SAXON's BIFF BYFORD undergoes successful hernia operation
02-12-2024
Vocalist Biff Byford of British heavy metal legends SAXON underwent a successful hernia operation on Friday, November 29 at Duchy Hospital, a private hospital in Harrogate, United Kingdom.
Last weekend (Saturday, November 30), Biff took to his social media to write: “Hi. Had an hernia operation yesterday. Big thanks to the team at Duchy Harrogate. I’ve had this thing for years. Getting it sorted before the tour.
“Uk Ireland shows just went on sale. They sold out last time so get your tickets early they’re selling quick.
“Keep the faith and have a good Christmas”.
Earlier this year, Duchy Hospital was recognized at the highest level by The independent regulator for the Care and Quality Commission (CQC). The U.K. national healthcare watchdog described the 27-bedroom hospital in Harrogate, which is part of the Circle Health Group, as Good in all five domains with safe, effective and well-led services.
This past August, Biff underwent a “procedure” to treat atrial flutter, a type of heart rhythm abnormality, or arrhythmia, that causes the heart’s upper chambers (atria) to beat too quickly. The operation was performed by Dr. Jane Caldwell, a consultant cardiologist at Spire Hull And East Riding Hospital, a private hospital in Hull, East Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Back in December 2021, Biff told Full In Bloom in an interview that he had made modest dietary changes in the two years after he suffered a heart attack and underwent an emergency triple bypass surgery. “A little bit,” he said. “I don’t eat dairy anymore. I suppose I’ll eat an occasional piece of cheese, but I don’t eat dairy anymore because of the cholesterol level thing. But pretty much (everything) else, I haven’t really changed. We’ll have a veggie week some weeks where my wife will just put vegetarian food all week, which is a bit of a change, really, and it gets rid of toxic things in your body. But I haven’t really changed that much, to tell you the truth.”
The now-73-year-old singer went on to say that he has added 16:8 intermittent fasting to his lifestyle, a type of dieting where people fast during a portion of the week and then eat on the other days. The 16:8 type of intermittent fasting involves eating only during a specific right-hour period each day.
“I will do that,” Biff said. “I mean, I did do that today, actually. I didn’t have lunch until 2 o’clock and I’ll eat dinner at 7:30 and then I try not to have anything else until the next day. So most of your fasting is done while you’re asleep; that’s how it’s supposed to work. What you try and do is eat all your meals in the eight hours. Don’t go stupid. And then if you go to bed at, say, 11 o’clock and get up at eight or seven, then you had nearly eight hours in bed. A lot of people do it. It’s quite positive. I think it’s a bit easier than some diets.
“If you don’t eat until the morning until quite late, you definitely feel a hit of energy,” he explained. “And you’re also quite hungry, so you appreciate the food (that you are eating). Keeping to it is difficult sometimes, obviously. You want a glass of wine or you want a beer or something; you’re always being tempted with these things.”
According to Biff, he still drinks alcohol occasionally. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “A couple of glasses of wine some nights, it’s no problem. As long as you’re not drinking two bottles of wine, it’s fine.”
More than four years ago, Byford described his heart attack to Planet Rock, saying “it wasn’t like a Hollywood heart attack, (where) you drop on the floor with your legs up in the air. I was biking, I was on my bike — I do a lot of biking and walking. And I was getting a bit breathless. And I went to the doctor. They sent me in to the hospital straight away. One of my arteries was getting blocked. They couldn’t get to it easily; it was risky. So they gave me a heart bypass. And so while they were in there, they did all three… So, yeah, they did all three. And then I came to, and that was it. I was really ill.”
A heart bypass surgery, or coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery, is used to improve blood flow to the heart. A surgeon uses blood vessels taken from another area of the body to bypass the damaged arteries.
The term triple bypass refers to the number of coronary arteries bypassed in the procedure. In other words, a triple bypass means three coronary arteries are bypassed.
In the beginning of 2024 SAXON have release the official lyric video for “Witches Of Salem”, the fourth single from the band’s critically acclaimed 24th studio album, “Hell, Fire And Damnation”, which came out on January 19 via Silver Lining Music.
Watch the official lyric video for “Witches Of Salem” below.
“Hell, Fire And Damnation” is an album which sees SAXON investigate all areas of history and mystery amidst ten of their most confident and thunderously powerful songs yet. In “Witches Of Salem”, lead singer and founding member Biff Byford explores the unjust condemnation of the women victimized at the Salem witch trials and the sheer bigotry and mass hysteria prevalent at the time.
“This is an American story, but the witch trials started in Scotland, spread into England and across the sea to the colonies in America. Those poor women in Salem,” explains Byford, “they weren’t ‘witches’ more than just unfortunate women, really, blamed for everybody’s ailments… whether your horse died, or the milk went sour, they blamed women. Maybe because they were jealous of them, or maybe it was because some guy had made some advances and she’d told him to piss off, so he’d declare that she was a witch. And once a person was declared a witch, I don’t think there was any way back from that; very few of them were found innocent.”
Produced by Andy Sneap (JUDAS PRIEST, EXODUS, ACCEPT) and Byford, with Sneap mixing and mastering, “Hell, Fire And Damnation” strides the perfect line between confident, current power, and gloriously irreverent flexing of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal muscle which SAXON co-created.
“I think this album’s one of the best he’s done sound-wise, and he’s done a lot of albums,” Biff declared. “It has a really raw, vibrant sound… if you compress the total time making this album, it was four weeks tops… you can hear everything brilliantly, nothing’s overcomplicated, nothing’s over compressed. The guitar sounds are fucking immense, they’re just great, raw guitar sounds. And we haven’t done a lot of overdubbing on there, it’s just playing. I really, really like it.”
SAXON will join forces with URIAH HEEP for the “Hell, Fire & Chaos – The Best Of British Rock & Metal” U.S. tour, set to kick off on April 23 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Earlier this month, BBC News, reported that founding SAXON bassist Stephen “Steve” Dawson has been jailed for repeatedly abusing a six-year-old girl in the 1990s.
The 72-year-old, who was a member of SAXON until 1985, when he was kicked out of the band, got the verdict at an earlier hearing at Sheffield Crown Court on March 21, and was given a five-year custodial sentence on April 11.
The officer in charge of the case, Detective Constable Robert Heath, said Dawson “thought he had got away with committing these horrific crimes against a young, vulnerable victim 30 years ago.
“She has shown extraordinary strength through coming forward,” he added. “It is clear that his evil acts have remained with her throughout her life, and I hope this sentence goes some way to allowing her to move on from these traumatic events.”
Discussing the charge, Heath assured that the case “demonstrates just how seriously we take these offenses,” urging others who have “been subject to any offense, no matter how long ago it happened, to come forward and report it to us.”
He concluded: “We are here to listen, investigate, and bring the perpetrators before courts.”
A few years ago, Dawson told Rhino about how he reacted to being fired from SAXON: “I was sort of sad and relieved in one hit, if you can understand that. I went straight into recording with a guitarist who Phil Lynott had been working with just before he died, and we started making music. Everything was going great, I’d really been enjoying myself, and then all of a sudden the money stops and you end up in court. It all just sort of fizzled out then. I was just getting back to being a well-known musician, but I was broke. (Laughs) Which is sort of a familiar story. So I just sort of bummed around a bit, and then after about two years, I just quit the music business. When it got to the point where the guys were turning up to take the house away and all me furniture, I just thought, ‘I’ve got to do something with real people instead of time-wasters.’ So I just gave the music business up, really, and I became a stripper. Not a stripper as in taking my clothes off. (Laughs) Removing paint from objects.”
In 1999 Dawson and fellow original SAXON member Graham Oliver registered “SAXON” as a trademark, maintaining that they had exclusive rights in the name and tried to prevent singer Biff Byford and SAXON‘s promoters and merchandisers from using the name. In 2003, Dawson and Oliver reached a settlement with Byford and guitarist Paul Quinn over the usage of the SAXON name and logos belonging to the original partnership.
OLIVER/DAWSON SAXON, consisting of Oliver and Dawson, acknowledged that the band featuring Byford and Quinn would continue to be known as “SAXON“, and have use of the logo. In return, Byford and Quinn acknowledged that OLIVER/DAWSON SAXON had a legitimate use of the name in that form.
Stephen Dawson: Saxon founder member jailed for child sex offences https://t.co/M96QJLCW3M
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) April 12, 2024
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