Managing to avoid the family tradition of working in the ship yards of Wallsend in Newcastle, Tony Dolan formed Atomkraft with a bunch of mates before being invited to front Geordie legends, Venom following the departure of Cronos. Little did Dolan realise that not only was a life in the music business ahead of him but also a life on the stage and screen as a Shakespearean actor and in the movies alongside Sylvester Stallone and Russell Crowe. On 7th December he returns to his hometown with Venom Inc. to headline the Byker Grave Festival. Mick Burgess called him up to chat about the festival and to look back on his music and stage career.
You’ll be headlining the Byker Grave Festival in Newcastle on 7th December. Are you looking forward to it?
I can’t wait, it’ll be amazing. Stu the promoter has been at me for so long to do this so I’m really pleased to finally be playing at it. I’ve played everywhere on the planet so I can’t wait to come home again.
Have you had any thoughts about the songs that you’ll be performing?
The legacy is so rich, there’s just so much stuff but this music is for the fans. We put a post on Instagram and asked them if there were any songs they really wanted us to play. Problem with that is that we’ll now be playing for five hours. We’ll just pick out as many as I can and give the fans what I can. “The Chanting Of The Priests” from Calm Before The Storm was a popular choice and stuff from Possessed, Wastelands and Temples Of Ice too. Of course “Warhead” came up a lot but they were staying away from the classics as they wanted to hear more deep cuts so we’ll play some of those as well as the classics as well. Brian Ross from Blitzkrieg will be joining me on stage for a song too. It’s going to be great fun.
Do you know how long you’ll get on stage?
There’s a few bands on including Discharge and Goatwhore so we’ll get about an hour and a half for our set. I love talking to the crowd but if it means I’ll have to miss a song out, I’ll just keep driving the bus.
You were born and raised in Newcastle. How does it feel to be headlining a festival in your home city?
I’m from Wallsend, a spit and a kick from the ship yards. To come home after so long is fantastic. I moved to London 30 years ago and I’ve travelled the world playing music and doing films so I’ve been very grateful but there’s always the specialness of being a Geordie and coming home, playing with friends and for the fans and new people who may have heard the stories about us but haven’t seen us yet. It’s really special and so exciting to be able to play up in Newcastle. The likes of us, Raven, Avenger, Tygers of Pan Tang and all of those other bands from the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal in the early ’80s changed things in the rock world and they were all from out city and that’s something that we should be really proud of. That’s the flag I’m bringing back home. We went off and conquered the world and we were just four Geordies.
You haven’t lost your Geordie accent unlike some other stars from the region.
The thing is, when I talk to a Geordie it comes back out. With the TV, film and Shakespeare stuff I can’t do that in a Geordie accent so I have to modify it. Funny thing is when I modified my accent, when I came back to Newcastle for my stag do before I got married all my mates got drunk and I couldn’t understand what they were saying but it’s so nice to hear that accent again.
Who were the bands that fired your love of music?
My Mum and Dad got divorced and we moved to Canada for a while and I saw KISS at the Cobo Hall and Ted Nugent when I was young. I didn’t even know who they were but they were immense. They were like a circus I went from Showaddywaddy and T-Rex to KISS. I moved back to Newcastle in 1977 and punk rock had exploded and that was another shell shock moment to me. I went from Foreigner and Journey and threw myself into punk. I loved The Buzzcocks, the Upstarts, UK Subs and The Ruts. I saw every show I possibly could. Around 1979 someone suggested I go and see this band who long hair and wore leather jackets and went bang. They were Motörhead. I came out like I’d been hit with a hammer. That was it. It changed my life. I moved to Team Valley and used to travel into Newcastle with John Gallagher of Raven and we saw everyone from Avenger, Hellenbach, Lone Wolf and I saw Raven a gazillion times. Then there was Iron Maiden and Saxon and all of those bands too.
It was sad to hear about the passing of Paul Di’Anno from Iron Maiden the other week.
He didn’t live that far from me. Whenever I went into Camden I knew that he was in the pub as I could hear the police sirens. He was such a character. I remember seeing them on Top Of The Pops doing “Running Free”. They then came up to Newcastle as they were supporting Judas Priest and I hung out with them at the Mayfair afterwards. It’s a sad loss. He was going to be a guest on the new Iron Maiden tour for the anniversary so he went thinking that was going to happen. For Paul that would have been massive. The fans would have loved that. It would have been the ultimate show. That gave me some comfort knowing that he thought he was going to be doing that. He was still playing and touring right up until the end. That’s the kind of industry this is. You just keep going and like with Lemmy, it’s only death that stops us.
Do you remember your first band?
Yes, it was a punk band called Moral Fibre. One of my friend’s Dad’s worked in Germany and he brought us some anti-nuclear badges which had the word “Atomkraft” on them and we thought that was really cool so we changed our name to Atomkraft and became a metal band. We started off with me, Steve White and Paul Spillett. Steve, who was our guitarist, now runs the Theatre Royal in Newcastle. I got him the job. He’d never been in a theatre before and he’s been doing that for almost 30 years now. I left the band to go to Canada and came back again in 1984 and I wanted to start up Atomkraft again but the other lads had moved on so I needed new members. I went to Neat Records in Wallsend as I wanted to sell a guitar and get a bass. The first person I saw was Conrad Lant, who was Cronos in Venom and we did a trade. I told him I needed some players for my band as the other guys had gone their separate ways so he suggested Ged Wolf who was a drummer and the brother of Eric Cook who was Venom’s manager. Me and Ged got on like a house on fire. We were then recommended this 16 year old guitarist by Venom’s Abaddon and that’s how Rob Mathew joined. We did some demos for Neat Records and a couple of months later we did Future Warriors. We then went straight out on tour with Slayer and then Venom and Exodus.
You ended up in fellow Newcastle band Venom in 1988. How did you end up joining them?
In 1988 Atomkraft were on tour behind the Iron Curtain with Nasty Savage and Exhumer and Tony Bray (Abaddon), Venom’s drummer, was the tour manager. On the final night he asked if I fancied doing a Venom song for the fans. Venom had never played there before so we did “Welcome To Hell” and Tony played drums. When we returned to England a couple of months later Conrad (Cronos) had left Venom. He wanted to take the band in a different direction so he left and took the two guitarists with him. Eric, the manager, and Tony asked me to meet them in a pub in Rosehill in Wallsend and they said they needed a singing bass player who knew the songs and who knew the band. I agreed but said that I couldn’t think of anyone and then they said it was me. I had no idea they had been talking about me. I said I’d do it so they then called up Jeff Dunn (Mantas) and asked him to come back in and off we went.
How was your relationship with Cronos, the original singer after that?
I was Jeff’s best man at his wedding in ‘95 or ‘96. I’d left the band in ’92 and moved down to London and they’d done Cast In Stone and Resurrection by then. We all hung out together and had a great time. Conrad was great and was always very funny. He worked on a YTS scheme at Neat Records when I did my first demo and he was lovely. So we go back a long way. He actually went out with my girlfriend’s friend. I remember when they did the first record I thought it was mind blowing as they were just a bunch of local kids and we didn’t do things like make records. That’s what all those bands do. I became close to the band and supported them in the early days. Conrad was always pleasant and fun to me. The things is in this industry fame, money and drugs changes people. That’s why I stayed away from all that crap. I stayed away from drugs. If I make any money that’s great but I’m not expecting it. For me, it’s all about the music and to think I’ve been able to play music all around the world is just incredible. I got to travel, meet people and play music and that’s all I really wanted out of it.
Were your parents supportive of your musical ambitions?
No. I was supposed to go and work in the ship yards as all my family worked there. I tried to explain to my Dad that politically and economically, that the ship yards were going to close but he couldn’t accept it. When I came out of school to start an apprenticeship they closed and were sold off. He didn’t get the music at all and thought I should get a proper job. My Mum didn’t get it either but she did let us practice in the kitchen once at Station Road. I can’t imagine what that must’ve sounded like as the kitchen was so small. She wanted me to get a proper job and earn money but she didn’t say that I couldn’t do it so I suppose that was her way of supporting me. She just let me get on and do what I wanted. When I’d done a couple of movies they cut things out of the paper for me and would tell everybody about it. They were very proud of me. If I was in The Chronicle, they loved all that.
How was the experience of recording Prime Evil with Mantas and Abaddon?
That was an amazing experience. I think things had fallen apart when they did Possessed when Jeff left and Calm Before The Storm was not such a good recording and wasn’t so well received. I think they’d lost their way a bit. I think I helped them find their identity again. By the time I’d persuaded Jeff to come back I’d written three new songs. I wanted to bring back that punk power and arrogance back into their music with the darkness and storytelling with all of the fun bits too. We were better musicians then and it was better produced. We worked with Nick Tauber who did a great job at Link Studios, which had been Brian Johnson’s studio at one time. We just really enjoyed ourselves. There was no politics and no hassle. It was a lot of fun and I got to play music with my friends. I knew that when we went out on tour I’d get to play all of those great Venom songs that I loved so much. Fortunately the fans and critics loved the album too. They were very good times.
How did you morph into Venom Inc.?
We stopped doing Venom for a while. Jeff was doing his own Mantas project and he did a show in Trillians with Anton Lant, Cronos’s brother and they did “Black Metal” at the end of their set. A video went online and everyone went crazy. People said they should get me in to see what happens so Jeff called me and asked me to join. We had the name Prime Evil but changed to Empire of Evil but had to change it again later as there was an American band with the same name. We were asked to play at the Keep It True Festival in Germany and the promoter asked if we could do some Venom classics with Abaddon in the band. I said that it’d never happen as they hated each other. Tony would say yes, but Jeff wouldn’t do it. I worked on them and they both agreed to do it. We did our set, came off then came back on with Abaddon and did five Venom songs. The people went absolutely crazy. Within four months we were in China playing shows together again. We wanted to change the name from Empire of Evil but wanted to link it with Venom, as that’s where our roots were so we thought of Prime Evil, Jeff suggested Iron and Steel and I suggested Venom Incorporated. It fit as we were all in Venom and it was part of the big picture. I asked to have some T-shirts printed with Venom Incorporated but when they came back they just said Venom Inc. The guy said that Venom Incorporated was just too long and didn’t fit so he shortened it. By the time we’d got back off our tour everything just said Venom Inc., so it just stuck.
Did having a slightly different name allow you to spread your wings a little wider than if you’d just been plain Venom or does the Venom blood still flow in the same way through Venom Inc.?
Yes it does. The idea was to do some shows so people could see Abaddon and Mantas and if I was the catalyst for that then that’s what I’d do as Conrad didn’t want to do it anymore and the fans wanted to see them. It meant that if you wanted to see Cronos do “Black Metal” then you could but if you wanted to see Abaddon and Mantas do “Black Metal” then you also could. I do occasionally get bricks thrown at me but it didn’t stop me. It was about enjoying the music to me. Doing this as Venom Inc. Also meant that we could broaden things musically a little if we wanted. We are free to do whatever we want. Our legacy is Venom so we get to play all the great stuff and we can play whatever else we want to.
Are Jeff and Tony still involved?
Tony, not so much. He got married and his wife had a baby and she wanted him to be with his family and he didn’t want to leave her by herself and why should he? We used a dep for the tour that we had booked and Tony never came back. I think it was about politics, money or whatever. I don’t really know as he wouldn’t talk to me so his dep, who was our sound guy, is still in the band in his place. Jeff is still in the band but he had a couple of heart attacks which really shook him up. At the moment he’s struggling a little but he’s getting there as he’s always been quite fit but I think mentally it’s hard for him as he thinks what if it happens again and he’s not at home. There’s no pressure at all on him. I told him I’ll just keep going with the band but he is always welcome to come back. He doesn’t need to put his hand out to stop the bus. He just needs to stay “stop!” and it stops wherever I am and he’s on it. I hope he’s able to join us in Newcastle for a song or two. You never know.
You are also something of a film star and you’ve appeared in Master and Commander and Dirty War. How did you get involved in acting?
Acting is a performance and as my alter ego The Demolition Man will testify there are so far apart but it was a total accident really. I was on tour as a master carpenter for the Royal Shakespeare Company on a world tour and while in India a cast member was sick and unable to perform. I was always quoting the text from the play, A Comedy Of Errors, so they asked me if I would go on and cover the role. I hadn’t considered acting but thought why not? If I’m shit only the Indian audience will know. I wasn’t and the director asked me to do it again at the Old Vic Theatre in London.
How did that develop into the movies?
I said to the director that if I was going to perform at the Old Vic, then he’d need to teach me how to act properly. He did and within a month I had two agents. Two months later I was at Pinewood shooting Judge Dredd with Sylvester Stallone and was to go straight onto First Knight with Sean Connery and Richard Gere but as I couldn’t ride a horse properly I bowed out. I did then did some TV work like Badger with Jerome Flynn and a bunch of stuff until the band kicked off again.
Did you continue with your theatre work?
I did. In between, I was working for Queen running their musical stage show, We Will Rock You in London, I worked in the Lion King automation department and did a tonne of production work. Coldplay’s Brit Awards show, work for Rammstein, The Rolling Stones and Radiohead.
What has been the most challenging role for you so far?
All and none really, if you love your art then the challenges are all a part of the fun. Sometimes it’s the physical as in Judge Dredd and Master And Commander and sometimes the script like with Shakespeare.
How different is it for you acting compared to performing in a rock band?
Very different, I love both, but one is more considered and the other more immediate. You can’t beat a live music interaction, my first love and my greatest.
Is there any actor or director you’d particularly like to work with in the future?
Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, and Zack Snyder.
Do you have any roles lined up?
A couple of offers but looks like I won’t have too much time for acting as next season is filling up fast where we’ll be touring North and South America, Europe and Australasia but I may pop up in a couple of movies being shot 2025 but releasing later. Who said ‘He Man’ or ‘Supergirl’? Not me!
It’s been a couple of years since Venom Inc.’s There’s Only Black album. Have you any plans for its follow up?
Yes, we’ve been writing for the next album which we’ll be recording in 2025 to be released in time for the European tour at the end of the year. Between then and now will be a couple of Live Assault albums and a new EP.
What do you have lined up for the rest of the year?
We have a huge festival in Mexico City in November and of course Byker Grave in December then the 2024 season ends for Venom Inc. We are preparing now for the USA tour which begins January 2025 and runs for over a month and that’s only part one.
Venom Inc. headline the Byker Grave Festival at Newcastle University on Saturday 7th December.
For tickets visit:
https://www.fatsoma.com/e/4binh0e6/byker-grave-festival-2024
Interview By Mick Burgess. Photos provided by Tony Dolan.
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