When
I was at the Bang Your Head!!! festival in Balingen this year I
had the chance of talking to Virgin Steele again. This time I was lucky to talk to the whole band or what was left of it: their new bass player didn't come over! But it wouldn't be Virgin Steele if they stayed at home lamenting over fate or bad luck. They're not only singing about overcoming but they're living it . (just a
quick hello to Iron Maiden who left me standing in Oberhausen
after a long journey because one of their 3 guitar players had
fallen off the stage the day before). After Virgin Steele's
performance we met at 9 p.m. at the second day of the festival to
talk about this and more. My interview partners were David DeFeis
(vocals, keyboards), Edward Pursino (guitars) and Frank Gilchriest (drums). Because they had handled the serious
situation with a killer gig, they had partied a little bit
already, especially Frank, so don't take everything too
seriously. Sit back and enjoy!
David, when I read Eschylus some time ago, I noticed a difference
between the original and your version for the theatre in
Memmingen: there is a kind of feminist shift which can already be
observed in the new title "Klyteimnestra" whereas the
original was focussing on Klytemnestra's son. Was it your idea
and what is the reason for it?
David: Well, between the
director and I we discussed the merits and the strains of the story itself and the characters and we found that Klyteimnestra,
the wife of Agamemnon, was really the strong character. Eschylus
says: "Here is this queen who plots andschemes like a
man" and 2000 years ago in Greece this was a very frightening thing for men, it's still frightening today: most men
are scared shit of women, you know? So to have this queen, this
very, very feminin, very sexy creature weelding this kind of
power was a holy terror! So we wanted to portrait this kind of
thing. Because the bottom line of what the whole House of Atreus
work is in addition to all the main themes, the subtext and so
is: who is more important: a man or a woman, matricide or
patricide, it's a male / female conflict among many other
conflicts and this is one of the strong elements of the work.
You still have problems with your bass
players. Please tell me
about your current one.
David: Yeah,
it's a royal pain in the arse as the English would say: this guy
was arrested
a day and a half before we came over, so we had two
choices. One: we could hang our heads in shame and not coming and
being worthless and weak or we could say fuck you, this is a
challenge - (bangs on the table, my recorder gets problems) - by
the hammer of Zeus we will come and play! And we came and played.
Edward: Yes, we came over we're
loving every minute of it and as every moment unfolds...
David: We're
loving it more and more, we're very happy we came... The pain and
the agony, you know, this was a test to metal and to ourselves,
you know, all the stuff that we stand for, all the stuff that
metal is we said: okay we ain't gonna call off and die all because it is fuck! Fuck him! You know? He's out!
Edward: The other evening I
came down and David told said to me: we have no bass player and I
said: okay. There was not one word mentioned that we would not be
here. We made it happen. And it was so nice to see the crowd
welcoming us without the bass, you know. Because we're all about
songs, we're all about presentation, we're all about art, we're
all about performance, it's almost like a great play, you know,
this pain, this agony...
David: Agony and shame!
Edward: It all unfolds as soon
as you say: we're on! You know, we were not going to say: we're not coming this weekend! We're not gonna let down our fans! You
know how many people came up to me tonight and said: I'm so happy
that we saw you tonight?
David: Hey,
because someone isn't there, one of the employees is not around
doesn't mean the shop is not open for business!
Frank: Listen,
you got a shop, right, if one guy quits, does the fuckin' boss
close the shop!?! Or does he say fuck this! We're gonna go on?
So
you're looking for a new bass player again? Do you think you need one?
David: Yes, we're on the hunt.
Edward: And
we're looking for a beautiful Madel tonight, too, you know?
Frank: We're definitely
looking for a bass player but we're looking for a guy who's gonna
come to the table on our terms.
David: We're looking actually
for a chick!
Release
of Act 2?
Frank: In about 15 minutes
from now!
David: September or October.
And
after that finally a tour?
David: Yes,
finally a tour.
Frank: We're gonna tour but
we're not gonna play any music. This is all the capitals and embassies...
David: All
the beer making capitals of the world.
Good idea! How did you like the festival, did you watch any
bands?
David: The
festival's great!!!
Frank: I did! I just watched
Doro and I would say that I'm completely in love, I'm gonna ask
her to marry me before the night's out! You can quote that! Print
it, send it out on the internet, whatever it takes. I'm
completely in love with Doro!
Edward: We love this festival,
we think it's great, all the bands came here really really with
some good hard stuff, Exciter came here, the boys were ready...
Frank: Jag Panzer! The
Scorpions were great of course...
Edward: We love it because we
fit right in there that's why David was like out there tonight kickin' some royal ass, singin' his ass off tonight he was
winking at all the nice chicks out there, you know, it's
Rock'n'Roll! And we're really diggin' the whole vibe of the festival...
Frank: Really
nice people plus it's in Germany...
Edward: Germany is very
important to Virgin Steele because when we first came over in 1987 Germany was like...
David: Almost
like home.
Edward: We love Greece and
Italy. We love Germany because we...
Frank: ...got a lot of friends here.
David: Second home, might be
down the road.
Edward: You know what we always
think? We always think: you think the Germans would like that,
you know? We love the Germans, and I'm a bit German myself, so...
David: Yeah,
he is!
Edward: By
the gods!
Frank: And he does have 2
German shepherds I might add.
Edward: I really do. I'm a
fuckin' German. I said to David this morning I'm gonna have a German breakfast, drink German coffee and then drink German beer,
so I'm a true German today. Excuse me while I drink... We're
feeling strong about the next release, David has written some
great music, he's very very good on the vocal edge on this next
record, his vocals are very in your face...
David: Going
to every record I'm the worst critic of Virgin Steele, I'm very
hard on myself, I'm very hard on everything, but this particular
record going to the mixing I thought very very confident in the
songs and the strains of everybody's performances. Frank has done a wonderful job, Edward has played his balls off and some of the
best singing I've done in a long time I think.
Frank: Listen, I wanna tell
some taller people out there who wanna know. Look: I am the drummer, so I know a couple of things. This new Atreus 2 is
Dave's best music he has ever written, I mean I love the old
stuff, when I was a kid I was a fan of this band before I was in it. I have records, I went to see them in concert, I never
thought in a million years I would end up in the band.
David: Hey, he threw a bottle
at me!
Frank: I did because he didn't
do Noble Savage! I think what David is trying to do is trying to
capture a lot of elusive elements, a lot of different stuff and
bring them all under the same tent kind of thing. His ambitions
are so great, you know. And I think on the next album it really
comes together great. So people who love Virgin Steele are gonna
love
this next record. (...) He's squeezing the entire content of
most bands entire career into one album!
Edward: Most heavy metal bands
have a lot of problems, you know, definitely drug problems, women
problems and this and that, it's like: Jesus Christ! They can't
get it together! They put 10 songs on the fucking record! Now
Virgin Steele have 25 songs, maybe 55 to choose from...
David: ... and we get the same problems! (laughs)
Frank: That don't mean we
don't have drug problems, don't get the wrong idea!
Edward: ... but at the same
time it's like the music comes first and it's like...
so we always feel that we wanna give a little extra to the fan.
It's like- yeah, the fan will go out and buy some records with 10
songs on the album, but Virgin Steele - oh my god! They have 10
songs more! It's very ambitious. It's discipline in comparison to
Sylvester Stallone's Rocky, you know? It's pain, it's pleasure...
David: ... it's our lives in a
nutshell. You can slice me, you can slice anyone else right here- it bleeds out. It's what we wanna give you. This is no bullshit,
we've been doing this since the day we began. We are trying to
say: okay, this is a glimpse on our world and we wanna share it
with you. There's a lot to our world and we know that you work
hard for your money and you pay a lot for these records, the
prices have gone way up, you know. So we try to pack in not only
quantity but of course the quality.-(Edward leaves for the toilet and Frank
takes his beer)-If we did the
show and we sucked we'd say: okay we tried and it sucked, sorry, but we did the best we
could...
Frank: But it's a great thing
because it's like a coincidence about how we overcame this and
how much Virgin Steele's music is about overcoming.
(Running Wild start their gig)
What
about the Guardians of the Flame rerelease?
David: We
wanna do that- after Act 2 we wanna reissue the first 2 records
perhaps as a box set with all kinds of special bonus tracks both
old and new and then what we really wanna do is a live album
because I'd like to the Marriage songs, the Invictus tracks, a
couple of Atreus things, maybe some things that we never actually
recorded, just live versions of brand new songs. Why not?
Frank: I'd just like to record
and do a bunch of live records, you know? People could look at the songs, the nights, pick what night and songs they wanna hear.
Like Zeppelin, you know, you have one Led Zeppelin live album,
what the hell does that mean? Every night was so different, so unique... (some Led Zeppelin-fan talk
between David and Frank)I think the concept of a live album is so strange because it's
like live means live like it's happening right now, like when you
watch live t.v. what makes you excited because, you see, it's
live, you know, that's what makes it exciting. A lot of these
bands do live albums and they sit there ... and it might be as
well a studio album.
David: The only thing that's
live is the bass drum and the audience!
Frank: Yeah,
that's about it. It's terrible! I'd just like to make every night
available to the people somehow, because when we go on tour we
usually have 2 or 3 songs that we start the night off with
and then that's it! The rest of the night is like whatever songs
we feel... it's very free, you know?
David: We might have a set
list but we might not even use it, you know?
Frank: Yeah, we're hanging it
up every night like we're gonna do it tonight, then when we get
up there we don't do it. Then we're like: "come on, we
better stick to the set list, then we put it up again and we
don't do it again.
David: It's fresh for the audience!
Frank: Yeah, it's fun for us
and it's fun for them because people come and see us a few nights
in a row, you know, some of them are even expecting like a record
to hear the same set list and like oh my god, you know? But, you
know, when we're up there we would like to play like we're
rehearsing at home, we got like a hundred songs, I mean
the three
of us could play like a hundred songs like right now. Not like
these loser guys who like, you know, gotta really really really
concentrate to learn 12 songs to do the gig, you know? I mean it
takes every ounce of their retorted concentration, you know?`
(Edward is back)
What
was the first album you ever bought?
Frank: My
first album I ever owned was Boston-One, that's the first album I
ever owned.
Edward: My first album was
Grand Funk live. What a great fuckin' album!!! Grand Funk Railroad was just like put your fuckin' amp on, get on stage and
let it all hang out kinda concept. Probably like a hippie kinda
thing, you know? So I was growin' up with that kinda... I have a
very hippie outlook with everything I do and I really love that,
I really dig that freedom, you know? And as you noticed tonight I
was on my knees on the stage and then I said to myself: holy shit
I'm Marc F(...?) from Grand Funk!
David: We're
still fans, man!
Frank: The very first thing he
has ever listened to is still with him today!
Edward: Big time!
Frank: We're
old school, man, there's probably no other guitar player here
let's say that he loves Grand Funk Railroad. We got roots that
are deep, that's why people like us, you know?
Edward: The
last question really was like how do you appeal to these newer
Heavy Metal fans? We're ourselves
and we have a lot to offer.
When we walk on stage there is not just like these guys
who've
been playing for a couple of years together, there's a lot of
history there! And
people feel it and that's why like today, if I
may say so, we got this fuckin' crowd that
was sitting on their
ass all day on their feet
to say: holy shit! I wanna experience
things!
Didn't Jimi Hendrix save the best- Jimi Hendrix Experience? Isn't it all about experience,
you know? We rose
people up and we said: this is fuckin' experience! Let's be a
part of it!
Frank: We're heavy metal guys,
you know, through and through, but we're also smart
enough to
appreciate bands that came before us.
David: What I could say is like: know your history, know where you came from but then take
that and don't just rape that, take it to new hights! That is the concept, you
know?
Edward: We're also real fans!
David: Build
on what's been done before. Play on, brother, there's a lot more you can build from here. And that's the philosophy!
Frank: Live
in the present but don't deny the past, you know what I'm saying? A lot of these bands seem to live only in the present. It sounds
like a lot of the same shit just reduviated cause they're all
trying to get famous and rich. You gotta be modern but also don't
deny the past!
David: You
can't grow flowers on flowers, flowers grow on horse shit, you
gotta
dig deep into the fuckin' soil! That's the whole thing, you know?
Edward: That's why so many
people hit the stage and say I wanna be a part of this! Because
of the history! That's what the heavy metal here, especially here
in Germany stands for.
Frank (singing along with Running Wild): Raise your fist - I left my balls on
your chin - I left my baaaalls oooon your chiiin!!! Listen, next
time you come for an interview bring some drugs!
Interview & Live Pics: Ramon Claassen
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