Thunder duo’s tour set to make All The Right Noises

There are constant wisecracks, frequent in-jokes and more laughter than you’d find on a Saturday night at the Comedy Store. Perhaps that’s the type of shorthand that builds up over 50 years of a friendship in which the two rock stars have barely exchanged a crossed word.

The frontman and guitarist/songwriter from Thunder have blazed a trail during a remarkable career that’s showed no signs of slowing down.

As the friends celebrate 50 years of friendship, they do so against the backdrop of a slew of forthcoming arena shows for their band, Thunder, and a number two chart placing for their most recent record, the formidably good All The Right Noises, a record that equalled any of their recorded output over the last 31 years. Where most rock ‘marriages’ are hallmarked by squabbles and competition, Danny and Luke take a road less travelled. Laughter gets them through the ups and downs of life in Britain’s premier rock band.

Luke says: “I think there’s two things to this. The first is that Danny and I get on, that’s very important. We complement each other. We’re both good at the things that the other one isn’t so good at. The second is that we don’t cross into each other’s areas. We very rarely argue. I can’t remember the last time we did. The fact we still make each other laugh, we’re good mates. That’s it really.”

The disruptive force of Covid took them off the road through most of 2020 and 2021, but now they are stopping off in the West Midlands as they celebrate 50 Years of Mateship. They are hitting the road to promote a stunning, boxed and signed autobiographical book, which reflects on their years together.

The First Fifty Years will be launched with a 19-date tour of regional UK theatres, taking the duo to many towns and cities that their band doesn’t usually visit. There’ll be laughter along the way, as well as stunning acoustic renditions of the classics that fans have grown to know and love. Danny and Luke play Birmingham Town Hall on Sunday and Stourbridge Town Hall on Tuesday. They will also be back in December with two dates at KK’s Steel Mill in Wolverhampton and at Birmingham’s resorts World Arena in May next year.

The tour follows a successful venture onto the road in 2019 with their stripped back Unplugged & Unscripted show. Fans can look forward to acoustic renditions of favourite tunes as well as hearing the stories behind the songs. Poignant, revealing and frequently hilarious, there’s a treat in store for all.

Danny says: “We were approached to tour and we thought we’d give it a go. The idea was to go to places where fans don’t usually get to see us and to do something where it’s very intimate, very up-close-and-personal.”

“Sometimes too up-close-and-personal,” quips Luke.

“Most of the shows sold out very quickly. We got to tour the country and see places we’d not visited before and the fans saw a different sort of show that went down really well. This next run of shows will be along the same lines, but we’ll be expanding on various sections from the new book and bursting into song at regular intervals. It’s going to be a fun night, and we can all do with a few of those.” Luke adds: “That’s right. I think we were in Crewe one night on the last tour, and I walked from the dressing room to the stage, past a signed photograph of Rod Hull and Emu. That’s when I realised we’d finally made it.”

The tour follows what ought to have been a crowning year for the band. Thunder had been due to play a series of arena shows in 2020 while celebrating the release of All The Right Noises, an immense record that captures the band at a creative peak.

The record heralded a return to the full-throttle sound of Thunder that has seen them create a hugely successful 30+ year career at the forefront of British rock, all built around the lifelong friendship of vocalist extraordinaire Danny Bowes and song writing genius Luke Morley.

Luke says: “All the songs were written and recorded pre-Covid. But it is interesting how if you look at some of the tracks through the prism of Covid they still make a lot of sense.”

The volcanic lead single from the album, Last One Out Turn Off The Lights, could easily be mistaken for world-ending lockdown rage. Luke says: “That was directly about Brexit, but you could apply it to everything else.”

Danny says: “The record was good fun to make. Thunder records are always good fun to make. We spent most of our time laughing. I think it’s a good position to be in. When Luke writes the tunes and presents us with a really good bunch of songs. We get into the studio. Everybody is confident in their abilities to play the tunes, the studio is great, the songs are great, the environment is great… you can’t fail to enjoy yourself.” The record was recorded at Rockfield Studios, the iconic residential studio in Monmouthshire that Thunder have visited before. Run by Kingsley Ward, it was the place where Queen recorded Bohemian Rhapsody, where Coldplay wrote and recorded Stars and where other records have been made by Oasis, Ozzy Osborne, Stereophonics, George Michael, Motorhead and dozens and dozens more. Danny says: “We did it in three sessions. It seems like a long time ago now. I think it was July 2019, November 2019 and January 2020.”

It is another chapter in the band’s incredibly successful history that has seen them create a succession of some of the most highly-regarded rock albums of the past 30 years. The tour gives them and their fans a chance to celebrate, to look back on the first fifty years.

Danny says: “I think there’s been three waves, three versions of Thunder. The first lasted 10 years. We came like a dog out of a trap. We’d been in a band before, realised that all of our naïve feelings of music being art had been reduced down to a product like a tin of beans. That was quite crushing. We came out the other end, went to America and came back very determined to be a full-on rock band again.”

Road trip

“When we formed Thunder, it made us realise that if we were going to have another go we had to do it on our own terms. That was the first wave, born of a lot of frustration and resentment for record labels. By the end of that, the rock press had become resentful, grunge had been and gone, but the fans were still there.

“We felt like we ran out of steam. Because we couldn’t make a difference we stepped away. When we came back, for version two, we were running our own record company and had a direct relationship with the fans. We could take control. That was very good.”

The problem was, Danny was running the record label as well as performing in the band. He become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of admin work – admin – that he’d got to do on behalf of the band. “I bore the brunt of it, because I was the only one interested in the numbers. That drove me to a near-nervous breakdown and heart attack. That’s why we split up.”

Version Three of the band had given the band the chance to learn from what had gone before. They signed up to a label, had good management, so Danny wasn’t bearing the brunt alone. “We had this whole new spirit within the band. We’d listened to some of the music we made during the 2000s and thought we sounded too drunk. We wanted to take it more seriously. We debated it a long, long time. It was six months of talk before we came back.”

Thunder toured with Journey and Whitesnake. They’d not done anything for ages. None of them were busy. “It’s a difficult band to walk away from. We’re all friends. So the idea of spending a couple of weeks on the road, playing arenas – well, what’s not to like. So we decided to see how we got on.”

The rest, as they say, is history, and amid the laughter and stunning tunes, amid the best vocals of any British rock singer and the hilarious tales, there’s just about room for a November tour.

Danny says: “It’s great to go off the beaten track and plan to these small towns where there are pockets of hardcore fans.”

Luke adds: “We have a great laugh travelling round. It’s a road trip for us where we enjoy being away for a few weeks, having a lot of fun and playing acoustic versions of songs that the fans really love.” Oh, and brushing past photographs of Rod Hull and Emu, too. Fifty years and they’ve finally arrived.