DANNY BOWES & LUKE MORLEY THUNDER
The story of Thunder is really the story of singer Danny Bowes and guitarist Luke Morley. Not just musically, but also in terms of personality, determination, even destiny. They are blood brothers who have known each other since they were 11 years old. You can’t really understand the story of Thunder unless you know the story of their friendship.
We meet on a sunny afternoon at a hotel in London where the roof-level bar area comes equipped with hot tub, rock soundtrack and posters of Jimi Hendrix. Danny and Luke, as bona fide rock stars, both belong here yet look somehow strangely out of place. They don’t buy all this rockcool stuff. They never have. It’s one of the many reasons Thunder fans still love them so much.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the release of their scene-setting debut album, Back Street Symphony. To mark the occasion in September they release Thunder: The Greatest Hits, and in October Danny and Luke undertake a 16-date UK tour titled Unplugged & Unscripted, in which they will perform acoustic versions of some of their best-known songs and be interviewed on stage by this writer. There are some full-on Thunder shows scheduled too, and a new album planned for 2020.
What are your first memories of knowing each other?
Danny Bowes: We were sitting opposite each other in the vestibule of our school, both there for our interviews, because it was a Direct Grant school. It was a bit Tom Brown’s School Days.
Luke Morley: One above a grammar school, but not quite a public school. So there were no boarders but there was a board of governors and all that stuff. So you had to be ‘selected’.
: Or rejected, depending on the answers you gave at the interview. He was there with his mum and I was there with my mum. I’d been pretty much forced at gunpoint to have all my hair chopped off. I used to have really long hair. When I was eight years old, I was shaved bald by a blind pensioner, who used to do cheap haircuts from an air raid shelter down the bottom of his garden on the council estate where I lived. And it scarred me. After that every time they tried to make me have a haircut I ran out.
