It’s only a few hours before the pumpkins get on the stage of Release Athens Festival, making this the first time that they will play on Greek soil with Michael Kiske and Kai Hansen. The last time they played in Greece was 10 years ago and Markus Grosskopf cannot explain why it’s taken them so long to come back. However, he promises an amazing show that we will never forget and we don’t have any reason not to believe him. He says that the band will be playing live all year long, so the new album will be out probably in 2024. Also, he confessed that he never wanted to be a singer, because it’s a pain in the ass, that it took them some time to convince Kiske to reunite with the band and finally that… drummers, but mostly bass players are the coolest people! He is laughing all the time and talks with passion, so once again we don’t have any reason not to believe him. Interview: Yiannis Dolas
Rockpages.gr: How was the States? How was playing in the States.
Markus Grosskopf: Nice. We haven’t been there since the pandemic times, everything was delayed for like two, two and a half years. And so, yeah, that was really, really great. Hanging out in America, doing things over there. South America, North America. It’s been two months of playing and fun. You know, it’s been great being able to go out there and play again, you know, reaching an audience. We did the first summer festival in Spain two days ago. It’s working, you know, it’s moving. We’re on. That’s what you live for.
Rockpages.gr: Do you see that power metal is making a comeback worldwide, both with Helloween, of course, reuniting with the two singers, but also with newer bands like Sabaton, Power Paladin, Windrose and others who are very popular?
Markus Grosskopf: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, wherever we go, we have a warm welcome and people seem to like it. At least where we are going, hanging around and playing. People seem to really like it, going for it, you know, that’s good. It’s traditional kind of metal and it’s good. We have lots of young folks coming to the shows. We have lots of older folks coming to the shows. We got all ages, we almost get like three generations hooking up, you know? That’s very good. I like that.
Rockpages.gr: Now, of course, the question is that everybody’s asking, what’s going on with the new album? We’ve read the interviews, but when it’s out?
Markus Grosskopf: Yeah, we just ran into the festival season now and everybody has ideas. Song ideas, for themselves, individual members are collecting ideas. But, now we we’re going to finish this summer. festival things. There’s a lot of festival to do for us next week and we can all play a different festival or two and well after that, it’s probably the time to think about it, to record for the next year and then the beginning of the next year we will trying to get together and then listen to ideas and making plans for our studio, making plans for another record, making plans for songs, you know.
But this year we still concentrate on playing and going out there and having a lot of festivals to do.
Rockpages.gr: But, do you have any song ideas, any stuff that you’ve written and you want to show the guys and the work on it?
Markus Grosskopf: I have it all at my home here and when the time will come, I would present it to the guys. We didn’t sit together now. We have a couple of songs, already. But, we will sit down whenever there’s time for it. I have some stuff here, I have some good ideas, but I have to try to get them together. Making real songs out of parts and out of a theme. You know, we needed a good time to do this.
Rockpages.gr: And how do you write your songs? How do you make a song of after an idea?
Markus Grosskopf: Mostly I start with a middle melody, with a melody that got in my head and I kind of build the guitars around the melody, you know, working with the melody of the chorus line or like the verses any, any good. So you can put the guitars around it rather than having a steady riff and then you can sing to it, which will work as well.
But you can’t limit it with a vocal. If you don’t want to change the riff you always got to be open to If you’ll find some better notes for like the chorus line or something, you should be able to change the guitar riffing ‘till then. It will fit the new idea from like the vocal part. It’s like the chorus line should be the main thing in the song.
And while you should be able to put guitars around the chorus line, around the melodies, that’s not what everybody has in his head. I mean, in metal and rock music, there’s a riff going on it, which is kind of same important as the chorus line. But, if you don’t sing to it, you can play whatever you like, but I like to have the melody like it is, and then fooling around with the guitars surrounding it, so that the melody, the hook line, is still like the main thing.
And then, I try to put it together, find parts and pieces that fit with the whole song. Of course, with Helloween, you’ve got some killer solos in there. And a different part here, a different part there. Or you make it easy or simple. But then like, like Andy is doing a lot of times, which I really do like, or you make it a bit more complicated, like Weiki does…
We are having fun writing, because we’ve got a big variety of things to do, you know, that’s making it very, very interesting.
Rockpages.gr: Variety… I was going to ask you about that, because I read in an interview with Michael Kiske, that Kai Hansen sent a demo to Michael Kiske and he thought that the stuff that he was listening was “out of the box” somehow. So, I wanted to ask you, what’s exactly in the “box for Halloween” and what is “out of the box”?
Markus Grosskopf: Out of the box? Right. It’s just something that sounds so different from what we did before, but we do it. But, you know, if it’s going to work on stuff that you wouldn’t think would fit Helloween, but then Halloween, working with it, working with such ideas, it suddenly becomes Helloween, you can put it in the “Helloween box”.
Because we all got our different unique styles and different unique ways of working with stuff. And then at the end of the day, you have a Halloween song.
Rockpages.gr: Actually, that phrase, “out of the box”, reminded me of your “best of album” for your 25th anniversary, the “Unarmed” album with. I actually remember that when I went to Sony Music in Athens to get some promo CD’s and I got the Helloween “Best of”, so I put it in the car stereo and when I hit “Play” and listened to it, I thought that it was the wrong disc, so I was looking through the CD cases to check which one was the correct ont and I almost crashed my car! So what’s your comment about this? Did you like the totally different album idea?
Markus Grosskopf: They wanted us to do an on an unplugged album, but everybody’s doing one. So we decided to make it a little bit different, to give it a different costume, to give it a different vibe. You know, we have like people working with that songs who never heard the originals, they’re not listening to metal or something. So, we wanted to get our songs in a totally different costume, arranged by people who doesn’t even listen to heavy metal and see what happened with it. It got really interesting that way.
Rockpages.gr: Did you think about your fans and go: “Oh, if we change the classic songs, they might not like it”.
Markus Grosskopf: What would they think? I don’t know. I mean, we just can do what we think is right, hoping that the people may like it, you know, and hope that all people find it interesting, just like we did. If we do like it, we release it, you know, and then you can make your own thoughts about it because we thought it was cool that way.
Rockpages.gr: And now you’re coming back to Greece after some time.
Markus Grosskopf: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s been a long time not being in Greece.
Rockpages.gr: And you play, for the first time in a venue where you can actually see the sea from the stage. Do you remember anything special from Greece, from the past, from some other shows?
Markus Grosskopf: From Greece? I’ve been in holiday in Greece for years and years and years ago. And we did a couple of great shows. But then in the recent couple of years, we didn’t get an invitation and we didn’t have a promoter. I don’t know what why it doesn’t happen. I can’t really tell you. I’m not managing. I just go there when I’m asked for, so I can’t really tell you why we didn’t go there very often. I don’t know really.
Rockpages.gr: Okay. The people here is very happy to finally see you. And of course, see Μichael Kiske singing all those songs again.
Markus Grosskopf: Yeah, that’s going to be great. It’s so much fun with all the guys being on stage and having the different singers, it’s a very, very great atmosphere. There’s a singer coming from that side. There’s a singer coming from the other side. Sometimes they are together. I like it. I like it really a lot and people seem to enjoy stuff like this, you know? So it’s going to be great.
Rockpages.gr: Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that in the heavy metal, this is the only time where you have a band having two singers. I mean, the previous singer and the current singer both together on the album and on stage. I’m not sure if anybody has done it before.
Markus Grosskopf: I don’t know. We thought it’s a much, much cooler move. And then you’ve got Kai singing a couple of things here and there. It’s very interesting. It’s a big rock and roll circus. It’s so much more interesting than like getting two people out of the band, and getting two people into the band and making a normal reunion. We have such great musicians. Why not use it? Why not use all of them, you know?
Rockpages.gr: How long did it take you to do this? I mean, did you think about reuniting some time ago, years ago?
Markus Grosskopf: It took a long period of time thinking about it. How can we do it? And it took a long time preparing for this. We took a very, very long time rehearsing this stuff before we went on tour and even a long time writing songs for the record, because we didn’t know what singer is going to sing that song, or this song. We just took our time to work on things ‘till we thought it was right to be released. It’s the only way we can work. It’s it’s time. We don’t rush things. We just give it the time it needs.
Rockpages.gr: Would you advice any of the older guard bands to do that as well? If they have a previous singer that they split up with, have a beer, think about it, and go out all together and play?
Markus Grosskopf: Well, I don’t know. It depends on if they if they got separated because of fights and not disagreements and all that. I cannot give advice. I, I don’t know they can hook up together, talk about things, make a brain search, and then try to find out what’s best for themselves, for their band. But, it’s so individual, you know? most of them are splitting and firing a singer, getting a singer, it’s so individual, you know, it needed a lot of time for Michael Kiske to be back in heavy metal you know.
We kind of prepared this for him to be very very comfortable and he agreed you know it’s working very, very well ever since. I hope it’s going to be working out for the next ten years or something. It’s so much fun!
Rockpages.gr: So after being in bands for a long time yourself and being, you know, with a singer guitarist like that, what would you say that they have the biggest egos, singers, or guitarists?
Markus Grosskopf: Singers and guitarists, all of them, all of them! Only bass players and drummers are very cool… hahaha! I’m joking. But, I’m lucky that I’m the only bass player in this band. We have so many guitar players, but the heartbeat and the pulse of the band, you know, is the drums and the bass, that’s what I call the heartbeat and the pulse. They are always single, unique people.
Rockpages.gr: And I was reading an interview with Ozzy Osbourne lately, and he said, the singers are very vulnerable. They don’t have a musical instrument, other than his voice. So, if that is gone because of, you know, partying or a cold, whatever, they can’t sing, so the band cannot play. But, he says that people prefer to see a singer struggling, or not being in the best shape, rather than cancel the show and go home. What do you think?
Markus Grosskopf: Being a singer is a tough job. I wouldn’t really do this. You know, they have to take care their throat. I can put my instrument in the case and then I go for a little drink, or two, hahaha! The singer cannot just do this. They got to sleep very long. They need dry air conditioning. Anything could affect their voice as well. It’s just like a pain in the ass being a singer. I wouldn’t do this.
Rockpages.gr: And what do you remember from the time that you were playing punk and afterwards you met Kai Hansen and you played with Second Hill. What do you remember from those times?
Markus Grosskopf: I just remember going into this rehearsal room, hearing guitar players sounding like Michael Schenker and all those guys, you know, thinking, “wow, this is it! This is what I’m going to do!” Coming from a punk band where everything was a bit loose and slappy and floppy. It was fun. I still like punk music, but then having different ideas about what my musical skills and career should go; in which direction, I found this much more interesting and I was amazed by how they could play and sing and all that. And so, I went really, really quick into this kind of stuff. I was just like, overwhelmed and I was like, “wow, this is it. I’m going to do this”…
Rockpages.gr: Typical question, but I have to ask you, when you finally started playing with Helloween and released the very big landmark albums for heavy metal and power metal music, did you realize what you were doing? That those albums you were making were going to be monumental?
Markus Grosskopf: Well, when we did the first songs and then we did the mini LP and “Walls Of Jericho”, there was something going on that we could feel was something very, very different. We gave something to the scene that kind of wasn’t there before. Or, at least we developed some style of music to make it our own kind of style. Of course we realized that. And then, there were the “Keepers…”, we did a big change again with a new singer and something happens there, you know? And then you realize, “Oh, wow, wow, there’s something going on”, with what you are doing. And it’s something very special.
Rockpages.gr: Last question, a silly one, because I was watching a video by Iron Maiden on Youtube and they were saying that once, when they were not very famous, they played at a wedding in Poland. Somebody was getting married and they asked Maiden “Can you guys play for us?” and they actually did! Did something similar ever happened to Helloween, or do you have any Spinal Tap situation like that, that you can recall?
Markus Grosskopf: Well, it was only Dani! We had a monitor guy. He got married and invited us to the party. And there was like this German, southern folk music, a band going on. And they didn’t expect Dani to play the drums. Because, he started playing with a marching band. And he could play exactly what they were playing and they were amazed by it because they didn’t expect him to get it together. He did a couple of songs from club drum notation paper, you know. Well, and I was standing there shouting: “Yeah, my drummer Dani! Give them some shit. Yeah, baby”. Maybe even bringing him beer. That was funny. And the guys were looking very weird, not expecting him to be as good as their own drummer.
