Tales from the Quest

Before I get started with the first “tale” I really want to say how thrilled and excited I am to be bringing Power Quest to Sabaton Open Air in August 2017. It’s only the second European festival the band have ever been invited to and I really can’t wait to get there, meet you guys and deliver an exclusive set that nobody else will see….barring a few clips on You Tube

Many thanks to Krister Lindholm for the opportunity to be part of SOA in Falun.

Talking of the exclusive set we will be playing all the songs from our debut album “Wings of Forever” to celebrate 15 years since that album was released. Some of these songs have never been played live before either so it’s going to be something special for the band as well I think.

All this talk of festivals and 15 years ago got me thinking back to the very first little tour we did in August 2003. If I remember right it was 3 small club shows in London. Bradford, Bristol and Derby ahead of our very first appearance at any festival. This festival was Bloodstock, back in the days when it was an indoor event.

By this point we had already recorded what was going to be our sophomore release “Neverworld” so we had a good selection of songs to choose from for that 45 minute slot and I think the balance was 50/50 between the two albums.

It was a really big deal for us as we hadn’t even played live when we were booked and to be on the main stage as well was quite surreal for such an inexperienced band. We shared the stage that evening with Saxon and Blaze Bayley I seem to recall and over the course of the weekend there were also the likes of Nightwish, Edguy and Dragonforce playing too.

To go over so well with the crowd on the main stage so early in our life as a band really filled me with confidence for the future and I think PQ have gone on to show over the years that as a truly 100% live band, we can take some beating when firing on all cylinders.

We had the pleasure of hanging out with the likes of Bob Catley, Tobias Sammet and my old DF pals to name but a few. Funnily enough, also on the bill that day was a band from Derby called Cruel Humanity who featured a certain drummer by the name of Rich Smith. Small world isn’t it?

So despite the mini-tour ending on a colossal high, it hadn’t started out that well. Within 10 minutes of arriving at our hotel in Bradford (we hadn’t even finished checking in) a couple of guys broke into our van and stole pretty much all the shirts we had for the merchandise stand for that tour. Not the best of starts really and it was some time before I could afford to produce new merchandise…so long in fact that we never produced Wings of Forever shirts again.

I hadn’t thought about this tour for a long time but as with most of us, when we stop to think….the memories come flooding back. I particularly remember myself, Simon Burrell (our merchandiser/driver) and Gav Ward (drummer) heading to the nearest Tesco supermarket quite late in the day after our set at Bloodstock. As we were leaving, Gav stood in the doorway to the supermarket with his arms raised in the air and loudly bellowed “ Thank you Tesco…..and Good Night” which had the rest of us laughing like kids. Needless to say a few beers had been consumed by this point in time, hahaha.

So that’s just a few memories from the “Wings of Forever” days and I’m very much looking forward to making some more of these memories at Sabaton Open Air in Falun on August 18th 2017. I’m looking forward to seeing as many of you guys there as possible and sharing a beer and some stories with you. It’s going to be one hell of a metal party I reckon

Cheers

/Steve Williams – Power Quest

This was the first chronicle written by a band / band member that i have booked for our festival in Falun, Sweden. More will come later, and i really like this idea in getting a story written by someone, without editing or altering any of the words. This is the real deal. I only asked Steve Williams in Power Quest if he had an interesting story to share with us, end this is the result. /Krister Lindholm – Co founder Stargazed Magazine.