Biff Byford

Biff Byford is Saxon's singer and co-founder, and the only member present throughout the band's history, from 1976 to the present. Born in Honley, Yorkshire, in 1951, he came from a mining family and worked in the pits before making a living from music — an origin that appears explicitly in the lyrics he writes. His voice is the opposite of the shrillness the genre usually associates with British heavy metal. Byford sings in a mid-to-high register, with clear diction and his northern English accent intact, and sustains long notes without resorting to a scream. It is a delivery of force rather than of altitude, and it gave Saxon the working-class identity that set it apart within the NWOBHM: where Iron Maiden sang mythology and Judas Priest sang power, Saxon sang lorries, motorbikes, factories and the crowd at the gig. He fronted the band on Wheels of Steel (1980), Strong Arm of the Law (1980) and Denim and Leather (1981) — the three albums that define the classic phase — and crossed the departure of every founder except Paul Quinn, the legal dispute over the name in the 1990s and the long rebuilding that followed. He is still recording: Hell, Fire and Damnation (2024) is the twenty-sixth studio album. He also released the solo record School of Hard Knocks (2020) and the memoir Never Surrender.