Author: Urban Bolta
Location: Lokal Patriot / Novo mesto / Slovenia
Interview date: 16.12.2011
Mary Rose are a hard rock/heavy metal band from Postojna who, despite years on the scene, never managed to win wider recognition or even get any airplay on the radio, which makes them the best-kept secret of Slovenian hard rock. But the band couldn’t care less about that kind of promotion and is racing toward its third album, due out sometime next year. To make the wait a bit shorter, Rockline sat down with the band to talk about the upcoming record and the usual stuff that comes with Mary Rose.
I rolled into rainy Novo mesto at half past seven in the evening, and on my first visit to the place I found Lokal Patriot, right in the center of the Dolenjska region’s capital. Mary Rose were in the middle of their soundcheck, so I waited another hour, then tugged guitarist Eki by the sleeve. He gathered the whole crew backstage, and the following conversation was born.
Hi! We’re in the Dolenjska region, in Novo mesto to be exact. Funny that we met right here, considering you’ve never really chased general popularity in these parts, since your home base is Primorska..?
Eki Alilovski: Not true, we’ve played in Krško and around a few times, and I think we’ve got quite a few fans in these parts too. We’ve played some really authentic, great parties, so I think people here welcome us well. Sure, we mostly played student parties, but we’ve always felt good here. For tonight’s gig, for example, we got a lot of emails from people asking whether we’d be playing more of our own songs. That really, really surprised all of us, and it’s a big confirmation for the whole band.
Great, that’s actually why I came myself.
Žanil Tataj Žak: Awesome! (laughs)
How did you end up with tonight’s show?
Eki: We’d been talking about this gig for a few years, and now we finally agreed on it, all of us together.
Now let’s say a few words about your upcoming album. You’ve been promising it for quite a while, two or three years, I think?
Eki: No, it hasn’t been that long. We went into the studio in April 2010. We spent 8 or 10 days there, properly recording everything. David, for example, tracked his drums in one day, then Žak and I kept polishing things. You know where it stalled? It stalled at the lyrics. Other projects came up in between, Žak was doing his own thing, I had health problems… And it also happened that after we recorded the material, we agreed to “leave it in the corner” for half a year and only then listen back to it. The deal was that if we liked it, we’d move on, and if not, we’d go fix things. We liked the material right from the start, and even a year later we’re really happy with it. You know, it’s often the case that when you listen to a record after some time, you think, damn, I wish this bit had been a little different. This time the material really holds up. That’s how I’d put it. With this record we’re making now, what matters most to me is that every member of the band is maximally happy with it. The most important thing is that the band is happy with it, and if anyone else likes it too, we’ll be over the moon.
Eki, after Šank Rockerji broke up you joined Matjaž in his Jelen band. Could that also be a reason why the Mary Rose album has taken so long?
Eki: No, not at all. I went to Jelen because of the people, we get along well. The other Mary Rose members are busy with other projects too, David plays drums in Leeloojamais, for instance, and Žak has a project of his own. I decided on the Jelen band project because it’s doable right now and I can fit both in my schedule. But my heart will always belong first and foremost to the name Mary Rose.
Žak: Each of us does different things, but Mary Rose is Mary Rose. When we finish the album, we’ll release it and everything will be fine.
Eki: And in the same breath, we promise the record will be good. We’re really happy with it.
Do you maybe know more precisely when the album will see the light of day?
Eki: We’ll put out a single before the album, but otherwise I don’t know, it’s hard to predict an exact date. Let’s say the album will come out sometime in 2012. In the long run, quality matters more than the exact release date, so we’re not stressing about it. Another interesting thing about this album is that it’s the product of the whole team, whereas the album “Feniks” (2005) was more or less my and Žak’s work.
So for ” Feniks” you had studio musicians helping out during the recording?
Eki: More or less it was friends. Cveto Polak played, for example, and Davor Klarič, Mitja Kobal.
You say that on the new album every musician contributed their own piece of the mosaic?
Eki: Yes, and I have to say you can really hear it.
And what will the album sound like stylistically? Will it follow its predecessor, which, considering the debut came out so long ago, was more hard rock and leaned toward melodic?
Žak: Melody is very important to us, my vocals are very melodic too, I don’t just focus on textbook, rhythmic tricks.
Eki: The whole band works in a way that everyone listens to their own style of music, but we have lots of common ground that we work on and build up. We listen to Zeppelin and Purple as well as Mr. Big and Dream Theater. It’d be hard to pin down the direction we’re sailing in right now, we simply do what suits us.
Žak: We always do whatever feels right to us at that moment. How the listener takes it is another story. But the album is very heavy, heavier than “Feniks”.
Žak, now that I’ve got the chance, I’d like to ask about the current state of things with Divlje Jagode. Do you still appear as an occasional guest at their shows?
Žak: Basically, not anymore. Jagode have a new frontman, so it feels silly to keep guesting with them.
Yeah, I get that, but if you have a joint show with Mary Rose and Jagode, do you still sing a song or two with Jagode?
Žak: Well, for a party we sometimes do that too. Zele Lipovača and I get along fine, we’re cool, but our working together as such is a closed chapter.
Eki: At the end of the day we’re all just musicians, and we’ve got to stick together.
David (the drummer, ed.), you’re the member with the shortest tenure in Mary Rose. Where did you find each other, how did the collaboration come about?
David Debevec: They found me more than I found them. Eki came to one of our gigs once when I was still playing with Lunapark, we chatted a bit, and soon he called me and we agreed I’d come to a rehearsal, where we clicked right away. There’s no special backstory or higher philosophy behind it. (laughs)
Žak: That’s how it is, you show up at one Mary Rose rehearsal and you’re in! (laughs)
Sandi Trojner: I had to keep showing up for two years before they took me on as a member. (laughs)
Eki, how would you rate the hard rock situation in Slovenia today? Requiem recently filled Kino Šiško, Lene kosti are back, Chateau, Cveto Polak released a solo record, and so did Franc Zabukovec…
Eki: Yeah, I played on that Cveto record too. I think the hard rock scene is slowly coming back. Everything being done in that direction is a big plus, because in the end we’ll benefit from it ourselves. You can tell people are still into this kind of music.
What are your long-term plans? Are you keeping your minds on the Slovenian market, or are you also eyeing other countries, especially the market of the former common state?
Eki: That’s tough. When I was twenty, I dreamed about playing in California… This crew plays because we like what we do. Anything that comes on top of that is just a big plus. It’s not like we’re going to sit in the rehearsal room and cry about it. We play because we like it, we enjoy it. I won’t say I wouldn’t love to make a million dollars from playing, but not for the pile of money itself, rather for all the effort I put into music. If we had the money, we’d record even more records, open our own studio, so in that sense a million dollars would come in handy, we could be even more active musically, while I couldn’t care less about the material side of the money. We’ve put our whole lives into music, not just me, the whole crew. Sandi, for example, played with Tabu for a long time, that was a relatively big band, he made a lot of money, but it’s not all about that.
One last question. The standard one when you do an interview right before the show: what can we expect tonight, do you have anything special planned?
Sandi: Yeah, Križ je s tabo, we’re playing that song today! We’ve never done it before.
Žak: Tonight we’ll play almost the entire “Feniks” album.
Eki: What can you expect? We go up on stage and do our thing, and you’re the one who’ll tell us how it went. Mary Rose is a band of moments. If the moment is right, the show will be great.
Sandi: It was already great at the soundcheck for me!
Now it’ll be even better, because the moment is right and the club will be packed too… (laughs)
Eki: Doesn’t matter, one, a hundred, two hundred people…
Žak: It does matter, it does! It’s about the energy, when people breathe with you, they give you drive and carry you forward.
Thanks for the chat!
Photos: Karin Zelko
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