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Motor.de October 2005 - Interview with Paul

Translator's note: a big disclaimer! Paul is always difficult to translate and the topics were not easy either. I really do hope I have translated what he said like he intended to be understood. I say this because there is some political stuff in it and I really do not want anybody to get Paul wrong. Sometimes even me, a German mother tongue has some difficulties in understanding what Paul really means.



Rammstein

We are left-wing patriots

Had Rammstein fans to wait three years for a successor of „Mutter“, now Rammstein push the speed: only one year after “Reise, Reise” the Berlin sextet will release their new album “Rosenrot” in the following days. But what is “Rosenrot”? A real independent album or only a hastily done use of left-overs for easy money?

We talked about this and about a decade of Rammstein with Paul Landers, 40, the talkative one, hobby-chef and guitarist, who can “realise his musical ideas with Rammstein” still after ten years and who will therefore “never do a solo-album”. And still today there will be no interview without reference to the current debate about nationalism in pop music. And there were interesting things to discover: Landers, holding court in a spacious suite of Berlin’s Hyatt Hotel and feeling “nearly like a doctor or a psychiatrist” because of the interior of the suite reminding of such a consulting room, is, in his own words, a “left-wing patriot” and one “shall think that the band will have the right opinion”.

Paul, with “Rosenrot” you have a successor for “Reise, Reise” already only after one year – for Rammstein that is tremendously fast. How comes?

P: When we record an album, we always record more songs than needed. It is the same with cooking, everybody knows the situation: parents will come for a visit, you want to cook something really special, but without any reason it does not work - although you stuck neatly to the recipe. And to have something then, you take a song from the replacement bench of which you know it will work and the rest you just throw away. But with “Reise, Reise” the “bad” situation occurred all songs turned out well and we did not know what to do with that great material. Making a new album was the best solution, because with it we fulfilled our album contract which was about five albums. Besides, the idea of making a new album very fast was of attraction to us as artists. To understand this you have to know that we normally are a very inert club. Like a big tanker cruising the oceans. It can take ages before he would change direction.


On the cover of the current album the tanker even got stuck…..

P: Yes. You have to think of the two cds as a double; we even thought of calling the album “Reise, Reise 2”. But we dismissed that idea, because “Rosenrot” is an independent album. But the two records belong together, they are only released with a pause in-between. Some of the songs weren’t completed at that time, some texts were lacking. And at last we wanted to try how it feels like to record in a studio in Berlin, we never have done this before. But it did not work that well. It just won`t work to record a song like “Zerstören” when you just have returned from an appointment with your tax consultant.

You said you fulfilled your contract and that you used left-overs. Is “Rosenrot” maybe no real album but only a way to easy money?

P: No, definitely not. It is a complete Rammstein album which has fulfilled our standards well – when Ramstein is written on it you will get Rammstein. The only difference is that we did not develop the music any further than on “Reise, Reise” because the two of them belong together.

And a double-cd would not have worked, because it is your iron rule only to record eleven songs for one album.

P: Yes, because the long and the short of it is our motto, like not seeing someone too often prolongs the friendship. Here we are again with the comparison to cooking: if you have your favourite meals for six days in a row you do not like it anymore. Therefore we do not do things in a too big extend; our concerts are not intended to last too long, too. To bore people, well others can do hat, not us. We want to entertain.


Just back to the picture on the cover of the ship which got stuck. How do you avoid routine, how do you keep the project Rammstein fresh and interesting?

P: As we are six people we already have more excitement as we need. The only thing you can count on is our producer, but with the rest we had a lot of struggle, so we would have appreciated a bit more routine. But fortunately we could still manage all things up to the present.

How have the personal relationships in the band developed over the years? Is it only a work relationship or still a friendship?

P: We started as friends and the friendships in the bands are nearly still the same. Well, there were changes. If you see somebody nearly each and every day for ten years you got to know him very well and how you see him can change. But there were not that big changes and in the recent past things got much better in comparison to a few years ago (knocks on wood).

It’s important you all are on good terms with each other, isn’t it?

Certainly. We now have realised what he have with the band. You can invent even some stupid stuff and people will listen to it, they will even pay for it and with this giving us the opportunity to travel the world. We did not recognise earlier how unique and wonderful this is. Just compare it to Gerhard Schröder’s (Germany’s chancellor) situation: we can go on forever, but he has to resign, if nobody wants him anymore.

But in a way you could be forced to resign, too.

No, we can’t.

Well, but if your records are not sold anymore and nobody comes to the concerts anymore you maybe will reach a level on which music does not do for a living anymore.

P: You are right. But that is a development and does not happen all of a sudden. You can adjust to it.

To avoid it you have to develop. Would you say that you have developed over the years and maybe even take risks?

P: We have different characters in the band. Some fear every kind of change. They want to preserve the structures and they drive old cars, too. Others always have the newest car and go for development. Therefore we could achieve a good balance between old and new. One could say we are a mixture of AC/DC, whose songs are all alike, and of U2 or Depeche Mode, who have taken risks in all phases of their career. We have changed a lot, but not abruptly, more step by step.

But with the typical Rammstein-riffs and Till Lindmann’s typical voice you are bound to a destination. So maybe as on outsider one does not see the changes that clearly like you do…

P: It is easy: if you are not interested in a band then every song of them sounds the same to you. If I let my Grandma listen to the “Black album” and then to “Reload” of Metallica then both times she would consider it as an awful noise. She will never be able to realise the huge development of the band between these two albums. Those who are interested in our music will hear the differences and realise the development we have gone through.

Key word: routine. How is that on tour? Do exciting things still happen after all these years or is it a similar scheme?

P: There is a scheme in the course of things, but you begin to appreciate more the quality of life than at the start. Now I know where to find a good café in Barcelona, where I can eat good spaghetti in Milan or where to buy a good sandwich in Paris – that rocks.

You even have success in countries not known as typical Rock’n’Roll countries like Russia or Mexico. You are a known Russia fan and the band is often there. It is said that touring bands have to grease someone’s palm. What about you?

P: We have Maecenas, who protect us. We never have to pass the customs clearance at the airport. Maybe therefore my view is a bit blurred and assumingly far from reality.

O.K. The concept of your shows is a steady figure in the Rammstein universe, it has been stable over the years. How long can you do it?

P: We always want more, more burning, more noise, more brightness, but we have reached a point where you could not top it – we maybe have to burn whole houses on stage then. But I am still satisfied with the show, I am fully behind it. A few years ago we did not like fire that much and tried to integrate water into the show, but rock music with loud guitars and water do not get along; there is reason why nobody is doing it.

Ozzy Osburne does.

P Ah, he empties his buckets into the audience, or what does he do?

No, he has a special hydraulic water spray system with which he wets the first 30 rows totally.

P: Water canons. We had that, too, it works, one could do it. But I was talking about water on stage, not wetting the audience. Well, in any case, the pyro stuff has its own life now – we cannot do without it.

Is it maybe your dream that people would just come for the music and that you can do without the pyro stuff?

P: A difficult topic. How important is the show for our success? I tend to think that we would even have some success without these stage shows, because the music has its own quality. But the question does not really occur. On the one hand you are distracted from the music with the effects and the whole thing is like a circus. But on the other hand we simply are that way. We will never appear on stage with lumberjack shirts, we will never play endless solo parts to force the others to play. As we play with sequencers we are bound on stage. We have tried to put off that scheme a few times and tried to do improvised parts, but we still returned to the scheme after only three times. Maybe this is due to our German roots. We love to do the same, to repeat and to do it over and over again with an apathetic face.

Monotony is a part of your style.

P: Some of us are fed up with some songs and then we do not play them. But the majority of the band loves to perform the same stuff. The dull repetition of the very same. Maybe it sounds a bit sad, but we are a bit like a music theatre. If you play Hamlet you only can vary the role a bit, same with us, we do no freestyle. Nobody has forced us to, it is a kind of self-made, voluntary chosen corset. Maybe a rail on which we roll safely. Well said; I am enthusiastic. (laughs).

Instead of the lumberjack shirts you tried something different, e.g. the NVA (Nationale Volksarmee; former GDR army) uniforms for women at the Motor party and after that nobody could say any longer you were humourless.

P: You have no influence on how people think of you, if they consider you to have humour or not. We always try some changes, but in the last time we nearly were a bit too funny. Now the funny time has to be over!

Good-bye self irony?

P: No. We have self-irony by chance most of the times, but sometimes it happened on purpose. Especially the Germans like the ironic break of our martial pose, because we have some problems with it due to our history. In general how you deal with success is even different in Germany compared to other countries, it is judged in another way.

I do not want to go into detail, because it was dealt with sufficiently. But even on the new album you take willingly into consideration to be misunderstood, e.g. with “Zerstören” when the texts shows the desire to destroy the property of others and the music adds Arabian harmonies. This could be understood as a call for racist attacks

P: Interesting, I never have thought of that. But I would assume that you want to understand it this way. We show the people a mirror in a way. The texts were written in the times of the Iraq war. We were interested in parallels between hordes of hooligans, who go through the streets destroying everything after a football match, and countries which invade other countries and destroy everything there. Our basic point of view was that there is no difference. We took it as impudence that the Americans could bomb just another country and then still they got away with it. At this moment for me George Bush is nothing else as an unsocial hooligan. In general you can consider us to be right and you never have to fear that we can mean the wrong things. (laughs)

But I believe quite a lot people consider you to be wrong, misunderstand you. Therefore in a way you are brave, that you still have the courage to pick such topics and that you do not stop over-sensitively because you fear to be misunderstood.

P: We have been over-sensitively for quite a long time, but we got rid of it. We are not to blame.

There are some more songs which could cause misunderstandings. I do not really get the direction of “Mann gegen Mann”.

P: Interesting. What do you think?

After what you have said before, that I should consider you to be right, I would say that the song deals with the feelings of homosexuals from a heterosexual point of view.

P: But?

But I was not sure and wanted to ask you. I think it is because of Till’s voice and how he sings, that misunderstandings can occur.

P: Exactly! And with this we play purposely. Take a text from Nena (female German pop singer, “99 red balloons”) (Paul imitates Till Lindemann’s voice and sings) “Everything I like you for is exactly how I say it. I am confused, I am going mad, when it happens tonight.” As you see you can turn something quite into it’s opposite only by interpretation. We play with that, it is part of our formula for success that people will take it as an attack against gays because they interpret it. If you see the written text and without a threatening performance you will recognise that exactly “Mann gegen Mann” is a piece of sweet lyric about gays. In connection with us it nearly looks quite the opposite. But we like that. Everybody can ask himself how loose he is, it is a little test!

P: Some time ago a new discussion has started about the so called positive nationalism in German pop music. Bands like “Mia” have defended their opinion that one could basically have a good feeling concerning Germany and one could have a kind of national pride. Other bands, like “Blumfeld” or “Tocotronic” have denied that vehemently. Now a sampler with the title “I can’t relax in Deutschland” is released, on which bands like “Kettcar”, “Die Sterne” (all these bands sing in German like Rammstein) and others make clear that they have no positive feelings concerning Germany. In most people’s opinion you are maybe the most German band. So where is your, the former user of Leni Riefenstahl film cut outs, position?

P: In my point of view it is funny that there are people saying “I can’t relax in Deutschland”. If you only can relax in your holidays in foreign countries and not in Germany you should ask yourself if you have a problem. This panic to be German I never will understand, but as we travel a lot my relaxed feelings for Germany have increased even more. Because people in other countries do not ask that question so narrow minded like we do it here; you will find this attitude only here.

People in other countries have a different history. Significantly the pro votes for positive nationalism come mostly from East Germany, the bands on the sampler “I can’t relax in Deutschland” are mostly from the West. Do you, as a musician with East German extraction, think that a positive view of Germany is more popular with East Germans?

P: For sure; the East Germans are more relaxed. They do not take it so seriously.

But people from East Germany have more painful personal experience with Germany then the present generation from the West.

P: The problem with Germany has nothing to do with East or West, but with how you deal with your history.

Sure, but in the GDR with history was dealt with different moral standards, i.e. that the problem of neo-Nazism, which was already there before the fall of the wall, was hushed up.

P: I only can speak for me: I can relax in Deutschland, I do not have to go away for it. Once again: nowhere else in the world people are so narrow-minded when it comes to this. People with that problem I only can recommend to travel a lot, because then they will experience that people in foreign countries do not have such problems with a German being proud of Germany. I feel sad for these people, I cannot understand them. Well, maybe I should not say this so affable. But I think these people will not stop the development that the relationship of Germans to their own country will normalise. It is important to me that a sane dynamic, a kind of feeling as “we” originates. Also to solve the problems here. Tim Renner has told me years ago – and it gets my vote, too – that patriotism originally was something left-wing. Our battle is now to give patriotism back to the left-wing – we fight for a left-wing patriotism!

Text: Torsten Groß


© 2005 Richiebaby