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Kerrang! feature:Rammstein - Bandmates

Kerrang! (Issue #1028) 23-October-04
"With bandmates like these...who needs enemies?"
Hidden in the grooves of Rammstein’s latest album is the story of how a group torn apart by internal tensions defeated their demons and rediscovered fun. We joined them in Berlin for a rare glimpse into the band’s creative heart and soul...

A bare bulb-lit room above a karate gym in Berlin. Six burly men stand around, smoking and talking on mobile phones. They are dressed as women - East German military policewomen to be precise - in uniforms, big black leather boots, lipstick and wigs. Initially, it's a bewildering scene. Within seconds, I'm caught in the bear-like hand-shake of the most muscular transvestite. And one thought is flashing through my head: "Jesus tucking Christ -she's the singer in Rammstein! " Something is clearly very wrong here. Because not only does Rammstein vocalist Till Lindemann never, ever, meet the press, but he was also, until today, quite butch.
But, like everything else they do, Rammstein are taking the preparations for K!'s shoot incredibly seriously: they frown and sweat as they wrestle tights over hairy calves, fuss with their wigs, inspect their uniforms in the mirrors. And when they break for make-up and gather for coffee, cigarettes and flurries of text massaging, they correct each others posture. It's oddly touching. Rammstein, you see, are having fun. The band whose thundering industrial rock is a byword - on these shores, anyway - for Wagnerian walls of sound and the raging of tormented souls, are, for today, more Monty Python than Metallica. And it suits them.
It's strangely appropriate, too, given that their new album, 'Reise, Reise' ('Journey, Journey') sees them expanding their horizons with an unhinged, Mephistophelean humour, extrovert outlook and dark relish that previous outings only hinted at. 'Mein Teil' chorus 'Because you are what you eat'- concerns last year's consensual cannibal sex-death scandal in Germany; Amerika' is a double-edged swipe at everybody's favourite bogeyman; 'Moskau' sees the East German sextet turning the tables on the former Soviet capital. This sounds like a band who know that, now, they can do what the Hell they want.
Which begs a question: 'Reise, Reise' isn't a light album by any stretch. Nor is it any less intense than earlier outings. It's just that, after the troubled sessions for the dark, claustrophobic 'Mutter', it seems someone's opened the shutters. Rammstein are looking outward. Clearly, something's happened. Something's changed them. But what?

That's a question easier to ask than to answer. In past interviews, they've talked in general terms: I want to know specifics. What follows often feels like a series of police interviews. The picture that emerges - of fisticuffs, of therapy, of a group of friends who always loved and inspired each other learning how to trust each other - does so slowly, and sometimes painfully.
Recording.
Meet Till Lindemann, Rammstein's hulking singer. Normally a rugged fellow, he now looks like a rugby-playing prison matron. He sits in a skirt, legs apart Till it is acknowledged, does not give interviews.
Yet here he is.
"Making our last album, 'Mutter’, we fought a lot in the studio," he growls, his cigars-and- brandy voice emerging from lips smothered in crimson Chanel No 7.
"We fought because of the pressure we were under. There were tensions within the band, and other pressures - the record label advanced us money And of course, the third record is the crucial album; the one where people decide if a band is going to make it or not. And... well, what went on in the minds of those fans was also reflected within the band."
So the band pressed on with 'Mutter'. Lindemann's lyrical vision got more and more personal. But so did the others'. And they clashed. Something had to give.
"In the end, we couldn't function properly," says the singer, clearing his throat. "People wouldn't step back. And in an extreme democracy like this band, it is impossible to work like that. A disaster is going to happen. And it happened."
Click.
A new tape rolls. Christoph Schneider leans forward, introduces himself. The drummer looks, and even talks, like a very kind school cookery teacher - albeit one dressed as a DDR interrogator. "It all came to a head with 'Mutter'," he sighs. "That song was Till's thing alone. A very personal song. That was the first time we decided we didn't want to participate. All band members have to buy the lyric, and be associated with it... and I couldn't accept it."
So?
"So we had a huge fight, and we didn't see each other for months... And yes, some people felt, 'I don't wanna continue'. It didn't get that serious that we thought we were definitely finished. But it was a turning point, where we reorganised."

The turning point. The fightback.
Get the members of Rammstein on their own, and you'll hear very different versions of what exactly went down. Someone - they won't tell you who - called a crisis meeting. Or, there was no meeting. Things got physical, says one member. Nobody ever fought, says another. They all took time off from Rammstein, to think over their future within the band. Nobody took any time off. They were all equally to blame. Certain members were more to blame than others.
But this isn't wilful obfuscation - bizarrely, this is honesty. You get a sense that everyone is being completely honest with what they recall of the situation. Like witnesses to an accident, they all recall different things. If those things contradict each other, that's just because they refuse to dodge, to give the convenient answers you want. To settle on a story. Their truth is their truth. How very Rammstein. The one thing everybody does agree on is the fact that, once apart, Rammstein had the chance to do what few bands ever manage. To step off the wheel. To see themselves as others saw them. “Exactly", smiles Schneider ruefully. "The distance helped. We thought about each other, thought about what we had, and everybody came to the same conclusion – we wanna keep the band alive, not just break up because of some stupid fighting; stupid ego. It’s not worth breaking up for, you know..."
But while, thankfully, they all agreed that the world was a better place with Rammstein in it, they also knew something had to change. And the more they talked, the more they realised that some of the most creative forces within the band were also the most potentially destructive. It became clear that the guitarists, in particular, had put a stranglehold on the others - without even knowing it.
Play/Record. Rolling.
Speaking: Richard Z Kruspe-Bernstein, livewire guitarist and, today, Heidi-plaited uniform dominatrix. German accent heavily Americanised. He sounds like Lars Ulrich. He chain smokes. He courteously turns off his phone when it rings, which is often. Because he has a confession to make. "I was...I wouldn't say blinded, but obsessed with my own vision. I created all the songs down on my computer, and went in and said, 'This is the direction I wanna go'. And of course Rammstein songs are an organic process. But I've got this drive, and I got pissed off... I was like, 'We have to get this record done', and I really didn't realise that it was kind of a controlling thing. After a while, I realised there were issues in the band."
How did you realise that?
"We had a long meeting, and we spoke about it. Like, 'We don't really have fun anymore'."
Who called the meeting?
(Exhales smoke. Pauses.) "I don't really remember."
How did you react when they confronted you?
"I couldn't really understand. I got really sad. You feel, 'I've worked my ass off, and you're blaming it on me! You know what? I don't know what I did wrong!'. That was one of the reasons I moved away, left the country.. I had to move away I wasn't happy. I felt like, you know, I did everything I did just to help the band, and this was the thanks I got. I moved away to New York. And slowly but surely, I realised what was wrong."
Tell me exactly what you realised.
"I realised that sometimes a band has to make mistakes. Especially in this band, everyone's got to be involved. Because we don't have someone who leads. I learned sometimes you have to cope with the fact that somebody might make a mistake... and that that's alright! And I had to relax and give up control, which was - is - a real issue for me."

What you're saying sounds exactly like what Paul confessed to me earlier. (Exhales cigarette smoke.) So you two were the guys. "Yeah."

Same room. Different guitarist. Thirty minutes ago. Paul Landers is speaking across the microphone between us. A slight, Molko-esque figure, he looks like a design student. He wears a dress, but, so far no make-up.
So what were you doing wrong?
He looks me in the eye. A sad smile. He makes a decision. Starts talking.
"I have a problem. I should go to the doctor, because I don't trust anyone. I don't know what the reason is. It must be something in my childhood... But I don't trust anybody but me. And that's not good for me, and not good for a band like us."
But you know it. Are you trying to fight it?
"Yes. Otherwise they'd have thrown me out of the band already"
You're smiling though. Can the rest of the band laugh about it too?
"No, not quite. They still suffer from me." He pauses. His sad smile brightens.
"But they also realise that everybody has their little ticks. Over time, you realise that everybody has their difficulties, and with time, we've learned to appreciate them. They've all got something, but I'm still very fond of them all."
Is there a list of rules now, then? 'Reise, Reise' even sounds like you changed certain things within the band...
"Yes. We realised the important thing is that we feel good. On this album, everyone did what made them happy. If you wanted to go to the rehearsal room, fine. If you didn't, that's fine too - that's our new recipe. Everybody in the band does whatever makes them feel good. Do something you enjoy, and people will hear it."

“Olli. Bass. One-two. It's working."
Lofty Oliver Riedel smiles shyly. Shorn of his goatee, fully made-up and with a wig covering his shaven head, he's every inch the gawky teenage girl, fidgeting in his seat throughout the interview, arms folded tightly across his chest. He stares at the floor He bites his cuticles. He explains how Rammstein got its groove back.
"It used to be that if we had a 10 am rehearsal, you had to be there. Now it's more like if you want to come, you come. Don't come out of a sense of duty, but because you want to express yourself. Then we realised that this was something productive and something came out of this. A new trust between us."
More freedom for you as an individual?
"Yes." It's a tricky environment for individuals, Rammstein. The six-piece makes every effort to maintain uniformity, a united front. Their photos present them as a themed unit, a conquering army, straight from a book of socialist iconography. One is all and all are one. Is that something you've had second thoughts about?
"Well, for the first album we didn't even name the individuals, but presented ourselves as one strong unit. We did that right up to 'Mutter'. Then we gave our names. We wanted even then to become individuals. Now we have."
Is that atmosphere of freedom reflected in the music?
"Yes. I was really relieved because when everybody brought their ideas, they brought the right amount. Before, there was pressure to come up with more and more ideas, which is good on one hand, but you were sometimes forced to produce ideas and you weren't happy with what you were coming up with."

This one’s tougher. Off-duty flicking through his copy of Kerrang! a few minutes ago, keyboardist Flake (pronounced 'Flar-ker') Lorenz was quick to smile and exchange chit-chat. But now he's sitting over the mic, he's all guarded stare, folded arms and pursed, crimson lips. Every inch the suspicious boffin. Is he playing the role? He pauses, watching the tape roll. Crafty: he's hoping it'll run out. So, this 'Reise', this journey.. It's Rammstein's journey over these three years, isn't it? The great escape you've pulled off? "It's been a journey through time... but actually, no..."
But Rammstein changed for all of you, hasn't it?
A shrug. Sharp intake of breath. Of... what? Agreement? Annoyance? Nothing. Then...
"We don't feel the need to pack it all in anymore. When you're young, you think you have to say everything you can in the shortest possible time. Then you realise that, really, you don't."
The way in I was looking for.

All together now, relaxed and playing up for the camera, the band make as queer a collection of individuals as you're ever likely to come across. And yet there is something inseparable, something truly brotherly, about this rag-tag collection of egotists, bookworms, rockers, intellectuals and rabble-rousers.
Nowadays, they all agree with Riedel that they've "recaptured the atmosphere" they had at the start. But if 'Reise, Reise' attests to anything, it's that what led them to the brink of implosion, into the shadowy world of infighting, repression and depression, was their absolute refusal to go backwards. To re-record 'Mutter'.
"I think some of the fans might have wanted our first album all over again," says Lindemann. "But if that's what you want, go and play that one again."
Landers agrees.
"It's a matter of remembering what's important. What we mean by the feeling we had at the start is, when you start out, your battle is to make the best record, to show what you can do. And then you've done that. So then the battle becomes to be successful. And then you have different battles. To maintain that level of success, to resist the pressure to do things you don't want to do."
But if the band fought that battle in their different ways, the sudden rush of realisation - of what really mattered, over and above the squabbling - has done more than put the fun back. It's brought about a quantum leap musically too.
"There's two sides to it," nods Lindemann. "When you're young, you're in a rage and you explode creatively. You can get into massive fights about what you think of other bands, let alone your own band! And that rage gets less. On the other hand, you're better... You've learned more, and when you're writing a song, or playing, and you think you've reached the limit, you come across things you'd never have thought of doing before."
The hyperactive Kruspe-Bernstein has found new musical horizons opening up, too - both as a solo artist and within Rammstein. Has letting go made him happier, though?
"The thing is, guitar players, especially in this band, have huge egos," he laughs. "There's a reason we picked these instruments! So we especially had to learn. When we all reconvened, I remember being in the studio and thinking, for the first time in how long, 'Shit, I don't know what to play!'. None of us knew what we were gonna play. We just kind of jammed around. Letting go was phenomenally important for this album, and the way it sounds. It was suddenly, 'Yeah, let's fuck things up! Let's just do it, doesn't matter if it comes out all weird!'." “All weird" is, in fact, a pretty good alternate title for 'Reise Reise"s parade of five-star grotesqueries. Till Lindemann calls the album "a newspaper; a document of the time we were making it". And if 'Mein Tell' served as a warning that the band had conquered its internal devils and was ready to take on the world outside, then new single, 'Amerika', is a song the old Rammstein would never - could never - have produced. It's one of the key pieces for the album - more than a good old dig, (Rammstein would never be quite so obvious), it's a recognition that the band, like every other European rock band, has a strange, double relationship with the USA. "Americans find it impossible to tolerate humour about their country," smiles Lindemann. "The barricades just go up. They’re the least humorous people on Earth ... They should be able to rise above it, but I don’t know if Americans can. Their culture is all over the place, but they can’t seem to see the wood from the trees."
Yet the band owes some members’ involvement in music to Uncle Sam, too.
“I was in a real rock 'n’ roll band when I started," says Kruspe-Bernstein. “Playing real American-style rock 'n’ roll. And then when I went to America, I realized that it was all nothing but a lie for me to be playing like that! That’s when I got interested in the kind of music Rammstein plays." And yet, for the guitarist, whose ex-wife is American, the US was also the place he retreated to when Rammstein turned rocky.
“I underwent therapy there," he confesses. "I was having panic attaches. But you know what? I thought it was the band, but it was New York City. That's what gives you the panic attacks." And if airplay in the States has suggested that, so far, America has failed to gasp the sly fun poked in lines like 'Santa Claus is. coming to America./ And in front of Paris is Mickey Mouse", that doesn’t seem to bother the lyricist. Because they're having a ball creating the songs again.
“We’ve relaxed now, we’re confident to try things we’d never tried before. A song like 'Amerika’ opens up a whole new dimension – it’s a pop song! It’s opened up a new place to us musically. I mean, we’re not going in some pop direction, but a musician always wants to reach new listeners."

It’s not just America that achieves this unique doubleness either.
"'Mein Teil'," says Lindemann, "was [a story] we were drawn to. Because if we had written the story behind it (the front-page scandal of 2003, in which a German man, Armin Meiwes, advertised on the internet for 'fit, chunky young men... willing to be butchered, cooked and eaten', then cut off and cooked his willing victim's penis with garlic and white wine, then slaughtered and ate him. The 'victim' was consenting throughout and even helped finish off his own penis) everyone would have said, 'Oh, that's Rammstein, they're exaggerating'!" Is all the fun in the studio spilling over into a more - whisper it - humorous Rammstein on record, then? "Some people say Rammstein is funny," muses Schneider. "Or that we have a lot of humour. The thing is, we try to be totally straight as much as possible, but sometimes it's so overdone, it's getting to be funny flipping over to the funny side. That's what happens when we try to do something so very serious! We didn't see it before but we've been told [people see it] a lot, and we've also recognised our funny side. Sometimes we do it deliberately now. A lot of our lyrics have humour in them..."
He smiles, clearly relishing the historical punchline he's about to deliver..
“But unfortunately, English-speaking people won't get it."
There are, you suspect, a lot of things about Rammstein that some people just don't get. You also suspect that this is exactly the way they like it. That this insistence on being nothing but themselves, whether it baffles people or not, is part of what keeps it interesting for them. What are they like? They are like Rammstein. What genre would they say they belonged in? Rammsteinesque.
That's the essential riddle behind every one of their stern expressions in these photos; behind the archive samples on 'Moskau'; behind their dazzlingly OTT videos, their - literally - incendiary concerts. They are what they are. And it's a unique bond that now keeps this unique band together Paul calls it a marriage: "Only it's a marriage between six people. Which actually makes it easier.. When you argue, it's not just silence. Someone can always step in and help.'
"There are six people here, so we talk a lot," says Lindemann. "It's like a male-only monastery sometimes. Everything can be said, and the main thing is to say what's on your mind - to break the silence that seems to build up - even if it results in actual physical confrontation, violence. I mean, I hear stories of British bands where the brothers beat each other up every day, and I understand that. But..."
He's distracted by Flake Lorenz, stumbling around, half out of a pair of ladies' tights, hair still in a neat bun. Lorenz sees Lindemann, waves up at our balcony.
"But really, come on. There's no way you could ever hit someone looking like that!'
The laughter that explodes all around is spontaneous, generous, affectionate and free. This is Rammstein, after all.
Words: M. Potter
Photos: S. Page
RAMMSTEIN’S NEW SINGLE, 'AMERIKA’ IS OUT NOW ON ISLAND/UNIVERSAL.

© 2005 Sue Lindemann