The following is an excerpt from an interview that appeared in the October 1983 edition of Canadian Musician Magazine shortly before the release of the Riders On Dark Horses album. For the full interview, a back issue may be purchased here. Bruce McPhee (BM) interviews Ian Thomas (IT) in Ian's basement.
BM:	What have you done since your last album, The Runner?
IT:	I've written a lot. I'm working on a TV script for a special on myself. I did my first acting job on a commercial a couple of weeks ago. I'm writing the theme for the Bob and Doug (McKenzie – Strange Brew) movie right now. They phoned me on Thursday and (brother) Dave didn't want to use me because he didn't want it to look like favouritism in the family. But basically what they had submitted they disliked so much that everybody on the crew said, "Why don't you use your brother?" So I get called and I get a week to do it.
BM:	Do you still have fun with music?
IT:	Yeah, I do, although I didn't find writing this new album fun. It is a bit of an about-face. You look at The Runner, the last album, and it was all pretty slickly recorded pop songs. I didn't want as much of a pop album this time.
BM:	Where were the difficulties?
IT:	Every time I started to write a song, it'd be, "Oh Jesus, I've heard that before." I was getting nowhere in that every time I started getting into a tune, it would be, "Oh, this doesn't sound fresh to me at all." I guess it comes down to what you really like and what you're able to write are two different things. So, it takes you awhile to get out of old habits, what you're used to writing and more where your tastes are. I like a lot of the stuff that's pushing the perimeters; I like the Peter Gabriel (Security) album. I liked Avalon a lot, the Roxy Music album. I guess I generally like things that aren't that mainstream because unfortunately mainstream is so derivative. About the only area mainstream seems to work, in terms of composition, is with the AC/DCs. That sort of R&R will always be around simply because it's "don't-give-a-crap-rock." From that standpoint it works great. I like AC/DC records. When I wrote The Runner, I was into the Doobie's Minute By Minute album and that sort of L.A. sound, and I've since gone totally off that. That bores me, that's getting close to elevator music to me.
BM:	Where would you like to go, in the direction of Gabriel and Roxy Music?
IT:	I don't want my writing to emulate any of those. I want my writing to sound at least unique. I don't want it to sound derivative of a particular style.
BM:	How important is the songwriting success? For instance two of your tunes, Hold On and Chains were hits last year with Santana and Chicago.
IT:	Financially, it's lucrative. But, it's funny when you hear those things on the radio, everyone says, "You must feel really good hearing those things covered." I don't, 'cause 9 times out of 10, I preferred my versions. And yet, Stateside, they got the releases and I didn't and that bugs me. So from that standpoint, it was, "Yeah, all right." It made me realize how much I value being a recording artist versus how much I value being just a songwriter. I've already had offers to cover material from this new album, and I'm saying, "No, they're for me first and if I strike out, then they can have them." So what I think I'll do from here on in, is write some of the songs that I seem to have to write and ship them off to other artists and try to make albums that please me a little more. I have a publishing representative in Los Angeles by the name of John Lombardo and he has long been a believer in my tunes and me as an artist, so it really was easy for him to push something he believed in. He's one of the few working publishers there are. A lot of publishers are just basically collection offices. And in terms of actively getting out and publishing, they don't do that at all. There's maybe one or two good working publishers around.
BM:	How come Calabash or Still Here didn't break you in the States?
IT:	I don't know why that is. You constantly hear artists blaming everyone else but I don't think anybody can wear the blame. I think it's a combination of things. For instance with the Calabash album we basically had no product in stores, there was no major tour lined up to promote it. With Still Here it was the same problem. Still Here had airplay all over FM and it was getting pretty heavy airplay a lot of places. But with nothing in the stores, how do you justify possible further airplay or chart positions. So that's one side. The other side is, that if there had been enough demands placed upon the record stores from anxious buyers, then records would hopefully have made it through. Supply and demand. Maybe, it just wasn't in the grooves, maybe there was something wrong with my production.
BM:	On this album you've had assistance in the production chores for the first time in a long time. You've brought in Mick Ronson and then Max Norman.
IT:	Max Norman is great. It's taken me a long time to actually meet someone who had aggressive, positive input into my tunes. I have produced more out of not being able to find the right guy than out of desire. I engineered for the same reason. I heard things in my head a certain way, I didn't like the way other people were doing it, so I had to put my nose in on the board. I engineered this album, I engineered the last one, I engineered the Glider album. It was all out of frustration with engineers I guess. This time around I had Max Norman in. It's great. He's got a whole different approach than me. He's toughening up some of the cuts. And it's like the first positive input I've had from outside. Mick Ronson is more, maybe a little too much, like me.
BM:	Did he not work out?
IT:	I think we were both waiting for each other to make the first move. And Mick is not a conceptual person; he sort of takes things layer by layer with the recording process. Whereas Max says, "This has got to be like this, so this is what we have to do to make it like this." It's definitely two schools of thought. The difference between the songs that I mixed with Mick, and that Max is doing now, is night and day. Totally different songs, for the better, I think they sound great. Max is basically taking some tunes, editing, restructuring and getting into a lot of very, very British mix ideas. You see, I think I had to work with an engineer/producer. Mick is just basically a musician/producer. We really are into a heavy engineering era right now. People don't want good clear sounds. People want bizarre, interesting, unusual sounds. Everyone is getting reverbs on snares and that sort of thing. I think that's what's made the whole business interesting all of a sudden. When I started writing this album, music was boring, it really was. It reached a point where everything I heard on the radio... (raspberry sound effects), give me a break. But right now I can list off some great records. Blinded Me With Science, just great. Interesting sounds, interesting production. New David Bowie single, interesting sounds, interesting production. Right down to Puttin' on the Ritz. Two years ago that never would have had airplay. We were into that whole mainstream Foreigner thing, where everyone was a Foreigner clone. It seems now maybe the program directors are opening up a little. God knows their formats have been a little narrow, to say the least, for the last few years. And I think that's helping open the market up. They had to open up a bit because the market was opening up without them.
BM:	Does this give you hope for your own success?
IT:	I've always had hope for myself. I'm basically an optimist. I'm always working in future tense.
BM:	Is there anything lacking in today's music in your opinion?
IT:	Yes. I think what is lacking in the North American market is a little adventure. We're always looking to Great Britain for what's going to come next. Whereas here we're much more monetarily oriented, and we say, "That made a lot of money, let's write one of those."
The rest of the interview is available in the October 1983 edition of Canadian Musician Magazine. It may be purchased here.