Chris: Thank you. Coffee?

Martin: I will have a tea, please, as I already had two cups of coffee.

Chris: I only drink coffee when I’m in company, and as you are my company today, I will definitely have one.

Martin: Thank you for the invitation.

Chris: As I was on my way here, I noticed, that we are in the darned 7^th year now.

Martin: Oh really?

Chris: Yes, we’ve known each other since… when was the Viva Hades tour? 2011?

Martin: You probably know that better than me. I just remember 2012, as 2012 we did “After the War”, which was our first Top 10 album, that’s why I remember it so well, because that really changed my life, but I cannot recall exactly, when the earlier albums came out.

Chris: For me it is 2 remarkable dates: in 2012 we were supporting Eisbrecher, which was a big step forward for us, and one year beforehand it was you. So we are in the 7^th year now.

Martin: It feels longer though.

Chris: Is that good or bad?

Martin: It’s good! Especially Mika is an indicator for me on this.

Chris: He’s pretty exactly as old as how long we know each other.

Martin: I’ve seen him as a new-born and by now he is a Rockstar himself!

Chris: Right! When we were on tour back then, I told you that I’d be a father in 2-3 months and *laughs* – now he’s a Rockstar himself.

Martin: Last year on the M’Era Luna festival I was surprised to see this big boy run around, or when we were doing “Children of the Dark” and you had him with you, where he was going around there in his toy car… so, indeed it feels much longer to me – and that’s a compliment.

 

(2:10)

Chris: We’ve spent a lot of time together touring, we talked a lot backstage, we know a lot about each other, but there’s definitely a few things, that I don’t know yet and that I’ve always wanted to ask you. You started making music at quite a young age, but I honestly don’t know how …I think I heard it was with drums?

Martin: We really never spoke about that before?

Chris: Not really, no. We touched the topic a bit, but not into depth.

Martin: I was born in Hamburg-Bergedorf, that’s where we lived for the first few years, my father was a drummer himself, a pretty bad one, he played in a band in the 60s, “the Starfighters”. His biggest success was to be supporting the Beatles…but by that time the Beatles were not famous yet. He played in that Rock’n’Roll band and he had his own drum set at home. As soon as I was able to walk, I walked past it, found it interesting; the first pictures of me on drums are about age 2 ½-3 years. My father was working as a federal railroad official. He had 2 hobbies, one of which was horse riding, the other one was playing the drums. He had 2 sons, so he somehow got the idea, that one son should become the best drummer of the world and the other son should become the best horse rider.

Chris: Not a football player?

Martin: We were not allowed to play football, as that was considered antisocial. He was not interested in football himself. At the end of the day he wanted us to fulfil the dreams that he had. That’s why my drum classes started at 3 years already. Lots of classes. Not about 15 minutes per week, as would be a normal amount at such young age, but every single day. That’s how it all started.

I haven’t had contact with my father for 30 years. In retrospect one can say… I won “Jugend musiziert” (youth makes music), I was Germany’s best young drummer …

Chris: That’s surprising …usually, if you get forced to do something that much, you often do the exact opposite in the end.

Martin: During puberty, when we had to go away from our father, because it just was not bearable anymore, because of physical, domestic violence, it became dangerous for us, I was 15, my brother was 18, we did a moonlight flit… after that I did not play the drums for a full year. I even joined a football club, that was the first thing. And I did everything else, that I had not been allowed to do before… polished my nails, got piercings, smoked, total rebellion, I gave my Mum a really hard time back then. She wanted to make up for everything that had happened and so she let me do everything and so I flipped from one extreme to the other one. I just bollocked up everything, stole cigarettes by breaking vending machines open…

Chris: Did your brother too or were just you the “bad boy”?

Martin: Him too! My brother, whose “order” it had been to become a famous horse rider, had made it to be German Vize State Master in military horse riding. When we broke up with our father, our father sold all his high class sport horses or he took them to the butcher’s. So… this was the end for both of us. I stopped drumming until I got a phone call from Pearl. From about age 8-9 I had been endorsed by Pearl Drums and our artist supervisor phoned my Mum and asked, “What’s going on with Martin? He needs to play the drums!” My Mum told him, that I didn’t have drums anymore as my father had kept them all and took them to the bulky waste. Then Pearl invited me and my Mum to go there to Marburg, we went there … and they said, “Open the trunk and choose, what you want; here’s the storage hall, you can pick whatever you want.” I filled the car with the best drum parts I could find there and suddenly I was full of motivation again. I built my drums, played them and noticed, “That’s what I want to do, it’s so easy for me – unlike e.g. Maths at school, where I struggled hard and still didn’t get far – with drums I knew, that’s the path I want to take. I just have to do this. Funny enough, in the end I was really successful - with something different than playing the drums.

 

(8:49)

Chris: Mono Inc became successful, once you took the microphone, right?

Martin: No, it didn’t happen THAT fast. Actually Mono Inc. was not my first successful project. It began at a pretty young age, when I started composing, just because I found it interesting.

Chris: Then I have another question: Can you remember the first real song you composed? So, an actual song, not just snippets or an idea for a guitar riff?

Martin: No, because I already tried that at age 8-9 at the organ, so this is somehow… you can’t really tell. But I remember the first song that as a composer earned something, which I had not counted on. But I don’t recall the first composition, no.

Chris: Is it a secret, that one song you remember?

Martin: No, it’s not a secret. It was a song named… hmmm I forgot the English title! *thinking* ”My little secret”! – that was the name of that song. I wrote it for a Danish band. And at that time they had already reached gold in Denmark.  And I thought, “If they sing that song, and they are that famous in Denmark, that would be a real breakthrough”. I was in my early 20s then. They really wanted that song. “Colourblind” – that was the name of that band. They published that song and it was a big flop. The fun thing about it was, that the Chinese (or was it Korean) version of “Madonna” covered that song with lyrics in Mandarin – and it became a big hit in Asia. At some point I got my GEMA-Billing and found to my biggest surprise € 35.000 on it.

Chris: Wasn’t it German Marks? Did we already have Euros by that time?

Martin: Yes, you’re right, it was Marks. But still. It was the first time for me to not be completely broke. That’s what I definitely remember.

Chris: I can understand that well.

Martin: Thereupon the music publisher EMI said, ok, you’re good, we’ll supply you with the financial means, so you can completely concentrate on composing.

(11:40)

Chris: When did you start playing the other instruments? Composing only on drums does not work so well maybe? You’re a multi-instrumentalist, and you surely didn’t start that only a few years ago … you probably started at young age also? Did it happen incidentally?

Martin: At home we had a keyboard… I remember the first song that I could play there, was “Drive” by “The Cars”. I remember that very well. I must have been pretty young then. And there I always played around. We also had a guitar standing around at home, that nobody used, so I just tried. And at some point I found an album in my father’s LP collection, and on the back of the record cover there were images of how to play certain chords.  So… I mainly taught myself.

Chris: Apparently it worked, somehow!

Martin: Indeed, somehow it worked.

 

(13:01)

Chris: When it comes to songwriting, I always find the phases interesting, like the first songs that you remember. Or highlights, not only concerning financial success, but… what are the most important/meaningful songs for you, either by Mono Inc or by someone else, your personal “Top 5”, for whichever reasons?

Martin: Voices of Doom. I wrote it within an hour, and I knew, “That’s it.” I knew from the beginning. “This works.” I totally believed in it.

Chris: There are such songs, where you notice that from the very start, that something big is going to happen.

Martin: When did the album come out? 2009, I think. That album somehow has paved the way for us. From then on we have played that song at least once in every show, and it’s one of those songs that you don’t get tired playing. If you’d have a song like “Ein Bett im Kornfeld” (German version of “Let Your Love Flow”)… if you have a song like this sticking to you through your whole career – it’s not that nice.

Chris: Or “Ein bisschen Spaß muss sein“… but on the other hand, even  if you already came to hate the song… when you play it live, something happens between you and the audience, that’s something completely different then. For example “Westerland” by “Die Ärzte”. They said, they’re so fed up with that one already, but when you play it live then and everybody sings along, you remember why that song is still so important.

Martin: But besides the success … we took a new video clip for “Voices of Doom” at the beginning of this year, because we thought, by that time it was the most successful song by Mono Inc., and while shooting the video you get to hear it like 30+ times also…. and I still did not get fed up by it. I was still fine with it.

(15:48)

You said, you found each other in 2009 … didn’t you play in that glam rock band before?

Chris: Exactly.

Martin: How did it come that at some point you said, “Now I want…”

Chris: Actually it was a bit earlier. I started already earlier, when I was still very young, with dark music and I did that for quite a long time, but on the other hand by that time many things happened, that made me think that I need some more happiness, a bit of colour and light in my life, I cannot make dark music exclusively… that’s why I founded this glam rock band, “The Pleasures”.

Martin: It still exists, right?

Chris: They still exist. But as it always goes, life comes in waves, and no matter how high an amplitude is, at some point the shaft pass is over and then it became clear to me that I need to get back to what I originally had wanted to do, so with Lord of the Lost I continued, what I had started much earlier. The turning point was in 2007, when I got to know my nowadays wife … and what kinds of songs do you write in that state? You don’t write glam rock songs but plenty of love songs, they need to come out and they all didn’t fit in my current musical projects and there I suddenly had this huge amount of songs that were not only about pink glasses but also about (in advance) fears of loss, if you’re that much in love with someone you worry about everything. That’s why the first album is called “Fears”, because of all those big fears that come along with strong emotions, about getting involved in all those emotions, the facets in that field are endless. So, in 2007 I started to write these songs; I already had the nickname “Lord” from childhood days on, which was originally just fun. And on my computer I had a file named “Lord”, and that’s where I saved these songs. On the other hand I also had this electro project named “UnterArt”, a kind of EBM project with Grigory, who now plays in VNV nation. By that time we were at the Label “Out Of Line”. In 2008 we were on tour (UnterArt), together with Combichrist and Rabia Sorda or Hocico. Then I went to the boss of that label, Andre, and said, “Now look, I do something with guitars here, give it a listen.” And he found it cool. So far they didn’t have any guitar bands at Out of Line, but they started doing that then. They told me to just finish what I have done so far. And so I finished it.

Martin: You already had the deal in your pocket before the band even existed?

Chris: So to say, yes. He said, if it’s good, we’ll make it. Then he came to the conclusion, that I need a band. If you want to play live… you’re not a laptop band after all. So I looked around among my friends and I put together a group, way too many actually, I think it was 7 people, that’s also the reason why we had so unbelievably many changes in the line-up at the beginning. Suddenly we were there, it worked out, and then there was the contact with a real audience on tour with you and then the thought came up, “Do I want to do this professionally?” – and so this manifested itself… the question, “Who goes where, who stays in the band, who doesn’t stay… “

Martin: Class was in the band then already?

Chris: Right, Class was there from the beginning, and Gerrit also, so to say, he joined after a few months.

Martin: He was there on tour also.

Chris: Exactly. Wherever he could. We didn’t have money by then, and so we didn’t have the resources to travel with 7 people. I think, 5 fitted in your nightliner, we were 6 or 7 then… I think, we “shrunk” for this tour, so some of us only played some shows, where they could go with their own vehicle…really crazy.

Martin: Dry the rain… I remember the last show of the tour, in Erfurt …

Chris: Yes, which venue?

Martin: A pretty weirdly built one, with columns …

Chris: Stadtgarten! Wait, no…

Martin: As I said, a weirdly built one, with columns, it was sold out, people were jostling there at the entrance …  but that’s not what I was going to tell … what I remember from then, was that you played a cover of “In My Heart” there.

Chris: Yes, only piano and vocals. That was cool.

Martin: Yes, until the second half of the chorus. There was a wrong chord. But I really loved that idea.

Chris:  There is even a YouTube video of that. 

Martin: A really lovely idea and I thank you for doing that.

Chris: My pleasure. I like it, that on tour you grow together emotionally also. To perform a song from the other band, only with piano and voice – that gives you a feeling of closeness. We also did that at the first “Eisheiligen Nacht” with the song “Eisblumen” from Subway to Sally at the last show, also just piano and voice. That also worked out really well, even further than to the second chorus, as this time the chords were correct.

 

(21:36)

Martin: Did you know from the start that you’d perform in English only?

Chris: To be honest, I never really thought about it. The first time I thought about it, was when the record label before the second album said, “Try something in German, that’s nicer.” It just didn’t feel right to me, I don’t even know why. I listened to a lot of German music in my youth, “die Ärzte” for example, but when I  started to write songs myself, to develop my own ideas – it always was in English, no matter, how bad my English was by then still. It just suits me better phonetically.

Martin: As a composer… but I remember, I have once heard a song in German from you… I think, it was for a Subway to Sally tribute sample album …

Chris: That also was “Eisblumen”.

Martin: There I thought, “Man, you singing in German sounds really cool!”

Chris: Meanwhile I like it too.

 

(22:37)

Martin: I’d like to ask you something different also: You have a brother…

Chris: Nope.

Martin: You don’t have a brother??

Chris: Nope.

Martin: Who is…? I always thought, the man who builds your guitars is your brother…

Chris: Nope, I have a sister, she “builds fashion”, clothing. You mean Tom, Thomas Harm.

Martin: Aaaah!

Chris: And my real name isn’t Harms anyway.

Martin: Ah yes. I knew that.

Chris: Harms is my mother’s maiden name, which perfectly fits as an artist name… and the other person is Thomas Harm.

Martin: I just always thought, he must be your brother or something, as you promote that company, Cyan guitars, so much.

Chris: We do that, because they customize instruments for us the way we want - at a really reasonable price, within the craft opportunities they have. It’s all unique pieces after all. Cyan guitars is a historic custom guitars producer… all guitars that Farin Urlaub (Die Ärzte) uses were built there. Tom knows Rodrigo from “Die Ärzte” as they were school friends. I think, it started with that “Sylt”-guitar, at least that’s what legends say, he said, “I need a guitar in the shape of the island Sylt, or a tennis racket shaped guitar or whatever” – to which Rodrigo replied, “I know someone who builds guitars.” And that’s how Tom started to build guitars for “Die Ärzte”, also those legendary ones that look like those half-acoustic, black guitars… and at some point, when I was in the studio with my first real band in the early 90s, the headstock of my Les Paul guitar broke…looks like that’s a predetermined breaking point with those… the producer in that studio  – which was in Glinde, by the way-  said, “You best go to Tom. He’s the guitar producer of “Die Ärzte” – he will repair that.” That’s how I got in touch with Tom back then.

Martin: Which studio was that in Glinde?

Chris: Absurd Studios.

Martin: Never heard of that.

Chris: Metal Production.

 

(25:23)

Martin: Another thing that I wanted to ask you, as it’s a big topic for me at the moment: In a few years my son will be obliged to go to school… you went to a Waldorf school?

Chris: Yes.

Martin: Completely?

Chris: Yes. From Kindergarten until graduation. Really completely.

Martin: And would you do it again?

Chris: As I never did something else, I cannot compare.

Martin: Did you have a good time in school?

Chris: I had a very good time in school, I’m one of those children, who have nothing negative at all to tell about their school time. I was totally happy and grateful… maybe it was up to me, maybe it was up to the schools, maybe both, I don’t know. I experienced various Waldorf schools, because we often moved in my childhood; I started school in Munich, went to school in Dortmund until 7^th grade,

Martin: Why did you move often?

Chris: Because my father worked in an insurance company and he built up various branch offices for that company. Then we moved back to Hamburg, there I was at the Waldorf school for 3 weeks, there I was kicked out, for nothing actually… the teacher who kicked me out was sent to undergo a therapy a few months later. From then on I went to the Waldorf School in Hamburg Altona, as I wanted to stay in that kind of school system. I was afraid to change to something different. We checked public schools also, but I told my Mum that I’d like to stick with what I already am familiar with. And I was very happy there until I graduated from that school. So… what’s your question?

Martin: I just wanted to know… you know, until 5-10 years ago Waldorf students got that prejudices like “They can dance their names, have a driver’s license for a tractor – but cannot calculate”. You are an example…but I know you can calculate…

Chris: A bit, yes. I have a pretty bad maths diploma, but… I can calculate a bit.

Martin: You don’t have a driver’s license for a tractor. But you are able to calculate the VAT of 80 Euros by mental arithmetic.

Chris: yes. More or less.

Martin: Many people in my circle, like our tour manager, or our drummer Katha, who have a fantastic diploma, still need a calculator, if they are asked to calculate the VAT of 50 Euros. Then I think to myself, “I was pretty bad at maths, and I didn’t care about it anyway… but that never stopped me from managing the essential stuff.”

Chris: There’s these strange myths going on about Waldorf schools, that have been building themselves up over the years… as it’s the way with legends and myths. One thing is…many people think, the name “Waldorf” has got something to do with “Wald” (Forest) and “Dorf” (village), but that’s not true. The thing is, when Rudolf Steiner built one of the first Rudolf-Steiner-schools, he needed a sponsor for that. Next to that building there was the Waldorf cigar factory. They sponsored that school and asked to name the schools after them in return. The second thing: about “to be able to dance your name”, which I find quite funny actually – in principle it’s possible. It’s not really dancing though. You can, by using Eurythmies, show pitches and sounds, theoretically also an alphabet- but that’s not the goal of it. Eurythmy is a form of movement art, a form of dance, which is basically not that different from e.g. Tai chi. It’s a lot about body control and body tension; And I have to say, even though I found it silly as a child, to stand there with that strange white smock, (so you wouldn’t stand there in your adidas hoodie), and do these moves… it really supports you at developing a good body control and tension. Seen from the outside it may appear strange. If I get asked, “Are you able to dance your name” – I always nicely say, “Yes, I can.” There are various forms of presentation. It’s not that difficult to recognize, but that’s not what it is about. What’s indeed an issue about Waldorf schools is, to what extent diplomas from there are approved by the state… which even is different in federal countries, I think. It has become better since my times there; for example my final exam consisted of four theoretical and four written exams, and the only thing that counted for that final exam was said final exam. You didn’t “collect points” during the year or even the years, only the final exam counted. So, you really need to check for your child, to which extent is this “synchronized” with public schools by now… otherwise it could end as a kind of torture.

Martin: In any case, I am convinced that my son will not go out of style and would want to become an employee at Siemens later on… I rather guess, he becomes a surfing instructor in Hawaii.

Chris: Does he show ambitions in that direction yet?

Martin: Or he builds guitars… I think, the whole education system, the way the society develops urgently needs a fresh coat of paint. It can’t go on this way. My mother-in-law is a teacher and the things she tells from her work in high school, a supposedly good high school in a small town, is shocking. You don’t want that. These things didn’t happen in my days. Pretty much every day they need an ambulance there. In my days we didn’t even slap faces yet, I think. Talking about graduation… I really struggled in school, there were subjects that I just wasn’t made for, I had private tutoring… and for what? Seriously? I never needed any of those. Never.

Chris: Yes, it doesn’t work for everyone. Your talent lies elsewhere.

Martin: I think, that everybody, every child, has a talent. The talent, to be especially good at something particular. Maybe it’s biking, drawing, calculating… you need to find out, what’s the special talent of the child. First you need to find it and then you need to support it. In this country everything is about supporting, what the children CAN’T. If in first grade they notice, this boy is bad at reading, he gets forced to read and read and read, but they don’t notice that he’s a gifted dancer. Nobody says, “forget about reading for a while, let’s go dancing”. That’s the bad thing.

Chris: Yes, that’s true.

Martin: Here you only can get there by hazard… like with me for example it was that drum set in our house… which gave me the chance to become a drummer, a musician. How did that happen with you? You started by playing the cello, right?

Chris: Yes, there was this Christmas concert, shortly before my 3^rd birthday, somewhere outside of Hamburg, in Wörme, that “venue” was called “Schafstall” (Sheep’s stable), there was this string quartet playing. I sat on my Mum’s lap in first row and we were sitting right in front of the cellist. I can’t remember it, but apparently from then on I kept annoying my Mum daily with the wish for this “toy”. By that time my sister was playing the violin already, we also had a piano in our house and there also were acoustic guitars …

Martin: So your parents were musicians too?

Chris: No, just campfire guitar players, they were able to play a few chords and sing along a bit; my sister already attended a Waldorf school by that time, so she already had music education, she wished to play the violin and the piano and she studied both of that there. I then always grabbed her violin or my parents’ guitars, held it like a cello, took a random stick or the violin bow and “played”. I just really wanted to do that. When I was 5, I finally was allowed to really start learning it. That was a total epiphany for me. I sat there, and after a few minutes I managed to play the low C-string in a way that it didn’t just squeak but produce a real sound … the whole instrument vibrated. Actually such a tiny cello for such a small human does not sound really nice, it rather sounds like a croaking big viola… but still it was pure enlightenment to me. I had colourful music sheets, the music was drawn like stick figures, different sounds had different colours, they were quite big also. That’s how I already learned to read sheet music, with those funny colourful stick figures. So I rudimentary was able to read sheet music, before I was able to read and write. I was totally absorbed in playing. I really loved it. Of course later on there were phases, where I didn’t find it so cool, as a teenager you might prefer inline skating or date girls …

Martin: I’m sure you were allowed to do these things, too? Knowing your Mum, I’m sure she would never throw roadblocks in your way.

Chris: No, of course not; I never was forced to play. Of course she sometimes would say, “Hey, in the last 6 months you didn’t really go… cello classes are really expensive, maybe you should consider if you still want to do it? If you want to take a break, you should do that, and if not… maybe you should go there again?”  So, I stuck with it. Because I knew myself, I would later on regret, if I had quit.

 

(33:57)

Martin: And you knew pretty early, that music will be your path in life?

Chris: Actually I have been interested in other things, too… medicine, for one. I found that really interesting. Or bizarre things like dental technology, which I found really cool. And biology. Scientific stuff. Even to this day I still check about 30 times a day something on Wikipedia, because I want to know, to understand something. So it could also have gone in that direction, something with natural science, medicine, but… it never really was a question.

Martin: What did you do after graduation?

Chris: I did my civil service, and a lot of… nothing, way too much partying, I really drove my parents mad at that time. When I was 20, I moved out. At some point I got in touch with SAE because of the bassist of my band; he was studying audio engineering there. I went there with him, we recorded something and I found that incredibly cool. So I was there at the age of 20 sitting in front of a “Logic”-computer and moved around that midi-music and played around on an equalizer. From then on it was clear to me, that’s what I want to do. I did not just want to make music, but I also wanted to know, how to properly make this music sound good, how to record proper demos, that are better than a 4-track cassette recorder. That was my inspiration. Then I went and studied audio engineering.

Martin: There at the SAE?

Chris: There at the SAE. And I even did so well, that a few weeks after graduation they asked me to work there.

Martin: How long did that education take?

Chris: 2 years by that time. You didn’t get a bachelor’s degree by that time yet, just an internal diploma, which isn’t really worth something officially.

Martin: And your parents supported you, so you could do this? It probably costs something?

Chris: Yes, they supported me completely. It costs a lot of money. I told my parents, “I now know, what I want to do”. We went there, they looked at it/ listened to it, found it useful. My father said, “Okay, we’ll do that. We pay that… if you quit, or if you within 5 years after that decide you’ll do something different, you’ll have to pay it back.” And I was like, “Okay, let’s do it then”. I knew, I wouldn’t quit, so I agreed. So, they supported me by paying that education for me.

Martin: A good deal!

 

(38:41)

Chris: You got your sound-engineering skills self-taught, “learning by doing” in the US, right? How did that happen? Did you think, “I’m leaving, I need to get out of here, go find myself a studio” …or did you know someone who knew someone?

Martin: At about 20 I recorded demos in Hamburg with a Swiss woman. Really terrible ones, bad songs, bad voice, everything was bad about these. But it was fun. This singer was tall, blonde, *shows big boobs with his hands* – she then went to the US somehow, dated a famous movie producer there, he even married her. I hadn’t heard anything of her for 2-3 years, then suddenly my phone rang and she was like, “Hi, it’s me, do you remember me? I live in L.A. now, I’m married to Steven Cayman...and I’d like to make music again!” -so I thought, “Okay… I’ll have to do that.” She said, “It was fun with you… can you just come over?” So I went to L.A. In Westwood, right next to Hollywood, they had a very beautiful house with a guest house in the backyard. Underneath it there were two garages where they had parked their Jaguars… imagine, as big as those two garages it was … about half of it was a studio, the other half was like “guest room”. I was there for about 2 weeks, we recorded a few songs and then I flew back home. She paid for my flights, that was the deal. I came back to Hamburg. A few days later the phone rang; she had talked with her husband, he apparently liked the whole thing a lot, said, “You’re a talented boy – we offer you a job.” I got a fixed salary of 1.000 $ per month… and I stayed there for a year. It was a really nice time, California’s weather is awesome. But at some point it took a twist, although I had been proud to be in L.A. and to make music there, all the sunshine and the Sunset Boulevard…we had written a few songs and those were accommodated in some Hollywood productions… but then the producer said, “You have given us the rights to these songs with the 1.000 $ per month that we paid you!”

Chris: You didn’t think so. Of course.

Martin: So in the end I heard my songs in bad Steven Seagull movies … and didn’t earn a cent with those. And then I thought, “Ok, I do need 1.000 $ per month, I don’t know what else to live from … but that doesn’t work this way. This is not ok. It is not fair.” That’s how my time in L.A. came to an end. So I went back to Hamburg and went to EMI Publishing and said, “Well, I just came back from L.A., I’m an artist and author” – and I told them about that song for that previously mentioned Danish band, and it was a blessing in disguise.

 

(43:19)

Chris: And what about Mono Inc.? I know, you played in some other bands, I found a really funny photo of you with long hair on the internet.

Martin: Yes, a metal drummer… with Stonewashed… Warlock actually. Cool photo, embarrassing music…

Chris: I never listened to the music, but I just found that photo really cool. I found it on the internet and put it in our Lord of the Lost WhatsApp group and asked the guys, “go search for a familiar face in this photo!” – it didn’t take them long though, until they were like , “Oh NO!”

Martin: I have one of these photos hanging in my hallway, and whenever someone comes to visit me, it gives them a good laugh. Mono Inc. was actually my last resort to only do what I really wanted to do. It started around the year 2000, so I was in my early 30s, and after the first big success with that Danish band some things worked out, I composed for boybands, for very popular German pop musicians with plenty of friendship bracelets (Wolfgang Petry, additional info from translator), I earned pretty well with that; So when I was in my early 30s, I had one defining moment, when I was just working with an artist from Florida; she was only 14; she had the same manager as the Backstreet Boys, so there was a real plan behind it. So we were recording songs with her, went to a German major label with this girl, and as we sat there in this A&R  meeting - for you out there: that’s the people at the record companies, who search for new artists. So we were sitting there with that 14 year-old girl, her mother, the manager, and played the songs to them… and that A&R guy said, “Musically it is really great, but… she’s too old for us.”

Chris: How old was she?

Martin: Fourteen.

Chris: Ah yes, you said that. What, really? No joke?

Martin: And there I thought, they’re not right in their minds. It was that time, when apparently “The younger, the better” was the motto. And they really rejected a 14 year-old girl, who was really good, because they considered her “too old”! So I was like, “Nope. I just can’t accept this from a record company guy. If this is supposed to be my future career, to have to deal with such assholes, I’m out. Then I’ll rather become an organic farmer or fry burgers, but… I really don’t feel like doing this shit. “

So I went home and wondered what to do now. I went into my studio, wondered if I was possibly really going to fry burgers now… but instead I wrote “Temple of the Torn”. I said, “Now I’m in my early 30s … either I go on with making music and try to have my own band again… or I just let it be. I took all my savings, founded a record company, because we were rejected by all record companies; we didn’t apply everywhere though, because I thought, if they tell a 14-year-old that she’s too old, me as a 32-year old … it doesn’t even make any sense to hand them demos. So we founded our own label from the outset, I spent all my savings on that, and said, “Ok, we’ll try it with making music!”

 

(47:42)

Chris: But where did the other band members come from then? In the beginning there was another singer, also other band members?

Martin: Well, Carl Fornia played guitar from the very start, our bass player was a fellow student of Carl, he was no singer actually...  in the beginning and I also wasn’t really into looking for a singer, so I just said, “Come on, Mikey, you do the singing!” – so we tried that. We did it like that for 2 years with Mikey and also played on tour, even with “Tanzwut”… that’s how long I’ve known “Teufel”, since 2003. But then it became clear pretty fast, that this is not what Mikey was planning for his future, he had built up something different in parallel. He thought, “If I’m a musician now, I can possibly found a company in my spare-time, this allows me a secure income and to be independent. He founded an internet provider, which went right through the roof, so he earned a shitload of money, so pretty exactly at the time when “Temple of the Torn” was released, he said, “Now I’m a millionaire, I don’t want this all here any longer”… and he emigrated to Mallorca. I had poured all my money into this company, so I was not that pleased about it… and again I wondered, what to do. I needed to find a singer, who is able to sing the songs and lyrics that the drummer has written… and who does everything the way the drummer wants it… and who also is the producer at the same time…

Chris: and the record label boss…

Martin: Guys like that don’t grow on trees. That doesn’t work. So I did it myself.

Chris: Why didn’t you do it yourself from the beginning?

Martin: I think I’m not good at singing. There are people, whose voices I am really jealous of…of course these people can’t help it either, for example my mate Ronan Harris from VNV nation… with him I think, he just had really good luck there.

Chris: Indeed, he has a unique voice.

Martin: When he opens his mouth … or for example Peter Heppner – even if he reads the phone book to you, it will sound cool. Or Joachim Witt, he’s also …he’s not really a singer, but he has a voice that immediately makes you go, “Wow”, a voice that appeals to you somehow. And at that time I thought my own voice doesn’t appeal to me.

Chris: It’s a good thing it appeals to many others!

Martin: Well yes, and it gives you more self-confidence, and meanwhile there are really some tracks where I say, “Well yes, this is going in the right direction.” But still I’m not a fan of my own voice.

Chris: Getting used to hear your own voice……

Martin: You also have one of those special, characteristic voices. Despite the fact that you have no education as a singer either.

Chris: Thank you. Actually I’ve only started, after so many years, to accept myself as a singer. For a very long time I used to say, that I’m not a singer, but I sing anyway. To me singers were people like e.g. the singer of Muse, or Freddie Mercury… they are what I call “singers”. I think, you have to differentiate there between “singers” and “SINGERS”, as well as for example between DJs and DJs. There’s real DJ-artists, who really work with turntables and stuff… and then there’s people who just press the “play”-button… like me. Still in the announcement it says, “DJ Chris Harms” … which always feels a bit embarrassing to me. I am no DJ. But as I said… I needed to get used to hearing my voice. And that’s not just about singing, but already about speaking. Like when I bought one of those big, bulky cameras in 1995/96… when you hear your own voice on the video there for the first time … that was horrible. To hear my own voice, to get used to it, and to accept that it’s ok… it took me years. Until about 2004/05 I always imagined another singer and tried to sound like him then. To get some security, sort of like thinking, “It works out well with him, I’ll just try to imitate him”… a bit like Manson, like HIM and such…

Martin: Well, Manson and HIM for example have also really cool voices! My problem was, that when I was young I always imitated Udo Lindenberg… but if I hear that today, I still find that pretty cool.  *says this in the tone of Udo  Lindenberg* ... I always think, there’s something of that in my voice still.

Chris: You’re right.

Martin: So, I’m pretty fine with people calling me “the frontman of Mono Inc.”, because I will never be a real singer …

Chris: Or “the voice of Mono Inc.”?

Martin: I’ll never be a real singer, but that’s perfectly fine with me. I’m very happy with what we’ve achieved. I think, it could have been a bit easier here or there, the path could have been a bit easier…

Chris: (quoting a song title by Xavier Naidoo): “Dieser Weg wird kein leichter sein” (This path will not be an easy one) … will not have been an easy one!

(53:58)

What was one of the worst obstacle in the career of Mono Inc.? Can you name something? Have there been obstacles that were so big that you thought “What am I doing this for after all? I should better quit.” Did you face such low blows?

Martin: No. We didn’t face such low blows with Mono Inc. It was my dream, I was aware that this is my last resort to achieve something … and I believed in it. And so did the other band members. In the first 2-3 years when we were on tour we were sleeping in nasty artist places backstage… do you know the “Underground” in Cologne?

Chris: Oh yes... you don’t want to … ewww, the beds there…

Martin: *makes vomiting sounds*… so ugly. But I absolutely wanted it, and even if in the beginning there were only 2 or 3 paying audiences there – at least these 3 loved it.  I remember the second show of our band, in Brunswick, in the Maier Restaurant I think, *Chris laughs* we played our gig.

Chris: In the restaurant!

Martin: And there were 3 paying audiences. Two of these 3, Melanie and Franzi, still come to our shows and stand in first row. And that’s really fantastic.

Chris: I know, which ones you mean.

Martin: They loved it back then. I had so much self-confidence back then that I thought, “Well, if there’s 2 people, who love it, then for sure we can also have 20 of that kind. Or 200. Or 2000. And then we can also have 20.000 at some point. I also think that with a good song, a good composition, a nice album, you don’t know, if that isn’t going to go through the roof at some point. There’s always coincidences happening. Like what I told you already, when we got to China, a song, that nobody gave a damn for here – made them go crazy there. So I have seen one of those weird coincidences happen already with that song that made me money behind my back … so you never know anyway.

Chris: It’s still a question of character, if you are able to make it through such hard times. Of course you say, “Even if there’s only two people in the audience, I give it all!” – and you really do that… but still it is hard, to play in such empty places. You cannot compare it to the adrenaline rush you get with 100, 500 or 2000 people… or an audience like at the M’Era Luna. I know these shows, in front of almost nobody, you still give all you can, you do it with full passion, but we also had that, like 7 people in our audience in the “Kaiserkeller”, out of which 5 actually came to see the other band, so there were 2 standing in front row and five in the back. It is really hard and I can see, why quite a lot get destroyed by that. I admire bands who keep doing that for years and years. There are bands, who play for 20-30-40 people for 20 years…. and they keep doing it, because there is nothing else they can do, because that’s their thing… I don’t think I could do that, to stay on this low level for my whole life… I couldn’t do that.

Martin: When we were in China recently, the first show in Shanghai was very well attended, same goes for the second one, and then we got to that small town in the mountains with like 100 listeners… and that somehow felt like it was 15 years before, and yes, you have to fight, but still in the end this was one of the best shows for me, because after 3-4 songs the ice was broken and these 100 people just went nuts and it worked out. In the beginning it is always more difficult to motivate yourself and to tell yourself, “Ok, there’s just 100 people out there, but they paid to see you, so work your balls off, they deserve it!”

Chris: Once you have achieved a particular endorphin level, it kinda goes on on its own… but first you have to manage to build it up to that level.

Martin: Yes, but still you also need to have the concept, “If there’s 100, who find it cool, then there’s also 1000 somewhere to find it cool…. But you have to start at some point. Anyway it is a hard business. Like with our first show in Austin, Texas, this pub atmosphere that we faced there, only like 2 small lamps, no light show… but you have to go through this.

Chris: As you say this… I remember one of my very first shows in England, with my glam rock band, in Leicester, the pub was called “The Attic”, and it really was more or less just an attic, to which you had to carry your Marshall speakers through those narrow English staircases. You could not stand on particular spots on the stage, as there you were in danger to break right through it, and there were two “lamps” on that stage. One of which was daylight, so there was a window right behind the stage, so you kind of could make a light show while drumming; and the other one was a lamp from IKEA, which was tangled to the timber framework there… a desk lamp, and they had covered it with some red foil…

Martin: Nice.

Chris: Yes. And there were like… I don’t know, maybe 20 people there, they had great fun, so it was cool. But on the other hand it was also really tough. So it’s an ambivalent thing somehow. If I think back to it now, I both feel happiness thinking about it, but at the same time I am grateful that I don’t have to fight THAT hard for my dream anymore but that by now sometimes I am really able to LIVE my dream.  

 

(1:00:42)

Martin: Do you like touring in England?

Chris: Yes and no. Actually I don’t really know, where this “no” comes from. Maybe it really is … even though I live in Hamburg, so I should be used to it… this cold, wet, dirty, shitty weather. Somehow it’s also always in a way shabby there...

Martin: Exactly. England is the origin of Rock’n’Roll. What sucks about England is  ...”it needs a painting.”

Chris “It also needs a new carpet.”

Martin: And the clubs there consider themselves “cult”. And the more “cult” they are, the more filthy and messy they are.

Chris: I have my personal “Mirror-Sticker-ratio” there. So, if there’s more stickers on the mirrors than there’s visible mirror surface, I know I’m in England.

Martin: I have to admit that playing in Germany is the best. Even all my international friends and bands say that too - with good reason.

Chris: But in my opinion there’s countries which beat that. Countries in Scandinavia. Because there music receives very high public subsidies; already a bit in Finland, but really much in Norway and Sweden. If you show up as a young band there, they kind of ask you “Do you need speakers or drums?” Then you get into this room, and there’s these shiny new instruments … and you ask, “Where does this all come from?” -and they say, “It’s subsidies from the government!” Also the rehearsal rooms, they pay these for the kids. Also the clubs there are on a level of which the ones here can only dream of. Also considering technical equipment.

Martin: So… we need to go to Scandinavia more often?

Chris: Absolutely. Concerning touring comfort it beats Germany by far.

Martin: Should we play there together at some point?

Chris: Yes, we can do that.

Martin: As you’re already famous there.

Chris: Not really famous, but... getting there.

Martin: Sounds like a plan!

Chris: Well, let’s do it then! For now my plan is… I’m fed up, I’ll drive to the studio now…what about you?

Martin: Me too. I’m also fed up, I can just WALK to the studio, it’s just around the corner, but...

Chris: What will you do in the studio?

Martin: I can’t tell you that!

Chris: Me neither!

 

*general laughter*

*hugging goodbye*

 

 

Translation: Margit Güttersberger

Proofreading: Sandy Bollig