Heideroosjes

Am 09. März erschien das neue Album der Heideroosjes. Folgendes Interview habe ich dazu mit dem Sänger Marco Roelofs geführt.

Your band exists for 18 years now. What yould you say is the biggest difference between the band back in 1989 and the band today?

We are older, more fat. No that’s a joke. Well I think there is a lot of difference. When we started we were 15 years, we were just kids who are in Highschool. We didn’t know how to play. We were just four friends who were angry at the world. Today we have of course grown as a person, I mean I’m 32 now, that’s a big difference. We grew as a person and as a band of course. We did a lot of shows, we made a lot of albums already so there is definately a big difference between Heideroosjes back then and Heideroosjes now. But in the core it’s still the same thing: four guys doing what they love most: And that’s making music.

18 years that is really incredible. My sister just became 18 years old and I mean it’s like a whole life. You are still in the same Line-up. Did you get along well all this time or did you have intern fights at least sometimes?

Well of course we hit each other in the face sometimes. I think you can compare it to maybe you and your sister or any other famil. We’re kind of brothers. We’re on the road that often. I sleep more in a room with the band members than I sleep in a room with my own girlfriend, you know what I mean? I’m on the road so many times a year. Of course we have fights, of course we have discussions, but we are always, let’s call it brutally honest to each other and if you are really honest with each other you can work it out and that’s what we do. We are still together with the same four guys. It’s like having family. Sometimes you could kill them but in the end you can’t live without them.

The new album was recorded in LA. How did it come to that?

The reason for that was because our producer, the producer we wanted to work with, he lives in Los Angeles, Cameron Webb. And he said: „I own my own studio here, so you guys better come out to the US“ We really wanted to do that, cause normally we record in Holland and after seven albums we wanted to record in a different place and LA is not the baddest place

How did you get Lemmy to speak the intro of „My funeral“?

Cameron also worked with bands like Ignite, Social Distortion or Sum 41 and also with Motörhead. So he was a friend of Lemmy. We met Lemmy once in France. But Cameron was a close friend of Lemmyso that was very easy. But the little problem was that Lemmy was on tour in England, so he couldn’t come to the studio and we have done it by phone. I guess Lemmy was pretty drunk when he spoke, cause when we called him, because of the time difference, it was late at night in England and he was kind of drunk. But that was fun. Maybe it’s not the best take of Lemmy you can get, but it’s definetely Lemmy like the way he is. It’s just a little intro that he does. He is doing the intro where he is pretending to be a priest at a funeral, so it was fun.

What’s your personal favourite song on the CD and why? You made this teaser for the album, including „Homesick for a place that does not exist“ which I do like most, but you said you want to save the best for later, so I guess you don’t think so

(laughing) Well, of course in a way we… No let me put it another way: What we wanted to do was to show the whole record to the peopl, but because it’s not out yet we had to pick just three songs and it’s really difficult to pick just three songs, cause people make their opinion on those three songs, so that’s why we put it on the Website „We saved the best for later“ you know, so the people will check back later.
Did you get the album?

Yeah

Ok. Well, whats my favourite song? That’s a question I don’t like, because it’s you know, we made fifteen songs for this album and it’s really hard to say what my favourite is. I have to come up with a cliché: I love them all. But the song I like is „My funeral“ and the dutch song „Ik ben niet bang“, cause that’s musically a strange song. We made that song with two cello-players. Thats two songs I really like

How important is it to you to make songs in the dutch language?

It’s something I don’t really think about. I just start writing a song and sometimes the words come in english and sometimes the words come in german or sometimes the words come in dutch. It depends on the subject I write about. I never thought about it. Most of the songs I write in english and there were always some issues I like to write on in dutch

How did you get to record a song for Tibet?

That was because we were asked to play on a Free Tibet Festivalin Holland and I met a singer from Tibet, a traditional tibetan artist and we spoke a long time about the situation in Tibet, what’s going on there and I got very inspired by the way they try to resist in a peaceful way. A lot of people if they stay under pressure they get violenced, but there the people are very peaceful towards the Chinese people who opress the. So that was really inspiring. That festival was last year and this year they asked if we wanted to make a song together to promote the festival and thats how „United Tibet“ started and that’s also how we wrote „Shout out for freedom“ which is on the new album. Because the „United Tibet“ song was a release of an old song from de Heideroosjes („United Scum“) and I felt I wanted to do something more with the subject of tibet. So that’s why I wrote „Shout out for freedom“

How important is political message to you?

It’s important for me to write these song, because all the stuff is in my head and I wanna give it out. So in the first place it’s just for myself: I just want to release the shit thats in my head, But I think Heideroosjes is not a band like Anti-Flag - you know them?

Yeah

- or other political bands like Boy Sets Fire. We say what we think about politics, but we are not a movement or something. I mean we make bad jokes on stage. And bands like Anti-Flag, which are really really liked by the way, they are more like „Let’s go. Let me see your hands in the air and shout against Bush“ and that’s not really what we do. We write the political message, but that’s it. People should do what they want

Why is it so difficult to get your releases and merch here in Germany? I remember that we bought the „It’s a life“ back in 2002 in the Netherlands and I’ve never seen it here. Same with the DVD’s.

Yeah, it’s really really difficult. I think Heideroosjes is a pretty small band in Germany. Or maybe it’s the name that is difficult(laughing) I don’t know what’s the problem. In some parts of Germany it’s easy to get the stuff, in other parts it’s pretty difficult. I can’t really say why that is. I only hope it gets better now. And I think you will be able to buy the new record in Germany. I think now I know for sure, because we have a record deal.
But like the DVD’s, it was a project that we did ourselves, so it’s not easy to find a distribution deal for DVD’s, because DVD’s don’t really sell that much, so I think that has to do with that

Some years ago you were playing in Germany really often and there were not many shows in the last years. I know you played the „Nikolaus Raus“ Tour, but there was not so much compared to earlier. Why was that?

Well it really was we needed a break as a band. We toured so much in the last few years, did hundreds of shows all over the world. We went to South-Africa, to the United States, to England, yeah you named it we have been there and we were really tired of touring together all the time. We wanted to kind of go back to a normal life so we were like „Lets step down for a minute and not tour so much“ So we took a break for a few months and then we started recording and writing songs for the new album. But in 2007 Heideroosjes will be all over the place again.We’re gonna tour in Germany in April and then come back in Summertime. I think it’s like twelve or thirteen shows in April. Because we have a new album out and we want to promote it. We’ll be in Germany a lot

And there will be a release show in Cologne, right?

Yeah, on the 17th of March

I saw you had two „tryout-shows“ this weekend. What does that mean?

Well tryout means try out. It means we played new songs and people don’t know the songs yet, because the album is not out. We like to try out the new songs in front of an audience. Because we can’t play fifteen songs of the new album, that would be boringfor people if we go on tour. So we have to make a mix out of eight albums. And so we tested the new songs in front of a live audience and then we throw some songs out and put others in. That’s basically what „tryout“ means

Okay. And how did it go?

Really well, really well! It was fun, the people responded very good to the new songs. It also helps. If you record songs in the studio, you change so much in the studio, so when you came out of the studio, some songs got out very different, so you have to practice the songs to play them live and it was also good to play those songs livefor ourselves. Now we know which songs went okay and which songs we have to practice a little more. But it was really fun

You’ll be touring Japan next week. Is it your first time there?

Yeah, it’s the first time and I’m really excited to go there. It’s always exciting to go to new places, where you haven’t been

To me it seems the Netherlands are not a very musical country for I don’t know many dutch bands. Which other dutch bands can you recommend?

I think it’s true what you say. Holland is not really a Punkrock-country or a Rock-countr. It’s basically more House and Hip-Hop and that kind of stuff. But there is some cool bands in Holland: The Apers is a dutch punkrock band that is cool, the Riplets, a dutch girlband. Let me think. There is lots of bands. Best thing is to go to Myspace, go to topic Holland and type in punkrock and you’ll see all the cool bands we have. It’s not so many as in Germany I have to admit. But we are a smaller country.

von Manuela Schon | 16.03.2007 | Kommentare (0) | Kommentar schreiben