Roland的訪談~
as title....
Holland's Lords of Metal e-zine recently conducted an interview with
MASTERPLAN/ex-HELLOWEEN guitarist Roland Grapow. A couple of excerpts from
the chat follow:
Lords of Metal: A while back I was quite surprised by the announcement that
[singer] Jorn Lande had left MASTERPLAN. Of course musical differences was
given as the reason, but can you be a bit more specific about the actual
cause for the decision?
Roland Grapow: Well, first of all, Jorn was always complaining after the
shows we did that things were not working out for him. Secondly, he wasn't
always in agreement with the stuff we wrote as a band. For instance, when we
finished an album, months later he would say that the melodies were too high
for him, that he couldn't sing them well live, that the direction of the band
wasn't hundred percent his taste, that our song material was too cheesy, and
so on. The musical style that we're in is however were important for
MASTERPLAN. We tried to work this out already for the "Aeronautics" album,
where Jorn was pushing us also a little too much in the direction of
traditional, straightforward heavy metal. He found us too progressive, too
dark. Uli [Kusch, ex-drummer] and myself decided that we wanted to keep our
style, maybe getting back a little bit more to the style on the first album.
Then Jorn decided that he didn't want to stay in the band. He wanted to go
more into the direction of his solo albums. Don't get me wrong, I still love
him as a singer and he's still a good friend of mine. I think he made the
right decision however, since it's not good to have somebody in the band
who's unhappy all the time.
Lords of Metal: Of course you knew that it wouldn't be easy to find a
suitable replacement, but how did you get to Mike DiMeo [RIOT]?
Roland Grapow: It was very difficult and we checked out a lot of singers. We
wanted to do the planned gigs already with the new singer, but that was
impossible so we either had to cancel the shows or ask Jorn to come back and
do the gigs with us. So Jorn did the gigs with us and it was a lot of fun. We
were relaxed and we really enjoyed what we were doing. After these gigs, Mike
contacted me and I checked him out since I didn't know him at all. After
checking him out I found his style to be quite similar to Jorn — he's also a
blues-type singer and that is good for MASTERPLAN. I complimented him first
about his performance and then asked him if we was interested to sing for
MASTERPLAN. Luckily for us he was.
Lords of Metal: Is it no difficult to work with American singer, since he's
living at the other side of the world?
Roland Grapow: No, not really. It's not more difficult then working with a
Norwegian singer. Nowadays it really makes no difference anymore whether
you're from Norway or from the States. The flight is just a few hours more.
Lords of Metal: As a result of joining MASTERPLAN, Mike (had to) quit his
former band RIOT. Was this a mandatory move because you want him to focus on
MASTERPLAN or was it just impossible to combine the two?
Roland Grapow: It was certainly not requested from my side. In fact, RIOT
announced another singer instead. Mike was surprised himself that they went
on tour with a different singer. Maybe for RIOT, Mike joining MASTERPLAN was
the reason to go and look for a replacement. For us it made no difference
whether he would have stayed in RIOT as well. RIOT is just doing some shows
in the New York area and things would have been relatively easy to combine. I
said him beforehand to not quit anything, since making money in this business
is also important and at that time the future of MASTERPLAN was very
insecure. The same goes for Mike Terrana. When he joined I told him as well
not to leave RAGE but he said that he wanted to leave RAGE because he
couldn't work with those guys anymore.
Lords of Metal: You already mentioned the other change in the line-up being
Mike Terrana as your new drummer. Why did Uli leave and how did you get Mike
in?
Roland Grapow: Mike Terrana is an old friend of mine, so his name sprang to
mind easily when thinking about a new drummer. First I just asked him to help
out while he was on tour with AXEL RUDI PELL. He asked me what had happened
and when I said that Uli left the band he said that he would be the new
drummer for MASTERPLAN. He had always loved the band. I know him well and he
plays great, so I'm really happy to have him in the band.
Lords of Metal: Let's talk about the new album for a while. When did you
start with the preparations for the new album and how long did the overall
process take? Was Mike DiMeo already part of the band during the song-writing
process?
Roland Grapow: I started writing the songs in January last year, still with
Jorn in mind as a singer. I finished about six or seven songs during January
and February. Then I took a long break and in June I had a meeting with Uli
to talk about the stuff that he wrote. When he left, I had a meeting with Jan
and Axel in September and I stated that I really didn't want to have Uli's
songs on the album when he was no longer part of the band. We decided to make
one exception and that was the song "Masterplan" which I felt was too good to
leave it off. We still didn't have enough songs for the album at that time,
so I wrote "Keeps Me Burning", "Watching The World" and "Warrior's Cry".
About Mike DiMeo's participation in the songwriting process: when we write
songs, we don't write lyrics of vocal melodies. So I sent everything to Mike
and he wrote the lyrics and vocal melodies. The first attempt of him didn't
really fit the MASTERPLAN material, it sounded too much like RIOT. So we
started to work as a team for each song and during that process he really got
in to it and understood the style of the band. At that time I felt really
secure about the future of the band.
Read the entire interview at www.lordsofmetal.nl.
Roland Grapow接受訪談時的說法。
算是回應Jorn Lande的說法吧。
Roland和Uli想保持自己的風格啊。:p
不過最後他們二人還是拆夥囉。@@
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