Author: Rok Klemše
Location: VPK Mediapark, Ljubljana
Interview date: 20.02.2009
Jon Schaffer founded Iced Earth in 1985 under the name Purgatory. A fair number of members have passed through the band since, but the driving force, the boss and the mastermind is still guitarist Schaffer. In twenty years Iced Earth have put out nine studio albums that lifted them into one of the biggest heavy metal bands of our time, and through it all they’ve been kept alive by Schaffer’s perseverance and stubbornness, if you will. On their tour with Saxon, Iced Earth are presenting their current record The Crucible of Man. With it, Schaffer wrapped up his grand sci-fi story, which he kicked off back on the cult record Something Wicked This Way Comes (1998). Jon Schaffer talked about the past, the present and what’s still ahead for Iced Earth before the Ljubljana show.
RockLine: Hey Jon! The tour with Saxon is slowly coming to an end. How has it gone, and how did you actually end up touring together? Was it an idea from the two bands’ labels?
Jon: No, our agent actually gave us the idea last summer. My manager and I talked about it last August and we thought it was a good idea.
RockLine: Does this tour tie in with you saying that after Matt’s return you’d be playing fewer shows and doing smaller, shorter tours?
Jon: No, I never said that, that was the media blowing things out of proportion again. We said the shows would be limited, but not the way people think, like we won’t tour at all. It was only about whether we’d be doing tours that are half a year or a year long. I don’t even want that right now, Iced Earth isn’t a priority for me at the moment. Things are changing, I’m working on other projects, new things I want to do. This tour is the last thing for Iced Earth for a while, maybe with just a few festival shows still to come. We’ve done a big American tour, a big European tour, tons of festivals, I’m constantly on the road and I haven’t had a vacation in three and a half years. After the Framing Armageddon tour we had a huge number of festival shows, then a seven-week European tour, and right after that came the promo for The Crucible of Man.
RockLine: Have things changed for the better for Iced Earth in the US? A few years ago you were absolutely huge in Europe, while in the US you weren’t getting much attention.
Jon: The American market is actually the biggest one for us, and it’s been that way for a while. It exploded after Horror Show came out, and The Glorious Burden was really successful. There was no US tour for Framing Armageddon, because we went straight off to finish the second part, which was followed by an American tour. When Framing Armageddon came out, the European tour followed, and after The Crucible of Man came out, the American one.
RockLine: Matt Barlow, whom many consider the band’s first voice, recently returned to Iced Earth. Had you two been talking about it for a long time, or did it happen after he sang the Immortal album for Pyramaze?
Jon: It all happened pretty fast. Like I said, Iced Earth will be fairly limited, because of Matt’s job and because I’m ready to step away from Iced Earth myself. There are other things I want to do. If I felt Iced Earth was the band that should be my first priority, I wouldn’t have let Matt come back, but I have other plans and it all actually works out. Iced Earth has been around for 20 years, and from the start I’ve been the driving force doing everything, every single day. The only moment of the band illusion is on stage, otherwise we’re individuals. I’m tired of that and I’m ready to move on. Iced Earth will of course still be around, but it won’t be like it was in the past.
RockLine: Can you maybe reveal what you’re working on?
Jon: No, not yet. Let’s keep it a secret for now.
RockLine: Over the years a lot of members have come and gone in Iced Earth. Was it hard for you, being the band’s only driving force and the only constant?
Jon: No, not really. Even most bands with stable line-ups have one or two driving forces. I don’t think it had any major impact on anything in the band, my intention was always to sell what we do. Realistically, we never had a big chance to be a support act, with the exception of the Heaven and Hell tour in the UK. We were only ever able to rely on ourselves, since 1990. The tour with Blind Guardian did help us a lot, but both bands were already pretty successful by then. Our debut was already getting attention at that point, especially in Germany. We had a strong fan base from the very beginning, thanks to the success of the Enter the Realm demo. But it seems to me that if something bigger were meant for us, it would have happened already. I’m sick of the whole thing, I really want to start something that’ll be a real band, you know what I mean? A band that gives me new challenges and stands for something new. One of the reasons is that people can’t even imagine everything I had to put up with, especially when it comes to the business relationship with our former label. Most bands would surely have folded under those conditions. That’s the difference between them and Iced Earth, because I don’t give up on anything I start, and I’m not giving up on Iced Earth either, since it’s a big part of my life, it just isn’t first anymore. It’s time for new things, and with Iced Earth we’ll still record an album and do a tour every now and then.
RockLine: Given what you just said… A while ago I talked to Hansi, who mentioned that a new Demons&Wizards record could happen this year or next.
Jon: Possible. We’ll see each other soon, and Hansi and I will be doing Demons&Wizards until we die. It’s the product of our long friendship and partnership, but it’s something we have to squeeze into our packed schedules. My Iced Earth thing is calming down and will be minimized as much as possible, in the last three and a half years we’ve just done a huge amount, just finishing the Something Wicked story is…
RockLine: Your magnum opus?
Jon: Yeah, at least for me from the songwriter’s standpoint, for sure. Whether people see it or not doesn’t matter, it was my thing that I had to finish. I don’t know yet what the future will bring, but I do know there’ll be new things and new people I’ll be working with, and that’ll be very fulfilling. That’s what I’m striving for right now, and Hansi and I will talk as soon as we see each other. I don’t know exactly what his schedule is like and I’m not totally sure what mine is, and I don’t want to take on too much in the next two years, but working with Hansi is always extremely fun and very natural. I know there’ll be a new Demons&Wizards album, I just don’t know exactly when.
RockLine: Have you ever thought about doing a joint Iced Earth and Blind Guardian tour, with a Demons&Wizards set slotted in between the two bands’ sets?
Jon: Yeah, we’ve talked about it, and again it comes down to our schedules. At the same time, a new album from both bands would have to come out at about the same time. It’s been a long time since that happened, and something like that is hard to pull off without a new release. We could, but labels and promoters don’t like organizing a tour when there’s no new product. That’s the biggest problem, but we’ve talked about it and who knows, anything is possible.
RockLine: With The Crucible of Man you closed out the Something Wicked saga. So what’s next for Iced Earth: will you keep going with sci-fi and fantasy themes, or turn back to more real-world stuff like the war theme on The Glorious Burden?
Jon: I really love military history and I’m sure songs about it will follow in the future, I just don’t know when. Right now all I have in my head is wrapping up the promotion for the new album, and it wouldn’t even be smart to think about anything else at the moment. The reality is that a year or two could go by before I even start working on a new Iced Earth record, and when that time comes I’ll definitely be in a different headspace than I am now, and I don’t know what’s waiting for me. It’ll definitely be whatever I feel is right, which is what I’ve always gone by and what my instinct has always told me. I’ve never listened to bands, people, labels or anyone else when it comes to creativity. Right now I don’t have any concept or theme yet.
RockLine: Recently you talked about releasing both parts of the Something Wicked saga as a boxset in special packaging, with extras and the like. What’s the status on that?
Jon: The label’s interested, but it would be a ton of work and take a lot of resources, and right now the industry is fighting for survival, labels are dying, shops are closing… I’d only do it for the sense of continuity… if you ask me, I think Framing Armageddon is a damn good record as it is, and the story works as it is, too. If the label puts out something like that in the near future, it’ll probably be without my approval, because I don’t see the point in wasting as much time and money as a project like that takes. Nothing’s missing on Framing Armageddon, production-wise the lower parts just lack some “punch”, which we found out after it came out and fixed in the mix of The Crucible of Man. I was slightly worried there’d be too much of it, that it would blow people’s ears off if they cranked the speakers. I still think Framing Armageddon is a great record and that it’s missing nothing. I think Tim’s performance is fantastic and he did everything I asked of him brilliantly. As for the first three albums, I was disappointed with the production, especially the vocals, except on Night of the Stormrider, I don’t like some things on Burnt Offerings, I don’t like the vocals on the first album. That’s why I decided we’d record Days of Purgatory, to make the songs as good as they could be, but in the end it didn’t make much of a difference.
RockLine: How did you actually find Tim (“Ripper” Owens) after Matt left? Was he your first choice?
Jon: Actually, I had someone else in mind. His name is Jorn Lande, the guy’s got an incredible voice. I just wanted to finish The Glorious Burden the way I wanted, since we’d already mixed it with Matt’s vocals, but it didn’t sound the way it should and I didn’t want to release it. I just wanted to get the record out, even with a guest vocalist, and we’d think about a new permanent singer after the release. Jorn was committed to Masterplan at the time, so I called Tim, who simply shone in the studio. He sang everything the way I wanted, I could easily be proud of a record like that. A week later the Priest announced Rob’s return and I offered Tim the job, if he wanted it.
RockLine: On The Glorious Burden you used an orchestra, which you’d never done before, and on The Crucible of Man a real choir for the first time too. Is that something you’d like to explore further in the future?
Jon: Yeah, maybe, but it depends on the subject matter. On Angel’s Holocaust, for example, if I’d had enough money at the time, I’d have wanted a real orchestra, which would have been insane. I don’t know if I’ll do it more, it’ll depend on the theme I’m tackling. Right now my gut tells me it’s time to go back to my roots, to rawer metal, without all the extras and orchestration. But if I write some big epic, I’ll definitely use it. One thing that makes Framing different is that it has a ton of world instruments, and I’d had that in mind from the very beginning. That’s a huge part of it, and I’ve been collecting those instruments for a long time, and it was fun to work them into metal, but it always comes down to what each song demands. If I want to write, say, a big epic about D-Day, I’ll definitely want a lot of orchestration, but if the song’s 4.5 minutes long, probably not.
RockLine: In the past you’ve written quite a few concept albums: The Dark Saga, Night of the Stormrider, and to a degree Horror Show. Is it easier for you to write with a whole concept in front of you, or to write an individual song?
Jon: It’s definitely easier to write a collection of unrelated songs. But I’ve never taken the easy way out, I like writing songs that are demanding and theatrical. I’ve always spent the longest time on the big epics. I poured the most heart and soul into them, even though I do that with every song I’ve written. If I write a song together with someone, it feels different. Working with Hansi is different. If I wrote all the basic parts, it would sound a lot like Iced Earth with Hansi on vocals, but that’s not what I do. I help out with the lyrics, but he writes the vocal melodies. Mixing my writing with Hansi’s vocals makes a new monster, a Frankenstein. That’s exactly the best thing about the whole deal. What’s kept Iced Earth alive for so long is that I have a very clear vision of what I want from the band.
RockLine: Thanks a lot for the interview, Jon, I wish you a great show and a great finish to the tour.
Jon: Okay, cool, thank you!
Photos: Mojca Perdih
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