Ex-SAMSON Drummer THUNDERSTICK Talks About His Time Playing For IRON MAIDEN

Swedish SAMSON fan site (Until Recently) The Only Samson Site On The Web recently conducted an interview with former SAMSON/IRON MAIDEN drummer Barry Purkis (a.k.a. Thunderstick). A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Q: So what led you onto the IRON MAIDEN gig then? Was it an audition, advertising?

Barry Purkis: "Yeah, I auditioned."

Q: Were you looking for a hard rock situation to play in or was that just the way it turned out?

Barry Purkis: "No, by that time I knew that I was good enough to be fully professional and I was getting very frustrated of being semi-professional and having to do work and going out to play weekends and evenings. I just thought, 'This is stupid,' because in Sicily I had been professional because of the nature of the band. We had a large road crew, in fact, funnily enough, we had a Swedish roadie called Bosse. He was great, a really good guy! And I'd come back to this country expecting to try and fit in to a fully pro band but it didn't happen obviously. But with IRON MAIDEN the setup seemed to be a lot better. You know, they were getting their own PA, they had their own truck and Steve Harris was very directional with what he wanted. He used to come to my house and we'd sit in the bedroom going over the bass and drum parts and stuff like that. That was it. Then they just phoned me up and said, 'Yeah, you've got the gig,' so I started playing with them."

Q: So why didn't it work out then?

Barry Purkis: "It didn't work out because they, at that stage, were going through a transient stage trying to find themselves, they couldn't find the formula. We had Tony [Moore] on keyboards, Dennis Wilcox, I can't even remember the guitarist's name..."

Q: I think it was one of the Terrys...

Barry Purkis: "Terry, yes, Terry Wapram or something like that. It was great, but you could see that Steve had a direction and he was the driving force. Some rehearsals sounded great, absolutely great, I've got some on reel-to-reel at home, they're probably worth a bit. We've got the whole set with 'Sanctuary', 'Prowler' and 'Wrathchild', 'Iron Maiden', all of the early stuff."

Q: But what about "Thunderburst" / "The Ides of March" then? That must have been conceived while you were in the band?

Barry Purkis: "Yes, it was. I came up with a drum pattern that did that constant rolling. I would have ideas and Steve would then transpose that, because I don't play guitar. It was the same with SAMSON... I'm unable to pick a guitar up and show my idea, I have to sit there and go 'du-du du-du du, no that's the wrong note' and we'd go through it like that. So that's how it came about. And I had a drum pattern and I was trying to explain the chords to go down on the drum pattern 'cause the whole thing goes around the drum pattern. I think we played it a couple of times with IRON MAIDEN as an opening track. Just an intro, it was a throwaway thing, not really a track. The story behind that was that after we'd recorded 'Head On' and they'd recorded 'Killers', Clive Burr went round to Paul's [Samson] house to listen to the new SAMSON album and in turn took the new 'Killers' album with him. So Paul put on side one and they were 'Yeah, it's great stuff,' turned it over and up came 'Thunderburst' and Clive nearly fell of his seat and went, 'Fuck, that's 'The Ides of March','. Paul was like, 'What the hell is he talking about?' So anyway, long story short, I got summoned to EMI and there was Rod Smallwood and Steve Harris sitting there and a lawyer, solicitor, and an EMI representative and just me sitting there. So what was decided in the end was that Steve Harris would share 50-50 the publishing rights on the SAMSON version of it, but I never got sweet F.A. on the IRON MAIDEN version..."

Read the entire interview at this location.