Vardis have made substanial changes to their date sheet, which now reads;
Bradford Princeville April 10
Goole Station Hotel 18
Gravesend Red Lion 19
Bishops Stortford Triad 20
Sheffield Broadfield 23
Tonypandy Naval Club May 17
Halifax Good Mood 23
Taunton Market House 31.
(Sounds, 12/04/80)
Wakefield's Electric Warriors By far the most interesting of any NWOBHM bands to come my way to date is Vardis, a rock 'n' roll power trio from Wakefield whose self-evident qualities make it easy for a New Wave hick from the sticks (like me) to sell out without feeling either 'self-conscious' or 'compromised'. So it's with great pleasure that I invite you to participate in the post-punk democratisation of UK rock by reading on . . .
Vardis. You've seen the name before in gig guides and tour news departments. The guys who are Vardis have always been prepared to do the hard way - any way - and they've busted guts to get their name into print whenever/wherever possible, and, blow by blow, got through more gigs than Ian Ravendale . . .
Vardis is blond longhair Steve Zodiac's band, and always has been. Like he says, It's as democratic as it can be, but when I'm right, I can usually prove it - the others have got confidence in me, cos I'm not often wrong".
His 'mam' gave the band's first incarnation its name - 'Quo Vardis' - when Zodiac, a former bona-fide headbanger, had graduated almost by accident from tennis rackets six years ago.
"When I left school, me mate used to come round, and we'd play Slade and mime along with tennis rackets and a sweeping brush for a mike. It got a bit frustrating after a while, so we got a guitar - to see if we could get more feeling into this mime… But I never thought I could play and couldn't see any progression. We did our first gig - a wedding reception - for a fiver, through sheer hardfaceness and nerve, after I'd got pissed out of me head. I mean, I knew we couldn't play right well, but I wanted to be up there, just to play to some people. And we went into it head first.
"Most of the gigs for the first couple of years were garbage - we were doing pop numbers like 'Ride A White Swan', 'Suffragette City' and 'Twistin' The Night Away' - and the line-up kept changing. But I used to stay in and practice all the time - it was the only thing I had - and I made it policy that every time someone left the band, I'd get a better replacement, so we'd improve. And eventually, we were pretty good. That's why we changed our name to Vardis - well, we couldn't call ourselves 'Quo', could we? - to show we'd changed. But I could never believe I was any good. I mean, people tell me I am, but I can't tell."
Zodiac - He's determined to pass this off as his real name - teamed up with bassist Alan Selway two years past, recruiting 19-year-old drummer Gary Pearson, who hadn't cut it at a previous audition, six months ago after advertising in that bastion of northern HM, The Yorkshire Post. It's only since Pearson joined that things have really come together . . .
Instrumental in getting Vardis where they are today' was Zodiac's alliance with Windsor rock entrepreneur Jane Revell, which came about through Zodiac seeing an ad for a Sledgehammer single on Ms. Revell's indie, and sending her a copy of Vardis' self-financed debut 45 (currently changing hands for £5 and upwards), '100 M.P.H.'. Hearing 'potential' in the rough and ready collector's item, Jane came up to Bradford to check out the band's live capability, and subsequently negotiated management, determining initially to invest in a single.
The outcome was the Sounds alternative chartbuster 'If I Were King', accredited with sales in excess of 5,000 and showing no signs of letting up. Recorded at Redball Studios in Market Drayton, a useful eight track set-up in the West Midlands, the single was recorded in a hurry - the B- side first, and then, pressed for time, the band plumped for a live take of 'If I Were King'.
"Nothing on it is good as it could have been," says Zodiac. "Gary had only been with us a month when we recorded it. But it was a milestone for us, and has a nice charm. Anyway, I thought if Sledgehammer could get into print, we could - and it made sense to do a song like that. "(Vardis junkies may, incidentally, care to know that Stiff are leasing 'If I Were King' for their forthcoming US HM compilation album, which, inevitably, they'll be making readily available on 'import').
As for the rest of their repertoire, Vardis aren't the easiest NWOBHM band to define. Zodiac himself doesn't see any sensible comparison with any other current combo: "Similarities with others on beat and guitars, you're going to lose on the vocals. I doubt whether anybody's got a voice like mine - or would want one. But we've got a load of really good commercial rock and roll numbers - numbers which need a good studio production and obviously weren't suitable for us to do like we did 'If I Were King'. The only thing you can say is we're more rock 'n' roll than anything else . . ."
Zodiac cites the Stones, Status Quo and Jeff Beck as premier inspirations, though Slade and contemporary glam rockers Gary Glitter and T-Rex probably gave him more to identify with 'gut response-wise'.
"I would never have picked up a guitar if it wasn't for Bolan and 'Electric Warrior' - that album was so heavy. I saw Bolan at Sheffield in the early days, and he - uh - just blew my mind. In fact, up until recently, we were playing 'Lean Woman Blues' … And I've tried to learn something offa Jeff Beck."
Zodiac accepts that HM is 'just entertainment', that it has none of New Wave's pretensions and ambitions, and that the genre's lyrics are basically- confined to 'women, horses, bikes, the road' and suchlike, but believes that cliches can be transcended.
"We want to get a different angle - and try to be original. If you don't want to try to be original, then you shouldn't be doing it Unless you're just in it for a living, which I'm not. Like, I think Motorhead are originals . . . I've seen them, and I could quite happily have banged me head to them all night . . .
"Like, we used to be billed as 'high energy rock', even during punk - in fact, I was always being asked to join punk bands - but I was into HM so much, and wasn't going to change. And we were totally knocked out when we got mentioned and had our photo in Geoff Barton's NWOBHM thing. Because, all of a sudden, someone had called our kind of music fashionable again!"
Apart from being a genuine emergent virtuoso axeman, Zodiac's well in contention for Young Businessman Of The Year, Prior to Vardis' signing to Jane Revell's management company, it was Zodiac's heavy duty trunk-calling which got his band their gigs, and earned them their reputation as one of the best gigging bands in the north. The band are already 'big' at several venues up and down the country - the Norbreck Castle, Blackpool, the Bristol Granary and Sunderland Mayfair, for instance, are all gigs which regularly get the Vardis treatment, like it, and ask for more - thanks to sheer unadulterated graft.
Zodiac's always planned the band's gigging schedules to avoid over-exposure. He didn't, for instance, want to do a recent Durham gig because the band had played Sunderland only a couple of weeks before (although, on this occasion, Pearson and Selway formed a quorum in favour of the gig, and they went), and re-bookings are frequently stalled.
"The whole thing gets stale if you overdo it," Zodiac submits. "We want people to look forward to seeing the band, rather than for us just to show up every Monday .
Over the last few months, the band has developed into a spectacularly effective live act. Visually, Zodiac's hair makes him superficially reminiscent of Johnny Winter his eyes are regular Caucasian, though) and his minimal denim threads wrap a charisma you really do expect to be hogging a piece of the action years from now.
Preserved in a lonely plait during the day, Zodiac's hair is, along with his barefoot gimmick (Identifying with the Sandie Shaw Syndrome, he 'can't concentrate in shoes'), Vardis' most distinctive trademark, and sets off the glorious, over-the- top posturing of the two-man front line as they 'headbang, freak out, and stalk around like headcases'.
In the circumstances, it comes as no big surprise to find that Logo, the label to which the band has just signed, are intending to launch the band's recording career proper with a live album - a novel idea, for sure, but one which Vardis, more so than any other new heavy band, should pull off.
And yet, chickens are not being counted. Whichever way the wind blows, 22-year old Zodiac will be involved in rock "forever. There's nothing else. If I didn't make it, I'd just go off somewhere and be a recluse - and stop doing everything. But I've got about eight or nine years to have a crack, and I'm in shape. You'll have to ask me six years from now how I feel about the way things are going - I'm not desperate just yet."
(Des Moines, Sounds, 14/06/80)
Vardis, who should have supported The Plasmatics at Hammersmith Odeon last weekend but didn't owing to explosive circumstances, will have a new single released on Logo on September 12 called 'Let's Go'.
The band's debut album, '100mph' comes out in mid October and was recorded live at various venues.
They have gigs lined up at;
Stroud Marshall Rooms August 25
Liverpool Brady's Club 26
London Music Machine September 2
Blackburn The Castle 8
Rayleigh Crocs 19.
(Sounds, 23/08/80)
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Encyclopedia 
Vardis have tacked another batch of dates on to their current tour and will be placing their sanity under sever scrutiny at;
Vardis have a compilation album released this week by Razor Records called 'The Lion's Share'. It features rare and live tracks and is 'not recommended for vegetarians'. The band, who have been involved in lengthy legal hassles with their former management, are now back in the studio recording a new album and should be touring here in the autumn after a European tour.