Paperback
Denim and Leather: Saxon’s First Ten Years
is the long-awaited result after being asked more for a book on Saxon than any other band, other than Uriah Heep. Those who read my stuff will not be surprised by the style: it’s every album, every song examined in full with a dedicated chapter, plus a long look at the pre-history of the band from new first-hand source material.
If you like the way I’ve been doing these books, a chapter per album, every song addressed—and if you were a card-carrying NWOBHM maniac—then this book is for you.
Denim and Leather is 250 pages of biker metal hail after hail, with two four-page colour sections, loads of fresh interview content, all the facts and dates and even some of the hot disputes.
As the back cover crows…
Stand Up and Be Counted!
Now that there’s no more Motörhead, it’s up to Iron Maiden and Saxon to uphold the fine tradition of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, something both bands have been doing for over 40 years now. Indeed, 2020 marks the 40th anniversary of Saxon’s landmark Wheels of Steel> album, a record we celebrate in this book with much reverence and many pints of ale clinked between headbangers clad in both denim and leather.
Of course there’s more than that but not everything! Indeed, Denim and Leather: Saxon’s First Ten Years focuses on the band’s golden era, Saxon’s prodigious first decade of output. Saxon, Wheels of Steel, Strong Arm of the Law, Denim and Leather, Power & the Glory, Crusader, Innocence Is No Excuse, Rock the Nations and Destiny each are dedicated stand-alone chapters, inside of which Popoff deconstructs every song across both sides of the original vinyl, while not forgetting bonus tracks and B-sides, as well as the live material along the way, including the beloved The Eagle Has Landed album.
It’s a glory-bound Saxon-fest that is long overdue, and it is the hope of the author that at the end of this sometimes critical examination that the reader returns to these records with new reflections on the NWOBHM and some of the detrimental things that came after for many bands, the heroes of our story included.