Daniel Bowes and Luke Morley first met in 1975 during a pre-term interview day at Haberdashers’ Aske’s, a grammar school in the south London suburb of New Cross. Although both were just 11 years old at the time, it was to be a significant encounter.

More than a quarter of a century later, the pair still play music together.
“I’ll never forget that day as long as I live,” reminisces Bowes now. “My mother had made me get my hair cut for the interview; until that point I’d been growing my barnet almost down to my arse after my head was shaved by a blind pensioner in an air raid shelter when I was eight.

At the interview, who should sit next to me but this boy here” – he nods across the table at Morley – “with loads of very, very long red hair. I whispered to my mother, ‘Look, he’s got long hair’, and she replied that he wouldn’t get in. But on the first day of term there he was, looking the same. What a mug I was, getting mine cut.”
“My first thoughts of Danny were that he was short and aggressive, but also very funny,” says Luke. “The first time we actually spoke was in an argument over a stool in the science lab.”

Although Messrs Bowes and Morley were in the same class, they didn’t strike up a friendship till three years later. By that time Luke was in a band, which Danny managed to elbow his way into after claiming – falsely, as it happened – that he owned a microphone. Coincidentally, the frontman forced aside to accommodate the group’s latest recruit was none other then Malcolm McKenzie, who later managed Thunder.
“And so,” grins Morley, “for the first of many times, I fired Malcolm.”
“But he took three weeks to pluck up courage,” Danny adds. “I eventually had to say that unless they told him, I would do so. Even then they didn’t like firing him, so they made him their bass player instead.”

With the addition of drummer Chris Hussey, Nuthin’ Fancy were formed and the next four years were spent gigging all over the south London circuit, also releasing the now extremely rare independent single, ‘Looking For A Good Time’. When the rhythm section quit, bassist Nick Linden and drummer Gary ‘Harry’ James stepped in and Terraplane were born, naming themselves a vintage car.
“I’d been in a rival band called Moontier, and my first impression of Danny and Luke was how cocky they were,” remembers James. “They knew where they wanted to go, they were well organised and they seemed to have the talent to back it up.”
“We were never short on confidence,” nods Bowes. “Blind ambition was what drove us. Our first band were complete rubbish, but we were convinced we were gonna take over the world. I remember my then girlfriend’s mother telling me we were diabolical, and in that instant she went from being a really nice person that I quite fancied in a secret way to being the worst woman in the world. Everyone else was entitled to their opinion, but to us it was always going to be irrelevant.”

“He’d just say, ‘Do it louder and faster, and I’ll mix the drinks’”
Luke Morley on working with Duran’s Andy Taylor

Black guitarist and king birder Rudi Riviere joined the same year (thus enabling them to label their records: ‘Terraplane is an equal opportunities group’), but the change proved to be purely cosmetic.
“Rudi was a nutter for the birds, he’d have fucked the hair on a barber shop floor,” states an incredulous Danny. “Seriously, the man had his own diving board. When we did gigs with him he spent more time at the front of the stage giving out his phone number than he actually did playing!”

Various band images came and went, including a teddy boy look and a colourful array of outsized garments that became known as their Andy Pandy suits. By 1987, Terraplane themselves didn’t seem to know whether they were a rock or a pop band.

Though not without sporadic moments of defiance like ‘I Will Come Out Fighting’, their ‘Moving Target’ swansong was best summed up by such formulaic horrors as ‘Good Thing Going’.
“As was the fashion of the era, Epic thought, ‘Give ’em all a terrible mullet, stick ’em with a pop producer and see what happens’, and it was our own weak management and naïveté that let them do that to us,” maintains Morley now. “Halfway through the ‘Moving Target’ album I realised it was a complete mistake, but by then it was too late.”
It was something that Bowes and Morley swore they would never allow to happen to them again. After ties with Epic were finally cut, the pair flew on a shoestring budget first to New York, then to Los Angeles to get a vibe of what was happening on the other side of the pond.
“In LA, Guns N’ Roses, Mötley Crüe and LA Guns were all happening, there was a real scene going on – unlike in London,” recalls Luke. “We found it so energising that people were listening to rock music there.”

"As the automatic door opened, Harry's whole body convulsed and
evil-looking bright orange vomit spewed forth"
Luke Morley

Thunder had graduated from a Shepherds Bush boozer to headlining three nights at Hammersmith Odeon in just 15 months, shifting 100,000 copies of their debut album in the process. In America, Cinderella manager Larry Mazer had taken up their affairs and A&R legend John Kalodner, who’d caught Thunder’s Donington set on the radio whilst en route with Aerosmith to the show, succumbed to the lobbying of Guns N’ Roses singer W Axl Rose, Steven Tyler of Aerosmith and Whitesnake leader David Coverdale and signed the band.

“I gave an Oscar-winning performance as a guy who was afraid his band was gonna break up.
The whole thing was made up.”
Danny Bowes on the 'Luke to join Whitesnake' rumours

Luke and Danny had learned of Axl Rose’s interest in Thunder during a visit to the Rainbow Bar & Grill in Los Angeles. After spotting Axl dining with a girlfriend, the next several hours were spent deep in conversation. And later, as everybody exited onto Sunset Boulevarde, Rose even revealed a copy of ‘Back Street Symphony’ in his car stereo.
“He’d given me the thousand yard stare until I told him I was in Thunder, but he and his missus came and sat at our table, and we talked for three or four hours,” relates Morley. “It was a fascinating conversation, mainly about English music. He had some interesting theories. When anyone tells me now that Axl Rose is a complete nutter, I find it quite hard to believe based upon that conversation. He’s a very bright lad, and I wonder how much of his madness is contrived.”

But Thunder were to be plagued with ill fortune. Plans to tour the US with David Lee Roth were scuppered by the ex-Van Halen singer’s cancellation, and although some 250,000 copies of ‘Back Street Symphony’ found American homes, it amounted to chickenfeed while other acts were shifting millions. The band had spent so long touring the debut that there was little time to write a follow-up, and because of Mike Fraser’s work with Thunder and Aerosmith had made him so popular they waited around in vain for the in-demand engineer.

With pressure around them mounting, the band found time to let off steam and in June 1991 played a now legendary one-off secret show at Tramshed Theatre in London as Danny & The Doo-Wops. ‘Laughing On Judgement Day’ finally emerged in August of 1992, and although not quite as indispensable as its predecessor, the double set nevertheless housed the Top 40 hits ‘Low Life In High Places’, ‘Everybody Wants Her’, ‘A Better Man’ and ‘Like A Satellite’. Even Morley now admits that it was “an indulgence” to have recorded 20 songs and selected 14 favourites. A North American tour with Iron Maiden followed, during which time Thunder were openly courted by Maiden’s manager Rod Smallwood, though they remained loyal to Malcolm McKenzie. And there was a second appearance at Castle Donington, again on a bill topped by Steve Harris and company. On top of all this, the spectre of the Seattle explosion was just emerging. The pair can now address Thunder’s decision to spurn Smallwood with hindsight, but they remain uncertain they’d have done anything differently.
“I liked Rod Smallwood as a bloke, but I wouldn’t have wanted him as my manager,” Danny comments. “I didn’t feel he understood what we were about.”
“It’s swings and roundabouts,” professes Luke. “Going with a big company like Smallwood or Q Prime [who represent Metallica] would’ve opened doors, but although Malcolm didn’t have their level of experience, his enthusiasm and commitment to the cause was invaluable at the start. We did eventually part company with him, but it was at the right time.”

And Luke adds: “For me, the biggest negative factor to affect our career was not who was managing us, but the arrival of grunge.”

Turning a blind eye to such perils, Thunder set about enjoying their newfound popularity. After the lean Terraplane years, all forms of rock ‘n’ roll decadence – groupies in particular – were grasped at every available opportunity. Condoms were introduced to their backstage rider, and a bizarre method of scoring, based on the golfing par system, was instigated. Each band member had to get lucky at least once on every night of the tour, otherwise they’d be one under par. I travelled with Thunder a lot around this time and recall a certain band member being two under par at the start of the evening, but claiming to be four above by the time he came down to breakfast the next day.
“On one particular tour we’d vowed to get 100 points, and a version of Churchill’s ‘England expects every man to do his duty’ speech was trotted out in the bar,” says Danny. “But we were drinking for England as well,” guffaws Morley, “and as everybody knows that those two pastimes aren’t always compatible.”

Such antics were a welcome diversion from the uncertainty of the group’s career, and Thunder’s first line-up change arrived in late ’92 when Snake was sacked after a Japanese tour. Although the rift was later mended, and the bassist briefly played with the David Coverdale-Jimmy Page alliance, the straw that broke the camel’s back was a regrettable incident involving Harry James’ birthday cake and Classic Rock lensman Ross Halfin.
“Things had been brewing for six months,” recalls Luke. “Ross wanted to photograph Danny and I alone, so he told the rest of the band to fuck off, as only Halfin can do. So Snake later decided Ross should end up wearing Harry’s cake. Nobody could quite believe it, but to his credit Ross took it pretty well, passing the remains of this cake to his assistant and continuing with the session.”

The first that Bowes, who had retired to the non-smoking dressing room next door, knew of the incident was when Halfin stormed in and informed the singer that he’d only refrained from flooring the bassist on account of their friendship. Danny beams as he recalls informing the snapper: “Don’t hold back on my account, mate.”

Over the next couple of years, the all-consuming success of Nirvana and Pearl Jam made life very difficult indeed for bands like Thunder (who’d been joined by Swedish bassist Mikael Höglund). Indeed, column inches became so rare that Morley and Bowes now claim to have hatched a plan to generate invaluable press coverage. The way they tell the story now is that they ‘leaked’ an attempt by David Coverdale to poach Morley for Whitesnake, thus causing a serious rift.

“We fanned all that up ourselves,” laughs Luke, who incidentally remains in contact with Coverdale about the possibility of future work. “I don’t even know how it started, we just gave it a little nudge here and there to keep it going. Someone from his band even said I’d been rehearsing in Los Angeles with them, when I’d been in Portugal playing golf with Harry!”
“In an interview with a certain writer, I gave an Oscar-winning performance as a guy who was afraid his band was gonna break up,” offers Danny. “The whole thing was made up.”
Press and radio apathy were cunningly offset by Thunder’s policy of playing annual and very extensive tours of the UK. And although their next album, 1995’s ‘Behind Closed Doors’, was to be their last for EMI, it was nevertheless a Top Five release that offered further hit singles in ‘River Of Pain’ and ‘Castles In The Sand’. Well aware of their crowd-pulling capacity, Bon Jovi invited them play two shows at Wembley Stadium. After the greatest hits collection ‘Their Finest Hour (And A Bit)’, the band temporarily became a quartet with the loss of Höglund, severed ties with Malcolm McKenzie and hopped labels to Castle Communications offshoot Raw Power for ‘The Thrill Of It All’ in ’96.
New Labour had been preceded into power by a typically buoyant Thunder anthem called ‘Welcome To The Party’ (“Welcome to the party, there’s a new kid in town/Looking like a million, gonna bring our burden down”), but deeper moments like ‘Pilot Of My Dreams’ and ‘Hotter Than The Sun’ confirmed the maturing of their sound. Yet proud as Thunder (and their new recruit, ex-Then Jericho/Go West bassist Chris Childs) were of their status as a band of the people, they soon discovered that it didn’t cut both ways. While the audience lapped up the more cabaret moments of their live performance, it became increasingly difficult to remind some that they were serious. That said, ‘The Thrill Of It All’ still sold 30,000 copies in just a month.

“When anyone tells me that Axl Rose is a complete nutter, I find it quite hard to believe”
Luke Morley

“Luke and Danny have always been perfectly matched. They should probably get married…?”
Harry James

IS IT A BIRD? A BULLET TRAIN? A STREET-FIGHTING MAN?
No, it’s Thunder’s loony drummer Harry James

We asked Luke Morley and Danny Bowes to relate their favourite stories about Thunder’s eccentric percussionist and Crystal Palace supporter, Gary ‘Harry’ James.

Luke: “One morning after the night before in Tokyo we travelled by Bullet Train to Osaka. H was in a terrible state, and on the way to the station he threw up a full litre of orange juice into a plastic bag. On the platform, a fan approached for an autograph. H passed the punter the still-full plastic bag and proceeded to sign the guy’s albums.
“The train arrived, H took back the puke-filled bag – anybody else would have left the hapless punter with the offending bag! – and stepped onboard. A young Japanese girl greeted him. As the automatic door opened, H’s whole body convulsed and evil-looking bright orange vomit spewed forth. Trying not to soak this poor girl, he turned his head left and sent another stream into the First Class carriage, which was populated by horrified businessmen. Time stood still for a couple of seconds and then H looked up, wiped his mouth and said, ‘Sorry about that, I don’t feel very well’, then took his seat, lit up a B&H and said, ‘That’s better’.”