AVAILABLE AT
ARTIST
Wheels of Steel
- Edition
- Original release
- Release date
- 3 April 1980
- Label
- Carrere
- Format
- 12-inch LP and CD
- Bonus
- The original release has no bonus track. The 2009 remaster runs to seventeen. In 2025 Marquee Inc. reissued it in Japan as an SHM-CD in a cardboard sleeve with eight bonus recordings, seventeen tracks in all.
LINER NOTES
LANGUAGE
The second album is the one that fixed the band's place. Carrere released it on 3 April 1980 and it reached number five on the UK albums chart — Saxon's highest placing there, and still unbeaten. It was certified gold in Britain.
It was recorded at Ramport Studios in London in February 1980, produced by Pete Hinton with the band. The line-up is unchanged from the first album: Byford, Oliver, Quinn, Dawson and Gill.
"747 (Strangers in the Night)" takes the 1965 Northeast blackout and the aircraft that were in the air when the lights went out. The title track came first as a single on 14 March, followed by "747 (Strangers in the Night)" in June and "Suzie Hold On" in September. The title track has since been used in games including Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City and Brütal Legend.
The running order given here is the original pressing's.
TRACK LIST
- 1.Motorcycle Man
- 2.Stand Up and Be Counted
- 3.747 (Strangers in the Night)
- 4.Wheels of Steel
- 5.Freeway Mad
- 6.See the Light Shining
- 7.Street Fighting Gang
- 8.Suzie Hold On
- 9.Machine Gun