TYGERS OF PAN TANG Trivia — 47 Entries
47 sourced facts about TYGERS OF PAN TANG.
Trivia
The Japanese spelling of the band's name is not settled. Tower Records, diskunion, HMV, BARKS and Universal Music Store all write タイガース・オブ・パンタン, while the band's current Japanese label, Marquee Inc. (Avalon), writes タイガーズ・オブ・パンタン in its own product metadata. That is why on Amazon.co.jp the artist entity uses one spelling and the product titles use the other.
The success of The Cage took them to Japan. Rocky Laws puts it simply: The Cage was a commercial success and their biggest album, and they went to Japan.
The Official Charts Company's record of this band reads: Wild Cat number 18 for five weeks, Spellbound number 33 for four, Crazy Nights number 51 for three, and The Cage number 13 for eight. Among the singles, "Hellbound" reached 48 and "Rendezvous" 49. The album that charted highest is the same one that finished the band.
Hiring the band's current singer took less than a minute. Robb Weir's account is that Jacopo "Jack" Meille came up to Newcastle upon Tyne to audition in 2004 or 2005; the first song he sang was "Hellbound", and after forty-five seconds Weir stopped listening, looked round at everyone else in the room and asked whether that was all right with them.
In November 2021 the band took the NWOBHM award at the Hard Rock Hell Awards in Great Yarmouth, with Robb Weir collecting it. What their own site chose to dwell on was not the award so much as who got in touch about it: congratulations arrived from former members John Sykes and Jon Deverill.
Ritual (2019) was made at Trinity Heights Studio in Newcastle, which belongs to Fred Purser. The guitarist who replaced John Sykes in 1982 and played on The Cage was, thirty-seven years later, engineering a Tygers record. The band produced it themselves and Soren Andersen mixed.
The debut single "Don't Touch Me There" was re-recorded in 2019 for its fortieth anniversary. Four guitarists took a solo on it: Robb Weir, the band's then-guitarist Micky Crystal, former Tyger and producer Fred Purser, and producer Soren Andersen. It came out as the B-side of the "White Lines" twelve-inch.
The band's long association with Mighty Music and The Target Group in Denmark began by accident. Robb Weir tells it as a moment on stage: playing the Jailbreak in Rome, he looked out into the audience and saw the Tygers' own manager from the late seventies standing there.
The sleeve of the 2022 EP A New Heartbeat was designed by the band's drummer, Craig Ellis. Ellis handles a good deal of their visual work: the video for "Gangland", the single that preceded the 2024 live album, is his as well.
The live album Live Blood (2024) was recorded the year before at The Patriot in Crumlin, Wales. The band's own description of the set is that it takes in tracks from across the decades.
The Animal Instinct reissue at the end of 2024 came with a new remix by Marco Angioni and new sleeve art by Andy Pilkington. The band's own site says the reception surprised them — they had no idea it would be so well received.
Guitarist John Foottit's arrival was announced on 19 January 2026. The band's note was brief: see him on the road this year, and hear him on the new album later in it.
The mantra Jack Meille gives for the 2026 album Electrifyed is simply that the heavier it was, the better. Marco Angioni produced it and Andy Pilkington of Very Metal Art did the sleeve, and it is John Foottit's first studio record with the band.
The name was bassist Richard "Rocky" Laws's idea. Founding drummer Brian Dick puts it plainly: Rocky came up with it and lifted it from Michael Moorcock's science-fiction novel Stormbringer. Robb Weir's version fills in the picture — to reach the emperor's lands you had to get past the cliffs of Pan Tang, and what guarded them were not attack dogs but the emperor's tigers.
The band's first singer was not Jess Cox. Original bassist Rocky Laws describes the sequence: the three of them started writing, went looking for a singer, and a man called Mark Butcher joined — about twenty-five shows' worth. After Butcher left there was a gap before they regrouped and Cox came in. Most short accounts of this band make Cox a founder. The people who were there do not.
Their first gig was at the Coach and Eight in Durham, and by Brian Dick's count exactly one person turned up. The set took in covers of Ted Nugent's "Cat Scratch Fever", Rush's "Bastille Day" and Motörhead. Dick remembers the night for a second reason as well: putting his bass drum back in its case, he cut a rat in two.
The three of them met at a polytechnic, not a venue. Brian Dick spent most Friday nights at Newcastle Poly while doing his A levels, and there he met Rocky Laws, who had a heavy metal DJ slot upstairs. Laws turned out to play bass and to live round the corner in Whitley Bay, and the two of them started playing in his parents' garage with his mate Robb Weir.
Rocky Laws took up the bass because someone gave him a copy of Hawkwind's Space Ritual and he heard Lemmy play — "Lord of Light" above all. A cheap acoustic guitar he had been given earlier went nowhere, because nobody could teach him and the few lessons he had covered music he did not want to play. He also notes that he did not start out in a band with Robb Weir at all: he began by roadying for Weir's punk band, Trick.
There was no metal scene in Newcastle to speak of in the late 1970s. Rocky Laws can name only three local metal bands from the time: Raven, who had not yet hit on the athletic rock style; Axe, who became Fist; and Fastbreeder, most often remembered now because Andy Taylor played guitar in them before joining Duran Duran. What separated the Tygers from those three, in Laws's account, is that the others predated punk while his band started during it and was heavily influenced by it.
Before the record deal they lived on pubs and CIU working men's clubs. The clubs wanted two one-hour sets a night, which meant a lot of material: Rocky Laws lists AC/DC, Ted Nugent, Motörhead, Status Quo and ZZ Top among the covers. At Sunderland Boilermakers the audience was famous for never clapping, and an encore was still expected anyway — locally it was called a "false tap", on the reasoning that if you were still alive they must have liked it.
David Wood of Neat Records found them at a gig at Whitley Bay High School — his children went there. Rocky Laws explains why they played schools at all: it reached an audience too young to get into the pubs and clubs, and he reckons having a school-age fan base is what helped their first single sell.
The MCA deal came out of a typographical error. Rocky Laws remembers their biggest local show before any contract — headlining the Mayfair Ballroom in Newcastle — as something of a disaster: endless technical problems, and Laws himself so nervous and so drunk he could barely stand. They still drew 1,500 people. Music Week reported the figure as 15,000, and the record deal with MCA followed from that piece.
Their first time in a studio was not to make a record but to get cheap studio time. Rocky Laws says the first session at Impulse Studios in Wallsend was David Wood's idea: three tracks cut as an entry to the Vitavox Live Sound Awards, which brought the rate down. They had not taken the competition seriously — they put false names on the entry form — and then found they had to turn up and play at it. They won.
The compilation First Kill is not a set of worked-up demos. Rocky Laws says one of the Impulse sessions existed simply to record their live set: they set up and played the whole thing through without stopping, with no overdubs. Much of that tape became First Kill, and Laws reckons it is a fair example of what the band actually sounded like at the time.
One of the junior staff at Impulse Studios when the band were cutting their single there was Cronos of Venom, as Brian Dick remembers it.
The debut was made in London because the producer turned down the studio at home. Rocky Laws recounts that Neat wanted the first album cut at their own Impulse studio in Wallsend, and that Chris Tsangarides came up to look at the place and said he could not work there; he moved the session to the room he was used to, Morgan Studios in London. Both Wild Cat and Spellbound were made there.
Spellbound was demoed at Guardian Studios in Durham. Rocky Laws notes that those demos were the first recordings the band made with new singer Jon Deverill and new guitarist John Sykes, and that when he played them back at home afterwards he could not believe how good the line-up sounded.
There was no room for self-indulgence on the first two albums. Rocky Laws says Wild Cat and Spellbound were each done in a couple of weeks: guitar, bass and drums in a couple of takes, then guitar overdubs and vocals on top. A few extras did get in — Laws, a serious Rush enthusiast at the time, mentions adding kettle drums and bass synth pedals.
The live tape recorded at Rock City in Nottingham in 1981 sat unreleased for about twenty years. Rocky Laws says John Sykes listened to it and pronounced it unusable, and that it was forgotten after that — for a reason Laws says he still does not know. He believes releasing it then would have made a considerable difference to the band's career; instead they went and made Crazy Nights, which they were not ready for. The recording finally appeared in 2001.
Nobody involved hides that Crazy Nights was rushed. Rocky Laws describes going in without demos and writing a good deal of it on the spot. They tracked bass and drums against a guide guitar, but there were no lyrics yet — just a chord progression or a riff — so nobody had actually heard the songs when the basic tracks were cut. There are virtually no overdubs and no backing vocals.
One reason Chris Tsangarides was not on Crazy Nights had nothing to do with money. Rocky Laws says they partly wanted a change, and partly that Tsangarides had asked for a writing credit on a Spellbound track, which annoyed them. On Gary Moore's recommendation they brought in Dennis MacKay instead, whom Laws calls totally wrong for the band — he was working on a Stanley Clarke album in the States at the same time and flying back and forth.
Two of the rooms Crazy Nights was made in are worth recording. Rocky Laws says part of it was cut at Trident Studios in London, which closed down straight afterwards — not their fault, he adds. The vocals were done on Virgin's recording studio, a boat on the Thames.
Peter Collins, brought in to produce The Cage, had never made a rock record before. Rocky Laws remembers him coming to a rehearsal and saying he could not believe his first experience of hearing loud rock guitar in a confined space. He evidently did not mind it: Collins went on to work with Rush and a good many other rock bands after them.
The cover that became the band's biggest single, "Love Potion No. 9", was not their idea or their producer's. Rocky Laws says it was suggested by Peter Collins's manager, Pete Waterman — later one third of Stock Aitken Waterman, of Kylie Minogue fame. It was cut as their first session with Collins, while John Sykes was still in the band.
John Sykes left in 1982 to audition for Ozzy Osbourne's band after Randy Rhoads died. Rocky Laws records the rest briefly: Sykes did not get the job, and when he asked to come back they said no and looked for a replacement. That replacement was Fred Purser, who was only supposed to be temporary — enough to cover a French tour they had already booked — and stayed because they got on so well. Purser had been in the local punk band Penetration.
They played Reading Festival twice. Brian Dick puts them at 1980 and 1982: the first was nerve-wracking and in daylight, with cans and coins visibly coming towards the stage. The second was a different matter — penultimate band of the day, before Iron Maiden, and played in the dark. Years later Dick heard the BBC recording of the 1982 set on Radio 6 and was taken aback by how good it was; he calls it a career highlight.
The Cage tour brought them back to Newcastle Mayfair on 3 September 1982, with Tytan opening and tickets at £3. Brian Dick remembers the night for three things: getting the bus into town in true rock-star style, his girlfriend of the time being accidentally knocked out afterwards and spending several hours in A&E, and his father coming to see the band for the first time. His dad was still sorry he had given up a secure job — but after that gig, Dick writes, could see why.
The secure job Brian Dick gave up for this band was as a computer operator at Tyne and Wear Council. He describes the Neat recording as the thing that led to record and publishing contracts, national gigs and the band's first trips abroad.
Their first support slot was with Iron Maiden — two nights at the Marquee in London, by Rocky Laws's account. It was the first time the band had travelled any distance to play and the first time Laws had ever been to London. The venue was packed, and he says Maiden were unbelievably good and you could tell they were going to be big.
Their first national tour was as support to Magnum — and the order later reversed. Rocky Laws notes, drily, that Magnum went on to support them on a UK tour and were not very pleased about it.
There is a reason Saxon treated them well on tour. Rocky Laws says it was because Motörhead had been good to Saxon when Saxon were in the same position. Saxon were Laws's favourite NWOBHM band, and he recalls helping out during their show — working smoke machines, dry ice generators and spotlights, just for the fun of it.
The Scorpions support very nearly ended early. Rocky Laws says they were not used to big venues, did not impress the headliners over the first couple of shows and came close to being thrown off the tour. A storming night in Glasgow turned it round, and everything was fine afterwards. Laws adds that they learned a great deal from watching Scorpions do everything very professionally.
Asked for a favourite, Brian Dick names Spellbound "by a country mile", with "Gangland" and "Hellbound" as the songs — and notes that live, the tempo goes into overdrive. Two others come to him straight away: "Life of Crime" and "Stormlands", both B-sides, both recorded in five minutes with no real production.
For Brian Dick the band did not blow up so much as stop. "Tygers came to a natural end for me around Autumn '87 following a final run of gigs across mainland Europe," he says. He had played on six studio albums.
After the Tygers, Brian Dick played in a band called Sargeant, with Stevie Lamb on guitar — the guitarist who would later play on Burning in the Shade. Sargeant opened for Accept on tour, and Dick particularly remembers singer Tony Liddle at the Hammersmith Odeon: having eaten too close to stage time, Liddle threw up on stage, shouted "rock an' roll", and the stalls rose to their feet.
Everything the band cut for Neat Records was produced by Steve Thompson. Rocky Laws's assessment of what Thompson was dealing with is unsparing: he doubts Thompson had ever worked with a band who knew so little about music, since between the lot of them they could not have played a scale.
The first they saw of the phrase NWOBHM was in Geoff Barton's writing in Sounds. Rocky Laws says that after the paper ran pieces on Def Leppard and Iron Maiden, the band's manager sent Barton a tape pitching them as a comparable band from Newcastle, and they appeared in the following week's round-up. Things began to move from there.