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Heavy Rock- (Spain) - October 2005

Rammstein: German Anger- " 'Te quiero Puta' is a merry anthem"

They have set an end to all speculations: their next album is not going to be called 'Reise, Reise Vol.2', but 'Rosenrot' and it will be out on October 24th. This way the band wants it to have an identity of its own, as they consider it as good as their previous album. Juan Destroyer goes to Paris to listen to it, and to interview singer Till Lindeman.

Nobody was expecting a new album from the Berliners so soon, but there was so much material left over from the Reise, Reise recording sessions at the El Cortijo studios in Málaga; that by adding a few songs they had recorded this spring in the Teldex Studio of their hometown, they had enough material to complete an album. They stuck to the same team, producer Jacob Hellner, Stefan Glaumann in the mixing, and Howie Weinberg at the mastering.

After a long tour which has kept them busy for about a year, inbetween gigs of their own and headliners at several festivals, this rush to publishing brand new songs works for the band as an excuse to take some time off for a few months, without being "silent" before touring again. Rammstein does not want ´Rosenrot´ to be taken as a "leftover record" or a "second part of" (which, by the way, are never good). As you listen to it you do not get that feeling at all, although there are some connections, as it has been written at the same time as the predecessor, or even the cover, which is almost identical to Reise, Reise´s Japanese edition.

Certainly, "RedRose" will be again a big success in half of the world; because maybe since their first hit in 1997 with "Du Hast", up to the present, Rammstein has become the greatest German band of all times, begging Scorpions pardon. The latest acknowledgement of their international success recently was when the band was rewarded with "Best Selling Artist of the World- Germany", at the World Music Awards´ last edition, celebrated in Los Angeles, putting them up with Eminem or U2. This selling potential cannot be taken lightly by their record company, Universal, which does not want the album to slip to the media before the appointed date, and they order us to the capital city of France to listen to it. So there we went, the one behind these words and the native translator Katja (as you all know the members of the band would rather not speak English, if possible), in a hurried trip, up earlier than the sun and already returning home for dinner.

Our first stop is a boat, waiting for us at the river Seine bank (nearby the Liberty Statue, whose much bigger version was given to the USA by France at the centenary of their independence and which has become the greatest symbol for this country within its short history). Each of the journalists coming from diverse corners of Europe (Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and so on) is given a portable CD Player, sealed and numbered, and as we're listening to the record the boat starts to move, passing the Eiffel Tower by and heading towards the golden bridge of Alexander III, where the bands is waiting on another ship. I'm scheduled for one of the last interviews of the day, so I walk down the Champs Elyseés up to the Triumph Arch (enjoying the wonderful clear and hot day with temperatures up to 35 degree Celsius, while it is raining in Spain and pouring down in Catalunya), in order to get some tasteful croissants that will make my family happy.

The hour has come, and the first thing that I can see is that, despite you can't take pictures of the band, they've come in full uniform as they do in all public presentations: this time they have gone for military aesthetics . They are always a union and work in an absolute democratic way when it comes to making choices; but that does not mean that they are always of the same opinion, as Schneider reveals to me in the first interview (which will appear at Kerrang´s next edition) that he is not pleased at all with the album's cover. The next one I get for an interview is Till and I'm really happy because he was not expected to be here. It has been a long time since the now 42 year-old Lindemann, was nominated to be an Olympic swimmer for the GDR (German Democratic Republic, Communist Germany before the Fall of the Wall), three years before the Moscow Olympics in 1980 in which he could not participate due to an accident, which changed his life. Since then, he turned to music and as you see, he has become a world class star, the kind you can not access so easily. Indeed, he has kept a swimmer's body for life, despite a few extra pounds and some extra muscles. You can tell this easily only by looking at picture of the two of us: just compare the difference of the width between the backs of the interviewer and the interviewed.

The singer greets us in Spanish, he´s learning the language because he´s a huge fan of Latin culture. "I´ve always liked it, but I´ve fallen for it completely because of the journeys I´ve done to Latin America, both with the band and on my own: Costa Rica, Venezuela, México, Panamá, Argentina or Brazil, where Portuguese is spoken. I have the most grateful memories of ron, salsa dancing, tequila, and the usual love for life that Spanish speakers´ culture has in general."

The Mexican musical connotation in "Te Quiero Puta" is quite evident, but that is not what is most relevant about the song, but its controversial lyrics in our language (http://www.mariskalrock.com/ampliacion.php?Id=2659) which will certainly bring accusation of sexism to the band. What I would like to know is if it has something autobiographical about it, or if it's only a little bit of a provoking, a punch in the face Rammstein's style. He laughs and answers: "First of all, I don't explain my writing, but I like that of the punch in the face, Rammstein's style, you can somehow understand it that way. If I did explain my lyrics, it would be like going to a French restaurant and let someone else taste the lobster for me, it wouldn't make any sense, that is something that each one of us has to do for ourselves. I think of it most of all as a merry anthem and the music of it goes very keenly with Spanish temper. Spain and Mexico are two different worlds but that mariachi sound, with the trumpets makes immediately clear to a Spanish speaking person that it's about Mexico, so they can also identify with that". Altough he does not like to analyze the meaning of his lyrics, I can't keep my mouth from telling that the one concerning "Spring" has made me think that someone else's tragedy, be it of an individual person or an entire nation, will sell newspapers and increases television viewers. "As I've said before, it is okay that each person can read the meaning of the texts in their own way, without a preconception. That idea is your point of view. The story which inspired me to write this song was in the papers a while ago, quite some time before I have written the lyrics. One Sunday afternoon, on a skyscraper situated in a large city, there was a person that wanted to commit suicide. As people felt curious about he was going to jump or not, they remained down there causing a traffic jam. There were several people that were screaming 'Jump!', some because the thrill of seeing something like that, and some others because they weren't going to wait until he made up his mind, because the traffic jam wouldn't let them get to their houses. Those days when we helped each other are over, that's the tragedy, and it has come to the surface once again with the New Orleans' disaster. The song is about a person that is on a bridge because he wants to see the sunset, but the people passing by think he wants to kill himself and cannot make up his mind, and they stay to shout at him so he jumps. I, as the narrator, end up by pushing him from the bridge to help him making the decision, because all this people think he's a coward, and they also want to see the show they're expecting to happen."

There's no doubt about that this topic is linked to the videoclip "Benzin", directed by Uwe Flade and filmed in Berlin, where you can see the band as firefighters with cinder-covered faces. Instead of helping, they answer a distress call and in their way they trash everything that's in their way (a train, cars, buildings...). In Paul Lander's imagination, he pictures he's saving a young woman from the fire, but when they arrive at the place they realize there's a man who's up on a high roof (it's Flake, to be accurate, who gets traditionally the degrading parts in videos and live performances). They prepare a jumping-sheet and encourage him to jump, but when he finally does, the jumping-sheet is torn because each fireman pulls it to his own direction.

A little while before I got my turn with the interviews, we have been listening to the album again and a very, very soft ballad was added, with some pop flavour, the song not named yet but it will surely split waters between the fans. In this song, Till performs a duet with Sharleen Spiter- this information we get from Till personally in his rudimentary Spanish, as the record company people won't let a word loose about it-, and we learn there are two versions. In one of them, he sings in German and she sings in English, and the in the other one both sing in the mother tongue of the Texas singer, something quite unusual for Rammstein. I throw in that it is something very different from what they have done before, both musically speaking and because of the language, and he explains to me: "Right now we, the record label and the band, are deciding which version will be in the album". Could that be taken as an attempt to reach the American audiences, the only ones that have not surrendered completely? "First of all the American market is not of importance for us, we haven't cared much about it. We had our moment there - they became famous with the soundtrack of "Lost Highway"- but it is strange for any band to have an enduring success in USA. They usually forget about you in a heartbeat, that's why it's not that important to us to achieve fame there as it is in Europe, where the fans and the musical scenario are quite stable throughout the years."He keeps his mind for a little while, and proceeds. "About the song sounding different, you are right. When we recorded 'Reise, Reise' we took a lot of time and we could experience opening up to a lot of sound and rhythmic possibilities that we didn't explore before. We used to lock ourselves, to work with the same elements under the pressure of success, we didn't want to yield. From the fourth record on we didn't mind. We wanted to play a little and we have liked doing that a lot, had a better time writing and recording the songs, so we thought when the experience worked out so well with Reise, Reise, why not working the same way with 'Rosenrot? In between these experiments we came up with this song, which could be thought of as a bird escaping its cage. We think that the mixing of the two voices is pretty and I think that the English version-since it's her mother tongue- will reach a larger number of listeners."

'Mann gegen Mann' is about an homosexual relationship, which takes me to talk to him about the brand new law that was passed in Spain, which allows marriage for people of the same gender, and I refer to possibility of adoption of children as well. I want to know his opinion, even more bearing in mind the song 'Mutter' and how they remarked the mother's role in that one. Can a child be raised by two fathers, or is it not possible to substitute the role of a mother? "I think that is a 100% possible, but on the other hand a mother is totally needed, her love is necessary for a child in order of growing up harmonically. It's like a wool hat, if you don't have it you can catch a cold, but you can do without it, the same way you can raise a child without a mother, with two fathers, there is no discussion. I have been a sole parent on my own, have raised my daughter without a mother, and surprisingly she has turned out quite well, even though it doesn't mean she had not needed her mother." Once the promotional appointment is over, the band will take an undefined break before getting back to the stages, and that will be the moment for each one of them to do those things they usually do not have time for. Till has a clear mind about that: "I'll be back to Latin America on vacations" but he also knows that "We are certainly going back to work little by little, neither of us can stand to be off for a long time, without being creative. About three or four months from now we'll be calling each other, starting to think about the next tour; and regarding this I can tell you something you'll find interesting: as we started our last tour in Spain and Portugal, we made a mistake by going from south to north, as we went to Germany and Scandinavia from there. It was quite a turn off because our concerts were equally sold out but we missed the temper of the southern fan, it was like a cold shower going from Barcelona, Madrid, San Sebastian or Lisboa, to Oslo or Helsinki, and I'm not meaning to disrespect our German or Scandinavian fans. This time we'd like to go from north to south, since the audience is like the weather: there more you go south it gets warmer. "Te Quiero Puta" is a tribute to our Spanish speaking fans."

© 2005 Mafi for 'Verboten!'