Kamelot
One Hot Summer’s Night

07.08.2007

Guitarist Thomas Youngblood of international power/progressive metal outfit Kamelot turned out one of the most elusive musicians we’ve ever talked to. Phone interviews with him would fail until the moment record label people said there is no sense to try anymore. And when we tried to catch up with the band during their first visit in Moscow, they… cancelled the gig! Luckily, a month later all problems were settled, the band did arrive in Russia, and shortly before Kamelot’s performance at Moscow’s Tochka Club we sat down with Thomas backstage to discuss the new album “Ghost Opera” and selected scenes from the band’s 15-year-long history…

Let’s start with the one thing that all your Russian fans want to know. You were supposed to play in Moscow on May 11, but the concert was cancelled at a day’s notice. What went wrong? We heard there were some visa problems….

We were working with someone that was organizing the visas, and they waited to get the visas until the day before we were to leave Helsinki, which is a big risk. We thought they would make it, we had train tickets from Helsinki to Moscow, actually we still have them… So they went to do all the things, they went to the Russian embassy, and for some reason the embassy just closed the window right in front of them, and that was it. We’ve been working hard, and actually we had to do a lot of runaround to get the visas in time for this trip, it was a lot of stress, and it cost a lot of money.

So how was it this time, were there any problems at the border?

Nothing. But we had some problems with transportation – two of my guitars are missing. I do have one guitar, but I usually have another one. Apart from that, so far everything’s going fine… (The missing guitars actually arrived at the venue 10 minutes before the band hit the stage – ed.)

Usually bands go on tour after they release albums. What made you go in Europe so early this time, when the new album only came out in June?

Part of it was that most of the countries were new for us, so it didn’t really matter if we had a new record or not. It was also kind of a way to still promote the DVD (“One Cold Winter’s Night”, 2006), but also promote the upcoming record, and it worked out good, because the shows were very full, and the record charted really high in the countries we played. It’s a different way to look at touring – instead of putting an album out and touring, maybe tour a few months before the record, so people get to hear a few new songs.

It’s something Iron Maiden did in the 1980s – they would go on tour, and the new record would come out when they had been on the road.

Did they? I wasn’t aware of that.

How many new songs do you play at your current gigs?

From “Ghost Opera” we’re playing three new songs, and when we come back in October or maybe next year, we’ll probably play four to five new ones.

Do you play any songs from the first two Kamelot albums (“Eternity”, 1995, and “Dominion”, 1997)?

No, and there are several reasons why. The first reason is the different singer, he doesn’t really wanna sing those old songs. The second reason is that most of the fans at the concerts – I don’t know about Russia, but in most of the countries we play, they don’t even know those songs. You have hardcore fans that wanna hear “Black Tower” or “Call Of The Sea”, but the majority of the people have never heard these songs. It doesn’t make sense to do them when we have a limited time to play.

Do you still have any relations to your former singer Mark Vanderbilt, who sang on those early albums?

Yeah, actually I do. He lives very close to me, we’re friends and stuff. We’ve actually talked about doing things, but there just hasn’t been time for side projects.

Let’s now speak about “Ghost Opera” – the two previous albums had a concept, what about this one?

No concept, other than we just wanted the whole record to have sort of a more melancholic, darker feel to it. The first time in 4.5 years we’ve done a record without a concept, and it was a nice getaway from the concept thing.

Is it easier to work on a regular record than on a concept record?

There are pros and cons to each one. The good thing about a concept is that you never lose the inspiration for lyrics, but if you’re doing 10 separate songs, it’s almost like 10 little concepts, you have to have an idea of what all these songs are gonna be about. From that aspect, it’s better to do a concept record, but the hard part about doing a concept record is making sure the music has the right feeling for the story, and the lyrics have to be in order.

It was announced that the new album features many guests, but it’s not quite clear who these guests are. Can you say a few words about the people who worked with you in the studio?

Simone Simons (Epica) is on the new one as well, like she was on “The Black Halo” (2005). Another girl is Amanda Somerville, who is a really great singer. We had Thomas Rettke, who was in Heaven’s Gate and Redkey, we had Cinzia Rizzo again, who was on “The Fourth Legacy” record (1999). But we didn’t have a lot of special guests on this record, because of the fact that it’s not a concept album. With “The Black Halo” we had a cast like in a movie. We had the Devil played by Shagrath (Dimmu Borgir), we had a girl, my wife actually sang that part, so that was a different approach.

So Mary Youngblood is your wife, right? And who is Rachel Youngnlood? This name is also sometimes mentioned in connection with Kamelot…

That’s my sister, she used to do the artwork for us, but she hasn’t done anything since the first record really.

You filmed a very interesting video for the title track “Ghost Opera”. But why did you decide to film it in Serbia? It’s quite an unusual place for such activities…

The guys down there do a fantastic job with visuals and special effects, and the price of getting those special effects is quite low as compared to the USA, where we would never have been able to afford it. More importantly is that the product you get from those guys is really great, we were totally happy when we got the final version.

More about the visual side of the band – how did you end up doing the photo shoot for Nocturnal Models Calendar? And how did you like it?

The owner of the company invited us. She’s doing a calendar, and she’s a fan of Kamelot, so she wanted us to do it. We said we’d love to do it, but we wanted to be able to use some of the photos. It’s cool, because we get a lot of this partial gothic crowd, so this is a little bit of a crossover between those.

“Ghost Opera” is your third release on SPV Records. What can you say about cooperation with this label? In what ways are they different from Noise?

They’re much better, in all phases basically. We liked working with the people at Noise, but they didn’t have enough money to really make a band more successful. It takes money sometimes to do videos, to do the DVD… It was a smart decision, and so far we’re really happy with SPV.

You mentioned that many of your fans don’t know the first two records. Why is it happening, are they hard to find in America and in Europe?

Yeah, they’re hard to find, and it was 10 years ago. We have 14-year-old fans in some countries, and they don’t know anything about “Eternity” or “Dominion”, they really only know about something new. That’s the kind of the way the business is.

It has become common for bands nowadays to re-record the old stuff with a new line-up, in order to kind of resurrect those old tunes? Have you ever considered doing that?

We have, but since the old songs are on Noise Records, it’s a big business and legal thing that makes it much more difficult.

In the beginning, was it easy or difficult for you to get a deal with Noise?

We sent out demos to four or five different labels. The guys at Noise were listening to the demos, and one guy walked through the office, heard the music… and then they called us. We also sent the stuff to Metal Blade and Roadrunner back then, and Noise was the one that stepped up with a good offer.

Kamelot has never been known for frequent line-up changes, but the position of the keyboard player gets vacated quite often. You had David Pavlico on early records, then you had session keyboard players, and now you have Oliver Palotai (Doro, ex-Blaze). What is the reason for changing the keyboard player so often?

We didn’t really change them. We had one, and then we never replaced him, we always used people as guests. We never really replaced anybody, we just never hired a new person until now.

OK, and what did Oliver do to become a full-time member?

He fit in the band perfectly in terms of his playing ability, his stage presence, and most importantly, his social connection.

More about the line-up – how did you first hear of Roy Khan?

His band Conception was on the same company as us, so I had heard some stuff from them. I liked his voice, and when I heard they split up, I gave him a call.

Is it true that before you accepted him in the band, you asked him to do a parachute jump with you?

Yeah. It was a kind of joke, “Hey, you gotta jump out of the plane with us to show your faith!” (laughs)

Did you jump all together?

Yeah, we all jumped. Casey (Grillo, drummer) didn’t do it, but me and Dave Pavlico and Roy did it.

In the beginning you recorded your albums in Florida, in the famous Morrisound Studio with Jim Morris, but nowadays you use no less famous European production duo – Sascha Paeth and Miro. How big are the differences in their work methods?

Maybe Morrisound is a bit more business-oriented than Sascha and Miro, they’re more family-oriented and more focused on what’s best for the band. Morrisound is a bit more factory-kind of thing, do you know what I mean? I like the guys at Morrisound, but they just got so busy, and it was really hard for us to get time in the studio, so we started looking for new people back then. When we started working with Sascha and Miro, it was a totally different way of looking at music and actually investing more time into what we end up with.

The music of Kamelot often includes themes from various classical composers or some ethnic fragments. Are there any great composers of the past or any ethnic musical cultures that you would like to use, but have not tried it yet?

We never consciously go after any particular composer, other than in the song “Forever” we used the Grieg melody. Other than that song, we never really think, “Let’s use Chaikovsky or somebody like that.” We make up things, and if they have this sort of classical feel to it, that might be reminiscent of someone else.

Present-day lyrics of the band are mostly based on myths or classical literature. Why did you choose this particular lyrical format for Kamelot? Is it of no interest for you to write about environmental disasters or other current problems of the world?

The thing is that a lot of the songs are about the present-day, but we use metaphors to make them more mysterious and more exotic. A lot of times the songs have to do with something that’s happening now. For instance, “March Of Mephisto” has a lot to do with politics.

We’ve always wondered how the band got this name – Kamelot? Who came up with this idea?

Actually my mother suggested the name when we were forming the band. She was a big fan of President John F. Kennedy, and his daze at the White House was called “Camelot”. But we use it more like a medieval reference. We spelt it with the “K”, because we wanted to be different than anything else, we wanted to have more of a European look, and that’s how it came out.

Is there a Kamelot song that is especially important or especially personal for you?

Yeah, the song “Don’t You Cry” is, of course, about my father. One of my favorite songs is “Karma” – it has every element that a good song should have: melody, speed, power. “Memento Mori” is one of my favorite songs, too… Every record has a significant song on it, and each person in the band has his favorites.

So how do you put together the setlist then?

It’s very difficult. It’s got a lot to do with not having too many fast songs, not having too many slow songs, not having too many ballads. There’s gotta be some new songs, there have to be songs that are comfortable to play, songs that are comfortable to sing... We have 80-100 songs, so it’s very hard.

The Kamelot setlist always features a keyboard solo and a drum solo. And what about a guitar solo?

I mean, I play solos on every song! (laughs) For me it’s really not hard to do that, but it’s more about my own personal thoughts about the whole solo thing. There’s a real fine line between being a musician, an artist, and being a clown. And I don’t wanna be the guy that’s up there juggling. We do an instrumental now that’s kind of cool – it’s got guitar solos, drum stuff, keyboard stuff…

At the latest tour you played together with Leaves Eyes. What kind of audience did you have – were there mostly gothic fans or mostly metal fans or a mixture of the two?

There were mostly Kamelot fans, but they brought some friends along, and there were some gothic people among them. Those were headliner shows for Kamelot, so the majority of people were our fans.

Then we wonder how the Kamelot fans reacted to the music of Leaves Eyes?

They didn’t go over so good, to be honest. I actually thought they were pretty cool, personally I think they did a great job. They’re gonna open up for us again on the U.S. tour. The reviews by the fans of Kamelot were not so good for Leaves Eyes, but I don’t think it’s totally fair.

You mentioned that you’d like to do a solo project. What kind of music would you like to do if you go solo?

It depends if it’s a band or a solo record. If it’s a solo record, it’s gonna have a lot of guitar stuff with some really special guests. I’ve been in this business long enough to have a lot of friends, so I’d probably get some pretty big names. But I’m not sure yet. Right now I’m working on a song for Tarja Turunen’s solo record, and once I start doing that, I will have some extra stuff that I probably will use for either a solo record or a side project.

The final question – how much have you managed to see in Russia? And what expectations did you have about Russia when you were going here?

I wasn’t really sure of what to expect. We had a lot of problems getting in, with luggage and some guitars going missing. It’s been difficult, but tomorrow we’re gonna do some sightseeing, go to the Red Square and try to see a bit more of Moscow. But as to the people I have met here, a lot of them are really nice.

Kamelot on the Internet: http://www.kamelot.com

Special thanks to Vera Dmitrieva (Spika Concert Agency) for arranging this interview.

Interview by Roman “Maniac” Patrashov, Dmitry “Ward” Kulikov
Questions also composed by Grigory “Starbreaker” Vorontsov
June 18, 2007
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