Tony, many thanks for taking the time to answer our questions. As I write this we are about a week away from the start of a series of planned live dates for Shy over the next couple of months kicking off with a show at Nuneaton’s Queen’s Hall on Oct 16th alongside Statetrooper. As it has been a while since Shy last played live, at this point is more a case of nerves or excitement and anticipation as the time counts down towards the first show?

I haven't played a full electric show with SHY in fifteen years. Dont know where the time has gone, but there you go !
But the band have been in rehearsal for months now and I think we're ready to let it loose. A new line up has really helped us reach a fuller potential live sound as well, much has come together. If anything I'm relieved that we're back out supporting new product with a fresh outlook. If I was nervous, I wouldn't be in this business !

We can also expect a new Shy career retrospective CD – ‘Reflections, The Anthology’ that is due to be released through Sanctuary in November. What is the idea behind releasing this album now and how did it come about in the first place?

This album and the concept behind it came from Sanctuary themselves, it wasn't an idea that SHY came up with. But I dont think SHY can really class themselves who would be a band releasing a 'Greatist Hits' type concept, but an Anthology of the work for people who never bought the product or missed out on certain tracks etc., is a good idea. It's well put together and has the support of all the companies that have been involved with SHY over 22 years, so I'm supporting it whole heartedly.

Tony Mills

This album precedes Shy’s appearance on the bill at the Firefest II show at Nottingham Rock City on 26th November, what sort of personal expectations do you have from a festival show like this as opposed, to say, your own headline shows and do you tailor your set list differently for such an event?

Well I may be able to weigh up what my expectations of the show will be after I've attended the pre-show night. But, there are like minded bands on the bill and it seems like common sense that we should play such a concert. In fact we'll be headlining the Z Rock bill in March as well. This band have never been very good at getting onto large bill or festival shows and I intend to change that. The set list invariably changes for such events as time has a lot to do with it and limited set lengths kick in. I doubt we'll have any more than an hour, so all acoustic tracks will disappear from the show to start with. The show runs at around an hour and a half at the moment, so I guess we'll have to trim it somewhat. I think the set length with Statetrooper is limited to only 45 minutes.

On the Firefest theme any clues as what to what the fans can expect on the day and are you likely to throw any surprises into the set?

Material from Excess All Areas, Unfinished Business and Sunset and Vine. Surprises ? Well no, the set kicks in with Breakaway and rolls into some Sunset material, some classics from Excess and rolls out with No Other Way from Unfinished.

With so much activity surrounding the release of ‘Reflections’ do you feel that the opportunity to promote the excellent ‘Sunset & Vine’ album, released early in 2005 has been lost, as both fans and press focus on the older material that the anthology will feature or is the album still very much ‘live’ product as far as Shy are concerned?

I think the band feel Sunset is still very much live product and we intend to include different tracks from the album in live shows over the next eighteen months. There are people who will never buy Anthology albums, simply because they already got practically everything on other releases anyway and I don't blame 'em. However, on the other hand, there are people who don't consider their collections complete without everything a bands ever done and I understand that too. There are previously unreleased demos from the Misspent Youth era on the Anthology as well as acoustic tracks as well.

I guess this really is a busy time personally for Tony Mills as Z records are also releasing your second solo album ‘Freeway To The Afterlife’ as a double CD package with your first solo album ‘Cruiser’ on October 19th.. As Freeway To The Afterlife’ has been available for some time via your website why choose to make the CD available through a record company at this point?

Good question. It was a commercial decision to tie up product available from Z and give the album a proper distribution through a label and all it's licencers rather than keep it tucked away only available through a website. I like the idea of the two being twinned together and I 've also been contracted through Z to write a new AOR solo album that will probably emerge in Spring.

With these two upcoming releases, both solo and from Shy, do you see the two projects as complimentary to each other or is it more a case of treating them as entirely different entities and promoting them separately?

Very separate indeed. I enjoy writing material for solo work as much as I enjoy working and playing with SHY. I have been asked to play a lot of shows both here and abroad in support of the solo projects. However, I have other people to think about and SHY takes the priority when appearances are concerned. I need the vent of creativity which I do with a lot of different people from SHY, but I am still very dedicated to the band and the fans of SHY.

You have also recently launched the Shy Official Website at www.shyonline.co.uk. How important do you feel that the internet has become as a marketing tool for bands in the twenty first century and do you feel that the positive points of the internet outweigh its negative side, for example music downloading?

This is a question I get asked a lot, and my opinion regarding this is simple. I don't think the negative side of the internet has ever really affected us at all. If I want soundclips put up that never really poses a problem because they're not full length anyway. If other post full length tracks for people to download, the quality wouldn't be the same as the original recordings anyway. The real fans of any band wouldn't be satisfied unless they had the original product. As a marketing tool, I think the net is practically unrivalled. People will always buy magazines though, it's traditional and we'll never kill that.

Looking back into the past Shy first emerged onto the Rock scene at round about the same time as many other excellent British bands, FM, Dare, Heavy Pettin’ to name but a few. Despite extensive touring, major label support and heavy press coverage, none of these bands ever made the final step into the ‘big time’ whereas many, often inferior, American counterparts from the same era did break through. Why do you think this was and do you think there was anything Shy could have done differently to change the situation?

The first thing that springs to mind here, was the fact that SHY were dropped by RCA in 1987 when they were riding a high on the back of the Gary Moore tour. We came home thinking that this snowball was getting bigger every week only to have the rug pulled from beneath us along with 20 other bands on the RCA roster by their accountants. If that didn't halt the momentum, nothing could. There has always been a different culture and attitude in the American camps and you see it all the time from people like Paul Stanley, Dave Lee Roth, Vince Neil and so many others besides. The English love the attitude and confidence of American bands and who can blame them ? Many British bands lack the balls to get off the fence and really go for it. The other thing as well don't forget is money. Many bands come from the States loaded to the teeth with the power to afford every MTV promo product and tool they can get their hands on and many British hopefuls will never see that sort of money or have those opportunities.

When they say you have to be in the right place at the right time with your fair share of talent and a shit load o' luck in your back pocket, I wouldn't entirely disagree with that.

When Shy were getting ready to record their second major label album ‘Excess All Areas’ your label at the time, RCA, packed you off to America to work with outside writers. At the time did you feel this was a slight on the bands own internal ability to come up with strong enough material or did you view it more as an opportunity to learn and gain experience from more established artists?

I genuinely feel that there were people in RCA who knew that we had the ability to make it and they also knew that we had a fairly blinkered outlook in how we were writing. I'm sure they were right. It was a wise man who placed us in LA at that time (Peter Robinson - Head of A&R) for us to soak up some culture and work with people who could help us open our eyes a little wider. The work we did was co-writing with people, not bagging songs from anyone we could, although that opportunity was there. They helped us mature and helped us realize our own abilities more clearly.

Shy also had the opportunity to work with two renowned producers in the shape of Neil Kernon & Roy Thomas Baker. I know things didn’t exactly go to plan with Baker, but what were the main things that you learned through working with such luminaries of the rock world?

To be honest, you can't beat a top class sound engineer and Neil Kernon certainly was that. There were also facets of his personality that were very difficult to work with and these things come hand in hand, never on their own. Kernon helped me greatly with vocals and we teamed up well. I've never seen him since, although SHY worked with him on Welcome To The Madhouse. From what I understand, they parted mid project because it wasn't working out and ended up with another name producer in Denmark at Puk Studios. I wasn't surprised. Baker was a very different animal, oozing wealth and a low tolerance level. Again, a clever man in his own right, but very difficult to work with and completely nonchalant throughout many sessions, leaving it to the an engineer that he would later sack because of reasons that would suit him. So, these people come with great knowledge and also airs and graces that can make life very difficult as well. It ain't all roses in there I can tell you. I remember leaving Kernon at the end of the mixes at Red Bus in London respecting him though. I cant say the same for Baker.

When you eventually left Shy in 1991 was with it with a definite plan in mind for Tony Mills’ future or more with a sense of relief and a hope for things to come?

I left SHY after a calculated conversation with MCA records. I ensured a contract as a solo artist for a while and MCA set me up with enough money to record the majority of CRUISER, which later came out through Z Records in 1999. I had many ideas and fellow musicians to work with outside the circle of SHY and I just got on with it. I immediately signed a production contract with Pylon Productions and spent 12 months writing with Simon Harrison from 'Atlantic'. Session work came in pretty regularly and my love of heavier music developed SIAM which carried me to the mid 90's. I never really looked back to SHY over those years, and had little to with them and certainly never socially. I was glad to have left SHY because it kept giving me bad memories and I was always relieved when I thought about the decisions I had made during those times. I'm glad I didn't sing the Madhouse album, because they were not songs I respected and it really wasn't for me. MCA thought that I had made the right decision as well. So that was that.

The next time the Tony Mills name was in the public eye was with the release of the debut Siam album, ‘Language of Menace’. The demo version of that album, which I heard before its release, had spoken word sections in between songs. What happened to these pieces as they never made it onto the finished product?

The original album was a continuous story or concept if you wish, but the Japanese edited all of the songs and released the product without all the links, switching the song order around to suit themselves. There was little I could do about that when the product was released and I was annoyed about it, but hey, it was what they wanted at the end of the day. Many of the songs played well live as individual tracks anyway.

Both of the Siam albums were a lot heavier than anything that Shy had released previously and there were obvious comparisons to be made with Queensryche in the sound the band employed. Was this a deliberate move on Siam’s part or was the music more organic in its nature than that?

The Queensryche colour in the sound wasn't really there to begin with, although it crept in whilst recording the sessions on both albums. The discovery of much deeper tones in my voice didn't really help matters either ! Always having had to sing relatively high to be able to cut through the wall of sound that was SHY never revealed this. With SIAM, there was so much separation in the instruments in the SIAM songs that deeper tones in the voice would cut through as well as the higher registers and so much of this was used. I think both guitarists were into a lot of music, although they were also into QR and many chord structures featuring that anguished and tearful heavy minor sound appeared regularly in the writing. I didn't really care to be honest. We recorded many songs that didn't sound like QR at all, perhaps we didn't include enough of them in retrospect.

After the two Siam albums, things seemed to go very quiet on the Tony Mills front for a couple of years. Do you feel in retrospect that this time away from music rekindled you passion for music and allowed you to get your focus back on writing and singing?

I guess. I hooked with a band I had done session for in 1981 and helped them out for 9 months singing as Geddy Lee for a Rush tribute called YYZ. But doing that sort of thing was so monotonous and I couldn't carry on any longer. I formed another band but it obviously wasn't going anywhere. After more session albums, and various charity projects I eventually got a call about signing to Z for a new SHY album. This took some time to consider, but I went with it in the end and now we are where we are.

With two solo albums under your belt plus two new studio albums from the reformed Shy what does the future hold for both Tony Mills, solo artist, and for Shy as a band?

I am involved with other artists quite a lot, co-writing for Tor Talle in Norway, and writing and singing on a project with Eric Ragno, Michael Riesenbeck and Greg Bisonnette. I've also been asked to do lead vox on a new Survivor album for Escape Music. I don't think any of these things will overshadow what I am doing with SHY, though, I am committed to working with the new line up and rehearsals have gone well. I do have a new album to write for Z Records, although I haven't started it yet and it will revolve around the live work that I intend to book for SHY over the coming months.

Finally to round things off the ubiquitous HardRockHouse questions of ‘Is there anything else you would like to add or cover that we may have missed?’

Well, it's been a long time since SHY played lived together, and I have promised so many people that I would eventually get around to it, all I can say is, sorry it's taken this long, I'm sure you'll enjoy the forthcoming shows.

Many thanks to Tony for taking the time to answer our questions. Shy hit the road over the next couple of months, including playing Firefest in November. For a full list of dates please check the Gig Guide

For further information on Shy & Tony Mills then you can check out the following web sites:

www.shyonline.co.uk
www.tonymills.net
www.aorock.com

We also have a review of Shy latest album Sunset & Vine available which can be read via this link

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