Redaktör Niclas gjorde tidigare i år först en telefonintervju med Till Lindemann och Peter Tägtgren och fick även sedan sitta ned med Till då han besökte Stockholm i februari. Här har ni nu del två i vårt snack angående projektet LINDEMANN, men även en hel del annat. Till berättar bl a om hur svårt det var att få till låten “Golden shower”, att Rammstein blivit av med sin replokal och att hans första hårdrocksskiva var Deep Purples “Stormbringer”, men även att det kan vara svårt att motivera sig till att göra ett nytt album med sitt huvudband Rammstein:
“We go down into the basement and start again with producing an album and you have to go through this… I don´t wanna say hell, but sometimes it´s really hard to consider yourself in this band situation. Six different persons with different egos and ideas and tastes. Is it worth it these days? They´re (fans) gonna download it and as you say, they consume it so fast, but I know there´s a lot of fans longing for new material so…”
Do you and Peter share the same kinda humor?
Till: Yeah, in a way. We laugh at the same shit. Sometimes he goes way too far. It´s that northern Swedish humor, but I grew up in the countryside too. But some things he says, then I´m out of the picture. (laughs)
How would you describe Peter? Is he an easy going person?
Till: Yes, one of the most easy going persons I´ve ever met. He´s very well known in the metal scene here in Sweden and he´s producing all this stuff. I saw his refrences and I was like “What?” and now The Exploted, a fucking punk band from Scotland. I listened to them in the 90´s and even in East Germany they were superstars for us. His range is so wide and he´s so multitalented. He´s like a one man band. He plays all the instruments, he´s producing, he´s recording and even mixing. He won´t even give out these mixes and I said “Come on, give them to Stefan Glaumann and let him do it!”, but he just said “No!” But he did it really well. It´s amazing and he did a really good job
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Could the music have been totally different from the stuff you do in Rammstein and he does in Hypocrisy?
Till: I saw how I could jump into the death metal scene, because I think the growling is really cool and we could´ve come up with something like Dimmu Borgir or Cannibal Corpse, but I can´t. I stay where I am and we had some friction in the beginning, because Peter always come up with the guitars too early and jump straight into with a riff and I had to stop him and go “Come on, let the piano grow and maybe put some strings on it.” We were criss crossing all the time and we were feeding each other with ideas and experiences.
There will most certainly be a lot of talk about the lyrics. Do you feel a need to be provocative? Is it harder being provocative these days, since everything is out there today already?
Till: I realized from my friends and journalists and so on, that they´re talking about the lyrics and that´s the best thing you can look for. For me, I´m totally happy about that. “How can you have cunt in a chorus?” With Rammstein we were the first band in Germany that recorded a lyric like “Ich will ficken” for a major record company and people said we couldn´t do it, but in the end it became like a hymn. Nobody believed me when I said that “One day, I will reach out the microphone and I promise you that 20.000 people will start singing Ich will ficken.” And it happened.
What was it that made you go with “Skills in pills” as the album title?
Till: It´s just because it’s a nice song. It´s good in a graphic way. Sometimes you don´t have to look too far to make choices. It comes by itself. We asked people about it and we had so much bullshit. “Home sweet home” is also a good title.
“Praise abort” might´ve been too provocative?
Till: Yes, but we didn´t think of that one as the title. (laughs)
Can you write about anything or do you have certain boundaries?
Till: I´m not that good when it comes to writing about politics and political subjects. There are so many bands that have like a need to bring a message, but let them do their shit and I do mine.
What will you do if this thing really takes off?
Till: Then we have a problem. (laughs) Really. Peter is more laidback about it and he doesn´t give a shit. He´s already thinking about the next record. Maybe we´d do a little club tour in Europe, like show cases and see how it feels. Maybe nobody likes it and want us to go back to our regular bands. Rammstein gets together again in September and we have to look for a new rehearsal room. We used to play in this old and famous club, the Knaack Club, but they closed it down because of neighbors and some bullshit, so we have to find something new.
What are the plans for Rammstein then?
Till: We don´t know, really. Maybe we go straight back into touring or an EP or a full album, I don´t know. We have to sit down and discuss it, which will take weeks. We´re six guys with six opinions and it can be a nightmare sometimes.
Do you think you´ll bring anything from this experience (Lindemann) into Rammstein, when it comes to writing new songs and so on?
Till: Besides the English part, I don´t know? Maybe I can try it, but we have really tough procedures in Rammstein about everything we do and there´s no way to sneak around it. And it demands Peter (Tägtgren) because without him nothing happens. I really need him and it´s like this ying – yang situation.
Is there stuff that got left over on the Lindemann album?
Till: Yes. Peter is on his way to Borlänge now (interview took place in February). He´s all sick and feezing and sweating at the same time. I go up there tomorrow and we´re gonna start singing on a couple of more songs. There is one song I really wanna work on and I want to have it on the album. It´s such a cool song.
How come it´s been left out this far?
Till: He was mixing the album and I was on vacation. I told him to give it to Stefan (Glaumann), but he refused to. I was so exhausted and needed to go on vacation and I told him “If you wanna work on it, go for it, but I´m outta here!” I always have the same problem, I wanna go away from everything and then I sit there after two or three days and I open up the laptop and go “Let´s see, there was this one song…” and then all of a sudden I get an idea and I have to work on it and people tell me to throw the laptop in the ocean. Once I start working on the idea, the vacation is fucked and my girlfriend goes crazy.
Does that happen a lot, that song ideas grow on you over time?
Till: Yes. The worst case scenario is if you´re missing a chorus. You have a pretty good story down and everything is good, but you´re missing the chorus That´s the heart of the song and if you´re missing that, you have to put it aside and wait for it, something that sparks you. If you have a chorus, the story comes by itself and it´s very easy. Well, not easy but you can work on it. One of the hardest on the album was “Golden shower”. It took six or seven months. Everything was done except the chorus and then one day, in Peter´s studio actually, we put three voices on top of it and put a lot of reverb on it, but it wasn´t catchy. Then out of the blue came “Cunt!” and it was amazing. I love the Chorus because it took so long to come up with. It´s such a small thing, but it means everything and now it´s perfect. I looked in the dictionary for words that rhymes with “cunt”, like blunt and grunt. I love it!
During the time you spent working with Peter, did you pick up any Swedish? Did he pick up any German?
Till: Peter was married to a German girl, so he can understand a lot of German. He doesn´t speak much, but he understands a lot. In Sweden it´s so hard to pick up anything, because everybody speaks English so well. It makes everything comfortable and easy, but when it comes to learning the language, there´s no chance. When I grew up we all had to learn Russian, so we were all very late when it came to the English language, so it was so hard to catch up. When we were on tour, I was up at night translating books. I had these books by writers like Edgar Allen Poe and stuff and it was English and German on each side, so you could pick up on things right away.
Back in East Germany, what was the first metal music you got in touch with?
Till: Deep Purple´s “Stormbringer”. Somebody offered it to me and I had no idea what it was like. I knew of Deep Purple though. It was like a one chance thing, take it or leave it. It cost a fortune, like a monthly salary these days. It was my treasure. I was like Gollum, “My precious.” (laughs) I cleaned it and put it on the turntable. There wasn´t a scratch on it. An amazing procedure.
Back then, you bought an album and it stayed on the turntable for weeks and weeks. Not so much these days.
Till: It´s so easy to get hold of today and it´s so cheap. Now you have these DJ´s, which is kinda cool. Stuff like Skrillex and so on. It´s amazing and I totally like it and all the dub step and so on, but it´s a really strange consuming behavior. It makes it hard to believe in a product and to keep on going with this music. Like with Rammstein. We go down into the basement and start again with producing an album and you have to go through this… I don´t wanna say hell, but sometimes it´s really hard to consider yourself in this band situation. Six different persons with different egos and ideas and tastes. Is it worth it these days? They´re (fans) gonna download it and as you say, they consume it so fast, but I know there´s a lot of fans longing for new material so…
Did you ever get to see any metal shows when you lived in East Germany?
Till: No, nothing. We had like silly rock wannabe metal bands in East Germany. You weren´t allowed to play music like that. There was censorship that stopped you immediately. It was bullshit.
Text: Niclas Müller-Hansen