Interviewer: Anni Funk

 

[0:00]

Anni: Do you want to say anything first?

Chris: No.

Anni: No?

Chris: Hi.

Anni: Hi.

Chris: Hi.

Anni: Okay well. The year is practically over, the last concert lies ahead...

Chris: I could do a greeting.

Anni: Yeah, go on!

Chris: Welcome to the second fanterview on this tour, with Anni. And Anni has collected questions.

Anni: Too many questions, for the time. 

Chris: From very many people. But we'll just try. There is no time limit. Apart from the battery of course. There, now intro.

 

(intro)

 

[0:48]

Anni: The year is almost over, the last concert lies ahead. What was your personal highlight in the year 2016, and what awaits us in the new year?

Chris: ...I always say I think it's unfair to pick one concert. Of course the big concerts stay in your memory: to play classical on the M'era Luna is of course a great highlight, but um...I'm in the wrong mode for that right now. I'm on tour right now and this is currently demanding a lot of emotion from me, and so the other concerts feel like they're 10 years ago, so I can't even think about them. Next year a lot of different things are gonna happen again, but in the centre first of all is our tour. A completely simple boring standard answer. And I'm in fact not allowed to reveal most of it yet.

 

[1:40]

Anni: Few hours ago it was announced that Bo has to stop due to personal reasons. What does that mean for you and how do things move on from here? 

Chris: The question is actually...when this is published everyone already knows..

Anni: Everyone already knows..?

Chris: ...how it continues. So you know that already. And what it means for us: well we have to take things the way they are. He decided it for himself. We're very sad about it. But you have to respect it. It's the important thing for him. And we have to...of course, it's tough after 7 years. But it's no use opening up an emotional barrel and getting all panicky and going crazy. We are all adults, and we just have to deal with the situation, and we won't get weaker because of it. But we will grow from it.

 

[2:36]

Anni: How do you deal with the pressure of always having to put together something new and creative?

Chris: I don't consider that pressure.

Anni: How do you get strength and inspiration for your work?

Chris: Sleep, eat.

Anni: So the usual normal human stuff.

Chris: It's really like that. You have to imagine it like, one person is trained as a baker and then he's a baker, and I'm a musician and composer and producer or whatever everything at once. There are even days where I come into the studio and think "I'm not in the mood for this right now". It not the way people always imagine it where it's always "Wooo, you get there, and awesome, open a beer, and party". Even this can sometimes just be a job. But for me that's just, I don't have that pressure. Cause it's the same thing to me as it is for someone else to bake a bread. I know what ingredients to use and then I make a song. It's not always good either

Anni: But most of the time.

Chris: ...you only know the tip of the iceberg. I write much more which no one ever hears. A lot of trash is produced too. You can only influence creativity within certain limits. But basically it’s just: yeah I know which tools I need to use to build what I build.

 

[3:55]

Anni: Do you make the music mainly for yourself or do you during writing and composing think of things that the fans might like particularly?

Chris: It depends on what I'm doing it for. If I write for, I don't know, a casting show or whatever, then I have exact instructions about the framework, for which target audience, who needs to like it, and I work completely only target audience oriented. Sometimes I make music only for myself, just cause a song needs to be released. Sometimes I deliberately make a song where I think "Oh I need something..." Credo, for example, what can be made which...

Anni: ...expresses the fan-love

Chris: Yeah, and which moves people at the end of the concert. The coordination of emotions that happens then. It can indeed be like that or like that. But it's not generally the case that I think "How can I maximize the success?" but: We need to like our music ourselves first and foremost. We are our own biggest fans. That always sounds so arrogant, but isn't meant that way. We think ourselves really really great, and the music…

Anni: Well it should be that way that you stand behind it.

Chris: And that's what I mean. We really do think our music is really great. It has to be this way. I think every musician who says he's not a fan of his own music..

Anni: ..is no musician. Or at least in the wrong profession.

Chris: ..yeah he's doing something wrong. And first and foremost: we need to think it's awesome. And that's the most important thing. That makes it work.

 

[5:26]

Anni: With Empyrean, when you translate that, you've created a haven, a seemingly perfect world. What's up with the fact that older songs were sometimes hidden in new songs like easter eggs? Or that the new songs sometimes build on older songs? 

Chris: Um, for one thing I just thought it was funny. Like that always recurring scream in moves, that Wilhelm Scream. (scream is played in audio) And on the other hand it really is the case that sometimes one song lead to the other. Because I somehow, I don't know, thought about the other song while writing this one, or I felt some connection which maybe only I see. Sometimes those don't mean anything and it's just my thing at the moment. It's just fun. 

Anni: Interesting

Chris: ..to connect them.

 

[6:15]

Anni: How many percent of the real Chris do we experience in public?

Chris: By "in public" do you mean the stage or generally the..

Anni: Stage; generally when you're among fans.

Chris: Um...73.

Anni: Okay. Point five?

Chris: 73. (laugh) No idea. After all that's all me. On the stage that's me too. Of course you kind of play a role but it’s not like I have a script. Instead that's a part of me, some other facette that comes out. I'm always 100% me, but of course I'm different towards people that are close to me, with whom I...my family for example. My closest friends. But that's the exact same thing like when you, don't know, go to the supermarket and talk to the salesclerk. You can also only build up the connection to her which you built to a salesclerk

Anni: There's less emotion behind it then than...

Chris: Exactly. And what's difficult about it of course, is if you imagine that we hang in certain rooms as posters, and all day our music is on, you as the fan of a band develop a much closer connection to us, from that side, than we do to the fans, which we CAN have to the fans.

Anni: Cause they're only a large mass

Chris: No, no..

Anni: Well of course everyone is important individually..

Chris: No, I don't mean that. It's just that, we sometimes don't know them at all. Then two people meet after a concert, and they already know me...they know all my lyrics by memory, and can play along to the movements of every scene in a video, and feel like they're very close to me. And I see them for the first time. And that's of course sometimes a completely absurd situation. And that's of course...yeah. But I'm always 100% me. But I'm of course different to people that I know well.

 

[8:10]

Anni: Subject fan love: I've received unbelievably many compliments and personal questions about you. How do you perceive this? Does it honour you, does it frustrate you sometimes, or do you sometimes even feel underestimated when so much is sexualized?

Chris: I see that in a completely relaxed way. Everyone should consume me the way they want.

Anni: Okay

Chris: So if people come to our concerts cause they just..I don't know,..just think we're hot, then that's perfectly okay. Everyone should see and consume it the way they like. It's ok.

 

[8:43]

Anni: Okay. If you had to reinvent Lord of the Lost once more, would you do anything different from the beginning?

Chris: For sure. But I don't know what. (they laugh) No idea. That's a question that's completely hard to, I can't answer it. I get it a lot. I think everything was right, even though I made mistakes.

Anni: They're part of it. Otherwise you probably wouldn't be where you are right now.

Chris: Exactly. But I would certainly do things differently. But I can't...no.

Anni: Can't say precisely what.

Chris: No.

 

[9:16]

Anni: How does it feel to present your personal experiences to the public in the form of music?

Chris: How do you mean that?

Anni: Well you build personal experiences into your songs, and how does it feel to bring those to the outside world?

Chris: Um...I of course always try to do that in a way so that it's not just self-therapeutic but also reaches someone else. Cause I think it's totally uninteresting to have a text like "And at the age of 17 I met..Beate..and blabla.." no one cares about that. It's about basic emotions..

Anni: Some might care.

Chris: Some might. Sure, she was quite sexy, Beate. And, um, it feels good because we humans are all kind of the same, and in certain parts of life we're all moved by the same things. So it feels good because...now I've got a hair here (pulls a hair away from his face)

Anni: It's not mine.

Chris: Not?

Anni: I don't know.

Chris: Maybe while hugging before, while saying hi? It was blonde.

Anni: Then it really wasn't mine.

Chris: Must have been Gared.

Anni: Then it was Gared, heh.

 

[10:24]

Chris: Um, where was I? It feels good because then I can reach other people, who might feel exactly the same in certain situations.

 

[10:33]

Anni: What was your most embarassing moment on stage?

Chris: I don't wanna say. Cause it was so embarassing.

(both laugh)

Anni: Okay, now everyone will make their own mental image.

Chris: I assume they will, yeah.

 

[10:47]

Anni: Which three things do your band colleagues need to bring along to be a part of Lord of the Lost?

Chris: Their instrument, intelligence, body hygiene.

(Anni laughs)

Anni: Do you sometimes reject production offers cause you don't like the artist or the content of the production?

Chris: Yes.

Anni: Often?

Chris: No.

Anni. Okay. (laugh)

 

[11:08]

Anni: What should we never know about you but you'll tell us now anyway?

Chris: I won't tell. (laugh) These are the kind of questions..

Anni: Yeah, you wouldn't know where to start.

Chris: I don't understand why they're asked. Cause it should be clear that nothing...

Anni: That in the end nothing will be told about it.

Chris: It's also kind of...you actually shouldn't do that. Actually that's impolite. I also don't go to someone and say: "Tell us the worst thing you ever did, which you shouldn't tell." It's not nice.

Anni: I'm sorry.

Chris: Naughty.

Anni: (laugh) Naughty naughty (wags finger).

 

[11:46]

Anni: What would have to happen for you to give up the band?

Chris: Um, I don't know...if I died that would be a reason.

Anni: That would be a pretty good reason. 

Chris: I don't know, maybe really extreme family stuff, if everyone around you dies away, or something that's really so dramatic that you're no longer able to practice that and enjoy it, which I do for my work. I hope that will never happen, but you never know what happens in the end.

 

[12:18]

Anni: Do you believe in destiny?

Chris: No.

 

[12:22]

Anni: Okay. What scares you, and what makes you sad?

Chris: Um...I'm afraid of what's been happening to the world these last couple of years. It's getting increasingly worse. Um.....what makes me sad is....if my son isn't feeling well, that makes me sad. When you can't help such a little child. 

Anni: Cause often you don't even know exactly what's wrong.

Chris: Yeah. Sometimes you don't know why the little guy is sad now. And then I get very sad too.

Anni: Understandable.

 

[13:04]

Anni: Since you can't cook: What do you like to eat the most, and where?

Chris: Asian, mostly. At Thai Town, in St.Pauli. Well yes, I do cook. I know how to...I'm just not a passionate cook who juggles with spices to conjure some things...but I am capable of preparing food, and I even do it.

Anni: Wow (laughs)

Chris: Usually not for myself, but I do prepare food.

 

[13:36]

Anni: That's most of it already, cause I had to sort out most of the questions because..

Chris: Like what?

Anni: Um...Russian questions. Questions from Russia.

Chris: For example?

Anni: If, while playing the Cello...

Chris: Do we have to do it in German?

Anni: Oh. Well I don't speak Russian.

Chris: Oh. If, while playing the Cello, I...?

Anni: ..you had an orgasm before?

(both laugh)

Chris: Well I don't know exactly how..

Anni: Because you become one with the instrument. At least it seems like that on the outside.

Chris: Well I imagine that to be very...I think I'd need a third hand, then it would probably work. But it would be very exhausting!

Anni: Probably mentally or something.

Chris: Yeah okay, and what else needs to...well we could still...well see here...no, no orgasm, cause I also never...nah. No.

Anni: Ok. Well the fans will be disappointed.

Chris: (sigh) Also, making music on a stage, that's also very exhausting. So, I don't know...maybe that works for other people but, I don’t get an erection onstage. I’m very focused on what I’m doing.

Anni: Gared is nodding!

(both laugh)

Chris: Nah.

 

[14:41]

Anni: And how far you would go with a fan? Cause some are rather dressed sexually explicitly. And if you sometimes have the desire to rip the clothes off their bodies.

 

[14:52]

(see for yourselves if you think he looks sarcastic. I'm not sure)

Chris: (pause) Yeah, sure, all the time. And oral sex is okay.

Anni: But only.

Chris: Yeah. Only. And a lot of it. I'd do that. Also with anyone...Any WOMAN...yes.

 

[15:11]

Chris: That was it, from Potsdam. (Gestures to Anni to talk)

Anni: Thank you for your great questions. Sorry if some of them couldn't be answered. And you'll surely have the opportunity to ask them yourselves again.

Chris: So how are you doing?

Anni: Quite good.

Chris: And what are you doing in your life?

Anni: Well, I'm...(laugh) I'm studying to become a hotelier. And it's totally fun.

Chris: What's the worst thing you ever did and wouldn't tell anyone but will tell us now anyway cause we wanna know?

Anni: That's a very difficult question, you shouldn't ask that to anyone.

Chris: How far would you go with a musician? As in pulling clothes off their body..

Anni: Depends on who it is.

Chris: With Gared for example (gestures to the camera).

Gared: Hello!

Anni: That's not a question!

(both laugh)

Gared: Yes, I am a big question. And the answer is usually no.

(Chris laughs)

Anni: Awww.

Chris: Alright, thanks a lot. Cool.

Anni: Yes, thanks too.

 

 

Translation: Manuela Lütolf