Magnum: We won't slow down

Magnum's Mark Stanway says there is no sign of the band's prolific output slowing down.

The keyboard player says a follow-up to Escape From The Shadow Garden – released in March this year – will be out within 18 months, insisting that an album every year and a half is the target going forward.

And he adds that live material and possibly a DVD is in the cards over the coming months.

Stanway tells MyRockWorld: “In the 80s we had a schedule to release an album as soon as we could, every 12 months. The record companies wanted this.

“So 18 months is a good gap and at our age we can’t wait that long before we put another one out. We’ll have another one in 18 months. Next year we’re going to release some live stuff off this tour.”

Stanway also revealed that the crashing sound heard on classic Magnum track Soldier Of The Line – the opener to the 1982 album Chase The Dragon – was made by him throwing a piano lid onto the studio floor.

He says: “There’s a big banging sound at the beginning of that – that’s me throwing a piano lid on the floor. It’s slowed down and has echo lid on it, but it’s me. I had a piano lid and I just smashed it down like that. I had to do it three times.”

In the rest of the interview, Stanway describes Escape From The Shadow Garden, Magnum’s 18th album, as a natural progression from their previous record, 2012’s On The 13th Day.

Listen to the interview below

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.