Interview with Nick Barrett of Pendragon.

Monday 25th June 2007 at 7pm

Nick thanks for taking the time to talk to me this evening and how you doing?

I'm doing really great

What is Nick Barrett and Pendragon up to at this time?

Well at the moment we are really re-establishing the band after a very, very long lay off.

I mean the band has been back since late 2005 with the album Believe. The next thing after that was really to get touring, so we did quite a bit of touring, playing a 25 date tour and then played some festivals and some more dates and made a DVD of the first shows that we done in Poland back in May. We have done a 21st anniversary DVD which was going back to the Jewel album, which was our first album. We tried to get everyone who played on that album back and playing. We got everyone apart from the drummer, who wouldn't come to Poland, but we did manage to record some stuff of his up at Riff's bar up the road from where I live so at least he got involved somehow.

So yeah we were pretty busy doing all that sort of thing then this year we have got a lot more festivals coming up and we are also working on a new album.

You guys have just come off of Rosfest in the States, how did that go for the band?

Well I think when those guys started it up 4 years ago it was a kind of 'antidote' to Nearfest. Nearfest was getting bands of a sort of intellectual Prog or should I say pseudo-intellectual prog, which I am not so keen on. I am more a kind of melody man myself. I am a more straight forward rock musician.

Some of the guys in America thought there were some great new bands you now like IQ, Arena and Pendragon, well I say new but we have been kicking about for a while.

So they had bands performing that didn't have that much opportunity to play so they put on this festival called Rosfest. The idea being to get the more mainstream melodic bands to play there and it has been very successful. The band that we put together last year, to play Rosfest 2006 was called Neo which is a kind of collaboration of Prog bands. Its got me and Clive Nolan, John Jowitt and Andy Edwards from IQ, Alan Reed from Pallas and Mark Westwood who is not actually in a prog band but he has been on the periphery of all these bands over the years. We get together and play a number of IQ, Pallas, Arena and Pendragon songs and it is actually just for fun really and we did that last year at Rosfest and at the time, George the organizer said when are Pendragon coming over here, so he booked us for this year.

Reading the reviews from Rosfest  you were certainly well received?

Well that's very flattering to hear that, it was an exceptionally good show. It was exceptionally good for us as it had been 12 years since we last played in America. To have something like this is really, really good. And another band who went down really well at Rosfest this year was Magic Pie, I didn't actually see any of their set but I heard a lot of people say that they went down very well. So I think between us and them we pretty well got the main scoops for the festival. It really was a great festival to do.

What mixture of songs did you play, was it old and new or did you drop the older songs, like so many bands do when they have such a choice of songs from their back catalogue to play?

You know we done quite a cross section of songs. It's important to play the old stuff because even although the band can be a little bit tired of playing the old songs. A song like The Black Knight from the Jewel album and we brought that back out for this tour and festival, you know we haven't played it for a while. We thought we would bring that back to the set, but you have to remember that some people in America or South America have never heard or seen songs like that performed. So for the fans it's great if the band are going to do a nice cross section of material. I think that is really important. We like to do that. We like to do stuff which is very old and unusual as well as some of the newer stuff. We get a nice balance with the set we do.   

Did you watch anyone else's set from Rosfest?

I saw a little bit of Spock's Beard, who I had never seen before. I was a little bit disappointed with them to be honest, and I think they were as well. Our sound guy is also Spock's Beards sound guy so there is quite a close connection there. I spoke to Nick D'Virgilio the next day and he said that they just wanted the ground to swallow them up. They just had a bad night.

Is it important to the band for them to play Prog festivals, and there are so many of them all over the world now. I see that you are going over to Germany, Spain and Norway in 2007. Is is easy to transport all your equipment over?

It's quite a difficult task really. One of the most difficult aspects of it is the expense. I have always done this side of the band's organization. Like hiring vans and booking flights and all that sort of thing. So with each one that we do we hire a van to take over all the equipment or we fly over and book a van at the other side to get to the gig. We play the gig then come back. We are doing a festival soon with Fish and Jethro Tull and we are expecting a big crowd to turn up. So it is important to us as the band is coming back after a long lay off. It's important to be seen to be making the effort to be doing these festivals. We need to be back in the cogs of the machinery and that sometimes means going the extra mile. We are playing anywhere and everywhere we can at the moment and most of all we are really enjoying it as well, so it is very worthwhile for us to do the festivals.  

Do you still get a buzz from playing live?

Oh crikey yeah, like riding the motorbikes and I like surfing as well so something like that is timeless, as it doesn't matter whether you are 6 or 60 you still get that buzz from it. The rest of the world is just kind of left behind. The mortgage is forgotten about. When you are up on stage all your problems have totally disappeared for that couple of hours. It's really like stepping into another world and I don't think that I will ever tire of that. Before I go on I still get incredibly nervous, even after all this time. But you know that is what makes it what it is because I get very nervous about it, you know I get nervous before I do enduro riding on the bikes, and you kind of need that, you need that feeling that it may actually go wrong. And sometimes it does go wrong. Fear is the thing that makes you feel alive. I need that. So playing live to me is something I thoroughly enjoy.

Do you do a lot of rehearsing before you play live?

Well the rehearsal schedule is dependant on what gig or festival we are going to be playing. The Believe tour which was about this time last year, we hadn't played since 2003 so we done 2 weeks of rehearsing as a band and we also done quite a bit individually. I was going through the set once a day by myself, playing with CD's and working out bits for Clive Nolan. So that was put together as well. That was quite long winded. So once we finished the Believe tour the next gig we done was a couple of months later. It was Summers End festival in September and we only needed to do a couple of rehearsals for that. That's fine and also with Rosfest we done two rehearsals but once you have played the songs so much over the last year and a half you get better at pulling it out of the hat later on. It's only if you have a gap of 2 or 3 years that you become rusty.

You have been about for quite a few years now, since 1978. What is the secret of the longevity of the band?

The secret really is determination. I have thought occasionally would I like to do something else. I always think it would be pretty shit to do something else. If I wanted to do something else I would still definitely want to be doing this as well. To do music has never really become boring, its hard but so even if I was say working with Genesis it would be hard but bring a different set of problems I guess. We have managed to sort things out normally, but one of the big problems that the band has had is line ups, we have guys for three to four years then they start arguing and there is problems about who is doing the song writing, the money side comes into it and people start arguing about how much money they are getting paid. You know, you wrote that song so you get more, then you get the politics as well and before you know it the band is splitting up. But if you can get past those problems and keep going. We had a lot of trouble like that in the early days, but the line up we have now, well its like a marriage in a way that is if you can get past the difficulties, as with marriage as in friendships you learn about people and you move on and that is how Pendragon has been. I have learnt things about the other members of the band and we have moved on.

How far does the Nick Barrett/Clive Nolan partnership go back?

Clive started working with us in about 1986, we lost our original keyboard player then. Clive joined then, but I have known him since we were both 4 years old , which kind of made it easier. Its easier to know someone if they are an old mate, you haven't got all the learning to do about the person and you hopefully don't get any nasty surprises with someone you don't know, like ten years down the line you could discover they are actually an axe murderer (laughs)   

However you have only released 8 studio albums in that time, what is the reason for that?

For the first few years we didn't have a record deal and to tell you the truth we didn't even really know what a record deal was. We were just playing locally and we thought that some huge record company would hopefully just come along and beam us into stardom. Of course that never happened, and it wasn't until 1982 when we met Marillion that we started to get out into the real world and do some gigs and also some gigs with them, Fish was still with them at that time.

You have only released 2 albums in the last 8 years, was that a decision the band took not to dilute the music or were there other things happening that influenced that decision?

Most of the reasons for the delays in making albums is mainly sue to external forces beyond our control. In the 90's we were going really well, we done The World, The Window Of Life and Masquerade Overture in very quick succession. Then it got to 1997 and the whole thing absolutely just hit a brick wall. I got divorced and it just completely through my whole life in to complete turmoil. I had quite a big house with a massive mortgage and the whole business of Pendragon was very wrapped up in the finances. I had to sell the house and it just went completely wrong, then I got into a very, very deep depression that I couldn't get out of, I couldn't really write music and it just went wrong.

It didn't really start to come good again till the release of the Not Of This World album, which we managed to put out in 2001 but it wasn't really till even after that, I think I kind of started to emerge from the shadows of the effects of that divorce.

You have just released a DVD, Past and Presence, can you tell me about that?

This is the 21st anniversary gig of the first album that we ever made called the Jewel that was released in 1985. As I said before we got everyone back together who was involved in the album to do the concert plus a few other extra people who had never been on recordings, like Julian Baker. You know it wasn't just for the Jewel album, there was also a mini album which we done in 1984 called Fly High Fall Far and a couple of other tracks because we had to make the concert up to about 1 3/4 hours worth of material.

We were really excited about this and it was great to play with these people again after all those years, it really was good fun.

Has that been released on your own record label?

Well we couldn't afford to do the production of the DVD, we were coming back and we have had a lot of problems with people downloading the albums that we have. So naturally we haven't had a lot of money to reinvest into doing a DVD production.

To do something with some decent lights, 6 cameras and a decent edit, the whole package. You have to spend about £30,000 and we just don't have that money. So the option was to do this through Metal Mind and we could still sell copies through our website ourselves. To make a good product that was the best way for us to do it.

Is the DVD on Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound?

Yes it is, however I don't know what like it is on 5.1. I don't think its real 5.1. The audience is 5.1 and the ambience is 5.1 but the individual instruments are in stereo.

But if you put it on a decent screen with a 5.1 system you will definitely get the live experience of the gig

Neo, the all star prog band, what is you involvement with that project?

My involvement with Neo is playing bass and guitar and sing for the Pendragon stuff, we do three Pendragon songs, I also sing an IQ song and also one piece from Clive Nolans project with Oliver Wakeman called Shadows Of fate. It's a nice thing to do as it stretched everyone out a bit and as musicians it is was nice to do. The IQ song that I do is called Outer Limits and I really like that song so I was pleased to do that. It just gives everyone a bit more variation in their day to day musical lives.

Is Neo something that you would tour with?

It might be yeah. The idea was to play places that these individual bands hadn't played before or played very much. America was one, trying to get to Japan was another one. We don't really see why we shouldn't go out and do some gigs anyway just for the fun of doing it.

Is music a full time profession for you?

Yes it is, it's a little bit up and down especially in the last few years. Pendragon record sales were always pretty good for a small prog band. We were always selling reasonably well to make a living from it. Since about 2001 the problems that we have had with downloading has crippled us. The whole kind of framework has changed. We used to constantly sell albums as people discovered the band and they would go and buy them. But now what tends to happen is within the first two months of a release the hardcore fans would go and buy it, but after that album sales virtually stop completely dead.

How would you describe the sound of Pendragon, and how has it changed over the years?

The sound of Pendragon now is that there is more emphasis on the lyrical content and what the songs are about. As I have got older I got sort of more political, tablethumping and they are more kind of social observations as well. Which, for me is important to say things in songs and make observations of life and give certain opinions and those are things that I hope will sort of inspire people. In the early days lyrics were a bit of a struggle and I don't really know what the songs were about, they were abstract lyrics.

Musically it's very hard to say, you know we come from the Genesis, Pink Floyd, Camel area, but also bands that I like are T Rex and Slade. I wasn't really a prog rock musician to start with. I was a guitarist and we sort of just ended up in this vein. But I think we are developing on from there and our sound is influenced by some of the more modern bands as well.

Who are your musical or non musical influences, who did you listen to as a youngster?

Initially Marc Bolan and T. Rex, Slade but one of the biggest influences on me was Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars by David Bowie. People always rave about The Beatles as songwriters but I thought Bowie was just an incredible songwriter, he is really great. I also listened to bands like Led Zeppelin Deep Purple then moved on through to the Genesis, Pink Floyd, Camel type bands.

I have heard that you have read some books by David Icke, what is your interest there? Will of Caerllysi Music is interested to find out which book is a good one to read?

A good one to read, even though it's pretty stodgy is called the Biggest Secret. I am interested in things that most other people would probably regard as a little bit nutty and they stand up and make a great big world statement and that is what David Icke does. Most of the time, most of the population laugh out loud at them. I actually think that a lot of these people have something quite interesting to say. Its definitely more interesting than most of the rubbish that some people come out with. Even if what he is talking about is absolute rubbish, it's a phenomenally interesting idea on life and I don't think it is absolute rubbish and some of it has the potential to be true and certainly people should be asking the questions, checking it out and maybe find out more about what he is saying. I have always been interested in spiritual type things and UFO's and that sort of thing so I found his sort of take on things very, very interesting.

Do you find the writing process harder or easier now?

It's probably harder, it certainly doesn't get any easier. As time goes on you get more self critical. To start off with we wrote as a band and some of the ideas were quite watered down. If you have a strong emotion about something you get a vision for it and it's a bit difficult to add jazz sections or something like that. I don't think it gets any easier, writing music is really difficult, it's endurable but it's really hard.

Are you writing music constantly?

No, not really. A lot of time is taken up with the administration of running the record label and the band. The last few weeks I have been working on the touring dates for the band. Sometimes I get to the point where I get stuck with writing and I have to take a break from it. Then you get inspiration from something and you return to it later on.

Has the technology age helped in the way that bands can record and produce music now?

Well yeah, it really has. With software like ProTools, for a guitarist it's incredible. I have used Cubase for quite a long time but for patching music together using ProTools is an absolute joy. It is so easy to do. I used to be so restricted trying to write, by putting down the backbone of a song using Cubase, you couldn't really add other bits, like guitar in quite so easily. In the early days we used ADAT's in conjunction with Cubase but that was also difficult.

What is your view of the internet, I guess there was no internet when you started off. Then it was all stuff in the music papers and word of mouth. Has the internet helped the band in a positive way in recent times?

Well the Internet has helped, however it's a double edged sword. It's massively helped because we can communicate to a massive amount of people extremely quickly. If we have got a new gig, what we used to do was a mail shot to everybody which was expensive and difficult. Now you can just do a blanket email and tell everybody really quickly if something has changed or a new date has been added. You can put it on your website. So that side of it is phenomenal and there is so much information out there now. The downside of the internet for us is the downloading of our music.

That leads nicely into the next question which is what is your view of downloading music, free from the internet?

I have various kind of feelings about it at different times, ranging from being non-plus about it to being extremely angry about it. It has definitely damaged our record sales very severely. As I said, after about two months of putting an album out, the sales of the album stops. The main reason for that is that people are downloading music. We still have the same distributors, we are back playing live and we are bringing a lot of new listeners to the band and the pattern has changed and the only thing I can think of is illegal downloading. Some of the sites that I have been too I have seen that they downloaded our albums 300 times and I worked out the loss of income from that and it is massive.  

Band's like Pink Floyd who you can buy from the supermarket these days, people think well I can buy it and I don't need to download it. On this one site I checked, we were actually downloaded more times than Pink Floyd.

It's this middle layer of bands that are really suffering from this.

Do you think it is real music fans who are downloading?

I think that it is real music fans, as I said the pattern of sales has changed so drastically. It used to be you could live off the release of a new album for years. It's changed now.

There seems to be a pattern of people on the verge, but you know that they are not going to go out and buy the album.

Who do you think is to blame for this?

It's a bit difficult, I think everyone is to blame in a way. I am not sure that I like blaming. People get very defensive, I prefer the idea of people understanding what is happening and try to change their habits. I am not a blame type person or trying to start up a witch hunt on this. Everybody will just retreat into their shells, shut the door and that's will be it. I don't mind if someone says well I downloaded one of your albums but then I went and bought another 10 because I liked it. I wish we had 20,000 people like that. I don't mind that. I think it is fair that people buy the music to keep the band's going. Band's will just pack it in, running a record label is very expensive.

Most hard core record fans like the real think, Progressive Rock is very lucky that way. The kind of people who like this music tend to be collectors, and really want the original album.

I see that you have your own record company, Toff Records, how did that come about?

We started the record label because we couldn't get a record deal in the late 80's. We done all the Marillion support's, played the Reading festival. We headlined the Marquee club in London. We done the BBC Friday rock show sessions, you know everything. We had started to branch out into Europe but still record companies wouldn't touch us. And we thought this is ridiculous, when we started out we could sell about 10,000 albums. Which must be worth something to people who are in the business. So I went to Pinnacle Distribution and said look we have sold 10,000 albums and we would like to start our own label, they were delighted and said yes, come with us. That started it off and we realized then that we had quite a lot of value and we had a very strong following who really wanted to buy the albums. Worldwide, it wasn't a band that was going to have a hit single or a band that would need a lot of money pumped into it. Pendragon is a working band and on this level it worked very, very well.

Are there any other bands on the label?

No, not really. We have release a solo album from Peter Gee, Pendragon bass Player.

We also released an album from a band called A Million Blues, who were a sort of Talk Talk, Tears For Fears  type band and who I thought were very, very good. We couldn't really afford to do much with them apart from releasing the album and as much promotion as we could afford to do. But to tell you the truth it was harder to sell than the progressive rock stuff

Do you promote and distribute all your own music?

Yes we do, apart from the stuff that comes out on Metal Mind records , but even that we promote and distribute. We distribute it in the UK so we still have a certain amount of control over that. We also do all our own publishing so essentially we control everything.

Do you find it  difficult being a businessman and a musician?

Sometimes, but the musician always wins. If it costs £300 for an advert, the businessman side of me says we can't afford to do it, but the musician side of me asks can we afford not to do it as you always need to promote. In some ways it the most successful thing we have done, if a businessman came into this he would most probably say completely forget the business side, you will never make a profit out of this. I look at it long term over 5 years and I think we will probably get it back on it's knees and get the business into a better shape. Having our own label also means that we only have ourselves to blame if it all goes wrong. I really enjoy doing the business side of things, yes it's sometimes difficult, but I have managed it quite well so far. So I am very happy with it.

I understand that you did a Channel 4 television program last year, called Teenage Tycoons, can you tell me how that came about and did you get anything out of it?

This was a television series about struggling businesses. They are a bit a bit odd these sort of programs. They manipulate things around. It started off with them looking for business's who were having hard times due to unforeseen circumstances. I thought that this was a perfect platform as we have the problem of illegal downloads and we could sit down and talk about this on the program. They came round, went to some rehearsals, heard the band and done an interview with me and I said at the time that we really want to do this program. We set off about what the program would be like, however they didn't really want to talk about the downloading situation or the internet. We thought ok we will rule that out. Their idea was to send in so called young business tycoons who were going to plug our business back in financially and get us back on our feet. As it turned out those kids were hopeless. They tried to push me into some things, like a rock school type thing, where 15-20 year olds would pay money to learn how to be in a band. It seemed like a really cheap shot and they weren't very happy about that when I didn't want to do that. It probably made us look like really bad business people but they somehow missed some of the aspects of progressive rock bands. Out of all of the Prog bands in the late 80's like IQ, Arena.....Pendragon were the only band not to split up. And we were the first band, apart from The Enid to start up our own record label. By the mid 90's it was getting big, we were making a lot of money, so much so that the bank turned round to us and said we were the highest grossing small business that they had so far this year. It was going really well. The problem's started when I got divorced and the whole lot went to the wall, and somehow this program didn't look at that aspect of the business.  

The one thing that it did do for the band was that it gave us exposure.

Are you heavily involved in your own mixing and production?

Very much so, Karl Groom has done all our productions over the last few years. I really like him and have known him for a good few years. It's real hands on approach and I am right in among it with the mixing. If you are not sweating and going through all of your emotions by the end of the mix then you haven't worked hard enough.

On the subject of mastering, do you prefer the demo sound or the mastered version?

Well it really depends on the mixing and how that turns out, and also how the music turns out. We have done demos over the years and some have sounded fantastic but other have just sounded really bad. Mastering obviously gives you another opportunity to add some bass or compression. I don't actually do my own mastering but I am with the guy who does do it.

What sound do you go for in the finished production?

Well it depends on what the music requires. I usually find myself craving for more bass to get a deeper or fatter sound. Sound has changed traditionally over the years as back in the 80's everyone was going through a phase of albums sounding really crisp and really firm and bright. I guess if you listen to Marillion's Fugazi its quite a thin kind of sound, its very clear and bright. But if you listen to a later album like Clutching at Straws it is much fatter, deeper sound which I actually prefer. So I think it is a more personal sound.

Are you able to talk sales figures for Pendragon, do you know how many CD's/LP's you have sold since you started?

Altogether I believe that we have sold 250,000 copies of Pendragon albums. I am very pleased about that. Some albums sold better than others but it wasn't always due to the albums but the time and the circumstances. Initially, The World album sold about 10,000 copies when we brought it out but maybe now it has sold in the region of 25,000. The Window Of Life sold about 15-20,000 copies but when The Masquerade Overture came out it went absolutely nuts, we sold 60,000 copies. It was the third album in a row in a relatively short time. The band was going great guns, we were touring and there was a lot happening. It was a great time for the band. Then there was this big massive gap, Not Of This World sold 25,000 and the last album Believe sold 18,000 so far.

Is the latest release, Believe,  a move away from the classic 'neo prog' sound of previous albums

Well it is a little bit. You get to a point where you think that you can't do exactly the same thing forever. I started to think that there were some other aspects of music that I really like and that we hadn't explored yet. It was still progressive but it had different parameters. I just felt that some of the music was trying to breakthrough and I just let it happen. I wanted to make the whole project a little bit more modern by using samples, which was something that I hadn't used before and it was incredibly exciting. Music has got to be exciting to do. I don't do music to please other people, I do it for me. If other people like it then that is great. In a way that's the way it should be and you are hoping to create something that may inspire people in some way or they will enjoy it or maybe even hate it. It's important to have some sort of opinion on it and maybe it will change some thoughts in their head. I just felt the need to kind of move on with the music and also the artwork and the sound of the band too.

Has your fan base changed over the years?

Well our fan base has got older, when we used to play the Marquee back in the 80's we would have 25year olds, now 20 years later those guys are now 40-45 year olds. The unbelievable thing about this, well I sort of equate this to jazz music, Prog is something that once it's in your blood you just always like it. On that level, even although some of the other prog rock bands moan about not selling many albums, to have fans like that is absolutely worth it's weight in gold. Most people just go off trend type music but with prog they seem to like it forever and for people still to be following the band since 1982 is incredible. Some of them do drift away but then they come back, I believe that it is quite sort of cyclic, you go through waves of different experiences and each one is a bit of a journey.  

How has the Progressive Rock music scene changed over the years, and do you think it is healthier now?

In some ways, it did go through a phase towards the end of the 80's where it was pretty turgid. A lot of the bands IQ, Twelfth Night, Pendragon, Pallas all thought that they had done the prog thing. And nearly all the bands at that time had done a more commercially sounding record. And I am not saying that some of those albums were bad, they had some good songs. I think the parameters had changed and it hit the doldrums a bit. It wasn't really until the early 90's that it sort of came back out again. There were a lot of bands round that early period who were pretty awful but there were also some great bands. There was a lot of also rans back then jumping out of the woodwork.

But now you have a new wave of different kinds of new bands and I think that actually in a way this is more exciting. Some of the newer bands have kicked some of the older bands up the pants a bit and they have changed the rule book. I think that is quite a clever thing to do for progressive rock. It inspiring and it should be, some of the old guard are slightly kind of cantankerous in their ways, they are complacent. They should be listening to what some of the new bands are doing, it's important. Bands like Pure Reason Revolution, Riverside, Porcupine Tree, Blackfield, Mars Volta. There are lots of new bands out there, even some of the nu metal bands that I have heard are playing metal that has more depth than just playing metal. So there is something kind of happening here that is exciting.

Why do you think Prog music is not as popular as it should be?

A lot of it is down to the national music press and the radio. If you take a band like Muse, who some regard as a progressive rock band, they have had a lot of exposure and they have become hugely popular. But then it has to tie in with what the general public really want as well. I feel that he general public are just waiting on something more progressive. I was watching Glastonbury at the weekend and the sort of thing that is going on seems almost like it is ready for something more melodic or perhaps atmospheric to come along and make an impact. It seems the next logical step. The press and the radio have not given Progressive rock a favourable standing really. It has had a lot of criticism.

What music do you listen too?

Today I listened to Pat Metheny, its Monday morning so that is really mellow music to listen too. I also like Jack Johnson. Some of the newer bands like Blackfield, I have listened to them quite a bit recently. I dug out some old progressive albums recently like Close To the Edge and some Pink Floyd. It was my birthday a couple of weeks ago and I got Linkin Park and I really like that. I really like Pure Reason Revolution they are innovative and also Riverside. I don't really like the prog bands that are regurgitating the Genesis era. I love Genesis but some of those bands aren't really doing something different.

Did  you see Pendragon as one of the pioneers of new wave of Neo-prog music back in the 80's?

We were in the 80's, but in the 70's it was Genesis, Pink Floyd, Camel, Yes, King Crimson. They were the first wave of band's who obviously became successful In the 80's we came through very close with Marillion, but they got signed and they just took off. They had so much to offer in the early days. We were very young and naïve about what we were doing.

You not being signed to a record label, was that just not being in the right place at the right time?

It definitely was, our manager was a promoter and he told me about this band who were starting to get a few reviews in the music press called Marillion. He put them on locally with Pendragon supporting them. That was the best move we ever had made. We got to know them pretty quickly, we were doing similar music and within two weeks we were doing a gig with them in London at the Marquee. We couldn't believe it as there we were in London playing in front of 500 people. There were people in the crowd wearing make up like Fish and it was just an amazing rock crowd and we had never seen anything like it before.

What is the current line up of Pendragon now, has there been many personnel changes over the years?

The personnel stayed pretty solid from about 1986 and it was me, Peter, Clive and Fudge. That line up stayed till last year when Fudge the drummer left. We brought in Joe Crabtree to replace him.

You have parted ways with your drummer recently, how did you fill that void?

Well for legal reasons. Lets put it this way, over the last few years things for Pendragon have been really difficult. You ask any musician or band, you have big ups and downs. There comes a time when you think that you have to pack it all in, and things just seem to be getting worse and worse. That's where this band were a few years ago. Trying to hold it together and doing gigs and stuff it became obvious that Fudge was not really into making music as he was into doing business. The business aspect of his life became more important and it all came to a head just shortly before we went out on tour. It was an extremely stressful period of time and the bottom line was that he threatened to pull out of the tour. We had this kind of thing going on for so often over the last few years that we just had enough. Clive said to me at Xmas 2005, when you going to draw the line, how far you going to go with this. I said well I will know when the time is right, when we have ran out of steam with one another. That time came just before going out on tour and was one on of those things that we knew at some stage it was going to happen. It was as well it happened then rather than later. We were very luck to get in Joe Crabtree. Fudge leaving was a relief, every time we toured we weren't sure whether he would turn up. Every time we rehearsed we could get a phone call saying he couldn't come. We were at the end of our tether with it all. Even when we were recording the album we had those problems. We would book the studio time and if he did turn up he would be late or leave early. We went along with this way of thinking for years, we believed that we were the four members of this band and we wanted to keep it that way. The stress of it just took over in the end and we got tired of it. We needed to pull together, we had been in the doldrums for a long time and the band needed to get out of that. We needed to be there for each other and we just felt that he wasn't there for us. So it was a massive relief, we also didn't quite know how people would react to us getting a new drummer. To be honest on the tour only two people commented on the change. We were thankful for that.

So on the subject of recording studios, do you have your own?

Well we do. For drums we record them up at Clive's place. He has a good studio area. Karl work's up there. At home here I have a computer set up with ProTools, Peter has a similar set up. Anyone can do that at home now.

What is next on the agenda for Nick Barrett and Pendragon, any new releases or tours on the horizon?

We are working on a new album. That is the next big thing. We are also constantly touring and trying to raise the profile of the band again. A lot of that relies on making albums, we need to make albums. I set myself certain criteria that I try to achieve and that is to make a progressive rock album that sounds modern. That might sound daft to say that but it is quite a difficult thing to do as the sounds that you would normally go for you have got to stop yourself and try something else.

Is this approach to writing working  for you?

Yes it is. I am very happy with what I have got so far. The song I am working on is a bit more keyboard sounding than the one before, nevertheless I think it does overall sound more modern.

Do you have a working title for the album?

We are thinking about calling it Pure, which is all about kids when they start off life then it just bursts into a cornucopia of different possibilities. It was inspired by, well I just thought that people go through life just constantly plagued by trouble in their lives for all of their lives. Then there are people like Sting, who just kind of walks through life without any apparent problems, millions of pounds in the bank, write whatever music he wants to, it is almost a perfect life. So that got me thinking that there is such a contradictory thing here between what people have. Some kids get drawn into cults and all these sort of things. Yet, we all start off the same. So those are the ideas for the album.

Do you have any other musical projects that you involved in?

We may do a couple of more gigs with the Neo project. That is about all at the moment. The old Pendragon keyboard player, John Barnfield, has written quite a lot of material that we were going to get together and make an album at some stage.

Anything can happen, although its mainly Pendragon for me.

Do you have a message for the fans of Pendragon, or indeed for anyone who hasn't heard the band at all

Go to the website, go to Youtube and look at some of our videos. If you haven't heard the music then you can download it, which we provide on our website. It isn't illegal downloading, it is approved by the band. But please if you like the music don't download the albums but please buy them from the website

Nick, I would like to thank you once again for taking the time to talk to me this evening.

I would like to thank you for taking an interest in Pendragon