SAXON Band Description:
I don’t remember Saxon as a bullet point in “NWOBHM history.” I remember them as a sound you could feel through cheap sneakers on a sticky floor — the kind of night where the air tasted like beer, denim, and bad decisions that somehow age well.
They came out of Barnsley and hit that late-’70s/early-’80s sweet spot where British heavy metal stopped apologising and started stomping. Biff Byford up front — part ringmaster, part drill sergeant — with Graham Oliver and Paul Quinn throwing twin-guitar lines like they were trying to out-accelerate each other, Steve “Dobby” Dawson holding the low end, and Pete Gill on drums in the early run. Later, Nigel Glockler took over behind the kit and the whole thing tightened up and hit harder, like the engine got rebuilt with less mercy.
Then 1980 happened. Twice. "Wheels of Steel" and "Strong Arm of the Law" landed the same year, and that’s not trivia — that’s a band basically saying: we’re not waiting for permission. The hooks were big enough to grab you by the collar, and the riffs moved like machinery. In 1981, "Denim and Leather" doubled down on the tribe element — loud, proud, and unashamedly aimed at the people in the room, not critics with notebooks.
The thing with Saxon is they never “presented” songs. They pushed them. You can hear it in staples like "Princess of the Night" and "And the Bands Played On" — not delicate classics, more like battle anthems that accidentally became tradition. And live, that tradition had sweat on it. Sometimes it was a little too loud, sometimes a little too fast, and honestly… good. Metal should have scuffed edges.
They weren’t just a UK phenomenon either. They worked the road hard and pushed into bigger markets through touring and momentum — not by becoming “safe,” but by writing choruses that stuck whether you liked it or not. If some bands wanted to look mysterious, Saxon wanted to look like they’d happily plug in again tomorrow night and knock over your pint doing it.
Of course, the long career comes with the usual human mess: changing line-ups, shifting eras, and the kind of behind-the-scenes friction you never see from the cheap seats. Graham Oliver eventually split from the band in the 1990s, and yes, it got complicated around the “Saxon” name — because nothing says rock ’n’ roll like paperwork and a headache.
My quiet anchor with Saxon is boring on purpose: putting a record back in its sleeve after it’s finished, ears still ringing in memory, thinking, “This is exactly the level of ridiculous I signed up for.” They’ve always sounded like a band that meant it — not flawless, not fashionable, just stubbornly alive. And that’s the point.
