Influ

I would have to say if one person defined a turning point in my tastes in music, if not all of ours. It would be Mark Ponn. When he came back from the Army with Judas Priest - Hell Bent For Leather, AC/DC-For Those About To Rock and Def Leppard - On Through The Night. . From that point on all I consumed was metal. Thanks Mark

Ah! Frank Zappa we have to thank Pat "Link" MacDonald for this one. To this day I think all four of us think Zappa is one of the greatest musical minds of all of music's history. We never covered any Zappa I don't even know if we could have. But we loved him and we will definitly miss him. And on a personal note because Link turned me on to Zappa , then I got turned on to Stevie Vai. Thanks Linkus

RUSH - Even though I worship this band their influence on B. F. Raid music falls mostly on Barry and Lenny. As I have told many people Barry and Lenny were the best rhythm section any guitarist could ask for. They would play RUSH tunes constantly before and after practice. That brought a flavor to our music that it never had before. In songs like Victim and Eyes you can hear the Lee/Peart like syncopation.

Van Halen - Truly one of the greatest American rock bands ever. David Lee Roth's attitude and swagger was a image to be imitated. (probably why all my High School teachers all hated me). With songs like Take Your Whiskey Home, Beautiful Girls and Atomic Punk, Van Halen albums were like a how to book for young metalheads. And Edie's influence can definitely be heard On Raid tunes The Boston Strangler and of course Victim.

Pink Floyd - Not quite the influence that you can hear musicly though we did cover In The Flesh from The Wall. We took a lot of their ideals and concepts and applied them to life. Their lyrical influce shines through in

Who Cracked The Egg and Within The Wine.

Jimi Hendrix - He was a very important man to all of us. His lyrics were superb, and his music was magical. I personally think Jimi invented the power trio. His bluesy overdriven sound was a benchmark for me to gauge my own tone by. Noel Reading and Mitch Mitchell both are legends by their own right. I know that Mitch Mitchell was a huge influence on Barry's drumming, but Mitch was such an influence on Stewart Copeland (The Police). Barry got a double dose of Mitch's talent to surface in his own playing. Noel Reading, not too many bass players could hang with Jimi. Noel's flair for guitar orientated riffs is very much like Lenny's style of playing. It's like he's playing lead guitar but an octave deeper. I can come clean and tell you I stole half the riffs for the lead in Eyes from Len's bass lines. I'll never come clean on how much I took from Jimi.

Led Zeppelin - I would say if there was a band that touched us all it was Zeppelin. Not only did Billy have the same long blonde locks as Plant he had the same raspy bluesy style. I can't remember how many times I heard Barry warm up with the riff from "When The Levee Breaks". If you listen to "Black Dog" by Zeppelin you can hear the same unision type of thing that me and Lenny did on Angel. When it's one guitar and one bass what else can you do?

The Beatles - I know for me they are still one of my greatest loves. To me John Lennon was one of the greatest MEN that walked the earth. They remind me of B. F. Raid because they were freinds not bandmates, they loved what they did and the people around them. We didn't do many covers but we did cover "Come Together". It was the first song Harry heard us do and asked us the title of it after hearing it. When we told him it was "Come Together" he said it sounded like "Come Together from hell and he loved it."