Avantasia
I Don’t Play Music For People Who Hate Me

14.03.2013

He may have said that doing large-scale metal operas is suicidal in this age of free Internet downloading, but he still wants to give it another go. After all, Tobias Sammet was among the trailblazers for the metal opera movement, and it’s only natural for him to keep releasing them, as long as he is inspired and his works have success. “The Mystery Of Time” will be the 6th installment of Avantasia, and so far Tobias has never failed with this project, so look out for something special this time once again. If that alone is not enough, check out the names of performers: Michael Kiske, Ronnie Atkins (Pretty Maids), Biff Byford (Saxon), Arjen Lucassen (Ayreon) and many others. Our personal track record with Tobias has not been as faultless, as we were really battling to interview him for the entire first half of the 2000s and only succeeded in late 2007. This second time it was surprisingly easy, though very rushed – I only got to know the date of the evening conversation the morning of the same day. Nevertheless, talking with Tobias Sammet you never find yourself in a situation when he has nothing to say. Read on to learn what he thinks about the new record, relationship between artists and critics, the upcoming tour and the future of the music market…

Before the release of the previous two Avantasia installments, “The Wicked Symphony” and “Angel Of Babylon”, you said that this might be your last large-scale production, because the situation in the music business was going from bad to worse and such productions were extremely difficult to arrange and finance. But now, three years later, you’re back with an even bigger production. How did you manage to pull it through? Has anything changed in the music business or record labels’ policies?

(cracks) No, not really! I do have a better record deal now, though. The truth is that I did not know where the future would lead us, nobody knows what will happen one year from now, two years from now, three years from now. But “The Scarecrow”, “The Wicked Symphony” and also “Angel Of Babylon” were really successful albums, and as there are so many loyal fans who don’t take the music just for free, but buy original albums, there is a chance to keep doing this. Of course, I don’t know what the future will bring, and I’m still a little bit afraid, because you never know. But still, I managed to get a good deal to do this. It was also blind faith, because I was recording the full album myself without having a record deal, I only signed the record deal a few weeks ago. Until the album was almost finished, I didn’t have a deal, I didn’t have a budget, I just did everything on my own, because I have so much belief in the material, I knew that the previous albums were doing really well, and I had confidence that in that short time from “The Wicked Symphony” to now the market had not declined that badly. (laughs)

I remember Sascha Paeth receiving some kind of producers’ award for the sound he did on “The Scarecrow”. But still this time you decided to use a real orchestra, which you haven’t done since Edguy’s “Hellfire Club” (2004). Do you think anything was missing in the sound of previous Avantasia albums?

No. To be honest, I didn’t miss anything, actually the previous albums were perfect. It was just that I had the feeling that this is what is required for this material. It was a gut decision, it was a real instinctive decision that we should have a real orchestra. We had such big songs with such big orchestra passages that when we were looking over the material, I had the feeling that we should use a real orchestra. I don’t know why, but when you hear songs like “The Great Mystery” or “Black Orchid” or “What’s Left Of Me”, you know there is so much space to put in a real orchestra that we had to do it. When you have fast songs, it’s really hard to hear the difference between a real orchestra and a computer orchestra, if it’s really done well and everything is put in its place very carefully. But when you have a bombastic epic mid-tempo song with a lot of space in between, you can have a real orchestra, and the orchestra can unfold its real full sound, and then you can hear the difference. I do not think that a real orchestra would necessarily make “The Wicked Symphony” or “Angel Of Babylon” that much bigger, but for this song material that we have on this album, I think it was really worth using an orchestra. I’m not saying it’s better or worse song material than in the past, I just think that this material that we have now is more classic epic European… classic… music, in a way, so a real orchestra is more appropriate for this album.

How would you evaluate the input of Sascha Paeth in “The Mystery Of Time”? Was he as important on “The Mystery Of Time” as he was on “The Scarecrow”, for instance?

He’s always important, because he’s there from the very beginning. He’s a great guitar player, and if I screw up on bass, he will get the bass and even play for me. If he has a good idea, he will play a keyboard or even the drums. He was there for the arrangements – I wrote the stuff myself, but when we arranged it, he was there from start to finish. He’s a very good friend of mine, a true friend, and he definitely has a lot of influence on the material.

You have announced quite a few singers for “The Mystery Of Time”. Is this the final list, or are there more people on the album? I’ve seen some comments from people expecting you to announce some big superstar like Alice Cooper or Klaus Meine – do you have anybody of that league this time?

Well, I think personally the people that I have announced are in that league. And it’s definitely it what we have announced now. If you hear the album, it’s very very great, and the material is really… When you listen to it, you don’t have the feeling that somebody is missing or something is not really put in place, which makes me really proud. The album is such a big thing, and everything is so well put in order where it belongs, that it just doesn’t need anything on top of it. I can understand when people say, “Oh, he should have… well, the Caesar of China, or the Pope” – the next Pope now. (laughs) That’s the reflection of our modern day and age: everybody wants to go for a sensation, the next big thing, “we need this and we need that, we need Lady Gaga and Michael Schumacher…” (everybody laughs)

I’m really happy that I worked with Klaus Meine and Alice Cooper, don’t get me wrong, but for this album this is exactly what it needs. If you listen to it, there is not one second when you will miss something, and that’s a good thing. A lot of people were asking for Jorn, I can tell – and I love Jorn, no doubt about it, Jorn is a great singer and a friend of mine – but if you listen to the album, the album is great as it is.

The subject of guest singers brings us to the subject of lyrics. Can you say a few words about the album concept?

It’s a fairytale, it’s me going back to fairytales, in a way. It’s about a young scientist, an agnostic scientist, who realizes that around him a lot of people are lacking time. Everybody seems to be running short of time, and the wheel of time seems to turn faster and faster. The scientist has got the feeling that it happens on purpose, as if something wants to take people’s time, so that they don’t have time to think about who and why they really are. That’s pretty much the topic.

He sets off on a journey, in a way, a spiritual journey to explore the reason and the cause of the subject why everybody is lacking time. On his journey he gets confronted with a lot of internal thoughts and realizations and also exterior interferences. He has interesting thoughts and conversations, he finds out a lot about himself and what’s going on around him, and it ultimately becomes a very exciting fantastic fairytale. He gets caught between his conviction as a scientist and spiritual questions that lead him to spiritual answers, and he finds himself in a lodge of occult scientists. It’s a spiritual thing, and I tried to put a lot of personal information and personal experience in there, as well as a lot of personal questions that I have and that may lead people to ask those questions themselves. Questions are, after all, the first step to answers. The quest is the purpose for that album, I just try to paint a beautiful scenery for people to put their own questions inside. Each song has got interesting lyrics that are open for interpretation, whereas in the booklet we also have 28 pages of lyrics and the background story. I reveal a lot, but at the end of the day people will have to use their own imagination to read their own story in the lyrics.

You said that you wanted to create “a real grown up rock opera” – that’s a quote from your website, and what I’m hearing from you now also confirms this, because teenagers never think about time. At the same time, many fans view you as a kind of person that refuses to grow, some sort of “Peter Pan of heavy metal”…

(cracks) Probably size-wise they’re absolutely right, at 15 I stopped to grow! (everybody laughs)

But leaving size aside, are these people having a completely wrong perception of you?

(pause) Yes and no. I think growing up and developing from a spiritual and personal point of view have nothing to do with abandoning the child inside. Growing is more about deciding when you are not allowed to be childish, and when you are allowed to be childish. I don’t think it’s very mature to refuse to be a child. When you’re really mature, in my opinion, you just distinguish between the moments when you have to be mature and when you’re allowed to be a child. I would consider myself mature and grown up, but it’s just I know very well those 2 percent in my life and in my day when I have to be grown-up. The rest of the time I can spend perfectly being a child. That’s all the secret. I think some people really don’t understand that, because a lot of people pretend they are very mature and know exactly how to behave, and they abandon everything about being a child. I think being a child is the greatest thing in the world! I am a child, I take album covers of my favorite bands, I take the vinyls, and I look at them for minutes and hours and I just waste my time looking at those covers – just because I can do that, and that’s fine. I collect funny things, I have pictures on the wall, and I look at them – I am a big child, of course, but I know when I have to take responsibility and be mature, I know those moments. That’s what everybody should do, I think, because it doesn’t make sense to be a serious person all the time. It’s fucking boring!

Speaking about other people’s perception of your music – what was the magazine that rated your work “two out of seven”?

(laughs) Well, I won’t reveal. It’s not a Russian one. (everybody laughs) It was actually a magazine that doesn’t have a seven-point scale, it has a different scale, but it was very representative of that kind of journalists that are just journalists just for the sake of being particularly picky about things. I really don’t have a problem with people saying, “Hey Tobi, you know what? In my opinion, your new album is really crap!” That’s no problem, I can say, “OK, that’s your opinion”, but I have a problem with those people who don’t know anything about me and my art and just want to ruin it for the thousands of people who think like me. I don’t play music for aristocratic experts in art, I play music for myself and 250,000 people who think like me. We are enough, it’s fine for us, and if somebody hates it, I’m totally fine with it. But what annoys me is when people write stuff like, “Oh, he should have delivered differently in the seventh song, because the seventh song, I think, is a really crappy song.” I don’t get the point.

You’ve had quite a few songs about the relations between an artist and the audience, for instance, “Speedhoven” or “Judas At The Opera”. In your opinion, what’s wrong with the public today, and is there anything that we can do about it? Is this something that developed in the Internet age, or has this antagonism between the creator and the public always been present in art?

If you read diary entries of the classic composers of the 18th and 19th centuries, you will realize that they had the same “problems” as we have today. It’s always like that – there’s an artist, he writes, and there’s a critic, he writes, too. (everybody laughs) Between the audience and the artist – I don’t really think there’s a big problem, because I’m just like every other person. There are some days when I’m in perfect shape, I get up in the morning, and if somebody says, “Tobi, you’re an asshole”, I say, “Yeah, have a great day!” Some days I wake up in the morning, and I’m not like that, I have a bad day, and it gets through to me, I’m pissed off, and I write a song like “Judas At The Opera” or “Speedhoven”.

But to be honest, if I want to improve something about myself, then I should not really care about negative comments. I’ve never played music for people who hate me, I play music for myself and for fellow music fans who love that kind of music. Most of the time when I go on stage, there are thousands of people, and they love what I do, and I say, “Thank you very much, I enjoy being on the stage”. That should be the audience that I play music for. When you make it clear to yourself, it’s not a problem then. I should not just care too much about those people who do not like what I do, there are enough people who like what I do. Thus, I don’t think there are problems between my fans and me.

What make me really furious is when people want me to do something because they really believe that I am not doing what I like. To explain it a little better – sometimes people say, “Oh, he’s doing that ballad to sell records. It’s commercial sell-out!” I think that hurts, because I know best why I’m doing this. I do this because I believe in it, and I’ve never done anything just to sell records. Never! It would have been much easier if people said, “Oh, they are slowing down, the new album is more hard rock.” But they say, “They wanna sell more records.” I can tell them, “If we would record a speed metal album, our Japanese label would pay us probably three times more money that they pay us when we’re doing not a speed metal record.” This is not about money, it’s just because I feel the way I play my music, and sometimes it hurts when people assume that you’re doing something in order to just make money, because that’s never been the case. That’s when I get a little bit pissed off! (laughs)

Yet another question about an Egduy song – what inspired you to write “Dragonfly”?

That’s a good question. That’s a real good question – it’s hard to remember! Actually it doesn’t make a lot of sense. I really like the word “dragonfly”, I think it sounds really fantastic in a way, it sounds really big and epic. But at the same time, the song is about somebody who’s smoking a drug.

That’s why I’m asking – the images used in the song seem to be drug-related…

It’s true, but I’m trying to make a little fun of it. If I remember it right – it was like five years ago when I wrote it – it’s about a boy who can’t stand his daily life, and he slips into drug. He smokes a dragonfly! It’s not even a metaphor, he literally smokes a dragonfly. It doesn’t make sense at all, it’s probably one of the most stupid lyrics that I’ve ever written! I have to say and to underline that I’m absolutely anti-drug. I really hate it, it’s not right to do it, and I really don’t want to come across as somebody who describes drugs as something harmless. I think it’s a really bad thing, and people who take drugs just destroy themselves. I want to make this clear.

Going back to the new Avantasia record – how was it like working with Arjen Lucassen? Did he come down to your studio, or did he just send a few solos over the Internet?

He sent over one solo actually! I was recording for Arjen’s album a long time ago, I think it was 2008 or 2009, and Arjen got back to me and said, “You gave me a favor a long time ago. I read on Blabbermouth that you’re recording a new album. Do you want to have a solo?” I said, “Yeah, great! Let’s do one!” I sent him the song that I thought would fit best, and the funny thing is that I have just read on the Internet that some press guy who had heard the song thought this was written for Arjen, because it sounds like Ayreon. But the truth is that it was completely written by the time Arjen asked me if I had a song for him to be playing on!

He’s a great guy, I love Arjen. We came to know each other in 2007 or 2008, when he was releasing that “one-zero-zero-one-one-one-one-zero-zero-one” or whatever the album was called (everybody laughs), and I was doing “The Scarecrow”. We were releasing them on the same day, so we had to talk in the press about each other all the time, so we got in touch, had a conversation, and since then we’re friends.

Now a very obvious question – will there be a “Part 2” of “The Mystery Of Time”, or do you tell the complete story on one CD this time?

There will be a “Part 2”. There has to be Part 2, because the story is not told in full. I don’t know when it will be out, I have not recorded it, I have not written it, I have not even thought about it. I have a few songs composed for the second part, but after the release I will concentrate on the tour, and then I will probably take 1.5 or 2 years off from Avantasia to focus on Edguy. Then, in 2015, if the music market will not have crashed by that time, there will be the second part.

You have done two tours with Avantasia in the past. How will the upcoming tour be different from your previous gigs? What shall the Russian audience expect to see in June?

It will be amazing. We will come with the whole touring line-up, and there will be Michael Kiske, there will be Eric Martin from Mr. Big, there will be Bob Catley, Olli Hartmann, Sascha Paeth, Amanda Somerville, there will be me, there will be one surprise guest that I cannot tell you right now, and we’ll play old songs, new songs, a total of three hours, and it will be just amazing. I hope it will be the best Avantasia show that people have ever seen, and we’re working on that. We’ll play 24-25 songs, we’ll play some surprises, we’re planning to play some real long old songs that we haven’t played yet. Let’s see! I’m really excited and I’m sure that both fans of “The Metal Opera” and fans of the new album will like the tour. Of course, we’ll play “Scarecrow” songs, too!

Avantasia on the Internet: http://www.tobiassammet.com/

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

Roman Patrashov
February 11, 2013
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