Saxon singer Biff Byford is not a man easily given to outpourings of emotion. In that sense he is as much a quintessential Yorkshireman as cricket legend Geoffrey Boycott. But when Byford talks about the day that inspired his band’s biggest hit, his face lights up. “It was magical,” he says.
That day, August 16, 1980 was when Saxon appeared at the first Monsters Of Rock festival at Donington Park in Leicestershire. And the reaction they got from the 60,000-strong crowd had a huge effect on Byford. “It was something that hit you like a flash of light,” he says. “So you write a song about it.”
