Classic Rock Revisited: Neil Murray is the other original Whitesnake member in Snakecharmer. How did this band come to be?

Micky: About three years ago, I was playing a gig in London, locally, in this blues type of club. I live in Richmond and back in the day, all of the bands like the Stones, and the Yardbirds played there, and it was quite historical, from a British blues point of view.

There is club here, now, that deals with guys from that era and they asked me to play a gig there one night with a guy called Pete French, who played with Cactus and Atomic Rooster back then. We put a band together for a one off, just for fun. We were playing kind of Jeff Beck type of things.

We had a break and I went to the bar, as we do, and who's standing there but Neil Murray and his mate Doogie White. I said, "Hello Neil, I didn't know you were coming. Did you pay to get in?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Oh, you should have told me you were coming and I could have put your name on the guest list. You're an old chap; you didn't need to pay to get in."

We played together over the years since Whitesnake in The Moody Marsden Band, Company of Snakes and M3. We had not played together in maybe four, or five, years. We decided that we should get together and do some gigs.

He called me back, a couple of days later, and said that he had spoken with Laurie Wisefield, who he works with in We Will Rock You in London. Neil said that Harry James from Thunder would also love to do something. I was recommended a guy called Chris Ousey, who I had never met before. A friend of Neil's, Michael Bramwell, played some keys. We went out and did a few fun gigs playing some Whitesnake, some Wishbone Ash and some Thunder. We called it The Monsters of British Rock.

Uriah Heep's manager, Martin Darvill, said that we had a good lineup and that we should record something. We went into his studio and we put down the first two tracks that we wrote, which were "Turn of the Screw" and "Smoking Gun." It took us a while to record the album because this is not one of those permanent things. We have to all try to make time to do it. Now that it is taking off a little bit, we are hoping to take a bit more time.

Classic Rock Revisited: Will there be a future for this band, or will you all be too busy?

Micky: I am pretty sure there will be a future for this band. I don't do as much as some of the others. I do some TV music and I do some albums of guitar music. I am writing another book. Laurie and Neil are presently in We Will Rock You. They will let them do other things if they like. Adam Wakeman is off with Ozzy or Black Sabbath. Harry does Magnum and a couple of other bands. Chris has never really been on the road that much, as he is more of a studio singer and writer. If things take off, and the offers are reasonable, then we will do some work.