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Kerrang! 29-Jan-05 -Issue #104 : Interview with Richard & Paul

Next week, German industrial gods Rammstein hit Britain. But while the fiery, sex-and-death spectacle of their shows is legendary, what about behind the scenes? Here's the big you don't ever see...

From Kruspe-Bernstein's first greeting ("That last interview we did, I got really worried afterwards. You got inside my head, I kept thinking, ‘What have I said?') it's clear the livewire guitarist has made a decision. This time, there's nothing to lose. No holding back. He lights a cigarette, draws deep, and prepares to tell the whole truth...

Few bands are as mysterious as Rammstein. Their paradox is at the heart of their appeal: these are men who, onstage, serve up an infernal cabaret of fire, sex, death, poetry, drama and the soundtrack to their souls' darkest recesses. And then, in the blinding afterglow of the final explosive flash, they are gone, replaced by something more earthly: great musicians, fearsomely creative minds, and very private men.
We wanted to know how the six members of Rammstein prepare, execute, and think about their show. Onstage and off. Just what makes them tick?
So we persuaded guitarists Paul Landers and Richard Kruspe-Bernstein to take us inside...

You seem to thrive on you live adrenaline more than anyone else in Rammstein – you're really in the zone up there aren't you? "Are you trying to say I'm a cokehead? Hahaha!"

Not necessarily...But what are you thinking about up there?
"Good question. Okay, let me see...If I'm having a bad day, I'm trying to get someone in the audience. I need someone I can focus on. I try to make eye contact and get a connection with them, so I can turn them round, make them react. That works especially well if they're female and good-looking. During a good show, there are moments you remember it going past, then the rest of it's all a big blur. It's a rush, and you're not really conscious of anything else. Although for me, I'm a sound freak – I must have the right sound onstage – so I do tune into that, and think about that. I need the physical sound to get excited. That one thing I can change during the concert."

What do you mean, one thing?
"In Rammstein, you're a slave to the machine. There's not much room for improvisation. In the early days, we'd play shows and the power would go off, so you'd get (Christoph) Schneider running around on stage and trying to work the audience, and having to really improvise to keep it going. But the cool thing about this band, and what we loved about it in the beginning, was really shedding rock'n'roll and being part of a machine. Still, my big dream is to play a show with AC/DC, where you can be really loose. For us, if you take half a step too far when a pyro's going off, you're in trouble!"

Who's to blame for all the stunts?
"The whole band. I'd love to do more, but as a guitar player it's difficult to take part. That's why most of them are Till and Flake – they don't have instruments strapped round them all the time. I've gotta keep playing, so that limits it. We get my guitar burning, and for a while I had my hat on fire but I've stopped doing that. It just looked silly."

So, show over, final encore, you walk offstage, dressing room...what then?
"That depends on how it went. Sometimes you get offstage and you're so pissed off you just better shut your mouth. I had to learn that especially. At first, we used to get really emotional after shows, and we'd really confront each other. So now we have a rule, we can say stuff, but don't criticise stuff people do right after a show."

On the subject of criticising the show, do you ever have stunt ideas you take to the others and they say "Come off it, that's shit"?
"All the time! Sometimes even I think my idea is shit! I had the idea of Flake being cooked in the pot, then I realised, the first time we actually did it onstage, that it was too convenient, just stupid or not even funny, whatever. So I said, ‘I hate it'. But by that time, the rest of them had done it and loved it...What do you think of it?"

I like it. There's nothing more unsettling than a silly thing done with absolute seriousness. Look at psychopathic clowns for example...
"Ah yeah! So the only thing is not to laugh while they're doing it, huh?"

So do things go wrong much?
"Stunts go wrong all the time. But Mexico City was the only time I feared for my life p we started a riot there and it wasn't even a show, jus a signing session! The expectation was that there'd be about 4,000 people. When we turned up, there were already 15,000, and Mexico City was completely out of control. It dissolved into complete anarchy and riot. We had to escape over the rooftops."

Will you ever get bored with all the stunts, all the fire and cannibalism?
"That is the weird thing. I would love to do an acoustic show with Rammstein. But you can't just stop what we do. I'd like to get stunt advisors, but the other guys aren't too open to having someone from outside come up with those things."

So Rammstein are a team in terms of band decisions?
"Yes, but that team feel becomes looser as you go on tour. Schneider, me and Till like to go our own way on tour, and the others stick together more. I've got very much my own rhythm, and it doesn't fit with anyone else's. I wake up, then jog for one hour. Then – no breakfast – I play and practice my guitar and maybe vocal coaching, then we're off to the next place. Whereas others go down to breakfast. But also, quite honestly, I don't wanna see them every day! That's the reason bands drink and take drugs on tour: every day's the same. It's especially hard for me, because I need to always be doing something creative."

There must be ways of staying sane...
"Running's the best thing.... As for all that rock star behaviour, I would only drink when I took drugs. But I've moved past that. There was one time I tried to do a show on some cocaine, and I wanted to be the original major high-speed guitarist! So now I try and do something creative – even just my vocals or something. To defeat the boredom that makes you do that..."

So when it's all over, are you relieved, or suicidal?
"Coming off tour is really hard. You go through a kind of depression. After all, the reason you do this is you need the attention. On tour, you're the god, you're the boss, you're the rock star. People do stuff for you, and then suddenly you have to take care of your own stuff. On tour we've got a guy who does things for us called Tom. And for weeks afterwards I catch myself sitting in my living room and calling out "Tommmmmmmm!". Ha ha ha!"

Paul Landers seems gentler, more reserved. Don't be fooled. The introductions are friendly but formal – almost British – and the interview begins... And he's soon revealing a cool-as-fuck line in irony, a warm bonhomie, a partying streak, and the secrets of Rammstein's dressing room...

Okay, so it's just before a show, you're backstage... What are you all doing?
"We have a CD of Silesian folk music – do you know Silesian folk music?"

No...
"(Defeaning falsetto war-screech)RRRRRRRR! Rlrlrlrlrlrlrlrlr! Ya-ya-ya-ya-ya! OWA!"

Oh!
"Yes, so you see people would be surprised by that, don't you think?"

Er...yes.
"We all have little rituals too. Till(Lindemann, vocalist) lifts weights. Richard plays his guitar. Schneider (drums) has a space where he'll practice. Flake (Lorenz, keyboards) just sits quietly and drinks a glass or two of port. Olly (Riedel, bassist) plays football."

No stagefright?
"Ach, no! The only time we're really nervous is when we're maybe just doing one number for TV cameras"

What if your stunts misfire?
"Oh, that happens all the time. And it's awful. When it all goes wrong, and one of the contraptions fails to go off, it changes your mood completely. Especially Till - I've seen times when he's had the big Robocop-style flame hose tied to his arm, and he raises his arm into the air to shoot a ball of flame and...nothing happens. Again... nothing. You just knew there would be a massive row in the dressing room after that!"

So have there ever been stunt ideas that go too far even for Rammstein?
"It's more just because they don't work. Even the one with the flame-hoses – we thought it up, and then everyone went, ‘Hmm, that's just silly'. But we agreed in the end to keep it in for one show and see how it went, and then we all turned to each other and went, ‘Actually, that's pretty good!'. That happens all the time...And we change them as we go along, too."

Where do you test these massive flame-throwers before the gigs?
"We have an old factory that we use as a test-site."

Can I ask, do you get lots of shit from your insurance people for all this?
"Mmm, yeah. The problem is that it's getting harder and harder to do the illegal things. It wasn't so bad when we were small, but now word tends to go ahead of us along the concert hall grapevine... Someone will see something in a magazine about a show early in the tour and call the promoter who'll say, ‘You're not allowed to do this. Cut down on the pyro by the time you bring the tour here, or we won't allow the show, lose this, lose that, and so on."

So what do you do? I haven't noticed you cutting down on any pyros...
"We say, of course, you're right. Then before show time we put them all back in. We have to take photographs of the venues after we perform, to show they're not burnt that badly, otherwise people try and overestimate the damage they can bill you for!"

Do you find yourself thinking about other things when you're onstage?
"That's something that happens only during the bad shows. Of it's going flat, you start to think, ‘What shall I have for dinner tonight?'. But then there's the great shows, where you're so into it that you don't know anything until it's over."

The off to another city, filling another day...
"Yeah, I can do anything but sitting around. Flake's great, he goes for long walks without any plan, right out past the edge of the city. Then at some point he stops, turns round and tries to find his way back to the hotel again, ha ha! And we have friends we like to meet with. In London, we always like to get together with Placebo or the Skunk Anansie people..."

Still the rock'n'roll lifestyle then?
"Well, let's just say we're not the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, with their herbal tea and mineral water..."
Matt Potter

© 2005 Sue Lindemann