Promo "Mutter" (2001), Richard Z. Kruspe — Interview by Olivier Rouhet, 05-11-2001 (Rock Hard #005)
Rock Hard : First of all, can you tell us about the photo on the cover of this Rock Hard's issue : Till disguised as Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver !
RZK : Oh, we don't have to rack our brains. The American magazine Rolling Stone wanted to photograph us. Till suddenly had this idea : he had shaved his head "Mohican" style not very long ago and it made him laugh at playing Robert DeNiro. It's that simple, there is nothing conceptual behind this shot !
© Olaf Heine (San Francisco, 2001)
RH : What were you doing before embarking on the Rammstein adventure ?
RZK : I was playing in a band called Orgasm Death Gimmick (O.D.G). It was very Anglo-Saxon, quite pop music, but I wasn't sure which direction we were going. On an artistic level, there was something missing in the music. And then one day I took a trip to California with Oliver (Riedel) and Till (Lindemann) - we weren't playing in the same bands then, but we had already been friends for a very long time - and I realized than ODG was redundant, that there was nothing original about what we were doing... When I came back I had a new project in mind : an authentic and German project - why try to sound like the Americans ? I didn't have to be ashamed to be German... So Oliver and I saw each other again and started rehearsing. I was singing and it didn't do it at all ! So I called Till to join us, but he refused. I begged him to come and rehearse with us once, just to help us out, so that we could see what our music would be like with his type of voice, even if it means looking for another singer of the same style later. He finally accepted, he came, but he wasn't really a musician, it was very hard for him, he wasn't comfortable at all. So he asked us for a few minutes, went out and bought himself a bottle of whiskey. He took it down, to the point that he couldn't even speak anymore, but he still managed to sing with his particular style. We recorded a demo that we sent to a jury which organized a springboard in Berlin. If I remember correctly, the tracks “Rammstein” and “Weisses Fleisch” were on this tape, at least in their earliest versions. We won this springboard and, as a gift, a week of studio was offered to us. At the time, Paul (Landers) was part of two groups : Feeling B. and Die Firma. He was also our sound engineer when I played with O.D.G. He showed interest in Rammstein, so I encouraged him to join us. We were missing a keyboard and I absolutely wanted Flake to join our project : he didn't want, I tried to persuade him, for a very long time, until he finally accepted. At the beginning, it was therefore only a side-project, each of us remaining in our own band. But quickly, we realized that something was going on between us. We were friends at the base, but this project made our bond even stronger, we felt like we belonged to a gang. At first we weren't thinking about anything professional : the record companies were the least of our worries, we didn't care if we were successful, we just wanted to make music, to express that kind of anger that we all had in the heart...
RH : What kind of anger ?
RZK : Sentimental anger ! By I don't know what conjuncture, we all found ourselves at that time in a complicated phase with our girlfriends : we were dumped, we were fed up. It is the result of these frustrations that motivated us. Actually, I don't believe in fate, but I can't help but think that if we ended up with six pals, being dumped by our girlfriends, it had to happen. Rammstein was born from our heartache (Editor's note: "Herzeleid" in German, title of the first opus). We would never have been so motivated if we had stayed with our girlfriends, while there, when we got together, we told each other about our romantic woes and we motivated each other.
© Erik Hackenschmidt (2001)
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