Mandy Meyer

Armand "Mandy" Meyer is a Swiss guitar player best known for being a member of the hard rock band Gotthard, the progressive rock band Asia and the heavy metal band Krokus. Meyer has also worked with Cobra, Stealin' Horses and Katmandu. He was born August 29, 1960 in the town of Balcarres, Saskatchewan, Canada. The son of a Swiss dairy farmer and a Canadian mother, Meyer spent his first three years in Canada. After his parents were divorced his father took him back to Switzerland where he grew up in the house of his grandparents in Küssnacht am Rigi.

Meyer started to play his first instrument, the marching drums, at the age of 9 becoming a member of the local marching drum club for the next seven years. At age 12, he began to study classical guitar and at the age of 15 formed his first local band Quarry performing at parties and local clubs. By 1978, Meyer was the lead vocalist and guitarist for Swiss group BM-Smith who issued the "Chaincy Fever" b/w "Silver City" 7" single that same year and made an appearance on Swiss national TV in 1980 performing the punk rock laced "Do You Wanna Dance", now fronted by female vocalist Vera Kaa.[1]

In 1980, Meyer was approached by Chris von Rohr, founding member and bass player of Krokus, about joining the band following the departure of Tommy Kiefer. He accepted the offer and toured Europe and the United States for the next two years in support of the band's Hardware album. At the end of the touring cycle, Meyer decided to move on and began looking for musicians for his own project, teaming up with two members of Lucerne, Switzerland band Roxane, vocalist Tommy Andris and bassist Tommy Keiser. The trio set off for Memphis, Tennessee in 1982 where Andris was soon replaced by former Target vocalist, Jimi Jamison. Rounding out the line-up were guitarist/keyboardist Jack Holder (ex-Black Oak Arkansas) and drummer Jeff Klaven. Managed by Butch Stone, who was also handling Krokus and Black Oak Arkansas and had managed Target, the fledgling new group, named Cobra, quickly became a fixture on the local Memphis scene and scored a record deal with Epic Records. Cobra would issue their one and only album, the Tom Allom produced First Strike, in 1983. Only a moderate commercial success and plagued by management problems, the band went their separate ways in 1984, with members going on to join Survivor, Krokus, and, in Meyer's case, Asia. An unreleased Cobra song, "I'm A Fighter", would find its way onto Van Zant's self-titled 1985 album and became the theme song for WWF wrestler Paul Orndorff, aka "Mr. Wonderful".

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