Michael Weikathin haastattelu
Erityisesti mielenkiintoisiksi koin nämä osat:
AS FAR AS I CAN RECALL YOU GUYS USED TO WORK WITH THE SAME MANAGEMENT COMPANY AS IRON MAIDEN....
Yes we did, but Iron Maiden themselves weren't big time idols for us. Me and Kai Hansen, we were born around 1962-63' and we grew up with a lot of influences.
Naturally, we knew Iron Maiden, but as for me, when I heard them for the first time, I was really angry, because they did the things that I had in mind, or that we had in mind and wanted to do.
When I heard their second album - 'Killers' - for the first time, I thought: "Fuck, this is what I wanted to do and someone's already done it!" Then they did 'The Number of the Beast' and I took that record to my band, the one I was in before Helloween, and I said: "Look, for 3/4ths of the year we have to be able to do something as impressive as this and if it doesn't work out, we'll have to end the band and do something different."
That's when Kai Hansen played in my band for about two weeks, but we got a lot of criticism from the others, who didn't want to do it, so then we quit that band and created HELLOWEEN. We were thinking more along the lines of Rainbow, Deep Purple, Accept - even more extreme, fast and heavy than Accept. That was one of our main intentions.
And to have something of the huge impact that bands like Manowar or Dio, as a singer, would create. We wanted something like that with our band. We didn't really care much about Iron Maiden, even though we liked the music, we were aware that we had to come up with something different.
The comparisons are because of the twin-vocals, but our idols for twin-vocals were Wishbone Ash, Thin Lizzy and the Scorpions, also Accept and Judas Priest. I mean, Iron Maiden was there, but it wasn't like: "Oooh, this has got to sound like Iron Maiden and we're so influenced by them."
After all, we had our own bands for eight years before all that. We were doing separate things until Helloween, we did semi-professional music for eight years.
JANUARY 23RD, 2011, HELLOWEEN WITH STRATOVARIUS AT THE 'HRISTO BOTEV HALL'...
Yes, you've just said it. It's a package, with Stratovarius as special guests. Naturally we have a new setlist, which so far contains five tracks from the new record, as well as a few other things. Also some little interludes, instrumental stuff, drum solo and whatever, plus a few tracks we've never played live and some that we did in the past that came out quite well.