On 5th February, http://krokusonline.seven49.net  published a notice that read as follows: “The band decided to take an artistic break.  More news to follow.”  There have been no updates to the site since, so I thought it was time to get to the bottom of the story.  Following a sequence of events, it was arranged that I would interview Tony Castell (bass) and Mandy Meyer (guitar) to get the inside scoop.   

The first interview was with Tony, and to begin I asked him to explain the situation from his point of view.  “Well, in September last year there was a big TV show in Switzerland called “Die Grossten Schweizer Hits” (Greatest Swiss Hits of All Time).  Krokus was announced as the line up from 23 years ago and they played a medley of hits – ‘Bedside Radio’, ‘Tokyo Nights’, and ‘Heatstrokes’ from ‘Metal Rendez –vous’.  I was shocked because the rest of us didn’t know exactly what was going on, so we did a press conference together.  I asked Marc in front of everybody if he wanted to continue with the ‘Hellraiser’ line-up or if he wanted to stop because the TV show was a good opportunity for him to get back with the original line-up.  He said he wanted to move forward with us, with a new album, our new management and new record deal.  It was also planned that we would go to the USA.  Four months later, it was all over.  We played the last concert of the Hellraiser tour in Nadur on February 2nd this year, and the day after, Marc decided to leave the band.  The first reason he gave was that he wanted to retire and go back to Malta to spend more time with his wife, especially now that the children are grown up.  I asked him if it was something to do with going back to the original Krokus line up, but he said he didn’t want to tour again and that they’d just do a couple of gigs and that would be the end of it.  Of course that is not the case, because they are playing a lot of shows in Switzerland.”   

As the Hellraiser line-up had started working on new material in the break after the Hammerfall tour in 2007, I asked how far the writing process had gone.  “This is another reason I am upset, because we wanted to start recording straight after the final show of the tour.  We had new management with great options, and a new record deal with the opportunity to film a DVD and to play a lot of American gigs, including a spot at Rocklahoma which has been cancelled of course.  That is the thing that hurts, because we thought that we could do something really good this year.  I respect his decision, though.  We are friends; we are not fighting or whatever.  It is like it is.  At first we thought let’s just find a new singer, but everyone else in the band just wanted to be left alone, and weren’t interested in doing anything else, except for Mandy.  We have plans to work together.  Jimi Jamieson is coming to tour in the UK and Europe, and he is looking for a new band, so I hope we can get together with him.  He is a great singer and I also love his songs – they are nothing like the rock and roll style of AC/DC or Krokus.”  As Mandy and Tony have worked together a lot and are great friends, and with Mandy’s connection with Jimi from the Cobra days, it would seem like the backing band from heaven.  At the time of writing the word on the street is that Carl Wilcox from Diamond Head is very interested in the vacant drum seat, so it’s a case of watch this space.  At the end of the day the decision is going to be down to Jimi and his new management.   

I asked Tony if the Hellraiser line-up was definitely finished for good, and his answer was short and sweet “Yes.”  As to the original line-up, I was curious about what plans were afoot.  “I hear that they plan to do a CD, because Fernando Von Arb is already writing songs and everybody is back on board.  It seems that they really want to go for it.”  It turns out that Tony had been in London during November last year for a photo shoot as he fancies a spot of acting.  “ Yes, it was a great shoot, and now I am trying to get an agency and finish my portfolio.  Then, who knows, maybe I will get the opportunity to go for castings or whatever.  I’m open for anything,” he laughed.  Tony has tried his hand at acting in the past, as the whole band, with the exception of drummer Stefan Schwarzmann, were in a film called “Handyman”.  “It’s a comedy,” he explained.  “It got to first place in the cinema charts, and the song ‘Hellraiser’ was on the soundtrack.  It’s really funny, but there’s also a love story there.  It was filmed in Zurich and the main actor is a Swiss comedian called Marco Rima.  He is a huge rock music fan, especially of Krokus, and he plays the part of our manager in the movie.”  As Tony plans to come back to the UK in May for the Dio/Girlschool shows, he promised to bring me a copy.  We shall see how the Swiss stack up against the British in the comedy stakes.    

  

Tony Castell

Tony is a very talented musician and vocalist, and for the last eleven years has been teaching four days a week at the Music Academy close to where he lives.  “I teach different styles of guitar, and have over 80 students at the moment, ranging from 6 to 20 years of age,” he explained.  “I also teach music theory and history of music.  I was coaching a band called Black Sheep for a Battle of the Bands contest last week, and they got third place out of 25 bands playing.  They are only 13 years of age, and the crowd was going crazy.  They did three of their own songs and they had really great lyrics, too.  They were so happy with their success that they didn’t want to go back to school!  That day I had a lot of people coming up to me asking if I would manage their bands.”  As for going on tour, he has a replacement teacher, and any time there is a problem, no matter where in the world he is, Tony is happy to talk to a student, or rather tell them to do what the replacement teacher says!  He’s also very lucky that the principal of the school was happy to write a touring clause into his contract.   Who knows, maybe we’ll see a Swiss version of “Rock School” with Tony as the Headmaster.  I have no doubt it would be a huge success.  As we talked about the Swiss rock scene in general, it transpired that Reto Reist from the relatively new Swiss melodic rock outfit Skansis received vocal coaching for a couple of years from Tony, who was also kind enough to help them out by giving them a bit of a leg up in the business.  He is a thoroughly decent guy who deserves nothing but the best.  I trust it won’t be too long before we see him on stage here again.   

A couple of nights later, and with Skype freshly loaded into Mandy’s computer, we made the connection, fired up the webcams and got the beers out.  Unfortunately webcams use up too much bandwidth, so after a couple of dropped calls, we decided to carry on without looking at each other!  As with Tony, I started by asking Mandy for his version of the story.  “Well, we fired Marc,” he laughed.  “Actually, it was all about a reunion which is basically interesting for Switzerland.  I don’t know the main reason for it, but he just seems to think its better for him to go back with the original line up.  Maybe it’s good for Switzerland, but they’re thinking about doing 11 concerts a year at the most.  They were offered gigs outside Switzerland, for example America and other places, but it’s too complicated to travel and have all the hassle for a concert that wouldn’t make much money.  I think they just want to make a quick big buck in Switzerland.  The gossip papers here said they might have some big headline reunion shows, but afterwards they have to come through with some good material and good playing.  The other thing that helped is that Chris Von Rohr is famous in Switzerland as a radio guy and he also had a show on television.  He’s very much in the press, but it has absolutely nothing to do with music.  It’s like Jay Leno joining Motley Crue or something, but it seems to impress some people.  Besides that I can’t see anything attractive about that reunion.  We had a really good band; each of the guys was really good at what he did.  This reunion isn’t going to be any better than what it was before, that’s for sure.  They’re coming back from nearly 30 years ago, and Marc’s voice has totally changed in that time.  It’s not as high which was a big plus for his voice back then.  One of his strengths was the reach of his pitch, but I said to Chris (Von Rohr) that Marc only starts to sound good after twenty gigs, yet they’re only planning to do eleven.  Marc is like a Ducati engine, you have to run it warm!   Same with playing – you need to play every night and after a month’s touring you start to improve.  My daughter’s godfather is a tour manager for people like Cristina Aguilera, really professional bands with top professional players. They rehearse every day for six weeks and after ten concerts they are a much tighter band.  You cannot be at your best if you only do a few gigs.“   

I’d heard a rumour that Mandy had been asked to appear in the TV programme, so I asked him if there was any truth in it.  “No, actually, they didn’t.  Chris wouldn’t want me in the band with Fernando (von Arb) because we cannot play together.  He is very strong minded and I cannot play like that.  It would be like taking a step back.  I would consider such a move if it was Aerosmith or something, but it’s Krokus (laughs).  It wouldn’t bring me any further in my career.”  I asked Mandy to clarify exactly how much work had been done towards the new Krokus album following on from the Hammerfall tour.  “From my side there were about four songs and the other guys had some songs recorded, but I actually got together with Marc and we had some ideas on tape.”   As for what he intends to do with the  material, as soon as he started telling me he had plans to use it when working with another singer, I pre-empted him and asked if it was Jimi Jamieson.  “Well, he’s a possibility, but nothing is quite sure at the moment, because with Jimi you never know.  He’s very keen at the beginning but then you won’t hear anything for a long time, and I can’t  depend on him.  He’s a really great guy and I know him from way back working with him in Cobra, but I don’t know how dependable this situation might be.  It might happen, of course, but I can’t count on that.  Of course I’d always work with Jimi, any time he’s ready, but it’s all theory at the moment.  It’s really difficult to bring everything together, especially from the financial point of view.  Of course recordings can always be done via mp3, but I prefer to have a band based near each other so that we can do gigs.  With Jimi it would have to be a tour for maybe two months, and then he would go back to Memphis.  At the moment I’m really looking for a project that can do a few gigs here and there without having to fly people thousands of miles.”  So, which singer did he have in mind for the material?    “Well, I’m starting to work with Mark Fox, vocalist with Shakra.  There are some problems within the band, and it’s got to a point where he believes it won’t go any further.  They are a bit complicated, and they feel that because they started the band before him, they can tell him what to do all the time.  They are naïve, though, because Mark is a really valuable front man to have.  It’s hard to find someone who has such charisma on stage.  We haven’t recorded anything yet, but he likes my songs, and I heard two of his songs and they are very good.  I have known him for a long time, and each time I see him there is progress to the point where I feel I can take him over now.  When I was with Gotthard he was just a baby, but now he is heading towards 30 and really on top of his game.  I’m also working with another singer, Andy Portmann.  He was the vocalist of Ain’t Dead Yet.  He has a good voice, and can sing anything, but you really need to have something extra special to be a lead singer, to get the attention and everything, so I doubt whether I would be able to get a record deal with him; if there was a book about lead singers, for me Steven Tyler would be the main role model.”

  

Mandy Meyer

 Having outlined his plans for the near future, I thought it would be a good opportunity to find out a bit more about Mandy, how he got started in music, and the many bands he has been involved with over the years.  I began by asking if he had been classically trained.  “When I was in school we had this old teacher that was teaching guitars and accordion and all that, and I took some lessons there which took me in a few different directions.  Back then there were no electric guitars … even Jimi Hendrix was still alive!  After that I pretty much carried on teaching myself.  There was nobody around that was a master of this kind of music – you had to go to England for that.  There was no-one even in Germany because the Scorpions came along much later.”  I’d seen videos of him playing Stratocaster and Les Paul, and asked him which one was his guitar of choice.  “Definitely the Stratocaster, because I can cover a lot of different sounds at the same time, like the tremolo stuff and the slide.  Also, the contours seem to make it really comfortable to play.  I like Les Pauls too, but I cannot get certain sounds out of it.  The best thing would be if you could change guitars during a song,” he laughed, “like a Gibson Fender double neck or something - that would be perfect.”  I asked when he’d started playing the slide in a rock context.  “I did that a long time ago with Katmandu.  It was always hard to bring it into rock, but that was because I wasn’t used to it.  Then suddenly I’d find the right notes and the right approach so it fitted in and gave it a different colour.   For Krokus I wanted to get them away from this simple rock.  I really love AC/DC but there can only be one AC/DC, and Krokus doesn’t do it as well as AC/DC.  Also, you need to progress a bit after a certain age, and I tried to put a few more counts in the music for the Hellraiser album.  With no keyboards and no acoustic guitars, you have to have something else, not just the same Angus licks all the time.  

As to who he rates as a guitar player, it’s not surprising that Steve Lukather is top of his list.  “He’s got such great feeling and he plays so many different approaches, it’s incredible.  He also plays with a lot of fire.  He’s really explosive and I really like his approach.  Of course I like some of the old guys, too, like Dave Gilmore, Eric Clapton, and Richie Blackmore.  There are so many great players; I probably have a list of 100 at least.  When I was learning one of my favourite bands was T.Rex.  Then afterwards I started to get over to the blues stuff, and I bought a Johnny Winter album.  Also Chuck Berry, of course, but Johnny Winter’s blues licks really impressed me.”   

Onto the bands that Mandy has been a member of over the years, and starting with Katmandu, I wondered why they never took off, especially with a vocalist like Dave King in the line-up.  “I think the record company gave up too soon.  After the first single they had to make up their minds about who to spend the money on, and it was between us and Firehouse, so they kept Firehouse and dropped us.  They just didn’t have long term vision.  Firehouse was really good, but I think that we were much more up to date than them.  It was also the time when grunge came along.  Dave’s with Flogging Molly now, and I think they’re coming to Switzerland soon so I hope to hook up with him.  He doesn’t like hard rock, though.  Even back then I had to really force him to sing the hard rock songs.  He hated bands like Whitesnake – he always thought it was such a generic, boring sound, which is ironic, because his voice is perfect for that stuff.”  And how about House of Lords – had he ever spent time as a full member of the band or had he been a session musician?  “Actually, I was considering being the guitar player for ‘Sahara’, but I was with Katmandu and I couldn’t do it because we’d just signed a deal.  I got to know them because I wrote the first single that they released from the first album ‘I Wanna Be Loved’.  Actually I just saw James a few days ago.  They played in Switzerland.  He recorded ‘The Final Countdown’ with a classical orchestra.  It’s going to be released as a single at the end of April in connection with the European soccer Championship.”  The next band I enquired about was Stealin’ Horses, which had an impressive list of musicians involved, including Neil Young, Steve Lukather and Mike Porcaro among others.  “Actually I wanted to go on tour with them because I played on the album, and then a few weeks before the rehearsals for the tour I dropped out because there was a chance of doing something with John Waite.  I’d already met him and recorded a song with him.  Of course I said sorry to the band, but then it didn’t work out with John Waite because he went on to form Bad English.  Afterwards I didn’t feel too bad, though, because the Stealin’ Horses tour was dropped.  They did a few gigs and then the record company just pulled the money.”

 Looking at Mandy’s career to date, the longest time he had spent with a band was Gotthard from 1996 – 2004.  Naturally I was curious as to why he left.  “We had problems with the manager, Mark Antonini.  He was doing really bad things and when I found out about it I said no more.  It was about some publishing money, and unfortunately Steve (Lee) and Leo (Leoni) knew about it but I didn’t.  I wrote a lot of songs and they got some publishing advance and didn’t tell me about it.  I don’t like it when people lie to me.  So basically they stole my f***ing money.  There are a lot of my songs on the Gotthard albums, and they weren’t just album songs, they were singles too.  They stole some of Jimi Jamieson’s lyrics for ‘Looking at You’ and Steve Lee put his name to it.  I don’t know what they’re saying about me, but that’s what the real reason was.  I liked the band a lot, but they just didn’t play correctly. If there’s one thing I cannot stand it’s somebody lying to me, it doesn’t matter who.  It feels like your wife is cheating on you or something.  Then they fired Chris Von Rohr also, and Chris was my song writing partner in Gotthard.  Once Chris was gone, I knew I wouldn’t have a lot of chances in that band, because Leo wants to be in charge of everything.  I always said that Steve should have moved to LA and tried other things.  I think he wasted a lot of his talent down in Ticino in between the mountains where there are only a few players.  If he’d gone to LA maybe he could have done a duet with Don Henley or whatever, you never know.  If I hadn’t left Switzerland I wouldn’t have ended up in Asia and all those bands I played in.”   

  

With such a long and interesting career, I asked Mandy if he could pick the most defining moment, what it would be.  “The most incredible moment was when I joined Asia. The surroundings were so glamorous and I couldn’t understand why they took me,” he laughed modestly.  “Steve Howe is such a different style of guitar player.  They had a lot of money to waste on guitar players, and they could have taken anybody.  It was a great time, though.  ‘Astra’ is a very keyboard oriented album.  I wish I could have a shot again at the same tracks now because I could give them so much more these days.  Actually it didn’t sell as they would have expected – to them it was a flop even though it sold a million worldwide!” 

On a final note, I asked Mandy if he felt betrayed by the situation with Krokus.  “I think Marc really listens to one person that takes care of his business, and sometimes he is not very well advised.  I’m not really mad at him, he just seems to think that this way is better, especially as he reckons he is getting too old to tour.  I just think he should be careful that he doesn’t lose the energy.  It’s hard to get back onto the horse once you’re off.  If the thing with Jimi works out, it would be great if we could do it under the Survivor name because it’s more likely to draw a crowd.”  I suggested they could call it Surviving Cobras, and he laughed and suggested that as he’d left Gotthard and Krokus he was thinking of forming a band called Krokhard.  “But in the very near future I’ll put something together with Andy Portmann and we’ll go out and play old Katmandu songs, also Asia and the other bands that I was with – a few from each band, and a few covers, just to get out there and play some clubs in Switzerland.  Maybe Tony will play bass with us and Stefan might also be involved, if he wants to do it.  Dominique visits Brazil a lot because his girlfriend lives there – or maybe he is hiding from the police (laughs). Andy has a great voice, though, and he’s so flexible he can sing anything.  I’ll send you some mp3s so that you can hear for yourself.”    

So, just when we thought Krokus had turned a corner with a talented new line-up and an outstanding album in ‘Hellraiser’, money and temptation would appear to have lured Marc and the original line-up into a reunion which smacks of a nostalgia trip more than anything to do with any future development of the band.  Is Krokus destined to become a tribute to itself?  We wait with baited breath.  

On 20th April, the following paragraph was attached to the end of the band’s biography on their website.   

COMEBACK OF THE ORIGINALS - Long anticipated and now officially confirmed: KROKUS is back in its original formation. Marc Storace, Fernando Von Arb, Chris Von Rohr and Freddy Steady are rocking together again. The band's greatest success internationally happened in the early 80's with this line-up. Up to today KROKUS is still the biggest rock export Switzerland ever had.  August 2nd, the "originals" are playing the only concert planned for 2008 in their native Switzerland. Fasten your seatbelts, because on that date KROKUS will rock the "Stade De Suisse" stadium in Berne/Switzerland. Afterwards the band will start working on their comeback album, slated to be released in middle of 2009. The anticipation will be as big as the one for their first concert. Be part of history in the making and join us on August 2nd!

Dawn Irwin