One of the great melodic hard rock bands of the ‘70s into the ‘80s that never quite broke, THE BABYS began life as a singular UK concoction through their self-titled 1976 album and ended up slightly Americanized, closing shop with On The Edge in late 1980.

Now drummer Tony Brock and guitarist Wally Stocker are back with a reformed version of the band (obvious conspicuous absence being lead singer JOHN WAITE), consisting of those two originals, plus John Bisaha on vocals and Joey Sykes on second guitar.

The first salvo is a totally swellegant old school Babys song called ‘Not Ready To Say Goodbye’ with a new full-length record in the works.

“I’m producing it at the moment,” says Tony. “You’ve heard the first song, ‘Not Ready To Say Goodbye,’ that’s kind of the direction we’re going in, although we still want to get it live, bit more raw. We’ve got about 20 songs that we’re working on. I’m updating my studio a bit more, putting a new board in and stuff, so gotta get that all down and get rough and ready.”

As for direction? “I would say definitely the Broken Heart album and the Head First album—both of those. I think that’s where we want to stay, and I think that’s where Wally and I, the original members, that’s how we play, that’s who we are. We don’t really want to change from that.”

Which is the band as it existed mature but not crossed over to the Ricky Phillips and Jonathan Cain era, namely inside more of a ‘70s sound, with a distinctive boxy drum sound.

“Right, well I think, basically, Ron Nevison moulded us into what the Babys sound is, because we were always... we grew up with FREE and BAD COMPANY, and all of those guys, Zeppelin, although our sound was a little bit more R&B;, and I think Ron Nevison, who did our second album, the Broken Heart album, he pushed us with the strings and B3 and all that sort of thing. So we just had to have classic songs from there and then on, and I think that’s what kept us alive—just by having good songs.”

As to why the band never quite broke, “Well Jonathan did join JOURNEY,” laughs Tony. “That didn’t help. No, but I’d like to believe we just needed that one more album. And of course, everybody can always say that. But yeah, but I believe, that’s the reason why people still love The Babys now, because of what we did then. There’s not many bands that can come back 30 years later and get the respect that we’re getting. So I’m really pleased about it. It could’ve gone the other way, people not being ready for it, but it’s just working just great. We’re having such a good time with it.”

Wally is very much on the same page as Tony with respect to pinning the new stuff to a certain ethic The Babys followed in the mid years. “We wanted to incorporate the sounds from the past on the new record, and we were kind of conscious of that when we were writing this new song, to incorporate like the style of ‘Isn’t It Time’, ‘Every Time’, ‘Back On My Feet Again’. That’s kind of our trademark sound at this point. Which comes from many of the early classic British rock bands: Free, SMALL FACES, HUMBLE PIE. Tony and I grew up with that kind of music, so it was very influential on us.”

And will the band be able to nail that quintessential Ron Nevison drum sound without him? “Yeah, well, you heard ‘Not Ready’. I think that’s pretty big,” laughs Tony. “That came out of my studio. So yeah, I think I can, but we’re not ruling out the fact that Ron Nevison would come in, because we’re just trying to get some of these songs out of the way and see how they feel. If we need somebody to see this, then Ron would be the first guy we call.”

Adds Wally, “The Broken Heart album into the Head First album, those two albums really showed exactly where we were trying to go with our music. And we’re maintaining that kind of style, you know, being able to have not only full-on rock songs, but also commercial pop rock songs, if you like. Lots of melody, big drums, good guitar sounds, but also lots of melody and strings. We’ve always loved using strings and brass, and so we like to interpret that in our music as well. So there’s kind of two sides to the band, although we like to think of it as one. We are not sort of tunnel vision when it comes that. If instruments sound good on the track, we’re all for it. It’s exciting to be able to broaden the horizon and just have this whole spectrum of sounds. Back then, doing those records, it was a full-on orchestra, and it was exciting just to sit around and witness it going on, let alone having it on your records.”

It’s definitely been a strange career, with one wrinkle being the soft pastel tones of the Broken Heart album cover causing some chafing against the heavy sounds enclosed...

“Yeah, I suppose it did,” laughs Wally. “It was kind of like good news, bad news. It got us noted. It was just this concept they came up at that time, but to us it was just an album cover. We weren’t trying to... I mean, on the back it sort of does a 180 as far as the look of the band. But I guess it was sort of like a portrait. But there were a lot of bands that were kind of looking like that. So it wasn’t like so extreme that people just backed away from it. Of course on the other hand, it got us noticed, so you can’t argue with that.”

Another strike against the empire was the strange high amount of hype showered down upon the band with their classic debut. Might that have hurt prospects right out of the gate?

“Yeah, but no, that didn’t hurt us,” muses Tony. “It was just, everybody, Chrysalis believed in us so much. At first we thought it was going to hurt us, but once the billboards went up on Sunset Boulevard, all that sort of thing... we actually played on the top of Tower Records, after signing autographs, looking over Sunset Boulevard. But no, it didn’t hurt us at all. If we couldn’t back it up, then yes, it would’ve hurt. But we still… It’s like, I was with ROD STEWART for 12 years, and it doesn’t matter what Rod does, we put on a great show every night, and that keeps the longevity going. And I think The Babys had a similar thing. We always tried to do the best shows we could ever do. As a team we were strong together—that’s what made The Babys. We were strong as a team, I think, and maybe some people might’ve been a bit intimidated.”

And the big question... why no John Waite?

“He’s enjoying his solo career, and of course he had a couple of hits, and he’s quite happy doing that,” ventures Wally. “I don’t want to get involved in that anymore. I’m quite happy doing what I’m doing, and you could only ask somebody something for so long, and in the end, it’s like if we’re going to do this, we’re going to have to move on. And that’s when we decided to look for a lead singer, somebody that can pull off the Babys songs. I mean, it wasn’t easy. But that was our intention. We auditioned a lot of good singers but they just couldn’t pull off the Babys material. So we really wanted somebody that could do that, before pursuing it any further. Because you know, without the right singer, there was really no point in trying to bring it all back.”
“Promoters and everybody is on board now,” says Tony peering into the new year. “And we’re going to be hitting the road pretty soon. We’re not exactly sure yet, because the album is going to be taking a little bit of time. I just want to make sure that we absolutely get back, as I said, to those times: Wally and I do together. And our new singer John Bisaha is into what we’re all about, and with Joey Sykes, who is the new guitarist, we have the team now that’s really positive. It’s going to find its own direction. We did our third show here the other night and it was so spectacular, it felt great, so I know I’ve got the right players in place now.”

And as one can witness via the wonder of youtube, live the band is going whole hog, including the use of female vocals. Says Wally, “That was the main discussion that Tony and I had to begin with, is if you’re going to bring this music back, we’ve got bring it back full-on, full sounding we’re not gonna cut out any corners and just go out as a four-piece and try to pull off ‘Isn’t It Time’ and things like that. So with that in mind, that’s really how the new song came about. Because we still wanted to incorporate strings and brass and everything else, just sort of picking up where we left off. Touring is going to be in the new year now, because right now we’re concentrating on the record. We just recently got involved with a new agency, and hopefully in the new year, if things go according to plan, we’re hoping to get out on certainly some festivals, and hopefully some major tours. Especially if we’ve got a new record to promote, it’ll be even that much more exciting.”

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