This was in 1999. Boris had a studio appointment with me, he wanted to record something for a friend, and that’s how we met. He wanted to record a Rammstein cover in the studio, he had a band and we recorded it. Then he started to sing, and I told him, “Well, I think the way you sing and talk has at least as much as strength as Till!” He said, “No, it can’t be true,” but I said, “Yes, it’s my opinion.” This is probably when it all started. We made the decision to work together, because I like the way he talks and the way he performs on the recording, and I had some musical ideas, so we put his abilities to perform and my ideas together.
Why was Der Bote chosen as the name of the project? In English it means something like “messenger”…
Exactly! The lyrics of our songs tell people who are in a rough time of their lives how to improve the solutions to the problems they might have. The protagonist of our songs is not speaking about himself, but he is something like a messenger from a different level. And this is why we chose the name “Der Bote.” But to be honest, in Germany they sometimes name newspapers “der Bote”. That is why we have to explain a lot why we chose this name, but in my opinion, “der Bote” is a very tough word in the German language, it’s a very old word and a very serious word.
How long did it take you to compose the material for the album? Can you describe the songwriting process in Der Bote?
You know, you have to take into account the fact that we don’t meet each day. We meet two days a week or whatever, because Boris has a lot of other things to do, and so do I. Altogether it took half a year to compose the material and it took another half a year to do pre-production.
Your Russian label CD-Maximum describes “Kalt!” as “a cross between Rammstein and Lacrimosa”. Do you think it is a correct definition of Der Bote’s music?
It is, to a certain extent. I think they described it quite well. Der Bote has a lot to do with the Rammstein kind of music, and of course, the way Boris performs is quite similar to the Rammstein way, at least when you listen to it for the first time. On the other hand, it has much more funky elements and elements from the 1970s combined with the Rammstein thing. The lyrics and the dark atmosphere have pretty much to do with Lacrimosa. But Megaherz is also a big influence on this album. It’s basically those three – Rammstein, Megaherz and Lacrimosa. Although old Pink Floyd of the “Dark Side Of The Moon” era and old Earth Wind & Fire attitudes are in the mix as well.
For this album you didn’t have a permanent line-up, there were many session musicians involved in the recording. Do you have any plans for turning Der Bote into a full band, for playing live shows, etc?
Yes, we do. The basic idea is to have Victor Smolski on guitar, and he has already agreed, Jorg or Stefan on the drums, me on the bass, and a good friend of ours called Sven Harms, who played the intro and the outro on the album, on the keyboards. We will also need an additional guitar player. It will be a line-up of six people.
In the studio, how did you divide the songs among session musicians? For ins
tance, you had three drummers on the album – how did you decide that Jorg Michael should play on “Einsam”, and Stefan Schwarzmann on “Schuldig”?OK, the three drummers are Jorg Michael, Stefan Schwarzmann and Ralf Gustke. I know that Jorg is really good in straight-ahead drumming with a very rocky attitude, so we presented him the album, he chose two songs, and I said, “Let’s do another two.” The same was with Stefan. The third drummer, Ralf Gustke, is a good friend of mine. He is more into that fusion/funk attitude, and I decided to let him play more syncopated tracks. Boris had known Stefan and Jorg for quite a long time already, and the atmosphere was really nice while working with them. They had a good couple of days in the studio, and I had a brilliant couple of days in the studio. On our homepage, there are some videos of the guys playing. It’s always a pleasure when I go back to the homepage to see how Stefan plays really heavy drum things. Ralf Gustke couldn’t play that way. On the other hand, when you go into that very syncopated and funky stuff, Stefan would… I don’t think he would have problems, but Ralf would be a better one to play that. And he’s an old friend of mine.
Victor Smolski played a very important part in the recording of this album. How did you first get in contact with Victor?
Basically it comes from the factory of Yamaha. Victor has been a Yamaha endorser for about five or six years, and I’m a Yamaha endorser for ages. We met at the Frankfurt music fair for the first time back in 2002. We talked and found each other quite sympathetic, so we did some workshops together. Then he asked me, “You have a studio, can I send you some material, and you mix something for me?” That was the first work we did together, it was on his new album “Majesty & Passion,” his solo album. He gave his material to a lot of different studios, and then he compared the results and figured out the best one. I didn’t have the best sound, but I had the most musical way of mixing it. So he came to my studio and said, “OK, you’ve got the great musical way, but we have to figure out something with the sound, it has to be much harder than it is now.” We got together, he liked the way I work on the sound, and we realized that it was good working together. Then I told him about Der Bote, and he said, “Well, let’s have a listen to it!” He listened to the stuff, and he liked it right away. I told him, “Do you mind if you play on some of the tunes?” He said, “Of course not!” From that moment on, we started to develop a very good working relationship. He was basically the one who made everything happening with CD-Maximum.
You also played bass on Victor’s solo album “Majesty And Passion”. What are your impressions from working on this record? How was it like to work with an orchestra and adapt classical music for a rock band?
For me it was the first time that I played with an orchestra. And the songs were recorded the other way around – not the rhythm section and then the orchestra, but Victor recorded the orchestra first, and the timing of the thing really fluctuates – it goes faster and then slower. After that he put the drums on it, and then the bass, so it was for me a really new dimension to get slower and faster a bit. The way of thinking and the way of putting that much energy into a thing where you normally have only a string en
semble and a regular orchestra – this was something totally new for me, and I learned a lot from Victor sound-wise and musically-wise. He is a really sophisticated and well-educated guitar player.Is Victor an easy person to work with? A lot of people, both in Russia and in Germany, consider Victor quite an arrogant person…
(sighs) I haven’t got any problems with Victor at all. Let’s put it that way – if he respects me and if I respect him the way I do, then there’s absolutely no problem. He’s totally problemless on the musical and personal levels, at least towards me. We sometimes meet in private, he stays at my home, we even did a little thing for Yamaha in Dubai last September. I can say it’s more than a working relationship, it’s really friendship. Maybe I’m the wrong person to be asked whether he can be difficult in the studio. As far as I’m concerned, he was totally into the music, he was really well prepared, he has a marvelous sound, and he even gave me his own tips. He didn’t have to, but he did, it was perfect. So I’m probably the wrong person to be asked this question – I’ve never seen him being complicated, never.
Now let’s go back to Der Bote. You and Boris wrote nearly all the music for the album, but in the lyric-writing, there were a lot of other people involved –Gerrit Heesemann, Vanessa Meinke, Carsten Pape. Who are these people, and why did you decide to attract so many different persons to lyric-writing?
It has something to do with the development of this thing. When we were recording the first songs, we were not sure if we can get the right lyrics, and if you don’t have the lyrics that sound right on the spot, it might sound weak. Two of very good friends of mine, Gerrit Heesemann and Carsten Pape, are well-known writers in the German music scene, so I asked them, “What do you think about doing some lyrics for that?” It was the first two songs we ever did. And then after we realized that we can do it on our own and it turns out more unique, we started to change it and did it all by ourselves, Boris and me. But there is one more person involved – Vanessa. Actually Vanessa is the girlfriend of Boris, and she is marvelous in giving basic ideas for songs. You know, Boris and Vanessa obviously talk a lot, because they live together, and they are a couple. Boris watches people and he is very interested in their destinies, so he talks with Vanessa a lot about other people’s destinies. She is the one who offers the idea of what may be the subject of the song, and then Boris and me put it into words, come up with the rhymes and word order. But the basic idea of the lyrics mostly comes from Vanessa. This is the way we work, and I think it is quite good. Sometimes women understand things totally different as compared to me, and I would like to have the female approach to some problems and some items in the lyrics together with the male approach of Boris and me.
Where did the photo session for the album take place? The photos in the booklet are very interesting…
A very close friend of Boris is a photographer. He runs our homepage and he does these things. These photos were made in the eastern part of Germany and in the U.S. An old factory which burnt down in the eastern part of Germany looks very ugly, and it is a perfect scene for this kind of photos.
You know, this old
factory reminds us a lot of some Russian provincial landscapes…(laughs) As far as I know, they took these pictures in the U.S. and in the eastern part of Germany. Boris hasn’t been in Russia yet, and me neither, so it is something totally new for all of us.
You write a lot of music and lyrics for Der Bote, and you also played a lot on the album. But Boris is pictured alone on all the big photos in the booklet…
Boris is the one who sings in Der Bote, he is the one that is the center of attention on stage, and I am the one who works in his shadow, which I don’t mind. I have no problems with that. I do most of the producing, we work together on the music and lyrics, but I don’t need to be in the picture. It’s good to have this thing focused on one person.
What do you think of Boris’ cover band Feuerengel, where he is playing Rammstein tunes?
Feuerengel is the band that helped us meet, it is this band that he wanted to record with in my studio.
Has this recording ever been released?
No, no, it was just a kind of promo and a gift for a friend, it was never meant to be published. Is there any sense to publish a one-to-one copy of the original? I think no. If you do some new stuff, if you do a Rammstein song in a big-band arrangement or whatever, then it has the sense to be published.
“Kalt!” has been on sale in Russia for a while. But what is the situation in Europe. When will it see the light of day in Germany?
Ha, that’s a good question! Maybe you have heard that the German music scene has gone through really big and massive changes. A lot of major companies merged and got even bigger, then they realized that they don’t sell enough copies to get this big thing happening, so they threw out a lot of people. Nevertheless, after the merging they weren’t any bigger than any single one of them before. The German music scene, at least as far as the major companies are concerned, is really running low. I hope it stops one day, but who knows? At the moment it’s really complicated to get a major deal in Germany, if not impossible. We have definitely sent this stuff to very many labels, but they said, “Why should we sign this, if the market is satisfied with Rammstein?” But imagine, if you were, let’s say, 50 Cent, and you went out searching for a deal, would the record company say, “Why should we? We already have Puff Daddy!” I mean, this is one of the stupidest ways of arguing I have ever heard! But I can’t change it, this is the way that German record companies think at the moment. Because the whole business is running down, they are pretty much afraid that their own job will be closed very soon, and the atmosphere in the German music business is not very good nowadays.
So at the moment the CD is only released by CD-Maximum and no one else, is that correct?
Exactly! Victor did a really big favor for this record, actually he managed all that, and I’m really thankful to him. You know, Germany is a really weird company. Do you know the Scorpions? There was a time when the Scorpions did a world tour, they started the tour in Germany and ended it in the U.S. They started in front of less than 100 people, but they ended this tour in the U.S. in front of 77,000 people! (laughs) They had to become successful in A
merica, and after it happened, they became successful in Germany, too. This is how the German market works, it’s weird, but it’s like it is. I am talking about the early 1980s, but this is how Germans still think. You have to get big somewhere else before you get big in Germany, and Scorpions is the best example for that. It was the same with Kraftwerk.Then that’s hope that Der Bote gets big in Russia, and then the German market will accept it!
That’s what I pray for! (laughs) If we get really well-known in Russia, it will make our negotiations with German record companies much easier. We will be able to tell them, “What do you want to have more? It’s a thing that works in Russia!” The arguing that we don’t need another Rammstein is bullshit anyway. Do you know the band Oomph!? I always heard the arguing that we don’t need another Rammstein, and then, four weeks later, Oomph! came out with the single “Eins, zwei, drei, vier, Eckstein” (the song is actually called “Augen Auf” – ed.), and it was a big hit. This makes it absurd anyway, but that’s the arguments they try to use. I think record company people only do it because they are afraid to spend some money on a project which is less than 140 percent successful. Sometimes I think, “OK, you have a good product, you have a good performer, you even have a company like Mercedes that sponsors the commercial thing, what else do you want?” But even then record companies say ‘no’, because they are so frightened of having an artist that is not mega-successful, because if it is that way, they’re gonna be fired. That’s the main thing – they are so frightened to be fired, and if you don’t do anything, you don’t make mistakes.
What are the future plans for Der Bote? As far as we know, you are already writing new songs…
Yeah! As CD-Maximum made it possible with the deal in the Russian countries, it gave us pretty much energy, so we’re going back to compose, come up with new ideas for lyrics, and there will soon hopefully be another record coming out.
You told us in the beginning that you are also busy with other projects. What are you currently engaged in? What musical projects shall we expect from you in the future?
Apart from Der Bote, I’ve been producing a guy called Lotto King Karl for about seven years. He’s a local artist based around Hamburg, he’s got typical Hamburg humor and he’s actually playing rock’n’roll. Then I’ve got a band called Real Groove Band, we have played on the German music fair for Electrovoice (prominent maker of microphones, loudspeaker systems and amplifiers – ed.). This is a cover band with totally different numbers ranging from old Earth Wind & Fire stuff and Tower Of Power to Peter Gabriel. Then there’s a girl that I produce, she’s called Irin Heney (not sure about the spelling – ed.), I hope to get her a record deal soon. She plays crossover between rock’n’roll and metal. Then I have two or three other things going on in the studio, but they are not developed enough yet, so I can’t talk about them. And I’m teaching at an academy in Mannheim, that’s the only pop academy in Germany. I do band coaching, bass and so on, so I have a really tight schedule at the moment.
Mannheim is somewhere in the south of Germany, right?
Yes, you’re right, and I live in the north. If I do my lessons there or do my band coaching, I have to drive about 600 km to get there and then another 600 km to get back.
You are known both in the world of jazz and in the world of rock. What did you begin your musical career with – jazz music or rock music?
(laughs) Actually it’s the mixture between them. One of my major musical influences in my schooldays back in the 1970s is Stanley Clarke. Then came Level 42, but the reason why I started playing music was Uriah Heep. So I was always between rock and jazz, those two streams.
Over the years you have played with numerous interesting musicians and performers. What album was the most interesting or the most challenging for you to record?
(sighs) The most challenging album was the newest one with Real Groove Band. This was a live recording from the German music fair back in 2004. The songs we chose to put on the album are really complicated – two Tower Of Power songs, one by Earth Wind & Fire, they are very heavy to play for the bass player. But in general, the less ideas the producer has, the more challenging it is for the player. Sometimes you go to the studio, listen to a few chords, and when you ask, “What should I play?”, he says, “I don’t know! Play something.” That’s a challenge! I don’t know if it’s really positive, but it is definitely a good thing to do something without any templates. Der Bote is also very challenging musically, the bass line in “Todgeweiht” is really heavy to play, I was really sweating.
When you listen to the Der Bote album attentively, you notice that the bass lines are really untypical for this kind of music…
Yes. Normally you double the guitar to make it more punchy. This is the way bands like Rammstein, Megaherz or sometimes even Lacrimosa work – the bass plays exactly what the guitars play. But for the bass player it’s much more interesting to do a bass line on his own. Plus, I have music education in funk, jazz and rock music, and I want to sometimes play additional bass lines, which are not in parallel or in unison with the guitars. Although on one song, “Schuldig”, where I played the guitar, the bass exactly doubles the guitar. Another thing that is totally different from Rammstein is that we don’t quantize on the recording. I want to have it not as precise as Rammstein, because they do it electronically as precise as possible, and I would like to still have the human touch in it. Everything you hear, except, of course, the programmed stuff like the string arrangements, is not quantized at all. Even drums are not quantized, so they are not perfect, but because of the fact that the stuff is not perfect, I think it’s more charming.
You are both a musician and producer, you compose your own songs and you record a lot of songs by other people in your studio. Do you still listen to music just for pleasure?
That’s a pretty good question! Normally when I listen to music, I always do it cognitively, which means that I try to analyze it. But there is some music that I can really enjoy without analyzing all the stuff, I just think it is beautiful. Most of that music I don’t understand at all, classical music, for instance, sometimes it is too heavy to understand. I can’t even analyze it, so I leave it unanalyzed and I enjoy it. This is also the case with the singer-songwriter stuff like Eva Cassidy or Holly Cole. But as soon as it comes to the music where I know what is going on, I only listen to it analytically. Sometimes it’s a pain in the ass, I must admit it. But as a producer I have to learn to see the whole thing, the beauty of the whole thing. For instance, if you only hear music analytically, as a producer you will do a lot of mistakes, you will not see the forest in front of all the trees. (everybody laughs)
Special thanks to Irina Ivanova (CD-Maximum) for arranging this interview
Roman Patrashov, Natalie Khorina
June 20, 2005
26 èþë 2005
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