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The original interview was published in the 128- Das Magazin der Berliner Philharmoniker and has been translated by Rammstein USA
Source: http://www.rammstein.us/archives/11305
Flying the Kite
A drum duet – A conversation with Raphael Haeger, percussionist for the Berlin Philharmonic, and Christoph Schneider, drummer in the heavy metal band, Rammstein.
By Andrea Thilo
Photographs by Andreas Mühe
Translation by Ava Murray
Two percussionists. Members of German, internationally acclaimed top acts – but active in two musical worlds that almost couldn’t be any more different: Raphael Haeger, the percussionist of the Berlin Philharmonic since 2004, and Christoph Schneider, drummer in the Industrial Metal band, Rammstein.
Even if their repertoires might be worlds apart, they have surprisingly much in common. Raphael Haeger got his musical influences from his father, who was a guitarist in a rock band. He already wanted his first drum set at the age of four, but was also sitting happily at the piano in his teens and played in several jazz bands for which he also did the arrangements. And for a long time, he could not decide which one of the two instruments he should make his profession.
Christoph Schneider was also influenced musically by his father, the Berliner opera director and college professor, Martin Schneider. Although he’d much rather have seen his son sticking to his classical trumpet playing, Christoph got his first drum set at 14 – with far-reaching significance. In 1994, he, together with Till Lindemann, Richard Z. Kruspe, Oliver Riedel, Paul Landers and Flake Lorenz, started the band, Rammstein, which today is the most successful rock band from Germany. Schneider still attends concerts of the Berlin Philharmonic, but before this drum duet, he and Raphael Haeger didn’t know each other personally.
“The percussionist in an orchestra has a totally different function than the drummer in a band“
Raphael Haeger
128: What did you immediately think when you heard that we were asking the two of you for a joined interview?
Christoph Schneider: First I thought, great! Then, why me? And finally, Yes, I’d love to.
Raphael Haeger: What went through my head, was that we as teens sure had a lot in common without knowing it, and that it would be exciting to look for the differences today.
Do you see any similarities in the art forms in which you are performing?
Schneider: Our show runs like clockwork, night after night, with everything from the set list and the excessive pyrotechnics to the lighting effects. Ultimately, we operate a lot like the Philharmonic – our secret lies in playing as well as we possibly can every day. But the truly creative bit is the song writing, we’re having a lot more intense discussions then.
Haeger: Thank God for not having to deal with this song-writing bit! Everyone would just concoct their own bridge, and the whole thing would end up as blues in the end – you’d go completely mad! Nor do we have such a strictly choreographed stage show as Rammstein does. Remarkably, a lot is open-ended for us, on any given evening.
Open?
Haeger: Yes, since we have so many big egos – musicians with a lot of experience as soloists, being used to leading an orchestra by themselves. These small changes are the high-light of the night for us. A horn player, for example, could suddenly play his three-note solo in a totally different way than the last time, just as in Chamber Music at large. These contributions are often the trick that intuitively and in one shot changes everything – for us all. Something that gives the impulse that lifts the whole concert. Ideally, something like this happens every few minutes.
Which role does the percussionist have?
Schneider: With us, the drummer is the backbone of a song. He‘s always playing!
Haeger: The percussionist in an orchestra, waiting for his cue, has a completely different function. We aren’t really responsible for timing or tempo, but instead for timbre, passages, the integration of small motives.
Schneider: When I think of you, I feel that the challenge must be to be so completely focused when those pivotal moments come. To be cool enough to play it right! I only feel this excitement before the show, before the first beat.
Mr. Haeger, as opposed to Christoph Schneider, you are, as the percussionist for the Berlin Philharmonic, sometimes left out.
Haefer: Yes, whenever the Philharmonic plays Brahms, Beethoven or Bruckner. I have compensated for this over the years by starting to study conducting. This way, I have gained a deeper insight into what the string section up front is really doing. And I have finally worked through my “classical complex” and now I know better where the journey will take me.
How much abandon in your playing can you really, in your quite exposed situations, allow yourselves?
Schneider: When the interaction between me and my instrument clicks, I can feel how I sometimes pull the whole band into it. But there’s a lot that could mechanically go wrong with percussion. Not often, but it happens, that something technical gets in the way of immersing yourself in your playing.
Haeger: I can’t even really remember one incident when a two-hour concert went completely according to plan. There’s bound to be a door that opens and then the timpani goes out of tune. There’s always something to fix. The concept, “Flow”, is quite popular these days, and surely it helps the audience to get into this flow while listening. We always have to think about what we’re doing.
Schneider: That’s the razor’s edge we’re walking on – to control our play without castigating it…
Haeger: …and always holding the strings so that the kite can fly.
Do all six members of Rammstein hold the strings?
Schneider: When it comes to dynamics, are we a democratic group. No one’s the boss, everyone is allowed to chime in, but no one is allowed to go too far off the beaten path. Anyone could come up with ideas, but at least four of the six of us have to agree with the idea for us to proceed with it. Admittedly, you first have to learn our kind of democracy.
Haeger: Unlike you, we don’t decide our show ourselves. Our “democracy”, with 128 members, would be governed quite differently from yours – from the front.
How do you come up with such a spectacular stage show as Rammstein’s, “democratically”?
Schneider: We often push each other to always be able to offer something special according to the motto: If we’re doing this, we’re doing it right! This way, you learn how to bring in elements that alone would be way too extreme. We had different opinions about the fake-semen cannon, with which Till Lindemann, our singer, shoots foam into the audience. On the other hand, the cannibal-song, “Mein Teil”, in which Till wears a butcher’s apron, a chef’s hat and, drenched in blood, sings into a huge, meat-carving knife, was liked by all six of us – it fit perfectly with the text and was a superb match to the song.
Would you like to have anything from each other’s lives?
Schneider: I would like to have some of your structured life. You are employed, you can go home to your own house almost every night, travel every now and then and have contact with relatively many people.
Haeger: Says he, who performs in front of 10,000 people at once!
Schneider: Yes, but we are often off for months at a time without any rehearsals or a social structure that works after the tour is finished – quite different from you.
So, you are putting the rock musician in the closet for months?
Schneider: Of course. We haven’t played for six months now. The album is “toured“, so to speak. It’s only after that that we can come together again and write new songs. It felt a bit odd, throwing on the gear for the photo shoot today. As you grow older together as a band, you need the actual physical space away from one another in-between, since you know each other all too well after 25 years – otherwise it will get on your nerves. We all need this space to find new inspiration.
You were both inspired by rock music as well as classical in your youth.
Haeger: Rock music was the dominant element at our house. But when my father came home at night, he played Schumann on the piano. My room shared a wall with the music room, and I fell asleep blissfully with the door open surely a hundred times. In this respect, classical music was my elixir.
“I would like some of the structured life of an orchestral musician.“
Christoph Schneider
Source: http://www.rammstein.us/archives/11305
Flying the Kite
A drum duet – A conversation with Raphael Haeger, percussionist for the Berlin Philharmonic, and Christoph Schneider, drummer in the heavy metal band, Rammstein.
By Andrea Thilo
Photographs by Andreas Mühe
Translation by Ava Murray
Two percussionists. Members of German, internationally acclaimed top acts – but active in two musical worlds that almost couldn’t be any more different: Raphael Haeger, the percussionist of the Berlin Philharmonic since 2004, and Christoph Schneider, drummer in the Industrial Metal band, Rammstein.
Even if their repertoires might be worlds apart, they have surprisingly much in common. Raphael Haeger got his musical influences from his father, who was a guitarist in a rock band. He already wanted his first drum set at the age of four, but was also sitting happily at the piano in his teens and played in several jazz bands for which he also did the arrangements. And for a long time, he could not decide which one of the two instruments he should make his profession.
Christoph Schneider was also influenced musically by his father, the Berliner opera director and college professor, Martin Schneider. Although he’d much rather have seen his son sticking to his classical trumpet playing, Christoph got his first drum set at 14 – with far-reaching significance. In 1994, he, together with Till Lindemann, Richard Z. Kruspe, Oliver Riedel, Paul Landers and Flake Lorenz, started the band, Rammstein, which today is the most successful rock band from Germany. Schneider still attends concerts of the Berlin Philharmonic, but before this drum duet, he and Raphael Haeger didn’t know each other personally.
“The percussionist in an orchestra has a totally different function than the drummer in a band“
Raphael Haeger
128: What did you immediately think when you heard that we were asking the two of you for a joined interview?
Christoph Schneider: First I thought, great! Then, why me? And finally, Yes, I’d love to.
Raphael Haeger: What went through my head, was that we as teens sure had a lot in common without knowing it, and that it would be exciting to look for the differences today.
Do you see any similarities in the art forms in which you are performing?
Schneider: Our show runs like clockwork, night after night, with everything from the set list and the excessive pyrotechnics to the lighting effects. Ultimately, we operate a lot like the Philharmonic – our secret lies in playing as well as we possibly can every day. But the truly creative bit is the song writing, we’re having a lot more intense discussions then.
Haeger: Thank God for not having to deal with this song-writing bit! Everyone would just concoct their own bridge, and the whole thing would end up as blues in the end – you’d go completely mad! Nor do we have such a strictly choreographed stage show as Rammstein does. Remarkably, a lot is open-ended for us, on any given evening.
Open?
Haeger: Yes, since we have so many big egos – musicians with a lot of experience as soloists, being used to leading an orchestra by themselves. These small changes are the high-light of the night for us. A horn player, for example, could suddenly play his three-note solo in a totally different way than the last time, just as in Chamber Music at large. These contributions are often the trick that intuitively and in one shot changes everything – for us all. Something that gives the impulse that lifts the whole concert. Ideally, something like this happens every few minutes.
Which role does the percussionist have?
Schneider: With us, the drummer is the backbone of a song. He‘s always playing!
Haeger: The percussionist in an orchestra, waiting for his cue, has a completely different function. We aren’t really responsible for timing or tempo, but instead for timbre, passages, the integration of small motives.
Schneider: When I think of you, I feel that the challenge must be to be so completely focused when those pivotal moments come. To be cool enough to play it right! I only feel this excitement before the show, before the first beat.
Mr. Haeger, as opposed to Christoph Schneider, you are, as the percussionist for the Berlin Philharmonic, sometimes left out.
Haefer: Yes, whenever the Philharmonic plays Brahms, Beethoven or Bruckner. I have compensated for this over the years by starting to study conducting. This way, I have gained a deeper insight into what the string section up front is really doing. And I have finally worked through my “classical complex” and now I know better where the journey will take me.
How much abandon in your playing can you really, in your quite exposed situations, allow yourselves?
Schneider: When the interaction between me and my instrument clicks, I can feel how I sometimes pull the whole band into it. But there’s a lot that could mechanically go wrong with percussion. Not often, but it happens, that something technical gets in the way of immersing yourself in your playing.
Haeger: I can’t even really remember one incident when a two-hour concert went completely according to plan. There’s bound to be a door that opens and then the timpani goes out of tune. There’s always something to fix. The concept, “Flow”, is quite popular these days, and surely it helps the audience to get into this flow while listening. We always have to think about what we’re doing.
Schneider: That’s the razor’s edge we’re walking on – to control our play without castigating it…
Haeger: …and always holding the strings so that the kite can fly.
Do all six members of Rammstein hold the strings?
Schneider: When it comes to dynamics, are we a democratic group. No one’s the boss, everyone is allowed to chime in, but no one is allowed to go too far off the beaten path. Anyone could come up with ideas, but at least four of the six of us have to agree with the idea for us to proceed with it. Admittedly, you first have to learn our kind of democracy.
Haeger: Unlike you, we don’t decide our show ourselves. Our “democracy”, with 128 members, would be governed quite differently from yours – from the front.
How do you come up with such a spectacular stage show as Rammstein’s, “democratically”?
Schneider: We often push each other to always be able to offer something special according to the motto: If we’re doing this, we’re doing it right! This way, you learn how to bring in elements that alone would be way too extreme. We had different opinions about the fake-semen cannon, with which Till Lindemann, our singer, shoots foam into the audience. On the other hand, the cannibal-song, “Mein Teil”, in which Till wears a butcher’s apron, a chef’s hat and, drenched in blood, sings into a huge, meat-carving knife, was liked by all six of us – it fit perfectly with the text and was a superb match to the song.
Would you like to have anything from each other’s lives?
Schneider: I would like to have some of your structured life. You are employed, you can go home to your own house almost every night, travel every now and then and have contact with relatively many people.
Haeger: Says he, who performs in front of 10,000 people at once!
Schneider: Yes, but we are often off for months at a time without any rehearsals or a social structure that works after the tour is finished – quite different from you.
So, you are putting the rock musician in the closet for months?
Schneider: Of course. We haven’t played for six months now. The album is “toured“, so to speak. It’s only after that that we can come together again and write new songs. It felt a bit odd, throwing on the gear for the photo shoot today. As you grow older together as a band, you need the actual physical space away from one another in-between, since you know each other all too well after 25 years – otherwise it will get on your nerves. We all need this space to find new inspiration.
You were both inspired by rock music as well as classical in your youth.
Haeger: Rock music was the dominant element at our house. But when my father came home at night, he played Schumann on the piano. My room shared a wall with the music room, and I fell asleep blissfully with the door open surely a hundred times. In this respect, classical music was my elixir.
“I would like some of the structured life of an orchestral musician.“
Christoph Schneider
Having to do it for school definitely took most of the fun out of it for me. Orchestra was always the most fun...
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