Three Priests & a Megadethie walk into a club ...

[uwe]

The mind boggles, I never thought I'd hear anything from Les Binks again, much less with KK and Ripper ...









Stuff Priest never even did (admittedly, this always sounded like a Scorpions ballad ):

[westen44]

You're right.  "Before the Dawn" does remind me of the Scorpions.  I lean more toward the songs before that that were more aggressive, but that one was good, too. 

[doombass]

I tend to favour the Les Binks-era. I like his swingy drumming which unfortunately (yet fortunately for the band considering they took off commercially without him) the others steered away from when rehearsing for British Steel. They simply asked Les if he could play more straight drums. He simply refused to and was kicked out.

[uwe]

The reasons for the departure of Les Binks are somewhat lost in the mists of time, Halford, Tipton and KK have all professed to "not exactly know" why he left. "it was a management thing ...", but apparently the "he played too complicated" is a myth:

• Binks was a renowned session drummer, he could play glam rock- or disco-simple. That is him drumming here,
  the black drummer in the below vid is just miming ...
  
  
  
  to add some bi-racial allure ...
  
  
  
  ... the band in question, one- or two-hit wonders Fancy [Les Binks, Ray Fenwick & Mo Foster, none of them black]
  
  
  
  were a manufactured ensemble around - here in the arms of a visibly elated Les Binks -
  
  
  
  former professional PENTHOUSE model and, uhum, amateur very breathy singer Helen Caunt - please: no juvenile jokes about her last name, all five letters are vital!)
  
  
  
  or he could drum with more sophistication if required (Binks together with, again, Foster and Fenwick constituted the Roger Glover's Butterfly Ball cornerstone band - with various guests joining and leaving for individual songs - throughout the evening of the seminal performance):
  
  
  
  The first JP recordings he heard were those with Simon Phillips who had turned Sin After Sin into a sort of demonstration drum clinic record  (not a knock, I love Sin After Sin and the drumming on it, it was my first contact with Priest), with some trepidation he began to copy Simon's drum parts thinking at first they were outside his capabilities, but it worked for the tour - which Simon couldn't do to commitments to the Jack Bruce Band. The album after Sin After Sin was Stained Class which to this day ranks as Priest's most progish work, Bink's more elaborate drumming was just right there. Killing Machine/Hellbent for Leather was eclectic too (it even had disco influences - think of the track Burning Up), Binks mastered again every track.
• With JP, Binks wasn't a member, he was on a monthly retainer and had signed for specific studio albums and tours. There was no agreement whether Unleashed In The (Y)East was a free add-on to the Japanese tour (JP management view) or should be compensated separately (Binks' view), Binks demanded more money and out he went.
• After the demise of Trapeze, which had never really earned any money, fellow-Brummie Dave Holland (never a real Priest band member either) did not ask too many questions and knuckled down to the job. If that meant playing like Phil Rudd because Priest-producer Tom Allom wanted that sound, then so be it. Truth is: Listen to any Trapeze album and you'll realize that Dave Holland (credited by Glenn Hughes as a "the premier Brit funk drummer" of the time) was not a simplistic drummer at all, he just did it for Priest. That's him here then as well.