If you had told Marc Storace that at 73, he’d be the frontman for not one, but two bands, he never would’ve believed it. And yet, here we are. As we approach 2025, Marc Storace is fronting not just a resurrected Krokus, but his own namesake band, who are currently burning up the charts with their latest album, Crossfire. It’s quite the busy life for a man who’s been rocking and rolling for well over half a century, but as you’ll read in our latest discussion with the legendary Swiss singer, he wouldn’t have it any other way. We sat down with Storace to discuss collaborating with Tommy Henriksen (Alice Cooper, Warlock), the return of Krokus, and the origin of the infamous “Smelly Nelly”.
Greetings Marc and welcome back to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?
Marc Storace: I’m fine Joe, thank you! It’s nice to see you again.
It’s nice to see you too! I’d like to start by thanking you for taking the time to talk, and more importantly, congratulating you on excellent new hard rocking album, Crossfire.
MS: Thank you!
How soon after Live and Let Live did ideas start coming together for this one?
MS: Well, we had a nice run with Live and Let Live. It carried us through three years of concerts. We did some great recordings as well with KISS and Scorpions and Alice Cooper as special guests. After finishing the gig with Alice Cooper, I talked with Tommy Henriksen. There was already some songs on the way, but he said, “I want to produce your album.” I said, “Hellyeah! If you got the time, let’s do it!” That’s how it started. Then, he was off on tour with the Coop and Hollywood Vampires. It really was done bit by bit, with a lot of patience and a lot of goodwill from his side because he really made time in between the tours. He’d fly back home here to Switzerland to his family. Luckily, he lives in Switzerland. I would go over and record a couple of tracks. We’d have a good time, then wait until the next time. In between, we’d work on new songs. By hook and by crook, we got there *laughs*!
How far back do you go with Tommy? I know he was in Warlock back in the day. How would you describe your creative partnership with him?
MS: I go back as far as about 10 years ago, I guess. He was producing a China album. The China guys are friends of mine, also from the Zurich side. There was an American singer then, Eric St. Michaels, who was a good friend of Tommy, so that was the connection. So I met Tommy that way. We kept in touch on and off, very sparsely. It was after this concert at Rock the Ring that we really talked about doing the new material. Of course, I had some material here and sent it all over to him. Thank God for internet *laughs*! He’d send me stuff back.
When I went to his place, he must’ve had about 30 or 40 different songs. I said, “I’m not gonna listen to all of them.” *laughs* He played about 12. I picked 5. The first one was actually “Sirens”. That turned out to be a really bombastic, aggressive, violent song which really sticks out, because it doesn’t really fit with the party songs which come before. Tommy said, “Do you really want to have that on the album?” It was ready and finished. I said, “I love it! We gotta do that!” Maybe someone out there doing a new movie is gonna pick it up, listen to the lyrics, and say, “That fits.”, and use it for a soundtrack on a movie!
The rest of the songs were really fun. Tommy said from the first day, “Hey Marc, I think you should do an album that rocks. That’s what your fans really wanna hear from you. You can still do it. I just heard you up there onstage. You blew everything away. You had a mosh pit going there.” *laughs* There’s a couple of great songs on this album *pulls out Live and Let Live*. What it doesn’t have is Krokus sounding songs. I steered away from that and I wanted to do other stuff. There’s a couple of songs like “No Place to Hide”. As soon as we started playing that, it’s kind of aggressive, fast, and punky. That’s when they started forming this mosh pit. It was the first time for the Storace band, so after the gig, we said, “We must be doing something right!”
The other one, which the band loves doing, is “Carry the Burden”. It’s really a forward-driving *laughs*, in your face kind of song. That’s great. I was going more in that direction. “Live and Let Live” is also a metallic, forward-driving (song), you know? *sings* “Live and let live!” *laughs* Great riffs and so on. Tommy missed hearing the old school stuff that I did throughout my whole career. I thought for the second album, I’m gonna give in and I’m gonna do what’s in my DNA. I’ve been doing it for so many decades. Luckily, I thank heavens that I can still do it. As long as I can, you have to take the opportunity while it’s there.
One thing I must say is Tommy is also a younger guy. He’s about 15 years younger, so he’s a big Krokus fan. He was really inspired by Krokus. He always loved my singing. I love his singing too on Crossbone Skully. So we took it from there. We put it all in a bundle. He knew what to work on and it inspired the rest of the band. Finally, we got there and here it is *laughs*!
Also working alongside you and Tommy is former Krokus drummer, Pat Aeby. What’s it like working with him again and what does he add to the music?
MS: Pat does a lot. He does so much. He’s not just a drummer. He’s an engineer, a great organizer, musical director. He has 15 years experience working with BMG Ariola working in promotion and marketing, so he’s a great asset. Plus, he’s a good old friend. We got together to do a D/C World album, which was AC/DC covers, but medleys, to commemorate Bon Scott’s 22nd anniversary of his passing. I was game for that. I really enjoyed doing it.
After that, Patrick, along with Dominique Favez, his great friend, the rhythm guitar player, they helped Krokus record Rock the Block. We went out on tour promoting that album, a tour that lasted about two years all around Europe *laughs*! We released an album, which Patrick recorded along the way live called Fire and Gasoline. It was amazing. Then, Patrick had to leave because of his record company. I went on tour with The Hellraisers. Dominque Favez was the only guy from that batch who came along, and Tony Castell as well, a great bass player. He plays in Gotus with Patrick.
(Guitarist) Fernando (von Arb) left the band after Rock the Block because he had a problem with his wrist. We were organizing to go over to the USA. We did 22 dates with not much big publicity about it. It was just to get the band really to gel together so we could write some great songs, which ended up on the Hellraiser album. Instead of Fernando, we took Mandy Meyer on that tour. He was an old buddy from the Hardware tour. When Tommy Keifer left the band, we took Mandy Meyer on tour with us. It was really great that he came back for the Hellraiser album after a long stint with Gotthard, which is the other big hard rock band here in Switzerland. That’s the story *laughs*!
This entire album is filled with absolutely scorching vocal performances, my personal favorite being the aforementioned “Sirens”. What is your secret to keeping your voice in such great shape after all these years? Do you have any advice for aspiring rock and metal singers?
MS: When we were young and careless, carefree, wild, and on the road, I did a lot of smoke. Not so much beer, because I look for my health. I once tried a line on a mirror before we opened for Joe Walsh at this festival. We played before him. It really didn’t help my voice. The thing is, it was like a psychological thing. Immediately, the blues feeling that I like; I’m a very bluesy person actually in private life *laughs*, but then I can switch into rock, hard rock, and it’s like, “Bang!” You can still hear the soul, the blues, which is inside of me. After that experiment, it was gone! “What am I doing here? I’m not enjoying this? Where’s my feeling gone?”
After that, I thought, “No sir.” It’s not good for the vocal cords either, so that’s very dangerous for singers especially. It eats away your vocal cords. That’s why some of the biggest singers right now are having some big problems. Maybe they indulged a lot. This is just my theory. I don’t want to go pointing fingers at anybody. People are free to do what they want. Recently, when you become a dad and you have kids, you want to be a great example, so you don’t take the rock n’ roll to your home. You’re just daddy, you know? Of course, then they got worse than me in their teens *laughs*. They’ve grown out of that though. It was just a short phase.
I watch what I eat, my diet. I exercise a little bit. We got enough stairs in this house. When you go up and down, you’re doing cardio without wanting to. It’s good for the memory because if you forget something upstairs and you go downstairs, you go, “Oh, oops! I gotta go back up!” *laughs* That’s why we’re not gonna sell this house, I don’t think *laughs*. So yeah, basically the normal stuff. I don’t smoke anymore. Sometimes, the occasional thin cigarillo, but you don’t intake. You don’t take it into your lungs. It’s just for the taste, and it goes with red wine. I indulge in the good things, which are not dangerous for the voice.
I start preparing for a concert about a week before. The first day is always like a warmup, to see if I got too much slime around the vocal cords. That gets you coughing and gives you that burnout in the middle of a concert. That’s it basically. Don’t eat fatty foods and you have to enjoy what you’re doing. I started singing in a band, my first band, when I was 14. I’m still doing it today and having even more fun than I did back then because I reached my goal. I came from a little island in the Mediterranean. There was no place to go there. It was too tiny. I went to London, and from there to Switzerland. I met all the great people here, and love the country.
There’s big bands coming through, in and out of Switzerland playing, so you’re not starved for music like I was in Malta. There were no live bands. It inspires you, the scene you’re in. One thing led to another. From Tea, I went back to London to Eazy Money, and then came back here and did Krokus. I knew the guys because they had been on tour with Tea on our final tour. It was the Tea farewell tour. We took Krokus on as a supporting act, and I fell in love with the guitar player, his playing, Tommy Keifer.
Later on, he tragically passed away because he was into the heavy stuff, but you can hear him on my debut album with Krokus, Metal Rendez-vous. Those songs, with his guitar playing, will last forever. The song “Fire”, that nice long solo, and “Tokyo Nights”, great guitar solo there. Then, Fernando took over and Mandy came in to play rhythm. He was replaced by Mark Kohler because Mark Kohler is a solid rhythm guitar player who doesn’t wanna play lead, whereas Mandy Meyer is a born lead guitar player, so it didn’t really work. That’s why he was never on a Krokus album until Hellraiser, because I took him back in *laughs*.
There’s a great song on here called “Rock This City”, which is something you’ve been doing for decades now. Off the top of your head, what are some of your favorite cities to rock and why?
MS: I always loved Hamburg. There’s loads of places in Germany that left a big impression on me. Munich, Stuttgart, Frankfort: So many. I love doing Zurich. The Hallenstadion is like the temple of rock. All the bands play there. Then, there’s also Geneva. There’s places like London, Manchester, Glasgow, Newcastle, Cardiff, so many cities that I’d like to revisit with the Storace band! I love the band, my band. Apart from Patrick Aeby and Domonique Favez, who I mentioned before, we have a great bass player in Emi Meyer. She is phenomenal live. The way she slaps that bass is just incredible! She moves nice with her long curly hair. She fits the scene.
I knew her since 15 years or so, working together in This is Rock and also Rock Circus. We played in this travelling circus tent all over Switzerland! This went on a year after year, so I’m glad she had the time, because she does other projects too. She was really eager to join. It’s going well. Last, but not least, our new lead guitar player, Serge Christen, is awesome. He replaced Turi Vicki because Turi decided to stop touring because of personal reasons, but he did a great job these past three years, playing songs from Live and Let Live, plus the Krokus covers we played and other stuff.
I’m really happy that Serge was willing to rejoin. I say “rejoin” because when I did the Marc Storace Band back then, about…ages ago. What was that? 20 years? *laughs* I don’t know, but anyway, he played lead in that band. We opened for Johnny Hallyday. I don’t know if you know Johnny Hallyday, but he was a big French rock n’ roll star in the footsteps of Elvis Presley, but more modern. Johnny Hallyday played in Lausanne. That’s where Patrick and Dominique live close to. It was great. We had about 14,000 people there. We played a couple Krokus songs there too. When we played the intro for “Screaming in the Night”, it started to rain lightly. It really fit the scene *laughs*. It was like part of the show! Because it was the rainy season, they all had their parkas and so on…we got wet though! *laughs*
I’m getting goosebumps just thinking about that, the rain coming down during that fade-in intro to “Screaming in the Night”.
MS: Yeah, with the thunder and lightning coming in from the tape, which we do every time for that song. It was great! It’s great. It’s still going great. I’m enjoying myself. Now I’m in two bands. I have three families and one family down in Malta *laughs*. It’s a busy life, but it’s great. Of course, something else that’s changed, when we recorded Live and Let Live during COVID, during the lockdown it was kind if a depressing time. People dying, businesses going down the drain. No record company was interested to sign any new act. Forget it!
My friend Roli Eggli, he formed a label, just so we could go out on something *laughs*. I financed the whole studio production. We got the band together, formed the band from the studio musicians who recorded this with me, and they were great. We took Turi Vicki because Jean Pierre (von Dach) couldn’t come on tour. We started with streamers, you know? Because he played with Joss Stone and he was signed to rejoin and start rehearsals and so on and so forth, he couldn’t tour.
The very first (show) after the baptism of the CD, we were pouring Prosecco on the CD. My kids were there too. They’re bigger than me now *laughs*. We did that baptism by Prosecco instead of fire *laughs*. Baptism by fire was the lockdown. Then, we did that first gig to about 20 people, all wearing masks and cameras. This was a professional stream with a big truck outside, playing in this little club where I met my wife about 37 years ago, close by here in Basel called the Atlantis. It was streaming for a production called the Baloise Session.
I don’t know if you ever heard of the Baloise Session. They’re really good. They bring in a lot of acts every year. Krokus played there before Foreigner. It was two rock acts. They don’t only do rock. They do various stuff, so this was kind of special with Krokus followed by Foreigner. This Baloise streaming thing was really good for the Storace band, a brand new band for everybody. “Who’s Storace?” “Don’t you know? It’s the singer for Krokus!” “Oh, sorry!” *laughs* It really helped us because a lot of people, they stream to about 40 different countries. That was a big bang in one go!
Then, COVID disappeared. We could go out again and play *laughs*. I did one tour with the same band who recorded Live and Let Live, and then decided to go for a new formation and called up my ex-Krokus members, Patrick and Dominique and the rest. Off we went! We got these gigs opening for KISS, Scorpions at the temple of rock in Zurich, the Hallenstadion. That’s amazing. We covered a lot of ground and here we are now. Back to the Crossfire!
You know why that album sounds so great? It’s because, in the end, the songs are already great, but the big bonus was it was mixed by Olle Romo, the studio and sound engineer of Mutt Lange, the legendary Mutt Lange who produced Foreigner, AC/DC, Def Leppard, you name them, he produced them. It was really great. This was thanks to Tommy’s connections.
That makes sense, because at times I was listening to this and it definitely has that old school ’80s arena rock sound.
MS: Yeah, for sure!
Many of your songs have been inspired by women, with the single “Adrenaline” off this latest album being no exception. I’ve always wondered how many of these songs were based off real encounters or fantasy. For example, was there a real “Smelly Nelly”?
MS: *laughs* “Smelly Nelly”! I don’t know! I bet there are a few out there *laughs*! I cringed when I read those lyrics. I said, “Do you really want me to sing this? Come on guys!” *laughs* “Smelly Nelly”, oh give me a break *laughs*! Amazing *laughs*. “Adrenaline”? That’s classy! That’s more up my street. You can picture this sexy woman walking down the street and you’re like, *sings* “I saw her walking. Then we were talking.” One step leads to another and bang!
It was quite similar when I met my wife. I was breathing down her neck, standing at the bar in the Atlantis, like I said before, waiting to get a drink. Then she got her drink, turned around, and was like, love at first sight. I watched her walk away *laughs*. Luckily, the club owner knew her and he knew me very well. He liked doing this at the end of the night. He’d throw a party in his office, a big office with sofas and a bar. He’d invite close friends and she walked in. From then on, it’s history *laughs*.
When we last spoke, we talked about some of Krokus’s classic early ’80s albums. This time around, I wanted to ask about one of my personal favorite Krokus albums, Heart Attack. Where was the band at this point in their career and what are your feelings on the album in the scope of Krokus’s catalog?
MS: That turned out to be a good album. I wrote nearly all the lyrics for that. I really got into it. I knew it was our only hope because grunge was right around the corner. After the glam metal era, it was easy for someone like Nirvana to come in because they were real. No colored hair or hairspray *laughs* or whatever. Krokus, we decided to call Chris von Rohr again, the founding member who had done such great work for his baby, Krokus, and still does today again.
Heart Attack was a milestone, and we were hoping it was going to save the band, but the momentum of things in general were not looking rosy for hard rock at that time. During that tour, I decided I’m gonna take a hiatus and return to my little island home and spend quality time with my mom. We had just lost my dad. That did me good, to regain my objectivity, breathe in sea air, eat seafood *laughs* and local stuff, meet my friends and family. To just do something completely different than being on the road for months on end without end. It really helped.
That’s when I decided to do the Blue album, which was something completely different. I didn’t want to go back into the same thing I was doing Krokus. Actually, there’s a little similarity to Live and Let Live, not musically, because this is much heavier. The Blue album had lighter stuff and ended up towards the end with the heavier stuff, like “Hold On”. *sings* “Start me up on your locomotion!” It’s a long story, never-ending *laughs*! We could drink a bottle of red and talk all night.
In the time since we last spoke, Krokus has gotten back together and is performing live again. Considering the way that farewell jaunt was so abruptly halted by COVID, did it seem inevitable Krokus would one day regroup? Furthermore, how important is it for you to see the band still up and running in 2024?
MS: I’m really happy it’s still going because it really broke my heart when the guys told me we were gonna stop the machine rolling after the last gig at the Hallenstadion here in Zurich on December 9, 2019. I was in tears before the last encore. So were most of the fans in the front. I couldn’t sing. Here you got this lump in your throat because “forever” is a heavy word. We’re gonna stop forever? We’ve been doing this for so long.
Then came COVID and we had another tour lined up in the USA and Canada. We were gonna do some gigs in South America, Brazil and so on. After that, some gigs with Saxon in the UK playing the Apollo and stuff like that. I’m really into that. COVID destroyed all those plans and the guys finally threw in the towel and said, “Come on. It’s a sign from heaven that we should stop.” For me, it was really frustrating. I got my stuff together, I looked into the archives, and first did some duets with my young daughter. We put them out on YouTube, did some streaming on television.
We had that little excitement, and also watching her enjoying myself, but I thought, “What if this goes on forever? What am I gonna do? I better prepare myself. Krokus isn’t around. As soon as COVID disappears, positive thinking, I need to have product and a band so I can ship out again and have some fun.” That’s what happened, but I’m really glad that Krokus finally…I guess I gave them a good example *laughs*. What really did it was because Krokus played in Solothurn, which is their hometown. They were celebrating 2,000 years of Solothurn. They booked the band to play on this huge stage in front of a square. It ended up being jam packed with about 8,000 people. You couldn’t get more people in there.
My daughter joined me onstage for “Bedside Radio”. There was a feeling of happiness and people seeing the band performing again in their hometown. After that, the guys said, “I think that’s another sign.” *laughs* The wind changed again and here we are. Not recording new albums, but doing great gigs and there’s a great feeling in the band. It’s really great to be doing this. We did some nice festivals this year. Some more are coming in already for next year.
There’ll be stuff coming in for Storace, so I’ll be, how can I say, roller skating. My legs will be on two sides. I’ll be shifting from Krokus to Storace, back to Krokus back to Storace, but that’s such fun. I love to be busy. I spend my time at home. I love to watch movies, catching up with all the news and bullshit that comes on TV, you know. Enjoying good meals and a good bottle of red, but yeah. It’s a special time in my life. Who would’ve thought after the age of 70? As long as I can still do it, that’s good.
In closing, next March, Krokus will be performing on the Monsters of Rock Cruise, where their initial run concluded roughly five years ago. Is there any chance the American fans could see some tour dates around the cruise?
MS: This was one of my big requests to the band, but they turned it down. I don’t argue anymore. If that’s the way they want it, so be it. I’ll try my best to get the Storace band out in the States and play some Krokus songs, more Krokus songs than I do right now. Maybe do 50/50 of Krokus and Storace during one gig. I know they’d love to hear the band, but at least they get to hear the singer. My band plays Krokus stuff real well *laughs*. Let’s see! Hope dies last. You never know what can happen, but that’s the way it is right now. These are the facts. Let’s hope everything stays good. No COVID again *laughs*!
The new Storace album, Crossfire, is out now on Frontiers Records. For more information on Storace, visit en.storace.ch. For more information on Krokus, visit www.krokusonline.com.
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