Danny Bowes, vocalist of rock band Thunder spoke to Leona Graham on the latest episode of her podcast, released on 12th May 2025, about life after his life-threatening illness and accident in 2022, which is currently preventing him from singing.
“My brain thinks I've got something stuck in my throat. I haven't. So I can sing the loud bits, I can sing the quiet bits, but I can't join them together. I can't do those transitions. So until I can, it is really difficult to contemplate the idea of being able to singing again, but I am working on it. I'm doing my level best.”
Danny also tells us some exclusive stories from his and the band’s past, including the time he inadvertently saved his bandmate’s life, after he nearly froze to death whilst on tour, and a first-time public confession about getting revenge on his local Cubs group at the age of nine.
Transcription of the full interview below.
A Side
How did you discover that you had a singing voice and specifically a voice suited to heavy rock?
That's a very good question. Um, I dunno whether I can remember that far back. I'll be honest with you. I was 15 years old and I was mad keen on music, spent all my money. I had a Saturday job, I had a paper round. I did all kinds of stuff to earn money and I spent all my money on records and the moment I could go to concerts, concert tickets. And I can remember being in school, and Luke, the guitar player from Thunder, who is my best mate and has been for many, many years. He invited people down to his house. The rest of them sat in a room, smoking himself to death and not being a smoker, never had any desire to be a smoker, I was then banished to Luke's bedroom where I sat, and in the bedroom was a drum kit. And this was probably the cheapest drum kit you could get from the Freeman's catalog, you know, 30 pence a week for all of your life. But this thing, to me was like a thing of beauty. There were sparks coming off of it. I could hear ethereal voices. It was ridiculous. And it affected me so much so that I couldn’t think of anything else for the rest of the day. We went back to school, lessons were all going on, all I can think about as a drum kit and I came to the conclusion that in order to be near this thing - and I had no real interest or desire to learn an instrument even if I could afford to buy one - so I came to the conclusion that I'd have to be a singer because you didn't need any money to do that.
So just completely by default, that was it? Not because you had a singing voice?
Nope, I didn't. I never sang out loud. At all until the next day or the next day. I engineered it so that I would get an audition. I sat next to Luke in an economics lesson. Never forget it. And while the teacher was writing things on the board, I would basically whisper to him, ‘I'm a singer. I'm a singer’. And he whispered back me, ‘no, you're not’. And then he swore at me and this went on for about 20 minutes. And it just got worse and worse and worse till in the end, outta sheer desperation, I said, ‘I've got a microphone’. And his ears pricked up - 15 years old, it's in the seventies, nobody has got any money, nobody's got any gear. And for me to tell him I had a microphone. Made him think, well, he must be serious. I didn't have a microphone. I lied, but I just had to find a way to make it happen. And that's basically what happened. I borrowed a microphone from my uncle and um, that was that. And I went home afterwards and then I couldn't speak for about four days.
What, nerves or excitement?
No, I'd just been shouting my head off into this microphone for hours.
So you made yourself hoarse?
Yeah, I had, I mean, it's been a perennial problem for me all my life. And I never got to be the singer for weeks afterwards because Luke already had a singer and he was too frightened to tell him that he wasn't gonna be the singer anymore.
Was that Terraplane?
No, no, that was before that. The band was called Nothing Fancy, named after the Leonard Skynyrd album and never was a truer expression said, because we were absolute rubbish.
So when did Terraplane come along?
82. 82 was the beginning of Terra Plane.
So do you think if you just started with Thunder in the eighties, it would've been different for you? Because I know you said before that you came along as a rock band in the nineties when grunge came along and rock was a bit like, oh, we don't like this anymore. So it was a difficult time for you really as a band.
I think you're right. But I don't think you necessarily think about it that way. Had we started Thunder 87, 86, we might have been a bit more established and able to weather the grunge storm better. But that's like hindsight 2020 vision. You know, I mean, you just, you're in the moment, you're doing your thing, you're getting on with it. And to be honest with you. When the magazines are like Thunder Weekly, which is what it was in it from 89 to 92, it was, you know, it was very difficult to say, well, it could be better than this, you know? It was very, very good. Yeah, we had a really, really, really nice time. I mean, so nice. A lot of it we can't even talk about, honestly.
Oh, I'd love to know these stories.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're never gonna hear them. No, no, no. They're never gonna get spoken about.
When you went on your first tour, you called it The Toilet Tour? Any reason and what was that tour like?
The tour itself was fantastic. It was named The Toilet Tour because most of the venues were a bit like toilets, but I remember we played a place called the Duchess of York in Leeds and we were opening for Tony Ts McPhee, whatever the band that was called. And um, they took exception to us naming this The Toilet Tour. 'cause we had our t-shirts that said the toilet on the back. And uh, yeah, they took exception. We almost had a punch up in the venue. I remember. Yeah, yeah. ‘I mean, this is our life. This is, this is what we do.’ And we were thinking, yeah, well maybe that's what you do, but we are not gonna stay here. You know? We are not. And we didn't, luckily, so it all worked out all right. But I remember that was a particularly bad experience.
Yeah. 'cause you guys have got a good sense of humour, having met Luke as well, but did your fans get your humour?
I think so, yeah. From the get go, we've always been very lucky, especially in Japan. They love the irony, the British sense of irony, you know? I mean, they seize upon the things that you say. And quote them back at you over and over again. I mean, it’s absolutely amazing. But the Japanese especially get it.
B Side
Now, as many listeners will know, you had a serious illness back in 2022. You’ve been on a road to recovery for more than two years of rehab. Where are you at with your recovery now?
In a nutshell, I had a stroke at a party. I said to my wife, I don't feel very well, and had go to bed about midnight. And we got back to our room fine. She's tottering around on her high heels. I get to the room okay. At the top of the stairs, she’s fiddling with the key to get into the room and just sees me fall backwards down the stairs. And then I ended up being taken to hospital where they operated on me for about five hours.
And then they were like, actually, you had a stroke, that’s what caused this?
Nobody knew it at the beginning. It was only afterwards that, because where I hit my head was directly on top of where the stroke had taken place. It was only afterwards when they put it together that they realised both of the things had happened. So it wasn't a, uh, straightforward situation. Yeah. And I can't honestly say I've had a fun time over the last three years. It's not been fun.
So you can't sing at the moment or anything?
No, no. I ended up with a thing, it's known as Globus Pharyngis. And nobody really knows what causes it, and nobody knows what makes it go away. They think it must be to do with a traumatic event. It's like fake news for the brain. My brain thinks I've got something stuck in my throat. I haven't. So I can sing the loud bits, I can sing the quiet bits, but I can't join them together. I can't do those transitions. So until I can, it is really difficult to contemplate the idea of being able to singing again, but I am working on it. I'm doing my level best.
But in the meantime, you have a spoken word tour called Maximum Chat.
As you might have gathered, I do chat.
How do you feel about doing a solo show for the first time?
Between you, Leona? I am petrified. I've never done anything on my own before. Ever.
But as you said talking, you feel comfortable talking. So have you got like a structure to the evening or you just taking questions?
It's gonna be a bit of both, I think. I think there's gonna be some stories from my life. I mean, that's the way I conceived the idea.
Have you got a story you can share with us that is quite exclusive for the podcast?
Perhaps there was a time - I remember early on in the band's career when - you know what it's like if, if you're in a band, you have to put up with a certain amount of discomfort, jump in the van, go play somewhere, have a great show, sleep in the van, go home. And, uh, we did a tour like that one. And, um, the reality was not anything like as good as the idea and the band reasoned that me being the singer, they couldn't have afford for me to lose my voice, so I had to go and sleep in the guest house while some of the other band members would sleep in the van, and they kind of took it in turns to rotate some in the van, some in the guest house. But I got to be in the guest house, which I have to say I'm very grateful for. Apart from the fact that when you jumped into the bed of a nighttime, the sheets were all Bri-Nylon. And so you were really lucky if you didn't get electrocuted. That's the truth. You could get outta bed, see sparks, you know? Yeah, yeah. It was just mad. But the weird thing was, it was in Wales, I'll never forget it - we went back to the guest house in the middle of the night having been locked in the venue by the guys who owned it. And, uh, they wouldn't let us out. And we got out at three in the morning drunk and we ended up going back to our guest house and we'd warned the lady that we'd be late and we jumped into these Bri-Nylon-sheeted beds and electrocuted ourselves. And, uh, all the while knowing that Harry, our drummer, was asleep in the van in a sleeping bag on a mattress of some kind. And the next morning, I kid you not, it was freezing cold overnight. And he's sleeping in a rock hard transit van. Yeah. And the next morning we opened the back door, because he couldn't get out, we had to lock him in. And we unlocked the van and we looked at him, and I'm not joking, he was blue, his face was blue. And uh, we had to take him down the cafe. And pour sweet tea in him just to try and get his colour back. Honestly, this is the truth. It probably took about half an hour and about six cups of tea before his colour came back.
And was he asleep when he opened the van?
No, no, no, no. He was just laying in the van shivering in a sleeping bag. Like, you know, he couldn't even get out, honestly. He would've died in there, yeah, if we'd left him too long. I'm not gonna talk about it on the tour, so you can have that as an exclusive.
What did it mean to you and Thunder to get your first support slot with Aerosmith in 1989?
We didn't believe that we would get it. Tell you a story about that - the Aerosmith police used to go around making sure there was no booze in the building. And uh, of course we get the gig, you know, and here we are, we show up and then someone says, ‘this is a dry tour.’ We said, ‘what? This is a dry tour?’ And we said, ‘no, no, no. Think again.’ You know, there's a lot of swearing and cursing going on. So we had to smuggle our drink into the venues. And we were told that if anybody was caught with any kind of booze, they would get fired. Which was just for us, like grist to the mill. It was like red rag to a bull, you know? It just made us even more inventive in terms of the way we did it. But the weird thing was we had loads of people in the dressing room every night as a result.
So how did you get it in?
Well, we smuggled it in, we smuggled it in flight cases, and we wheeled them through to the dressing room.
And then where did you hide it when you got there?
Well, you know, behind chairs, you know. In the sink, in the shower. I mean, anywhere you could think of doing it, you know, in your bag, wherever you could put it. You know, you drink it in secret, make sure there was no one looking, shove it down your throat quick. But that was what we had to do.
Bonus Tracks
First song you ever performed?
I would suggest, it's very hard to know because it was a long time ago, but I would say Jumping Jack Flash.
First artist or band that you loved?
David Bowie, without a doubt. Luke had a copy of a Aladdin Sane and I took it home and it blew my mind. I then decided I had to get that album and I had to walk five miles to the record shop to buy it. And when I got there, I was 10 pence short. It was £2.39, the album, I'll never forget it, and the lady in the record shop said ‘it's only £2.29’. So I said, ‘well I've had to walk five miles’. And she said, ‘okay’, not helping. She wasn't gonna help me so I had to walk five miles home. Get the other 10p. Five miles there, five miles back. Give her the £2.39. 20 miles to get this bloody record.
Have you still got it?
Yeah.
Which name is better Terraplane or Thunder?
Thunder. Big, loud and simple. That's what we elected with at the time. Terraplane came from a car. Our manager came up with the idea, a Hudson Terraplane was a car back in the day. And a terrible, terrible idea. But, you know, it was the best idea we had at the time, and it was the eighties after all.
What was your best or worst subject at school?
Science, obviously the worst one. I was no good at that. I mean, I was always setting fight or something, or make your things explode or getting chucked outta class, you know, I was rubbish at science.
When was the first time you got into trouble at school or life in general?
In trouble? I burnt a scout hut down. When I was nine, they wouldn't let me join the Cubs. They said I was unsuitable to join the Cubs. So, uh, with a friend we decided we were gonna burn a scout hut down, and we did. And, uh, I don't feel better for it. It's got to be said.
Did you ever get caught for that?
No.
Is this a first confession?
It is.
Have you ever said before?
I might have told my wife but she probably wasn't listening anyway.
So this is a first public confession, we’ve got an exclusive here.
