If you like you guitar playing loud and fast then it is a good bet than you're a fan of Axel Rudi Pell. Since hitting the metal scene back in 1984 with the band Steeler, and more latterly with his solo work Pell has become a master of his axe. Pell has worked alongside some of the best vocalists in metal, from Jeff Scott Soto to his current singer Johnny Gioeli and produced one great album after another. This time round though he's doing things slightly differently. Not only is the new album, Diamonds Unlocked, a covers album but Pell has also looked outside of the pure rock world for the songs that made the cut. Steve Cummings talked to Axel to find out more:-

Axel Rudi Pell

Hi Axel, how are you?

ARP - Hi Steve, I’m fine thank you, lots of busy work here, buts it's ok

I can imagine, I bet you’ve a whole load of promotional work to do for the new record?

ARP - That’s right, yeah and I have to work on my new DVD too and I have to write new songs for the next record too. I’m quite busy, but it's ok.

Obviously you have a new covers album coming out of the 1^st Oct.  You’ve recorded covers before on albums but as individual songs, so why a full album of covers at this point?

ARP - Oh I think it was about time,  I always thought about someday releasing a cover album, I don’t know why, it' something that stuck in my brain. I don’t know to explain it right,  I just always dreamt of it.

There has been a whole lot of cover albums released in the past couple of years, does it not worry you at all that you might be seen as jumping on the bandwagon?

ARP - Oh no defiantly not because I only just found out that so many people are releasing these kind of records. I just found out two weeks, I think it was two ago, that Tesla are releasing a record of covers. I didn’t know this before, it's just weird circumstances.

What you tend to find is that when bands release covers albums they choose songs from within their immediate peer group, but you haven’t gone down that route?

ARP - That’s right because, as soon as I told people about doing a cover record they said “ah you're covering Rainbow songs, Deep Purple songs and stuff" and I say no I’m will not and they are very surprised because everyone knows that I am a huge Richie Blackmore fan, Michael Schenker too, UFO, they say "why?"  Because that’s the point, I don’t want to cover any of my idols. I’m not fixed on any special group, or any special guitar player. For me when a song is a good song, for me then it's a good song, no matter what the style, so that's I wanted, great songs for my covers record. Say like Free for example, 'Heartbreaker', it's practically followed my life from when it was released, I think I was twelve years old at the time. I covered that song  a while ago ago in my first band. I think we were called Silver Stones or Firebird or something.

You had covered Free before with Wishing Well, so the band has obviously had a huge impact on you?

ARP - That’s right, especially the guitarist Paul Kossoff, I think he was a underrated guitar player, he was well ahead at of his time, but he died too early.

He had a very melodic touch to his playing, a light feel to his playing?

ARP - Yes Absolutely.

So in covering that, do you feel you have to reign your playing at all?

ARP - A bit,  because I’m a guitar player for myself but the main point for me covering a song is to get the soul of the song. The arrangements are sometimes a bit different from the written arrangements of the original tracks but you have to get the soul of the song and transport it into a new arrangement.

Arrangements were what struck me on the album, I guess the most obvious Love Gun. I’m sure everyone has asked you about, why take it to be a ballad?

ARP - You know I always liked the melody. I was really surprised when Kiss released their acoustic album, I think it was during the nineties, they didn’t have the Love Gun track on it. I was really surprised,  It was hey you can make a really good ballad out of it too. Cause the melodies are so great, we tried it once in the rehearsal room, 2 or 3 years ago and we thought "Hey that’s a cool thing to cover" and we’ve already played it now live since 2 years ago, even on our acoustic live shows.

And I guess the other one that really falls in that category is "Like A Child Again", a song that surprised me because The Mission are your archetype Goths, I actually had to go back listen to the original.

ARP - Yeah I think there are two or three different versions by already The Mission. They had a normal speed song, and then they had a acoustic version with a guitar and then an acoustic version only with a piano. So three different version by the Mission.. So a few years ago I saw them on TV, it was The Mission recorded live from Rock Live or Rockplast thing, from 95 or something and they played this song Like a Child Again and I was really  surprised. Just a piano, the singer, and I thought wow this is a great tune, when I do a covers record, I have to include this song. I liked it that much.

Perhaps the bravest choice on the album is the U2 song, it’s a band not many people are brave enough to cover, what was your thinking on that time?

ARP - You know like other songs too, I really liked the tune, I really like the melodies and the riffs of the song. I like the riffs, but won’t copy the Edge cause he's a much different guitar player than I am. I try to make a heavier version out of it,  but the melodies are so good that I can't change them too much. I think Johnny made a great job of the vocals on that too.

It must have been a very difficult job for him, following in the footsteps of some iconic vocalists?

ARP - That’s right yeah. When he did the vocals, I told him, Johnny do it in your own style. Don’t copy Bono or anyone else. Cause the plan was to have this record sounding like another Axel Rudi Pell record sound but without my own compositions. I wanted to have it  sounding exactly like a normal Axel Rudi Pell record and I said Johnny sing it with your voice, the way I like you to sing normally and he did it. I think it turned out really good.

When you were choosing the songs, did you pass ideas between yourself and Johnny etc, to see what he felt comfortable with?

ARP - Oh yeah. I had a list of over twenty five or thirty songs. I made tapes and burned it onto a CD and sent it to the other guys and said pick out your favourites. I already had six or seven fixed one that I really wanted to record - but for the rest I said "Look over the other things, tell me what you prefer and what you don’t".  And I got the list back and it was identical to what I thought, we all thought the same. We had ones that were left over, but I said come on we can't record so many songs, because then we’d have had a double or a triple CD. Maybe it's ok, if the sales are OK then we’ll make another one in five, six or seven  years.

So is there anything that was left over that didn’t make the CD?

ARP - No we just recorded all those tracks.

Moving on a little, you recently cancelled the last three dates of your Mystica tour?

ARP - Yeah that’s right

You were due to be playing London at that point. You don’t seen to be getting over here to play live often, is that promoters or you just don’t see a market here particularly for you?

ARP - Oh no, when we first played the UK, I think it was last year, September or October, when we played the Bloodstock Festival. It was the first time that we'd played in the UK and we got a great reception and the people like it and the audience were great. So I thought it was a good idea to put one or two British dates on the next leg of the tour. Unfortunately I became ill on the tour, became very sick, got the flu, a virus and I was exhausted just before the tour and I collapsed at the gig in Spain, Madrid. We had to cancel that show, it was really not that good,  but what can I do. Then we didn't have much luck. But it may have been cancelled anyway because of the weather. I think there were snowstorms, the airport was closed, the ferry boats were not riding. So we may not have made it anyway, unfortunately. 

Are you gonna tour on the back of Diamonds Unlocked or wait until a new studio album?

ARP - No we don’t have the time for it to be honest, I'm just doing the promotion for it now and then I in Sept/Oct I have to concentrate on our new DVD that will be released next year in Feb I think. After that I will start writing the new material for our new album in Oct this year and we will be in the studio next April or May so I think the next really big tour will be the fall of 2008. We are doing a few big festivals over Europe next summer. But before that we don’t have another chance to play live, there's I've many other things to do, it's too much you know.

I read about the new DVD, you filmed it at a festival this summer?

ARP - Yes we played at the Rock Hard Festival, as co-headliners ad we recorded everything. I think it turned out really ok, although I haven’t the chance to see all of the stuff right now. I have to get the first cut in like 10 days and we’ll do the audio mix with my long time engineer friend Charlie Bauefiend and then there'll be a bonus DVD, DVD 2, which will cover a few unreleased things, footage from my own cam. Some like bonus bootleg footage. Stuff from Sweden Rock, from the Bloodstock Festival from last year, from the Graspop Festival, I don’t know what else, what ever I can find in my archives.

Anything that you happen to have kicking around

ARP - Yeah that’s right, But I can’t include everything, it would be to long. I have complete versions of my shows filmed in 2004 and 2006, but it would just be too much.

One thing I did want to pick up on, you produce the albums and then Charlie mixes them. How does that relationship work, do you oversee him mixing or do you just let him get on with it?

ARP - Normally I produce the records by myself, but Charlie helps me out a bit with the guitar stuff and sometimes if I’m overstretching the solos a bit, Charlie will say "Hey Axel this bit is too long, it will be too boring for the people listening only too your guitar" so it's "c'mon you motherf***er, shut up". So he helps the guitar and with the drums of course, because he was good drummer in the past, not too many people know that. So we're doing the producing together and then when we go into the mixing, Charlie right now knows exactly the sound I like. He tries to get the songs, to get the right sound done, maybe two, three or four days for the rhythm guitars, for the drums drums, for the bass, for the keyboards and then we start the mix.

The album comes out 1^st Oct I believe, do you think that releasing a covers album will introduce you to a audience outside of the core metal fan base?

ARP - Could be. Because there are so may different kinds of music on it, so many different kinds of songs from various people that have made them famous, so maybe It will be ok. People will be like this 'In The Air Tonight" song but I haven't heard it from Axel, I like that song, I will give it a try. So maybe, maybe. 

Yeah In the air tonight or Beautiful day could easily find its way on to radio..

ARP - I think so too, maybe not In the air tonight, it's too long, like eight minutes or something and radio only plays songs for like three and a half and then they cut it. I don’t know, maybe, hopefully.

Its quite interesting what you did with that song, how you put in the additional drums, was that something you worked out in the studio or did you have that planned before you went in?

ARP - I had it planned before I went in. I wrote it down in my apartment, when I was going over the songs and writing the arrangements. It had to have a special drums part in it. I recorded the idea with my voice, you know ba da boom, ba da boom, something like that and I brought it into the studio and played it to Mike, and said I have want to add an extra special part for you. he said “For me, just drums??” and I said a little bit of guitar and he went, "Ok I’ll do it".

Having seen Mike, he's a phenomenal drummer.

ARP - Absolutely, He’s a animal on drums.

I guess the other thing about that song was you didn’t overdo the guitar, it was quite understated.

ARP - Sometimes I don’t want to overstretch it, so people go ah this is that kind of metal again, I wanna go more into a rock style, instead of going into pure heavy metal records again.

So do you think that’s where you future recordings will lie, more in hard rock rather than out and out heavy metal?

ARP -  I think I already call myself, my style of music, hard rock not heavy metal. Anyway just call it what you like.

Before I sign off, is there anything else you’d like to add?

ARP - We hope to be in the UK very soon again, hopefully on the next tour in fall 2008 and I think we’ll probably play a London, I’m sure.

Well thanks Axel, I appreciate your time.

ARP - Thanks Steve

Diamond Unlocked is released via SPV on October 1st, to read the HRH review of the album then click here. To find out more about Axel and Diamonds Unlocked then you can visit the following websites:

www.axel-rudi-pell.de

www.spv.de