Bonfire
Legendary Tales

19.09.2019

The story of Bonfire could make a great adventure novel, with all the line-up changes, stylistic changes, and even band name changes. The story of attempts at bringing Bonfire to Russia could make a good chapter in this book, as the band’s shows have been announced and then cancelled repeatedly in the past 20 years. Luckily Russian fans finally got to see Bonfire in July this year, at a solo gig in St. Petersburg and at the Big Gun Festival outside Moscow. We the editorial office were absolutely determined to attend at least one of these historic performances, and that was also a good opportunity to do a new interview with the band, since we hadn’t done any for ages. By the time the bandmembers got to the festival grounds, it was already dark, the day’s headliners U.D.O. were about to hit the stage, but we found a quiet place at the festival’s press area, also pretty dark, but more than OK for a quick but very nice conversation. Our interview partners are relatively new to Bonfire: bassist Ronnie Parkes joined the band in 2014, and singer Alexx Stahl in 2016, but they play a big part in making Bonfire what it is together, and they are apparently very happy to both be in the band and talk about it.

Bonfire played its first ever Russian show in St. Petersburg the day before yesterday. How did you like the show and the city itself?

Ronnie: It was in a very small venue, but it was really great. Everybody was very receptive, everybody liked it, everybody had a lot of fun. And St. Petersburg is beautiful! I wasn’t sure about what to expect, as it is also my first time in Russia, but I loved it, I thought it was great.

How is the audience of Bonfire changing over the years?

Ronnie: The audience is still kinda the same. There’s a lot of people who listen to Bonfire from the beginning, and people still know the songs, so they wanna see Bonfire play their songs. So that’s what they see! (laughs)

An acquaintance of ours went to see Bonfire in Germany in 2001 or 2002 and he was surprised by the number of girls in the audience. Is it still the same these days?

Alexx: It’s the same amount of girls, but they are older now. (everybody cracks)

What venues do you prefer to play – smaller ones with a lot of contact with the audience, or bigger ones?

Alexx: You cannot say that we really prefer any of them. We like to play big festivals like any band, but when you see the band in a smaller venue, you will see that we have so much fun onstage, and getting into contact with sweating rock fans is really great. We have fun at both of these really.
Ronnie: They’re both great. A smaller show, as long as there’s a lot of people there, is sometimes more fun than a big show, because you really have contact with the audience. It’s a hot sweaty room, and everybody is going crazy, and it’s great. And then you play a big festival, maybe 20 thousand people or something, and it’s just a sea of people. Maybe you don’t have the same contact, but when you see all these people clapping their hands together, it has a different energy, but a great energy.

You were planning a huge tour called “Legends” in November last year, but it was cancelled mid-way. Could you tell us what happened?

Ronnie: The “Legends” concept was that we played songs – and we recorded an album for it, also called “Legends” – and we would have guest singers come and put on a big show, play maybe three or four Bonfire songs, and then we’d play three songs from each artist. Basically every song that’s on the CD – that was the show: you’d come and you’d see this great thing. It was a big undertaking, there were three different bosses to put it all together, and it was their first time doing something of this scale. There were a lot of problems with it, and it wasn’t able to continue. That’s the reason it stopped halfway through. Everybody that saw the shows liked it, but unfortunately it just couldn’t continue.

Is this concept dead and gone now, or would you like to revive it some time in the future?

Ronnie: No, it’s dead and gone!

Were you able to film the show?

Alexx: Unfortunately not. There are some videos on YouTube, but that’s all.
Ronnie: It was really special, it was really great, and the artists were great, we had a lot of fun, but business is business. After everything is said and done as much as we liked it, and we came in with what we were supposed to do, the business side of it couldn’t keep it all together.

How did you put together the tracklist for the album and the setlist for the show? Was there any general idea behind it, or did you just pick up your favorites from the melodic rock era?

Ronnie: The show was so long, it was about 2.5 hours or something, and it is a long time for people to sit, so we tried to break it into two smaller shows with a little intermission. Maybe once or twice we did that, and another time we didn’t do it, so it was a kind of hectic, chaotic scene the whole way through. We just put who we figured would be the bigger stars near the end and we tried just to make a flow like we would in a normal set.

The guest on the “Legends” album and tour that surprised us the most was Dieter “Quaster” Hertrampf from Die Puhdys. I mean, Die Puhdys is an East German band, and Bonfire is from Bavaria. What’s your connection with Die Puhdys? How did Dieter get involved in the “Legends” project?

Ronnie: I believe that Hans (Ziller, guitarist and founder) already knew Dieter, they had had contact before. Somehow – I’m not sure exactly how it happened – they came in contact, and he totally wanted to do it.
Alexx: When Hans was young, apart from Bonfire, he was DJing in some Ingolstadt club, and he sometimes played Puhdys songs then, because the people liked it, they were a big band. Even if there was the Iron Curtain, the music was there. In Western Germany the band was known maybe not as well as in Russia, but it was known, and Hans did know the songs, he told us he had played songs of Die Puhdys. Maybe that’s the connection, maybe that’s why he was thinking about asking Quaster.
Ronnie: And Quaster is great, actually it was a lot of fun playing Puhdys songs. We got to play three songs every night, and it was awesome.

Speaking about German origins – when Claus Lessmann was the singer of Bonfire, you used to have songs with German lyrics now and again. On the albums with Alexx you don’t have any German songs – why is that?

Alexx: I don’t know, we just haven’t done one. (everybody laughs)
Ronnie: We were actually talking about it, because we’re always trying to put something a little silly, a little crazy, something that’s going on with us, and on the last two albums… I come from America, so my German is not as good as everyone else’s obviously, and we would have conversations, and when Hans would try to explain things to me, he would have to go into German, because he didn’t know the English word for it. Then he would tell me, “Say this” or “Say that”. He was recording a lot of these conversations, and we put these things together - “Twinseler”, “Friedensreich Hundertwasser”…

Yes, that famous Austrian architect with the impossible name!

Ronnie: So we would put these things together… Actually we were talking about doing a Bavarian song instead of having something fun just to do, you know.

Ronnie, you came to the band together with David Reece. Then David was gone, and you stayed with the band. How do you look back on Bonfire’s alliance with David? Was it a mistake, or was it the right move for Bonfire at that time? I mean, David’s voice is so different from Claus Lessmann’s voice…

Ronnie: As far as the fans go, the fans were shocked, and it was a departure for Bonfire. Now with Alexx, it’s really like a family. Alexx fits in better, people accept him better, and it’s more of a family now than it was with David.

OK, Alexx, how did you come to the band?

Alexx: That was a funny story. When David Reece left the band, I was asked to be a spare singer for the band for about 15 ort 16 shows. After that another singer from Germany should have stepped in as a new singer…

Michael Bormann, right?

Alexx: Yeah. So I got this call, “Bonfire’s calling, let’s do this”. I thought I’d try my best to make the best out of the situation and at least get some advertisement for me and my bands, as I was in several bands back then. I called my boss, “I need some holidays, I need 10 days or two weeks for rehearsing the songs, and then I have to go on tour with Bonfire” – and he agreed. I consulted a vocal coach to bring the best out of myself for Bonfire. And then we met each other… Yeah, it was good chemistry, we had fun together, and Hans would come to me sometimes, “In this and this part you remind me very much of Claus Lessmann”. It was cool for him, and after maybe 10 shows or something he offered me the job of the new singer of Bonfire. That’s the way it was. It was a pity for Michael, of course, but we’re still friends, I see him sometimes when I visit his concerts.
Ronnie: That was the plan actually – we agreed that we were gonna take Michael, but he wasn’t available, that’s why we had Alexx fill in, because we had dates that we were supposed to play, and we signed contracts, so we still had to do the shows. We decided, “OK, let’s get somebody to fill in”, and we got Alexx. And the chemistry immediately was perfect – immediately. We got on stage, and nobody could tell that he wasn’t in the band for years, everybody accepted him. We played the Bang Your Head festival, Headbangers Open Air, and it was great! I think there was one or two videos from that show, and you could feel the energy on the stage, it just came across. Then Hans said, “We have to keep Alexx”, and everybody agreed. We had previously already announced that Michael was gonna be the singer but he never actually sang another song. There’s a lot of confusion and people say, “Oh they’ve had so many members and so many this…”, but in actuality, Michael wasn’t in there again, you know what I mean.

Who composes the vocal lines in Bonfire nowadays? The vocals in the title track of the “Temple Of Lies” album (2018) are so different from the usual Bonfire style – who came up with the idea to sing so high in the Geoff Tate style in that song?

Ronnie: Usually it’s a combination of me, Alexx and Hans. We’re writing songs, and everybody puts their parts in, everybody puts their input. I’ve been writing lyrics, because I’m a natural English speaker. I got handed the job first, and Hans really liked what I did, so we went with that. And when we’re in the studio, everybody puts their parts in, Hans maybe has an idea for a melody, and Alexx will just shine it up and do his style and what he does - that’s how it comes out.
Alexx: Another point is that Hans told us he had always been into bands like Judas Priest or Accept, for example, and he was never really able to do this style of music with Bonfire, because other members were not so much into this music. Right now he has the possibility to do this, and he does it with us, and we like it. I come from metal, that’s my background. Bonfire is a little more metal band these days, but not too much, we hope, for the fans. It seems that the fans like a little harder Bonfire, and that’s a new band, a new Bonfire.

There is a song on the “Byte The Bullet” album (2017) called “Without You”, which is co-written by Joe Lynn Turner, just like your classics “Sleeping All Alone” and “Sweet Obsession”. Is “Without You” an outtake from the 80s, or did you team up with Joe Lynn Turner again to write something new?

Ronnie: That’s something new, it wasn’t something that was already previously done. That was also one of the reasons why the Bonfire & Friends thing happened – when we were writing that, we had contact again with Joe, and the idea started to build. A year and a half later we said, “OK, why don’t we get him, we’ll get this guy… oh, and I love this song… and this song, when I was younger, everybody was into it…” We wanted to get the UFO singer, Johnny Gioeli, Geoff Tate… that’s where it came from.

There is one more outside songwriter on the last two albums – Fredrik Bergh from the Swedish band Bloodbound, which we like a lot! How did this creative partnership with Fredrik come together?

Ronnie: I think somehow Fredrik and Hans had been in touch. And Fredrik said, “I write songs, too, and I’d love to write something for you. I was a big fan of Bonfire”. He sent the song, and we liked it a lot. We worked on what he had sent, and then it became a collaboration. We liked the way the songs turned out from him, so we continued to work together.

For quite a long time Bonfire were releasing records on your own label LZ Records. But starting from “Byte The Bullet” you started working with outside labels again, and you also change them very often – UDR, then AFM Records, and the new live DVD is on Pride & Joy Music. Why did you decide to work with labels again, and are you satisfied with what they do for Bonfire?

Ronnie: That’s kind of the business side of it. It’s more beneficial to have a label than do it yourself. LZ Records was Lessmann & Ziller, they kind of just did it themselves, and record labels are a business, they have a better distribution, you don’t have to worry about this, they take care of everything, that’s what they do. We’re with AFM now, and we’re really happy with them, we have really good working relationship.  
Alexx: You probably know that our next album comes out on AFM in April 2020.

Why is then your latest DVD “Live On Holy Ground” not on AFM? (everybody laughs)

Ronnie: We played the show at Wacken, and it was recorded, and we really liked the recording. We thought the performance was really good, and we wanted to release it on DVD, but AFM didn’t want to.
Alexx: The first idea was to make it just a small goodie for the fans, a piece of merchandise, but it turned out so great after we mixed it in the studio, it’s a really valuable product now. If AFM had known this before, maybe they would have done it.
Ronnie: We spoke with AFM. Like Alexx said, first we were gonna just release it and sell it on our merch stand, but it really came out so good that we were like, “Wow, we wanna have a proper release for it!” AFM said, “No, don’t do it, don’t release it”, but we thought, “That’s too good, we have to”.

About 10 years ago Bonfire wrote a song called “Rap Is Crap!” It was before both of you joined the band, but maybe you know what drove the band to make such a statement?

Ronnie: I do know the reason. They are real rock fans, and back when they wrote this song, rap was a different thing. In the 70s there was this “disco sucks” thing, it was a rock vs. disco battle, and it was also the same back then when they wrote this song. And it rhymes! (everybody laughs)

OK, how do you guys put together the setlist? With so many albums to choose from, how are you able to put together just a 60-minute or a 90-minute set?

Alexx: That’s so hard! Fans come and tell us, “I wanna hear that song! We wanna hear this song!” You can’t make everybody happy, but we try. Sometimes we change the songs a little in the setlist, we put one song in and the other out from show to show, but actually the setlist is 2/3 parts the old stuff from the glorious days of the 80s, and 1/3 parts new songs from the latest albums.
Ronnie: We try to mix it up, but there are certain songs we have to play. If you’re Bon Jovi, you have to play “Livin’ On A Prayer”, you have to play “Wanted Dead Or Alive”, and Bonfire has to play “American Nights”, we have to play “Sweet Obsession”, there are certain songs that you have to play, you know what I mean. Then there are certain songs like, “OK, people really like this song, this will be cool, let’s surprise everybody and do this song here” – and that’s how we do it. We also have to put in new songs, so we try to make a nice flow where we start out with some power, we come in, we do our mellow ballad, we come back up, calm down, and then we leave on fire! (cracks) We try to give the fans an experience, we really watch how certain songs work, and that’s how we make the setlist.

To us the outsiders, the current line-up of Bonfire looks like really different people, but the band seems to work as a team so perfectly. What brings and keeps you all together?

Ronnie: With people it’s just like when you meet somebody for the first time. There’s always a chemistry, and the chemistry could be good, or the chemistry can be bad. For some reason between all the people that have gotten together now in Bonfire the chemistry is perfect. Everybody is really easy to get along with, nobody is short-tempered, or like, “I can’t sit still for a minute”, and it comes across onstage, and we’re all happy with it.
Alexx: And we all have a sense of humor. Humor is important.

OK, and what do you expect from today’s show here at Big Gun?

Alexx: Not really sure. (everybody laughs) We hope that many people show up. We hope that all these guys (stretches a hand towards the stage where U.D.O. are playing) are still there when we enter the stage. We play late, we are the last band tonight, and if they are here, we’d be really happy, and we’ll be able to do a great show. We will do a great show for 10 people, believe me, but it makes more fun if a big crowd is there.

What are the future plans for Bonfire? You mentioned a new album – how is it going to sound like? Have you already started recording it?

Ronnie: We have started to put it together already. We’re in the writing process right now, we’re gonna start recording drums next month, it’s a step-by-step process, and we hope to complete it by December. It’s along the same lines as “Temple Of Lies”, it’s not straying too far from that, a little bit heavier than the older Bonfire, but still keeping those catchy hooks and the choruses, the same type of style. We don’t wanna really alienate anybody, we still wanna be who we are.

Bonfire on the Internet: http://www.bonfire.de

Special thanks to Irina Ivanova (AFM Records) for arranging this interview

Interview by Roman Patrashov, Natalia “Snakeheart” Patrashova
Photos by Natalia “Snakeheart” Patrashova
July 27, 2019
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