Pete Agnew of NAZARETH - Interview, Nov. 10 '08 Page 7
by Martin Popoff

What other news is there with the band right now? Just a lot of touring... are you thinking about a new album?

Yeah, we do have plans. We've been asked to do another album next year, but I don't know if we're going to manage that. I mean, this year has been unbelievable, touring-wise. So far we've done more than 180 shows, and we're finishing in America. We're only doing ten shows or so there but we had to go there, for our 40th anniversary tour. We couldn't miss it out. We're going to do a big North American tour next year, but we figured we'll drop in the ten shows this year. So we've got that, and we just got back from Russia, and we've come straight out here, and we've got a lot of stuff. We're finishing America, and we got a few dates in Europe in December, and we got some time off, and then we'll go into rehearsals to change the set for next year. In January, and then we start all over again touring. There's a lot of touring going on. So we don't know if we're going to manage to fit anything in. Because we've actually got a lot of material ready, because there's a lot of material that didn't go on the latest album, that was very, very good, but we wanted to play around with it a bit more. So we've got enough to do an album - we could have it ready - but we just don't think we have the time to prepare it, because the amount of touring we have coming up again next year. We might get to recording towards the end of the year, but I can't promise that one.

Have you noticed anything different in Russia, with that oil money?

It's a completely different country, compared to what it was like when we first went. Completely different. And it's just run by, well, it's run by criminals. They have all the money, they bought everything up and stole it and everything, and it's just unbelievable. But it doesn't affect us. In fact, for us it's OK, because most of the time, these are the guys who are hiring us to play! They run the country. And the country, the people they've got... there's potential. There is mega, mega rich. You've still got the poor, but you've got a kind of middle class now that they never, ever have before. What you would call the middle class, anyway. And people have got a bit more money, and everybody's got a mobile phone, cell phone. I mean, if you go to Moscow and St. Pete, it's just about as good as going to any large city in the world; you've got everything. And then you've still got places where we play, and other bands... Deep Purple were out the same time as us playing Siberia and stuff like that. Some of that is still a bit rough. But things are improving. The hotels are improving, things like that. You see a big difference. But when we first went it was just shocking.

Pete Agnew of NAZARETH - Interview, Nov. 10 '08 Page 8