HELLOWEEN: Romnia is good for cool ideeas!

The reason I didn’t see Doro’s show at Rockin’ Transilvania Fest in its entirety was the interview I could do with one of the Helloween members. To find one available for interviews was not easy, but I finally got the chance of a short conversation with the tall, dark-haired, green-eyed guitarist who plays on the left side of the stage, as he mentioned when I said I’ll be watching them from the first row.

Michael Weikath, Dani Loeble, Markus Grosskoph, Andi Deris, Sascha Gerstner

METALFAN: This is your second time in Romania, your second concert.
Sascha: As far as I can remember.

METALFAN: How would you feel about playing again here?
Sascha: Well, it’s always exciting, but I’m a bit disappointed because I hoped I would see that castle of Dracula in Transylvania, but there’s no chance because there’s no time to go there.

METALFAN: You’re on tour, so everything is busy.
Sascha: Yes, so we got to go tomorrow so I don’t have time to see that place. I was hoping that I will someday.

METALFAN: How is Hellish Rock going?
Sascha: Very, very good! We played in Europe, Asia, Australia and South America, so it’s working really, really good. Now we just play festivals the whole summer.

METALFAN: What festivals, what are your plans?
Sascha: I don’t remember all the names, but we’re going to play like every weekend to a festival. We’ve played already to a few festivals, like two days ago we played in Norway, with Alice Cooper and it was really, really good and we’re going to play in fall in U.S. and Canada, and then the tour is over.

METALFAN: Looking forward to all those?
Sascha: Yes, definitely. I mean I’m a total life guy, I love to play live so studio work - I find it always kind of torturous.

METALFAN: What are your expectations for tonight?
Sascha: I don’t know, you never know what’s coming up. You never know how the people are, how they react. That’s what I like about playing live – that on stage you never know.

METALFAN: The surprise?
Sascha: Yes, it’s always the surprise, always.

METALFAN: What’s the feedback from the fans for Gambling with the Devil?
Sascha: Actually pretty good and we didn’t expect it because we had not much time to write songs or in the rehearsal room to rehearse. After the last tour we had to write the songs very quickly so it was kind of rough work and the album sounds rough too, it’s heavier and some songs are more basic. But that worked really well and the people had a good reaction about the album.

METALFAN: And the feedback from the press as well?
Sascha: Very, very good, maybe better than for The Legacy album. Now you really can feel that it’s a real band, the line-up is altogether, we played one tour with this line-up and now it’s the second tour. You just can feel there’s a steady sound and steady songs. A real team.

METALFAN: For this album you had a “thing” on your website – that “Crack the riddle” thing; what was it all about and what was the reaction, the result?
Sascha: The funny thing is we created the album title here in Romania. We were in a hotel in Bucharest, Andi, Markus and me and we were thinking what could be the next album, what could be the idea of the next album and we were talking about politics and stuff. Well, it’s like the world it’s the devil’s playground so then we just came up with the title: “Gambling with the Devil”. I thought also gambling is very popular right now, a lot of people go into Internet and they gamble, so we called gambling with the devil everything, all the stuff. If you go out of the house in the morning you never know what comes next, you never know what will happen, what good things and bad things. If it’s bad things, it’s gambling with the devil.

METALFAN: And if it’s good things?
Sascha: If it’s good things, we’ll make another album about it. It was actually a pretty cool idea and we found it here in Romania on the last tour. So we thought we could invite the fans to gamble with us a little bit.

METALFAN: You were on tour also with Kai Hansen. Do you think that it will be, someday, a tour with Michael Kiske?
Sascha: I don’t know. Maybe, you never know. I don’t know how the other guys would think about it, I just say never say never. For me, I don’t need to tour with him, but if he’s there, he’s there.

METALFAN: Did you listen to his unplugged album, Past in Different Ways.
Sascha: I just heard one of his last albums because I know the guitar player, I used to play with him.

METALFAN: I was wondering what you think about the idea of doing such an album.
Sascha: An acoustic album? Well, it’s not a pretty new idea.

METALFAN: No, but would it be included in your plans in the future?
Sascha: Of course it would, of course we’re planning some special kind of albums, doing some different songs for special albums. It’s actually not a new idea, but of course we could involve acoustic guitars for our songs as well.

Sascha Gerstner, the gambler

METALFAN: besides music and touring and everything related to it, what do you do in your life?
Sascha: Touring, and playing guitar, and touring, and touring. There’s not so much time for private life. When I joined the band I was like 25 years old and I thought: “Yeah, that’s great, you go on tour and you have a lot of time after that; and then you’re gonna write songs, and then you go to the studios, and it’s so much time.” But it isn’t. You come back from tour and you have to have new ideas to go to the studio again and it never stops. It’s full-time job. I mean it’s easier than a day job because you can be creative whenever you want, you don’t have to be there at 7 o’clock in the morning, but it’s kind of the same thing in certain way. It moves on from the beginning all the time, so you begin with the song ideas, than you go to the studio, and then you play your songs, than you go on promotion tour after that. So you don’t lay down and say there’s nothing to do. You make promotion tour, lots of interviews, and then you go to rehearsals for the tours, and then you go on tours. We’ve been touring since last year in November and it’s a long time since then. It’s actually not so much free time. Sometimes we have one or two weeks when everyone is working in the studio, witting songs, having ideas, making jam-sessions with other musicians, but in general it’s a full-time job.

METALFAN: Do you feel accomplished personally and musically? I mean how do you feel about everything in your life?
Sascha: Of course I want more; I mean even if I’m way younger than the other band members, for me it’s always things to do, things to dream about and I never lose that. Of course I’m planning things for the future, but in general I must say I’m really happy with life. Because I’m healthy everything is perfect. I don’t have to suffer some sickness like brain cancer, so my life is really good. I can do what I want, I can play music – that’s what I want, that’s a great life. I don’t have to complain about anything. And I don’t even understand why most people are complaining all the time – “my life is so shitty, my life is so shitty”; I’m happy with my life.

METALFAN: I think that would be all and I wish you good luck on stage and have fun!
Sascha: Thank you.