Swedish multi-instrumentalist Snowy Shaw has released the official lyric video for his song “If I Was King For A Day”. The track, which features guest appearances by Snowy‘s former bandmates in KING DIAMOND, Andy La Rocque and Hal Patino, can be seen below.
Snowy comments: “Are you familiar with the old proverb and expression ‘If Only I Was King For A Day’?… No? … Keep reading.
“Here’s the back story that spurred the creation of this very song.
Back in 2017 I wrote a song for my first namesake solo album ‘White Is The New Black’ called ‘Family Feud’ that has 3 verses and I had the idea of having King Diamond, Messiah and myself ‘brotherly’ sharing the vocals with one verse each and sing the rest together. King really liked the song and said he’d love to do it but the timing wasn’t ideal for him at that point and said he’d love to do something together later on. So instead I released it with me doing all voices and instruments myself, and then an alternative version that featured guest stars Joakim Brodén of SABATON, Jake E of AMARANTHE and Niklas Isfelt of DREAM EVIL sharing the vocals.
“A few years later during the dark pandemic year of 2021 I was making this very special concept where I recorded and released one single per month digitally, that would later be collected on an album titled ‘This Is Heavy Metal, Plain & Simple’. For the making of this album I’d invite a huge array of guests consisting of my teenage heroes, former bandmates and friends. Needless to say, King Diamond was at the very top of on my wish-list alongside Ken Hensley & Dan McCafferty (who both sadly passed away before their participation). I presented a song for King but also this time around he had to decline due to the fact that (like he explained) he hadn’t released any new KD album in 15 years at that point and the record company would probably kill him if he appeared on someone else’s. Fair enough, a fully understandable point and I just dropped the whole idea.
“A while later I was watching some old movie one night when I heard the phrase uttered ‘If only I was king for a day’. Wow! That’s a cool phrase I thought to myself and instantly my little grey cells started working… what if… ? So based on that title alone I wrote the song & lyrics as a tribute with what I considered a funny twist.. To my ears it came out sounding a bit like the era around ‘Fatal Portrait’/‘Abigail’, and since I had guests for all other tracks on this special album concept why make an exception here? I figured what could possibly be more perfect than to have both Andy and Michael Denner for a trade-off guest solo appearance on this song? I approached them both and introduced my idea with a rough mix of my recording and they both agreed to do it. Andy delivered his trademark solo contribution in no time (no-brainer, really, as he’s the owner of Sonic Train Studios). It was however a little more tricky with Denner who at the time had no recording options or for that matter not a lot of time at his disposal and I was on a tight deadline, so sadly in the end he had no choice but to opt out and I ended up using the guide leads I had quickly recorded just to examplify the trade-off parts. I still wanted more involvement from the KING/MERCYFUL camp so I got hold of my good friend Hal Patino to re-record the bass guitar for it, which he gladly and rapidly did.”
Snowy is perhaps best known for his work as the drummer for KING DIAMOND and MERCYFUL FATE. But he is also a vocalist and a multi-instrumentalist who has played with such bands as THERION, MEMENTO MORI, NOTRE DAME, DREAM EVIL and DIMMU BORGIR.
Shaw‘s autobiography, “The Book Of Heavy Metal”, came out in 2020. Named after his most popular anthem to date, written for former band DREAM EVIL, the book’s foreword was penned by Shaw‘s longtime friend, youth idol and mentor Mikkey Dee (MOTÖRHEAD, KING DIAMOND, SCORPIONS).