Demons
& Wizards
It has always been a dream
of mine to actually be able and have a talk with Hansi Kurch from Blind
Guardian, so when I found out that there was a Demons & Wizards interview
arranged for me with Hansi, I couldn't believe my ears! The anxiety was
overwhelming me, but the pleasure as well when the phone rang and the conversation
started unfolding... Here's everything we talked about!
1. HELLO! FIRST OF ALL I’D LIKE TO TELL YOU
THAT BLIND GUARDIAN WAS THE FIRST METAL BAND I’VE LISTENED TO AND IS ONE
OF MY FAVORITE TILL NOW.
Oooohhh! Keep on then! Hahahahahha!
-SO, IT’S AN HONOR FOR ME DOING THIS INTERVIEW
WITH YOU NOW!
Thank you, but the honor is on my side!!!
2. 5 YEARS HAVE PASSED SINCE THE RELEASE OF YOUR
DEBUT ALBUM. WHY DID IT TAKE YOU SO LONG TO RELEASE ITS SUCCESSOR?
It’s because of the activities of Blind Guardian
and there is no other reason. We simply never found the time to focus on
the Demons & Wizards songwriting. Jon did some work at the end of 2002
and I wasn’t able to respond to him until the end of 2003, because it was
then that we managed to find some spare time for the songwriting process.
After I accomplished it and finished with Jon’s arrangements back in 2003,
it seemed that we could never find the chance to complete that album, but
due to Jon’s health problems with his spine, he was forced to cancel his
touring activities and thus we had the chance to accomplish the songwriting
of Demons & Wizards and the production at the end of 2004. It was the
only chance we had and we took it! All in all, the songwriting has taken
in real time 4 or maybe 6 weeks in total and the production took another
4 weeks. It was just impossible to do that in one row, in a short amount
of time.
-HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT OF QUITTING AND NOT RELEASING
ANYTHING ELSE UNDER THE NAME OF DEMONS & WIZARDS BECAUSE OF ALL THESE
PROBLEMS YOU FACED?
No! We knew that we would be able to come
up with great songs in a short amount of time. This is something that we
figures out when we did the first one and we just built up everything on
that one. This wasn’t an option, because it would be a waste of talent
if we didn’t do so. We have such a strong chemistry as songwritiers and
it’s such a strong partnership that you need to spread out good songs if
there’s a chance!
-I BELIEVE THAT THIS ALBUM IS BETTER THAN YOU
FIRST ONE...
I agree with that! The first one lent too
many things from Iced Earth and Blind Guardian and we were 2 seperate song
writers at that part, but with the songwriting of the new album we somehow
managed to find a way to come closer as songwriters. It seems that Jon
reacted on my approach of singing and doing vocal arrangements and I did
the same with him. I tried to come up with vocal arrangements that would
be more suitable to Jon’s songs.
3. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO ACHIEVE WITH THIS PROJECT
AND WHAT DOES IT OFFER YOU THAT YOU CAN’T “FIND” IN YOUR MAIN BANDS?
There is nothing it offers to me that I can’t
find in Blind Guardian!I think it’s the same with Jon. The only thing,
which can not be offered is a constant work with Jon for a whole album.
We could possibly be creative together for one song either for Iced Earth
or Blind Guardian, but we couldn’t do only Jon and Hansi songs for Blind
Guardian or Iced Earth. That’s something that we can only do with Demons
& Wizards, but apart from that musically we could possibly do the same
songs for our main bands as well! It’s just a great privilege to work with
2 great people like Jon and Aners. Their approach of writing songs is in
some ways similar and in some others, it isn’t. The difference might be
that Andres is a more orchestrated lead guitar composer and Jon is more
rhythm guitar focused...
-JON HAS A MORE STRAIGHTFORWARD CLASSIC HEAVY
METAL APPROACH...
Hahahaha! Without any doubt! It’s more classic
heavy metal! Hahaha! There is no doubt about that! Jon is a true metalhead!!!!
4. APART FROM YOU TWO, CAN YOU TELL ME WHICH OTHER
MUSICIANS PARTICIPATE ON YOUR NEW ALBUM? DID YOU HAVE ANY GUEST APPEARANCES?
Yes! It has been Jim Morrison again who is
considered to be a constant band member for Demons & Wizards, if it
comes to studio production. Then there is Bobby Jarzombek who now plays
in Iced Earth and also plays in Halford, Riot, etc and he is one of the
best metal drummers and he has given a big improvement on the album, because
he played on it and he played with his own style. For some parts we have
hired the studio musician Rubin Drake who did the more rocky, real
bass inspired tunes, like for example in the song “Sieze The Day” and in
all the songs that deserved the sound that only the 70s inspired bass players
can play! Apart from that, we also had some guest musicians for the piano
and cello parts and for backing vocals, but they were just sessionists.
5. NOW LET’S TALK ABOUT THE LYRICS WHICH ARE ONCE
AGAIN FANTASY ORIENTED...
Some of them are fantasy oriented, others
are not. A good amount of them are inspired by fantasy literature. I read
“The Dark Towers” during this time and...
-I’LL ASK YOU ABOUT THAT!
-DO YOU WRITE FANTASY LYRICS BECAUSE YOU WANT
THE PEOPLE THAT LISTEN TO THEM TO ESCAPE FROM REALITY OR IS IT AN ALTERNATIVE
WAY TO UNDERSTAND HOW THE WORLD WORKS?
It’s simple... I’m so inspired by literature
in general, that I can’t resist to write lyrics about it. Another fact
for me which is very important is that I feel that most of the lyrical
concepts I come up with are somehow connected to the songs. It’s like the
songs crying out to me and telling me “Dxo the Lord Of the Rings!”... Whatever!
I told you that I’m inspired by this stuff, but I wait for the right tune
to come up with that type of lyrics. I want to have something suitable
for the songs, something I have the feeling I can relate to, I have the
feeling I’m good enough to come with good lyrics about, to inspire people
reading. If this is what you mean to escape from reality, then yeah, but
it’s more because I want to give them some spare time, to give the good
leisure time and not be too hard on them. Especially on demons & Wizards...
well NO! Even in Blind Guardian there are 3-4 more peotry like songs that
contain messages and even the more fantasy ones, contain some messages
about life...
6. ONE OF MY FAVOIRTE SONGS IS “BENEATH THESE
WAVES”, WHOSE LYRICS ARE BASED ON HERMAN MELVILLE’S “MOBY DICK” WHICH IS
ONE OF MY FAVORITE NOVELS...
I’m always happy to hear that you know! Hahahaha!
There are only 5-6 people so far that have managed to figure this out so
far and seem to be interested in it ever since I started this promo tour!
-I WOULD LIKE TO ASK YOU WHO DO YOU BELIEVE WAS
THE HUNTED ONE, THE WHALE OR CAPTAIN AHAB FROM HIS OWN AMBITION?
I think it is... captain Ahab the hunted one,
because it was his ambition to get the whale and it also the fact of men
struggling against nature, human’s place in destiny and how to cope with
it. It’s more about Ahab and he was the hunted one!
7. ALTHOUGH THE ALBUM IS NOT A CONCEPT, I
BELIEVE THAT YOU HAVE SONGS BASED ON “THE DARK TOWER” OF STEPHEN KING.
LIKE FOR EXAMPLE “SIEZE THE DAY” AND “THE GUNSLINGER”. AM I RIGHT? Yes!
It’s “Crimson King”, “Terror Train” and “The Gunslinger”. I was reading
the story during the recordings and I was still lacking some lyrical inspiration
and since I was so heavily moved by this story, I have decided to do a
story about the gunslinger, which turned out to be the song “The Gunslinger”.
Later on Jon suggested to do a song about Randal (note: didn’t catch
the surname) and when he did that, I was also into the idea of doing
a song about Randal, but pretty much connected to “The Dark Tower” more
than to “The Stand”, although there are elements from “The Stand” in there
as well and since Randal is a servant to the crimson king, I’ve just attached
the Crimson King to the story as well and later on since there was one
very insane song called “Terror Train”, because it has such an intense
aggressiveness, I thought I needed something related to lunacy and my attention
immediately has fallen on I was always a big fan (note: Didn’t catch
that name either) of that character and his story... “Sieze The Day”...
I kept that open my friend! Hahahaha!You partly got it right though! There
was a discussion between me and Jon and Jon was asking me to do a song
about “The Lord Of The Rings”, but I couldn’t really make up my mind and
I couldn’t also make up my mind about doing another song based on “The
Dark Towers”! hahahahaha! So, I’ve kept that one open and this is a free
style lyrical attempt that contains elements you can interpret and relate
to “The Lord Of The Rings”, to “The Dark Tower”, but also to me and Jon
as persons.
8. ANOTHER SONG I LIKED A LOT IS “DORIAN”, WHICH
I THINK MUST DEAL WITH THE STORY OF DORIAN GRAY,. RIGHT?
-I WOULD LIKE YOU TO TELL ME WHAT YOU WOULD DO,
IF YOU HAD THE GIFT OR CURSE OF IMMORTALITY.
I don’t want to have that gift! No, no fuckin’
way! Hahahaha! You know my nightmare has always been to become a vampire
that’s because of the immortality and be doomed to live forever... I don’t
even think about that! I’m really happy with being a mortal being, who’s
getting older, although there are sad elements on that as well! Hahahaha!
Still it’s better than the opposite way around!
9. CAN YOU TELL ME WHY BLIND GUARDIAN DECIDED
TO CHANGE LABEL AND MOVE FROM A MULTI-NATIONAL LABEL LIKE VIRGIN TO NUCLEAR
BLAST? WHICH IS BIG OF COURSE, BUT A METAL LABEL NEVERTHELESS...
We were used to major companies for many years
now and since the whole record industry suffered, the major labels suffered
even more, so that means they fired a lot of the people working for them
and due to that the companies became smaller and haven’t had enough people
to take care of all their bands. We’ve been one of them and we haven’t
been promoted the right way, especially with the last Blind Guardian DVD.
They did some significant mistakes there, so we asked for a termination
of our contract. We went out of the big business, because we didn’t want
to continue like this! Hahahaha! Due to our experience with this major
company, a major company was out of the question for us and we were looking
for a metal oriented label, which would promote the album the right way
and know how to deal with the quality of a band like Blind Guardian. The
major label even in the good days wasn’t able to do that! They simply released
the album, distributed it, promoted in a nice way, but not tremendously.
In a fine way, but I’m sure that Blind Guardian became famous mainly in
an underground way and we had a good mouth by mouth promotion and the promotion
Virgin did, did half of the work, but we never saw a real pushing, they
never tried to break us through!
-ACTUALLY THIS IS HOW I FOUND OUT ABOUT YOU! A
FRIEND OF MINE GAVE ME ONE OF YOUR TAPES AND WHEN I LISTENED TO IT, I WENT
TO THE NEAREST STORE AND BOUGHT THE ALBUM!
-AROUND 10 YEARS AGO...
10 years ago... At that part we’ve made an
album like “Imaginations...” which was a break through anyway... how strange
is that? You got the album from a friend and not from a promotional kind
of thing? So, they weren’t willing to do videos for quite a long time and
if they did, they gave us a really small budget and you know, they decided
to choose the director and stuff like that... That was still something
we could live with, but with the DVD...
-I THINK THIS IS UNFARI, BECAUSE I SEE BANDS INFLUENCED
BY BLIND GUARDIAN TO HAVE EXCELLENT VIDEOS, SO I’D LIKE TO SEE SOMETHING
MORE PROFESSIONAL FROM YOU... I AGREE WITH YOU.
That’s something we still suffer! We don’t
have any good videos, except for one which was so horribly expensive that
it can’t justify the amount of money spent for it and all the other ones
went really, really slow and I don’t like them that much!
-WHEN SHOULD WE EXPECT YOUR NEW ALBUM?
You can consider it to be released somewhere
in the first half of 2006. I’d rather think April – May 2006!
-I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO THAT!
10. I HAVE SEEN YOUR LIVE DVD TAKEN FROM THE BLIND
GUARDIAN FESTIVAL AND I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW IF YOU HAVE PLANS TO RELEASE
ANOTHER DVD WITH THE OTHER BANDS THAT PLAYED THERE…
No! There is a permission problem and some
other problems as well...
11. WILL YOU ORGANISE ANOTHER BLIND GUARDIAN FESTIVAL
FOR THIS YEAR?
I started thinking about it. I don’t think
we can do that on a yearly basis, which was my original intention. I’d
guess after each album we could do that, but this means that the new festival
will take place in 2007. If everything works out fine, we’re going to release
the orchestral album some time in the year 2007 and this festival would
be the perfect environment to promote this album!
12. YOU’VE BECOME A FATHER, SO DO YOU HAVE A DAUGHTER
OR A SON? I WANT TO ASK YOU SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
-LET’S SUPPOSE THAT SOMEDAY YOUR SON TELLS YOU
THAT HE HAS DECIDED TO BECOME A MUSICIAN.
-TAKING INTO CONSIDERATION ALL YOUR EXPERIENCE,
HOW WOULD YOU REACT AND WHAT WOULD YOU TELL HIM?
I’d tell him to go on!!!! I’d tell him his
crazy and he has to spend a lot of time, but it’s a fan job! It’s great!
If you have the ability, you are confident and can stand all these and
of course you are good enough to succeed, then I’d tell him “Go ahead!”.
I’d surely tell him, however, that this is not the easiest job and I don’t
think this is going to change the next years! Hahahaha!
-WHICH THINGS WOULD YOU TELL HIM TO BE CAREFUL
OF?
Hmm.. The most difficult thing is to keep
friendships with people not related to music and to keep a loving relationship,
because that’s the most difficult and most important thing in the world!
13. IF DEMONS AND WIZARDS’ MUSIC WAS AN EMOTION,
WHAT WOULD IT BE?
On the first one it would be a very sad girl.
On the second one it would be a very triumphant type of hero!
-IF IT WAS A PAINTING, WHAT WOULD IT SHOW OR SYMBOLIZE?
It would symbolize the crimson king’s eye,
which we have on the artwork anyway! Hahahahaha! Or something related to
“The Dark Tower”.
14. IF YOU COULD BE A FAMOUS PERSON FOR A DAY,
WHO WOULD YOU CHOOSE AND WHICH PERIOD OF HIS/HER LIFE WOULD YOU LIKE TO
HAVE A TASTE OF?
Hhmm... I don’t want to switch with another
person. I am me! I was happy my whole life! I do what I love, I always
had good friends, I always had fan and I had visions, goals, which I worked
for, but even if I wasn’t so successful, I still wouldn’t want to be someone
else! It is how it is! I am I and I’m good! That’s how it is! Hahahahaha!
15. HOW DO YOU IMAGINE HEAVY METAL MUSIC TO BE
IF ELECTRICITY CEASED TO EXIST?
It pretty much would sound, I think, like
medieval music. This is what I believe!
-BY THE WAY, HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT FO RELEASING
A BLIND GUARDIAN ALBUM FILLED WITH MEDIEVAL MUSIC, LIKE SOME OF THE BALLADS
YOU HAVE?
We haven’t thgouht about it so far, but this
doesn’t mean we won’t ever do it! I could imagine that this is something
to work on after we are done with the musical, because the musical has
demanded a lot of time and we have paid a lot of attention to that, orchestrations,
classical instruments, etc... If we do any kind of experimentation again,
this must be something really interesting!
16. THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR THIS INTERVIEW!
I appreciate it! The pleasure was on my side!
-IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU’D LIKE TO MENTION
AND I FORGOT TO ASK YOU? LEAVE A MESSAGE TO YOUR FANS…
It’s always good to be back to Greece and
I wish I could spend some more time here and maybe tomorrow the airport
might be on strike and my wish might come true! Keep your fingers crossed
for me! Hahahahaha!
-OK THEN!!! BYE!
Nick “William_Kidd”
Parastatidis
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