Exclusive Interview with Richard Kruspe

Last Friday came the big Rammstein Retrospective "Made In Germany 1995-2011". Read our interview with guitarist Richard Kruspe, in which he talks about false nostalgia among others and the concept of the band as a marriage of convenience.

 

Richard Kruspe, you seem different to look at their East German past as some of your colleagues. You have felt the GDR as a prison?


This must be considered selective. Until I was about twelve years old, I absolutely felt the GDR not as a prison, I had a relaxed childhood. There was really no discernible at first glance, social differences, status has not played a role. Only when I got older and started, had to look outside the box, came the questions. These questions were not welcome and were not answered, so I felt that then, at some point as a prison. I had problems with teachers, with authority over all, and I am so more and more pushed to my limits.

How do you assess colored nostalgic flashbacks?

Sometimes I can understand that. It's not all just black or white. But I am fully aware that my development as a person and musician without the West, so would not have been possible.

They are cut off from Hungary in 1989 ...


Six months before the Wall fell! That was not planned, but a stupid accident. The classics, like in the movie: I was advised by chance in 1989, a demonstration, and when I got off the subway, was arrested I did. A mix-up. Then it went to the police station, where I was placed on the wall for hours and beaten. I was beaten, interrogated, and if I have moved me again beaten. Then I knew: "You have to get out of here!" A spontaneous reaction to this incident. I am then fled with my gay friend Leo through Hungary to West Berlin.

Why did you go to the turn back to your old home? 

I found it totally sucks in West Berlin. Everything was gray and dark, which made ​​me afraid. I came from a very sheltered environment. In West Berlin, I was lonely and always on the go. Mainly on concerts, Nirvana have seen in the loft and so on. One evening I met at a party, to which I was not invited, met a woman and her ex-drummer of the wrong colors. By then I finally made ​​a little music.In the long run, the housing situation with three people in one room was very stressful, and in the east, there was no end of cheap housing. So I'm back.

They have broken out again, first from the East, later to New York, have implemented a solo project. The overall result is a picture of a restless people - how do you explain that?

Psychologically this is relatively easy to explain: I am the second born and my brother was always my mother's favorite, has always done everything right. I always had to fight for attention and eventually had chosen the other side and I got the attention there.

And ended up with a band that created by boundary violations attention. Behind the taboos of Rammstein, a concept? 


In the beginning was our only concept of approaching a certain naivety on the matter. This naivete, we have consciously tried to maintain. If you look at yourself too much questioning, automatically starts a form of self-censorship. But we wanted to avoid any form of censorship that we knew everything from the East, which was constantly censored. This is perhaps the only approach. There is no agreed master plan. I do not think that would work. Art comes out of a spontaneous gut feeling.

The musical and aesthetic context of the band has clearly defined. Which also means: One must strictly subordinate. How hard is that to you? 


Very difficult. And it is even more difficult, because you realize that you've become a slave to his own show. Time to just stand on stage with athletic shorts and loszuspielen is not. On the other hand, I also realize that we have created with this band a trademark and created a unique sound.Nevertheless, there is a narrow ridge, which is why it is important to be able to live out other needs elsewhere. I would like to play again in an AC / DC cover band. Simply go to the stage, are no lights, no show, only rock'n'roll.

There were some crises in Rammstein, had to do with such desires? 


already. But everyone knows that he was taking what we have achieved with this band will never make it again with something else. We are all proud of the achievements together. And we have to compromise. Flake has previously played in a funk and blues band. When we arrived with Pantera, he looked at me and asked, "What's that for a shit?" Today, he is also good, what we do.

Rammstein is the band one of convenience?


too. Absolutely. We are of course dependent on each other financially. It would be nonsense to say otherwise. 

The group is more than the sum of its parts?

Yes. We had to learn them all. I have succeeded by the departure from Berlin. That was important for me because my former environment was not healthy for me. In New York it has become clear with the necessary distance, as our moronic petty squabbles are. I could see again the great things we have achieved. And then you come back, and the whole process starts again from scratch.

The last album, it has re-crunched?

Yes, there were moments where everyone knew not supposed to go like it. We could also agree not musical. As you get older, you no longer want to deal constantly with the same old problems. So much remains unspoken and there are new problems. Since we are God had come out thanks healing. When the album was finally finished, was also the ballast away. During production, we simply had to make many decisions. With six people can be hell.

How hard you carry out such conflicts? 


We have never beaten us anyway, even if we were a couple of times on the verge. Sometimes I would even want me, because I think sometimes that can solve such an honest fist-fighting problems, like the Wild West. (Laughs) Was it not given. We have always managed to clarify the communication by, on the Buddhist Art

How much these long haul touring to your health now?

The tour is not the problem, rather the celebration. If you would go immediately to the hotel after the show - easy. But if you clock in the morning to six celebrating now increasingly difficult to get out of bed.

Drive to balance sport?

Everyone does something different. Because of my back problems I've started with Schneider to make the show an hour before yoga. We have a yoga teacher, and that helps too. And Till and Olli have always danced tango before