Tygers of Pan Tang: Robb Weir Interview

Our drummer at the time was big sci fi fantasy fan, and was reading Michael Moorcox’s fantasy book Stormbringer. In the storyline, there is a principality called Pan Tang guarded by Tigers. Originally I had suggested Achille’s Heel, but then our drummer suggested Tygers of Pan Tang, and that blew my suggestion out of the water. I had to sit down when I heard it, and thought that it was really amazing, so we went with that. We’ve found that people remember part of the name if not the whole name as a result, so it’s been very helpful to us. I was quite influenced by Elvis and early Rock n Roll, and with two older sisters I got turned onto Otis Redding, Little Richard and then later Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin.

We’ve all got home studios, I suppose everyone with a computer does now, but ours tend to be a bit more technical and old fashioned with a mixing desk and everything. Anyway, we were heading to a festival and we were trying to narrow down the songs we wanted to record. We had about fifty songs, and our drummer Craig was there making a note of everything, and eventually we got it down to fifteen songs. Then a few weeks later, ten new songs were written. So, it’s not like we’re stuck for song ideas, we’re all very prolific writers. I also wanted to do a new cover song, and so I suggested we cover ‘Got The Music In Me’ and originally the guys didn’t quite get where I was coming from, when we jammed the first time. But we came back a few months later and jammed it, they all saw where I was coming from before, so we got that down.  We got to recording the songs in Glass Studios, and we worked in Andy Taylor from Duran Duran’s studio as well but I felt as if there was something missing, so I spoke to our manager who spoke to the record company and then we sent a the entire catalogue of songs we’d  recorded and sent them off to this guy named Soren Anderson. He’d never heard the songs before and he had all of these tracks to look at and sort out. I think the first mix he sent back was Blood Red Skies and it was incredible. So he did the rest of the album and it turned out really well

Well we’re currently rehearsing for a couple of shows we have in the next few weeks. Playing in Cambridge and Venice, and then we’re going to be heading to the studio to record a new album which we hope to have out next year.