Fair Warning
Out Of The Limits Of The Ordinary

18.02.2011

Being a reporter, there are two ways you can go to get musicians for an interview. You can monitor record labels’ proposals and take up the ones you find interesting, or you can be proactive when you feel that need and approach bands and labels on your own. Very seldom these two vectors coincide, but that’s exactly what happened here. When we heard “Aura” (2009), the latest album by the excellent German hard rock band Fair Warning, some six months ago, we loved it so much that we really wanted to re-establish our contact with guitarist Helge Engelke and make one of those really long and detailed interviews that we do when there’s no 30-minute slots assigned by the record company and no pressure time-wise. But right when we were contemplating that, Fair Warning got signed by SPV Records for the release of live CD/DVD “Talking Ain’t Enough”, and an interview slot basically fell into our hands. Back in 2004 we already interviewed Helge, when his other band Dreamtide released a true masterpiece called “Dreams For The Daring”. So for this interview we decided to carry on from the point where we left off the last time, and track the things that happened to both Fair Warning and Dreamtide over the last five years…

In 2005 Fair Warning came back together after quite a lengthy break. How did it happen? What drove the four of you back together?

Oh, just money! (everybody laughs) Oh, it was a bit different. Fair Warning stopped in the year 2000, because Tommy (Heart, singer) left. And when he left, he did that with the words, “Guys, I want to do something else for the time being”. To me it was pretty clear that it was not our last word. We never lost contact, we were talking on the telephone while Tommy was doing Soul Doctor and I was doing Dreamtide, we spoke quite a lot. In 2005 it was like, “Oh, it would be nice doing something together again.” We all met and said, “OK, we should give it another go”, and that’s how the “Brother’s Keeper” album came about in 2006.

There were no bad vibes when Tommy left. It was not like everybody was scolding the singer or that anybody told that somebody in the band is a bastard. It was just that Tommy wasn’t content with how the things were at that time in Fair Warning and he was trying to make it better with Soul Doctor. Maybe he found out that it was not too wrong being in Fair Warning. (laughs)

How would you compare the situation in Fair Warning of the new millennium and Fair Warning of the 1990s? Are the personal relations in the band different? Did you change the way you work on music?

Actually not. You don’t change old men! (laughs) Some things did change, but that was not because of the break, that was just because things develop naturally. You get older, you get more experience, and you say, “We did these mistakes, we should not repeat them again”. On the personal level it never changed, it always stayed the same.

Why isn’t guitarist Andy Malececk taking part in the reunion?

Actually Andy left in 2000 before Tommy left. Most likely there are two versions of the story. If you ask me, if you ask Ule (Ritgen, bassist), if you ask Tommy, you will get the version I’m telling you now, and if you ask Andy, it might be a little bit different. (laughs) But the thing is that we didn’t have the impression that Andy was interested in working for Fair Warning anymore. He didn’t show up at rehearsals, he didn’t take part in the big parts of the production, we always had to press him, “Come over and play your part!” That got less and less and less. Finally we were scheduled to go on a promo tour and we were rehearsing, and the only one who didn’t show up at rehearsals was Andy. At the very last day of the rehearsals he came by and said, “Here I am, what are we going to play?” “Andy, do you know the songs? We sent you the list of songs that we are going to play weeks ago, but you didn’t show up!” He said, “Oh, did you?” Actually when he stepped into the rehearsal room, he was not prepared at all. But we said, “OK, we are going to leave”. It was some time in the afternoon, and when we came back at night, he still couldn’t play the songs. Then we said, “OK, Andy, MAYBE it is not a good idea that you come with us on this promo tour”. He didn’t rehearse with us at all! And he said, “MAYBE you’re right”. But when we came back, he said, “I didn’t go on the promo tour, so I leave”.

The next step was when we got together again. We didn’t have the impression that Andy was interested, but Tommy started another effort to build a bridge. Andy didn’t participate in the recording of “Brother’s Keeper”, but for that album we did a kind of video documentary (it eventually appeared on the “Don’t Keep Me Waiting” single – ed.), and we said, “OK, this is all about Fair Warning from the start to now, and Andy should at least take part in this”. Tommy fixed a date with him in Berlin – to meet and maybe film some footage of him saying anything about Fair Warning, but the one who didn’t show up was Andy. For me it was quite obvious that he completely lost interest in playing in Fair Warning.

What does the album title “Brother’s Keeper” mean? We know what it means in the Bible, but what did you mean by giving this name to the record?

There’s always a lot of discussion in Fair Warning when it comes to the titles. Actually it is taken from the Bible, and the meaning is the same “take care for the ones next to you”. When we got together again, we said, “It was quite nice making records together and we should try to do it again”, but also from Tommy’s point of view – and we all agreed to that – it was part of what the fans wanted. We got a lot of requests to make a new record from fans, but I would be lying if I said that was the only reason. As I said, when we met, we said, “OK, we should give it another try”, that was coming from us, because we enjoyed working together before and because over the five years we didn’t make music together, we still were in contact. We met quite often, we were on the telephone, or when Tommy was recording with Soul Doctor and he had a question or anything, he called me. Even though we were not colleagues in that era, we were friends, we were talking about music and this and that. This is what the title reflects – we still cared for each other.

When you’re making music together, it can get a bit complicated, because sometimes you say, “No, I don’t like this, I don’t like the way you sing it, I don’t like the way you play it”. Being just friends is a lot easier that working together. (laughs) But we never lost that friendship. This is hard to explain… OK, to give you an example of how it is… Tommy is living in Berlin, and Ule, C.C. (Behrens, drums) and me are living in Hannover, which is about 300 kilometers away. But Berlin is the capital of Germany, and Berlin is quite an attractive city. When my son was 12 or 13, he said, “I have talked to Tommy about me maybe visiting Berlin”. So my son went to Berlin and Tommy took care of him, even though we were not in a band together at that period. I think this reflects relationship that we have.

You have been recording all your studio albums on your own since the second Fair Warning album. We know that it costs much cheaper than using a real big studio…

Well, it depends. It costs a lot of nerves!

So are you personally satisfied with this way of working, or do you feel any limitations sound-wise?

No, definitely not! The way of recording has changed a lot over the last 20 years. When we started in the beginning of the 1990s, that was the end of tape machines and analogue recording. When we were making our first record, we spent a lot of time and a lot of money in the studios, and the thing is what actually costs a lot is renting a studio for a long time. It would be cheaper if you go into the studio, play your set live, and leave it after two days. That would mean the lowest expenses. (laughs) But when you make a studio record with new songs, you work on things, you try out things, and that always takes time. We compensated that time thing with producing ourselves and not renting a studio. Studio equipment these days – OK, you cannot go and say, “I spend 200 euros and will get a professional recording set up”, but if you invest the amount of two weeks’ studio time, then you get a proper recording setup. On top of that, what is sounding in big studios is the room, which is mostly beneficial for the drum sound. We compensated that by hiring or renting big houses, which for us had two effects. Andy and Tommy were the two persons coming to stay in Hannover, so we had a place to stay for them, and in addition to that, we had big recording spaces. No, I’m not missing anything that could be done in the studio. Actually you can spend more time and go into deeper details if you don’t have that time pressure. I don’t know in what amount you’re familiar with recording technologies. But you know that the basic recording device these days is the computer, and the basic recording system – no matter if you have a 10-million-dollar recording studio or if you’re recording at home – is still ProTools.

In 2008 you released the third album with Dreamtide (“Dreams And Deliver”), and it was your first departure from Frontiers Records after more than five years of working together. You told us last time that you were not always satisfied working with Frontiers, especially when there was a dispute about alternative mixes on “Dreams For The Daring” (2003). Was AOR Heaven better in this sense? Did they allow you enough artistic freedom?

They didn’t say anything about anything. (everybody laughs) I was content with that. Frontiers is a great record company, they love the way their music sounds. But there are some things I don’t like about it. First of all, they concentrate on what they call “melodic rock”, and that is a label that has very narrow borders. It’s a very limited style. This is not what I say, but this is what I’ve heard from many people, and I thought, “Well, this is what I agree to”. They say, “Frontiers have released a new record”, and I say, “By what band?”, and the answer you get is, “Oh, that doesn’t matter, it sounds like Frontiers”. That is nothing I would think is applicable to Fair Warning or Dreamtide. And once you hear, “Oh, what you did there is not really melodic rock”, I say, “What the hell? I don’t care! It’s good music.” If you want to have a blueprint and release the same record over and over again – fine, but not with me!

How did you manage to get Francis Buchholz (ex-Scorpions) to record bass for “Dream And Deliver”. He didn’t work with any bands for about 17 years before that, so what did you do to get him onboard?

I went to a party…

Okay… (everybody laughs)

Well, this is the real story! Francis is living in Hannover, and some time before he wanted to go back to music and do something – record, play live, whatever. So he started to play with Uli Roth, and they toured together, and Francis always wished that Uli would make another record like the old Scorpions days – it wasn’t supposed to be a dated record, but, let’s say “Hey, you’re a talented guitarist, let’s do a rock album”. But Uli is more into this classical, Hendrix-influenced style, and ordinary rock is not of much interest to him. At that time it was not clear whether Uli would record another album Francis would like to do.

Once I went to the birthday party of Fair Warning’s manager, Claus Ritgen, and Francis happened to be there, too. We talked for hours, and he said, “Yes, I’ve heard about Dreamtide”, because Olaf Senkbeil, our singer, was touring with Uli at that time. I said, “By the way, we’re looking for a bass player, wouldn’t you be interested?” Francis didn’t say anything definite, he said, “Maybe we should meet”. We met one day here at my studio, I was playing him some ideas for a new record. I said, “Listen to this, you could do this and this”, and before long he said, “Oh yeah, it’s a good idea, maybe we should work on this”. We met again the next day, and that’s how it came about. In the end we ended up doing that record together, which was a nice experience.

But let it be said that the former bass player, Ole Hempelmann, didn’t get kicked out or anything. In 2004 he got married, got two children, went back to the university to complete his studies, and he simply didn’t have any time. And Francis was very decent with that. When I said, “By the way, the bass player’s job is vacant in Dreamtide”, he said, “No, I don’t want to take anybody’s place”. I said, “No, this is not the case, it’s really vacant.”

The song “Download A Dream” obviously means a lot for you, as it is recorded in two versions on “Dream And Deliver”. Does downloading pose a serious problem for you? Do you see any way to solve this problem anyhow?

To answer the second part of the question – no, I don’t see any way to stop that. As a musician, with downloading you’re simply fucked. (laughs) That will not change – people are used to getting music for free and stealing. Of course, you’re affected by that, it’s the same for each and every band on this planet. By the amount that illegal downloads increase, sales of records go down – that’s a simple fact.

As a fan of music, I have to say it’s a great thing that music is accessible that easily. It’s nice, but on the other hand, I have to make a living and for that I have to say that illegal downloading is shit. But there is nothing we can do about it. It will not stop. There are some very feeble attempts of big record companies to stop that, for example, when you try to watch certain videos on You Tube here in Germany, you get the message: “Sorry, this video is blocked because of infringement of copyrights”, because it is the content of Sony and the other three major companies. Then again, what do people do? They type the same title into Google Videos, and there it is!

I think that neither record companies no politicians tried to prevent that early enough. It’s not the question of being criminal or anything like that, there’s just no awareness. If anybody can get anything for free, he takes it. On the other hand, if you have problems with your neighbor, he’s too noisy or whatever, it would be quite easy to go over and shoot him. But you don’t do that, because there are more sophisticated and more civilized ways to deal with that. It’s not the case with downloading. The technical condition is possible, and so people do that.

It would take a worldwide effort to control the Net for that, and I don’t see that it will happen. Maybe it will be accepted legally that somebody has to pay for it, and it will work like it works with TV. TV is basically for free, and they make a living out of commercials, and there are already some music download portals on the Net that say, “You can listen, you can download for free, but you have to see this bloody advert before”, that’s how they make money. It’s nothing that I’m particularly happy about, but we have to see reality. The only thing I can do is write a song about it. But most likely I will see it on the Net being downloaded with the rest of the songs. (laughs)

On “Dream And Deliver” your singer Olaf wrote a song for the first time. Can you tell us how “Help Me” ended up being recorded for Dreamtide?

Olaf had this idea, and he had a very rough demo: just the guitar and his vocal line. He said, “Can you see what you can make of it?” I tried to arrange it, and after that I recorded another demo. He liked it, then I did all the band arrangements, we recorded it, Francis and me worked together on it. In the end we all liked the song, and that was it!

We haven’t found any tour dates on the official Dreamtide page. Does it mean that Dreamtide is now basically a studio band?

Hopefully not. When we got together with Fair Warning, it was clear that neither Tommy nor me would stop Soul Doctor or Dreamtide. That is one thing that made it easier to make more Fair Warning records. Tommy left because he couldn’t do all everything he wanted to do in Fair Warning; I didn’t leave, but I have more freedom with Dreamtide, and I’m quite happy with that. On the other hand, the day has only 24 hours. I’m very much involved in all the production things, basically the recordings take place in my studio here at home, except for the drums which we record in big rooms. So I’m quite busy doing these records. When we finished “Dream And Deliver”, there was simply no time to take care of touring schedules or see if we could play somewhere, because Fair Warning was already waiting to record “Aura” (2009). Basically I was finished with the masters of “Dream And Deliver”, and the next day I started working on “Aura”. And when that one was finished, we said, “With Fair Warning we have to tour”, and we got good offers to tour. We were offered to do this Loud Park festival and a headliner tour in Japan, so rehearsals started. When that was over, normally I would have started another Dreamtide record, but we decided on recording a new live album. The day only has 24 hours!

Now we come to the latest Fair Warning studio album, “Aura”. First of all, it is the second time in a row that you have the band photo on the album cover. What is the reason?

Don’t ask me about that! This is one thing in Fair Warning that we argue about. This cover is shit! (everybody laughs) But if you ask Ule, he likes it. I didn’t think it was good to use the same idea for the third time. It was the second time in a row, but on “Go!” (1997) our bloody faces were on the cover, too. I told them, “Oh, come on, not again on “Aura”!”, so I’m completely the wrong person to praise this cover. I like the record, the music is fine, but the cover sucks!

Recordings of this album took about 10 months, and work on “Dream And Deliver” was even a longer process. How much do songs change from the original idea to the recorded track? Do you initially have a clear picture of how you want a song to sound, or do you develop a song step by step, so to say?

There are no rules for that. There are some songs that don’t change a lot from the initial idea. On the other hand, there are some songs that do change. The original demo of the composer – in Dreamtide it’s just me, and in Fair Warning it’s Ule and me – has to go in line with the ideas the others have and can contribute to the song. For example, on “Dream And Deliver” there’s a song called “The Vow”, which has a quite prominent monks choir part – in the beginning, in the end and in the middle. This was not part of my original idea. When I started recording vocals with Olaf, he was fooling around a bit, triggering different sounds, and I said, “Hey, wait a moment! This sounds nice, we should work on that.” It can be that you spend two or three days working that hard, and then change the song completely. That was an example of how the song changed from the original idea. The same happens with Fair Warning. On “Aura” there’s a song called “Holding On”. Ule gave me that song, and I had some ideas for that and changed the arrangement. Then I played it to Ule and Tommy, and they said, “Yeah, that’s a nice idea, maybe we should do it this way”. There’s also a song called “Fighting For Your Love” on “Aura”, Ule played me the demo of it, and I said, “Maybe I have a better idea, let’s make this song a little heavier”. I played it to Ule and Tommy, but unfortunately, they didn’t quite like it. They said, “No, this is all wrong!” I said, “OK, I’ll do it the way you want to do it, but let me play the guitar parts I like”. And then while mixing Ule turned to me and said, “Hm, somehow this song doesn’t really kick”. I went like, “Hey, that’s what I’m saying from the beginning!” He said, “Didn’t you record some alternative guitars?” I said, “Yes, I made a completely different version.” In the end it turned out a mixture of his version and my version of this song. But this takes weeks of discussing and changing things. On the other hand, I think the music is benefitting from that. Sometimes it takes a long time, it’s not like stepping into the studio, counting to four, recording and that’s it. This has never been the way a Fair Warning record works.

You now write for two bands. How do you divide the songs – which one goes for Dreamtide, and which one goes for Fair Warning?

I don’t do it at all. When we’re not recording and not touring I write songs and record my demos. And then whoever is doing a record, I play them to the other guys, and we pick up what we all like. I cannot write a song specifically for Fair Warning or for Dreamtide, and I don’t do this. With Fair Warning, after 20 years of working together, I’m still sometimes surprised with the choices my colleagues make. I play some songs to Ule and Tommy and think, “This one will be nice for them”, but it may turn out that I’m wrong. Or I can play something to Olaf and he might say, “I don’t think this is for me”. But I don’t separate that, I just write songs and play it to the other guys.

There are two of your recent songs which we really like a lot, and we would like to ask you a bit more about them. The first one is “As Snow White Found Out” from “Aura”– what inspired you to write it?

It’s a private story about a girl I know. She’s basically a nice girl, but when it comes to trouble and when it comes to taking life seriously, she simply refuses to cope with that. She takes refuge in alcohol or drugs or whatever. That’s basically what I tried to reflect with “As Snow White Found Out”.

Have you played this song to her?

Yes, but I don’t think she understands that it’s about her.

The second one is “Stronger” from the latest Dreamtide album. How did this song come about? A person really needs to experience a lot and learn a lot along the way to be able to write lyrics like that…

(sighs) Well, this is a bit of my story, a bit of what I have experienced. When you play music, there are always people who say, “Forget about it!” There are people who like it, but there are always people who want to change your ways, like the experience I had with record companies who said, “No, this is not melodic rock, you have to change it”. So you start writing songs about that and about the way you see things. Actually my lyrics are mostly quite personal, they are not always love stories, but what I experienced personally. Like “Download A Dream” – this is the case where I know what I’m talking about. I don’t think there are lyrics that are not somehow connected to what I personally experience.

In Fair Warning we sometimes have discussions about songs like that. When I come up with titles like “As Snow White Found Out” or “Generation Jedi”, Tommy would say, “What the heck is this title again?” (everybody laughs) We had this discussion about “Generation Jedi”, this song is not like, “hey, let’s have a party”. I always tell him, “This is what the song is about, I can explain you the story, I can explain you how the title comes about”. But he would say, “Yes, but this is not really rock!” And I’m like, “Who says it’s not really rock?! You cannot only repeat “let’s have a party all the time, rock you all night long” or whatever. If it’s strange, the better it is, because then you have something to offer that hasn’t been repeated before for a million times.”

I want to go out of the limits of the ordinary – not like extreme bands that have noisy things all the way, but with the lyrics… Eh, this is hard to explain… First I have to convince myself, and if I have some lyrics, about which I can say, “This is something I have heard a million times before”, I don’t take them.

Why isn’t Tommy writing anything for Fair Warning? He is credited as a songwriter on Soul Doctor albums…

A good question! When we got together again for “Brother’s Keeper”, I said, “OK, why don’t we all contribute a third of the songs” – Ule, Tommy and me. But Tommy said, “No, I’m away from this”. This is something great about Tommy, he says, “I’ve never written anything for Fair Warning before and I don’t think that what I write will fit the Fair Warning style.” I think this is very generous and very upright for him to say that. In his opinion, what defines Fair Warning is my songs, Ule’s songs and Tommy’s singing. He says, “I don’t need to write”. I said, “Why shouldn’t we try, maybe we can find an alternative”, but he didn’t want to.

Now we come to the present time and your new live album “Talking Ain’t Enough”. How did it happen that you are now with SPV? It seems that it’s a big step for the band…

There’s a quite profane explanation to that. With “Aura” we went with AOR Heaven because I had worked with them before, and our management heard – not only from me, but also from Tommy - that Frontiers is not the right record company for us. So we went with AOR Heaven, and as a logical consequence we told Georg Siegl, the head of AOR Heaven, “We’re going to record a live DVD, and of course, the DVD contains sound, so there will be a CD. What do you think, can you release them”. And Georg was just interested in the DVD part, he said, “No, people download music, and CDs is not the real business anymore.” Then we said, “Come on, this is not really what we want.” Then we got an offer from SPV saying that they will release it the way it was planned.

This is one side of the story. The other side of the story is that we have always had a Japanese record company for Asia and a European record company for Europe. There have always been complaints from the fans who say, “Japanese records always have bonus tracks, they are always released before Europe, so why are we always getting less music?” After AOR Heaven said, “We’re not going to release the CD, just the DVD,” we said, “We cannot do that, because then we will have the same situation again, and not because we want it.” Anyway, for the person who buys our music and is interested in Fair Warning, it doesn’t matter whose decision it is, whether the record company does that or anybody else. It all comes down to the band, and if a record company doesn’t want to do something which the band actually wants to do, the fans see it as if Fair Warning are not caring for fans outside of Japan. We said, “First, we don’t want to have just a DVD release, and second, we don’t want to have a bigger release in Japan than in Europe.” And that was the end of the story with AOR Heaven. SPV agreed to release “Talking Ain’t Enough” in the same way as Japanese do – there is a CD, there is a DVD, and there is a package of the two together. That was definitely a better offer for us, and we couldn’t but accept it.

Why did you decide to release a triple live CD? Don’t you think that three full CDs of live music are too much for many of your listeners? Especially nowadays when people are used to check a song for about 1 minute and then press the “skip” button…

Fortunately nobody is forced to hear the whole thing in one go or on the same day. Of course, we were thinking about that, but that has to do with the history of how it came about. After “Aura” was released, we said, “OK, we’re going on tour”, we got an offer from Japan and we decided to do that. Then the Japanese record company suggested, “Why don’t you record a DVD? Everybody has a DVD now, the combination of music and sound is something more contemporary than just releasing CDs”. Basically they asked us to record a show for a DVD, and we said, “OK, a good idea”. Before that we had no DVDs at all, in 1993 we recorded a show for a VHS cassette, which was later transformed into a DVD, but that was 16 years ago, and there have been four Fair Warning studio albums in between.

Then we got an offer from another Japanese promotion company saying, “We want to arrange a tour for you, but on top of that, we want you to play at the Loudpark festival.” Loudpark is one of the biggest rock festivals you can get to in the world, and they suggested to put is quite high on the bill, which we were pretty surprised with – it was an offer you cannot turn down. We said, “Of course, we’re going to do that”. At that time we didn’t think about putting this performance on the DVD, the plan was still to record the tour we were going to do in January 2010. But then it turned out that the Loudpark festival was recorded anyway, and our record company said, “You should use that as well”.

We had a different understanding of what “using” means. We thought we were going to release one entire concert that we filmed and recorded in Tokyo and add three, four or five songs from the Loudpark festival. The record company said, “No, no, the whole show is recorded anyway, please think about using all of that”. We listened to the recording and said, “OK, we’re playing quite well, and it’s a bit of a different atmosphere than a solo concert. Thus, we can present Fair Warning in a festival atmosphere and at a solo concert, and that’s a good thing.” But on the other hand, we said, “Come on, all of the songs that we played at Loudpark would appear again on the Tokyo show. Maybe it’s a bit too much.” But they said, “No, don’t worry about that, the fans would be appreciating that”, and we went for that.

The fact is that you can see it one way or the other way. You could say one would be enough, or you could say that there’s a lot of Fair Warning for a fair price. And the way SPV does it… OK, there are once again two sides of the story. The Japanese release is horribly expensive, in Japan they sell the package with two DVDs and three CDs at something like 80-90 euros, which I think is a lot. But I don’t have a say in that, that’s the record company’s policy. But SPV sells the package of two DVDs and three CDs here in Germany at 23 euros, which is, I think, nothing anybody could complain of. When I saw that, I said, “Hey, I have to make a living, why are you giving that away for free?” (everybody laughs) When I’m doing interviews and somebody asks me, “isn’t it a bit too much” or “isn’t that expensive”, I can say, “It’s quite a fair price”. It’s basically having so much Fair Warning at a discounted price. I don’t know what to think about that –I see the big difference in prices between Japan and Europe, but this is none of my idea, I have no influence on that, I let the record companies do whatever they want and we’ll see what’s coming out of that.

Who are the additional musicians you have on these recordings? There are obviously more than four people playing…

Actually it’s always been six people. There’s a keyboard player, Torsten Luderwalt, who is a permanent member of Dreamtide and who has always played with Fair Warning live since our very first showcase, he’s with us as long as Fair Warning exists. Then there’s a second guitarist. You can discuss in the band whether it is necessary or not to have a second guitarist while playing live, there are some who say it’s not necessary, I’m one of those (laughs), but others in the band say, “No, we should play with two guitars.” If it’s the decision of the majority that we should play live with two guitars, then it’s fine for me. In the 90s we played with Andy, and when we did “Live And More” (1998), Andy was still in the band, but he was too ill to play a whole concert, we had Henny Wolter with us. We asked him again to join us on the latest tour, and he said, “Yes, I can do it for autumn 2009, but in January 2010 I already have other obligations.” Before we asked him, he had agreed to go on the “Rock Meets Classic” tour here in Germany, and he was just not available to play with us. So we asked Niklas Turmann to do that. Playing with both is for me as a guitarist is really fun. With Henny we played before, and Henny is a real rock’n’roller. (laughs) When it comes to touring, it’s more about how you get along with each other. Whether these guys are good players – this is clear anyway. When you get along well, and you have a lot of fun playing, and there’s a good chemistry, a lot of laughing and a lot of humor, then it works fine. This happens with both Henny and Niklas – we had a lot of fun.

By the way, are there any plans to re-release your early live CDs - “Live In Japan” (1993) and “Live At Home” (1995)?

(laughs) Ask the mafia! Did I say I work with them? No, I didn’t say that, you haven’t heard that from me! The point is that we were young and we needed the money. And we were not only young and needy, but also stupid, so in the beginning of Fair Warning we signed with a major company answering to the name of Warner. After the second record we found out – “Hey, come on, who’s taking the money? It’s the record company, not us!” We bought us out of the deal with Warner, but the contracts we signed say the rights to these recordings stay with Warner until Judgment Day.

Oh God!

Well, they doesn’t literally say “Judgment Day”, but it’s very hard to get your rights back. I haven’t given up on fighting for that, because Warner is not selling these records anymore, but they’re controlling the rights. Frontiers made a deal some years ago to re-release “Fair Warning” (1992), “Rainmaker” (1995), and the DVD. I don’t know what deal they made, maybe they have the same parent company, he-he. I would be quite happy to get the rights back for us and re-release the records in the way we want it, but this is quite hard with a major record company.

What are your future plans? When can we expect a new studio album from Fair Warning? And what will happen to Dreamtide?

I will go on writing songs, and most likely we will do another Dreamtide album, but at the moment it’s not quite clear what is going to come next. After recording and working on this live album, it is quite obvious that Fair Warning as a band plays quite well, at least from my point of view. If there’s a chance to go on tour next year, we will do that, and it would be a wish to go to places where we haven’t been touring before. But it’s not yet clear whether it’s going to happen. With Fair Warning and Dreamtide, it’s always the same story – we make record after record, they are quite well received in Japan, reviews are good in Europe, but the audience in Europe is never as big as in the East. I think it’s about time to at least make another effort to change that. I don’t know if it’s going to happen, but I hope it will.

Fair Warning on the Internet: http://www.fair-warning.de

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

Roman Patrashov, Natalie “Snakeheart” Patrashova
November 22, 2010
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