Pain
Life Is Not A Picnic

21.03.2017

Peter Tägtgren, a recognized producer and musician, mastermind of both Hypocrisy and Pain, and one half of the Lindemann project (the second half of it being the Rammstein frontman), visited Moscow and St. Petersburg just a while ago, in December last year. Back then Headbanger discussed with him in detail the tour in support of Pain’s latest album “Coming Home” and various topics raised on that album. It seemed that this matter was closed. However, the restless Peter, being a great multi-tasker, has managed to do so many things during the past three months, that the recent news from him prompted us to continue the conversation that we had started in December. We wanted to find out more about the future of Hypocrisy, his arguably most recognized undertaking, to make it clear if there is any hope at all to see another Lindemann performance this summer, as well as to hear first-hand news about his future projects (as it seems this musician never stops for a minute). We met up with Peter during the “House of Metal” festival in Swedish town of Umeä after an unbelievable, energy-charged performance of Pain, with an absolutely stunning, perfect sound and a great atmosphere in general. After a few attempts to find some corner backstage where we could talk and a quick run through the corridors we ended up in a room and started our conversation. In which we were joined by the manager of Pain and Peter’s life partner Sanna Bark.

Peter: All the way from Russia! It’s good!

Yeah, I actually found out about this festival not long ago, and I immediately thought, “Oh, this actually sounds very cool”.

Peter: The festival is really nice. It’s well-organized, everything is super cool, everybody is very calm. There are never any spears, if you have a problem they solve it for you - always. I tell you this is the best festival organization-wise.

We were talking in the corridor earlier that the sound at your gig was very good.

Peter: Thank you very much. Unfortunately I got fever and I could not sing. It was just like if you run underwater it’s like eeeewwwh, but I hope people did not hate me too much. It was fun, it was a good feeling. What can you do when you have fever and stuff? I’ve had fever for a week now and it doesn’t wanna go away. I think on Monday I would need some penicillin or something. Anyway, never cancel a show!

Really? You never cancel a show?

Peter: Well, only if I’m gonna be half-dead or something. You know, fever won’t stop me. I have to deliver, otherwise I hate myself - you know, if I give up. I’m not the person that gives up.

Wow, that’s the big level of responsibility! Okay, so since you both are here, I’d probably start with the following question. I found out that you guys wrote a song together for Pain’s “Coming Home” album.

Peter: We actually wrote 2 songs together. But one is a bonus track. So they are “Pain In The Ass” and…
Sanna: “Me Against The Universe”.
Peter: Exactly. We actually did that one a long time ago. Like in the beginning, when we met. Cos we said: okay, it’s us against the universe. So we started coming up with the ideas. It’s a little fighting song. Kind of, everybody is against you, but you know that you gonna show them…
Sanna: I actually gave him the ideas, because I am not that good in putting lyrics into the rhythm.
Peter: Yeah, but for “Pain In The Ass” you did write a lot of lines in there, you know.
Sanna: I did!
Peter: It started when we were on the listening session. I was very late on the whole production and there were two songs that did not have any lyrics in them yet, there were only ideas. We had to do a listening session because it had already been on the schedule for a long time. There were a lot of people there, and we played those two songs without vocals. I didn’t know how to name that one, so I just said “Pain In The Ass” or something like that, and then Sanna said: “Why don’t we write the whole lyrics around this pain in the ass!” And then she started coming up with the lines and stuff.
Sanna: And he said: “Now you have to write it” and I said, “Yes, I’m gonna write it’.
Peter: And she did!
Sanna: So he can blame me, I’m the woman. (laughs)
Peter: It’s a little bit, you know, woman-ish kind of thing. But I’m singing that “woman on a leash is not for me”, so it does not mean that I wanna be in the control over the woman, it’s the other way around.
Sanna: It’s more of a joke.
Peter: Yeah, it’s a funny joke.
Sanna: A little bit in Till Lindemann’s style.

Yeah, I was gonna say it’s very much in his style.

Peter: Yeah, but only to a certain percent, because if you go into his world, you have to go on an even higher level. So I wanted to keep it not trying to copy him or his sense of humor…

But it’s a very funny song. How was your Caribbean cruise (70000 Tons Of Metal - ed.)?

Peter: It was good. We had a lot of problems with stagehands and stuff, so it could have been better, but in the end I think it was okay.

You played twice there, right?

Peter: Yeah, we played twice, first time we played at 2:30 am that means like 8:30 am in European time. So it was kinda jet-legged and they were trying to connect the right cables on stage and then the local crew was really bad, so it took too long and it was just… yeah.
Sanna: But hey, these were the Caribbeans!
Peter: Yeah, in that way I’m not too much of a social person. You know, some people in the band were hanging out everywhere in the bars, but I was more or less hiding in the room and just sitting, cos we had a balcony in our cabins so you could sit out. But it’s a good idea, I like it. I mean, if you are really a social person, it’s perfect.

Okay, so I cannot not ask about your two Facebook posts on Hypocrisy. (In response to numerous questions, Peter has recently made a Facebook post saying he finds it hard to be motivated to write a new album for Hypocrisy and asked fans if they thought it was possible to do a tour without releasing a new album. After a strong reaction from his fans that voted for the tour, Peter wrote the second post in which he thanked readers for their support and response and noted that he sees now that it is more important to go out and play than write new material quickly – ed.) Is it now confirmed that you are going to make a tour?

Peter: No. But we are not gonna kill the project, or break up, or anything like that, that’s for sure.

Yeah, but do you know that Tomas Elofsson (guitar) has already been asking on Facebook which song fans would like to hear on future Hypocrisy tour?

Peter (laughs): Yeah, he’s going bananas. But like, what can I do?

So you haven’t agreed on that, have you?

Peter: Well, of course we’re gonna go on tour and play again at some point. I just really wanted to know if it was very important to make an album before you go out again or it was okay to go out and play the songs that we already have. And we have 12 albums released. And people said – you saw the answers – they really want us to go on tour again. And when and if we are ready, we could do an album. But I’m not gonna promise anything. With the tour I don’t know… 2017? No, not at all, because it’s so busy with Pain now. 2018? Maybe. I don’t know. If it is 2019 than we might as well have an album done anyhow – if we can wait that long. But as I said, I don’t know and I’m not gonna promise anything.  

You also wrote that you were working on some new material with your son, Sebastian, and you said you had 10 songs ready. Does that make an album?

Peter: Yeah there are, I would say, 12 and a half songs now, so we have to work a little bit on every song and then it should be completed. It goes fast, we’ve been working on it for about five weeks.

Is that a new project between you two or is that going to be his new project?

Peter: I hope it can grow into his project, but for now it’s both of us. But maybe he can take it over. He has a lot of ideas and I want to help him to get them out of him. And when he makes some riffs than I wake up and continue after his riffs so we kind of feed off each other a little bit. That’s why we are making so many songs right now. We just wanna write, write, write and then when all the ideas are done we start putting the songs together. We don’t have any contract or anything set and confirmed, we just… It’s a very creative time now. Even though it’s not Hypocrisy creative, it’s just different things. You know, it’s always good to go different ways and try things.

And what kind of music are you writing with your son?

Peter: Well it’s hard to say… Nah, I’d better not say anything for now.
Sanna: But it’s good because Sebastian is giving him new ideas.
Peter: He shows me the new death metal, you know, what the 18 years olds would listen to, and it’s very different from the death metal that I listened to in the past. And also he listens to a lot of complex music: more jazzy or like Messuggah kind of stuff. He really loves to play drums after those things. He has learnt how to play super-fast and now he wants to become a technical drummer. I mean, we are not writing technical stuff, I am just explaining where he comes from.

Does he sing?

Peter: No, but we gonna try to push him to sing, so I don’t have to! So far he said: “I don’t know if I know how”, and I said I didn’t know either when I started, so let’s see.

Fair enough. As long as you play many instruments, what would you say is “your” instrument?

Peter: Drums!

And what do you use to write music?

Peter: Guitar. But mainly I write in my head.

Really? Wow!

Peter: Yeah, 90% I write in my head but then I have to take a guitar afterwards and then find it on the guitar. Or on the keyboard. I am a really shitty guitarist, really shitty keyboardist, really shitty bass player, but as a drummer I am good I think. Or I used to be.

Sure, that’s why you are always playing the guitar on your gigs.

Peter: Yeah but since I am the one who writes this shit I guess it will never come to be any complex stuff for me. I really love AC/DC – I like simple but catchy stuff, you know.

Have you ever thought about doing something that is not metal?

Peter: I am doing it already with Roadhouse Diet. It’s a blues band. It’s the guitarist, Jonas (Kjellgren), who played before in Scar Symmetry and the bass player from Scar Symmetry and it’s me on drums and there is another guy that Jonas used to play with when he was a kid, also playing the guitar. It’s like, I don’t know, I would say like ZZ Top, 70s ZZ Top kind of stuff. We just do it as hobby, you know. We did last year maybe 4 gigs together, including Sabaton Open Air.

Is that something that you’ve been doing for a long time and are you going to continue?

Peter: We’ll do it when there is time. It’s not a priority thing, you know. For some reason Jonas got tired of metal, that’s why he quit Scar Symmetry and he got into this blues world and started to buy blues guitars and blues amps and stuff like that. You know, everybody changes in different ways, but I talked to him yesterday and he is starting doing metal riffs again! So I guess he is back. But we already have like 20 Roadhouse Diet songs, so he is working and when he needs me to record drums, I do it. It’s good for me to keep the drumming up, because it’s easy to… well, not to forget, but it takes a while to get back into.

And what’s going on with your producer’s activities?

Peter: I produce right now the new Immortal album.

How is it going?

Peter: It’s going good, drums are done.

And you also recently worked with the Dutch band…

Peter: Carach Angren? It’s done also. It’s really good. Very theatrical black metal kind of stuff. Really crazy!

What was the story that you posted on Facebook with them? Like some Dutch Christian party was against them…

Peter: Yeah, some Dutch Christian party was freaking out on them, and they actually gave the band the best commercial in the whole world. They went out on the national TV and started saying like “Oh! Don’t listen to this band from our country!” and blah blah blah.

Ah, so it actually was serious.

Peter: It was the best commercial they could ever have.

Yeah I can imagine.

Peter: If they’d go to Russia I think they also might have problems.

Yes, I also think so, but it still would work as a very good commercial I guess. But this is so weird that it happened to them in their home country.

Peter: Yeah, but there are you know, very Christian people, very left-wing people, very right-wing people. Europe is becoming a chaos. Either you’re extreme right or you’re extreme left. There is this and there is that. And yeah, it’s really ugly, I would say. I don’t really get into politics and shit, but it’s getting weird in all kind of ways.

It happens everywhere I guess.

Peter: Yeah it does. Something weird is happening in the world.

Speaking about your tour in the spring, уou don’t have any Russian dates.

Peter: No.

Well I remember, you promised at the Moscow gig that you are coming back in two weeks.

Peter: In two weeks?! (laughs)

Yes, you said it! You said that you haven’t been there for 5 years, so the next time you are coming in 2 weeks!

Peter: Okay! I actually think we’ll come back soon. But we can’t come back yet because people already saw us. I hope we can do it within a year maybe. It depends on the promoters as well. That’s a tricky thing. I can go there now, but we need someone to take care of the local stuff, you know.

And this summer you play at the festival in Vantaa in Finland and I know that Rammstein is playing the same day. Is there a hope to see another live appearance of Lindemann?

Peter: I wouldn’t think so. I mean I would love to, I’d be happy if it happens, definitely, but it’s so hard to say. I wouldn’t keep my hopes up. I’m sure Till would love to as well, but it’s so complicated. We did it once, I hope we’ll do it again someday.

Why is that complicated?

Peter: I mean, the only one who can make this decision is actually Till. Rammstein is a huge band, and they are gonna headline that night, and if Till comes out during the day with us that might also kind of spoil the whole surprise thing. You have to see it in different ways. But I am happy to play the same festival, we’re gonna hang out and have a good time.

Do you know what happens after the summer festivals?

Peter: America, hopefully, if everything works. Only like two and half weeks. And then there is some work in November to do like a co-headline tour with another big band. But that’s not confirmed. So we can’t really talk about it yet. But as soon as we know, it will be out.

What do you get from such collaborations? Is that only about attracting bigger numbers of people?

Peter: Like, opening for Nightwish or something like that you mean?

For example.

Peter: That was great! I mean, Nightwish are such great people. We had crew from Nightwish with us in Pain. And what can I say? Playing in front of thousands and thousands of people is a good kick for yourself and your confidence, you know. And also their fans were really good. They were really nice, and it always was really packed when we started. You know, usually when you go to a concert you look in for the opening act and you see the place is like half full or something. But with Nightwish it was always full.

Yeah but I am not asking about Nightwish in particular, I am asking about such collaborations in general.

Peter: Yeah we often have people who ask, “Do you wanna go with us on tour?” But then you start thinking: does it make sense or does it not make sense. Will you gain anything? You know, that’s what it all is about. Of course to have fun is important. You know, to boost your ego. But it has to make sense also. Because you know if you tour too much your brain goes ‘pooof’! So you have to make sure these are the right ones you go for.

Are you taking on tour with you the same musicians as now? Cos I remember last tour there were many people, who were new to the Pain band.

Peter: Sebastian is staying home because David (Wallin) is back.
Sanna: David is original for the band.
Peter: Yeah, he’s been with us for 11 years or something, but he could not join us on the previous tour, so that’s why my son jumped in. Greger (Andersson, guitar) is new, but he’s permanent right now. Andre (Skaug) has some issues, so he’s gonna have another guy jumping in for him. It’s gonna be Jonathan Olsson from Dynazty, the bass player. He’s gonna jump in and take his place for two and half weeks because Andre can’t do it. Jonathan is a good one, and he’s gonna fill his shoes until Andre is back for the summer. And it’s only two and a half weeks.

I also wanted to ask about the “Coming Home” video. From what I remember it was shot by Zoran Bihac (who is famous for his provocative videos for Rammstein, e.g. “Mein Teil”, “Rosenrot”, for Lindemann – “Praise Abort”, “Fish On” –ed.). For him that’s quite an unusual video. Was this his idea? How did it come about?

Peter: I think it came a little bit from both of us actually. Cos we are always in contact since Lindemann stuff. And he is such a great guy. And he is full of ideas. I said, okay, if we do this, then you have to film a lot of backstage footage and get it real. No bullshit, no standing in front of mike and the camera. You know, like, try to catch the moment. And I think he did a great job.
Sanna: It’s a little bit like “Have A Drink On Me”, if you remember that one.

Yeah I do, this one has a different vibe though.

Peter: Yeah-yeah, that one was just chaos, you know.
Sanna: I meant as in filming backstage, what’s really going on. Because many people tend to think the musicians are not real people. So it’s good to have a video that shows what really is happening. It’s a really big production round. And the bigger the band the bigger is the production. And then there is this running around on stage. And everyone knows what they are actually doing and what’s going to happen. That’s really amazing to watch – how it is built. I don’t have a clue about it, because I’m just a manager, but…
Peter: Yeah, connecting things and wires wizsh-wizsh!
Sanna: Yeah! So I think that’s what he wanted to have in the video.
Peter: Yeah, and also that it’s not a picnic and it’s not easy-going all the time.

Yeah it went out I think on New Year’s Day, I watched it and I was like – sob, sob.

Peter: (laughs) Yeah you’re getting a little down, but you know that’s how it is sometimes, life is not a picnic.
Sanna: It’s hard and there is lots of work prior to this one hour on a stage. Waking up early, taking flights… (laughs) Today when we arrived a bag broke and we had to buy a new one.
Peter: Yeah it came half open on the thing you know…
Sanna: It was the suitcase with the doll of Joakim Brodén from Sabaton in it. It was coming out of it! (both laugh, Peter shows how exactly the doll was coming out). So we had to run out and buy a new bag. So it’s not just running around and living in La-la-land. It’s a really tough job…
Peter: …To buy a bag!
Sanna: …To be a musician!
Peter (laughs): No, but you know, nothing is easy. It’s always the case that something is happening and you go like urrghh!

Okay, my last question. I recently ask all the musicians about this because some time ago I spoke with somebody about it we had an argument. So I just want to know your opinion. Do you think vinyl will survive everything?

Peter: Not a Holocaust, but definitely I think that… everybody is saying that vinyl is coming back!

That’s what I’ve heard as well.

Peter: And I mean that’s such a great thing. For me of course, as I am a sound nerd. You know, it sounds warmer. Also, it is a big thing that you can hold, you can put a lot of stuff inside it, booklets and shit like that. And you know, all the photos get greater. On a CD they are like so-so and on your iPhone they are really like boo – and of course it’s all also a really poor quality so it does not have to take so many gigabytes and shit. So I mean, my Kiss collection – I don’t know how many boxes of vinyls I have.
Sanna: Yeah I think for the older generations it is definitely the best thing.
Peter: But the newer generation joins as well. They start picking up on the vilyls.
Sanna: True story: the daughter of one of our friends called him up and asked: “Dad, how do I do this? How do I play the vinyl?” She didn’t know that!
Peter: Yeah. For us who’s older, we know (clicks his fingers). Link it, and it works.
Sanna: But yeah, I think the new generation gets more and more curious.
Peter: And plus its size, you know. It becomes so much more fun. Even if you don’t play it, you have it. You play it from a  CD or from your iPhone or whatever but you have it like a book or whatever.

I used to know this guy who was a collector. He was always buying two vinyls.

Peter: Oh, one to play and one to have! Always! But that’s how I am with Kiss! You know I have a lot of them that are sealed. I have the plastic seal from the 70s. Early 70s and stuff like that. I will never open it. Ever! You know, in the 90s and 2000s the vinyl went down and a lot of places who made vinyls had to stop. Especially in these countries where they used to print a lot. And now you have to wait so long to get the stuff printed! That was also the problem when I was late with the new Pain album. They were like: we need the recording now – and it was 3 months before the release – otherwise the vinyls are gonna be ready way too late. They’re overbooked. New vinyl places are opening up where they print them because people are going crazy with the vinyls.

I am pretty sure that in terms of money they do not do any profit though.

Peter: No. I think I hardly make any profit on the vinyls. But I want people to have it, I want to have it myself, so they have to print a thousand, two thousand copies so I can have my own one. I don’t care if it goes plus or minus zero, you know. The point is not to make money. The point is to have a good souvenir.  A lot of bands think – I hope they think – the same. Plus the fans get it for a reasonable price I hope. And I think we go even when you press the things only in 1500 copies or whatever, you know.
Sanna: Yeah but that’s another thing.
Peter: That’s the beauty of it.
Sanna: They are marked from 1 to whatever by hand. So you know which one you have.
Peter: Yeah with the one we did with Pain it was 500. And I was like: print it till people won’t have any more. I want everybody to have it, I don’t care, just write 1,2,3,4 blah blah blah – whatever. 500 sold out like wooop!
Sanna: And then it was tricky with a vinyl because there were three different colors.
Peter: Oh yeah. But that I don’t understand! Even with Kiss. I really don’t care about the colors. I want the first pressing, I want the promotion pressing – with Kiss they had like a gold stamp on it, you could feel it, you know. And that is really hard to get, but I have them all.

Pain on the Internet: http://www.painworldwide.com

Special thanks to Petra Edström (House Of Metal Festival) and Sanna Bark (Bark Management) for arranging this interview

Interview by Olga Stebleva
Photos by Natalia "Snakeheart" Patrashova
March 3, 2017
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