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Kerrang: Gig of the week 18 May 2002

How would you describe a Rammstein show to someone who’s never seen you?
Richard Z Kruspe-Bernstein (guitar): “I would say, imagine you’ve seen ‘Star Wars’ for the first time.”

Who comes up with all the pyro effects?
Paul Landers (guitar): “Sometimes we each come up with ideas to improve effects, sometimes we’ll all work on it. The mouth flamethrower for example comes from Till (Lindemann, vocals). It’s an evil invention. Sometimes we’ll be rehearsing and we’ll hear a really loud explosion – booom! We’ll run outside and Till will be standing there with a black face and he’ll go, ‘So what did you think of that?. Ten minutes later the guy we rent the rehearsal room from from comes round to kick us out. It’s always the same one. The guy always calms down. Until the next explosion…”

Have stunts ever gone wrong?
Richard: “Of course! If you play with fire, you must understand that’s it’s not something you can ever completely control. Fire years ago in Berlin, we had a disaster when a burning backdrop that we used to have, fell down from the stage into the audience. No-one was hurt, but back then we used to do the pyrotechnics ourselves. After that we decided it was too dangerous and hired a special company. And you can always get that extra close Rammstein shave from a burning mike stand if you get too close. We also used to have a stunt where we would set fire Till as if by accident and then he would start to burn all the way up to his face, and then he’d fall on the floor and pretend to be hurt – he was wearing a special mask to protect his face, but it looked real from the stage. Then we would stop playing as if something was wrong…”

How on earth did the crowds react?
Richard: “The crowd would get scared, some people would cry and the energy would go down. It was always hard to bring it back up because they took a long time to be convinced that Till was okay. To be honest I never really liked the stunt – I didn’t think it was necessary. Sometimes you overstep the line, and for me it’s important that everyone who goes to a show has a good time.”

What’s the best thing about touring?
Richard: “Coming home! At the moment I feel much more creative at home. Touring is a very superficial life. It’s like Groundhog Day – everything is the same, I don’t like it.”
So er, what’s the worst?
Richard: “The thing about touring is that you become retarded – you can’t do anything. You can’t read a book, you can’t write music, you’re just waiting all the time for the hour where you get to go on stage, then you go and wait again and I haven’t figured out a way to deal with this yet and use the time in different ways – and that’s the worst. Also as a band we’re all in out mid-30s – we’re not 20 anymore and for me it’s like, I really like to have my own space. We’ve played together in a band for seven years and sometimes you just need breaks.”

The UK was one of the last territories in the world to accept Rammstein. Has the Brixton gig given you a more positive picture of the UK?
Christoph Schneider (drummer): “Everytime we would go to the UK we always had bad experiences – hostile press, indifferent labels, real idiots. We drew the conclusion that ‘England ist scheisse!(shit)’, and decided not to go there. And when we finally did the Astoria show got cancelled so we were under a lot of pressure. But hearing 5000 people singing in German at the Brixton show has been one of our greatest successes. We came offstage and we said. ‘Now we’ve done it! We’ve conquered England. And we did it without tanks…”

How different will the UK arena tour be?
Richard: “It will be a bigger production, but it won’t be so different. A Rammstein show is always like…’Star Wars’. There’s always a part two, and a part three and a part four…”

We should leave a Rammstein gig feeling…?
Richard: “My wife came up with a really good expression for this actually. And I really believe this because I hear it from a lot of people who see Rammstein. She said it’s like being 14 years old again.”

Catherine Yates.

© 2005 Sue Lindemann