KaiserKillers On the Making Of “Saints Preserve Us (25 Mix)”
Credit: © KaiserKillers
How did you come up with the idea?
Johnny from KaiserKillers: “Saints Preserve Us” began as the kernel of a song way back many years ago when I was in a band called the Chaos Brothers, a long, long time ago. This song and another one called “Love Conquers All” were kind of rejected by the band for being too nice! They were both revived and became the first two singles from KaiserKillers and this is the remix of SPU for 2025.
How did you approach the arrangement and composition of the music for "Saints Preserve Us (25 Mix)?"
The chorus and ‘hook’ were in my head, but it wasn’t much use in there, so Andy helped to externalise the song and give it some structure, adding guitar and bass parts. For the remix, I added new guitar and Stix put down a new drum track. The remix was done by Francis Gorini at London Mastering Studio, with input from me.
What did you enjoy most about making "Saints Preserve Us (25 Mix)?"
One cunning part of the song’s arrangement was where we added a glam rock stomp, by recording Andy jumping up and down on a bread board in his kitchen, that was fun! It was also good to hear the new re-mixed version, which addressed some of the mixing issues of the original recording and allowed us to re-amp the guitar tracks through some pukka Orange amplification!
Can you tell us more about you as a band?
We are old geezers by any measure and have been in and around music for many more years that we care to remember! Andy and I had been in groups together before (Isolationists and Martin’s Dad), KaiserKillers began as a project to externalise all the songs that were bouncing around in my head. It then seemed to take on a life of its own!
Are there any specific themes or messages that you aim to convey through your music?
“Saints Preserve Us” and “Love Conquers All” both had a political message to convey, but really – both being big Beatles nuts – the general theme of the music is about peace and love (to directly quote a quite famous drummer…), oh and girls. And cars and motorcycles. And if we can throw a bit about America, we often will, it's where we would like our music to be most favourably received…
