Pete Agnew of NAZARETH - Interview, Nov. 10 '08 Page 3
by Martin Popoff

What does your son Lee bring to the band, in terms of influences? Is he involved in the writing?

Very much so, yeah. Lee is a really good songwriter. And he's a good singer. He's a great drummer, but he's a very good singer, so it helps with the harmonies. But what Lee did on that album is like Gloria, Dying Breed, Liar - those are pretty much his lyrics and everything. Jimmy did sort out the backing track thing but it was Lee that did the lyric and everything. So he brought a lot to the album. He's a very, very good songwriter. Even with the sons, my sons, him being one of them, they've had a band for years, and Lee, and Stevie the guitar player, and Chris the bass player, and they all wrote songs, and they still do, and Lee wrote a lot of stuff for them. So he's been writing songs for a long time. In fact, I remember, way, way back, we did an album called Sound Elixir, and I think he was only ten or 11 at the time, and I was writing a song called Rain On The Window. Well, it wasn't called that, and it was just a song, and he started singing and it was 'rain in the window,' and he actually did the chorus for that, when he was ten. And that was on a Nazareth album way back when. So he's known about Nazareth for a long time.

Would he pitch in on riffs as well? Does he play things besides drums?

Oh yes, he plays piano. He writes stuff on the keyboards. That's the way he writes. And he plays a little bit of very funny guitar. But it's mainly keyboards, when he writes his songs. He's got a little squeaky thing that he uses at his house, but he gets the results.

From a bass player's point of view, what from the catalogue is particularly challenging for you to play live, and what do you have the most fun playing live as a bassist?

Well, the things that we do, the ones that are killer for me, are things like Expect No Mercy, and Morning Dew. I mean, I was stupid on those, and that's what the guys all tell me. When I come offstage complaining that my hand is going to fall off they say, 'Well, you were stupid enough to write that part in the first place. You shouldn't have done that.' And those are just hard work those ones, really hard work. And the ones I like... I like playing them all, really. I like the more mid-tempo things. And we do a lot of them. I like Whiskey Drinking Woman, and I like Hearts Grown Cold, and Beggar's Day. I like playing all the songs, but it's just that some of them are harder to play than others.

Pete Agnew of NAZARETH - Interview, Nov. 10 '08 Page 4