“Let us know when we should be expecting calls for shows in London, then,” bassist Arka jokes. “Our frontman will make you curry if you get us shows,” guitarist Shahed joins in. “He is a brilliant cook.” I first met Shahed in the trenches of retail, selling and shifting furniture for the well-healed and oft ill-mannered denizens of the King’s Road area of London while he was studying for an MBA. I knew he was a metalhead right away, with a serious fondness for the classics. I would walk into the stockroom to take a morale moment and catch him hard at work swinging pallets around, belting out the lyrics to the oldies accompanied by a much-abused radio cranked on Planet Rock Radio. I still own the black Stagg electro-acoustic he sold me with some regret many years ago, the white trim stained yellow from cigarette tar. The smell of tobacco smoke would rise like a phantom from the wooden body when played. Shahed returned to his native Bangladesh and joined the Dhaka based band after a ch
The first album I ever bought, of anyone's, was Bat Out of Hell II. I got it on cassette tape from Our Price in Margate high street. At that point I didn't even have my own system on which to listen to it. I would load it into my dad's JVC hi-fi, insert the impossibly long headphone cable and lie back on the sofa, my eyes closed and mind alive to whatever imagery the music and lyrics conjured in the soft darkness. Some of what Mr Loaf sang went above my head. (I was a lot shorter then.) Some of it was interpreted in theatrical set pieces involving Harley Davidson motorcycles, long hair and creaking leathers. In these little private dramas I felt powerful, something I couldn't feel with my eyes open, staring down the frightening, blaring world. So it is with misty eyes and heart heavier than the man himself I sit here tonight, listening to his repertoire of croon and growl, whimper and crow, wondering what broke him so completely, so long ago, that the fiend of artistr