Star One

Star One
I Don’t Really Feel Part Of This World

01.02.2011

Архив интервью | Русская версия

Two and a half years are not really a long time in terms of the music industry, and usually if you have done a big interview with someone 2.5 years ago, there’s not too many new questions you can ask this person. With Arjen Anthony Lucassen, the mastermind behind Ayreon, Star One and a variety of other projects, that’s not the case. Back in early 2008, we discussed Ayreon’s latest release, a two-CD mammoth called “01011001”, and since then Arjen has put together a new project called Guilt Machine, releasing “On This Perfect Day” in 2009, and then has resurrected Star One, a project he originally formed in 2001 to release “Space Metal” and then even go on tour, a rare occurrence for this master of concept albums with a multitude of most renown guests. For “Victims Of The Modern Age” (2010) Arjen managed to brought back exactly the same cast of singers that recorded “Space Metal” – Russell Allen (Symphony X), Dan Swano (Nightingale), Damian Wilson (Threshold) and Floor Jansen (Revamp), which is yet another remarkable occurrence for the man who is known for changing his collaborators as frequently as possible. Read on to find out more about this great new record, as well as about many other things that have been on Arjen’s mind lately…

In an interview several years ago you said that when an album is ready, you only feel empty and never really enjoy the music you have created. Is that still the case? If yes, what keeps you going forward?


The thing is that at the moment I’m ready with an album, I’m so proud of it, I feel that this is the best one I ever did and the world is gonna be shocked. (laughs) Then I send it to the record company, and there comes this horrible moment because it takes four months until the album is released, and you spend these four months waiting. Over these four months I manage to hate the album, I think, “Oh my God, it’s not good at all!” That’s probably when I did this interview you’re talking about. But then you start hearing reactions and reading reviews, and when you get ten reviews, nine of them are great and one of them is a little bit less positive (everybody laughs), and the only one you remember is this less positive one. You go like, “Oh my God, they don’t like it!” Right now I’m in that stage when I think that the album is completely shit. But each album I do is the most important album I’ve ever done. People often ask me, “What’s your favorite album?” or “What’s your favorite project?” I always reply, “The one I’m working on”. Each album I do is a challenge, each time it’s like, “Now it’s time to make the best album”. I can only be objective about it in about a year.

You have so many projects that every time you finish an album you have to choose what project to do next. Why did you decide to resurrect Star One at this specific point in time?

Basically because each album I do is a contrast to the album before that. The album before that was “On This Perfect Day” by Guilt Machine, and it was in contrast to the last Ayreon album. The last Ayreon album had like 17 singers and a huge story, it was a double album and it was all a bit too much. In Guilt Machine I went back to just one singer, and the music is much more intimate and a little bit more atmospheric; long songs, very big profound lyrics… As a reaction to that, I was like, “Hey, let’s plug in a guitar and make some metal! (laughs) Let’s just rock out and make an in-your-face album”.

After eight years of not working with the guys of Star One, how much did your cooperation change? Was it difficult to get back together exactly the same cast you had on “Space Metal” (2002)?

No, it was very easy, contrary to Ayreon projects. To get all those people together is hell, it’s really the downside of doing Ayreon: to arrange all these singers, to convince them to be on the album, especially the ones who don’t know my music… For Star One everything is different. I work with all these singers, first of all, because they’re fans of my music. It sounds a bit arrogant, but they were all listening to my music already before they knew me, and they really liked my music. Of course, in the meantime I got to know them better, because they’ve also been on my Ayreon projects, and we also did a live tour back in 2003. It was really easy to get them this time around, it was just one phone call, and everyone said, “You know, we’re busy, but we’ll make time for this”. That’s a good feeling, of course.

After “Space Metal” we had an impression that Dan Swano was not particularly happy with his involvement in Star One. He was the only singer from that album who didn’t tour in support of it. How did you manage to bring him back once again?

It had nothing to do with the fact that he wasn’t happy. In fact, he loved what he did, he’s a big fan of my music. It’s more than he doesn’t feel comfortable in the lead singer role. He couldn’t see himself being on stage with two vocal geniuses like Damien Wilson and Russell Allen, they’re the best in the world. He sees himself more as a guitar player, drummer and producer, and he doesn’t see himself as a guy who’s somewhere in the front of the stage. That’s not Dan, he’s a very polite and very intimate person, and that’s the reason why he didn’t wanna do the live tour. But in fact, as soon as he heard that I was doing the second Star One album, he was the one who contacted me and said, “Hey, I heard you’re doing the second Star One, don’t forget me!”

Can you say a few words about the singers on the second CD in the limited edition of “Victims Of The Modern Age”? There are a couple of guys (Mike Andersson, Rodney Blaze) who are not really famous to the general public…

With Rodney it’s kind of funny, because he’s the guy who repairs my computers. (everybody laughs) One day he left me a little CD. Now I get CDs every day, I get people wanting me to listen to their music every day, and I don’t do it anymore. I’m spoiled, I work with the best singers in the world – Russell Allen, Jorn Lande, Bruce Dickinson… You have to be really good to impress me, so I don’t really listen to that stuff anymore. But Rodney is a nice guy, and he’s fixing my computers (laughs), so I listened to it and was like, “Hey damn, this guy can sing!” In fact, he already sang on the expanded version of the first Ayreon album, “The Final Experiment”, and we stayed in contact all that time. I helped him a little bit with his stuff, and he helped me this time doing the guide vocals. I couldn’t do the guide vocals for Russell Allen, I can’t sing like Russell Allen, and Rodney can, and he did such a great job, that I decided to write a song especially for him.

Mike Andersson is the guy who’s been e-mailing me for years. He’s a big fan of my music, and he always said that he would love to be on my albums. He’s in a lot of bands, I think his most famous band is Cloudscape, a Swedish band. I really like his voice, it’s very powerful, it’s big, with nice vibrato, but I just never had the chance to work with him. Russell is on the album, so I won’t ask Mike, because his voice is a little bit in the same style. But as I had four songs on the extra CD, that gave me the chance to finally work with him, and he did a great job, definitely!

And then, of course, your next question… (laughs)

… is about Tony Martin, right!

He’s in my Top 10 of favorite singers of all time. To follow up Ozzy Osbourne and Ronnie James Dio in Black Sabbath is not easy. (laughs) For me, he did it! I’ve always loved him as a singer, and I approached him back in 1997 or something for Ayreon’s “Into The Electric Castle” album. Back then he was very expensive, I just couldn’t have him. This time I saw him on stage, and I contacted him and said, “Hey man, I’ve never worked with you, it didn’t work out the first time, but would you be interested?” He heard he song and he loved it, but he said, “Can I change the lyrics, can I work on it?” He recorded the song in his own studio, and when I got it, I was like, “Oh my God, this is one of my favorite singers singing my song!” That was a magic moment.

But why did he want to change your lyrics?

Ehh… He hadn’t seen the movie. I based the lyrics on the movie “Gattaca”, and he didn’t really understand the story from my lyrics. So he wanted the lyrics to be a bit clearer, and he also wanted to really be one with the lyrics, to be a part of it, and if he puts his whole soul it in, his whole feeling, he has to be behind it, of course. I had no problems with it.

For many years in Russia your albums were released on Irond Records. Why is this partnership now over?

I asked them if they wanted to release it, but it appears that the situation is really difficult at the moment due to piracy, illegal downloading and stuff like that. It’s really difficult for them to release albums, so we decided that maybe this time it wouldn’t be a good idea. It’s unfortunate, because I would have loved to release it in Russia on Irond, but piracy and illegal downloading are getting really bad.

Another question about your relations with record labels. Some of your CDs are very hard to find, for instance, we’ve been told that we can sell our copy of Ambeon for 150 euros. Why don’t you re-release “Fate Of A Dreamer” or “Strange Hobby”, especially as Transmission Records are no longer active?

I feel kind of bad about doing that. Transmission was the label that believed in me back then. I had a lot of problems with them back then, I have to say, they did a lot of weird stuff, but still I owe a lot to that label. They were the only ones who believed in Ayreon. That’s why I felt a little bad to re-release this stuff just because they’re bankrupt. Actually coincidentally last week I got a mail from the owner of Transmission Records, and he said that he would really like to release Strange Hobby and Ambeon again. I hope we’re gonna work it out, because a lot of people are still asking about Ambeon, and the original is, as you said, incredibly expensive on the Internet. I’m very proud of the album, too, so I think it should be re-released.

We hear from many musicians that nowadays they get more money from touring than from selling records. In your case, touring is rare and very problematic, and apparently studio albums require serious investments. How do you see your future career in light of this tendency?

Ehm, not very positive (laughs), because I can’t play live. Just imagine that if I play live with Star One, I would have to hire ten musicians, because there are 10 musicians of the album – five singers, a bassist, a drummer, a solo guitarist, and a keyboard player. I would have to fly them to Holland, we would have to rehearse for a couple of weeks, so they would have to be put in hotels… That’s gonna cost so much money. If you’re a band, touring still costs a lot of money, because there’s a lot of people to be paid, but if you’re alone and you have to hire everyone, it’s just you can’t do it.

Luckily I still have a very loyal fanbase who still actually buy my albums. And I really like doing something special with my albums – making a beautiful package, adding an extra CD, a nice little movie, nice images and stuff like that. People still enjoy buying the real thing. Loyal fans have all my albums in their collection, so they want their collection complete. But I do realize that it’s gonna be harder and harder in five years or something. I think there’s gonna be no CD shops anymore. Probably we’re gonna be selling stuff from our website. We already do it now, we did a pre-sale of this album, and within three days we sold a thousand copies, and within a week we sold out all the quantities that we ordered from the record company.

So far things are OK for me. In the last 10 years I did really well, I sold probably about a million copies of all Ayreon albums and all my side projects in total. And I don’t spend much money, I’m a very boring person. (everybody laughs) I don’t arrange parties, I don’t drink, I don’t do drugs… I just watch movies and make music, I don’t even buy clothes, so I don’t spend much money. I’ll manage it, I’ll manage it.

In your opinion, is there a way to stop free distribution of music? We get an impression that when people get music for free in unlimited quantities, music loses its value dramatically…

I fully agree with you. It seems like music is gonna be a hobby again. As you said, when you play live, you make money, but that’s not gonna be true in a couple of years. A lot of bands are gonna play live, there’s gonna be way too many bands playing live. The thing is that places where you play realize that, so they’re gonna ask a lot of money, a big percentage of revenues, and it’s gonna be impossible for bands to play live as well. It’s such a shame, but what can you do? I think there should be very strict laws, there should be big fines for people who download illegally. There should be tests, people might come to your house and check your computer – just scare the people a little bit! (laughs) People will surely go like, “Oh, if I do this, that’s gonna cost me a lot of money!” I’m all into scaring people a little bit. But no one gives a shit, it’s only musicians, and music is fun. “Musicians make a lot of money anyway,” that’s what they say. But well, in my case, that’s my only income. I only earn from CDs, there’s nothing else. Where is it gonna go? No idea.

We read in an interview that you are now listening a lot to singers-songwriters. How did you get interested in this genre, and what singers-songwriters would you recommend for beginners?

It’s not just that. Maybe that’s what came to my mind when they asked me, but I listen to so many different things. I read a lot of magazines, and each time I see a magazine that describes a singer as sounding like John Lennon, I immediately… well, I shouldn’t say it, but I download it. (everybody laughs) I listen to it, and of course, if I like it, I either order this CD at Amazon or I buy it at iTunes. It’s hard to give you any names, it’s different every day. Where did it come from? I think I’ve always liked the stuff like Simon and Garfunkel, folk music like Donovan and Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen… Anything in that style I like, I love folky music. I really listen to so many kinds of music, it’s something different every day.

You recently said that you will never produce other artists. What is the reason? Actually you did produce some other bands before – for example, Sun Caged …

That was an exception. And I didn’t produce them, I just mixed their album. I did that because their keyboard player Joost (van den Broek) played on my Star One tour. He did it all for free, and I really wanted to return this favor by mixing an album of his band. The thing is that I’m impossible to work with. (everybody laughs) I know that because I’ve been in bands, and people hated me. (laughs) I’m a horrible perfectionist, I’m a horrible control freak, I’m a horrible egomaniac. I know it, and it’s a good thing that I know it, and that’s why I work alone. At some point I decided, “Hey, I’m not gonna work together with other people, I drive them crazy! And I’m not gonna let them drive me crazy.” If I produce a band and I don’t like someone in the band – imagine that they had a bad bass player - I would say, “Hey man, this guy sucks, get another bass player! (everybody laughs) If he plays on this album, he’s gonna ruin the whole production.” That would not be good, that would become dirty. Moreover, people will come with stupid little synths, all those modern synthesized belly piano sounds, and I would say, “Hey, here’s my Hammond, play it!” I think all bands would end up sounding like Ayreon, and that will not be good either.

The first Star One album was based on space movies, the new one is based on post-apocalyptic movies. Does it mean that your tastes in movies have changed? What movies are your favorites at the moment?

No, it doesn’t mean that my tastes have changed, it just means that the music has changed. The music inspires me to come up with the content, it’s always the case – the lyrics, the story or, in this case, the movies to be used. The first Star One album was very spacey with creepy sounds, that’s why all the songs were based on the movies that were set in space. This time the music was a lot darker and more down-to-earth, that’s why I decided to base it on dystopian movies, like “Blade Runner”, which is one of my all-time favorite movies. In reality, I don’t watch science fiction that much, I like all kinds of movies. It really doesn’t have to be science fiction for me, although when it comes to TV series, I really like science fiction like “X-Files”, “Star Trek” or “Blake’s 7”. Science fiction is ultimate escapism, and that’s what I’m basically looking for, because I don’t really feel part of this world.

Speaking more about the visual side of things. Videoclips nowadays seem to be a very efficient promotion tool, bands just post them on YouTube or somewhere else and generate a huge following. Are there any plans to do a video for “Victims Of The Modern Age”?

It’s so hard, because these four singers are not available. I can’t fly Russell Allen from America just for a videoclip. Making these clips is also very expensive. We did one for Stream Of Passion, and I think it was EUR 40,000, luckily, the record company paid for it. If you want it done really professionally, it will be very expensive. The problem with my music is that there are always big stories, all these big science fiction stories – how are you going to put them in a videoclip? You gotta have big effects and stuff like that. I’m always too much of a perfectionist to do a videoclip that’s not really great… Oh, that’s not true, I’ve done a lot of videoclips that weren’t really great. (laughs) Someone is actually making a videoclip for the song “Victims Of The Modern Age”, it’s my ex-manager Yvette Boertje who’s making it, it will be done with actors, not with the original singers, and I’m very curious. I think she’s gonna be ready in a few weeks.

On “Victims Of The Modern Age” you worked with French digital artist Christophe Dessaigne for the second time. What makes this particular designer so interesting for you? And how do you work on the artwork – do you tell Christophe what to paint, and then he follows your instructions, or does he paint whatever he believes appropriate for the album, and you say yes or no?

Again, I’m hell to work with! (everybody laughs) We actually found Christophe on the Internet. There was this site called Flicker, and there we found his images - he’s a photographer, not a painter. We really liked what we saw and we contacted him, and it turned out coincidentally that he’s a big fan of my music, which is a bonus. He did the cover for Guilt Machine, which we really liked. His favorite subject is post-apocalyptic movies, dystopian movies, he loves that, so he already had a lot of material in that field. Again I was like, “No, change it, change it!” Before we got to work together for the second time, I told him, “Do you still like me now? (everybody laughs) When you listen to my music, do you still think, ‘hey, Arjen is a cool guy’? Anyway, you’re gonna hate me in a couple of months.” He was like, “No, no…” But when it came to the front cover, I must have sent it back to him 30 times – I’m not exaggerating! “No, change this”, “I don’t like that explosion”, “No, make the people smaller”, “No, I just want two people, not twenty”, “I don’t like the clouds, the clouds are too far to see…” It’s horrible, he had to change his stuff 30 times, and he got very insecure. He was like, “Oh my God, I can’t do it!” And I was like, “No, that’s not it, it’s just that I see it the way it should be”. Every image you see in the booklet is the result of 5-10 alterations. I put a lot of work in it, because it’s always been important to me – also when I was a fan and I was a kid looking at these LP covers.  

You are known for having close relations to your fans – you answer all the fan mail personally, and you even arrange special listening parties for them. But how much do you take their opinion into account? If you like a song, play it to fans but fans are generally unhappy, will you still keep this track?

Well, I listen to everyone’s opinion, and everyone’s opinion is important for me. I have to be careful with that, because I’m a very impressible person. If someone tells me, “This is shit”, I go, “Oh my God, this is really shit, this is horrible!” The thing with fans was that I had these 14 songs in total, and they couldn’t all fit on CD 1, so I had to put four or five songs on CD2, and I couldn’t choose. We put all the fans in a room, they listened to the songs and they were asked to make a choice. They all got a little paper and had to put little crosses there to mark if a song is OK, if a song is great, or if a song is fantastic, those were the three options. They did that, and it basically confirmed what I was already thinking deep inside. It was like most people said, “I don’t like that song”, and it was something I felt myself, but didn’t wanna admit to myself. It helped me, it was definitely good.

In 2005, you appeared on two charity compilations – “After The Storm: Katrina Project” and “ProgAid”. What are your impressions from these projects? Did their initiators succeed in raising the funds and helping the people stricken by natural disasters?

In the first place, you’re like, “Oh my God, it’s horrible that something like that happens”. And if someone asks you to do something, you’re like, “OK, I can help”. That gives you a good feeling, you don’t really think about it. I remember that with “ProgAid” I was the first, they sent it to me in the morning, and I went to my studio, recorded ten solos and sent it to them. They were like, “Wow, you’re the first to come back with your part!” It gives you a good feeling that you can contribute something. But I have to be honest with you – I didn’t really follow up on all things like seeing if they were successful. I don’t really think they were successful, it’s so hard to make money in the music business anyway. They may have raised little money, but… Maybe it’s not just the money, maybe it’s also about making people aware that it’s happening.

Speaking about natural disasters – have you seen the movie “2012”? If yes, what do you think of it?

Everybody told me not to see it! They were like, “No, no, don’t see it!” I’ve been disappointed by a lot of films lately, everybody’s like, “Oh, this movie is great!”, and when I see it, I’m like, “Oh my God…” I just don’t like how films are developing these days - all these special effects, and it’s so cold, and it’s so fast… Maybe I’m just getting an old bastard! (laughs) Maybe it’s the same as when my parents were listening to Black Sabbath and saying, “Oh, it’s horrible music! Turn this off!” (everybody laughs) But take James Bond, for example. I used to love James Bond when he was played by Sean Connery, I loved Roger Moore, his one line is so funny, and that’s it. That was James Bond for me. But now I see this latest James Bond and I’m like, “Oh, where are all these funny gags and the funny lines? It should be cheesy, it should be over-the-top!” I don’t even follow it anymore. It’s very rare that I see a good movie these days.

We heard that you were approached by a Dutch theater with an idea to do a theater production of “The Human Equation”. Will this idea ever be realized?

We talked about it, we had many meetings, we came together a lot of times… It would take two years to set it up – two years of rehearsals, building the whole set and stuff like that. The whole thing would cost two million, which sounds like a lot of money, but that’s what it costs, and that’s yet cheap production. A big production costs like 50 million, and they could do it for two million. But the thing is that my music is not mainstream, it’s cult music, it’s pretty underground. Also my music sells a lot over the whole world, not just in one country, and I’m not on the radio or TV in Holland, people don’t know me. My fans know me, of course, people who like prog and who like metal, but people in the street who watch TV don’t know about me. To invest two million in a project like that requires sponsors, and in the end they weren’t able to get the money together. That’s a shame.

You have celebrated your 50th birthday this year. Do you consider this age some sort of milestone in your life? Are you worried when another year passes by, or just the opposite, do you feel more mature and grown-up?

I think life gets better all the time. The only problem is that it gets so fast. Of course, it’s because it’s getting better, but really it’s like… I remember when I was a kid, a summer used to last a year, and this summer seemed so short. Of course, I was working on the album, I was in my studio without windows all the time, but I was always saying, “Yeah, we gotta go to the beach” - we always make this 10-km walk from one beach to another. And when I said once, “I’m ready now, let’s do that walk”, Lori (Linstruth, Arjen’s girlfriend and Guilt Machine guitarist – ed.) was like, “OK, but it’s autumn now”. (everybody laughs) I was like, “Let’s do it next week”, and she said, “Yeah, but it will be even colder”. I don’t like getting old at all, but I accept how things are going. Maybe if you speak to me in 10 years and I start developing physical problems, body problems and illnesses, that will be shitty. I would hate it if that happens. But I take very good care of myself, I jog every other day, I live a healthy life. Right now there are no problems at all.

Arjen, let’s not wait for 10 years to speak to each other again. A couple of years would be OK, don’t you think?

Yeah, sure. In 10 years I will be 60 – oh my God! (laughs)

Star One on the Internet: http://www.arjenlucassen.com/starone/

Special thanks to Maxim Bylkin (Soyuz Music) for arranging this interview

Roman Patrashov, Natalie “Snakeheart” Patrashova
November 3, 2010
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