Larry Paterson, was born in Matamata, New Zealand, before the Hobbits moved in to the area. He actually started out on guitar, influenced by the sounds of classic hard rock and heavy metal made by bands such as Motörhead, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath and AC/DC. His mate Beam and he immediately formed their first band as soon as they knew a few chords and several other bands followed over the years as they moved to Christchurch and spent most of their time practicing, drinking and hanging out at Ace T-Shirts on Colombo Street. After realising how bad he was on guitar and that he actually much preferred drums, he swapped instruments and was immediately at home! By 1988 he decided to relocate to the United Kingdom.
Once there he again spent years in several bands of different calibre and levels of achievement, drumming for the likes of thrashers Arbitrater in 1992 when they released the ‘Darkened Reality’ album.
For a period of time he was ‘official helper and gear carrier’ for Cozy Powell and his drum tech Eddie Naughton during the writing and recording of the Black Sabbath ‘Forbidden’ album; working for a while as ‘backline security’ for Sabbath.
Getting to know one of his all time drum heroes left an indelible impression on him and a profound influence of his playing style and attitude to both music in general and metal in particular. Cozy was a good guy as was Eddie, without whom he wouldn’t have got involved with Sabbath and known Cozy. Cozy put him up for an audition with Peter Green as temporary replacement for when he was away with Brian May; an audition that he spectacularly failed because he hadn’t worked on his shuffle, just stuck to the blues of Rattlesnake Shake and that kind of thing. It was a good lesson and despite being upset at letting Cozy down, he could not have been nicer about it. He learned a lot from that and Cozy’s words of wisdom, chief of which was ‘sometimes your face just doesn’t fit a band – but you gotta give it a go’. Fair to say he didn’t fit that band at all! Sadly both Cozy and Eddie are no longer with us and he still miss them both.
Over the years since his arrival in the UK, He has played in several notable bands, including Chokehold (who released three albums, appeared on Channel 4 television and toured with Saxon who were uber cool to them) and Blaze Bayley with whom he did two studio albums, a live double album and DVD following tours throughout England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Eire, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Croatia, Germany, The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Brazil, Poland, Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Italy and Greece between 2007 and 2010. It was a great time while it lasted.
A string of bands followed, some of which were definitely better than others. The last UK band he was part of was I.C.O.N, after temporarily filling in at times when they were between drummers. They released ‘The Blacklist’ and toured with Operation Mindcrime, Anvil and Udo Dirkschneider and had a blast (apart from the Udo tour giving him pneumonia as they weren’t allowed dressing rooms at most dates). Since then he has moved to Italy in 2017. Music took a back seat for a while, with a few gigs here and there, mainly with his covers band ‘Thunderhead’.
The pandemic threw the world for a loop, but in the second half of 2021 he joined American band Alcatrazz. Alcatrazz started life in 1983 formed by Jimmy Waldo, Gary Shea and Graham Bonnet and at that time featuring Yngwie Malmsteen and Jan Uvena. Malmsteen was replaced by Steve Vai, who was in turn replaced by Danny Johnson before the band went into hiatus.
Larry was playing alongside original band members Jimmy Waldo (keyboards), Gary Shea (bass) with Joe Stump (guitar), Adam Sheppard (bass) and Giles Lavery (vocals). He left that band in 2025.
Most recently he’s been the live drummer for Girlschool. This has been since their 2024 USA West Coast tour, a job which included supporting Saxon around Europe and Scandinavia in the first part of 2025. What a blast! Most fun he had on stage for a long time!
Away from music, he authored a book on the Blaze Bayley band’s history entitled ‘At The End Of The Day’, which was published originally in 2009. As of 2022 he has written 21 books, all but the aforementioned, about a totally different subject: non-fiction histories of the Second World War – predominantly related to the Wehrmacht – inspired largely by a lifelong interest in the Second World War and working as a Scuba instructor, which included a couple of years diving the wartime wrecks off France. He taught diving in the UK, Grenada, Cyprus, Malta, France and Italy.
