Edguy - Rocket Ride World Tour 2006!

Rocket Ride World Tour 2006!

Date: Location: Venue: (tickets)

Jan 27.06 Manchester (UK) MDH
Jan 29.06 Nottingham (UK) Nottingham Rock City
Jan 30.06 Leeds (UK) University
Jan 31.06 Glascow (UK) Glascow Academy
Feb 01.06 Newcastle (UK) University
Feb 03.06 London (UK) Astoria
Feb 04.06 Vosselaar (B) Biebop *+
Feb 06.06 Pratteln (CH) Z7
Feb 07.06 Milan (I) Rolling Stone
Feb 09.06 Madrid (E) Aqualung
Feb 10.06 Porto (P) Hard Club
Feb 11.06 Bergara (E) Sala Jam
Feb 12.06 Barcelona (E) Razzmatazz 2
Feb 14.06 Lyon (F) Transbordeur
Feb 15.06 Paris (F) Elysee Mont Martre
Feb 17.06 Stuttgart (D) LKA
Feb 18.06 Kaufbeuren (D) All-Karthalle
Feb 20.06 Langen (D) Stadthalle
Feb 21.06 Koln (D) Live Music Hall
Feb 22.06 Oberhausen (D) Turbinenhalle
Feb 24.06 Lichtenfels (D) Stadthalle
Feb 25.06 Osnabruck (D) Halle Gartlage
Feb 26.06 Hamburg (D) Markthalle
Feb 28.06 Goteborg (S) Trädgarn
Mar 01.06 Stockholm (S) Arenan
Mar 02.06 Lund (S) Mejeriet
Mar 04.06 Fulda (D) Wartenberg-Oval
Mar 15.06 Osaka (JP) Quattro
Mar 16.06 Tokyo, (JP) Ebisu Liquid Room
Mar 17.06 Tokyo, (JP) Ebisu Liquid Room
Mar 19.06 Taipei (TW) Family Theater
Mar 21.06 Hong Kong (CHI) Hitec Auditorium
Mar 24.06 Peking (CHI) Red Hall
July 16.06 Vizovice (CZ) Masters of Rock



http://jukebo.cx/archives/2006/03/22/edguy-rocket-ride/

Edguy’s brilliant new album, Rocket Ride, gets a review with a difference; the band’s very own nutty vocalist Tobias Sammet helps us give a complete track-by-track rundown of the whole album. Why? Well, because we asked him to.

Edguy began this year with the release of Rocket Ride and a support tour of the UK with Dragonforce. They then took Dragonforce with them for a Europe-wide headlining tour before going to Japan. They’re now in China. The new album is a perfect power metal album. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, makes jokes in the right places, handles important issues in the right way and does the whole thing with superb vocals, excellent musicianship and most importantly, variety. It’s exactly what you’d want from a power metal album.

Myself and Tobias did this a long time ago now, over a lunchtime drink at a hotel lounge in London, before the album was even out, but I decided not to spoil the surprise for any Edguy fans out there, as Tobias was quite revealing about the album’s content, and kept it under wraps for a time. The album’s been out a little while now, so the fans have had a while to live with it. We therefore think it’s about time, we share with you Tobias’ thoughts on each track and maybe shed some light on some of the meanings of the songs for you. We might also inspire some new people to check out the album, who knows?

Sacrifice
“It’s a long song and probably the most complicated song on the album, which is why many people think it’s strange to have it on the album as the opening track, but my opinion is it doesn’t matter to a metalhead how long the opening track is. Nobody sits there with a watch checking the running time of the song, you know. Metalheads are bright enough to cope with an eight minute opening track. They don’t need a hit single as the opening track. So it doesn’t make a difference.

“It has everything Edguy is about. It has aggressive passages, it has very calmed down passages, it has aggressive guitar riffing, it has anthemic melodies, everything. So it sums up the whole range of Edguy and the whole diversity. Lyrically it’s a very serious song, which is very funny because the cover artwork is really funny and of course there’s a few funny jokes, but Sacrifice has some very serious lyrics. It’s just writing down feelings. There’s a lot of things going on around me, and it has been like that for ten years. My life is constantly moving in the fast lane, which is a good thing! Travelling around, meeting a lot of people, and being on stage all the time, being in the studio writing songs. So there’s really not a lot of time to think, for me. Not a lot of time on my own. But when you’re on your own, especially in a hotel room, and everything starts to calm down and then you have time to think, so it’s just about how sometimes you’re really irritated by when you’ve got time to think on your own that everything starts to slow down and starts to happen in slow motion. It’s really to cope with the situation, to face a situation that you don’t know, that you’re not so familiar with, and that sacrifice I have to make is when you have so much going on around you that you’re facing an unreal, a surreal situation when you finally have time on your own. It’s a sacrifice not being able to cope with just normal situations.”

Rocket Ride
“There have been periods in my life where I’ve been spending a lot time thinking about the meaning of life and trying to find a deeper meaning in everything, but then on the other hand it will lead you to nowhere spending a lot of time thinking about conspiracy theories and the meaning of life and religion and philosophy. It’s a great thing to think a lot, but it can really drive you nuts, so there has to be some point where you just have to accept that we are just animals as any other animal. So Rocket Ride is just about embracing the profanity of life. Sometimes you’ve just got to switch off your brain and just live. Enjoy being a human being with all it’s lower needs. There are some!”

Wasted Time
“Wasted Time is a classic mid-tempo track for Edguy. It’s got some Scorpions in it, especially the riffing in the verse. That’s really funny because I’ve just come from Spain and they said they just did an interview with, like Classic Rock Spain, or something, where Rudolph Schenker said Edguy are the new Scorpions of Germany. The younger generation Scorpions. I felt really honoured, because I like the Scorpions, I gotta admit, especially the ’80s stuff they did. So I think Wasted Time has got a Scorpions touch, but still it’s more bombastic, and a heavier track. Lyrically it’s about a situation where you look back at a failed relationship and you just wonder if it all was wasted. Of course it’s not, but somehow we tend to be self-destructive and we tend to be self-sympathetic, so it was just all a waste of time. It’s a nice idea to think like that and just tell the World “it was all a waste of time”, and that’s what the song is about.”

Matrix
“Matrix is nothing to do with the movie. I don’t even know the movie, I know about the movie, but I’ve never seen it, I’m not too much into movies. Musically I’ve gotta say it’s a little bit different. It used to start like a normal Dio song. Dio meets modern keyboards. Sascha (Paeth) really produced it into a different direction. We were about three minutes into the song and he came up and said “Hey, I’ve heard this song!” So he was adding a lot of keyboards and rearranging everything and finally he liked it. I don’t know if it’s a typical Edguy song, but on the other hand you’ve got to surprise people at times, just to keep it interesting and exciting. And we were fine with the song, we said “OK, let’s do it this way, let’s take the song like that.”

“Lyrically, it’s kind of like Sacrifice, it’s when you discover there are two totally controlling sides to your personality somewhere inside. I’ve always felt like a real family kind of person, you know? Being very, very close to my family and being tightly bound to my home and to where I come from. Being a touring musician, with all those temptations that you have to face, it’s a very controlled thing. The first lines have been inspired by the feeling when you wake up in morning, looking in the mirror looking like shit, remembering the Jack Daniel’s bottle you had the night before, not remembering the name of the one who’s lying in bed next to you, and just asking, like, “what am I, really? It’s really time to reboot myself and try to find out what is right and what is wrong.” But, you know, finally when the song was written, one of the backing vocalists in the studio, Amanda, she is American and she was reading the lyrics in a different way totally. She said “it looks like you’re struggling with a fucked up relationship to a girl”. And I said “oh, that’s the way you can read as well?” She said “Yeah, I think that’s what it’s about.” “Oh good, so, it’s not at all about that, but if it works like that too, cool!”

Return To The Tribe
“Return To The Tribe is a typical Edguy song, speed metal, very easy going. We have a vocal guitar solo in there, I was singing the guitar solo. We were having a few beers in the studio and I told Sascha how I sing some solos to the others to give them an idea of what I think. He said “Oh, we should record that” and I said “yeah, cool!” We ran it through an amplifier with distortion and I was singing like a guitar solo and it sounded real! So we left it like that on the album. I think it’s the first time a vocalist sings a guitar solo, but I don’t know. Lyrically it’s just about the feeling you have when you’ve been on tour for months and no matter how much you like touring, really you’re just looking forward to, and remembering, people at home, you’re looking forward to meeting them and looking forward to going back to your shelter. Just looking forward to all sorts, “I enjoy what I’m doing, and I’m looking forward to doing it again next time, but now I’m going home to the great PlayStation evenings with my friends and drinking white wine and smoking a pipe and just enjoying a great evening at home.”

The Asylum
“Asylum is a classic Edguy track. It starts as a ballad, you know, really calm, and then it explodes, which is something I really like in our songs. We do that a lot of times, when we really calm down the whole mood of the song to make it explode afterwards. That’s a typical thing that Richard Wagner did as well in his music. He always had these huge, huge, huge explosions after it had calmed down. It’s classic Dio meets Edguy bombastic stuff. It’s got a very nice guitar solo, I think, I really appreciate it. Jens did a terrific job, especially the clean guitar solo. A very, very calm guitar solo. And lyrically it’s a political song, in a way, but it was never meant to be because I don’t think it makes sense to write political songs. I don’t think a war will end just because Bob Dylan sings about anti-tank missile silos and shit. It’s really stupid for bands to do that. It should be entertaining first. If it’s entertaining then it’s OK to be political as well. This song is just exploring the roots of evil, because everybody sees evil as something different. Controlling opinions, controlling ways of life, we tend to see that as evil. Or like this whole terrorism thing. I mean, of course it’s evil to fly a plane into a building and kill innocent people. That’s evil. And to blow up bombs in a subway station. There’s no way of calling something like that not evil. But, let’s put it this way. A snake. If you corner it, it will bite you. But if you leave it alone, give it space, give it a chance to find it’s food in the forest, there’s no snake in the World that will go “ooh, a human, that’s nice pray, let’s eat it!” That’s why I think sometimes we make it too easy for ourselves to call something else evil, without understanding the position. And I think that’s what happens globally at the moment. We corner some people, and we corner certain countries. If it’s their last chance to bite back, they will bite back.”

Save Me
“Save Me is a very, very kitschy love song. I love kitsch. Maybe some people call it embarrassing, but it’s cool, we are an embarrassing band! That’s what we’re supposed to be, that’s what heavy metal is supposed to be. I mean, I wonder what Dee Snider would say if someone came up and said “you look ridiculous, you look embarrassing”. He’d say “of course! That’s what it’s intended to be like.” So, Save Me is just a typical love ballad. Of course some people say that this topic has been really, really overdone. I don’t think so much about what is needed and what is overdone and what is not overdone, you just have to have feelings, and that is what I had in mind. It’s a beautiful song, I think. It’s a classic ballad, but again Sascha produced it into a very modern direction, production wise. Some people say it sounds like Nickelback. I think it’s still just an Edguy ballad. Some other people said it sounds like Matchbox 20.”

Catch of The Century
“Dokken meets Edguy meets Van Halen! I’m really proud of that song. It’s one of my favourites because it’s a good package as a whole. It’s a song about being turned down by a woman that you don’t want to be turned down by. It’s not so much the topic itself that makes it so funny and interesting and gives it the right attitude, I think it’s more the words. “I’m going down with flying colours before I go down on someone else” and stuff like that. “You’ve got your catch going down the drain, you’re dumping the catch of the century, Lady Luck’s got her ass in pain, you’re dumping the catch of the century.” It’s just the best way to get over a situation like that, just to say “hey, you don’t want me, you don’t deserve me!” That’s what I have to tell myself several times a day. There are many people in the World who don’t deserve me, I can tell you!”

Out of Vogue
“It’s all in the title itself, pretty much. It’s a real out of vogue song, it sounds like an ’80s rock song. Jens wrote it actually, almost everything. Ironically I wrote the solo and our guitar player wrote all the rest! Which is really stupid, but it is what it is. And I wrote the lyrics. It’s just about being out of vogue, and being out of vogue is the greatest thing in the World because if you try to be in vogue you will always be late. I just don’t understand that. Even if you manage to be fashionable, you just manage to be fashionable for a short time. And that’s the stupid thing, you should stick with what you really are and what you really want to do. And that’s what we do. Many people say “oh, that’s unfashionable and that’s old fashioned” and we say “yeah! And we’re damn proud of it! We are totally out of vogue!” Some people say we suck. Some people only listen to fashionable stuff, therefore Elvis is old fashioned shit and it sucks. Well, maybe we suck, but we sound quite good sucking!”

Superheroes
“Some people say we’re going pop, just because that was the first single. Well, it was the softest song. It doesn’t make sense to take the heaviest track, or the longest track, or the most complicated track and make it the single. It reminds me of the heavier version of old Bon Jovi. And that’s a good thing, we’ve always had that hard rock appeal to it.”

Trinidad
“Trinidad was supposed to be one of two bonus tracks. But it turned out to be so funny; it has no meaning. The meaning is I’m pulling fun out of my height. I’m not the tallest guy. I’ve been with a girlfriend and she was taller than me. It was like I had to walk on the sidewalk and she had to walk in the street so we were the same size. Again, it’s not so much the topic that is funny, but I think it’s the choice of words that makes it funny. Like “I’m a sight for sore eyes if your eyes could only see, I’ve been born on tiptoes, still you look like a lighthouse next to me,” and stuff like that. The song is just about a man who’s made fun of and while his wife is sleeping he decides to go out to grab some food and goes out and departs to Trinidad and never comes back and hangs out at the beach with girls. Some people may say this is really bullshit, but I say yeah, it is, but at least it’s entertaining and interesting and funny. And the song turned out to be so good; it’s anthemic, so we said “hey, let’s put it on the album.”

Fucking With Fire
“Our goal was to write a real ludicrous ’80s cock-rock anthem. And I think we did that. Every single syllable is cliché. “I saw her coming in high heels, moving like a queen”, I mean that’s so stupid it’s embarrassing, but again, we are an embarrassing band! Hairforce One is the subtitle, which refers to hair metal, of course. We thought it was funny and in the end we thought this is an anthem and some people may think we’re nuts, and that’s good, so let’s put it on the album. And I think it should work pretty well live.”

Standing In The Rain
“Erm, Standing In The Rain isn’t going to be a bonus track at all. I mean, Standing In The Rain has been recorded and it’s completed, but we decided, because it was so strong, to take it as a song and use it for another single. At the moment there’s no plan to release another single, so we’re listening to it at home.”

Watch for the rest of our exclusive interview with Tobias coming soon.