RAMMSTEIN IS A DISASTER

It all began in the north of the GDR, in my hometown of Schwerin. At some point the place got really stifling, options were few and far between. I couldn't breathe freely anymore. I realised that there were very few people who made music from a passion. I always had to motivate them. The local music scene was starting to make me sick. In 1988 I left for Berlin and didn't know a soul. I was living in a small backyard in Lychene Strasse and ended up making music all day long.

Those days were overshadowed by the fall of the iron curtain, the revolution had finally reached the streets. More or less by chance I got sucked into one of the demonstrations on the 10th October 1989. All of a sudden I was circled by a bunch of policemen and they carried me of in a truck. After hours of deriving it stopped somewhere near Weißensee. At the police station they detained me for three days. For six hours I had to stand against a wall and whenever I moved, they hit me. I had nothing to do with it, really, but the police obviously didn't care. After those three days I was so shattered and broken that I said to myself "that's enough". Beforehand I had never even entertained the thought of running away from the GDR. But then I realised - I have to leave, I have to get away from here. So I escaped over the green border between Hungary and Austria. My journeys took me back to West Berlin. But somehow that didn't feel right.

I realised I was wrong to look for strength outside myself, that I had to mobilise my own powers. It is one thing to discover your own centre, it is another to actually gain a creative force from it. Often, I was blocking myself. You have to be able to focus on the stuff that truly matters, on what you're really good at. I finally realised I was good at bringing people together and motivating them. It is important to find the right constellation. So that's when I decided to start my own band in 1993.

Musically I was very much influenced by America in those days. Because I hadn't really gotten around to developing my own style. I think that's a legitimate musical stage to pass through. But with time you reach a turning point where quantity is all of a sudden transformed into a new kind of quality. Right then I was still discovering music. We had some band practices and recorded a few demos. Than the mother of my child left me. For the first time in my life I fell into a really deep hole. I had always wanted to be part of a successful band, the addiction to success had totally tensed me up. My goal was clear and fixed, but the road to success, the "efforts of passing the levels" were my biggest problem. I was probably blocking myself with my own lofty expectations.

By now the wall had gone and after a year in West Berlin I moved to join Till in Schwerin. Till had a little workshop for weaving baskets. There he sang every once in a while. Often I was standing in his doorway listening and thinking "what a powerful voice". One day I recorded him for no specific reason. After two or three weeks I called and asked if he fancied singing, he should just give it a try. It took a long time to persuade him. He came up to Berlin. There he was, standing in the practice space unable to get anything to come out of his mouth. Then he fetched himself a bottle of Korn, quickly finished it off and managed two little words "yes" and "no".

Around this time I was obsessed with America, I desperately wanted to go to this faraway country where anything was meant to be possible. It wasn't just my great interest in American music, it was the yearning for and the fascination of this new, alien world. After the walled in years of the GDR America had become the embodiment of freedom to me. Then all of us, Till, Olli and me, flew out to America for the very first time. That's where I found out how important it is to look for one's own identity, to discover it, find it and hold on to it. No matter what you do or where you are. It's important to live with yourself the right way. To define your longings because they are life's true driving force. I discovered how incredibly important it is to be surrounded by the right people. And it became clear to me that the music I had been making had nothing to do with me. So I went back to Germany with the idea for a project concerned with German music. I wanted to bring machines and guitars together, hard guitars. That was the basic idea.

I was living with Olli and Schneider whom I knew from "Firma" (the firm). The three of us had worked together on this project. But I soon noticed how hard it can be to compose music and write at the same time I had to make a decision.

At the same time there was a competition in Berlin for young, inexperienced bands, the main prize of which was a week in a professional studio. A demo had to be sent in which we recorded at my place. Unfortunately we only had a four track and a small drum machine. Till who tended to arrive late at night, had to sing under the duvet because we couldn't be too noisy. We submitted the demo and won straight away. It was still just the four of us - Schneider, Olli, Till and me.

The fifth was 0 who at the time was very interested in out music. He was curious and wanted to know: "What are you doing there?" because he knew us all. We asked him to come along for a listen. 0 is a very open minded guy, but he and his way of thinking is totally the opposite of me. I found that important and exciting, bringing together different people with different ways of thinking because it's the only way creativity can flourish. That's why I thought it would be a good idea for him to join us. For the envisaged machine-sound now we only needed a keyboardist. The sixth, Flake, was playing coy for a long time. Once we were all together, Till, Schneider, Olli, 0, Flake and me, we became a conspirative community, some kind of gang. The curious thing about this constellation was that around that time all of us had fucked up our relationships. Every one of us had trouble with their girlfriend, we were all in the same position and could emphasis with each other's feelings. This created an enormous force, ready to be vented. We all knew: together we've got the potential to change the world. We never really thought about contracts or success. We wanted to be together and make music. Music that was only to do with us and would be radically different from everything else. And that was an enormous power overwhelming me. I never expected it to be like that. We then practised for a long time - in Schwerin and Berlin. We spent almost every day together.

In the beginning everything was fine. Well, there were some problems. With 0, for example - all of a sudden there was another guitarist. For me it was a totally new experience to play with a second guitarist. I had never been in that situation before. There were tough fights. These confrontations within the band still happen, it frees up our collective creativity. Rammstein is only Rammstein when all of us are part of it, no matter how much or little everyone contributes. No matter which one of us has a musical idea he can and should introduce it. That's a good thing and has proved worthwhile. All ideas have to pass through this Rammstein-filter before whey really become Rammstein. Otherwise we'd all be a little uneasy about it. All decisions we didn't make in unison have turned out to be bad ones. That's why I really believe in this Rammstein-force, channelled through six people. We've been proved right on this time and again.

I believe fate's played a major part in that. It's not like we deliberately sat down and said "let's somehow use a name that provokes". I believe things come together and are meant to be together and they created the real power and courage for a project like Rammstein.

I also think that someone who's never heard of the plane disaster in Rammstein will still notice the word's phonetic power surge. Rammstein contains an elementary force, it expresses an attitude to life. I believe that many sense this in their subconscious. Rammstein is no bogus claim, no fraud "it contains what it says on the packaging".

Rammstein is a disaster and the world is an accumulation of disasters. For me that makes sense. I always saw it in a productive sense, that someone is prepared to challenge real disasters. It's a normal phenomenon for disasters to happen in this world. That cannot be denied. No matter if it's a hurricane or a war. That's shy Rammstein is a claim, and attitude, a way of life. In this context the media often ask us: "Why employ this aesthetic"? Well, because we grew up with it. When you've lived in the East, confronted by the reality of socialism on a daily basis you will at some point notice that certain structures of the GDR's totalitarian aesthetics live on. It's simply an aesthetic we've grown up with. And when you want to create something new it is first of all your own biography you will draw on, the most authentic material you can use without lying to yourself. A central aspect to Rammstein is heritage. In the East art claimed a totally different position. Art was an instrument to critically dissect the shortcomings of society. Commercial success was secondary, it was unimportant. Money didn't play a major role. More important was the provocation and that came straight from the gut. The basis for art was communication and the artistic implementation and interpretation of certain problems. That's what many still don't seem to understand. And that's reflected in the numerous misinterpretations. We try to confront taboo topics in our music. This translated on stage with costumes, pyrotechnics, lighting etc., this overall work of art, this show is often misunderstood by certain journalists.

They tend to forget about our biographies: we grew up in a dictatorship where art had a completely different function, art was seen as a weapon. Rammstein can only be understood in this context. That always has been and will remain to be our basis - the straight-forwardness, the simplicity and consistency. Simple musically, comprehensible lyrics. Rammstein stands for and seeks communication and this could be our key to success. Rammstein is emotional and easy to identify with. That's probably the most important aspect. The phenomenon Rammstein polarises. This damned band cannot be ignored. Now that mainstream has become all-pervasive you are grateful when someone dares to crank up the mediocre, lukewarm, soothing ambient temperature, no matter which genre of the arts that might be in. Courage plays a major part in that. You have to have the potential for it. Any idiot can simply drift along. No matter if it's in music, art or everyday life.

Rammstein's success emerged from a new sense of freedom. There was no commercial or political pressure, no censorship to battle against. We didn't have to consider what was allowed and what wasn't. We just did it. That's a great advantage you tend to lose at some point. This spontaneity and creativity you should cherish for as long as possible. Naivety as a fixed aesthetic category. Because once reason enters, the equation mathematical calculations will take over and make the output predictable. This kills authenticity. The product becomes dispassionate and boring, the message is lost.

After long fights, endless practices, many discussions and sleepless nights we completed our first demo. In 1995 we were finally ready: Emu, our manager, had set up our first record deal. In this year we also started on our first album. It was hard to get a producer interested in an unknown band. After long searches we found Jakob Hellner, a Swedish producer, who, compared to the all the others, seemed like a serious guy to me. I will never forget this first production. There we were in Stockholm. We had two apartments, one in town, the other on the outskirts. The first title we recorded at Polarstudio, the former Abba studio. Then everything was still very productive and new to us. We didn't want to stop working. But after a while disharmony reared its ugly head. And that was something we all noticed.

There were many fights because everyone wanted to assert themselves. It was all about power, competence and hierarchies. This went straight to the bone. Jakob just wanted to work with Till - he kept him apart from us - and of course that didn't work at all. The resulting chaos was immense. It was the most difficult phase for Rammstein to date. Being the first album it took on existential importance - here our future was being determined and decided. It was a very tough time. In the end we simply stopped the production. We all went back to Berlin and thought about how to carry on from here. Eventually, we mixed the entire record in Hamburg with a new engineer and this is how, after long fights, "Herzeleid" was finished.

A lot has happened since, amongst others three studio CDs and a live album. We have received gold and platinum records and many awards.

To recharge my batteries for what lies ahead I recently returned to Schwerin, my old home, where everything had started. Lots of people reminded me that as a child I had walked around saying, "I will be a rock star". They had always thought I was completely bonkers. But I never stopped believing it and that's the most important thing - to believe. You simply know that there is a certain role for you to play in life. You receive certain signs and then take on that role. That's normal. Some people cherish a special dream. And this dream is meant to be dreamt. The dream itself is all about a dream. And when you question and confront it you will notice that it isn't a dream after all. Sometimes it's important to simply let people dream.

...well, maybe that's not the way it is, it's probably totally different.

Richard Z. Kruspe - Bernstein

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