Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Ljubljana / CUK Kino Šiška/ Slovenia
Interview date: 18.03.2013
Dirk Schlächter is the right-hand man of Kai Hansen – a key figure who helped define the look of European power metal back in his Helloween days, meaning the first half of the eighties. Since 1989 Kai has been the boss of Hamburg power metallers Gamma Ray, and Dirk Schlächter knows Hansen like the back of his hand. He’s been in the Gamma Ray crew from the very beginning, officially since the album »Sigh No More«. The seasoned bassist and guitarist, who also handles producer duties on the Gamma Ray albums, told RockLine in an in-depth chat what the mood is like in the Gamma Ray camp on the new Hellish Rock tour, which brought the band to Ljubljana alongside fellow Germans Helloween, where Gamma Ray finally played in Slovenia for the first time in their career!
RockLine: Hey Dirk! How are you feeling?
Dirk: A bit tired. We’ve got a long road behind us. We’ve already covered over 12,000 kilometers up to today. But everything’s okay. We kill time on the bus, we know how to have fun. We talk a lot.
RockLine: This is the second joint tour of Gamma Ray and Helloween, after the first one you did in the fall of 2007. How did you end up teaming up again, what’s the story behind it?
Dirk: When Helloween were out on their previous tour promoting their previous album, what was it called again?…
RockLine: “Seven SInners”.
Dirk: Exactly…. When Helloween got to Hamburg on that tour, we met up, of course. And they said, »You know, the tour’s going great, but it was way more fun with you guys!« We’ve got a really good relationship with Helloween, we’re great friends. So we said, why the hell not do another tour like that. We locked in the plan to do it back in 2012. Gamma Ray had actually planned to put together a new studio album in that period, but Kai was super busy the whole time with his new band Unisonic. So we decided to just put out an EP with four tracks recorded in the studio.
RockLine: If my math is right, your new EP »Master Of Confusion« officially came out on the very day you’re playing here in Ljubljana. I think that’s a really smart move, because it fills this relatively long stretch where Gamma Ray fans have to grit their teeth and wait a bit longer for your new studio album.
Dirk: That was exactly the idea behind the new EP. There are two new songs on it, and it was also very important for us to introduce our new drummer Michael Ehré with this EP. It all went very smoothly, both songs were brought in by Kai Hansen, of course, and then we polished the arrangements together. The point of the EP is for fans of our music to get a feel for how Gamma Ray works with a new drummer. Both new songs are composed in the Gamma Ray tradition. We’ve already recorded more new material with Michael Ehré, too. We’ll keep experimenting with that. Gamma Ray are seasoned musicians. Don’t expect any big evolutionary surprises from our side. What you see is what you get. Still, every one of us in the band carries a »little kid« inside, and we let him out in the studio to express himself. We love trying things out, and I can promise the new album will have a few special surprises on it. The album will be varied, but of course we won’t stray from our traditional Gamma Ray sound.
RockLine: You mentioned your new drummer Michael Ehré. Can you walk us through the whole story of the drummer change, and what were the key reasons longtime drummer Daniel Zimmermann left the band?
Dirk: After Daniel spent a number of years with Gamma Ray, both in the studio and especially on tour, and I have to stress that Daniel literally lived for touring, we’d always had to deal with the fact that Daniel is from Nürnberg. That’s quite far from Hamburg, where the other three of us live. Daniel always had to make a 700 km trip. So we always had to pay attention to scheduling. You know, when Daniel came to Hamburg, he came purely for rehearsals and recording. The rest of us three went back to normal life after rehearsing together and slipped right back into the rhythm of Hamburg. Daniel slowly started to get bored with those occasional stays in Hamburg. And of course he was also sick of traveling and getting shuttled from one end of Germany to the other. Even when you’re on tour. You know, on tour you live for that hour and three quarters of playing each day. Everything else is just »hanging around«, killing time. He wanted a change in his life. Then, toward the end of 2011, Gamma Ray got a really serious offer to play on German TV. We called Daniel and asked if he could come to Hamburg to do the show. Daniel replied that he couldn’t, because he was heading into the studio with another band at that time. He said they’d asked him to help out and that unfortunately he wouldn’t be able to drum for Gamma Ray in that slot. I told him this gig was very important for Gamma Ray, but he didn’t see it that way. So for the first time, when we needed Daniel, he just wasn’t there. Since this show mattered so much to us, we had to find a replacement. Kai and I were racking our brains over who could take over the drumming. Kai remembered that Michael used to play with Uli Jon Roth. He said Roth’s drummer was really good. That was Michael Ehré. So we contacted him and told him we needed him for just 20 minutes in front of the TV cameras, for our live TV appearance. Michael agreed, and that was the first time we played in a lineup with him. We clicked right away, and Michael showed up superbly prepared for that gig. Then came the day when Daniel announced he was leaving Gamma Ray. It was 2012, and we already had four big festival shows booked. We tried to convince him to hang in there, since it was only four shows, which he was well used to. The answer was no. Daniel said he wanted to quit. So we turned to Michael for help again, asking if he could get Gamma Ray through those four shows. By the time we played the second festival, in France, I already felt like I’d been playing with Michael for years, not just two gigs. Word slowly got around that we were without a drummer. All kinds of drummers started asking whether we needed help, because they’d love to play in Gamma Ray. Offers were pouring in from all over the world. Then, after we played those shows, Kai said there would be no auditions for the new Gamma Ray drummer, we’d just ask Michael if he wanted to join as our new permanent member. And the answer was yes, of course.
RockLine: You’ve known Kai Hansen longer than anyone else in the band, you joined Gamma Ray on the album »Sigh No More«,…
Dirk: No, no. It was earlier. On the album »Sigh No More« I was made a permanent member of Gamma Ray. But I’d already worked on the album »Heading For Tomorrow«. On that album I played on the song Money, and also added some extra bass for the ballad Silence. Even though I first played bass on those two songs, I ended up at Gamma Ray as a guitarist at first. It just happened that way. Kai and I have known each other since 1989. We met at music school. The Hamburg school of music for theater and classical music. Like any school, it had breaks between semesters. During those breaks there were all sorts of music workshops and calls for new students, with some kind of tryouts and exams as well. I signed up for one of those workshops myself. I spotted the ad in a music magazine. 300 musicians applied, and they picked 60. Kai and I were among those sixty. It’s really crazy. If it hadn’t been for that call, we’d surely never have met. Kai is from Hamburg, I was living on the outskirts of Hamburg. When we recorded the first Gamma Ray record, I moved to Hamburg.
RockLine: The songs that make up the current Gamma Ray setlist offer an outstanding selection.
Dirk: The setlist is actually a spin-off of the one from the 2011 tour, where we recorded and released our live DVD »Skeletons and Majesties«. We added two brand-new songs from the »Master Of Confusion« EP, and there are also tracks from the current album »To The Metal« mixed in. We originally planned more changes, more different songs, but we were happy with what we had and decided to keep a shortened version of it for the Hellish Rock tour too.
RockLine: I’d like to ask you a few things about Kai Hansen. He’s someone who can talk to both Michael Kiske and Michael Weikath at the same time. We know those two haven’t been in touch with each other for a long time. Where did Kai pick up such a knack for diplomacy?
Dirk: Kai is a very open person. He’s easy to get along with. He has an incredible level of tolerance and he simply accepts people as they are. Whether those same people hold grudges against each other, or have unresolved stuff between them, Kai rises above it and accepts the facts on both sides. The rumors swirling around all that are irrelevant to him. They just don’t touch him. Both Michaels, Kiske and Weikath alike, are extremely creative people and Kai likes working with them. Kai and Michael Kiske got close again through the Avantasia project and that project’s first tour.
RockLine: Which musicians inspired you as a young guy to pick up an instrument and decide to make music yourself?
Dirk: As a bassist, I was hugely impressed by bassist Jerry “Wyzard” Seay from Mother’s Finest. I’m still a big fan of that band, especially because of the way he plays bass. Otherwise, if I have to pick, Stanley Clarke is first on my list of bassists. Incredibly unpredictable, yet so natural in everything he does. On the same motif he’ll always play his lines differently. He’s got an amazing sense of rhythm. As for my guitar idols, at first I was a big fan of David Gilmour, later I got into Carlos Santana, and in the eighties I was drawn to fusion. Then Eddie Van Halen came out of nowhere. He turned the blues upside down and totally modernized it with his playing technique. And the one who took a little bit of this and that from everywhere is Steve Vai, of course. And I can’t skip Frank Zappa and his work. Zappa was a true genius. He could play anything. Literally anything.
RockLine: Gamma Ray have always been fascinating for your outstanding covers of the originals. You’ve covered songs by everyone from Judas Priest, Uriah Heep, Pet Shop Boys, Birth Control, and now The Sweet too,… Where does the band’s big love for playing covers, and recording them, come from?
Dirk: It just happens. Someone in the band comes up with an idea and we try it out. When we play other artists’ songs, we’re always driven by curiosity about how a well-known tune by whoever will sound once we give it the Gamma Ray treatment. It’s not a must, but usually the song we want to cover has to be something everyone in the band likes. We try it. We try it in different variations too, and we keep the one where all four of us click and where the spirit of Gamma Ray’s music comes through. If we can’t pull that off, we drop the idea and pick something else.
RockLine: This interview is coming to an end too. One more question. What are Gamma Ray’s plans for the near future?
Dirk: We’ve got to finish this tour with Helloween, then we have some festival shows. In August we expect to start recording the new studio album. The holidays kick in at the end of June. That’s when I have to focus on my family. The new Gamma Ray album should come out in January or February 2014. Even before that, our Hellish Rock tour with Helloween moves to South America at the end of October this year. And once the album is out, a new tour follows. A headlining one!
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