LES BINKS - DRUMS AND VOCALS

Former drummer for Eric Burdon, James Leslie Binks was a drummer on the 1974 Roger Glover album The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast, which featured such legendary names as David Coverdale, Glenn Hughes, and Ronnie James Dio behind the microphone. The album started out as a soundtrack for an animated film based on a famous book in England. Glover used different singers for the different characters, but a promo for the film never gained any interest, so the project was scrapped. Glover went on to release the soundtrack as a 'Roger Glover and Friends' title.

Vocalist Eddie Hardin co-wrote three of the album's songs with Roger Glover and then went on to release his own written and produced projects, the first of which was 1976's Eddie Hardin's Wizard's Convention, which again included Binks on drums with David Coverdale and Deep Purple's Jon Lordon piano. Both Butterfly Ball and Wizard's Convention have been placed together and re-released several times as a combo CD, and Japan's Teichiku label issued their own 1995 CD compilation titled Best of Rare Collection and sold it as a Deep Purple album. Through the Roger Glover connection, Judas Priest auditioned and hired Binks in time for their 1977 world tour - their first on American soil. He also played for the English band Fancy who had two US hits in 1974 with a cover of "Wild Thing", and "Touch Me".

Binks remained with Judas Priest for two years from March 1977 to July 1979, recording two studio albums and one live LP. Binks was considered a favourite amongst hardcore fans Binks has been co-credited for the song "Beyond the Realms of Death" on the Stained Class album. According to the band's memoirs he picked up one of the guitars, turned it around (since he was left-handed) and strummed the first chords of what then became the main guitar line of the song. Aptly the guitar sound of the track is very different from the output of Downing and Tipton, having a mellower "medieval ballad" kind of feel.

In 1979 Binks joined Charlie Whitney and Axis Point and remained active in the British hard rock/heavy metal underground. In 1981, he was a member of Lionheart which featured Dennis Stratton(ex-Iron Maiden) on guitar and Jess Cox (ex-Tygers Of Pan Tang) on vocals. It was only a brief stint, however, and yielded no albums, though they did open for Def Leppard on their 1981 British tour. Lately, Binks has been playing in a classic-rock cover band around South London called The Shakers with Dave Bunce, the Jeff Beck linked guitarist and ex-Alice Cooper guitarist Pete Friesen and vocalist/guitarist Tom Lundy of The Poormouth. Rounding out the band is bassist Phil Rynhart. Binks and Pete Friesen have also done time in Metalworks along with ex-Iron Maiden guitarist Tony Parsons (Tony was one of a series of guitarists that played briefly in Maiden in '79 before Dennis Stratton joined the band), playing Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and other legendary metal band covers around London.

COSMO - GUITAR

Cosmo started working professionally in the 60s when he was just 13 years old, playing some of the great old London gigs like The Bag O' Nails, The Flamingo, Tiles, Blazes, The Speakeasy, The Marquee and the infamous Top Ten Club and The Star Club in Hamburg, Germany. This caused mayhem at his school but in those days, fortunately, truancy was not so big a deal.

Moving on to establish a formidable reputation during the early to mid 70s, Cosmo toured extensively in the UK and US with the Heavy Metal Kids, and then Curtis Knight & The Squires (a former member of Jimmy Hendrix' pre-Experience band).

He has also worked with Frankie Miller, Andy Fraser (Free), Lionel Morton (The Four Pennies), David Jack (East Of Eden), Phil Lynott (Thin Lizzy), Brian Connolly (Sweet) and the legendary Jordanaires (The King's backing group) - the list is endless! Then, for no particular reason, Cosmo left the music business.