Motorblog Get Your Act Together: Was the title of the Saxon/Harvey Goldsmith TV documentary aired last Tuesday evening. With Saxon's career failing, top promoter, Harvey Goldsmith, was brought in to pull them out of the nosedive.
My friend, Eric, told me it had been edited to make the band look bad, edited that the rest of the band and manager were made to just smile and let Biff do the talking. Plainly, Biff didn't like the idea of anyone changing Saxon, burned, and probably burned badly on too many occasions in the past, he had the idea 'if it ain't broke, why try and fix it?'
For me, Harvey did what their manager should have done but was probably afraid to. With Biff's attitude, not that it was Rotweiller all the time, I cannot see any manager getting anywhere with him once his mind was set; so, why have a manager? With the control Biff semed to have, being a manager for Saxon seemed to be little more than having a whipping-boy to blame when things went wrong. At the Classic Rock Awards the manager did nothing but look lost and incompetant. Harvey arranged rock radio interviews for Biff, Mr. Manager could and should have done that!
The only thing I felt sorry for Saxon about was the 'air-guitar-football-pitch-fiasco;' with the half-time result as it was Harvey should have baled out and cancelled, it was no more than an exercise in gross humiliation. Agreed, the idea was to get X-thousand football fans to hear Saxon's new single and maybe get them to buy tickets for their Sheffield 'Homecoming Show,' but one should know when to be tactful, and on that occasion, Harvey didn't!
Overviewing, the programme didn't really do Saxon any favours. Their penny-pinching recording studio in the middle of nowhere, as Harvey said, can hardly be inspirational. Saxon are a great band, good grief, they came-to-fame on The Bomber Tour for goodness sake, but they seem to be the parallel of what would have happened to Motorhead had Lemmy not migrated to Los Angeles. Fair play, Saxon are doing their thing, making ends meet, and they don't have to clock in at the local factory - but only just.
My friend, Eric, told me it had been edited to make the band look bad, edited that the rest of the band and manager were made to just smile and let Biff do the talking. Plainly, Biff didn't like the idea of anyone changing Saxon, burned, and probably burned badly on too many occasions in the past, he had the idea 'if it ain't broke, why try and fix it?'
For me, Harvey did what their manager should have done but was probably afraid to. With Biff's attitude, not that it was Rotweiller all the time, I cannot see any manager getting anywhere with him once his mind was set; so, why have a manager? With the control Biff semed to have, being a manager for Saxon seemed to be little more than having a whipping-boy to blame when things went wrong. At the Classic Rock Awards the manager did nothing but look lost and incompetant. Harvey arranged rock radio interviews for Biff, Mr. Manager could and should have done that!
The only thing I felt sorry for Saxon about was the 'air-guitar-football-pitch-fiasco;' with the half-time result as it was Harvey should have baled out and cancelled, it was no more than an exercise in gross humiliation. Agreed, the idea was to get X-thousand football fans to hear Saxon's new single and maybe get them to buy tickets for their Sheffield 'Homecoming Show,' but one should know when to be tactful, and on that occasion, Harvey didn't!
Overviewing, the programme didn't really do Saxon any favours. Their penny-pinching recording studio in the middle of nowhere, as Harvey said, can hardly be inspirational. Saxon are a great band, good grief, they came-to-fame on The Bomber Tour for goodness sake, but they seem to be the parallel of what would have happened to Motorhead had Lemmy not migrated to Los Angeles. Fair play, Saxon are doing their thing, making ends meet, and they don't have to clock in at the local factory - but only just.
posted by Alan Burridge at 8:37 AM
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