SAXON “Innocence is NO Excuse” 1986: The EMI Gamble That Still Splits the Denim Crowd #saxon

SAXON - INNOCENCE IS NO EXCUSE British Heavy Metal 12" Vinyl LP Album

- Saxon’s glossy EMI gamble, wrapped around one very strange apple -

The front sleeve is pure mid-80s record-company theatre: huge close-up, glossy skin tones, red-orange hair, black background, and that odd pale green apple stamped with the Saxon emblem. The logo sits loud in the top-left corner, red and white, while the title crouches underneath in italic white. It is slick, strange, and just commercial enough to make old NWOBHM purists spill their tea.

Saxon hit the EMI years with "Innocence Is No Excuse", a 1985 NWOBHM survivor dressed in cleaner clothes and clearly eyeing bigger rooms than the old denim-and-beer circuit. It mattered because this was the band trying to prove they could polish the chrome without selling the motorcycle, even if some fans still sniff at the shine like it came with a bank manager. Simon Hanhart gives the record a brighter, roomier punch: big choruses, clipped guitars, drums with a showroom gleam, and Biff still barking like nobody told him the decade had gone glossy. "Rockin' Again", "Broken Heroes", and "Devil Rides Out" carry the weight, while this German LP pressing keeps just enough collector grit under the sleeve.

"Innocence Is No Excuse" (1985) Album Description:

"Innocence Is No Excuse" catches Saxon in 1985 with one boot still in the NWOBHM yard and the other slipping, rather suspiciously, onto a cleaner EMI floor. This is their seventh studio album, their first after moving away from Carrere Records, and the last Saxon studio LP with Steve Dawson on bass. The old steel-toecap charge is still there, but now it has polish on it, and polish is where metal fans start sharpening knives.

The interesting bit is not whether the record is heavy enough. That argument is too easy, and usually shouted by blokes who have already made up their minds. The better question is what happens when a band built on road sweat, denim, leather, and blunt-force choruses tries to sound bigger, brighter, and more radio-ready without completely losing the smell of the rehearsal room. Open the sleeve and the answer is awkward, glossy, occasionally daft, and much more listenable than the grumblers like to admit.

Britain in 1985 was not waiting politely for Saxon to return from the road. Iron Maiden had already become arena machinery, Def Leppard had shown every label accountant that British hard rock could be buffed until it reflected money, Motörhead were still grinning through the grime, Raven were pushing into a speedier metallic scramble, and Tank kept the pub-fight end of the street warm. Saxon were no longer the scrappy new gang at the bar. They were veterans with expectations hanging round their necks like a wet denim jacket.

That pressure leaks into the grooves. "Rockin’ Again" opens with a big, squared-up chorus rather than a dirty back-alley ambush, and "Call of the Wild" has the sort of hard-rock lift that wants lights, not fog. "Back on the Streets" is where the crossover itch really starts scratching: clean attack, roomy chorus, guitars less like a factory saw and more like a machine being demonstrated to people in suits. Annoying? A little. Effective? Unfortunately, yes.

The record was produced and recorded by Simon Hanhart at Union Studios in Munich, with mixing credited to Hanhart and Saxon at Wisseloord Studios in Hilversum. That geography matters more than it looks. The sound is not the cramped British club charge of "Wheels of Steel" or "Strong Arm of the Law"; it has wider shoulders, brighter edges, and a studio gloss that can make the riffs feel cleaner than some listeners wanted. The guitars still bite, but the bite has been polished. There’s the crime scene.

Biff Byford remains the chief weapon, because he can still turn a chorus into a roomful of raised fists even when the writing leans toward crowd-control slogans. Graham Oliver and Paul Quinn keep the twin-guitar engine moving, less savage than the early days but still sharp enough when the arrangements stop posing. Steve Dawson’s bass does its old job without waving a flag, holding the middle while Nigel Glockler gives the album a cleaner, firmer stomp than Pete Gill’s earlier rivet-gun attack. Wrong drummer listed on old copy? Easy trap. The label and sleeve point to Glockler here.

"Broken Heroes" is the keeper for me. Not because it is the heaviest thing here — it is not — but because it slows the room down and gives the album some actual weight beyond the usual hands-in-the-air business. There is drag in it, a little grief under the chorus, and Saxon sound less like they are auditioning for American radio and more like they have found a bruise worth pressing. That one earns its place.

The rest swings between sturdy heavy metal and big-chorus hard rock with the occasional eyebrow-raiser. "Everybody Up" and "Gonna Shout" are not exactly subtle philosophical documents, unless one’s philosophy was written on a beer mat ten minutes before closing time. Still, Saxon had always understood the ritual side of metal: repetition, chant, lift, release, the crowd becoming part of the engine. When it works, it works like boots on floorboards. When it doesn’t, it sounds like somebody from EMI smiled too much in the control room.

Scene Pressure, Label Polish, And The Usual Accusations

No grand public scandal clings to "Innocence Is No Excuse", no banned sleeve panic, no tabloid bonfire, no moral guardian waving the album around like evidence. The controversy was more domestic and more useful: fans arguing whether Saxon had softened up for a wider market. That accusation has some teeth, but it also gets lazy. Cleaner production is not automatically betrayal, though heavy metal fans do enjoy treating a reverb plate like a war crime.

The bigger misconception is the dating and line-up muddle that trails this album around like a bad merch-table receipt. It belongs to 1985, not 1986, with the EMI/Parlophone issue and the label text backing that up. It is also not Saxon’s twelfth studio album, and Graham Oliver was not some new arrival here; he was part of the original machinery. By this point the band had already gone through the Pete Gill-to-Nigel Glockler drum change after the early classic run, and Dawson’s exit after this album would make the next chapter feel even less settled.

The sleeve tells the same story in cardboard. The front cover goes for glossy temptation: a close-up face, a green apple, Saxon’s logo stamped into the fruit, all very mid-80s and very pleased with itself. The back cover adds the boot, the apple, track list, credits, barcode, and the cold little business marks that always drag fantasy back to the stockroom. Then the custom inner sleeve does the useful work: band photos, lyrics, credits, and enough printed matter to make the LP feel like a proper object, not just a disc shoved into a paper bag. Bless the custom inner sleeve. It earns its rent.

The record label adds its own collector nudge: EMI and Parlophone branding, catalogue number 1C 064-24 0400 1, LC 0299, GEMA and STEMRA rights boxes, "Seite 1", and "Made in EEC" sitting in the rim text. That is the sort of small print that keeps collectors hunched over a desk lamp at midnight, pretending this is normal behaviour. Been there. The apple on the sleeve shouts; the label quietly tells the truth.

Heard late at night, not too loud but loud enough to annoy the wall, the album feels less like a sell-out than a band trying to outrun the narrowing lane they had helped pave. The attack is tidier, the choruses are broader, the chrome is polished, and yes, some of the old road dirt has been wiped off. But Saxon had not turned into wallpaper. They were just trying to survive 1985 without being eaten by bands younger, faster, slicker, uglier, prettier, or better financed. Rock and roll, as ever, remained a charmingly unfair racket.

So no, "Innocence Is No Excuse" is not the rawest Saxon LP, and anyone saying otherwise has either lost the plot or bought the wrong record. It is a transitional heavy metal album with hooks, gloss, bruises, and a few slightly embarrassing crowd-bait moments. That makes it human. More importantly for the shelf, it marks a real fault line in the Saxon story: Carrere grit behind them, EMI polish under their boots, Steve Dawson about to leave, and the old NWOBHM certainties beginning to look less certain by the week.

References

SAXON - Innocence is NO Excuse Album Photo Gallery:

This gallery shows "Innocence is No Excuse" as a real sleeve, not some flattened catalogue scan with all the life ironed out of it. The front cover has that mid-80s EMI polish: glossy colour, careful posing, and just enough hard-rock danger to keep the marketing department from fainting. The back cover is cleaner and more practical, with the usual credits and layout doing their little factory job. The custom inner sleeve is where it gets more interesting, because paper, folds, print tone, and handling marks start telling the truth.

Album Front Cover Photo

Seen from above, this sleeve hits the table like a record company memo with teeth marks in it. The whole front cover is pushed right into the viewer’s lap: face, hair, hand, apple, logo, no breathing room. Saxon’s name sits up in the top-left corner in that red-and-white battle-axe lettering, still pretending the band is all grit and steel, while the rest of the cover goes full mid-1980s gloss. The apple is the trick, of course. Pale green, wet-looking, bitten once, and stamped with the Saxon emblem as if someone at the art meeting had discovered symbolism and refused to put it back in the drawer.

The model’s face dominates almost everything, with the eyes level and direct, framed by reddish-brown hair that falls across the forehead in loose strands. The mouth and apple do most of the heavy lifting, rather too obviously for my taste. There is a calculated shock-sleeve flavour here, not filthy exactly, but certainly designed to make a browser stop flipping through the rack. Subtle it is not. The black background makes the printed colours glow harder: warm skin tones, shiny highlights, the apple almost artificial in its smoothness. The bite mark near the top edge is small but important; without it, this would just be another glossy cover trying to look dangerous after lunch.

What works, grudgingly, is the physical punch of it. Held in hand, the design has that laminated, shop-window brightness that ages in a very specific way: blacks go slightly dusty, reds stay loud, and skin tones can wander depending on the camera flash. The title, “Innocence Is No Excuse,” is parked beneath the logo like a courtroom slogan, and yes, the sleeve knows exactly what it is doing. A little too clever, maybe, but memorable in the way a bad decision can be memorable. For a Saxon record, it feels like someone swapped the biker jacket for advertising perfume, then left the engine running outside.

Note: The images on this page are photos of the actual album. Slight differences in color may exist due to the use of the camera's flash. Images can be zoomed in/out, for example by pinching with your fingers on a tablet or smartphone.

Album Back Cover Photo

Back cover of Saxon’s "Innocence Is No Excuse" vinyl LP sleeve, with a large pale green apple near the bottom center, a glossy black high-heeled boot dominating the right side, white track listing and band member credits on the left, three small black-and-white inset photos in the corners, and barcode, price code, and catalogue numbers in the upper right. — Turn the sleeve over and the whole thing becomes stranger, not smarter. The front already hinted at a concept built around temptation with a heavy-handed grin, but the back really leans into it. Most of the right side is swallowed by a glossy black high-heeled boot, blown up so large it turns into a shiny wall of leather and reflected light. It looks expensive, faintly ridiculous, and very 1985. Then down at the bottom sits that big green apple, planted right in the foreground like the art department was terrified somebody might miss the point. No one will miss it. The thing is too large, too central, too stubborn for that.

The practical information is pushed over to the left in white italic type, and at least that part does its job without too much posing. Side 1 and Side 2 are listed clearly enough, with “Rockin’ Again,” “Call of the Wild,” “Back on the Streets,” and the rest stacked in bold white lines that read well from arm’s length, though the lettering still has that slightly slippery look these glossy black sleeves always get under a lamp. Under the songs comes the line-up: Biff Byford, Steve Dawson, Graham Oliver, Paul Quinn, Nigel Glockler. Straight to the point. No nonsense there, which helps, because the image around it is trying awfully hard to sell attitude by way of props.

Three little black-and-white inset photos are dropped around the sleeve almost as an afterthought: one at the top left by a tree, one at the bottom left against a brick wall, one at the bottom right in a garden or park setting. They feel like spare contact-sheet picks glued in late, and honestly that roughness does the cover a favour. Without them, the design would be all gloss and theatre. With them, there is at least a faint reminder that an actual band exists somewhere behind the apple and the boot. Up in the top right corner the retail clutter barges in: barcode, catalogue number, French price code, a yellow code box. That always pleases the collector in me. However grand the sleeve wants to seem, the paperwork still muscles its way onto the page.

The bottom edge is crowded with tiny production and thank-you credits, printed so small that handling the sleeve becomes a squinting exercise, the usual punishment for anyone foolish enough to care who did what. Still, that is where the object starts feeling real: EMI distribution text, studio acknowledgements, Simon Hanhart’s production credit, Bill Smith Studio, Gered Mankowitz. All the trade bones under the makeup. Held in hand, this back cover feels like a compromise between hard-rock image-making and record-company housekeeping. A bit overcooked, yes. A bit daft, definitely. But at least it commits, and a sleeve that commits to its own silliness is often more memorable than one that plays safe and dies in the rack.

First Photo of Custom Inner Sleeve

Black-and-white inner sleeve photo for Saxon’s "Innocence Is No Excuse", showing five band members standing across the center inside a thin red border. The background is a mottled studio backdrop, with a white outer margin, catalogue number 24 0400 1 at the top right, and printed credits along the bottom for group photograph, publishing, and live photography. — Flat on the desk, this inner sleeve side feels like the record company finally remembered there was a band involved after all that apple-and-boot theatre on the outer sleeve. A large black-and-white group photograph fills most of the page, boxed inside a thin red border that gives the whole thing a slightly school-photo-meets-rock-magazine pull-out look. Five band members are lined across the middle, leaning forward, shouting, grinning, pointing, and generally making sure nobody mistakes this for a tasteful portrait session. Good. Tasteful would have been the wrong disease here.

The photo itself has that mid-80s studio energy where everyone has been told to look wild, but not so wild that the marketing department has to leave the room. Denim, headband, long hair, hat, sports visor, patterned top, trainers — all of it thrown together with the confidence of men who have seen tour buses from the inside and still agreed to pose like this. The centre pulls the eye first, with the long-haired singer crouched forward and framed by the others, while the far-right member points outward with a grin that is either genuine or professionally useful. Probably both. The mottled backdrop behind them is busy but harmless, like smoke without the bother of smoke.

The white margin around the print matters more than it first seems. It turns the image into a handled object, not just a photograph. The catalogue number “24 0400 1” sits at the top right, small and businesslike, and the bottom line carries the credits: group photograph by Frank Griffin, all songs published by Saxongs/Carlin Music Corp., and live photography by Robert Ellis. That line is the collector’s little reward, the bit you read while the record is halfway out of the inner and threatening to slide onto the carpet because sleeves, naturally, enjoy making life awkward.

What works here is the plain usefulness of it. No grand concept, no fruit symbolism, no glossy temptation routine. Just the band, printed large, framed cleanly, and given enough space to breathe. Slightly ridiculous? Absolutely. But rock bands photographed while yelling at the camera are supposed to be slightly ridiculous. Better that than pretending to be mysterious in a warehouse doorway, the oldest sleeve trick in the book and twice as boring.

Second Photo of Custom Inner Sleeve

Custom inner sleeve for Saxon’s "Innocence Is No Excuse" with song lyrics printed in several narrow columns across a white page. Five black-and-white live photos with thin red borders are scattered around the sheet at the upper left, upper right, lower left, lower center, and lower right. Song titles appear in red, lyrics in black text, and a wide drummer photo sits at the bottom right. — Spread out on the desk, this side of the inner sleeve is the practical one, though Saxon and their designers still could not resist dressing practicality up a bit. The whole page is mostly white, packed with lyrics in tall narrow columns, with song titles picked out in red and the body text in black. That much works. It is readable, it feels like an actual sleeve insert rather than dead space, and after the outer cover’s apple-and-boot routine there is something reassuring about seeing a band finally fall back on the old reliable formula of *print the words and throw in some live shots*. Not original, no. Useful, yes, which matters more.

Five black-and-white performance photos are dropped across the page inside thin red borders, and they break up the text just enough to stop it turning into a wall of squinting. One sits at the upper left, another near the upper right, a tall one at the lower left, another near the lower middle, and a wide drummer shot sprawls along the lower right corner. None of them are subtle, and that is fine. These are live-band snapshots doing honest work: a guitarist caught in profile, a bassist or singer leaning into the lights, another player shot from below, and the drummer boxed in by his kit like he is trying to finish the page off by force. Much better than fake moody portraits in some warehouse doorway. Those always age badly and usually deserve to.

The lyrics themselves are laid out in a way that feels slightly chaotic at first glance, then starts making sense once the eye settles. “Rockin Again,” “Call of the Wild,” “Back on the Streets,” “Devil Rides Out,” “Rock ’n’ Roll Gipsy,” “Broken Heroes,” “Gonna Shout,” “Everybody Up,” “Raise Some Hell,” and “Give It Everything You’ve Got” are all here, marching down the page in chunks. A few columns feel cramped, and there is the usual inner-sleeve irritation where the text looks easy enough until the light shifts and suddenly it is a reading test. That is not rare with these mid-80s sleeves, just annoying in the familiar way an old road case is annoying: part of the job, still worth grumbling about.

What comes through, held in the hands, is that this insert is trying to balance fan service and filler while pretending those are not the same thing. The red borders tie the page together neatly enough, the live photos give it movement, and the lyric sheet makes the thing worth keeping with the record instead of tossing in a plain paper replacement. That counts for something. There is no big design revelation here, and frankly there does not need to be. A custom inner sleeve earns its keep when it gives the songs, the band, and the object a bit more life. This one does, even if it looks like the typesetter had one eye on the clock and the other on a pot of coffee going cold.

Close up of Side One record’s label

This close-up shows Side 1 of the record itself, with the dark Parlophone label sitting inside the black vinyl like a sober little office stamp after all the glossy sleeve nonsense. The label is mostly black or very dark charcoal, with pale silver-white print, and the usual circular legal text running around the rim. At the top is a small boxed EMI logo, and below it the large boxed Parlophone mark: the familiar stylised pound-sign-like emblem inside a pale circle, with PARLOPHONE printed underneath in heavy capitals. It is not decoration for decoration’s sake; it is the label trademark, the bit that tells the buyer which company is standing behind the pressing.

The centre hole cuts through the middle, with “Seite 1” printed to the right of it, using the German word for side. That is a useful collector clue, along with the GEMA and STEMRA rights boxes on the right, the “ST 33” stereo marking above them, and the “LC 0299” label code on the left. Under the LC code sits the catalogue string “1C 064-24 0400 1 A,” followed by “℗ 1985 Original sound recordings made by EMI Records Ltd.” The rim text also includes “Made in EEC,” so the label points firmly toward a European EMI/Parlophone issue rather than some vague mystery pressing from nowhere. Nice when the paperwork actually helps, for once.

The album title “INNOCENCE IS NO EXCUSE” is printed in uppercase below the spindle hole, followed by the Side 1 tracks in a tight centered block: “Rockin’ Again,” “Call Of The Wild,” “Back On The Streets,” “Devil Rides Out,” and “Rock N’ Roll Gipsy.” That last spelling is worth noticing, because the back sleeve uses “Gypsy,” while the label shows “Gipsy,” the sort of tiny inconsistency collectors enjoy far more than normal people should. Below the track list, SAXON appears in plain capitals, followed by the production and mixing credits for Simon Hanhart and Saxon. No band logo here, no theatrical posing, just the record telling you what it is. Quite refreshing, really.

Parlophone / EMI, Made in EEC Label

This Side 1 label is a European Parlophone/EMI pressing label for Saxon’s Innocence Is No Excuse. The design is functional rather than flashy: dark label stock, pale silver-white lettering, boxed EMI branding, the large Parlophone trademark, European rights markings, and German side wording. It is the sort of label that quietly carries the important collector clues while the sleeve does all the shouting.

Colours: Dark charcoal-black label with pale silver-white text and fine circular border lines, set against black vinyl.
Design & Layout: Centered European label layout with EMI logo at the top, large Parlophone logo panel above the spindle hole, rights and format codes to left and right, album title and track list below the centre hole, and production credits near the bottom.
Record company logo: The top of the label carries a boxed EMI logo. The main logo is the boxed Parlophone trademark: a stylised pound-sign-like emblem inside a pale circle above the word PARLOPHONE. The drawing functions as Parlophone’s label identity and company mark, not as artwork connected to Saxon.
Band/Performer logo: No Saxon band logo is printed on this label. The band name appears as plain uppercase “SAXON” beneath the track list.
Unique features: European EMI/Parlophone configuration with “Seite 1” side wording, LC 0299 label code, GEMA and STEMRA rights boxes, ST 33 stereo marking, “Made in EEC” rim text, and the label spelling “Rock N’ Roll Gipsy.”
Side designation: “Seite 1” printed to the right of the spindle hole.
Rights society: GEMA and STEMRA, printed in boxed form on the right side of the label.
Catalogue number: 1C 064-24 0400 1 A, printed on the left side of the label. Additional visible label code: LC 0299.
Marketing / format codes: LC 0299, ST 33, GEMA, STEMRA, and “Seite 1.” These codes identify label registration, stereo LP format, rights societies, and side designation.
Rim text language: Multilingual European rim text, including English copyright restrictions around the upper rim and “Made in EEC” visible on the left side.
Track list layout: Five Side 1 tracks are centered beneath the album title, with songwriter credits and running times printed on the same lines.
Side 1 tracks: “Rockin’ Again,” “Call Of The Wild,” “Back On The Streets,” “Devil Rides Out,” and “Rock N’ Roll Gipsy.”
Rights info placement: LC code and copyright notice on the left; stereo, GEMA, and STEMRA boxes on the right; circular legal rim text around the label edge.
Pressing info: “Made in EEC” appears in the rim text. The label uses German side wording and European rights society markings.
Background image: No pictorial background image. The label uses plain dark label stock with printed logos, codes, track information, and legal text.

All images on this site are photographed directly from the original vinyl LP covers and record labels in my collection. Earlier blank sleeves were not archived due to past storage limits, and Side Two labels are often omitted when they contain no collector-relevant details. Photo quality varies because the images were taken over several decades with different cameras. You may use these images for personal or non-commercial purposes if you include a link to this site; commercial use requires my permission. Text on covers and labels has been transcribed using a free online OCR service.