WELCOME BACK
Thumbing their noses at those who said the band were finished, they return with a new album and a UK tour.
WITH A COLOURFUL sound that manages to fuse AOR, modern rock and pop, accompanied by an unapologetic irreverent wit, West Midlands-based rockers Vega have recorded and toured regularly since forming back in 2009. Lead singer Nick Workman talks to Classic Rock about the birth of their eighth album, Battlelines, and starting over after a significant line-up change…
The Martin twins – bassist Tom and keyboard player James – both left the group last year. As co-founders and key elements of Vega’s writing team, that seems like a massive loss.
The real world got in the way. That’s literally all it was. But people seem to forget that I co-wrote every Vega song that’s been released. People told me: “Oh mate, you should quit now.” Why? I wrote those songs as well, and as far as I’m concerned we have made a brilliant album.
Your comment about the real world underlines a statement from Tom Martin, who said working with Vega was inhibiting his day job. Being in a band has never been more difficult, has it?
Mate, it’s fucking horrendous. And what happens when all of the Jurassic Park-style bands keel over and die when people haven’t supported those on the way up? There will be nobody left to fill arenas. That’s what one of the songs on the album, 33s And 45s, is about. Streaming is killing it all. I don’t make a single penny from Spotify, and that’s where most of the action happens.
The new album offers plenty of variety, yet it retains the DNA of Vega’s identity.
Without the twins it was never going to sound completely like [old] Vega. This time, Pete [Newdeck, drummer] came up with a lot of music. But like I said, I’ve written the melody lines to all of the Vega songs, so that classic element of our sound was always going to be present.
