“There is a deep meaning in the title and album cover of the new Michael Schenker Fest album“, says Michael Schenker: “It illustrates my musical life at a glance with much to be revealed. Because of that I called the album ‘Revelation’. Another title for this album could have been “Purity and Passion versus Greed and Corruption”. And it’s with that thought in mind I called up Michael and interrupted him whilst having his breakfast, my fault entirely of course, for only the second time in 1000 interviews I’d misread the time zone. I spent the next two hours wondering what one of the world’s most lauded guitarists ate to set himself up for the day…
Mark: Hi Michael!
Michael: Hi Mark!
Mark: I’m so sorry for interrupting your breakfast earlier.
Michael: (laughs) that’s OK!
Mark: The big news for me is that I loved the first Michel Schenker Fest release ‘Resurrection’ but ‘Revelation’ is even better – absolutely fantastic.
Michael: Thank you so much.
Mark: I’ve been listening all week and can’t seem to put it down. I know that you did what you normally did when you record an album and you sort of ‘isolated yourself’ from the world. What do you think that that gives you when you’re putting together a new album?
Michael: well I didn’t really isolate myself as such, whoever wrote that, it kind of left a dramatic effect on people as you’re not the first to ask that. Because I always say well what do you do if you study for an exam? You don’t invite your friends round, you’re gonna go into a room with nobody in there and you focus on your recording. But that’s just the normal procedure, you know, I don’t know why they made such a big deal out of it! (laughs) But it goes without saying that if you need to focus you don’t put yourself in a mix of people. So that’s just the normal procedure – me in my music room listening to my collective pieces of gold that I collect when I play and discover when I play on a regular basis for an hour or so. I have lots of bits and pieces and riffs as a starting point, and when I find a good one I use that to inspire me to put together a song. And I do that piece by piece until I have a collection – in this case I got to thirteen songs and when I finish I go to the studio with my co-producer Michael Voss and as he has no clue what is going to come up I give him some time and then off we go. I start putting down my music – I’m like the architect of the structure of the whole album, I think an album should read like a book and I have to make sure it goes in the right direction so I put together a blueprint lyrically and musically. And when I have my ideas down we add electronic bass and drums just to make sure the musicians know what’s going on and what the tempo is. Then the singers choose their songs – like Doogie chose the first two then Robin picked the next one, then Graham picked two and somehow it all works out.
Michael: So I create the blueprint and Michael Voss is in charge of making it all happen. I loved the part when we had the four singers, I wanted it to happen four times on this album but we managed it three times, the fourth one was actually a fast song – we never did a song with all four singers singing on a fast song, so Michael Voss came up with this great idea – he knew a guy who sang with Ritchie Blackmore and I said sure go ahead he has a great voice, and he came on board to guest on the album so we had another ‘Ritchie’ singer on the album! Another Rainbow singer! I don’t know what’s happening you know! The funny thing is I have three drummers of Jeff Beck, two bass-players of Jeff Beck, four singers of Ritchie Blackmore if you include Joe Lynn Turner, and Roger Glover who produced my first album of Deep Purple, and it was Deep Purple who once asked me to join them so there’s all these connections between Deep Purple and Ritchie Blackmore and Michael Schenker! They must have kept an eye on me when I was very young and played with UFO (laughs)
Mark: (laughs)
Michael: And of course I had Cozy Powell in my band, Don Airey who of course also played with Rainbow, so it seems like the generation before me had their eyes on me, and that I guess is why Ozzy Osbourne asked me to join him, I mean I love all these people, I love Ozzy Osbourne, I love Black Sabbath, I love Deep Purple, I love Led Zeppelin, that’s the Metal music I use as a screen to play my lead guitar, my lead guitar has always been a passion, I love how the notes come together and I try to create a chemical reaction, a positive way to create goose-pimples!
Mark: And you certainly do that with your work on this album Michael. I think you’ve already answered four or more of my questions already!
Michael: (laughs)
Mark: Just to recap a little I must admit I really loved ‘The Warrior’ and ‘The Last Supper’ where everyone is trading those vocals, it’s a very special aspect of the album and one that really does work so well. It was fun trying to pick who was singing each part!
Michael: (laughs)
Mark: There’s also the wonderful opener ‘Heart and Soul’ which features Mr. McAuley on vocals but which also has a guest appearance by Kirk Hammett who I know is a big fan of yours?
Michael: Yeah…what about it?
Mark: I just think it’s great to see, as you talked about the older generation looking at you before, and Kirk is one of the younger generation who I guess looked towards you?
Michael: I’m glad you said that, and it is fantastic you know, Kirk for so many years was too shy to approach me and finally we got together on That Metal Show in New York, and I asked him if he wanted to be on Michael Schenker Fest: there’s no Fest without a guest! “Kirk do you wanna do it?” And he said yes (laughs)
Mark: (laughs) And it’s a wonderful song as well, a great opener. The thing that gets me about you Michael is that you have so much going on musically. I think the last time I saw you play was in Agoura Hills in Los Angeles 2015, and that was a very different show, because you have the Michael Schenker Group, Temple of Rock and Michael Schenker Fest, and the Fest is the tour that brings everything together from your entire career?
Michael: Yes, absolutely and the idea came when we were in Japan, Graham Bonnet asked if he could sing a song with us and that’s when it clicked. That’s when I realised “Wait a minute Michael you have been performing a lot of the music of Michael Schenker but not with the original singers.” I wanted to get to performing the songs with the singers that I wrote the songs for and played with on the album, and that’s when it clicked, you know. I even thought about Klaus Meine and Phil Mogg even though it was far-fetched, but I thought maybe I could achieve it with the 80’s singers. It was still popular music, so we called the up and they were ready you know. I think they were waiting! (laughs)
Mark: (laughs)
Michael: I think they were. It was very strange that they were free. I had a very good combination of musicians put together – all the obvious choices especially ‘Big Mac’ a great addition to the whole thing, a fantastic musician, and then of course Ted McKenna passed away and put everything on full stop. I had to talk myself out of a pit and tell myself to keep on working. But I managed to focus and pull myself out. And then we had a lot of ideas for guest musicians but we had to scrap all that as it was very time-consuming and I had to now focus on drummers as there was a window of seven months from the last UK show to the US tour and I didn’t want to wait around for seven months and not record an album. I so started in September, I went to the studio in November and Ted was scheduled in for February but sadly he died on the 19th of January.
Mark: It was so sad to hear when he passed, a great musician.
Mark: The live show for Michael Schenker Fest is a pretty long show?
Michael: The Michael Schenker Fest we do is a minimum of two and a half hours. That’s 32 songs and then there’s 13 songs for the album, so a total of 45 songs. So we had the idea to ask Simon Phillips who is the original Michael Schenker Group drummer on the album that Roger Glover of Deep Purple produced the first Michael Schenker Group record. That was a good choice, he wasn’t available for touring but he really was keen on making the album, and Bodo Schopf from the McAuley Schenker group he offered help and he was available for touring. So we ended up with ten songs for Simon Phillips on the album and three songs for Bodo Schopf on the album. And every spare minute I had we were in the UK and we rehearsed the heck out of the set of 32 songs. Everything worked out and we finished the master of the album and on the 31st we invited the national press to a listening party, and people were happy with the album. The head of Nuclear Blast he wrote me a personal e-mail, he’s in love with this album! And that was fantastic to hear. Simon Phillips said to Michael Voss “Hey Michael (Voss) this is fucking great!”
Mark: (laughs) It is a wonderful album. I know that I’ve followed your career since I was very young, and I think one of the best things in music is when you hear someone who has always been there for you musically both sounding like they are having fun and producing some of the best music of their career. I know that for part of the nineties you sort of took a bit of a back seat but really for the past ten or eleven years you’ve been out there constantly touring and making new music and building things up again.
Michael: Yeah, you know what happened. In my ‘middle years’ for the first time in my life I realised that completely, unconsciously, I had no idea what I was doing, when I was a kid. I was playing and not expecting anything, not competing, not looking for favour, not looking for money or anything I was just having fun playing. I had no idea what I had created. When we did ‘Strangers in the Night’ people tapped me on the shoulder and people were shouting ‘Michael Schenker is God!’ and I was like ‘What?!’ People were calling me from America telling me everyone was playing my guitar style! And I was like ‘What!?’ and I told Kirk Hammett that all that I did that he liked so much I did unconsciously I had no idea what I was doing, I was just playing guitar! He said “Get out of here!”
Mark: (laughs) So what was the driving factor for you, what made you go your own way?
Michael: (laughs) Nobody understands that I was just playing! But the most important thing I think was when I was seventeen I made the conscious choice to stop listening to other guitarists, stop listening to music and release what was inside myself, that thing that nobody knows about, just like you have inside yourself. If others had something that was unique, then there must be something unique inside me. So why should I copy someone else who was already doing it – why don’t I just create new colours and release them to the world? And that’s what I did on a daily and yearly basis. That’s how I ended up with an original style. And that’s why I was saying I’m the architect of this (new) album and I want to make it all as much ‘Michael Schenker’ as possible. When I made ‘Strangers in the Night’ I hadn’t really experienced enough playing and I was really grateful I was given the chance to experience that so I could make a choice if I wanted to stay there or if I wanted to experiment as an artist in music and work on personal things and learn more about life.
Mark: What was it then that happened ten or so years ago to get you back playing live so actively?
Michael: In 2008 as you said all of a sudden I had the thought “I want to be on stage” – “What Michael you want to be on stage?” And then I realised it was the middle years that had made me ready for all that, I had to go through those middle years in order to develop and understand who I was. There’s that old saying about staying true to yourself and that’s exactly what is happening now. So I didn’t take the offer wit Ozzy Osbourne, I didn’t take the offers I got from Ian Hunter, from Lemmy and from all those great guys, and they are all great guys but I wanted to stay true to my vision and that was always ore important. I knew what fame was like and I wasn’t interested in that obnoxious Rock and Roll lifestyle – I didn’t need that. I am an artist and that’s what I focused on and of course I learnt so much at the same time. The first song I ever wrote was ‘In Search of the Peace of Mind’ and I have two tattoos on my back one says “Born to overcome” and the other says “Born to be free” and if you put all three pieces together you know where I’m coming from. So I stayed true to myself and created a three-dimensional Michael you know. So today I understand who I am, and maybe if I’d played with Ozzy I would have stayed two-dimensional? I would have maybe got a lot of icing but no cake! But because of my middle-years working on myself and doing all kinds of stuff, that developed me and took me to another level of understanding about life in general and that’s what made me ready for now! So what I unconsciously started I can now return at this point in my life and consciously continue. Now I have my cake I can put my icing on!
Mark: And the best thing is Michael, you sound like a man who doesn’t regret a thing!
Michael: (laughs) No. Yes – absolutely! And I maybe wouldn’t have been doing this today if I’d gone a different route. And you know another funny thing I sometimes lately ask myself is that people don’t look at what they get but they always look at what they want, it’s very strange. They don’t know how to say ‘thank you’ to anybody about what they get but they are always obsessed with what they can’t get. I wonder if I had never joined UFO what would have happened to the Scorpions. I wonder what would have happened if I had never left UFO. I wonder what would have happened to the scorpions if I had stayed with them. I wonder if they would have stuck with me, I might not have made them a penny, or Ozzy Osborne. Because those years were all about experimenting you know. So if I ask myself all these questions because the Scorpions were so unhappy when I left them, because I had a contract with them for the ‘Lovedrive’ album to have an equal share, but they left my picture out you know, which is breach of contract, but I never looked at that because when the Scorpions asked me to help them, because Matthias couldn’t finish it, I ended up playing throughout the whole album. Because the producer asked me to put little bits and pieces everywhere so I’m actually all over the ‘Lovedrive’ album. And Rudolf was already convinced that they were going to keep me in the band but they did not understand that I had my own vision and I could not do that. I had already just left UFO why should I start the whole route again? And then I thought look you left UFO, you said no to the scorpions why should you join Ozzy Osbourne? The next thing would have been to team up with David Coverdale you know? I left UFO because I wanted to be out of the spotlight and have fun, experiment, and that’s exactly what I did.
Mark: And I’m so very glad you did, and I’m so very glad that we’re talking about an album like ‘Revelation.’ I know we’re almost out of time now time Michael, but my readers wouldn’t forgive me if I didn’t ask you one final question – it took Scorpions over 30 years to get to Australia, when will we see you?
Michael: Well this is the question you know. Michael Schenker Fest is such a big undertaking, it’s a really expensive undertaking really. Gary comes from Bangkok which is not so very far from Australia, but Robin and Graham are in Los Angeles, and Chris and Doogie are in Scotland, I’m in the UK and others are in Germany and Italy, so it’s a big undertaking. But my organisation I’ve told not to accept any offers until the album has been out for one month, so that it’s had time to sink in and it maybe, if it climbs the album charts, creates some kind of negotiation. So that the promoters are confident, you know. But in answer to your question where people can afford us we will play!
Mark: That’s a good answer (laughs)
Michael: But I’ve never played in Australia, I’ve never even been to Australia, I can’t believe it after all these years! But maybe there is a reason for it, I don’t know, we keep the best things for last! (laughs) But of all the line-ups with Doogie and Robin and Graham over 30-40 years I never played any McAuley Schenker song, I never played any Graham Bonnet song except for ‘Assault Attack’ which is really strange. And so for this to come together is so peculiar, and it’s so easy-going. People don’t understand how we can all get on but with four singers there is more than meets the eye, it’s a very peculiar time of my life. It’s almost a bit like keeping the best for last you know. And here in the third part of my life after the middle-years battleground it all works, and as I said, I’m now consciously carrying on what I created unconsciously. And I’m now that three-dimensional person who can really enjoy it all and really be with the people you know. I’m having so much fun with the audience, and seeing them smile and be happy. It’s the greatest thing.
Mark: It must be. And what a great way to close.
Mark: Thank you so much for your time today Michael and apologies again for interrupting your breakfast earlier!
Michael: Hey no problem (laughs) no problem! Thank you for calling Mark, take care! Goodbye.
The new Michael Schenker Fest album ‘Revelation’ is out on Nuclear Blast on September 20th.
