Het nieuwe Axel Rudi Pell album ‘The Crest’ behoort tot de beste platen die ik dit jaar heb mogen beluisteren en ik moet eerlijk zeggen dat ik daar behoorlijk verrast door was. Natuurlijk ben ik altijd een groot liefhebber geweest van meneer Pell zijn muziek, maar het nieuwe materiaal klinkt gewoon een stuk frisser dan hetgeen hij op de laatste paar studio-albums liet horen. De zeer opgewekte en vriendelijke gitarist heeft er zelf ook geen echte verklaring voor, maar is verheugd te constateren dat ‘The Crest’ bij mij in de smaak is gevallen…
Axel, your previous studio album ‘Tales Of The Crown’ was released in November of 2008, how successful was this album for you? The album did quite okay, although it didn’t reach the sales numbers of any of the previous albums. One of the reason for this might be that the album was already available on the internet about seven weeks before the actual release date and that a lot of illegal downloads were done. On the other hands I myself wasn’t really satisfied with the actual album as well. At the time of the recording it sounded great, but when I listened to it some two months later, I felt that it just missed something.
In 2009 the compilation album ‘Best Of Anniversary Edition’ was released. What was the idea behind this release? This was an idea from our record company. We had just finished some gigs opening up for Heaven And Hell and we might have picked up some new fans during those performances. Therefore the record company thought it might be a good idea to do a compilation album for a budget price and that has become ‘Best Of Anniversary Edition’.
In March of this year the third Axel Rudi Pell DVD ‘One Night Live’ saw the light of day. What was the reason for releasing another DVD while ‘Live Over Europe’ was only two years old? People were asking for it, that’s why! It wasn’t planned at all, but the Rock Of Ages festival was filmed anyway and when the film crew asked us if it was okay to film us we said: “sure, why not?”. Afterwards they send two songs to me and the material turned out to be quite cool and therefore we decided to release it as a budget-priced DVD. We tried to release it already in 2009, but the editing of the material took somewhat longer and therefore it hit the market in February of 2010 instead.
On both previous DVD releases a lot of bonus material was incorporated, yet this ‘One Night Live’ was kind of sober, since it only contained the gig you played at the Rock Of Ages 2009 festival. What was the reason for this absence of bonus material? The simple reason is that there was nothing left anymore that was of high enough quality to add as bonus material. Everything that we had was already used on the ‘Live Over Europe’-DVD, so it was just the show and nothing else. Since the DVD in the stores for about ten euros, I think that you’ll still get value for money.
What do you think yourself of your performance on that festival as thus about the ‘One Night Live’ DVD? It was an average performance that we did that night, but we decided to leave all the mistakes we made on there. For us the important thing was to “capture the moment” so to speak.
Why did you decide to release this DVD just two months before the new album or was did done intentionally so that it would be kind of an appetizer for ‘The Crest’? I agree with you that the planning wasn’t exactly perfect, but as said earlier that had everything to do with the time needed for the editing of the DVD. We certainly weren’t planning on moving the release date for the new album, so as a result of this the two releases are just two months apart. So it was certainly not done intentionally.
’The Crest’ is released on April 23rd, but when did you start with the actual preparations for this new album and did you change anything in the song writing process for this new one? I started collecting ideas and different bits and pieces for this new album the complete last year, but it was the September/October timeframe of 2009 that I really started to put these different parts together and turned them into real songs. Putting ‘The Crest’ together took me double the time that I normally need to write an album, but it has been absolutely worthwhile because I’m really satisfied with the outcome.
The reason I ask this is that I think the new material has a certain freshness that I missed on the previous couple of Axel Rudi Pell albums. Do you have an explanation for this? Not really, sometimes there’s magic in the air and sometimes there’s not. I had a very tough time writing the material for ‘Tales Of The Crown’ and had to really push myself to get this done. This time things went very fluent and I already knew after writing two or three complete songs that this new album was going to be a special one.
In my opinion ‘The Crest’ is by far the best Axel Rudi Pell studio album so far, but how would you rate the new album in comparison with the other ones and why? I totally agree with you and I’m happy that you think that this is our best album so far. ‘The Crest’ is my favorite ARP-album and it’s the first one that I’m 100% happy with, although I’m still very pleased with ‘Masquerade Ball’ and ‘Oceans Of Time’ as well.
On ‘The Crest’ the traditional intro is back. Why did you decide to include an intro song again this time? Everybody expect Axel Rudi Pell albums to follow a certain scheme and a lot of people hold that against us, but when we changed things on ‘Tales Of The Crown’ we got a lot of questions why we had changed things. “This is not really Axel Rudi Pell”, people said and therefore we decided to go back to our roots again and to introduce the expected intro again.
The riff of opening track ‘Too Late’ reminds me quite a bit to the riff of Y&T’s ‘Hurricane’. Probably it’s pure coincidence but are you aware of this? Really? You’re the first guy that’s telling me that. I will check it out, but if it has certain similarities it is pure coincidental because ‘Too Late’ was written more with Rainbow’s ‘Kill The King’ in mind than anything else.
With ‘Dark Waves Of The Sea’ we have a follow-up to the ‘Oceans Of Time’ song where even parts of the original song are used. How did you come up with this idea and why did you feel the urge to write an ‘Oceans Of Time’ part two? The marketing guy of the record company asked me to create a part two of the ‘Oceans Of Time’ album and I told him: “No way, because these new songs are much stronger”. During the song-writing process this particular song ‘Dark Waves Of The Sea’ however had nearly the same chord scheme as ‘Oceans Of Time’ and then I got the idea to create a part two of the song ‘Oceans Of Time’ and added some parts of the original song into it because that just worked out great.
You’ve also included an instrumental in the shape of ‘Noblesse Oblige’. Why did you decide to do this, since it’s something totally different compared to the other material on offer here? Sometimes I like to do something completely different and the ‘Noblesse Oblige’ song just shows the emotional side of my personality. You don’t really need a singer to show your emotions and after writing this instrumental it felt like a good idea to incorporate it on the album, just because it’s something totally different when comparing it to the rest of the material.
Personally I think that the already mentioned ‘Too Late’, ‘Devil Zone’, ‘Dreaming Dead’ and my personal favorite ‘Prisoner Of Love’ are among the best songs that you’ve ever written, but if you had to name one song of the new album that represents Axel Rudi Pell best in 2010, which one would that be and why? I would say the intro ‘Prelude Of Doom’ is probably the best song…hahaha. No, seriously, there’s no way that I could give you an answer on this question right now, since I’ve been working on this material for over a year and I’m just too close to it to be able to tell you what I feel is the best example of Axel Rudi Pell in 2010. If you ask me again in a few months time I might have the answer for you.
’The Crest’ was the first album that you’ve produced yourself. What was the reason for taking on this job in the first place, wasn’t it difficult to keep a distance to your own material and what do you think about the actual end result? Well, actually nothing really changed, since I was always very much involved in the whole production process anyhow and we’ve been working with Charlie Bauerfeind for a long time already. You might say that the previous albums were co-produced by me, but this time Charlie had obligations with the new Blind Guardian album. Therefore he only did the mix this time and I took care of the production process without him this time.
What are your expectations from the new album? When will it be a success for you? I don’t know, maybe when we get back to the old sales numbers. I’m still dreaming of that gold record you know! ‘Oceans Of Time’ was the best selling Axel Rudi Pell record and that album is already twelve years old. So maybe this new one might get us back to those sales numbers, we’ll just have to wait and see.
Of course the world-wide decline in record sales makes it hard nowadays to survive in the music business. I saw that you also issued a statement about illegal downloading on your homepage, but how do you think that an artist nowadays can survive with all this illegal stuff going on? I have no clue to be honest. I think the only thing you can do nowadays is play as much as you can to be able to survive. The new generation tends to think that music is free and that they down rip off an artist when they download the albums, while in reality they are destroying the music business. Maybe it’s also due to the fact that way too many albums are released nowadays…
On May 3rd the first leg of the European tour will start. Which songs of the new album will be part of the new live set? Haha…I won’t tell you that right now, it’s a surprise. What I can tell you though is that we will probably do five or maybe even six songs of the new album, which we have never done before. But we feel that the new material is so strong, that we can easily do that this time.
The short tour finishes on May 15th with an already sold-out show in your home location Die Zeche in Bochum. What’s going to happen next, especially after the summer festivals? There will be a second leg of this tour, but we’re having some scheduling problems because Mike is on the road with other acts until the September timeframe. So we don’t know when that will take place yet. After this second leg of the tour I will start writing new material for a next album, but then we’re talking January 2011 probably.
In the past you’ve been active with releasing ballad albums and also a cover album. Is this indeed a thing from the past or are you again thinking about such activities next to the regular studio albums? There will probably be a fourth ballad album someday, I’m quite sure about that. I don’t think that we will be doing another cover album again, because there wasn’t too much interest for it and it really didn’t sell that good.
You’re already in the music business for several decades. What have been your personal highlights and lowlights during all those years? Pfff, this is a hard one. Well, the lowlights were probably the times that a singer would leave the band. I mean a singer is a very special character that determines quite a big part of the sound of your band and it’s really hard to replace him. Luckily things are working out great already for a long time with Johnny, so we have no worries there at the moment. The highlight was probably last year’s Wacken festival where we played for seventy-five thousand people and they didn’t leave…haha.
What are the things that you still want to accomplish with your band? What aspirations do you still have as a musician? As said earlier, I still hope to get a gold record one day. To be able to get there, we’re trying to attract as many new fans as we possibly can and hopefully ‘The Crest’ can contribute significantly to this.
Okay, Axel, thanks for your time and willingness to answer my questions. I’m looking forward to see you perform in the Bosuil in Weert a week from now. As always, the famous last words are yours? I’ll see you next week then and hopefully you’ll like the show as much as you like the new record!
With ‘Dark Waves Of The Sea’ we have a follow-up to the ‘Oceans Of Time’ song where even parts of the original song are used. How did you come up with this idea and why did you feel the urge to write an ‘Oceans Of Time’ part two?
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