Transcript of an interview I recorded with WOLF HOFFMANN of ACCEPT - 20210121. Full article here. MAL-
Talking once again to Wolf Hoffmann from ACCEPT. Wolf, thanks for taking my call. WOLF- You're very welcome. Nice to be with you. MAL- It's good to talk to you once again. Right, I've got a confession to make which leads to a question. I've been ian ACCEPT fan for 40 years. WOLF- Oh shit. Sorry about that. MAL- I was absolutely gutted when I found out that Peter had left. WOLF- Yeah, same here my friend. MAL- What can you tell me about that? WOLF- Well, how do you think I felt after all these years? Same thing here? I was like a little bit heartbroken and I felt it was not only a sad day for ACCEPT, it was also a sad day for rock and roll or heavy metal in general because you know, I thought we're going to be doing this.. I don't know, until the sun goes down, I don't know.. until forever but he all of a sudden decided otherwise and he made that decision and that was it, and that's sad, but what can you do, man? I decided along with everybody else the show must go on and we continue without him. So this is what we did and here's the new album without Peter but it's still sad. I still miss him sometimes, it's just the way it is, MAL- Three guitarists now. Now if ever there's a band I thought wouldn't have needed another guitarist, it's ACCEPT. Tell us about the decision to have all these guitars and what they brought to the band? WOLF- Yeah, it's not like we felt we needed somebody else. It was more or less we met this guy Philip Shouse doing a tour which we did two years ago all throughout Europe. It was called 'Symphonic Terror' where we played with orchestras and it was a very special different type of show we did there. And anyhow Phil was on that tour and we found out what a brilliant guitar player he is, what a nice guy he is, how easy he is to work with so we really bonded with one another and we felt like why shouldn't he be or why couldn't he be a third guitar player in ACCEPT because there's not really any law that says you can't have that and you know, what it enables us to do is just open up the whole thing a little bit more, we can now play different parts musically here and there, we can throw back and forth the solo stuff on stage more, we can do..I don't know, we can do a few more things that we normally can't do is just doing guitar players, but it's more or less a question of why not, and not the question of why do we have them or why do we need? No, we don't NEED him but we WANTED him, you know? MAL- Good answer, right tell us about this new album and how the lockdown stuff affected ACCEPT. Tell us what impact it had and how you worked around it. WOLF- Yeah, when it came time to start the new album, I mean, let's say we are in 2019. I've been writing for months and months, a bunch of demos and song ideas like I always do and we knew we wanted to record it in 2020 and I called Andy (Sneap-producer) and I said, 'You know, how's this going to look all throughout the year? When can we do this?' And he said, 'Well, I'm going to be on tour all throughout the summer', and ACCEPT was going to be booked all throughout the summer for festival shows. So it would have been quite difficult to really make proper plans, but we decided let's just go ahead and start recording while we can, let's record what we have and worry about the rest later, you know, so that's what we did, we started recording the first batch of six or seven songs in March and then wanted to regroup some point later and that's exactly during that time while we were recording this first batch of songs is when the news got worse every day about the rising Corona deaths and lockdowns and all that stuff started to really get serious. So we all went back home and found out the touring was canceled for everybody, for ACCEPT for JUDAS PRIEST and pretty much worldwide everybody. Nobody could tour anymore as we know. So all the summer shows were cancelled, which is terrible, of course, but the good side was at least we had time to work on this album now. The only bad part was nobody could travel into the United States anymore from Europe. So Andy couldn't come, the band was recording in Nashville, like always, Nashville Tennessee in the United States. So we found the solution around all that by recording ourselves basically and having Andy be online, the virtual producer basically, he was only visible on a computer screen. So we made it happen man, but it was strange. Luckily this is only for the remainder of the five songs or so we recorded back then and it was fairly easy to do because we know Andy so well and we've done it together so many times, the proper way that we you know, we felt it was doable. But you know, we kind of limped home in a way, you know. MAL- Right tell us a bit about the the album, some songs on there. I would have to say my favorite is 'No-one's Master'. Tell us about that one. WOLF- Good choice. That is actually yeah interestingly enough. That is a song that Martin Motnik, the new bass player wrote for the most part. MAL- Well give him a pat on the back from me. WOLF- Yeah. I will actually, he'll be glad to hear that, because he surprised me and everybody a lot by just coming out of nowhere with a bunch of ACCEPT songs, or songs that he had written because I invited everybody and I said, 'Let's see what you got. If you want to participate in the songwriting process, be my guest'. because I didn't feel like I wanted to write everything myself. So he came up with a bunch of cool stuff and that's one of them, and what surprise me about them, and Andy and everybody, is that they sounded so much like, you know an ACCEPT material that we could have written. It really sounds like one of my ideas and that's like of course perfect, you know, it's right on target, and there's another one, he's written another one that's 'Sucks To Be You' it's mostly his idea. MAL- He's slotting in nicely, isn't he? WOLF- Yeah, he did, certainly did a bunch of other cool stuff along the way and parts of the other songs and even some lyrical ideas. So he was the big surprise on this album. So even though it was sad that Peter was gone, yeah, it's always going to be sad forever. But at least Martin came up and tried to fill his spot the best he could and he's really doing well. MAL- When I hear 'Overnight Sensation', all I can think of is Instagram models. WOLF- Yeah, that's true. MAL- Is that who we're poking a stick at here? WOLF- Really taking the fun out of, poking fun at like the YouTube kids and The Tik-Tok people and all that, you know, the new generation of kids that grew up on the Internet basically who become literally famous overnight sometimes, you know, they post a cool video on there and all of a sudden have a you know, a million views or 10 million views and they're like an overnight sensation. MAL- Not always for the right reasons though. WOLF- No, and sometimes you wonder for what reason at all which is so different from the way that we grew up, you know, if you think about it, we all learned our instruments and we knew what lay ahead was years and years of practice and that was sort of the norm, you know, if you want to be really good and famous and well-known for something then you got to put in the years and nowadays. It's just a matter of days or hours and somebody's famous. It's crazy. Isn't it? MAL- Tell me about 'Symphony Of Pain'. Who came up with that one? Was that you or was that good old Martin as well? WOLF- No, that was me. Yeah 'Symphony Of Pain'. All right. I've been working on that song title for a while, for many years actually. You know, we always have a list of songs or topics or song titles, almost like a little cheat sheet that helps sometimes for inspiration. So whenever you have a good idea vocally, lyrically, whatever sometimes write it down and this was on my list for a long time and I've worked on it even during the 'Blind Rage' album and never amounted to anything that I liked. But finally I had some riffs that really seemed to fit the phrase really well and seem to have the vibe for it. So I thought 'Symphony Of Pain', you know the word Symphony alone indicates this could definitely be a song where some classical elements, some phonic elements would be in order. So then I thought you know the best-known Symphonies of all time are probably Beethoven's 5th and 9th, and luckily I found a place in that song for those real classical elements in there. And then we took it one step further inside, you know, lyrically, we could even talk about Mr. Beethoven himself and so that song really turned into a full-blown Beethoven song, you know because symphony of pain is talking about his personal struggle with deafness because you know, if you think about it, it's quite a symphony of pain to be a composer and then turn deaf. I mean couldn't even imagine, horrible. MAL- 'Samson And Delilah', excellent instrumental at the end. Tell us about that one. WOLF- Well, there's your other instrumental, your other classical inspired song. This is a good example of something that could have ended up on my solo album. And like I said earlier, I usually just write everything that comes to mind and that was in all my many tracks that I recorded, you know something that just record a little melody that I like and sometimes I work on classical melodies and see how they sound like on guitar and what kind of riffs I could come up with. So this was basically sort of an experiment. I played it to Andy and he really liked it and he was the one who suggested we should put it on the album in one form or another, and it's based on two classical elements, one is called 'Samson and Delilah' appropriately my French composer Saint-Saens. And the other one is the 'Symphony From The New World' by Antonin Dvorak. So two pieces inspired me there and I actually managed to put them in one piece, even though they were originally never meant to be together at all, you know, it's two completely unrelated composers, compositions whatsoever. But you know, it felt like a good old Heavy Metal piece when it was all done and it doesn't sound classical at all. Actually. If you don't know these original versions and it probably never even think about classical music. MAL- I really like it. It's a good way to finish off the album too. WOLF- Yeah, it feels like a nice little walking off music doesn't it? Like after a live show or after the movie, you know, the credits roll down. You've heard it all you've seen it all and then there's your outro. MAL- Yes it does, almost like 'The Galley' on an earlier album. WOLF- Yeah, exactly. That's right. We've done it before, you know with these things whether it's a classical stuff or an instrumental, we try to not have a formula and say we need one on the album or we need to have a instrumental piece or we need to have a classical piece. I think it kind of dictates itself when it's there and it falls in place and it feels right, we do it but other than that, we're not trying to you know, push it. MAL- Now. We've had to.. I say 'we' obviously 'you' have had to delay the album, any particular reason behind that? WOLF- Yeah, there's something to do with the distribution and manufacturing. It's really not our fault. We have nothing to do with it. This album has been in the can for months and months and finally at the last minute before release something went wrong, and I've heard some shipments got delayed because of the Brexit thing in Europe, but honestly, I don't really know all the details. All I know is it's going to be another two weeks and at this point, hell, we've waited so long, what's another two weeks? MAL- Exactly right. Then what happens? I mean what prospects have we got for touring over there? Are any areas opening up? Has anything been booked? What's the go? WOLF- Well booking went on all along, it has just been postponed and postponed. I mean originally we would be on a big headline tour all throughout Europe right now to coincide with the release, but that had to be pushed back a year to early '22 to be safe, and we had summer festivals from last year that have been rescheduled for this summer and they're now 'to be discussed'. I mean I hope they will happen but nobody quite knows. I mean, we can't really look into the future and it doesn't look too good. If you want my personal feeling it's sort of 50/50 if that can happen or not, but I definitely do hope they can because I can't wait to get out there again. MAL- So the album is called 'Too Mean To Die' coming out very soon. Any last thoughts. WOLF- Yeah, man, it's coming out in the 29th. And even though we can't be on tour right now, we want the fans to listen to the new material and really enjoy the album. Maybe it's going to take their mind a little bit off the current Corona crazy weirdness, whatever, you know, hopefully people can still enjoy the album and bang their heads in quarantine if you want or do whatever, you know, and hopefully soon we can all meet again in person on the road have some proper live shows. MAL- It really has sucked and I had imagined you guys will be going stir crazy as well. WOLF- Oh, absolutely, and it's not only financially disastrous. It's really also mentally as well, it wears you out because I mean it's why we are musicians, you know, it's okay to rehearse and it's okay to record albums and just sit at home and play but really you want to play out. You want to play with your friends and you want to go out on the road, you wanna perform that stuff, you want to get the audience reaction. That's it. That's the magic. The others stuff is just, you know, getting ready and like preparing yourself for it. So it's all you know, the final goal of the musician is always to tour and to be out there and if we can't do that, you know, it's like 'What the hell? Why am I here? Why do I exist?' MAL- Hey Wolf, I'll wrap it up. WOLF- All right my friend. It's been nice talking with you. You stay safe and we'll chat again, or maybe see each other in person before too long. Okay. MAL- Thanks for talking to me today. Good luck with the new album 'Too Mean To Die'. Excellent. I love it. Best of luck with it. And yeah, hopefully we see you out on the road soon. WOLF- Thank you, my friend. Comments are closed.
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AuthorMetalhead who hates bad parking. |