Interview with RAGE:

«Our next album is completely written»

To the sheer fan’s happiness, RAGE are not rare guests in Russia and the tendency isn’t going to change even after big line-up changes. In the anticipation of concerts of trio in Moscow and Saint Petersburg we have contacted Peavy Wagner: to talk about a new album, split-up of a previous band edition, state of REFUGE band and what’s coming up in general. As it turned out, RAGE have got much more news than a band usually have after just four months since the release of a new album.

Hi, Peavy! How do you do?

Hello, I'm OK.

You’re not on tour now?

No, we’re not on tour, I’m private today, that’s why I asked to make interview in the early time, because I’ll be off the rest of the day.

Will be busy with your bones and skulls?

Yeah, we’re collecting fossils.

I see. As usual. Your new album, “The Devil Strikes Again”, was proclaimed as a return in the middle of the nineties. But I think, it’s not like that: sometimes it feels like something from Manni era, sometimes like something from the 21st century. What do you think about it?

I don’t really compare it with the old albums. It truly has some of this energy back, but I wouldn’t say that it was meant to be a rip-off of these old albums. It’s a new RAGE album, it has some of the old vibes back, because this is the way how I used to compose and to do songs back then, it’s the way how it appeared. Of course, there are some reminiscences of the old stuff, but it’s a new band and new songs. I think we sound pretty much like we should sound today, it has a lot of freshness, some of this songs wouldn’t happen in the nineties. For example, “The Dark Side Of The Sun”, I don't think it sounds too much like “Black In Mind”. Most of this kind of criteria are set by critics and media people. I just write my songs, we just play our stuff and arrange it the way we feel. Surely, both of new members, Marcos and Lucky, are big fans of this RAGE era and some of these vibes are flowing into the music from them. I don’t mind, I like this era and I know, that lots of fans are pleased with the development in this direction, but in general I’m not trying to achieve something certain when I’m starting and recording a new album. I just let it flow and stuff comes out like we feel. In general I like the album, it has a lot of power, it has a lot of elements, that I like in metal very much. For example, these thrashy elements which are back into our music. I don’t know, let the critics decide what we did. We feel very good with it, we like the album, it’s a lot of fun playing this stuff live, we are happy that it was accepted very well.

Whose idea it was to work with Dan Swano? Unexpected choice.

This way my idea, because Dan is long-long-time friend of mine, since… ah, since what time we are friends? For twenty years or so. Basically, I started know him when he did the first NIGHTINGALE album. Holger Stratmann, the editor of Rock Hard magazine, he was doing the pictures for the cover art. It was a picture of the skulls, I don’t know, have you ever seen this album, it’s “The Breathing Shadow”, the very first HIGHTINGALE album. I can’t remember when it was. Middle nineties or so? Somewhere around 95, 96, 97, I’m not really sure, when this came out. And he borrowed skulls from my collection to do the pictures, and that’s how I met Dan. And since long-long time we’ve been talking like “one day we’re gonna do something together”. It never really happened and now, as I was thinking about who could work on the sound for this album, I thought of Dan, because I like very much the stuff he’s doing with WITHERSCAPE, for example. I thought, he was the right guy for it and I like very much what he did with the sound of this album.

Let me guess, the skull on your new album cover is also from your own collection?

Yes, it’s a skull from the Roman age.

While listening to the album, it feels like it was recorded very fast, as in impulse. Is it right?

In a way, yeah. We were very quick with it, we had lots of ideas and the creativity was flowing like hell (laughs). We were really fast, but not in a way like we had to rush. We had lots of time, we took the whole year, 2015, to write this stuff, but we were really quick and we had more material than we needed. And we are even quicker right now. I can tell you that our next album is completely written, everything is done, we just have to record the stuff (laughs). We did the pre-production a couple of weeks ago, everything is ready. And I guess we’re gonna continue writing and producing more songs, we have lots of stuff to choose from. What we have already is twelve songs so far, this is really killer. It’s going in the direction like “The Devil…” album with maybe a bit more deepness. For example, we have a very long trilogy, for fifteen-twenty minutes or so. We are still in this creative modus.  

No fucking way! Today a band needs a couple of years to tour after the release and only after that to start preparations for the next record.

(Laughs) This was maybe the quickest way I ever did it. Reminds me very much of the feeling we had back then in the eighties or early nineties, when it was kinda normal to release an album a year or so. We were also very quick back then and very inspired. There’s a very good vibe in the band and very good mood that inspires us a lot.

You’ve got two new band members now. What are the main requirements for a musician to become a part of RAGE?

The main requirement for this line-up – hopefully it’s the last line-up (laughs) – was that I wanted to work with friends. With people who knows me since long, whom I know since long, who accept me, respect me, respect RAGE history, all that I’ve developed over these three decades. So I picked Marcos and Lucky because I’m friends with them since long long time, plus I knew they are very respected by musicians, and this time I wasn’t really aware how good they are, especially Lucky, he hadn’t play drums for seven or eight years. I just remembered he was very good drummer in the nineties when he was doing his first bands. I know Lucky since 1988, he was fifteen or sixteen back then, he was a drum student of Christos Efthimiadis, and later he turned out to be a drum roadie for him, we were on tour in these old days, since this time we are friends. And I know Marcos since more than ten years now, we’re also pretty close friends. We thought about working together for a couple of years. I was never really sure what we’re gonna do together, and in the end it’s turned out he’s gonna be the new RAGE guitar player (laughs). In the beginning it was not really planned. Anyway, this line-up functions and works really great, it’s a fantastic band. We have toured a lot since we’re together and the band is close and tight. I don’t know, have you seen our live stuff on YouTube, but we are coming to Russia quite soon, in November, and everybody can check out what a good spirit is back right now. It’s really funny and it’s a lot of joy for me to go on stage with them, to be on tour with them, because the personal thing is also working. When you’re on tour with the band it’s like being married, and it’s really helpful when you like each other, when you have a great time together. It’s a complete different quality when you work just with professionals, you have no connection on the private level, like it was with the line-up before. It was a professional collaboration, everything good musically, but there wasn’t any private connection. Hanging out together for twenty four hours a day was sometimes really painful. So in the end the complete mood is suffering. Over the years you get the feeling of being lonely on the road, cause there’s no one you could really talk to. The whole situation now is way more enjoyable for me and for all of us. We have lots of fun besides the stage, which is the most part of the day (laughs). Life is better for me and for all if us since we are together.

But they say, that you’d better don’t do business with friends. Might be dangerous for the friendship.

I wouldn’t say that it’s dangerous. We have arranged everything very carefully, very detailed how we are gonna be connected on the business side. And everybody could bring his suggestions in, how it could work for everybody to be happy and what it needs. So on this side we are kinda secured and this relaxes everybody that we can work without thinking of what’s happening on the business side. Nothing is coming to shock anyone, everybody got what he needs. And we really take care of each other. For example, if some of us have private problems, next to the band side, let it be financial problems, let it be relationship problems with girlfriend or wife, we always help each other, try to solve the problems for the others. This can only happen when you really related in the friendship, when you want everybody to be happy with the whole situation.

By what principle have you chosen, which songs to be the bonus tracks? Because they’re more experimental?  

Yeah, there are three songs that we wrote, which we all felt sound a little bit different to the rest of the other songs, so we separated them. For example, “Requiem” in my opinion has more like IN FLAMES kind of thing. So we put them separately and they don’t disturb the vibe of the general album. And there’s three cover songs, it was quite spontaneously, each of us could mention a wish, an idea of a song to do a cover. I picked “Bravado”, the RUSH song, because I like this song very much and it has very special and private meaning to me, I always thought that one day I will do a cover of this, just for my private pleasure. Lucky picked “Slave To The Grind”, it was a very important song for him when he was a kid. Marcos is Y&T fan, he wanted to do their song. So it was quite spontaneously, we also had some other ideas in our minds, bit then in the end in the studio we just picked those and recorded in a quick way. There’s no deeper meaning behind this.

Some fans say, that “Into The Fire” sounds like BLIND GUARDIAN.

Yes, this is the reason why we sorted it out. It has a bit of BLIND GUARDIAN vibe, I agree (laughs).

Maybe these experimental bonuses can give us a hint, in which direction RAGE will go in the future?

Not really. We are good musicians, we have lots of inspirations, some of the main ideas for “Into The Fire” were coming from Marcos, and he’s also a big BLIND GUARDIAN fan, maybe he was inspired by this stuff. You couldn’t really say that for the next album we’re going in direction like this. I think that the next RAGE album, which I already know pretty much how it’s gonna sound (laughs), it’s very RAGE-like. The main influences are RAGE, the classic RAGE stuff (laughs).

I can’t help asking about the previous RAGE line-up, about its ending, to be exact. There was said a lot about the causes of the split-up, I guess we shouldn’t repeat it, but I wonder, if no one was satisfied with the situation within the band, why did this partnership last for so long?

Like I mentioned already, being together with those guys was sometimes really painful. There were no personal relationship, no friendship among each other, it was just a professional collaboration. On the music side there was no problem, but the private side was really a problem. It lasted pretty long, because we’re all professionals, and also before, with Mike Terrana, it was a very professional collaboration and I liked it back then, because it was on a very high musical level. But over all these years I really lost the joy in making music, because it was like going to work in the end. It worked as long as there was a professional respect for each other, but this got lost over the last years, especially the last two years. After “21”, when we started working on LINGUA MORTIS ORCHESTRA album, there was some really bad treatment from Victor towards me. In the end it turned out that he was not standing in the same point we’ve discussed before. I could say he was trying to cheat me (laughs). Stuff like this. I don’t wanna go into the details, but it was really getting unsatisfying for me, I was pushed very much. In the end he was treating me like I was just a hired gun. The whole thing was meant to be a fifty-fifty collaboration, and you must to keep it in mind – this is my band, I started it, I own the rights to its name, I developed it musically over the years long before he joined my band. And in the end he was treating me like I was a hired gun, like he was a boss of everything. He was like putting a gun to my head, “do it like I want it or not at all”. So I had no choice. If I didn’t wanna lose everything for myself, lose my band, lose my joy and inspiration for doing it. There was no other choice than get rid of him. I gave it to him and I took it away, it’s so easy (laughs). I was never married with him and I was never in a need to work with him. I wasn’t really aware how less I actually needed him to do RAGE. He was always telling me, how important he was and I couldn’t do it anymore without him, but that was just bullshit. I just realized when I told him “OK, it’s over, I won’t work with you anymore”, I just realized how easy it was, how easy it was to continue with other people. In the end it is my band and will always be my band. So I’m way better now. Don’t get me wrong I don’t wanna talk bad about him, but it’s better that we don’t work together anymore. He’s got his own stuff now, okay, be happy with it, I’m definitely happy without you (laughs). Thank you and good night.   

In general, do you take out more positive memories from those fifteen years?

Of course, especially of the first years. It was way easier, he also was a bit easier back then, he was more innocent, not that much pushing. In my opinion, he’s just taking everything way too serious, he’s losing all his rock’n’roll attitude and getting more grumpy. I don’t know, maybe that’s because of getting older. As long as Mike Terrana was with us, the whole situation was more balanced. Mike is also kind of strong personality guy, you have to hold him a bit down, because his ego may become too big. Basically, they were clashing constantly and I was in the middle of this. But somehow it was like a perverted balance (laughs). But when Mike get out of the band this balance was lost, Victor’s ego was becoming over-big. He was growing bigger and bigger, pushing me more and more aside. I think this guy is not capable to work in a band, to work in the democratic situation. He has to do his own thing, he has to be the boss and he only can work with the hired guns, I would say. This is the best thing for him. I think, that the whole situation now is the best for both of us. I don’t want to be enemies with him or stuff like this. I think I could change the situation already two years earlier and avoid a lot of bad mood. But in the end it was early enough when I go to this solution. This was before we really became enemies. Let the grass grow over it and in a couple of years we would laugh about it and can be cool with each other again. I hope so, at least. I don’t wanna be enemies and I don’t wanna miss all these years because on the other hand we really did some fantastic records. So everything just happened like it should happen. I’m fine with everything.

Recently I saw your photos with Mike Terrana and even Spiros Efthimiadis. There’s no more hard feelings between you?

No. Also this is very important for me, I don’t wanna have bad feelings to anybody in this world anymore. Having kinda enemy-thing going on with whoever, this is just a waste of energy and time. I’m not into this anymore, I try to solve problems. Some relationships don’t work, you can’t be close to some people. I still wouldn’t like to play again in a band with Spiros or Mike, but we definitely can accept each other, we can have a nice afternoon or nice hours, have a couple of beers and talk about whatever shit. This is good enough. I don’t need to work with them, but I can have a relax time with them and I can defnately have no bad feelings against them. I think they’re also now easy with this shit. At least for Mike, we played a festival together in Italy couple of weeks ago and this was really relaxed. He’s a passionate cook and we talked about pasta recipes (laughs). This is way more better and healthy.

Now you do concerts in “RAGE meets REFUGE” format…

Yeah, we are really close to each other: Lucky and Marcos, and Manni, and Christos, we’re all have kind of friendly relationship. Especially Lucky and Christos, they’re were close, like brothers. They have another band, TRI STATE CORNER, when they play together, Lucky is a singer and Christos is a drummer. Manni and Marcos, they exchange a lot about guitars, equipment stuff and so on. We’re really relaxed with each other and like to mix up our shows sometimes. It’s very nice, we start the show with the recent line-up and then Manni and Chris join us, we play some stuff together. I think, for the fans it’s also very nice – recent line-up and classic one together at one stage. It’s good fun for us.

Both bands are active now. Can you compare the process of writing the song with Marcos and with Manni?  

With Marcos the writing is very very easy, he’s also very creative and we don’t even have to talk about what we’re doing, we just understand each other quitе blindly. And the output is immense, there is lots of stuff coming out. I have to admit, this is definately easier to write stuff with Marcos and with Manni [than with Victor]. But with Manni we used to work together and do this kind of stuff since long long time before, so I know how can I get from Manni what I want (laughs). So this is of course also not a problem. The bigger problem when I work with Manni and Chris, is that they don’t have much time. REFUGE is more like fun band for us, like a side-thing what we do for a hobby. Both are having their families and regular jobs, which demands most of their time. We really have to find time to sit together and think about new song ideas. We do this when it happens, but it’s not like I can work with Marcos. With Marcos we go to the studio for a week, we work everyday from morning till night on new ideas. I couldn’t do this with Manni, because he have to go to work. And when he returns from work his kids have the demands and stuff. It’s a complete different situation. RAGE is a professional band with professional working situation, and REFUGE is a hobby band, this is happening when everything else is done and we have a spare time. You cannot compare it.

As far as I know, year ago you had three REFUGE songs ready. How does the situation look like now?

Now it's five and a half (laughs). We’re still working on them. Maybe you heard it, we signed a record deal with Frontiers Records for the REFUGE album, which is planned to be released in 2018. I think we need couple more times to gather and finish writing for the album within next year. So far there’s no pressure on us, we keep doing it like we can. Frontiers Records know it’s more like hobby band, they are OK with it and accepted it when we said that we cannot push it and work like a professional band. We promised we’re gonna deliver a really great album, we won’t release any bullshit. If we’re not really satisfied and don’t believe in the material, it won’t come out. We’d better delay it more and more in the future than release any crap. We don’t wanna have and we don’t have any time pressure. The main topic for the REFUGE is to have fun and not to have any professional pressure on us.

I look at your tour dates and it seems that REFUGE is much more active, than you expected.

Yes, in the beginning we didn't expect anything, we just wanted to have some barbecue, beer and rock’n’roll. Just for our private pleasure. We never expected that we would get many live shows, but we were invited to all big festivals, to the tours in all parts of the world. In the end it turned out to be something more than a little hobby band. But we’re reducing it right now a little bit, because I just have time to play that much, I’m busy with RAGE, especially for the next year, we have like 150 offers and we have to turn down every second offer, because we just cannot play everything. Of course, time is getting shorter for the hobby things, would it be REFUGE or my fossils and bones, I don’t find time for this stuff anymore. But this is good, I like to work with RAGE, so let’s see what’s coming out.

Does the orchestral side of RAGE belong to the past?

No no! It’s not active at the moment, of course, we’re concentrated on the metal side of RAGE. But we have worked out with our record company, Nuclear Blast, a five-year plan for RAGE releases. This year was “The Devil…” album, next year we’re gonna do the next RAGE metal album, for 2018 the REFUGE album is planned, in 2019 Nuclear Blast wanna have some live album or live DVD, in 2020 – the third metal album for RAGE, and in 2021 it’s gonna be the next orchestrated album, right after the 25th anniversary of “Lingua Mortis”. This is the next five-year plan, so the orchestrated side of RAGE will be refreshed and will be continued in 2021, that’s the plan. We actually wrote already two or three songs for this orchestrated album, but they won’t see the light of day until 2021 (laughs).

What an awesome efficiency! You seem to be more refreshed in comparison with several last years, when there wasn’t many songs on the albums written only by you.

No, this is not true. Especially on “21”, I wrote more stuff than Victor there, but he always demanded to have credits for his arrangement stuff that he did on my songs. I think he was becoming more and more greedy about this. Now, with Marcos, from the beginning I said that we’re gonna do it like Lennon/McCartney or Jagger/Richards. Whatever we write, whoever wrote something, it all comes out as Wagner/Rodriguez, so there is no discussing about who wrote what and wants to get the credits. We just share that shit together, fifty-fifty. Nowadays most of the stuff is based on my general ideas and I let Marcos just to do the polishing of the guitar stuff, and of course he’s contributing his guitar riffs. But the main structures of the songs were mostly from me. With Victor I had the arrangement like, let’s say, ten songs on an album, he writes five and I write five. And in the beginning we actually did it like this, he’s got the credits for his songs, I got for mine. Like it was for example on “Welcome…” or “Unity”, other early albums we did together. But in the last years when I worked with him he was demanding more and more credits for his arrangement work. When there’s a song credited like Wagner/Smolski, it means that this is my song, but he did the guitar arrangement. We has trying to get more and more royalties for it, it Germany this is real money. I know, in Russia no one really get anything for his creative work, but in Germany you can get money for it. We have a saying here, that royalties are your retirement (laughs). You will always get those money for the rest of your life, whenever your song is played, printed or put out in public. He was trying to get more out of this thing. I think, that the arrangement I have now with Marcos is more fair and transparent.

Soon you will play in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, but on previous tours you visited a lot of farther cities. What were your impression of Russian back-country?

Some very good, especially on eastern part, Vladivostok and this kind of cities. I was absolutely surprised, I thought we would meet Middle Age or something like that, but these are very modern, well developed and beautiful cities. And we definitely plan to come back there. I don’t know, maybe not on this tour, but for the next album, which is gonna be released next year, we already plan the tour right now for the beginning of 2018. When we’ll have the Japan leg, which is pretty close to east Russia, we definitely want to book shows for Vladivostok and cities around there. This won’t be the last time when we played there.

You play a lot of old songs live nowadays. Some of them seemed to be completely forgotten. For example, I’m very exited about the return of “Deep In The Blackest Hole”. Bringing the old songs to life, was it your initiative or also a wish of new band members?

It’s the wish of the new band members and of myself, we are very much together about this. Marcos and Lucky are real fans of this old era, they grew up with these records, they have a personal meaning to them. This is a big difference with the line-up before, Victor had absolutely no relationship to the old material, because he didn’t even know RAGE before he joined the band, he had no clue what the band has done before. I don’t blame him for this, but it was definitely a difference, when you play the old material and have no personal relationship to these songs. Marcos and Lucky have very deep personal relationship to the old songs. For example, “Deep In The Blackest Hole” was a song, when Lucky had sex for the first time (laughs). I’m kidding right now. They have memories to these songs, they have personal feelings to them, so it’s very important to all of us to have the old songs back in the live set. And we enjoy it of course, we’re gonna dig up more old songs to the next tour.

That’s why there wasn’t many old songs in the set-lists, when Victor was in a band...

This sounds maybe bad, but he was talking about the “old shit”. He had no fun in playing the old songs, he wanted to play his songs. Of course, I can understand it, if you don’t have any relationship, any feeling to the old songs and you don’t see them as your songs. I mean, he just defines himself over his own output, he didn’t give a shit about RAGE history, he was using RAGE as a platform to produce himself. He was not like “I wanna continue the heritage of this legendary band”. It’s like Marcos sees it now. He’s very proud to be a part of this band, because this band has a very deep personal meaning to him. This is one of three-four most favorite bands in his life. He’s got the tattoos over his arms: he has PINK FLOYD, IRON MAIDEN, HELLOWEEN and RAGE. And it was long before he joined RAGE. He was a freak-fan of the band which is complete different thing if compare to Victor. Which is definitely not meant to blame him or so, it’s just like it is. But it’s a different thing to have a freak-fan of your band in your band. He sees everything in a different light.  

What are you thinking about when you’re on stage?

I like it, I enjoy the moment. I’m here and now, I don’t think of anything else, just about the song and how it souns. I think of the audience maybe, I just look at the faces of people and feel the energy that’s flowing.

You say that that lyrics of the title song of a new album is connected with you well-known hit “Sent By The Devil”, but, honestly, I don’t find much relations. “Sent By The Devil” seems to be a song about a deadly passion towards a woman, while “The Devil Strikes Again” is about some different, more abstract stuff. Or I’m not right?

Oh, you’re not right. Both are about the same stuff. It’s about my obsessions. I don’t wanna go into the details, because it’s very private and not meant to come on the public. These are some private obsessions in my life. I was trying to get over those things, but I just realized after years, that it’s just gonna be in me for the rest of my life. Let it go, I accept it.

So, let’s everyone decide how to understand your lyrics.

Of course. I sometimes use the lyrics as some kind of self-therapy. I just write down stuff that’s in my head and try to let it go. And I always try to write in a way that people can reflect their own stuff in it. It’s not really important and necessary that you understand exactly what I had in my head when I wrote this stuff. The words can be picked up by anybody about his own private situation. Everybody has his own demons and obsessions, which fit also into the words.

Tell me, Peavy, have you ever wanted to put your bass off and become only singing frontman? You could run across the stage just like Bruce Dickinson does.

What? Put off my pants and run naked on the stage?

I said “bass”, not “pants”! I mean, without an instrument and a rack you can get more freedom on stage.

Oh, I can’t imagine this. I like playing bass. I started as a musician on a classical guitar, when I did my first bands. Pretty soon I switched to bass. This was, hmmm, in 1980 I guess. I love playing bass, this is a very necessary and important part for me to be connected into the song. So I never thought about quitting this. Plus, there’s no really a reason, I’m pretty good bass player and there’s no need in having someone else doing this. I would always be picky like “Give me the instrument, I'll show you, hou I want it!” (laughs). And I have absolutely no problem in signing and playing bass on a high quality level.    

As a creative person, don’t you fear sometimes (maybe subconsciously), that one day you may run out of ideas?

No. When you ever once in your life discovered how to connect yourself to the universe, to its creative flow, once you know how to do this you will never miss having new ideas. Basically, I just see it as I have to connect myself to the idea stream which is always around. And you need to be in a good mood, you need to be open, without any shit in your head. It’s kinda blocking you. The creative flow doesn’t work when you’re thinking of other things, you cannot really let yourself go into it. When you’re happy and relaxed it’s easy to connect to it… Oh, my first coffee is coming. Danke. I’m in a house of a friend of mine, we’re preparing for our next fossil hunting session (laughs). They’re waiting for me, ‘cause the breakfast is ready right now.

Great, and it was my last question. We’ve talked about the upcoming Russian gigs, so now you’ve got an attempt to convince the people who hesitate for some reasons about going to the concerts. Why everyone should visit the RAGE gig?

Because the band is in the best state it ever was. If you ever liked the band and the songs of the band, if you’re not coming, you’re gonna miss the best part of it. This line-up sounds very good, the feeling of the show is gonna be perfect. The vibe is absolutely perfect plus you’re gonna get the stuff from all the classic albums. You can write us your wishes and we will take a look (laughs). We are gonna put the focus on the whole back catalogue, it’s not gonna be the songs only from the new album. Of course, we’re gonna play a couple of new songs, but the most part will be the classics, from all eras, from very beginning to now. I think this kind of set you haven’t seen for long long time. It’s gonna be good and I know it, because we only have fantastic shows this year. Every show is like birthday, Christmas and Easter, everything together!

Text: Boris Igonin

Photos: Alexander Khoroshilov and the band's official web-site.

Thanks a lot to Alive Concerts and Eugene Silin personally for the organization of the interview.