Hard Drive Interview



This transcript is from an interview conducted by Hard Drive's Lou Brutus in Baltimore. This was when Rammstein toured with Slipknot of 2001. One realizes in the end that Till still answers to mom!

Hey, it's Lou Brutus backstage at Pledge of Allegiance in Baltimore where I’m joined by Till Lindemann of Rammstein. How are you? It's great to meet you.
Till:"Nice to be here. It's perfect"
Lou:If you would please, tell me about where you grew up, the town, what it was like growing up and what the music was like when you were a kid?
Till:" I grew up in a very small village in the east part of Germany, north east, and yeah as I say it was in the east part of Germany, it was kind of special, the wall was there and, yeah most of the people in the States didn't know what was going on in these days and, but we would listen to the West German radio stations and they had all this stuff I guess, Sex Pistols and when I was very young the Stones and Beatles, all these, but my favourite actually was Jean Michel-Jarre, it's electronic music from France and I grew up with this thing as well and I was very into Mike Oldfield and Tangerine Dream, stuff like that. Then everything changed, I really became a punk (laughs) I became a drummer in a punk band and actually, there my music career, whatever, starts as a drummer in a punk band."
Lou:If you would please, what can you tell people listening, about the song"Ich will"
Till:" 'Ich will' is it means actually...a band is playing and playing and touring and going to the studio on and on every year and, it's just the wish for success. On the other hand it's, the people recognise you are still human beings, actually we have a video, and the video try to explain the whole thing. We rob a bank and don't care about the money, we just need attention from the public, from the press, from TV stations, things like that and we win award for that but we are in prison because we robbed a bank before. We don't rob but we interrupt and in a way its kind of funny, you know, we don't mean it serious but there are a couple of lines – we want to see ‘raise your hands like in the concert’. People raise their hands and clap their hands and give you some encourage and there are some questions. ‘Do you hear me? Do you see me? Do you feel me?’ and I respond - You don’t hear me, you don’t feel me, you…actually you….what the f--- are you doing down there? (Till laughing a lot) That sort of thing because sometimes I know they don’t understand us and we don’t understand the people sometimes – what is going on, that means the phonetics thing. They don’t understand us and we don’t understand why they do everything what we want, whatever, for example – Clap your hands – and everybody is clapping hands and if you go down on your knees, they go down on their knees and I think I can’t understand it. I want a response these people are, do you understand me – ‘Oh yeah, we can hear you’ so it’s just a phonetic thing, you know."
Lou:Now what happens after this tour?
Till:"We go home for a couple of days and we play the European MTV Award and go straight to the European Tour. We play for our own and…ja…it’s until Christmas and then I go in my mum’s place and have a bit of vacation. Christmas, New Year’s Day and my birthdays come the 4th of January. So, chill out and get drunk or…. (laughs)"
Lou:Well, listen I know you don’t really do this too often, to sit down and do talks and everything. Greatly appreciated. Thank you very, very much.
Till:"You’re welcome."
Lou:Till Lindemann of Rammstein has been our guest here on Hard Drive’s backstage at Pledge of Allegiance.
*Special thanx goes out to Sue.Check out her site in the links section.
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