Interview с Edguy : DARKSIDE.ru

Toby once said that the new album will be more explosive and harder than the previous ones, and not very fast, but there will be only three fast tracks on it. Tell us a bit more about this choice?

Then I think I’ll start with “The Pride Of Creation”, which is one of the fastest tracks. I would say it goes a bit into a Queen direction, because it is a pretty long song and it’s got a lot of different parts and a lot of different quire part in it, but beside this I would say it is a typical Edguy double bass melodic song. Then we have a song “Speedhoven” that is a triple drum-bit which is actually pretty fast drum wise and there are also a lot of quire things going on on it. And basically for the new album we did what we needed: 4 fast songs, two ballads, three mid-tempo songs – so we just did what ewe felt to do and it came out like that, but all in all I would say that Toby is right in opinion that it is a bit a harder album than the previous ones, but I would say that it is because of some speed things or something like that, no, but it’s more because of the sound: we tried to create a more raw sound this time and not that typical polished clean sound that the bands used at the beginning of the new millennium or at the end of the 90-s for example. So this time we tried to focus on the main thing which is guitar-based drums and vocals and we tried to get rid of some keyboards also, we tried to make it mote brief so that the music and the instrument could have more air to represent the sound of the instrument and I think it was a good way, because in this way you’ve got fewer tracks on the record, but it sounds bigger somehow. We also used the natural drum sound this time which was unusual, because everyone now uses samples and tries to trigger drums and tries to make it as exact as possible, which led often

to a dead sound in the end. But it’s pretty hard, I mean if you want to transport feelings and emotions with music, it has to be played this way – that’s what we did on our last album, and I think it turned out pretty good and we’re really happy and I’m pretty sure that this album is gonna be the one that will be measured with in the future.

The new album is called ”Tinnitus Sanctus". First of all what does this title mean, where does it come from? Toby said that it has to do with the wall of sound…

Yeah, actually that’s true and that’s the thing, I mean “Tinnitus Sanctus" comes from a pretty famous pronunciation “Spiritus Sanctus” (the holy ghosts) you know, and somehow we came up with this title and thought that this would fit best especially in combination with the cover, because we were of the opinion that this new Edguy album in 2008 is a trend mark or states for what Edguy is in 2008. This is gonna blow out your ears, but in a positive way of course. We are very happy with the result and so far I had only good reactions on the phone when I spoke to press-people, and I’m pretty sure that the fans will like in the same way. Some of them might be a little bit surprised, but it’s a great album.

You just mentioned the cover artwork of the album and it differs greatly from, let’s say, “The Rocket Ride” cover. Instead of bright colors we see some grayish tints and there is a serious picture on it. Does it mean that you decided to violate your optimism, what is the reason for such an unexpected for Edguy cover artwork?

Well, I think that most of or covers have been unexpected. But the thing is that it’s not that serious as it seems. If you take a close look at it you can see this blood running out of the ear, which is a side joke of course.

There was no special need to do a special cover, but on the other hand some people complain a bit about “The Rocket Ride” cover, because they were absolutely not sure if Edguy is still doing serious music, but we always did and we’ll always do. Of course we take ourselves not too serious and we enjoy what we’re doing as we’re enjoying and having fan and we show it. We show it in lyrics as well, and on our live-shows you can see it as well. But probably “The Rocket Ride” was a bit too much for the fans. There were some funny songs and we had a video clip that was funny, too, and I think that some people were afraid that we didn’t do serious music anymore, but if have a look at the songs on “The Rocket Ride” and if you listen to them, there will be no doubt that we do serious music and we really take carte about the music. And on the new record it’s a kind of a statement what Edguy is in 2008 and this means it’s a strong band, it’s a powerful band, but we’’ never leave away the funny side also.

Will you comment on themes and the ideas that you touched upon on the new record.

That’s basically Toby’s part and some of the songs are pretty close to him. As a usual it’s a mixture. Of course there are some stupid songs on it, of course very well put in words, but on the other hand you have also pretty serious lyrics, what Toby usually does as well. These are the songs which everybody can fill up with his own life – there are a lot of space in between the lyrics and you can put your own story inside, and I think that’s what makes it so good, because it’s not just a stupid following of phrases, every song has a special meaning, but there’s no fixed meaning, in every song there’s a small part which you can fill up with your ideas and feelings from your own life.

You cl

aimed that your new album will become your ticket “to the hall of fame” where you could stand in one line with such legends as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath и AC/DC. Of course this is a joke – in part. But don’t you think that it’s a too brave and courageous allegation? Are you so sure of the success of the new album?

To be honest – every musician when he releases a new record says that it’s the best record he’s ever done! (laughs) So usually it’s stupid to talk about that, but on the other hand we are pretty down to earth people, and we’ve done a lot of albums in the past. This is the studio record number 8 – I mean after being in this business for a few years you really can judge if you’ve done a really good record or an o’k album, you have to promote it as hell and talk of it as much as possible. We’re sure that this album is gonna be positive in every way, and so far I talked to many press people and everybody is really surprised and loves that album. I mean you have a feeling when you do and album, and just everything went too smooth and it couldn’t be a bad album. It was a very short period for song writing and in the studio we worked pretty fast and this if the sign that you do exactly what you want and feel to do, so you don’t have to think about it that much. You just do it and it’s good or great, and that’s what we did on this album. And when I listen to this album now, I mean of course AC/DC is AC/DC, and it’s a high aim, but I think we get close. If we have a good promotion form the side of the label, I think this album is gonna be a success, it’ll find a lot of fans, because these are great songs, great production, it’s straight to your face and yeah – this is Edguy in 2008.

As far as I know this year you don’t plan any singles off the new album. Why? Were you dissatisfied

with the experience of “Lost in Space”?

Oh, we had several reasons why we didn’t do that. First of all the singles we did in the past were rather small EPs or LPs, so first of all you’ve got to put a lot of work in it. Then if you release a single the record company want a single to be released before the album and then you have to wait another two months until you release the album, and everything takes a long time and it gets later and later. Another thing is that single market is going down, so people just don’t buy it, they download it, they burn it whatever. And the radio stations for example in Germany they are not interested in that kind of music. Even if you get a good chart position you don’t get the attention from the major press. And we said, “Hey, if it’s just wasting time in a way and wasting money and making people wait even longer for the album and for the tour, because this is the basic thing we want to do – doing a tour, an album and so on. And record companies always want to have a single, to give people a kind of teaser and all that stuff, but…” we actually thought it didn’t make sense to do another single, because we would have to postpone the record again and the tour would start in March or whatever or in April and we wanted to play as soon a s possible and go out and play on stage again. So we said, “We don’t do an official single, but there’re going to be a single on the Internet, which will be “Ministry of Saints” and we shot a video some times ago and it’s spread all over the Internet”. You can have this one as a single for free if you want and in November people had the whole album. And after this – tour!

As long as you mentioned “Ministry of Saints” and the video clip. I know that this video was shot in Belgrade, Serbia, but not in Germany. Why such a choice? Wha

t is there in Serbia that you can’t find in Germany? The shooting took place in some garage or something of the kind, the setting is similar to the video “All The Clowns”. Aren’t there in Germany decent garages? (laughs)

Yeah, it was a kind of! The first reason to go down there was that Toby was doing two Avantasia videos as well with these people and they just know how to do their job. That was the main thing. Of course there were some good video companies here in Germany, but if you find somebody, you trust, because he knows how to fulfill what you want. And it is the best thing to take a person and say, “I wanna do another video with you and you take care of it and you do it good”, and he does it good. And that’s why we started to do that and in comparison to Germany… I mean there ARE good companies here in Germany, but the fact that it is more or less a single for the Internet means that it’s just money we have to invest for free, you know. And you’ll have a better result doing it down there, than here in Germany, because in Germany it will be twice as much expensive for example, or even more. And then we had to cut down again which would lead to less quality and we decided to go to Belgrade and do it down there. And the other relation to “All the Clowns” is that yeah, this is in an old business building – very very old dirty and stuffy. And it is where we shot the performance stuff and that’s where the pictures are from. In between there’s a story, there ‘s a story line.

When you were on tour with “The Rocket Ride” you recorded and shot your Brazilian concert for DVD. But you didn’t release it so far, and you explained like you didn’t want to postpone the release of the album. Now that the album is out, when are you going to get down to DVD? We want it! (laughs)

Yeah, we recorded a full length show in South America, in Brazil, and as you said the record company wanted us to release it before the new record, but this would have meant that the album would have had to wait for another 5 or 6 months. And we didn’t want it, so we said, “Hey, we do the album first, and in between after we finish the work at the album, we will take care about collecting old video material from all the tours”. And we copied the very very old stuff from the beginning of Edguy and now that we finished with the new album I think we can sit down and to take care about the DVD. I hope it’s gonna be released in March or April,

It’s just my observation that a lot of bands shoot DVDs in Brazil or somewhere else in Latin America. Is it a matter of the hot Brazilian blood or what?

I would say so, because all the people down there are very enthusiastic and it differs from Europe. I mean if you take Germany or France or whatever for example, they enjoy it and 70%
Is having a big party when you do a live show and 30 % may stay in the back and well, they enjoy it, too, but they don’t show it. They also go home and say, “Wow, that was a great concert”, but they don’t dance, they don’t have fun. But if you go to Brazil or anywhere else in South America, everybody on the venue is freaking out completely, and it’s such a great feeling to be on stage down there. And we thought it would be a perfect impression for the live DVD, because it’s just a big party and it’s just great! I mean I don’t complain about other fans, no way! But yeah, it’s just cool and the venues are big down there and you have the space to put all the equipment stuff there. And also the financial thing takes place there as well, their companies are a bit cheaper than here in Europe, so it makes sense to d

o it down there.

You’ve been doing Edguy since you were 14 as a know. Can you say that Edguy changed you? What changed in you personally and in the band in general?

First of all we all got much older than we used to be (laughs). But basically I wouldn’t say we’ve changed much – I mean before the band when we were 14, the line-up was pretty the same as it’s now, eleven years later. And this is great, because we are on tour, we’re a bunch of friends, we’re having a good time, making music together and making our living from that – everybody is pretty thankful for that, so there is no real need to split out or something. We all live in the same area, where we grew up, we have our friends from there.. So I wouldn’t say we have changed that much. Of course you go much on tour, you learn more, you become older, you know how the business works, you know more about the life in general, but basically I wouldn’t say we’ve changed that much, because nobody in the band is freaking out or something, everybody is pretty down to earth and knows what to do and what’s the important thing. We are pretty thankful that we have this privilege – we give something to the people, our music, and the people accept it and love at and this makes it possible for us to go on tour and record another album, this is a great job and I’m really thankful to our fans for that out there.

You’re setting off tour in January, but the warm up bands are not confirmed yet. Still one name is known – it is a band Heat from Sweden, this is a hard rock band – not a very popular one as far as I know. And how do you happen to know these guys?

Actually we’ve found out about some rock-band from Sweden from some magazine and about MySpace I think. But this band is such a great band, h

onestly. They are 22 years old or at the beginning of the 20-s, but they do it like the big bands in the 1980-s did – like Europe, or Giant – and it’s an honest band, they do it so good, because they are doing it with 120%. We thought, “This band needs support and it should play to an audience”. I’m pretty sure that the people will like it, because it’s so easygoing nice music. I pretty much like 80-s stuff, so I love that kind of music and this is a good thing to have them on tour. But besides, we’ve already chose the second band for the tour – for South Europe that will be Andre Matos, and for other parts of Europe it will be another Swedish band called All Ends. They are cool, they have two female singers and it’s also a pretty young band, but also we were trying to find a band with a lot of power you know. They are willing to do something as we were ten years ago – we wanted to go out on tour and play and, I don’t know, get bigger and become famous, and play our ass off to get new fans and I think they all are very good to do that. I’m sure that people will like it, it’s a pretty good package in my opinion, and it should be a cool tour, I’m looking forward to that.

I’ve read in some interview that it was your grandfather that inspired you to play guitar…

Where did you read that? (laughs)

It was in one of you interviews!

Then there must be something wrong. Definitely not my grandfather! (everybody laughs) Something must have gone wrong during that interview. Actually those were my parents. The first thing was that my neighbor built me a small guitar our of a cigar case when I was a little child. And this was pretty bad, because the only thing I did was that I hurt my fingers, because it was a self-made guitar – I tried to

play and it didn’t play well, and I just hurt myself. Basically back them I wanted to play drums, but I think that my parents probably thought, “Aaah, drum kit is very loud and it needs a special room to be played in, let’s get and buy guitar maybe, and if he likes it, it’s good, if not – we’ll probably change it for the drum kit some day” (laughs) But I think guitar was a right decision.

Tobias is a inborn frontman, he brims over with ideas and energy. It seems that one can even charge mobile phones out of him! He always plays tricks on people. Can you recollect the most cruel joke he played on you?

That probably might be a lot of jokes. I’m not sure anymore, we’re joking a lot, we don’t do that on stage, because then it probably gets boring to people, if you’re talking all the time to your band members. I can’t recollect the worst one, but we do it all the time in the whole band. It makes life easier on tour, let’s say it that way – if you can laugh a bit and make fun out of the others. Not in a bad sense of course, in a good way it’s good for the whole mood, if you can laugh a lot, it’s a good thing.

He is also a very ambitious man – is there any balance in creative process? Or does he tend to take the reins so to speak?

No, I mean on stage definitely he is a frontman, and he is the main songwriter of Edguy – no doubt about that. But besides that we’re five band members and not like one guy is the highest gun – no. We are all fixed members of the band. Of course at some points we have different opinions, but we always try to find the best solution for every problem if there is one. And even in the studio for example, there are a lot of discussions about parts and what to play, but the best thing on that point is to ask a producer

to judge about that, because sometimes you need a neutral person to decide something for the band which is the best. But in general I’d say there isn’t a big problem. Actually there’s no problem at all.

You co-write the material for Edguy…

Rarely rarely some stuff.

And is there any contribution of yours on your new effort?

No, on “Tinnitus Sanctus” Toby was doing all this stuff and got all the credits for it.

You’ve been to Russia several times already, what struck you most of all in our country?

Honestly, I’m always pretty impressed by this difference between the poor and the rich in Moscow, because we’ve only been to Moscow and only one time in St.-Petersburg. And it’s pretty hard, because what we get here in the newspapers is … I mean there are so many poor people in Russia, but on the other hand so many billionaires, unbelievable! And if you go to Moscow for example, you can see it in the streets that there are a lot of money out there, but on the other hand you see a lot of people that need money. That’s always a bit weird, because it was a communistic country for a long time. It’s pretty hard to see how hard capitalism hit that country, you know. And we’re going to your country next year! In the beginning of the year we’re doing European tour, and after that there follows a tour around the world.

What is music for you – work, hobby, lifestyle?

All together. Basically I would say it’s a big big part of my life, it’s also a hobby, it’s also a job, but as I said before I see it as a privilege to do it. If music takes 24 hours a day, it’s a 22-hour-of-music day.

Are there any guitar players you’d like to

play with? Maybe your own side-project, no?

There are no plans for a side-project, but there are a few musicians it would be cool to play with, but it’s pretty hard. If you take a singer, I love Bon Scott from AC/DC, but it would be pretty hard to bring him back on stage. But I was never that guy who has idols, but still there are some guitarists that I really like. For example, I like old Michael Schenker style like in the 70-s or at the beginning of the 80-s he was an amazing player. Also Yngwie Malmsteen used to play really really good, but I don’t feel real need to do like a jam session with them, because they are far far away better than me, and I will never reach that level I think. But if some day it’s gonna happen, I’d be only happy. I had a chance to meet some people at least – like Doug Aldrich from Whitesnake, I like him pretty much, He has a very good tone. I met him on a festival and then we had a smoke together in the airport, and that’s pretty cool. I mean if you can get people in a normal situation to really find out that they are really cool guys. Like Doug Aldrich, he is so cool, we just talked and had a smoke together – he was just a cool guy like everybody else.

In some interview Toby said that in some terms he is like God, because they both don’t take themselves too seriously. (Toby said, that God definitely has a sense of humor, and to support his words he suggested looking at offended by Nature aardvark – ed.) Can you say that in this regard you are also close to God (I’m speaking not about aardvark, but about sense of humor of course!)? Do you take yourself seriously?

It depends on what you are doing. I mean if you talk about music, then yes, I take myself serious, because I wanna do a good job, and I wanna do it right, and I want to record a good

record, when I’m in the studio for example. But on the other hand there are so many parts in life that are busy, or boring or whatever, that you need fun in your life, every day – to have a good life and to have an easy life, you know. It’s so stupid not to laugh about some things, and like Toby said it’s like God, I mean he created so many funny animals on this planet, so he must have a sense of humor! And it makes life much easier, if you don’t take yourself too serious.

If there’s anything that I missed in this interview, you are welcome to say whatever you like to your fans.

Actually I don’t think we’ve missed something, actually I’m a little bit in a hurry (laughs). (I’ve kept him on the phone twice as long as the time limit – ed.)
I’d like to thank to all the fans, without them it all – to go on tour or to make a record – would be impossible. I hope to see you all on tour and I pretty much hope and think that you’ll like the new album, check it out, and if you like it, buy it, come to the show and if we have a chance we will have a beer or a vodka together!

Interview by Ksenia “Wolfin” Khorina
10 янв 2009 the End


	( 8 )


Edge 13 янв 2009, 18:04	Новый альбом Эдгай - так себе. Мне не понравилось. Не пойду с вами пиво пить! Пиво - тоже дерьмо, точнее - моча.
smoking_joselin 14 янв 2009, 01:21	"Нет, на сцене он фронтмен, он также главный композитор Edguy — в этом не сомнений. Но помимо этого есть ещё пять участников группы..." - - Пятеро участников помимо Тобиаса? Либо это г-н Людвиг заговаривается, либо с переводом что-то не то. Тем не менее, спасибо за интервью.
Суперковен 14 янв 2009, 09:25	У Edguy по-моему больше всего интервью. Целых 4 штуки = ))
Kreator 14 янв 2009, 15:42	А по-моему у Edguy проблемы. Если раньше Тобиас привлекал для написания музыки даже того же Йенса, то сейчас узурпировал власть, сторонних проектов набрал (не хилых причем). А последний альбом - не реверанс ли последний участникам группы. Как-то грустно Йенс сказал о своем участии в альбоме, эти отсылки к Тоби... Ну, не знаю...
Don Huan 14 янв 2009, 23:58	да Бог с этими внутренними "проблемами" в группе! (если они вообще имеют место быть) главное- последний альбом получился добротным!!! думал что после бледного и скучного "РР" Тобиас сдуется вообще... оказалось нет)
Visionaire 16 янв 2009, 11:17	smoking_joselin, он часто говорил какие-то нестыкующиеся вещи, так что всё возможно.
Daria 20 янв 2009, 16:32	Спасибо за интервью!
Dragonfly 21 фев 2009, 16:07	Сказав "пятеро", Йенс, я думаю, имел в виду себя, Дирка, Эгги, Феликса и Сашу в придачу))) другого объяснения я не вижу А интервью действительно забавное))) TINNITUS SANCTUS рулит!!! (хотя пиво да водку я не люблю)
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Edguy

Never be serious!

Edge

smoking_joselin

Суперковен

Kreator

Don Huan

Visionaire

Daria

Dragonfly