”. This nostalgic NWOBHM celebration gave birth to a whole new music beginning in your career, right?

In 1990 we were approached by a Japanese company, Pony Canyon, to do three gigs in Japan to celebrate 10 years of New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Chris said that we can do it and they ask us if we could speak to Paul DiAnno and see if he was interested in doing it. Then we got Bruce Bisland on drums and later Clive Burr because Bruce felt from his bike and couldn’t play. We did the three shows and recorded it for “Live At Last” and I stayed with Mantis for many years.

You knew the Troy brothers since 1980, right? I really love Praying Mantis, but back then you had success mainly in Japan, and not at the rest of the world. Why do you think this happened? Which are your strongest memories from these years?

I know the Troy brothers since 1979 when we did the Metal for Muthas tour. I think we recorded some great albums and it is my kind of a band. Harmony vocals, harmony guitars, it’s not too heavy, and these were good years.

We were very successful in Japan, I think we did about 7 or 8 albums with Pony Canyon and sometimes I and Chris used to share some vocals. Again we had vocalist problems and we keep changing vocalists. That was a huge problem.

Which are the “Best Years” you are referring to the same titled song from “Forever In Time”?

It is about my early days, around East End of London, running around with a gang of kids and playing on sites where the houses were bombed in war and that was a part of the best years of my life that I just wanted to put into a song.

Later you parted ways with Praying Mantis. Why did this happen?

Pony Canyon had some problems and we were basically doing nothing. I spoke to Chris and Tino many times on the phone but nothing was happening. Tino went back into work, Chris was always at work but I wanted to do something different. Out of Mantis it was the first time, since probably my first gig, that I wasn’t contracted or wasn’t playing with a full-time band. I was basically on my own and that gave me quiet a lot of freedom, so I was contacted to go to Germany, Italy… In Italy, I am going the last five years and we are doing some Iron Maiden festivals there with different bands from Germany, Holland, England, all over, and these are great shows. It gives to children the opportunity to hear the songs of the first Iron Maiden albums.

I saw you in Keep It True festival in Germany this year with Roxxcalibur. You really enjoyed playing the old Maiden songs. What does this means for you?
 

We did three songs in Keep It True but when I go to Italy for the Iron Maiden conventions, there is a band, The Clairvoyants, one of the top tribute bands in Italy, or I would say in Europe for Iron Maiden, and they go on stage and play sets of early Maiden albums. And then I go on with them and do a 45 minutes set of the early stuff like the “Prowler”, “Remember Tomorrow”, “Phantom of the Opera”, “Running Free”, “Iron Maiden”, “Transylvania”, we go through the whole stuff and I am loving that at the moment. I am going back to Italy to play on the end of June and then I will go back over there in August and September. 

Somehow, I’ve lost your traces the last years… So, what have you done lately?

I am still working very hard in England with three bands so I am constantly working. It is a busy time at the moment with all the festivals coming up. We’ve been in Bulgaria, South Africa and there is lot of stuff on YouTube and Facebook showing clips of us on stage doing the Maiden songs.

  

Knowing the mistakes of your past, what would you change in your music career?

I’ve made lot of mistakes in the past and I am still making them now!

Thank you Dennis! I wish you all the best from the bottom of my heart! West Ham is back in Premier League, also. So, good luck!

Yes, go West Ham! 

Ok Andreas, it was lovely talking to you. Everyone there in Greece, God bless you.

 Dennis Stratton Official Facebook Page