Raven
Instantly 16 Years Old Again

14.10.2026

Could I have thought back in 2007 when I was discovering the world of New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) beyond the discographies of Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and Saxon, than almost 20 years later I would be interviewing John Gallagher, singer band bassist of legendary Raven? Highly unlikely. Actually, I wasn’t expecting the man that I remembered from the fun and naïve video for “On and On” to be such a thoughtful and attentive interview subject either. All the happier I am now to be able to publish this conversation as it allowed me not only to touch upon more than 50 years of Raven’s history, but also appreciate John’s talents as a guitar and bass luthier and see a part of his diverse musical collection with my own eyes.

Hello, how are you doing?

I'm doing fine, thank you. And what about you? How are you?

I was having a swim and I thought, “Oops, I've got an interview to do. I better get out quick”. So here we are, slightly wet, but ready to rock.

It's a real pleasure and honor to talk to you because you're truly a metal legend and the living legend of heavy metal.

Thank you.

So let's start with your plans for an upcoming studio album because I know that you were prepared for the recording already some time ago. Can you tell me anything about it?

Yeah, I was just actually mixing some demos. We did a whole bunch of guitar tracks, like rough guitar tracks so that we can send to Mike (Heller) and he can go over and come up with some drum ideas. And, you know, we're getting it together. The structures are there. We have lots and lots and lots of songs and we've cut them down by about, oh, 75%. So we've got about 30 songs floating around at the minute and we're going to look at them and from that 30, we'll probably pick what we're going to do for an album. Not that any of them are bad, but just some of them fit better than others. You know, there may be two songs that are a little similar and you really don't want that. You want to have some individuality, and so we're working on that. Mike is building his brand new studio, which it's been a year-and-a-half-nightmare doing that, but he has a structure. He's getting it soundproofed on the inside. They're starting to build. So hopefully by the end of the year it'll either be finished and we're in, or it'll be nearly finished and we’ll be there in January, February, something like that. That's when we hope to have it all recorded and we look to have it released by the middle or the back end of next year, depending on how it comes together. You know, you can't always put a time limit on these things. When it's ready, it'll be ready.

I guess you don't, but maybe you do: do you have a title for the album?

We don't! Actually, some of the song titles could work out very well for it. The one I was mixing, actually, I'm not giving you the title, but now that I think about it, could be a good title. It's always good to have either a title track or the title to come from the lyrics in one of the songs. So we’ve got to review that and obviously see which songs are actually going to be on the record. Once we pick the songs we're going to put on, we'll start working on a title, and then the title will spark off, hopefully, some kind of artwork and we'll, you know, get busy on all that. It's a whole process, for sure.

Yeah. I also play the guitar, so I kind of understand the idea of the process. And I also reviewed one of your recent albums called “Metal City”. It's not the most recent one, I guess, but still it's quite new in terms of your long career, so…

Yeah, I believe that came out in September 2020.

Yeah, and I really enjoyed it. And I also noticed that, in my opinion, it sounds way more aggressive and heavier than, like, your early stuff and especially, like, “Stay Hard” and Atlantic albums.

Well, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of albums more aggressive than… Well, not so much. Well, “Stay Hard” (1985) is okay. “The Pack Is Back” (1986) is a little bit lighter, for sure, but you could pick a lot of albums that are aggressive after that. Even the next one, “Life's a Bitch” (1987), that's pretty aggressive. But I understand what you mean. Here we are, it's 30, 35 years on from there, so we're a lot further down the road, as it were, you know. And “Metal City”’s new drummer Mike Heller, who's been with us now for 10 years, it was a definite raising of the bar and moving forward, and we're very happy with it. 

Actually, I wanted to ask about his influence on that record because I know that he used to play in way heavier bands like Fear Factory…

Yeah, yeah. I mean, his thing… Joe (Hasselvander, previous drummer) had had a heart attack, and we had two days to find drummers to fill in because we had four shows in America, a festival in Sweden and then a 12-day tour of Europe. And two days before all this happened, Joe had had a heart attack. So we freaked and we got a guy for Chicago and then this guy, Mike Heller played the next three dates in America. All we heard was he had played with Fear Factory and we talked and then we went on and played for an hour and a half and he was spot on. It was amazing. And we were improvising and throwing stuff at him and he was kicking it back and it was, you know, there was definitely something there. He couldn't do the Europe stuff, but we said, “When we come back, let's talk and see if you want to be part of this”. And he did. And I think what made it fun for him is the improvisational aspect where he's able to contribute and to, you know, invent on the spot and do stuff and bounce stuff. Where with the other bands that you mentioned, it's “dacadacadacadac-dacadacadacadac”, that's all it is, just, you know, machine. This is a lot more creative and musical, I think. So it appealed to him for sure. And you know, he was dealing with songs we'd already written there, but with the following stuff like “All Hell’s Breaking Loose” (2023) and the EP we did last year, “Can't Take Away the Fire”, he's more involved, you know, and with the songs we've got here, there's a few songs where he actually came up with guitar riffs, so it's great having… which is what we've always had really: there's a drummer who's a songwriter, who contributes, and he's certainly that. So that's great.

Yeah, it's, it's great he's contributing. Actually I was wondering about the songs you had on “Can’t Take Away the Fire”: do you think you will use some of them on the future record or do you have enough songs for it? 

No, that's a standalone thing. We wanted to record the songs because we knew there was going to be a lot of touring going on. It was going to take too long to do a full-fledged album. So we said, “Let's get in”. And Mike was in Los Angeles and he was going to be moving and he wouldn't have the studio. So we got in quick and did what we could and got that done. But it's a pointer to where we're going, you know. It's a step forward from “All Hell's Breaking Loose”. There's some different stuff on there, as it were. And it's, it's an interim thing that just keeps the pot boiling while we were working on the brand new album, you know.

As far as I understood, “Can’t Take Away the Fire” was like an anniversary release, wasn’t it?

In a sense, yeah. I mean, it's our 50th anniversary. It would have come out on the 50th anniversary, but that got held back to… the powers that be wanted some live tracks and we didn't want to do that. And it argued backwards and forward. So we came up with the tracks that are on, which made it kind of an anniversary thing where there's an early thing and a thing from the middle and then a more recent song. And it kind of ties it all up and really makes it more of a mini album than an EP because you've got eight tracks. Yeah, it's not bad. Good value for money, I think.

So how do you feel about, like, you're in the business for 50 years? Could you imagine doing this for so long when you started the band?

No, you could never think that. If someone said, “What do you think you're doing in 20 years”?, it was like, “I don't know, I hope we're doing this”. It's what we love, which is why we do it and why we've done it so long. We plug in our instruments and we're instantly 16 years old again. You know, it's like the fountain of youth. It just takes a little bit more ibuprofen on the night after, you know, a little bit more painkiller to get rid of the aches and pains, that's all. But you can't plan for those things. If you did, I think it probably wouldn't happen. The whole thing has just been one step at a time. The next tour, the next album, the next festival. And you build from there.

I hope you will have many of them in the future, and you'll release more albums, do more tours and so on. And I know that you suffered some serious health issues a year ago or something like that.

Literally last August. 

How are you doing now?

I'm doing great. I'm doing really well. I think the biggest problem after it was building my fitness back. It took an awful lot out of me. For people who don't know, I was hit on the head by a falling snare drum. And it gave me a bleed on the brain. And I was in hospital for two weeks in the ICU while they drilled holes in my head twice and drained the blood because the blood was pushing against my brain and giving me terrible headaches. And I was very, very lucky because it's pretty much exactly what happened to Ace Frehley. Unfortunately, he wasn't as lucky as me. You know, I was very, very lucky. I came out the hospital and it was a slow process of just exercising and building it up. Initially, when I got out of hospital, I picked up a guitar and my brain wasn't working very well. So that took about six weeks of hard work and - boom, I'm back better than I was. So that was the quickest thing, but the physical fitness, the actual, you know, get-up-and-go took a lot longer. It's surprising. The doctor told me, he says, you know, you may feel you want to go and do all this stuff and go tour, but the brain needs all the energy you've got to fix itself and you're going to be very tired for a long time. And he was right.

And what about your brother Mark? I know that he also had some surgery on his leg…

He's doing great. He's, you know, he's hard to deal with. The main one was the ankle, he had his, I believe it was his left ankle was bone on bone and he was compensating by leaning more on the right side on his knee, which was bone on bone. So he was in miserable pain for about 10 years. And the opportunity, when he had this, he said, “I'm going to hospital, I'm going to go and get it done”. So it's life changing for him. He's, you know, got a smile on his face. He's bouncing around like an idiot. He's doing great.

So I also was wondering, because I don't have a brother, I’m the only child: how is it playing like for half a century with your own brother in your band? Do you argue?

It's actually great. We are like two different people who just go (interlocks his hands), and that works personality-wise and it works musically too because, you know, we'll come up with pieces of music, like even the simplest things - (plays the guitar) that's him and I'll go (plays the guitar), and they're not the same. I play bass parts which complement the guitar. It's a three piece, you got to contribute musically. It interlocks and it makes something bigger than the parts. That's basically our way of working. We use the three of us to cover each other's shortfalls and make something bigger than what we started with.

Yeah, it's cool, it’s really cool. And if we continue talking about health and some issues with health, I know that besides being classified as an NWOBHM band, you also were classified as “athletic rock”. What do you think about this term? What do personally do now to stay in shape?

It had nothing to do with us. I mean, the first single came out and on the back it said, “Athletic rock from Neat”. And we looked at each other and said, “Who came up with that?” We laughed and said, well, it's better than being called just straightforward heavy metal. Whatever, you know, let's make of it what we will. We were wearing athletic running tops, which was black and white striped, or red and white. And as we've always done, jumping around like idiots, running around on stage, being active and getting the audience into what we do. And that'll never stop. As long as I can keep moving, we'll be doing that. And even at our advanced stage, we're more athletic, you could say, than the majority of bands. We're not standing there looking at our shoes for sure. We're connecting and bringing people in and doing silly stuff and having fun, you know, it's a big part of what we do. You gotta have fun.

Yeah.

Because if we have fun, the audience see it and it brings them in and they have fun and it's like a feedback loop, you know, it just gets better and better.

And I know that you keep touring. Our webzine recently ran a report on your gig in Belgrade, Serbia, and our reporter who was there wrote that you came in a van with only the driver and no crew, and that you had to move all the equipment yourself. Isn't it exhausting?

Yeah, we've done that now for years. We stopped using the crutch of a crew in about 1990. It's like, I don't need to pay a guy, you know, a thousand dollars a week to tune my guitar. I can tune my guitar, I can change strings, I can move a cabinet if I need to. It's not a big deal. So we had a good friend of ours from back in the days when we toured with Kreator, Andreas “Stoney” Stein, he came out and drove and sold merchandise, and, you know, we go lean and mean. There's a lot of bands I know that won't go out unless they're in the best tour bus and they got, like, a guy that's clipping his toenails and giving him a massage, and they do this. And at the end of the day, they’ve got no money. But to them it's like a hobby. They go out, they're not making money, they're just spending money. And we realized a long time ago that's ridiculous. Why would you do that? You know, there's no shame in hard work. We work hard and we make it happen. That's it.

Yes, I see the point. And as for me, I’ve only seen your show once, at Wacken Open Air two years ago. Do you remember it?

Oh, I remember that show. That was a horror because… Luckily I booked the guys’ flights two days before the show. And the airlines lost Mark's guitars…

Oh.

And they lost his amplifier rack and they lost Mike's kick pedals and they lost his cymbals. And we didn't get them back until the day after Wacken, which was good because we had like two weeks of dates to play right after that. So we went there and Mark had a line of amplifiers he was playing through, going, “this is shit, this is shit, this is shit, this one's okay”. And luckily I had one of his guitars. I brought it broken down in one of my cases. So he had a guitar and Mike knows the guy from Dragonforce and he borrowed a lot of stuff from him and we were able to play the show. But… tough.

Yeah, but I guess I would have never thought about it if you just haven’t told me.

Of course no! And again, it's not relevant, you know. People don't need to know that. It's interesting after the fact. And you're not going to complain about it. It's, you know, that's what happens on the day. The show must go on, you gotta make it happen.

Yeah. And if we talk about tours, I know that everybody in every interview asks you about that tour with Metallica supporting you.

Yeah.

I won't ask you that question, actually. My question is: what has been the most exciting tour or maybe some tours or gigs in your life, which one would come to your mind?

Yeah, that's tough. In the early days, playing with Whitesnake and Motorhead and Ozzy, that was like unbelievable. Playing with Judas Priest in 1986, they're heroes of ours, that was fantastic! Playing with Metallica in 2014 and in 2022 in Florida here - they were amazing, big shows, really cool. And you know, it's like the best tour is always the next one. Yeah, we had a hell of a time. We were playing great on this tour here. It was a shame to finish it when we did. We're playing on Saturday, there's a festival called “Blades of Steel” in Madison, Wisconsin here in America, we're playing that. And we go to Columbia in October, the end of October we've got two shows, a festival and a standalone headline show in Columbia. And then in late November we're touring England with Girlschool and Alcatrazz. That should be fun, good way to finish out the year.

Do you have any plans of visiting Europe like next year?

Yeah, absolutely. We want to do the festivals. We've got a new agent who's hungry to get us out on the festivals. We want to do a lot of festivals and then probably do a headline run in August, like the end of August - beginning of September, something like that. And hopefully get to play some new places. I mean like you mentioned, we played Belgrade for the first time. We played Zagreb for the first time. There's a lot of places we haven't played. We haven't played Bulgaria, Romania, we haven't played Russia. We haven't played a lot of places for a long time like Poland and we have played Latvia and Lithuania once maybe. These places we'd love to come back and play and it's always fun to play it to a new audience, you know, it's a challenge and we love that. It's great.

Would you go and play in Russia if you had the opportunity? Let me ask you straight.

Yeah, if we get the opportunity, we're there. That would be bucket list. I would love to do that, would love to visit Russia. It would be great. From what I understand and from what I see, the people are very like a lot of the other Eastern European, there's a lot of passion in their appreciation of music. They like to have a good time. They like to go out and go nuts. And we love that. That's great, you know.

I really hope to see you playing here in my hometown, St. Petersburg.

That, that's a bucket list. I would love to visit St. Petersburg. So, so let's see. We try and make it happen.

And I really hope to see you next year during the festival season because I hope to visit Wacken or maybe some other festivals. I also have a kind of professional question for you because you have a very distinguishing thing in your gear - you're constantly using headset microphones on stage. Could you please tell us the model and is it any different than using a common mic on a stand?

It sounds very similar. Usually most sound engineers are surprised and go, wow, that’s a really good sounding microphone. Yeah, that's why I use it. It’s a “Crown CM311”. I tried just about all of them. There's a few new ones which are really good that are very, very small: “Countryman” and a few other companies. But I settled on the “Crown” about 15, 20 years ago, maybe longer. I was using all kinds of them and having all kinds of problems until we took a while to work the bugs out. Initially it would cut out after half an hour because the battery pack was full of sweat from where I had it on my back. And once we moved it and put it in plastic it was fine. You know, teething problems. But yeah, the equipment thing is, you know, like I've started over the last 15 years building guitars so I've built Mark like three “Flying V”s, a “Telecaster” with an “Evertune” bridge and basically all the basses you'll see me play are pretty much homemade. I just made a “Flying V” 8-string or a couple of “Flying V”s. you probably see one behind me right there.

Yeah, I see it. It's a nice one.

Yeah, that was the first one I made. That's the main bass for the last three albums, actually, last four albums. It's such a good sounding guitar! A lot of the stuff out there is boring to me. It's just like I don't want to go to a guitar center and pick up a jazz bass and go, “Okay, this is wonderful”. You might as well make something that's fun, interesting – oops - looks different, you know, so we work with that. And you know, my brother's got such a unique, aggressive, powerful style and it's, it's not just aggressive sounding - he goes through equipment like a bulldozer. So everything has to be double strengthened and double glued, that's ridiculous.

I see you’re wearing Blue Oyster Cult merchandise. I really love this band. And what kind of music do you listen to in your spare time?

Wow. Well, I'm listening to all kinds of stuff. I'm trying to see what I've got floating around here: I just got the Status Quo “Live at Hammersmith Odeon 1979” double CD, which is fantastic. And the most recent Tori Amos album, and the most recent Yes bootleg from 1976. I listen to a lot of different stuff, you know, try to mix it up. Geez, what we got here? We've got The Black Crowes, we've got Alice in Chains, and we have the Smashing Pumpkins. (shows CDs) I mix it up. I listen to a lot of different stuff.

Quite a nice musical taste you have, I must say.

Yeah.

ОК, I see that we're running out of time, and I guess I have time only for the last question, and it's not really a question. I always ask the musicians to say something inspiring for the Russian headbangers community because we're having quite tough times here now…to struggle with it.

Well, all I can say is, first off, thank you for your support, everyone out there. You know, if it wasn't for people like yourselves, we couldn't do what we do. You're the people who hear the music and love the music and keep the music alive, and because of that, we do what we do and we will keep making the music and playing the shows, and we really hope we get to visit you. You know, Russia's been through a lot over many, many years and always came out at the end. So hang in there. Hopefully better times will come. You know, that's what I hope, I hope so. There's a lot of bad stuff going on in the world, and hopefully we can block all that out and concentrate on good stuff like music and art and shit like that, you know. And like I said to you earlier, hopefully we can come and visit you guys. 

Raven on the Internet: https://ravenlunatics.com/ 

Special thanks to Michael Brandvold (Michael Brandvold Marketing) for arranging this interview

Interview by Pavel Vlasov
Photos courtesy of Michael Brandvold Marketing
September 17, 2026
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