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Close up (Swedish) September 2005 - Interview with Till and Jacob Hellner

A reason for Till Lindemann to feel envious: homosexuality.
That is why on the October release Rosenrot he roars “gay” in a song which is about men who meet other men.
Close-Up gets a chance for a unique conversation with Rammstein’s media sceptical front man on a lighthouse-boat in Paris.

A boulevard along the river Seine is an exemplary location for a restaurant keeper in Paris. Next to a lustrous library – in a varied area where the only building which has not been recently renovated is a colossal, shabby warehouse occupied by artists – lies a row of moored restaurant-boats, in addition to widespread outdoor cafes.
The most peculiar addition is a lighthouse-boat, which has been painted red. Under the name of Batofar it has been made into a permanent location and it houses normally concert premises for synthesiser- and electronic-musicians.
Today however it is completely besieged by a German colossus.
Rammstein belongs to that category of bands, which can do these kinds of things.
It has an opportunity to transport a charming London double-decker, adorned with ads for the group, to the transport wise chaotic square of Place de La Bastille for a subsequent sightseeing tour around the Arch of Triumph. It succeeds without difficulties to interest enough journalists – excluding telephone conversations and other marketing – to fill many full days with time-limited mini-interviews in France alone. It can, if you should enjoy internal behind-the-scenes details, force the journalists to sign strange contracts which, crassly summarised, take from them the right to use their own material.
During this years Metaltown-festival in Göteborg – where among other things the singer Till Lindemann hurt his knee when he was ran over by a stage-vehicle, an injury which he claims he no longer suffers from today – one criterion for receiving a photo-pass was that all Rammstein’s wishes would have to be accepted. In effect that meant that none of the other performances at the festival could be photographed either, if one didn’t sign a paper including a number of strict conditions (the contract was torn up though at the last moment after protests from the largest evening paper).

A similar document lands in front of me without warning when Close-Up has been promised an advance listening session of Rosenrot (Motor). Legal terms in academic English, with approximately an announcement that if one defies the rules and spreads sound-recordings from either the album or the interview, they shall be tortured with acid for all eternity.
With no alternatives I sign.
I am allowed to listen to the album with headphones, from a cd-player which has been fastened with tape.
“If you break the seal, I’ll break your arm” I am warned by one of the coordinators.
What one can say, is that if the concept “techno” ever turns up in the descriptions about Rosenrot it is only out of old habit
This time the group has set a personal best for a short waiting period between two albums; this was possible because the band used a lot of material which was current already at the time of Reise, Reise (2004). On the official site http://www.rammstein.com/ the album title was even published first as “Reise, reise (vol. 2)”, which then was changed to “Reise weiter” before the name of “Rosenrot” was decided.
The product continues with the progress from the dance-oriented beat, which has been going on since Mutter (2001). And if etiquettes are necessary, the music today is rather industrial, rough metal with often grandiose arrangements.
That’s a development which especially pleases the producer Jacob Hellner.
- After Mutter I think that everyone felt – even if no-one said it out loud –that if we are to keep working, we cannot do the same thing again, he tells.
- It was the natural conclusion for Herzeleid (1995) and Sehnsucht (1997). It became a sort of a trilogy. We had taken that techno-metal thing into a full end, so to try and repeat it would have been just stupid. For us who were involved in the work, Reise, Reise felt finally really different when compared to the earlier records.

The Stockholm resident describes the internal band-situation during the Mutter-era as enormously tense.
- The members had to draw again the map for how they would work, he explains. Everyone needed to feel involved enough and in that way motivated to keep up with the extremely hard work, which this after all is. And if one has some sort of artistic driving force, it is extremely important to go on. That’s why I was so glad when the new material did not contain just a number of techno-hits; then I would have presumably thought: “What am I going to do with this?” Now instead came songs in the style of Keine Lust and Reise, Reise and then I felt really inspired.
He does not wish to claim that the fractures were so deep that a split-up would have been imminent.
- These guys have such an enormously long history together, that the ties between them are really strong. In different situations some of the individuals have doubtless felt that they don’t give a shit about this. But they can see that what they have together is something too unique to let go.
- What specifically the trouble was about is fairly uninteresting, because it was nothing unusual. A number of people shall go into a room and create something from nothing and agree about that… Differences of opinion are bound to happen. I can however say that it resulted in the record turning out damn well. There is more “attack” in Mutter than in Reise, Reise. Now people have become older and do not make as aggressive music anymore. Which I think is good.
What the members had to do to sort out the situation was according to Jacob Hellner nothing more complicated than being apart from each other for a period of time.
- They live constantly so close to each other and go through a lot of things. I think that they needed to be “free” to then try and rediscover a way to work which felt relevant. A collective way of creation where more people got space to produce things.

Vocalist Till Lindemann only gesticulates indolently and shakes his head at the information that there would have been a crisis in the camp.
Till Lindemann appears generally to be the kind of man who often gesticulates indolently when we meet at a coffee-table on Batofar’s upper deck.
Close-Ups extended conversation with the front figure is hardly a world scoop, but it is a somewhat exceptional occasion that he should show up for a magazine interview. During the past two years he has talked to the media only in extremely exceptional cases. The representative of the record company chuckles repeatedly how lucky I must be to get this exclusive chance.
Till doesn’t seem to enjoy himself as much.
- I am not particularly happy to be here, is the first he mutters. Richard (Kruspe-Bernstein, guitar) is busy with his solo-album and “Flake” (Christian Lorenz, keyboard) is sick, so I am doing this because I have to help my colleagues. But Paris is naturally beautiful…
Also guitarist Paul Landers, bassist Oliver Riedl (sp.) and drummer Christoph Schneider are devoting the day to talking with mainly French press. A demand from the band – yes, you perhaps are starting to get the idea of a pattern – is that all the interviews shall be conducted in the presence of a interpreter who has a good command of the mother tongue of both parties. Despite the fact that these days the singer speaks satisfactory English, a freelance-translator Björn Bratteby sits therefore with us during the entire conversation. The only time he needs to be consulted is when Till wants to describe in German what exactly is the thing with having a ship on both the album-cover and as an interview location (it’s something about monumental and expressive aesthetic).
- What I don’t like about interviews is that you have to sit and answer the same questions for three days in a row. And when one creates music one exposes a big part of one’s heart and soul; I handle a number of private things, which I really don’t want to talk about. People have to think for themselves. Take just a question like this for example: “What do you mean with this text?” I don’t understand why one will tell a story, if one then has to explain everything. There has to be room for imagination.
This ambition leads however the lyricist easily to frustration – since a considerable section of the fans do not understand the language in which he sings.
- What is fun is the fact that many fans take the time to translate the texts word for word. In Mexico I met a little girl who had taught herself everything only with the help of a dictionary. That was really fun to hear. It requires a certain effort. For some reason Mexicans especially are unbelievable when it comes to things like this. They sing along whole verses, downright whole songs! Even the Germans do not do that. But sure it is annoying that not everyone understands the lyrics. In the beginning we tried to make some songs in English, but that sounds really just ridiculous.

After a while it turns out that the steady man does brighten up in connection to two topics of conversation: gays and South American brothels.
In “Mann gegen Mann” the question is about the former. It is one of Jacob Hellner’s favourites on the album – “it has a kind of a YMCA-chorus, it is fantastic” – and the vocalist smiles shrewdly when the title is taken up for discussion.
- “Pissbög” in Swedish, he shows off (if I understand German-Swedish correctly).
What he means is the word “schwule”, which he time after time screams in the refrain. From his translation you understand that the expression is not altogether honouring.
According to Björn Bratteby “bögjävel” (bög = faggot, jävel = bastard, devil) is an appropriate interpretation.
- Do you think it is homophobic? Till wonders.
It is easy to get that impression.
- It is natural that it is so. But it is only a song. It’s about homosexuals and the fact that in a way they are well favoured. They never need to preen for the girls with ridiculous presents or dinner invitations. They just look at each other and decide to go home together. They find themselves in a strange situation, but they have it really easy to get laid. This is what I write about in a more poetic way. It’s provocative, but if one listens one realises that it is not meant negatively.
He denies that the text is self experienced, but gladly picks up an example:
- I don’t intend to name any names, but an English band we are friends with has two gays as members. We made a bet about something and the thing was that if I would lose I would take the two of them for a night out in Berlin and visit all the gay clubs in my home neighbourhood. Naturally I lost as I always do. When we went out I just thought: “Wow! How quickly it happens!” A glance, then they both know what they are going to do. I felt envious. I would love to be able to do that with a strange woman: “Hey, you are pretty. Shall we go to my place?”
I suggest that a charming guy like him should hardly have any problems getting laid.
- Not if one is a known bloody singer, he answers self-consciously. But as a normal bloke it is tricky. On a Saturday night in Stockholm it is easy, but normally one has to go through a lot of dating and shit. Buy flowers and chocolate and all those things.

To take the risk to be seen as hostile towards gays can seem like a bad idea for Rammstein. Long-lived rumours about rightwing extremism have followed the band since the beginning, largely because of the persistent use of the German language.
- I don’t have the energy to talk about that anymore, groans Till. People can believe what they want. A couple of years ago I was extremely angry because all the papers wanted to talk about this. Especially the German journalists have obviously big problems with us.
He experiences it so that in their homeland there is a constant hunt for negative material about Rammstein.
- The reporters are stupid. They are like small rotters who creep around your feet and try to piss on the stool. It’s hard for them to have to realise that a band singing in German can experience worldwide success. That’s why they sit tightly in their German niches and try to find these idiocies. I don’t know why. They are just…stupid. Or the fact is that the most of them are actually really intelligent, but it is something fishy that is going on.
I t’s exactly the choice of language in the texts, which takes us easily into the vocalist’s second favourite topic for the day.
On Rosenrot Rammstein offers for the first time a song where not one word is presented in German. The title is “Te quiero puta” – a Spanish phrase which the author translates to “I love you bitch”.
- Some guys, possibly we in the band, ride to a whorehouse. Some “puta” opens the door and exclaims “Hey, gringos!” These ladies don’t busy themselves with any poetic stuff. It’s about men, women, sex and party. The story in the song is that one guy is in love with one of the girls in the brothel. She answers: “I like you, but don’t come to me dragging all that emotional stuff with you. I only like your “fruita” so let me taste”.
He has – despite the scantily romantic theme – got help in writing the text from his girlfriend, who talks Spanish fluently.
- German and Spanish have approximately the same style, he reasons. The rolling r is used in the same way. The languages sound equally harsh and brutal. The couple has fallen in love in South America and wish to spend as much time as possible there.
The singer owns a small Spartan cabin with a view over the sea on the mountain chains of Costa Rica.
- I love the adventure, the life, the mentality… Everything. Most of it is completely different from everything that I have known before.
In which way?
- “Mañana”, he smiles and proceeds to rattle of a bunch of Spanish expressions. Everything happens, at the same time that actually nothing happens. Home in Germany everything is well-organised and controlled, people always arrive in time and disorder is a nightmare. I think it’s the same thing in Sweden. In South America it is more open surfaces. And the music with the warm-blooded rhythms one can dance too. And the women…
After Rosenrot has been introduced the band members are taking time off for the better part of 2006. That’s a plan which does not seem to trouble the front man.
- I will spend there at least four or five months. I and my fiancée are thinking of a long trip. We will start in Argentina, and then move on to Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. We have to think a bit harder about Colombia. It’s a pretty strange country. And their white stuff is a bit too good, he grins referring to cocaine.
Have you tried it?
- Yes, naturally.
How is it?
- Are you trying to convince me that you’ve never tried?
Yes, I am young and Swedish.
- Sure. The Swedes of course prefer amphetamine.

The laid-back attitude that Till Lindemann here pays tribute to is an absolute opposite to everything that Rammstein symbolises. He agrees but states that the one does not need to exclude the other.
- It’s probably why I like it, he explains. There has to be a specific time for work and another time for vacation. When we go to the studio we become at once enormously disciplined. It’s as if the German machinery starts pumping.
Jacob Hellner chooses the same words when he describes today’s version of Rammstein as “a well-trimmed machine”. He also claims that no Swedish artist he has worked with has shown the same high level of ambition and strong driving force as the six Germans.
- This time it was almost awful, how simply it all went, he tells. It was only necessary to push “start” and then the whole machinery went on. Everyone knows their role, their position and which work situation is the best for which person. If one looks back on how it has been over the years, the work with this record and the last one has been smooth going.
The band began to practise in April, Jacob came into the picture at the end of the same month and the entire May was spent in the studio. Rosenrot was eternalised in Teldex in Berlin, which is normally used for productions of classical music.
- Because we are so many when we work, there are not so many places at our disposal. With six band members and three in the other team, it is altogether nine persons who need space for work and comfortable living. Earlier we have travelled abroad to find peaceful surroundings to work and been to France, Spain and Malta. This time the production-work had to be squeezed into the tour-schedule, so we decided to stay there.
Even a DVD is right now in production and is supposed to come out in time for Christmas. It will mainly contain live-material from for example concerts in England, France and Japan.

If one takes the debut album as a starting point Rammstein celebrates their ten-year-anniversary this year. What has happened since then has widely exceeded everything the band planned when they came together.
- We have been extremely goal-oriented ever since the beginning, Till explains. There has never been any “ifs”. For me it feels especially fun, because I moved from my old home area into Berlin and gave myself a time limit of a year. If nothing should have happened in the year, I would have moved back. But I still remain. Originally I come from a really small town in the North, in Germany’s Lapland. There are only twelve houses there.
The moving truck went in 1994.
The singer was then thirty-one years old.
- I absolutely think that our career would have looked different, if we had been younger when we became successful. Today we know how to deal with each other. We are six individuals with really different personalities, and experiences have taught us that it is important to all the time talk, talk, talk. And we share completely equally everything. But of course sometimes it is difficult too. After ten years in constant company with each other it can feel exhausting.
On the whole the circle around Rammstein consists still today of the same people as in the beginning. Jacob Hellner testifies of a deep feeling which is familiar:
- Through the years we have developed a really good friendship, he tells. Most of the people who work with the band have been along for a really long time, and everyone is very keen to take good care of the new ones who are recruited. I have understood, without drawing any other parallels, that the Depeche Mode -camp is a bit similar. Everything is taken care of extremely internally and with a sort of a family-feeling. It is fierce.
Before Rammstein was formed Till played drums in a punk band, Oliver Riedl plucked folk pop, Richard Kruspe-Bernstein dedicated himself to hip hop and both Paul Landers and Christoph Schneider played punk-styled rock in different constellations.
When they united the primary goal was to achieve something unique.
- We really strained ourselves so as not to be like a cover version of some American band, the singer explains. In East Germany there were hundreds of those groups, who tried to do USA-influenced hip hop, metal, Goth or what ever. Everything was American influenced. Our ambition was to create something really wicked and spooky from hard chords and riffs.
Did people laugh at you?
- Absolutely. They still haven’t stopped.
Rosenrot, which will be the fifth attempt to silence Rammstein, will be released on the 26th of October and will by then have been preceded by the hard single Benzin.

When we rise to go after our discussion Till wants to show that it isn’t only Spanish that he has tried to study.
- Thank you very much, he says in Swedish.
Then he continues to show off his in-depth language skills by sending a final greeting:
- Jacob, I want to fuck!
Hereby the message is forwarded. Everyone is free to roar “schwule!”

JACOB HELLNER

One December night in 1994 Jacob Hellner went to a club in Hamburg, practically forced there. He had been asked to produce the recently contracted band, which stood on the scene, and his enthusiasm for the task was not overwhelming.

The demo tapes marked Rammstein, which he had gotten to hear right before that, had impressed no-one outside the walls of the record company.

- “It was mostly the fact that Till was so bad,” he states today. “He sang like a rake. His style of singing is still completely bizarre. But there was still something interesting about the guitars. The special sound was already there.”

Going to the concert turned out to be a clever choice also:

- “I thought directly: “I see! Now I get it…” That was the starting point. I saw Rammstein’s potential as a live band and I understood that it could go anywhere. But that it would then go so far and become so big, that no-one could have imagined in their wildest dreams.”

Jacob Hellners essential part in the group’s existence is far from an empty invention of Swedish pride. “The seventh man” read an article headline in a German music-magazine last year, which is something Till Lindemann is willing to confirm. The Stockholm-born does not wish to make such high claims, but does state that the sextet is clearly his biggest employer.

- “I think it is very important that we don’t take each other for granted”, he reasons humbly. “But I can state, that I work unbelievably close to the band and that they have given me colossal confidence. I work very hard every day not to lose that. It is worth enormously much for me.”

Without giving in to vicious speculations one can maintain that Rammstein without Jacob Hellner would sound very different. The frontman guesses grimly that “it would be approximately the same but with another type of music”, whereas the Swede himself “is convinced that it would still be Rammstein”.

- “What I supply is my feeling for what is a good song and my ability to navigate the project with the strong personalities that the members are. Then we have sound wise arrived to what we have to do to reach the goal that we are after. All the producers work differently, but the cornerstone is to get every individual to give hundred percent under production. When Christoph Schneider sits at the drums, I must have been able to create a situation which makes it possible for him to deliver the takes that we want. With that I have obviously succeeded in this case.”

It was however, according to the “sound-driver”, very close that Rammstein’s history would have looked noticeably different.

Till Lindemann says that he can’t remember, but Jacob Hellner tells that he was a hair’s breadth from getting fired already during the production of the debut-album Herzeleid.

- “The guys didn’t think that it became like… I don’t know what it was. They were unbelievably unhappy with the mixes that we had made here in Stockholm, but when I still got permission to continue, it was really just a few details that they wanted to change. They quite simply didn’t know how an album was made or how they should place themselves in the bigger picture without feeling that something was taken away from them.”

He describes as a miracle that the first album in the end even got completed.

- “It was an ordeal. A really strenuous production. I was relatively green, and the band was even greener when it came to creating an album, and that showed immediately how much internal tension there was. There was an enormous need for control from all directions”.

Even language was a contributing factor.

- “The band members’ English was very bad then, so we had obvious communication problems. But we came through to the other side and when the record was released, we could see that it began to sell almost immediately. Then we felt: “We have maybe done something right?” Then there were different forces which drew to all directions. I think that it was Till and Schneider who already early on fought for me. I don’t know for sure, but that’s my feeling. Now I work well with all of them, but the co-operation I have had with those two, and especially with Till, is really special.”

In retrospect he can look back to Herzeleid as a charming product.

- “It contained rawness and angularity that we will never be able to reach again. Today we have altogether too good control of the instruments. Then we had just vague ideas. The way of constructing the songs was also really different compared to what it is today, and sometimes I can just feel: “Damn, how did we actually think? Can’t we try to find our way back to that?” But today we have such a molecule-build, that it is difficult to land at the same place that we did then.”

Jacob Hellner has been constantly at the band’s side and has produced all the albums. That it has been just him who has been given this responsibility, has its roots in the work that he did in the beginning of the nineties with the Swedish-Norwegian rap-metal gang Clawginger.

- “Rammstein came from East-Germany, had played in a punkband in Berlin for ten years, was now going to do a record in west-style and saw immediately that in West-Germany there were no producers, who could do what they wanted to have. They had taken a look towards England without finding anyone, but when they heard Clawfinger, I got an inquiry.

- “We had this English bloke first, who had worked with Killing Joke,” Till remembers. “He smoked one joint after another, sat at the mixing-table and nearly slept when he listened to us. “Good shit”, he said, stoned to his ears. We fired him and tested two other people before Jacob turned up and solved everything.”

If one doesn’t want to stretch himself to claim that Rammstein without Jacob Hellner would be nothing, one can still claim that it would be a band with unconventional song-structures.

- “I remember one time in the beginning when he sat in the practice room when we played,” Till tells. “Suddenly he interrupted us and said: “A really good song, I like it, but you have to squeeze in a bridge.” A bridge? We understood nothing. He explained that it was something one should have before the refrain, so we were forced to find a few more accords and some words to open up the song for the next part. I will never forget that, because we couldn’t understand what that damned bridge was that he wanted us to build for him.”

Jacob Hellner can remember only one occasion, when he has vaguely understood that he has interfered too much

- “There was some fuss within the band and I had an opinion about this fuss which was about a shitty detail considering the bigger picture. I agreed with one of the band members, whereas the others had another opinion and they thought that since there were more of them, their opinion should win. But with the years I get more and more trust, which also becomes a way for them to get on with each other. It’s a very organic process, as you can understand. They have found such a way to work with each other and with me, that during the production we can go forwards and not just get stuck. That makes it possible that we function as a unit.”

Till Lindemann shares this opinion.

- “Jacob is the big boss,” he says. “He can get everyone in the band to shut up. At least one of us talks always, but when he starts talking, we immediately listen. He has ideas about how we should build arrangements and keep the songs going. He tries always to get the drums to lead. He can place right words at the right places and orders me to write more lines so that everything shall be right. He does a lot. Fifty percent of every song is his.”

The producer has also no reason to complain about the rewards for his efforts.

- “Hell, Rammstein sells one and half million records every time,” he reflects. “It has clearly changed one’s life. I am not ridiculously rich or economically independent, but it has obviously redrawn the map for my life.”

© 2005 Lovisa