Tankard
Best Interview Scenario

31.01.2008

The chill-out area of Moscow’s Tochka Club is full of people and beer bottles. You can hear the sound of the audience gathering from behind the doors, but inside everything is quiet, even though there are frequent outbursts of laughter coming from various corners of the room. This combination of beer and laughter is no surprise if you know who’s playing tonight, and it’s nobody else but Tankard, Germany’s top alcoholic metal band. Nearly all of them are in the room, only guitar player Andy Gutjahr is nowhere to be seen. Bassist Frank Thorwarth is sleeping quietly on a bench (he is obviously getting ready for taking in more beer), while the rest of the band – singer Andreas “Gerre” Geremia and drummer Olaf Zissel, as well as their manager Buffo are sitting at a table with us and a few of their friends. Apparently they and we are trying to do an interview, but it’s more like everybody is just having fun. After all, when you have so much beer and high-class energetic music around you, what else can you do but to have fun…

You tried to come to Russia twice before, but each time there was a failure on behalf of promoters. How was it like this time, did you encounter any difficulties in getting in?

Buffo: This time it hopefully works. (laughs) And it works really well. We are not yet finished, but maybe it will work. We are very impressed with everything, it works very easy, very fast and very well. The venue is great, we have very good equipment, and so far everything has been very professional. We are very impressed.

Gerre: The two times before it was not our fault. The previous time we got visas and checked up everything, and then one week before the show we started to ask tickets for the flight, but couldn’t reach anybody. We tried telephones and e-mails, but to no avail. I don’t really know what happened, it was not really serious, I would say.

Olaf: It was very funny at the check-in – I had three visas in my passport, but I was never in Russia. (laughs)

Tonight’s party is dedicated to the famous German beer festival – Oktoberfest. What do you think about it as German citizens?

Buffo: Honestly I’ve never heard that Russians drink beer, I thought they drink only vodka. (everybody laughs) Tonight’s show has a very funny name – Oktobierfest. It’s fucking great!

Olaf: And we have enjoyed your vodka! I don’t know the brand… (somebody shouts “Parliament”) Every vodka in Germany that I know tastes a little bit like fuel, but this is the first vodka that I drink and that tastes very smooth. I love it!

Gerre: The traditional Oktoberfest that takes place in Bavaria, in Munich, is a very commercial thing for tourists. We don’t have so much to do with it, because we drink when we want, not when somebody tells us to drink or to have a party.

You are celebrating the 25th birthday of Tankard this year. What do you think is the best present for the band on such an occasion?

Gerre: The best present is to be still there!

Twenty-five years on stage is a very long time, and we’ve seen many musicians who have been playing that long say at some point, “I’ve had enough, I wanna try different things in life”. Have you ever had such a desire? And what keeps you going on after all these years?

Olaf: We had some times in the mid- and late 1990s, nobody was into thrash metal anymore, we just had a couple of shows in a whole year. But we never really thought about quitting the band, because we are really into that kind of music. As we all have regular jobs, this is more like a big hobby for us. We don’t depend on money that we get out of music, and this is a very big advantage.

Gerre: Year, we’re having a lot of fun, and in the past couple of years we’re getting forward step by step again with Tankard. As long as our drummer loves me, it’s OK! (everybody laughs)

Olaf: I don’t love you, I love Bobby from Sodom!

Gerre: Ah, OK, good luck, Bobby! (laughs) Do you know the name of our next record? It is called “Udo Doro Olaf”. (everybody cracks)

We planned to ask this next question to Frank, but…

Gerre: He’s sleeping, because he’s on drugs all the time! (laughs)

OK, we’ve heard that Frank has three children. What do they think of his job with Tankard?

Gerre: I don’t exactly know, but I think they’re proud of it.

Buffo: I’m pretty sure that they love that their father is away all the time. (everybody laughs)

Gerre: Last time when we played at the Bang Your Head Festival, it was in 2005… (Points at Roman who wears a “Bang Your Head” T-shirt) Do you know the festival?

Well, just a little bit! (laughs)

Gerre: So he brought his three sons to the festival, and the two biggest ones watched the concert. They were sitting aside and looking like, “Wow, what’s going on here?”

Buffo: And when we were recording our latest album “Best Case Scenario - 25 Years In Beers” – it’s is not yet out in Russia, it will be out next year – they were also in the studio when we did the backing vocals, and they sang a little bit.

By the way, how did you put together the tracklist for this CD? Are these songs your own favorites, or did you ask fans to voice their opinion on it?

Gerre: Olaf decided everything because he’s the chief of the band! (everybody laughs) At first we thought about asking the fans, but it wasn’t the best idea, because we had so many discussions in the band about which songs we should choose…

Olaf: We can’t record 18 versions of “(Empty) Tankard”, so we had to vary the songs a bit. (everybody laughs)

Gerre: I was clear that we should only cover the timeframe from 1986 to 1995, the timeframe when we had the most fun in doing music. It also has something to do with the rights to the songs – after 10 years you get the rights back, and if we had chosen the songs from “Kings Of Beer” (2000) or “Disco Destroyer” (1998), we would have had some problems with the rights and everything. This was clear from the first moment that we would only cover this timeframe. Apart from that, we had a lot of discussions about which songs to choose, so we decided that we should take one or two or three best songs from each album.

There is also a bonus CD with Tankard songs performed by other artists. Whose idea was that, and how did you pick up the participants? Did they volunteer to play the songs, or did you have to go round and ask them?

Gerre: This was a lot of work for Buffo, he got in contact with all the bands he knew, and everybody was into it from the beginning. Then other bands from outside came and asked. You know, we are not able to pay them money, because we don’t have any money, our manager takes it all away. (laughs) (Buffo looks at him in mock anger) Oh, just kidding! Anyway, we were not able to pay them 500 euros for a song, so if they wanted to join the sampler, it was going to be a tribute – they would get five free copies, and that’s it. But in the end we had 18 bands on the sampler, and when we were in the studio, we were cutting pauses between the songs down to one second, because we had so much material.

Which version is your favorite?

Gerre: All eighteen! (everybody laughs) Firstly, my three favorites are “The Morning After” by Courageous, “Poison” by Tfreezeebee”, and “Sunscars” by Odium. They made the songs really different, they changed the chorus and so on. But I also love the other ones! Maybe Olaf can tell you his own favorite ones, but I guess he didn’t really listen to it yet.

Olaf: Of course I haven’t! (everybody laughs)

Each Tankard CD has a great and funny cover artwork. But how do you work on it – do you explain the designer what he should do, or is he free to suggest whatever he likes?

Gerre: First of all we have an album title. Then we get in contact with the artist, and I tell him what we think about the album title, and then he gets down to work.

You have been working with AFM Records for the past five years, and it seems that the band has become much more successful with AFM than it was with Century Media. In your opinion, what are the reasons for this?

Gerre: It’s because of Irina! (Points to Irina Ivanova, promo manager of CD-Maximum, who is sitting in the background) When we changed from Century Media to AFM Records, Henner, the label boss and the former singer of Squealer, was a real Tankard fan. He got in contact with us and said, “Join my label, I’ll try to push you a little bit more, we are all Tankard fans here.” I talked to Century Media, they let us out of the contract, so we signed with AFM, and they really started to push Tankard. This is one side. The other side is that the “B-Day” album in 2002 was a real breakthrough. We chose a new producer, and the quality of the songs was much higher than on “Kings Of Beer” and “Disco Destroyer”. “B-Day” started a new era in Tankard history. It has something to do with the record company, it has something to do with the producer, it has something to do with the band… and especially with Olaf!

Our next question is about your recent DVD “Fat, Ugly and Still (A)Live” (2005). It’s a great thing to watch, but why aren’t there any English subtitles?

Gerre: You are the 7,480th person to ask me that! (laughs) We are very sorry about that, but we didn’t have any time left to do any subtitles, and the record company AFM thought they would just sell the DVD in Germany. But the DVD was a big success worldwide.

Olaf: And there’s a lot of stuff you can’t translate!

Gerre: Yeah, the nonsense we talk you can’t really translate in English. But to be honest, we really should have translated the interview and the announcements on the first DVD. The next time we will do subtitles in Russian! Na zdorovje!

In continuation of the previous question – does Tankard have more fans in Germany or abroad?

Gerre: If we go to Greece, Turkey, Spain or Italy, there are more people at the shows than in Germany. But at the same time, we’ve played in Germany so many times… When we do big festivals, there are a lot of people in front of the stage, so it’s OK. We try to play everywhere we can… as long as they pay us in beer! (Everyone starts talking in German with excitement, while Frank continues sleeping. Gerre comments on that.) Our bass player is a wonder to nature. He’s asleep when everybody is drinking beer!

Olaf: But you have me, I’m the drummer! (everybody laughs)

Gerre: Lucky enough! (everybody laughs) OK, let’s go on with the questions.

We were quite surprised to find out that next year you will play one show in America. Why just one concert? As far as we understand, you haven’t played there for a long time…

Gerre: It’s something like a promotional gig. “25 Years In Beers” will be released in America in March, so it’s more like a promotional thing. It’s very hard for us to play full tours, because, as I told you, we all have regular jobs. Of course, we really want to play more shows in the States, but we will see what happens. This is might be something like the first step.

What are the chances of seeing your old video “Open All Night” re-released on DVD? It’s quite difficult to find these days…

Gerre: Buffo has a lot of plans to re-release it. He wrote a lot of e-mails to several people, and he found out that our record company AFM has to buy it from the owner, who has the rights to the video. At the moment not so much happens, but we still have it in mind.

Back in 1995 you recorded a song called “Fuck Christmas” and the same year you got involved in the recording of the mini-album “Rocking Around the X-Mas Tree” by the German band Capricorn, which is, in fact, a celebration of Christmas. So what is your attitude to Christmas – do you love it or do you hate it?

Gerre: I have nothing to do with Christmas, because I don’t believe in any religion. The thing with Capricorn was just fun – we were playing Christmas songs in a very rough and heavy way. In my personal opinion, Christmas is a very commercial bullshit.

Buffo: If you listen carefully you will hear that Gerre was singing “Fuck Christmas” all over the Capricorn stuff. (laughs)

Gerre (sees waitresses coming in to offer some drinks to the band): Hello! (playfully) Come here! (seeing the waitresses perplexed) They think I’m too fat! (Apparently the girls just didn’t speak English – ed.)

Buffo: And too ugly! (everybody laughs)

Gerre: But still alive! (shouting) Hooray!!!

By the way, why did you decide to re-record a very early demo track called “Incredible Loudness” for “Kings Of Beer”?

Gerre: We had a couple of songs that we re-recorded – “Rundown Quarter”, “Incredible Loudness” and “Death By Whips”. It’s so funny to play these demo songs nowadays. The first limited edition of the “B-Day” album contains the very first original demos, we just had them on tapes and now we put them on CD. The sound is very bad, but it’s a lot of fun for collectors.

By the way, the DVD “Fat, Ugly and Still Alive” contains songs from all Tankard albums, except “Kings Of Beer”. Does it mean that you are dissatisfied with that record?

Gerre: You have to ask other members of the band, but personally I think it’s not our best album. There are quite a few good songs on it – “Tattoo Coward” and “Dark Exile”, I really love them. But if you play live, and you have 15 or 16 records out, you have to cancel something. At the moment we try to do a mixture of old stuff up to “The Tankard” (1995) and the last three albums.

More about the visual side of the band – you shot your first videoclip in 10 years for the song “The Beauty And The Beer”. Does it mean that metal can again be seen on German TV?

I think the videoclip was primarily done for the limited edition of “The Beauty And The Beer” album. We also put it on a Rock Hard sampler or a Metal Hammer sampler, I don’t know exactly, and we also put it on the Nuclear Blast DVD. It was shown on a local Frankfurt television program connected with football, but never nation-wide. I don’t think heavy metal fans really need television, because there are so many bands that can do without it. Anyway, it’s good to have a videoclip, because you can put them on such samples, and other countries can use it. I don’t really know what happens in other countries, but in Germany there’s no heavy metal show on television.

Gerre, you are a big fan of the Eintracht Frankfurt football team, and you said many times that your biggest dream was to play for this team. Your dream recently came true. Can you tell us a bit about your impressions? What is your current biggest wish?

Gerre: It happened last year, when the favorite team of me, Andy and Buffo reached the national cup final. We did a song seven or eight years ago on a CD sampler dedicated to the 100th birthday of the club, and when they reached the final, they started to play that old song at the stadiums. A couple of days before the final took place Buffo got a call from some official, I don’t know who he was – marketing chief or something like that, and they asked us if we wanted to play at the Olympic Stadium of Berlin in front of 80,000 people and perform that song. We didn’t really believe him, we thought this telephone call was just a joke. They didn’t pay us anything, but for me personally this was one of the greatest things we’ve ever done. 25,000 supporters of Eintracht were singing along with us, it was really amazing. My current wish concerning football is that our team would spend at least one season without being in a shaky position. For the past 10 years they would get up and get down, and every game you risk having a heart attack until the last minute of the game. Now I wish a season without a heart attack, that would be really nice.

Did you hear any reaction to your performance from Eintracht players?

Gerre: No, and it’s not so important. Players come and go, but the fans are still there. (laughs)

There was a rumor on the Internet that some Tankard member (we don’t remember who it was) told a journalist that band members in fact don’t drink at all, and this alcoholic metal thing is just an image. Can you comment on that?

Olaf: This is indeed an image. We only drink mineral water all day! (laughs)

Gerre: This is the image! (points at his belly) And look at this guy – this answers it all! (points at Frank who is still sleeping on the bench)

Thank you guys for such a funny and entertaining conversation! And one last question – where can we expect your next studio record?

Gerre: We’re supposed to go to the studio in May, and hopefully the album will be out in October. In Russia it will probably be released a couple of months later, because we’re still waiting for the release of the “25 Years In Beers” album.

Tankard on the Internet: http://www.tankard.info

Special thanks to Vladimir Doronin (Delta Mekong Concerts) for arranging this interview

This interview incorporates fragments of the news conference preceding the gig. Since the reporters asking questions didn’t introduce themselves, it does not seem possible to identify and credit them.

Roman “Maniac” Patrashov, Natalie “Snakeheart” Patrashova
October 13, 2007
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