Interview date: April 8, 2006
This interview with Mike Terrana, drummer of the excellent German heavy metal trio Rage, who’ve been enjoying a fresh new spring for several years running, was done right before the band’s gig in Graz (Orpheum hall), between 6:30 and 7:30 PM at the backstage kitchen table, with the smacking and chewing of the Freeedom Call guys, who were right in the middle of their meal, as the soundtrack.
Mike Terrana is one of those drummers who have probably pushed playing technique in metal to limits that won’t be beaten or even reached for a good while. A one-of-a-kind drum wizard, he turned 46 this year. Born in New York, he went pro at just 16 and has played with some of the big names in rock over the course of his career. Mike has worked on 75 records over 30 years of his incredibly rich drumming career. He’s been living in Europe for 8 years now and has since become a permanent German citizen, based in Hamburg. Besides being a full-time member of Rage, Mike also plays in Axel Rudi Pell’s band – the German Ritchie Blackmore, so to speak. When I tiptoed into the backstage area like a mouse, he very politely asked whether I wanted to interview him or Peavy, and pointed at him. Mike’s finger landed on a 100-kilo heap sprawled out sleeping on the couch, red-faced and looking completely wrecked. The ever-cheerful Mike, who can crack a juicy joke at a moment’s notice, didn’t need long to find the right words, and sent his deeply hibernating buddy off with an invitation: “Hey Peavy, wanna do an interview?” Peavy did stir, but no more than that.
Aleš: “Let him rest. We’ll do the interview, you and me.”
Mike: “I’m a bad talker, I never do interviews for the band.”
Aleš: “I’m unprepared myself, the offer to interview Rage literally fell out of the sky half an hour ago!”
And that’s how my first interview ever with a foreign band got started. Armed with a scrap of paper and a borrowed ballpoint pen, which one of the roadies had kindly lent me, I was pretty nervous going in.
Aleš: Mike, how do you feel the current Rage European tour is going, and what are your impressions so far?
Mike: “Our shows in Germany were really well attended, with packed halls. The Scandinavian leg wasn’t as well attended, except for the first show there, in Finland, which was bombastic. Yesterday, for example, we played Planet Music in Vienna, Austria, in front of 500 people, and we were really happy with that.”
Aleš: “Your new album “Speak Of The Dead” is different again.”
Mike: “Yes! We were really euphoric before recording. We wanted to try out how the current lineup works in combination with a philharmonic orchestra. That’s how the 20-minute Suite Lingua Mortis came about. Victor Smolski wrote all the arrangements, you know, he plays cello, piano, violin and so on… he composed Suite Lingua Mortis. For example, the Rage album “XIII” has a combination of orchestra and metal band, but Rage were a different lineup back then. We simply wanted to try the orchestra thing again, because Rage today is a completely different story from the Rage that played on “XIII”. We knew this suite would be something special, and it is something Rage have never done before.”
Aleš: “Is Suite Lingua Mortis on tonight’s setlist?”
Mike: “Yep!”
Aleš: “Wow, that’s going to be insane! So who’s the orchestra?”
Mike: “Every night we really can’t wait for the suite to come up in the set. No, no, forget the orchestra. We use a sound “sample”. At this year’s Wacken Open Air festival in Germany we’re planning to have a small choir join us on stage, but otherwise that’s too big a bite for our tours right now. Financially, above all.”
Aleš: “From the cover you can tell that Soundchaser is nailed to the cross and finally doomed?”
Mike: “I actually have no clue how our covers come about. Peavy might be able to tell you more about the concept. All I know is that some guy from Los Angeles did the cover, and only a week before we sent everything to final print and had the record “duplicated”. For the “Soundchaser” cover, for example, the idea was mine, and my girlfriend, who’s a designer, just polished up my sketch.”
Aleš: “How come you, as a U.S. resident, ended up earning your bread in Europe?”
Mike: When MacAlpine broke up his band seven years ago, which I was part of, right after a European tour, I decided to move to Europe for good, and at first I lived in the Netherlands. In the beginning I was just a studio drummer!”
Aleš: “How do you manage to play in Axel Rudi Pell’s band at the same time? He just finished recording a new studio album too, right?”
Mike: “I like being busy, constantly busy. I met Roland Grapow, who had just prepared the material for his studio album “Kaleidoscope”, which I played drums on, and he introduced me to guitarist Axel Rudi Pell at some point. That was seven years ago. Axel is a great musician, I respect him a lot! He helped me get into the German scene!”
Aleš: “How come a top-notch drummer of your caliber plays in a relatively small heavy metal band? Rage are a relatively small band, a big band or a big solo artist could easily snap you up, and you could earn way better money there?”
Mike: “Last year I got two offers, but I turned both down. The first one was from Accept, when they’d just gotten back together for a few summer shows, and the second was from Ted Nugent. I’m really disappointed about that second offer, because I was really looking forward to joining Ted on stage. Ted can be endlessly entertaining, but I just couldn’t find the right time, I was too busy, and I had to turn his offer down!”
Aleš: “So Rage remain your first choice?”
Mike: “Yes. Rage is a stable band. No changes here. Each of the three of us knows exactly what he has to do, what his jobs are. We know each other really well now, which saves us a huge amount of time in reaching our goals, and the energy we put into the common cause is just optimal. Before, when I was only a studio drummer and was getting recruited by all sorts of bands and artists, from Malmsteen to MacAlpine to Gamma Ray, I somehow never felt like I was doing something truly my own. I was just fulfilling other people’s wishes and instructions. It’s a great feeling to belong to a band, and in my case that band is Rage.”
Aleš: “Your show tomorrow in Zagreb has been canceled.”
Mike: “Great. That means we can head to Treviso tonight, have a day off, and get properly rested!” Ah, Croatia….. You know, a few years ago I played in Zagreb at the club “Pauk” with an excellent Croatian guitarist they call “Šime”. We played nothing but instrumental stuff, full-on, high-energy jams, it was crazy, I loved it, the way a musician like me really wants to love being on stage. But let me tell you this too: last summer, for example, after we finished our set at the “Masters Of Rock” festival in Zlin (Czech Republic), we hurriedly packed up the gear right after the show and took the bus to Vienna, where we boarded a plane straight to Croatia… The next day we were supposed to play somewhere on the coast, in this town… ah, I can’t remember the name…”
Aleš: “Zadar?”
Mike: “Yes, exactly, it was Zadar. It was a disaster. We got there totally wrecked from the trip, without having had time for a decent rest, and found out the festival was off. Plenty of bands play anyway, even though they don’t get paid a cent. They play for free, strictly for the fans who come to the shows. But we’ve outgrown that. We act professional. Money first, then we play. So we canceled the show, deeply disappointed of course, unfortunately.”
Aleš: “So why is tomorrow’s show in Zagreb canceled? When I called the promoter, he told me he’d sold too few tickets?”
Mike: “Yeah, well, it’s canceled for the same reason. The guy didn’t pay us.”
Mike: “Want some coffee? European coffee really is the best.”
Aleš: “Yeah, one would really hit the spot.”
Mike (walks over to the machine): “With milk or without?”
Aleš: “With milk!”
Mike (sits back down at the table, hands me the coffee and continues): “You know, what went on between tours in the past was unbearable. A lot of stuff, our stage gear for example, went missing, and many times we didn’t get paid for shows. We put an end to that. Now we control everything money-related ourselves. I’m kind of the scout of the band, I’m the one who sorts things out with the promoters, about pay, show dates and the venues where we play!”
Aleš: “Oh yeah, right! I remember how you helped pack up the merch (“merchandise”) after the show two and a half years ago, when you played Planet Music in Vienna as the opener for Helloween. You and Victor helped carry boxes, and you were wearing a red shirt that said Security Guard? It looked more like voluntary post-show stretching. You know, just for fun.”
Mike: “Well, to some extent, yeah, but it’s not quite like that. A certain life situation forces you into it. When we got ripped off on earlier tours, our reaction was always too late, we always got the short end of the stick. Now on tour it’s really just Peavy, Victor and me who have everything under control. From selling our records on the road, to the merch, to ticket sales. We count all the money ourselves.”
Peavy wanders into the kitchen, hungover, looking like a steam locomotive had run him over.
Aleš: “Hello Peavy!!!”
Peavy (while sobering up by the coffee machine): “Mnyah, mnhhh, urghhh…..”
Aleš: “What do you listen to when you’re “outside” of heavy metal?”
Mike: “Practically everything except metal. Fusion, pop, classical music, and a lot of the time I just give myself over to silence, where I find an incredible amount of inspiration for music and ideas. I don’t listen to metal at all. Only when I go “jogging”. It’s great therapy when you need to get physical energy out of your system. When I’m doing physical work or sports, that’s when I listen to metal. Otherwise I don’t listen to it at all. I just play it. A lot of musicians I know who play heavy metal don’t listen to metal in everyday life or to unwind. That seems completely natural to me.”
Aleš: “What would you say about the other two partners in crime in Rage?”
Mike: “You just saw one of them (laughs). Joking aside. They’re exceptional. We all work together great, and everyone brings their ideas to the table on equal terms, and those ideas then build the whole. It’s awesome working with them. We found the right chemistry. We get along great everywhere. In the studio, on tour. Victor is currently sorting out everything for Rage’s show in St. Petersburg, Russia. Our concert is supposed to be in a big stadium, where we plan to shoot a new DVD!”
Mike: “How many people do you think would come to a show in Slovenia if Rage played Slovenia?”
Aleš: “Say around 500, with proper and timely promotion maybe 1000, I don’t know, those are just my personal guesses. You’ve got a lot of loyal fans in Slovenia, but as for decent promoters, I’d rather not get into that! A venue like the Orpheum in Graz literally saves our skin in Slovenia when it comes to going to classic heavy metal gigs. Even tonight I already ran into a few loyal fans from Slovenia outside the hall who came to see you guys.”
Mike (turns to Daniel Zimmermann, who’d just finished eating at the same table, the drummer of Freedom Call and also of the far more notorious (in metal circles) Gamma Ray, and who added some spice to the closing part of my interview): “How about Dan and I put together a drum clinic (“drum clinic”), just for Slovenia. The hall would definitely sell out!”
Dan smiled politely and wisely kept quiet.
Once the shared laughter died down, I thanked Mike for the interview and wished him lots of fun during the show, which we were all headed to at the Orpheum. Who knows, maybe Rage will make it to our neck of the woods someday.
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