The Hard Rocking Days of the 70’s and 80’s might be a distant memory for some, looking back from a time like today when there seem to be almost as many genres as their are bands, rock was much simpler then, purer, more connective. But those days aren’t gone, indeed some would say rock is on the way back, and bands like The New Roses have an honesty and reverence for the history of Rock and Roll their you can hear pouring out of their music.
Last year I called their latest album ‘One More For the Road’ one of the best hard rock albums I’d heard in years. It took us a while, but with a UK tour on the horizon we finally caught up with Timmy Rough to find out what makes The New Roses not just one of the most exciting bands in Germany or Europe but the World.
When we talked about great music later in the interview Timmy mentions the incomparable Aretha Franklin and how much he would have loved to have been there for one of her recordings, sadly days later Aretha passed away.
If you haven’t checked out The new Roses yet, You need to hear them, you really do.
Timmy: Hey it’s Timmy from the New Roses how are you?
Mark: I’m great thank you Sir. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to The Rockpit today.
Timmy: Hey no problem, thank you for the interest?
Mark: No worries at all, I’m a big fan of the band so just wanting to let our readers know what they’re missing out on if they haven’t checked out The New Roses just yet.
Timmy: That’s always a good foundation for an interview! (laughs)
Mark: (laughs) Yes, not a bad basis to start out with. I must admit though I came to the band quite late only hearing ‘One More For the Road’ when it was sent my way to review last year so I had to work backwards from there. I had a bit of catching up to do?
Mark: Let’s start off with a little background. You hail from the beautiful German region of Rheingau, is there much of a Rock scene in that part of the world?
Timmy: Well I guess you’d say that there isn’t really a Rock scene in the Rheingau anymore. When I was at school there was a kind of American Punk scene, and there was Nu-Metal with drop-down guitars to I don’t know what notes! Playing stuff like Korn and Slipknot and stuff like that. But there was no band really like our band that has that Rolling Stones sound so we started out as a Rock and Roll cover band when I was 17 and we played mostly for American military guys that were based in the European headquarters in Wiesbaden, one of the bigger towns in our area. So we got to play in these bars and we got to play our favourite music: a touch of Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Rolling Stones, AC/DC, The Black Crowes, Georgia Satellites and stuff like that. And that’s how it all began.
Mark: And the name, ‘The New Roses’ where did that come from? Just a cool name?
Timmy: I don’t know, it’s a common thing I guess to put real meaning into a band’s name but we didn’t, we just wanted a Rock and Roll band name that sounded cool. The only thought we put into it was that if you didn’t know us and you saw our name on a poster hopefully you’d see a Rock and Roll band. You’d read the name and think- “this must be Rock and Roll” and that was the only job our band name was meant to accomplish. The Rose I think is a good symbol for our type of music, we didn’t want to call ourselves anything depressive like the “Dead Skulls” or anything
Mark: (laughs)
Timmy: The New Roses sounded like it had something organic about it, something about love and hate, I guess a Rose is something pretty, but it has thorns, you know “every rose has it’s thorn”, “send me dead flowers to my wedding” and then you’ve got bands like Rose tattoo and all those things so we thought it was a cool idea. That’s pretty much it.
Mark: You recently played with my mate John Corabi’s band in Europe – The Dead Daises, which makes me think about their choice of ‘flower’ in their name, a daisy not quite as rock and roll as a rose…
Timmy: (laughs)
Mark: How were those guys to play with?
Timmy: They were great we did a whole tour together. They were amazing, they’re such great musicians, they really know what they are doing, every night was a blast, you could stand at the side of the stage and watch them do their magic and the more time we spent together on the road, you know, the ice melted and at the end of the tour we all got together and you could say it was like a real warm family feeling between the bands. I would definitely love to see them again, which we do in November when we do the Kiss Kruise.
Mark: The big news for UK fans is that you’re heading over for Hair Metal Heaven on the 14th September before slipping over to the States to play the Kiss Kruise and then you’re returning for a UK headlining Tour from the 21st November to the 1st December. The first headlining dates but your second visit now, what was it like on the first visit last year?
Timmy: It was a blast because anywhere you go for the first time is always really exciting, you know, and you could feel being there that the UK is along with America the most important country in Rock and Roll history. You can still feel that, you can feel it in the audience when you go out on stage. Rock and Roll is just very deep-rooted in the spirit of the people and we really appreciate that fact. So although the first time we visited we only played small bars we really, really enjoyed it because it felt natural. It felt real and it felt right. So we decided to invest time and money getting our feet on the ground in the UK and I think our management and everyone who was involved did a great job so that now we can get this first headlining tour together. So we can’t wait to see our UK fan club and hopefully some new fans. When you’re the support act there’s a lot of running around and you don’t necessarily get a lot of time free to talk to the fans, so having a chance to do a headlining tour is great as you get more time to connect with the fans, talk to them and it’s great to be able to do that.
Mark: I think you’ll go down great. Europe seems to be the home of Rock these days but I think the UK and Germany are leading the way. Both are producing some great bands at the moment.
Timmy: I have to add one more country – we just played Sweden Rock and Sweden is a very rocking country too.
Mark: Thank you for pulling me up on that one, Sweden has always kept the flag flying too.
Mark: ‘One More For the Road’ is the album you’re touring this year, when I heard it last year I was blown away, it is one of those rare records I still have to play from start to finish, there’s nothing to skip on there, how on earth do you choose what to play live with an album like that?
Timmy: (laughs) Well I guess there’s a difference between the record and the live set, and you kind of get a feeling when you play the songs live and you practice them in the rehearsal room, so you get a feeling of which songs feel better live, which fit best with the band and then you always have to pick combination to go with the songs from the other records, so the live set kind of writes itself in a way. But we do always change it a little and we keep songs for the next part of the tour because usually we do two parts of the tour, like a main tour then a second run of dates in Germany where we don’t play some of the songs we played on the first part of the tour.
Mark: There’s some great music on there and a whole range of great sounds and songs from start to finish, there’s bluesy touches, Southern Rock and even a ballad. I could tell you why I love them all, but one of the songs I always come back to is right in the middle of the album there ‘Consider Me Gone’ now that’s a great song, what can you tell me about that one?
Timmy: Well that song is one of those examples of songs that take their time because I had the riff, I wrote the riff years ago, five maybe six years ago and the lyrics I wrote in a completely different context, and then I wrote, I don’t know, maybe five or six different choruses but they never fit, so the whole development of the record took five or six years you know. I wanted to combine a modern style with the really classic blues roots style and connect the two so that’s why I took the very modern chorus with the very old school riff and do that almost kind of rap-style lyrics over it. I just felt I needed to combine those different styles in that song, that was my main goal and it took me a while (laughs) but I’m very happy with it and it’s one of those secret favourites of the audience you know, people really love it when we play that one.
Mark: I’m glad to hear it goes down well. I’m not normally one for ballads, but the two you have on the album are great – ‘The Storm’ especially, it’s such a powerful song?
Timmy: Thank you it’s definitely one of my favourites on the record because I always like those deep, a little dark, heavy slow songs and I always try to put one on every record. Like ‘Without a Trace’ on the first (record) and ‘From Guns and Shovels’ on the second, these are like different chapters of the same story. They’re all songs that kind of have the same topic, the same foundation and I tried to spotlight them from different perspectives.
Mark: So putting aside the difficulty of picking a live set with such a strong album, what can someone expect from a New Roses live show? What should the UK fans expect? Take us inside the room?
Timmy: What you see on stage is four guys who now exactly what it’s like to be a rock and roll fan because first and foremost we are rock and roll fans, and we do this because we love it. There’s no costume, no attitude, we just want to make the audience happy because we know how good it feels to be in the audience ourselves. I know how it feels to see a great show and also how it feels to be disappointed by your heroes, you know. So we’re dedicated 100% and we play every show like it’s the most important show we’ve played. We take every fan seriously and we’re so grateful that we get the chance to travel the world and do our stuff. And like I said on this tour it will be great to get the opportunity to play longer sets and to meet the audience after the show. We want everyone to have a good time with no barriers between us and the fans, and maybe we’ll have a beer and laugh with you all afterwards.
Mark: That’s a great answer. Take it all the way back now if you can. What was it that made you realise that music was going to be your life? Was there a defining moment or a gradual realisation? Thinking back to your early memories of music, what was it that first made you decide you needed to be in a Rock and Roll band?
Timmy: Music was always something that made me connect to my feelings, you know. So as a teenager I had these classic teenage feelings of you know, being in love with a girl, or feelings of being left out, or being the outsider and music was always the one thing that made me feel like I wasn’t alone, that what I was feeling was natural. The great shame was that at the time I was at school The Backstreet Boys were just huge!
Mark: (laughs)
Timmy: So everyone else seemed to be listening to those guys, but I loved the record collection of my father and all this 60’s stuff, Sam Cooke and Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis and that kind of stuff. So the songs of the 60’s really had a very big impact on me and still listen to them today especially when I’m in my car, I listen to Sam Cooke – you know that song ‘She Was only 16’?
Mark: I do.
Timmy: So when I was 16 I was in love with that girl and she wouldn’t love me back and all that stuff, well when I listen to that song today it takes me right back to when I was sixteen and I was sitting in my room at hoe crying that she would never love me! And music does that it connects so deeply, and back then it was a great way to handle my teenage life, you know? And over time the music got a little harder, it turned from Elvis to AC/DC and Zeppelin and all these bands. Then all of a sudden I played Saxophone in a rock and roll band and then the singer quit and then I took over the vocals till we searched for a new singer, who of course we never found. And then the guitar player quit and so I traded the saxophone for the guitar! And I was already 22 by the time that I realised that now I could play three chords I could start writing my first songs. And all of that just seemed like a totally natural progression, so I never thought one day ‘I want to be super rich, or really famous so I’ll start a rock and roll band’. I just always wanted to make music or be involved in music or just have it around me in some way, and the more music the better! But everything really was just coincidence, just stuff that happened along the way, you know. I picked up the guitar because I had to, I picked up the microphone because I had to and I couldn’t be happier, but everything just happened you know.
Mark: If you could have been a fly on the wall for the creation of any great album just to see how the magic happened what would it be and why? What’s the album that still resonates with you?
Timmy: Oh that’s a good question. That’s one I haven’t been asked before. I once travelled to the US and I visited the Sun Studios and I was in there and I touched the Mic that Elvis used and all that stuff. And there’s a picture in there where Jerry Lee Lewis is on piano and Johnny Cash, and Elvis and I think Carl Perkins are standing there around the piano. And Sam Phillips the owner of the Sun Records Studio at the time, he knew, although they were not that famous at that time, they were young kids, he knew that something big was happening so he turned on one microphone in the studio room and recorded that jam session. And I bought a copy of that recording, nowadays you can buy that, and the quality is super shit (laughs) because it’s one mic at the other end of the room. But you can hear them just fooling around and trying harmonies, and Elvis sings harmonies on Johnny Cash lyrics and it’s totally crazy man! It’s unreal! So it’s not a real record I guess but to be that guy who maybe cleans up in the studio, who mopped the floor that day, to witness that would have been super fucking great for me because I’m such a big fan. I’ve always wanted to witness a great recording maybe like an Aretha Franklin record (Editor’s note: Aretha sadly died a few days after our interview with Timmy) or maybe a Sinatra record to really see how these great artists made such quality and epic records. And often all in just one fucking day! They’d come in and sing twelve songs a day! Aretha would just go in and do one take and it was epic! It’s amazing, so to see something like that would blow my mind. I’m not a real technical guy, and you might realise that already, I wouldn’t look at the microphones they used, I’m not into that kind of thing, for me it’s not about the technique or the technology of recording, I’m more interested in the magic of the moment and how they could reach a level of performance that these days you just can’t reach anymore with all the technology in the world. You cannot make anybody sound like Aretha Frankin or Sam Cooke! But those guys they came into the studio and they didn’t even know the songs they were doing that well, they had lyrics and the notes, and when the band started playing they started singing. It was all one take, all live and they made such epic recordings.
Mark: And that to me is what rock and roll is all about, real music, live and from the soul.
Timmy: Yeah, for me too.
Mark: And as always we save the really easy question till last: ‘what is the meaning of life’?
Timmy: What is the meaning of life (laughs) the easiest question of all! (laughs) Well so far, and I only just turned 33 this weekend, so I wouldn’t yet consider myself a ‘wise man’, but for what it’s worth so far I think one of the main lessons I’ve learned is maybe the most important thing in life for me is balance. So everything needs balance and you only need a certain amount. Take rock and roll, now rock and roll is a very dangerous thing, if you have too much rock and roll in your life it eats you, it’ll kill you. But if you have too little I would be bored and a very sad man, and it’s the same with any kind of drug, and any kind of party… I wouldn’t say it’s about doing the right thing, I think you also need a certain amount of doing the wrong thing, knowing that it’s wrong but understanding that you need balance. Trying to stay in shape physically for example so that you can do what you need to on stage and paying attention to your body so you can hit those notes, but also to allow you to have a good time, have a few beers with my friends. I used to smoke two packs of cigarettes every day, but you know if you want to rock and roll every night you have to decide what is important. So balance is the most important lesson for me, and sometimes it’s very tough to find the right balance and you need to sometimes make certain mistakes to find out what’s right for you. I think that some people just don’t know what life has to offer in total because they sensor themselves often without any reason. So for example I like to read the books of Charles Bukowski you know him?
Mark: Yeah, ‘Ham and Rye’, all that stuff, love his work.
Timmy: Yeah he wrote I guess about the seedier side of life, prostitutes, getting shit-faced, but I like Shakespeare as well, so I guess what I’m trying to say is that there isn’t just one thing only, it doesn’t have to be exclusive, life isn’t about ‘either, or’ you can be a fan of both. For example I’m a passionate mountaineer I like to climb mountains and shit and be outdoors and have all kinds of outdoor adventures, but I also like to get shit-faced after a tour you know? Life has so much to offer and I can only try to motivate people and that’s what I try to do in my songs like ‘Every Wild Heart’ and songs like that and it’s not only just a phrase here and there to sound good, it’s an offer! An offer to look for things and try things out, you know, there’s no need to feel ashamed because you like things that are the opposite of each other it’s totally natural. Like when I was in school if you wanted to be a tough rock and roller you couldn’t like a Whitney Houston song, but you can, it’s no problem (laughs) So as a 33 year old man so far the lesson is ‘put everything in balance’ don’t feel ashamed. Is that a good answer? I don’t know?
Mark: That’s a great answer, maybe apart from that bit about Whitney Houston (laughs). If you get the balance right you can do more rock and roll for longer!
Timmy: Yeah!
Mark: Well than you so much for taking the time, have a great tour and we’ll hopefully see you soon.
Timmy: No problem Mark I really appreciate that you and your site are trying to keep rock and roll alive like we try to. Without you there is no us so thank you for your time.
Mark: And thank you for making such great music, and long may you continue to do so.
Timmy: If you get to see the show make sure you come by and say hi!
Mark: Will do, cheers.
