Interview: Inglorious guitarist Wil Taylor

Inglorious guitarist Wil Taylor Interview, ahead of their support slot with The Winery Dogs at 02 Academy, Bristol on 2nd Feb 2016: “We had someone comment while we were in Germany saying that we were the best support act they’d seen since Van Halen supporting Black Sabbath. So, you know getting comments like that is always nice.”

Have you played Bristol before? No it’s the first time we’ve been through here. Seems like a nice town! Nice and clean. It’s Phil (Beaver - drums) and Col’s (Parkinson - bass) home town so I’m sure we’ll be out for a few beers tonight. 

So what has the tour involved so far? We started off in Cologne, then Luxembourg and then we did The Forum in Kentish Town, London after that. And then we had a day off! Which was good.

Has it been what you’ve expected so far? It’s been great. It can be daunting being a support act, but supporting a band like this you know, three of the best musicians on the planet,we walk on stage to a lot of people that know what a good musician sounds like. You can see when we walk on people are thinking, who are these guys? 

But at the same time, a lot of people already know your music. Yeh, every gig we’ve done, even in Germany, you can tell when someone knows what you’re playing when you look at them. By a couple of songs in everybody’s been really welcoming, everywhere we’ve been.

It must be such a nice feeling. It is, yeh. It’s interesting to see the conversion happening as you’re playing. From, who are these guys to oh, this is awesome. 

I even got in my car to come here and put on the radio and you guys were playing. Haha, yeh Planet Rock has been great to us. 

That’s how I got to hear about you, and anyone who loves classic rock is going to love your music. Are you pleased with how the album has been received? Yeh. I mean we didn’t write the album to get rave reviews or anything like that, we just wrote an album that we like playing.

That comes across too. You’re just a group of friends who love doing what you do. Even this you know, we’re stuck in a fairly small bus travelling around Europe, lugging the gear around and getting no sleep and…we love it!

I suppose you have to get on well! We all get on well and we all love doing it. Even if we’re stuck in a bus for 20 hours, we know at the end of it we’re gonna get out and play. 

You’re so interactive with your fans through twitter. If people are interested in us, we want to be interested in them you know, that’s what it’s all about. We do like talking to everyone. We get a lot of nice comments so it can be difficult to respond to them all, but it’s really cool. 

We had someone comment while we were in Germany saying that we were the best support act they’d seen since Van Halen supporting Black Sabbath. So, you know getting comments like that is always nice. 

Has social media been a good tool for you? Definitely. If you live your life on social media, then that can be a bad thing, but using it properly and not just spamming people like, come to this gig, come to that gig, and responding to people’s messaging quickly is an important thing to do.

Do you think without it, it would’ve been harder to get where you are? Yeh, I mean we got spotted on YouTube. Derek Shulman signed us who has signed Slipknot…he signed Bon Jovi, so the internet has helped massively. 

You’ve got Ramblin’ Man Fair coming up in July when you’ll be playing with Whitesnake, Sebastian Bach, Europe and Thin Lizzy who you count as your influences.That must be exciting. It’s amazing to think we’ll be on the same stage as our influences. We’re all massive Whitesnakefans. We know Joel Hoekstra as we’ve co-written a few songs with him. 

Is there anyone left who you’d love to be on the same bill as?! You know, I would’ve loved to have been on the same day as Black Stone Cherry at Ramblin’ Man Fair as I’m a huge BSC fan. I’ve seen them go through the process that we’re now going through, from being a small support band for Alter Bridge to playing big arenas. 

Are you nervous? Do you get nervous? Not really, no. The guys might do a little bit, but they never show it. I mean, I’ve been gigging since I was 13. I used to get nervous then because I was smaller than my guitar, but now it’s more excitement than anything else. You’ve just got to let go and do what you’ve got to do. 

Where do you see yourself in a few years’ time? If we were in it for money we would’ve quit a long time ago. All of us would. For me, if we can just play, keep gigging, writing albums and playing for people, I’ll be happy. When we set out we didn’t think we’re going to write an album that everyone’s gonna like. If we did that we’d be in the pop charts. 

Is it about spreading the word of this type of music for younger fans, for you? Inspiring young people, yeh. I mean we had a video sent to us of someone playing versions of our songs and that makes us really proud. That’s what I did growing up, I used to do that with The Darkness. 

Does any moment stand out where you felt so proud of what you’ve achieved so far? To be honest, it’s difficult because when you’ve been doing it for so long, you learn very quickly that nothing happens until it’s happening, so you tend not to think about it that much. I still don’t think “Oh, we’ve made it”, because there’s still so much that we want to do. 

Nathan (Lead Vocals) took part in ITV’s Jesus Christ Superstar and BBC’s The Voice. It probably would’ve been different if he’d gone down that route, so in a way do you think it’s a blessing that didn’t happen? The thing is with Nathan, he’s not the right sort of person for those shows. This is what he wants to do. Things would have been different, but they’ve built him a fan-base which is a good thing. As much as I hate those shows, it did do that. 

Next up is your own tour, staring in Islington at the end of Feb. That will be the start of the album launch tour. Islington’s gonna be the big one, that’ll be good. We’ve got some good support acts too. Then we’ll have a day off which is good because I think we’re gonna get trashed afterwards, haha! Then we’ve got eight days of solid gigs. 

It must be so exciting to do your own shows. It is. The audience will be our own and everyone will know who we are. 

What’s after that? We’ve got festivals coming in thick and fast. We’ve got Ramblin’ Man Fair, Weyfest, Frontiers Rock Festival and a couple of others that haven’t been announced, so I have to be careful what I say!. But yeh. this is all before the album’s even out, so it’s saying good things. We’ve got a block of gigs in June in the UK. We just want to play as much as we can.