I can remember vividly seeing Bonfire play for the first time in the UK on the ‘Fireworks’ and ‘Point Blank’ Tours. For a band that had just released a record like ‘Fireworks’ and followed it up with a record like ‘Point Blank’ I’d argue that we got to see a band who had just released two of the finest albums of the era. I still gaze fondly on my framed signed copy of that album! There have of course been many years under the bridge since then and many great albums featuring the wonderful talents of Mr Lessmann. Despite meeting both Claus and Michael on the hottest day ever in a field in Oklahoma where we got to see both Bonfire and Mad Max I’ve only ever caught up with Michael previously for an interview. So despite my mobile provider dropping calls at the scheduled time we finally got there to talk about the new collaboration from the two men. The new album and first from Lessmann/Voss ‘Rock is Our Religion’ is a melting pot of styes and influences that you are going to love, it also throws in a few surprises along the way!
Mark: It’s so great to finally get to speak to you Claus. Thank you for a wonderful album! We have all three of us met before the once in a field in Oklahoma in 2009!
Claus: Yeah, yeah, yeah, just a couple of weeks ago but I remember that day!
Mark: (laughs) It was a great day not only did we get to see both Mad Max and Bonfire on that day but Hermann was there too!
Claus: And it was so hot! It was really hot! I think for me it was the hottest show temperature wise I have ever done. The stage was a concrete one and the lights from above made it even hotter, it was about 40 degrees Celsius (104 F) and the lights made it even hotter! I was close to collapse you know, but finally I did the show, but I was really scared because my body wasn’t feeling the right way.
Mark: I know how hot it was that day, I think I went through about three water bottles that set just watching – half over my head!
Claus: (laughs) To be honest I’m a little nervous talking to you because I haven’t done interview in English for years, I hope that my English is good enough!
Mark: Well it sounds perfect so far and I’m sure it is far better than my German! I think I can just about still count to ten and order a beer!
Claus: OK fair deal! (laughs) So where are you guys, Australia?
Mark: We are, in Perth over in the West and to be honest with you it was things like seeing you guys play at Rocklahoma that made me set up the website back in 2009. Literally when I got back from the Festival we set up the site. I go a lot further back though with Bonfire, I saw you back in 1988 on the Fireworks Tour and then on the ‘Point Blank’ tour in 1989.
Claus: That was also a long time ago!
Mark: (laughs)
Claus: We’re getting old Mark, we’re getting old! (laughs)
Mark: We certainly are but we had some great times along the way and we’ll keep on having them till we drop!
Claus: (laughs)
Mark: When I was thinking about the early days I just realised that it’s 35 years this year since ‘Fireworks’ was released, which still has to be one of my favourite albums of all time.
Claus: That’s so nice that you say that and it was a really good album, and a great experience for us being in the United States for the first time and working together with Michael Wagner and meeting all these people. It had a great influence on Bonfire.
Mark: Sadly Michael has retired now but he did a great job on that record. I love the fact that you rework ‘Take My Heart and Run’ on the new record that dates from the ‘Point Blank’ era and appeared on ‘Knock Out’.
Claus: It was the first time after the Point Blank tour that we (Michael Voss and Claus) wrote together. We wrote it at his place and we thought it was such a great song and a great memory back to that time that we should do it again which we did at the close of 2000 and we thought it was a good version so we put it on the album.
Mark: As a fan I’ve loved so much of what you have done over the years and I was really enjoying the Phantom 5 albums.
Claus: That was a good time concerning song-writing as well, good albums, good songs, good very talented people. It’s sad that that time is over but well, there’s an end to everything.
Mark: That’s right but you’ve gone on to produce something very special here I think, it’s a great album and a very diverse album, there’s a lot of different sounds on there. I love the swing of ‘Medicine Man’ which can help but get you moving to open.
Claus: Yeah, it’s almost a Seventies Rock style you know!
Mark: It is.
Claus: We put together a lot of influences on that album and we thought that we could do almost anything on that album because it’s a Lessmann/Voss album you know. It’s not a band project you know, it’s just two musicians, two friends writing together, performing together and that was the intention of the album.
Mark: It works wonderfully well. It was interesting to hear that the first time you wrote together was after the ‘Point Blank’ album, it’s a very long friendship and you can tell that the chemistry is there. Who takes control in the studio? Is it Michael?
Claus: … Yeah!
Mark: (laughs)
Claus: Mainly Michael! He knows all the knobs and all these little gimmicks and what to do. That’s his job and I think he does a fantastic job.
Mark: He’s certainly a very talented producer.
Claus: And also on the Michael Schenker album he did a wonderful job.
Mark: He did didn’t he, I mentioned that in my review, I think it’s one of my favourite MSG albums in years, it sounds great.
Claus: Oh yes.
Mark: Going back to the diversity I think that the single ‘Smoke Without Fire’ is probably the poppiest and most commercial sounding track on there.
Claus: Yes, it’s a Pop Rock song you know and I think it fits perfect because we all like strong melodies, you know and easy going Rock music and I think we have that perfect combination there and people so far seem to like it too. It’s out since three weeks I think now and we have almost 41,000 views on YouTube and that’s pretty strong I think.
Mark: And I think when the album comes out a lot more people will be sitting up and taking notice. So many great songs on there I don’t know where to start – two of my favourites are, well let’s start with ‘Look Around’ which I guess I see as a song about simple pleasures and appreciating what you have?
Claus: Oh ‘Look Around’ there’s also a funny story behind that because the day before we wrote it we were talking about what else we could do and I came up with the idea of doing some kind of a Rock Reggae, Michael said “OK we can work on that.” So we finished the day in the studio and had a couple more drinks then went to bed. And Michael is the one who gets up very early, you now, and teh moment he wakes up he is full of energy, and I’m completely different you know. When I wake up I need at least one or two hours to get going. But he came up with the guitar while I was sleeping in the morning at maybe six or six thirty! He plugged the guitar in and I just fell out of bed and thought “What the hell is going on here?” he said “Hey Claus I just had an idea because you were talking about that Reggae thing.” So he started playing some Reggae rhythm and said :What d you think of that?” I said “Come on Michael give me a break, give me just one or two hours and some coffee and some cigarettes to get this day started” you know “Then we can think about that!” So we went to the studio and we got there pretty early maybe eight or eight thirty in the morning and started writing the song. Then we started writing the lyrics, and with the lyrics we always go to a good friend of mine who is an English chap to let him look through them to see if they are correct because we are German and it’s his native tongue, you know. So he looked at us and told us it read well and everything was correct “but to be honest,” he said “I really don’t know what you want to say with that?” So I said well there was this guy called John Lennon who wrote a couple of songs where nobody knew what he was talking about.
Mark: (laughs)
Claus: Now I don’t want to be compared with John Lennon but I think it’s fair enough to write some lyrics about two guys having a good time drinking wine and stopping at the fisherman’s shop and having some nice sandwiches and then starting the day, you know. And if you look around it’s a beautiful world, it’s wonderful you know and that’s what the song is basically about. It might be a little crazy – the lyrics you know and maybe to some people it won’t make a lot of sense but there doesn’t always have to be complete sense in a song. It’s just a fun song.
Mark: I thought it was great and I think I got the intent based on what you said there. It is wonderful just to do the simple things and just look around and realise it’s not to bad a world we live in.
Claus: It was also a kind of principle of this album that things should come easy and most of teh songs really did come easy. Sometimes when you’re writing songs even if you like the song it can be a pain in the ass writing the lyrics or something else, you know so you work on that. But almost every song on this album really came very, very easy and that was important for us and the whole Lessmann/Voss project – if it’s not easy I don’t think it’s the right thing for us.
Mark: I think over the years I would put you in the category of one of my favourite singers out there…
Claus: Mark, so many compliments when can I buy you a drink?
Mark: (laughs)
Claus: (laughing) Get this many a dozen drinks. What’s your favourite drink?
Mark: Well I have an Erdinger on the go at the moment, I thought it was appropriate to celebrate the new album!
Claus: Erdinger Weissbier? Is it still cold? It’s a hell of a swim to Australia!
Mark: (laughing) It’s pretty cold still. Markus told me to pour a beer and give you a call!
Claus: Well cheers to you!
Mark: Thank you so much. It may be a compliment but it is still true and on this album I think the songs work so well with your voice, everything from the ballad ‘Slow Dance’ to the straight Rock of ‘Stay’ that on first listen sounded like a sister song to White Lion’s ‘Wait’ there’s just this wonderful resonance there! But the final song ‘What Feels Right’ I think is currently my favourite on the entire album.
Claus: Really? It almost didn’t make it on the album but it was such an easy going song we though we needed to have that on. I like it too but there’s not really a favourite song for me, it just depends on the mood I’m in. There’s so many different songs and that’s what I think is good about the album.
Mark: Oh it is, the Rockers are wonderful, the title track is fantastic and ‘Something is Better Than Nothing’ is another great one. They all stood out for to be honest, but the one I’ve been playing a lot recently is ‘Runaway Days’.
Claus: That’s one of the songs where we did more of a duet with Michael taking the lead vocals, then I take the lead vocal then we come together with a harmony.
Mark: It works great.
Claus: The funny thing about the title track, with the demo lyrics the title didn’t exist before, in the demo the title was ‘Kill the D.J.”
Mark: (laughs) Something we’ve all contemplated at one point!
Claus: The idea behind that was when you’re in a club and you walk up to the D.J. and want to hear one of your favourite songs, almost everyone has had the experience where the D.J. ignores their request. So you start buying drinks for him and he promises to play it in the next round but he still doesn’t play it. So then you come up with that wish in your mind “I want to kill that DJ!” And I think that’s an experience a lot of people have had, but then we thought maybe nowadays we should drop the idea of killing even if it’s in a humorous way because there is too much killing. So we rewrote the lyrics and came up with the whole ‘Rock is our Religion’ thing. But that was funny you know because I hate D.J’s!
Mark: I know that feeling.
Claus: And the D.J. scene is even worse! How can someone who is working with vinyl and Hip Hop and Rap earn so much money? For what reason? Some may be artists I guess but the D.J. scene, I donlt like that.
Mark: I think it’s like so much these days Claus where people get paid in a lot of ‘artistic’ fields without the necessary talent or creativity.
Claus: That’s a good way of saying it.
Mark: Let’s look back, I always love to ask this question, when did you know growing up that music would become such an important part of your life? Was there a defining moment or a gradual realisation?
Claus: No for me it was a process maybe, you know. You read magazines and think “Maybe” and then think “No I’m not good enough to be a Rock Star, I’ll just make music, I’ll be happy doing that.” I started as a bass player before I turned into a lead singer and somehow when I moved to another City with my parents there was an advert in the newspaper looking for a singer. And because I wasn’t available, she (Mom) called!
Mark: (laughs)
Claus: I didn’t tell her, she did it on her own! She called my colleague Hans Ziller and said “My son is playing bass” and Hans said “We’re not looking for a bass player, we’re looking for a singer” and she said “Yeah, he can sing too!”
Mark: (laughs)
Claus: So he told her to get me down to their rehearsal room on a certain date, so I went there and I got the job! And from there things started rolling, you know. And it’s funny that you ask this question because I was watching some Scorpions video only two days ago shot at the ‘Us Festival’ in 1983 and as soon as I saw the video – they were playing (sings ‘I Can’t Get Enough’) I think three songs I was watching and I was thinking “What an energy! What a blast! What a band!” you know “I want to be like these guys.” I remembered seeing it years before and knowing I wanted all of that, you know – flying with helicopters! playing big stages, not talking about the girls, but that’s a school boy’s dream!
Mark: It is!
Claus: And then I started working to get there, and three years later I was on tour with ZZ Top through Europe. And that’s how the whole thing started!
Mark: Fantastic! If you could have been a ‘Fly on the Wall’ for the creation of any great album in the history of Rock and Roll, just to see how the magic happened in the studio what would you love to have witnessed being made?
Claus: I think any album The Beatles did. Because without The Beatles we wouldn’t be doing anything like we are doing now. They are still my all time favourites. If I had to choose maybe Abbey Road.
Mark: Always my favourite, I love the later Beatles . I’m with you on that one.
Claus: They are all great.
Mark: And finally we have an easy question for you. We love to ask everyone this the first time we speak. What is the meaning of life?
Claus: Doing the best you can especially when we talk about love and friends and friendship.
Mark: I think it is that simple.
Claus: For me that is the most important thing. Being good to people in respect to what you are doing.
Mark: Just a quick note before we go I think you also have on the album my favourite ever cover of an America song too in ‘Sister Golden Hair’ – it’s a song that just seems to fit your voice so beautifully.
Claus: Yes, it’s a beautiful and wonderful and awesome song and it was one of my favourite songs from the 70’s and also it was one of Michael’s favourites too. And that’s what you find out when you talk to each other, when two friends are having a good time hanging out. That’s when we came up with the idea to do that song and I think it’s a good version. And it’s a potential for a hit as it’s already proven it, you know. A wonderful band America.
Mark: Thank you so much for your time today it’s been great to talk.
Claus: It was a pleasure talking to you Mark. And don’t forget if we ever meet in the future I owe you a drink for all those compliments! (laughs)
Mark: (laughing)
Claus: Enjoy your cold Erdinger and take good care of yourself and cheers to all the readers and listers at The Rockpit.
Mark: Thank you Claus.
You can pre-order ‘Rock is Our Religion’ HERE
Album out 22nd July 2022
