Guitarist and singer Bobby Barth has done more than most to keep the melodic rock flag flying. Starting with Babyface in the mid 70's, the band evolved into Axe who went on to make four excellent major label albums. The records in question were 'Axe', 'Living On The Edge', 'Offering' and 'Nemesis', each one jam-packed with gorgeous hard rock tunes that were completely at odds with their biker image. The band dissolved after a major road accident in which the band's other guitarist Michael Osbourne was killed. Bobby released a much mellower solo album, 'Two Hearts, One Beat', then went on to have spells with Blackfoot and Angry Anderson. In the nineties he has not only produced and managed Caught In The Act/Guild Of Ages but has also formed his own recording studio, production and distribution companies. In 1995 he reformed Axe with original members Edgar Riley Jnr. and Teddy Mueller, plus bassist Blake Eberhard and ex-Frank Zappa singer/keyboard player Bob Harris. The band have just released their eighth studio album, which was a good enough excuse to phone Bobby for a chat about 'The Crown', N.E.H. Records and the state of the music business.

The Crown sounds like a pretty strong album.

'Yeah, we're very proud of it. We don't get the chance to do new studio albums too often, the last two have been re-makes of old songs.'

That's one of the things I was going to ask you about. Why did you do the two of them back to back instead of doing a new album inbetween?

'We were just trying to get all of the stuff available on CD as soon as we could. Also, it's very difficult to get Axe together in the same place, we live in so many different places. Edgar (Riley jr.) lives in Texas and Teddy (Mueller) is in Florida, so it's real difficult to get together.'

Is Teddy still part of the band?

'No, he wasn't on this album, Christian Teele is our new drummer. Teddy's moved on to different things, he's working in the publishing business.'

In the past you've written a lot of things on your own but this time everything's co-written with Bob Harris and even with Michael Bormann (Jaded Heart).

'Yeah, Bob Harris and I have been writing together for quite a while, but I got along great with Michael Bormann when I produced their album last year. Michael and I have a same basic direction that we like to write in and we had a lot of fun working together, so when we were writing for a new Axe album we invited him to come and hang out with us for a couple of weeks. He's a lot of fun to work with, and a wonderful singer too.'

What is The Crown all about?

'The Crown is a message to a particular band that I'd worked with here in America. I don't think a lot of the younger rock bands are paying the respect to the older rock bands that they should. I produce a lot of young bands and they all think they've discovered titties for the first time, they think they're the first band to come up with all this stuff, but as you and I both know, rock'n'roll has been around for a long time. Also, the quality of the bands 20 years ago in my opinion was far superior to the quality today. It's kind of a message to them to stop puffing out their chests like they invented this shit, it's been around a long time. It's just so ridiculous how bad some of the bands are at the moment but this particular band thought that the sun rose and set on their asses and they weren't even really that good. It just drove me crazy so I just had to let them know.'

Are you going to name them?

'Er...No....well actually I will, they're a band called Wishdoctor.'

Do they know that the song is about them?

'They do now!'

Going back to what you were saying about bands being better 20 years ago, is the song 'Good Times' autobiographical, or is it just a general put-down of the state of the music business?

'It's about music in general I think. We're actually having more fun now than we ever did, the reason being that in the earlier years when we had a bit of success here in America the pressure was incredible. Being young men, and not knowing how to handle pressure, it wasn't necessarily a positive thing, but now that we're older and don't have anyone breathing down our necks it's a whole lot more fun. We're having a great time but the music business in general is in a pretty sorry state in my opinion. I know I just sound like an old codger bitching but I really do feel that way.'

How did you come to do the old Angry Anderson/Mike Slamer song 'Fire And Water'?

'Well, actually that song was on one of Angry Anderson's solo albums, which I was on also. I played in Angry's band in Australia for about a year and this was just one of my favourite songs that I did with Angry. It mirrored very closely my philosophy on life so I thought it was very appropriate to do the song.'

You now have a second guitarist in Axe. Where did Danny Masters come from?

'Danny's been a friend of mine for a long time. One of the things when I'm producing an album that I have to be very careful of, is that if I'm the only guitar player, and I'm also the producer and the writer, things can get a bit muddled and I can re-hash things without knowing that I've done it. Maybe a theme that I've already used comes back up again and I don't mean for it to but I have no other guitar player to point it out to me, so I like having someone there to bounce ideas off of. Danny's been struggling over here trying to get something going so I invited him into the studio to come and lay down some tracks with me.'

So is he a permanent member of the band or just a special guest?

'He's more of a special guest I think, he didn't play that much on the record, he's only on two songs. At the same time though he spent a lot of hours with me in the studio going through ideas.'

After the last song on the album there a bit of a gap and then a load of tom-toms come in for a minute or so, what was that all about?

'Ha-ha! We were drinking!!!! It was just something stupid, we were sitting in the studio having a drink and we decided to put that on the album. We used a lot more percussion on this record because the drummer, Christian Teele, is a world class percussionist and had a lot of percussion stuff in the studio and he started fooling around and came up with that. We recorded it and thought it was cool, so we put it on the end of the record.'

You're obviously busy with all your production work and N.E. Records. Do you have any touring plans at all?

'Yeah, we were just talking about that today actually, maybe a European tour in late spring or early summer. We just haven't decided yet, it just depends on how the album is received. If it's received well we might come and if it's not, we'll stay put. The problem is that it's so very expensive to tour over there. Really, I don't even mind losing a little money to tour but we can't afford to go lose 40 or 50 thousand dollars. In the old days the major labels would make that up but these days it's pretty difficult.'

When you first reformed the band, how did you come to use Bob Harris as the singer when you used to do most of the singing yourself.

'I've known Bob for a long time, he was with Frank Zappa when another friend of mine, Mark Pinsky, was with Zappa too, so we had crossed paths many times. Then as I got more and more into production work I found it almost suicidal for me to try to be the producer and the singer at the same time. My head gets caught in a bit of a circle and I can spend forever trying to critique what I'm doing myself, so I made a decision to try to get hold of a singer who had a feeling for what it was that I was trying to sing. Obviously Bob Harris is a wonderful singer so we just got together and he's been with us ever since.'

Are you familiar with the All Music Guide on the internet?

'No I'm not.'

It's a search engine for musicians and lists everything an artist has ever done and lots of detail about album credits and such. I think Bob might be interested to know that he died in 1993!

'Ha-Ha! That's kinda like me, I died in 1984. All Music Guide huh? I'll have to print it out for him and put it on his wall.'

There's a new Guild Of Ages album due I believe?

'Yes sir! In fact it's finished. We finished mastering Axe at 4 o'clock and we started recording Guild Of Ages at 5.30, so I had an hour and a half vacation. We finished it at the end of November and we just sent it to the label. I don't know when they plan on putting it out but I'm thinking maybe February or March. It's a much, much better record than the last one, I was very disappointed with that, but this one is a very strong record. It's a very un-produced record, we tried very hard to stay away from a lot of production and overdubs and tried to capture the band more live.'

When you first met the guys in Guild Of Ages, or Caught In The Act as they were then, did they sound like Axe then or is that just your influence?

'No, it wasn't anything to do with me. They really did sound like Axe already, and that's the reason I was contacted in the first place. A fellow named Kenny Turner (joint-manager of Axe and GOA with Bobby), who I do business with, called me up when I was still living in Los Angeles and said 'You really need to come and see this band, it's like a little baby Axe'. I came out and got to know them and we're very similar, but I had no plans at the time of reforming Axe, I started producing them and it wasn't until I was two albums deep on them that anybody suggested I do an Axe record. I think that for a moment there was kind of an overlap but I think there's much less of an overlap now. I think that Axe getting together again has grown into it's own thing, and they've grown into their own and we're not quite as similar now as we were.'

Did it bother them being compared to you all the time?

'I'm sure it did, people were calling them Caught In The Axe and stuff, but they are what they are, and if you go see them they do what they do, and I don't think it's fair to ask a band to be something they're not to try to attain commercial success. They're young talented guys and their combination of musicians sounds like it sounds and there's not much you can do about it. As their producer it wasn't really fair to try to steer them in another direction, to suggest that they'd make more money if they did this or that, that's a pretty shitty thing to do to a band y'know?'

Was it very gratifying to you to hear that there was a young band who sounded like Axe in 1994?

'Oh yeah, I think it was nice. In sounding like Axe, what I think people mean is that they were just a band who were into the songs. I don't think the guitar player sounds like me, or the singer sounds like me but I think it was a band who had similar song structures to what Axe had. I've worked very hard on the last couple of albums to let them go on their own, to try to help them find their own path instead of trying to walk down one that's been walked before.'

Tell me about N.E.H. Records, how did you get involved with that?

'You know, I'm not even sure, I just woke up one day and was. We had originally just wanted to import a few CDs for the fans here in the States, things that were hard to find for them. So we started to import a couple of titles here and there, really more as a service for friends and for fans. Everybody else was charging 30 dollars apiece for these CD's and it seemed crazy to us because you can go to any wholesaler in Britain or in Europe and they don't cost that much. People were over- inflating the market, so we started selling a few, then we hooked up with a couple more labels and now it's turned into a pretty big distribution centre. We do a lot of wholesale to stores across America. Then when we'd made a bit of money we bought the studio, and now we're equipped to record and produce and distribute bands on our own. We're just taking it nice and slow, there's no big press to get rich on it. It's more of a pastime y'know.'

Are you directly involved with the wholesale, or are you more involved in the studio side of things?

'I'm more involved with the studio but we touch bases with each other at least two or three times a day. I am involved in it, but the running of the business proper is handled by Mike McPherson.'

The things you distribute from the European labels like Frontiers, MTM, Z etc., how do they sell?

'It does alright. I think it grows every day but the problem is that with us functioning as a music store you're never going to sell too much product. Only so many people can come to your store every day, but as a distributor, being able to wholesale it out to record stores things are improving rapidly. There are an awful lot of stores cropping up all over the States that sell melodic rock and AOR but they don't know where to go to get their music. Each week we pick up at least one new store and some of them buy some pretty serious numbers but it's still small to medium sized, but it is growing every week.'

Do you like a lot of the stuff you sell?

'Yeah, I like most of it. One of the criteria has been that we've tried to remain true to a genre of music as opposed to just selling everything. You know, Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera would sell better but we don't carry anything like that. The N.E.H. website has been designed to appeal to just the people who like this kind of music, and they can come there and listen to little sound samples of everything we have. We've just had to buy our own server, our site got so big because we put sound samples of every song on every album that we sell, it's so big that after Christmas we're going to launch a new site that will sell downloads of selected AOR bands. It's all done legally through licensing as opposed to things like napster.'

Which of the newer bands impress you?

'Oh gosh! There are so many that I like, like Ten. I think Ten are a really great band, Dare is a great band, and I think Jaded Heart are a wonderful band. I think songwriting and singing wise there isn't a better singer out there than Michael Bormann. I've been in the studio a lot of years with a lot of people but I've never been in a studio with anyone better than Michael Bormann. Have you seen him live?'

No I haven't.

'If you get the chance then do so! He puts so much into it that in the studio I had to keep asking him if he was alright. I would say 'Are you OK, can you continue?' and he always can, he's a fucking powerhouse, I've never seen anyone sing the way he does. He has incredible timing and incredible pitch, he's the real thing and I think the only reason why they haven't made it is because they're German, and not many people take German rock bands seriously. The Scorpions were about it y'know! Gotthard are great also, but this kid is the real deal.'

Going back to your time with Blackfoot, what was it like taking a back- seat to someone else?

'At that point in my life I had no choice. After the death of Michael Osborne my head was just totally fucked up from the accident that I didn't really have the ability to front anything at the time. Actually, about half the time that I was with Blackfoot I don't even remember, that's how hard my head was screwed.'

Did you have a good time with them, because I heard that Ricky Medlocke can be really hard to deal with.

'Ricky Medlocke is like anyone else who's very talented and has an outgoing personality, he can be a bit hard to deal with but I'm sure that all of us can at any given moment. I had a good time with him, I'd known him for many years, it wasn't like we'd just met. We used to share a rehearsal warehouse back in the 70's so we'd known each other for a long time. I took Charlie Hargrett's place and he was a very close friend, and Ken Hensley was a close friend too so it just seemed like a logical thing to do. Here I was, I was on the same label and had the same management company, I had just been in an accident and had in effect lost my band, and here was a band that had just lost Charlie Hargrett and Ken Hensley, and as I played a little keyboards as well as guitar it seemed like the right thing to do.'

Going back to the two '20 Years..' albums, the original Axe albums had been bootlegged at least twice, have you seen the ones from New Zealand?'

'Yeah, the ones on Axepertise?'

What's your opinion on that kind of thing?

'Well, you know it is quite harmful, but I have to wear two hats on it because I'm happy that the people who want them are able to get them. This is old material and it's a part of our lives but I'm happy that people can listen to them, but at the same time it's very, very costly to people like us. I earn my living by songwriting and by recording albums, but as I understand the amount of sales that those things have done, that's the four Axe albums and my solo record, and if the figures that I've heard are correct then it's probably cost me something in the vicinity of 100 to 150 thousand dollars. It's a lot of money and I'm not in a position in life where I can afford to lose that kind of money. I think it's up to the individual to search their concsciences about it but it would have been a lot better if the people who own the rights to these records would have released them like they should have, and then we wouldn't have had this problem.'

Personally, I think the main problem with bootlegs is the price of them. If people shell out £15 each for the four discs it's unlikely that they'll pay for the official releases if they ever happen.

'The prices are ridiculous but that's very true. I got an e-mail from a fellow in Canada yesterday, he said he's been looking for the albums for years on CD and had finally found them on Ebay. He paid 80 Canadian dollars apiece, which would be about $55 American, each! He said he bought them and then the next time he went on to look the same guy had put another set of them on there. I would have a lot more respect for these people if they'd sold them for less than a standard album when they only cost about $1 to bootleg. When I was in Europe a couple of years ago I bought them, I paid $25 apiece so for the fucking artist to have to pay $100 for something you created is pretty sad. I'd like to meet the guy who did it. I don't think it's New Zealand by the way, I think it's from mainland Europe, probably Belgium.'

I wouldn't have thought there would be a market for it in New Zealand.

'No, they're just using New Zealand as a front, they did the same thing with Blackfoot.'

Yeah, I thought it was strange that they did Axe and Blackfoot when they were on the same label.

Yeah, it is odd. It might have been somebody from the old production company but I'd hate to think that. They're obviously not taken from a disc, they're taken from master tapes somewhere and I was thinking maybe someone with Atlantic England or Atlantic Europe connections. I suppose it's possible that they may have come from America but I doubt it. The interesting thing about the bootlegs is that some of the bonus tracks were me with Blackfoot, and live recordings from King Biscuit and things like that, so it would make sense that it was someone in the loop.'

Do you have any plans to make another solo album?

'Actually I'm just talking to MTM about doing something, I don't know if you can call it a solo album but there are an awful lot of songs I've written over the years that never made the jump from acoustic guitar to Axe. Or acoustic guitar to Blackfoot or whatever. I'm thinking about, just for fun, doing an album of acoustic guitar, percussion and fretless bass versions of a lot of these songs. Some of them are wonderful songs but they've just never been released, it's not really a career move it's just for fun. I don't think there would be a huge amount of people who would be interested, but anyone who likes the songwriting in Axe would probably enjoy it.'