Interview с Gotthard : DARKSIDE.ru

Hello!

Hi, This is Steve Lee, I’m calling for an interview!

Steve?! Glad to hear you, but I didn’t expect you today, I expected Leo Leoni!

I’m doing all the interviews today, and hopefully you don’t have too many guitar questions for me! (laughs)

No-no, don’t be afraid, I won’t torture you with guitar “whys” and “whats”! How did it happen that one of your old songs “Lift U Up” became a hymn for the Swiss football select team? Was it written especially for this purpose or you were just asked for this song?

(laughs) It was a little bit of a surprise for us, too, to be honest, but the Swiss team, the football team, the national team asked if they could use a song like “lift U Up” for the anthem, and we said, “Of course, yes! Good idea!” We tried to make it a little different with a special version from Mousse T. – the German well known mixing hero, I would say. He did a lot of special tracks like “Sex Bomb”, for example. And he worked pretty cool, so we said, “o’k, let’s try that”. And the result was, of course< very special. Everybody was singing this in the stadium and made us proud, of course. But it was a big surprise for us, too.

And why did you choose Mousse T.? Was it your first collaboration?

He was recommended by a friend, he said, “Since he is a star producer, he might help to make something special out of this song,”, and actually he did, I mean the song sounded different from the original version, which was dear to every Gotthard fan, but unfortunately it didn’t help the Swiss team too much, we didn’t have a chance to have a special result with this song, so I think that the song was better, than the national team! (laughs) So he was recommended, we didn’t knew him in person, it was a special experience to try out.

Gotthard reached the final of a popular Swiss TV show, “The Greatest Swiss Hits” after your ballad “Heaven” gathered about 27 votes of the auditorium. What was the result of this TV show and do you often agree to take part in different shows, competitions and so on?

Well, not always, of course. I mean that we consider ourselves a live band, we travel a lot and we play a lot of concerts. So it’s not always easy to be at certain shows here in our home country. But that one, “The Greatest Swiss Hits” is a show of all times, it’s a big show, and it made us proud that rock’n’roll music that we do has a chance to be a part of music in Switzerland. There was not only pop or rock music, but there were different sty

les involved, and it made us proud that people really like what we do. You are rock-‘n’roller or not – they like what you do, it is a special achievement, and we were very happy with that, but it is not often the case, to be honest. It was a special event, but I don’t think that Gotthard, especially here in Switzerland, is seen only as a rock band. It is seen as a music combo if you wanna call it like that – we make music for a wide audience, we’ve got a lot of people – we’ve got young people, we’ve got older people, variety of different styles, of fans – and that’s why Gotthard is so popular here. There are not only hard rock sounds, there are nice ballads, too – for a wide audience.

You new album was released on the 4th of September, what can you say now about the record?

I think it’s a very colorful album in the vein of Gotthard 2009. But it wasn’t easy somehow to combine the new sounds, the new way of recording certain songs, but at the same time keep the red line which is the sound of Gotthard with 19 years of existence. This is our album number ten and we are very proud that it sounds like Gotthard, but still with some modern touch. I think it’s also because Richard Chycki (the producer – ed.)( was quite able to bring this modern sound into songs, and it was a great experience to work with him of course, since he worked with a lot of great names from different styles of music – very interesting.

Among the songs I managed to listen to, there was a very beautiful ballad, “Need To Believe”. What pushed to you write this song and in general where do you take this motivation for writing a new material, for writing so beautiful ballads as this one?

Oh, thank you! Thank you for the compliment! I think there is no recipe for it. There is just some inspiration that goes on when you write the song. You don’t sit down telling yourself, “Well, I’m gonna write a love song.” Or “Today I’m gonna write a heavy fast song”, you just ought to pick some notes, some melodies, or when you take a walk or when you are riding a cycle – sometimes some idea may come to your mind, and then you try to get inspiration out of it. This ballad, “Need To Believe” is supposed to bring a little bit of hope in this sick world, cause everybody is trying to see just the bad part and the sad side of it all. But the message is, “You should believe in yourself. If you really strongly believe you can achieve anything. You can even recover from a bad disease or you can succeed in much more different things, than you actually thought”. That’s the message to everyone, and this is also our credo more or less, becau

se we went through hard times as well and we all tried to stick together and make the best out of it. And it works, because everybody helps each other, and it’s the way society should work these days. But instead everybody is trying to be more selfish, and everybody looks for himself, and that’s not the way the world should go. Every lyrics in these eleven songs in the album are quite different. Some are love songs, some are more rock’n’roll songs, so I think it’s very colorful. I think it’s very difficult – it doesn’t necessarily have to be a personal experience, sometimes it’s just fantasy like the song “Shangri-La”, for example. That’s a very mystic, very magic song with a lot of oriental touch in it, so I just love to try things out. It is one of the good parts in music – you can paint with a lot of colors and try different moods, that’s something I like to do. That’s the good part in music.

I listened to this song, and it seemed to me that it isn’t in the vein of Gotthard very much, and seems to stand apart from the rest of the songs. What inspired you to create this song? Did you travel in the East?

That’s right! A little bit of touch of oriental is cool. We had a chance to play times in Thailand as well. Then we had a chance to play almost at every tour in Japan. So I think it’s nice to try different colors out, some sounds. Sometimes it comes naturally. “Shangri-La” was written in a week in Stockholm, I went to Stockholm all by myself to a team of songwriters who collaborated with us already on “Lipservice” (2005) and on “Domino Effect” (2007). So I had a chance to work with them for an afternoon and we wrote about four songs in the afternoon and one of the songs was “Shangri-La”. I gave this song to Gotthard, to the band – and they told me, “Wow! That’s a cool song. Let’s try to record this.” And we did! This oriental touch was a spontaneous thing. We tried it actually with the sitar (laughs) in the studio and it didn’t work out the way it should, so we tried different sounds o make it sound less Indian touch, with less Indian sounds, but still oriental. And I think it was a nice experiment to try.

Definitely! “Need to Believe” is the title of your new album. Whom do you need to believe? Only in yourself, in your powers? Or probably you sing about believing in people, in best in people? And in general how often do you get disappointed in people who surround you?

Oh, that’s something that happens quite a lot! Regarding your first question I would say that I think it’s important to believe in yourself, first of all, because you are the one who can help and know best

what you need. But then again you need other people to succeed sometimes, you need friendship, you need to be open enough to give other people a chance to show that they are good. These days everybody tries to be selfish and everybody tries to make his own business, something which I don’t think is correct. Of course, especially in the rock’n’roll business you get disappointed in a lot of people. There are a lot of people who as soon as you get a little bit of success they try to steal your money and make business out of it. It’s pretty normal, I’m getting used to this these days (laughs bitterly). But I think you should give a chance to everybody as before, but mainly you should give a chance to yourself, because you’re the one who is able to change your life, if you really want. That’s the message of the song and of the album actually. You can do impossible things like squeezing juice out of a stone, which is actually the cover of the record.

Yeah! The cover is very catchy! And who was the initiator of the idea with these hands, a stone and water running out of it?

That was me! (laughs) Once again it was me! We had different ideas, which were not easy to put down on paper. Some ideas were pretty cool, but then when it comes to graphic design and everything, it’s not so easy sometimes to put the thing exactly you want it. Then I remembered myself trying the thing that … I was looking for something that was impossible to do, which looks a little crazy actually, which is impossible to do. And I remember myself having a stone here in my home, I held a stone in my hand and I was thinking like, “I could maybe squeeze juice out of this stone. That will be something special.” So I started to make a few notes to our graphic designer, and he came up with a few ideas. It was not actually easy to achieve the best possible picture in the end. So it’s not my hand, but the idea is mine. And I’m proud of is of course, and everybody thought it was a great idea, so it ended on the record.

One of your new songs will be used as a soundtrack of a film about a legendary German boxer Max Schmeling.

Exactly! Very well pronounced! (laughs)

I rehearsed!

Max Schmeling was a boxing hero of the 40-s I think, from Germany. He was against Nazism and war, against evil Hitler. He is a legend, because he was a kind of an untouchable, very successful. Uwe Boll, the director of this movie, asked us, if we would like to have a song in the soundtrack. We answered, “Of course, it’s a great chance to catch new audience from other directions, not

only from music direction”. Movie itself is quite interesting. And he also asked us, if we would love to make a video for this song, and we had a chance to make a video for the song “Unconditional Faith”, which will be released I think as soon as the movie is ready – January or February next year. So we’ve got the movie for this song as well, but not for other songs. You see we are not really a video-movie band. We consider ourselves as I said before a live band. Movies are simply too expensive – to produce and to do, if you want a certain quality. From time to time we try to make a nice video, but if you don’t want to spent half a million which we really don’t want to spend to make this video, then the chance to show a good video is not that big, as we are not an MTV or all these video channels band. So it is not so easy for us to do that, but I’m glad that we had a chance with Uwe Boll to do this video for the song.

But still video clips remain a great means to promote a band, especially if you are broadcasted on TV, for example…< /b>

Yes, that’s right. Maybe it’s better in Russia, since I know that you have a lot of great movie and TV-channels for rock’n’roll music. Especially here in Switzerland, or even in Germany it’s all special channel TV which you’ve got to pay a lot of money to see. These cable TV – almost nobody has an interest to put a video on such a channel for the band that is on the road for 19 years now. Maybe that’s one of the reasons. Of course, when we’ve got a chance to do videos, we do, as we did with “Unconditional Faith”.

You mentioned the director of this movie Uwe Boll. Why did he turn to Gotthard with such a proposal, how did you get acquainted with him and are satisfied with the result of this collaboration?

I’ll tell you when I see the film, it depends on how it is gonna end up. But I think that he knew the band from previous other projects he did. He did another movie called “Postal” (Postal is a film adaptation of a video game, 'Running With Scissors' – ed.) a few years ago I think in Germany. And he asked, if we would like to have a song on the soundtrack, the same as he did this time again. I think that he was aware of the fact, that there is a band, who does this kind of music, rock’n’roll, and he might turn to us and to get a nice sound for his movie. So we were happy that it worked this way. He was aware that there was a band called Gotthard, he called us and we were able to find a way to make everybody happy more or less. It was a cool collaboration. A cool chance to do a video with a special format, with a special quality, which is the movie

quality.

And could you disclose a little bit the plot of this video?

Actually the whole video clip for our side is shot from the middle of the boxing ring, in the 40-s. So it’s a big arena with a lot of people who wear the 40-s costumes and it is very interesting, with a very special boxing atmosphere. But the rest of the video is gonna be shot from the movie. I haven’t had the chance to see the rest of the movie. I don’t think actually there is going to be a real story behind. It’s gonna be part of the movie, you’re gonna see pictures from the movie as well. And I wonder myself what Uwe Boll is gonna do with it.

Apart from the usual album version, there will be also a high-quality box version including a special gimmick and the bonus track "Ain't Enough". What gimmick will it be?

There will be another rock’n’oll song, I think it’s a good song, "Ain't Enough". I think it’s a little faster, than the rest of the album. And to me it’s not actually a bonus track. It’s one more song and we recorded something like 13 songs I think. So we’re gonna have a Japanese version, with one more song, but it’s all the matter of a music business, every nation wants to have something special, but it is not always possible to accomplish everything and to make everybody happy, but I think this special set is gonna be a special item for real Gotthard fans. And I hope they will be also happy with another new song, and these more songs are always better, than eleven of course! (laughs)

You wrote a song for the football select team, you wrote a song for a film about a box player, so what other kinds of sports are you going to support with your music?

(everybody laughs) Oh, you never know! You should be open to every surprise, I mean we are very open to everything. We wrote a song for the ice hockey team, we wrote a song for the Swiss national team when they went to Athens for the Olympic games. So we are always open to everything as you see, but most of all we want to go on tour, so there will not be so many surprises in the near future. I think we did enough surprises, this is the time for the tour, which is gonna start in the mid of October. We are going to play all over, hopefully in Russia as well, cause w’d love to play there. And I’m petty comfortable that the next year the tour will go on and we hopefully be able to play in Russia again.

It just occurred to me that a couple of years ago Doro Pesch, a German heavy metal Queen also recorded a song for her friend-boxer…

Yeah! Was it two

years ago?

I think so. So is boxing is so popular among hard rock- and heavy metal musicians? (everybody laughs)

I would say it is pretty much the same, both are pretty much tough businesses to be in and sometimes you have to survive a few punches you get from time to time, pretty much the same. But I pretty much prefer to be a singer, than a boxer I think (laughs) That’s more what I like.

You have a very tight tour schedule on your official web site, everything is busy until the year 2011. But Russia is not in the list. You mentioned that you are trying to get in contact with the Russian promoters, but when shall we most probably see you here?

Yeah, as I said before we collaborate with the Russian promoters. And these are not the dates which are the part of the next year program, so we try, but it only depends on the Russian promoters and concert agencies, we are trying to put something together so as to make the Russian fans happy. I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to play Russia next year.

You’ve got a very long history, almost 20 years, and now that you are a famous Swiss musician what do you feel when you look back? Are satisfied with your career, you life, with the way you paved yourself?

Well, we all make mistakes from time to time, but I’d like to look forward and see the future. It’s not easy to know what is gonna happen exactly. I’m proud of what we did so far of course, I’m looking back at successful 17 or 18 years actually and 10 studio albums, and some more compellations and live albums. I think that the plans fore the future are pretty the same like the last ten years – every two years there is a record, there are a lot of concerts, the stakes are always put higher, I mean that we always want to have more success and be better, than before. I think that’s what it all about and I think nobody knows what the future brings, but hopefully a lot of good concerts.

Not long ago I read somewhere that you are going to continue with your solo album…

I think it is something that the journalist tried to make a headline out of. I mean it is true that one day I’d love to do a solo album, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that I’m not happy with Gotthard. My main project is Gotthard and I’s gonna always be Gotthard as long as Gotthard exists. I have songs that maybe don’t fit perfectly into the Gotthard project and maybe I’ll try to record songs with different musicians, something which every musician would like to do after 19 years of working together wi

th the same people. That’s something I wanna do in the future, but for sure not in the next two or three years, I mean it’s gonna take time to do that. Sooner or later I would love to – that’s correct.

What kind of material is it? I mean the songs that you prepared so to speak for your solo project? Stylistically what does it look like?

Oh, there is not gonna be any big difference from the Gotthard music. But of course on the solo project you can try different things, different instruments, for example do a lot of things with vocals which is not possible since I’m the only singer in the band. I would love to do maybe some special vocal parts, to join myself on different tracks. Some experiments – I’m not actually sure how it is gonna sound like. That’s one of the good parts of it, that I’m gonna be able to try different things. In fact it’s gonna be a surprise for myself, too. (laughs)

During your long career you’ve released 9 studio albums, and the 10th is upcoming, 5 live albums leaving alone LPs, EPs and so on. Do you notice how the music industry changes? Do you follow some new tendencies in this sphere like computes or do you prefer to come to the studio, record vocals, guitars, drums, then mix everything and that’s it?

We try to stick to what we do best, which is live playing. And also in the studio we all love to play together. We don’t use too much machines, but of course the new technologies give you the chance to try different things out, to try different techniques of recording, which we of course are aware of and tried on the new record as well. I think that the whole industry, and the record sales, and the way people release albums and sell albums is changing quite rapidly and it is not gonna be easy for the future band to live from only record sales. I think a lot of downloads, especially a lot of free downloads are damaging the whole music business. But the good side is that live shows are gonna be much more important I think. That’s the future actually. But the industry has to change dramatically, if they wanna survive with the record sales, and they have to come up with some new ideas or at least to show the young generation that music is not for free, I mean music is an industry and of course I would love to have music for less money, but the are a lot of people involved into it and everybody wants his piece of cake, and that makes it so expensive in a way. But I’m pretty comfortable that the industry is gonna find a way and make music which everybody can afford and everybody as we all know needs music to survive. I think it’s a very important part of a hum

an nature. It ‘s gonna on for yeas to come!

When you write music, what do you…

(at this point I heard in the receiver a lot of bells ringing so loudly that I could hardly hear Steve)

Oh, sorry, but I have to change a position, a lot of bells are ringing, and I cannot hear a word.

Of course. When you write music, what do you expect of the listener of your music?

Yes, of course, it depends on the person who listens to the songs. Of course, if you are able to give a message, whether it is a self esteem or love to someone else, love to each other – I mean it’s always a great message involved. But of course not everybody is picking the message up. But I think in the end if you’re gonna be able to give a good vibe to the people, to give a positive touch to the people emotionally, it’s always something special – I think that’s what music is for.

In what case would it be possible for you to give up music? Will it be possible at all?

Not really at the moment. I like to believe it’s not gonna happen in the near future. Of course, if I’m not gonna happen to sing anymore, or if I get sick or something and cannot sing, then of course it would be the end for me at least. But as long as God gives me the chance, the power to go on, I will go on, and as long as it’s possible to live from music and as long as I’m happy with what I do – I will go on.

You said that on the new album you sing about faith, and faith is one of the most leading themes on the new album. And what other themes do you touch upon?

Oh, it’s very difficult to say due to that it’s very difficult to put all the themes under one hat, you see. Every song is different, there is pretty much rock’n’roll song, which says, “I don’t mind, I wanna have a good time, I don’t care what people say”. Then again there is a song like “I Know, You Know”, which touches a great problem – that’s everybody is trying to close his eyes and forget about the problems around, and other people – maybe the neighbors, or maybe the people you know – you don’t care about what their problems are. But if everybody does that, it’s gonna be a selfish society, and egoistic way of thinking, it’s something that is not gonna bring our world to the next level. So it’s very difficult, but mainly I think it’s love songs, emotional songs which bear some experience I had, or sometimes some fantasy, in lyrics like “Shangri La”, for example – about some mystical, magical woman that might bring you trouble, but might be paradise at the same time. So it’

s very difficult as you see. They are all very different.

I know that you listen to a lot of music, and of course it cannot but affect your own songs, your own creativity. But do you get inspired by some other things like books, theatres, movies – something else?

Oh yes! The inspiration is all over, I think it always depends on what you are interested in. And you try consciously or unconsciously to put these themes into your songs. You always depends on how you feel at the moment. But I think most of the times it’s the experience that goes into your songs and into your lyrics. You are inspired from everything – it could be a motorcycle ride, or it could be some other sports, or maybe a sail trip, or whatever, but most of the times it’s people you meet and talk with and things you read in newspapers and there is a variety of chances to get inspired from. Especially with all the multimedia.

Do you relatives approve of Gotthard and all that you are going?

Well, everybody is proud of what I did, and of what I’m doing with Gotthard. I think that it’s not easy to come out of Switzerland and make living out of music, cause Switzerland is so small. When I started everybody said, “Don’t try this, cause it’s not gonna work”. But it’s always the same, some countries are not into rock’n’roll at all, and Switzerland is one of those probably. But we were able to show people that it is possible, and we are having a good time, and it works, so I am proud, and my parents and my relatives of course are, too.

Can you describe a usual process of creating a new song? Do you have a kind of democracy or do you have a leader who says, what the band should do and what shouldn’t?

So, it’s a democracy of course, everybody can come up with ideas, but after all it’s mainly Leo Leoni and myself who write songs, since we were able to have Freddy Scherer in the band, the three of us are working pretty much together and it’s a good chemistry and it’s working pretty cool. We are always open for ideas, so everybody may come up with ideas.

You were in Russia for three times already. Is there anything special that you remembered from our country? Maybe something struck you or interested?

Oh, I remember being especially surprised by and very happy to be in St.-Petersburg, which was very special to see. We enjoyed the beautiful places, the nice people. But I remember also a special concert we had in Moscow, in the Kremlin – we had a chance to play at the Kremlin, inside – and it was very special to see those people, sitting on chairs in this beautiful place, and controlled getting in and it was like at an airport! (laughs) But it was a remarkable night and everybody enjoyed, and it was a very special thing for us to play there. And it was very beautiful.

Well, Steve, thank you greatly for this wonderful talk! We learned a lot of interesting things from you. Good luck for you, and for Gotthard. That’s it, unless you have something to say to our readers…

Oh, I’d love to!! Thank you very much for your support, it’s great to have fans around the world, especially in countries like Russia, which I consider a very special nation and the fans here are very special, so keep up and hopefully we’re gonna meet next year on tour. Keep on rocking!!

For sure! Once again thank you!

Ksenia, all the best for you as well! Spasibo!!

Interview by Ksenia “Wolfin” Khorina
© Russian DarkSide E-Zine
18 ноя 2009

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