Few reunions in the history of metal have been as triumphant as Helloween’s. Upon the return of classic 80s guitarist Kai Hansen and singer Michael Kiske, the band found themselves celebrating their epic catalog to legions of fans; headlining arenas, stadiums, and festivals all across the globe. The release of new music in the form of 2021’s Helloween has only fanned the flames, especially here in America, where the band are about to embark on their most ambitious tour to date. In just a matter of months, Helloween will return stateside, with fellow power metal veterans HammerFall in tow. We spoke to Kiske about these upcoming shows, the differences between then and now, and why sticking to your guns is the only way to go, especially if you’re Helloween.
Greetings Michael and welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?
Michael Kiske: *in high voice* I’m good, thank you very much! Oh, I’m not Michael Jackson, sorry *laughs*. Your site happens to be named after my favorite Judas Priest record!
It’s my favorite too, hence the name!
MK: I was listening to that album on the last tour and I hadn’t heard it in ages. I hadn’t heard it in years and I was blown away how good it is. When you haven’t heard an album in such a long time, it’s like a revelation, my God. What a great record.
Absolutely! Well I’d like to thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview. We have so much to talk about. Helloween is on the verge of returning to America for the first time since 2018’s Pumpkins United Tour, that virtually sold out all across the country. Was the band shocked to receive such a reception here after so long?
MK: I was! I was really excited about it. We didn’t do a lot of shows. It was maybe 6 all over the place, but they all went down so well. The sound was great because the tech in the US is great, great stage sound. It was just, all in all, a very exciting experience. That is why we’re coming again. That was just a trial to see what would happen, if people would show up. This time we’re gonna do it a little bigger. When the pandemic came to an end and we were talking about playing live again, nobody knew what was gonna happen.
Nobody knew if people were still scared or if they were gonna show up, so we decided to team with HammerFall. We felt like if you could team with another great band, there’s a bit more safety. People showed up! We probably wouldn’t have needed to do this, but since it went down so well and we get along with the guys, we’re continuing it for the rest of the shows we do as headliners. It was a great combination, but that is the reason why we teamed up with them. They had the same thought. Nobody knew!
Right, and the fans are thrilled because they’re getting two great bands in one night. Now in Helloween’s case, with a catalog as vast and celebrated as yours, how does the band go about picking songs for a setlist?
MK: That’s a bitch. That’s so difficult. You can’t imagine. It was a lot easier when we did the Pumpkins United Tour. First of all, we had 3 hours, no support act or special guests. We had 3 hours and we were even extending on it. Sometimes we’d play 3 and a half hours, which is quite insane. We did not have a new record, so we could pick from the hits and make a really powerful program. This time, the set is shorter because we have HammerFall with us. It’s gonna be maybe 2 and a half hours, or something like that. I’m not 100% sure.
We would like to play some new songs as well, so the hits you can play are a little less. It’s very difficult to choose. It’s great to have a legacy like that, of course. A lot of bands would wish to have a legacy like that, where you can play songs from the 80s that everybody knows and wants to hear. It’s amazing! That’s the benefit of being a dinosaur. You have the legacy, but it’s not easy to choose the right tracks. I would personally, very often, do it differently.
Instead of playing…I’m forgetting the title. It was this one song Markus (Grosskopf) wanted to play. Sometimes, I would choose more of the key songs. I would always play “March of Time” for instance, because it’s such an important number, but you have to please everybody. In the end, everybody has to agree to the set. I usually just stick out of it and let them do it.
I love how you referred to 2 and a half hours as a “short” set for Helloween. Very few bands can say that!
MK: It’s a long set, but even with the 3 hours, we couldn’t play everything! We could make, literally, at least two 3 hour sets of great material, and they’d be completely different. It wouldn’t be any problem putting songs like “We Got the Right” or other stuff we didn’t play. I’m not even aware of the material of the Andi (Deris) era! They have done way more records with Andi than they have done with me, and I’m sure there are a whole bunch of songs among them that I’m not even aware of that the audience would love to hear, but that’s great. It’s better than having too few songs to play.
Of course. Speaking of Andi, what is it like for you to be sharing vocal duties with him? Both onstage and on record, you two seem to have found a balance that compliment each other extremely well.
MK: I think it’s a karma thing. It’s almost unbelievable how good this works. He is the person, together with Kai, I feel most close to. I’m even hanging out with him privately. For instance, when we’re in for rehearsals, we always sit somewhere drinking coffee or eating together. We get along well, which helps this whole band situation. I see it a little bit like KISS. KISS always had Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons. Everybody knows KISS has more than one singer. With Helloween, it’s kind of a funny situation how this comes together.
Usually, when you have a singer leaving a band, another singer is coming and that’s the band. This time, the old singer and the old guitar player comes back, but the band stays the same, so we just add two people. That’s highly unique. I don’t think anyone has ever done it like that. It was a difficult thing to start with. We really carefully looked into if this might work. The very first thing was actually me talking to Michael Weikath, because that’s where the most clash was in the late 80s. That was completely out of the way. He has changed so much. So did I. We both have changed so much that there was no problem at all.
The next thing was to see if I would get along with Andi because if we don’t get along, it doesn’t make sense. You can only fake it for that much. Sooner or later, it’s gonna fall apart. But that worked out great. It worked amazingly. Like I said, I believe it’s karma. I think we just had to go separate ways and then learn to forgive each other again. Now we do something together that is very refreshing and very different the way it is.
I don’t think the band would have the energy that we have now onstage any other way. By bringing all those forces together that were really important, almost everybody, gives it a whole different chemistry now. It was something that we didn’t have in the beginning and they didn’t have without me and Kai. Now we have it all together and it makes some sort of a new soup.
When you’re presented a song, do you have an idea in your head of how you’re going to deliver the vocals? Furthermore, how do you go about approaching an epic like “Halloween” or “Keeper of the Seven Keys”?
MK: In those days, before we went into the studio, we did a lot of practicing. The stuff was partly even written in the rehearsal room. The songwriter had ideas. I had ideas in those days too that we were working over in the rehearsal room and then made a Helloween track out of, which is the way it should be. To a certain extent, we do that still, but these days, the song is very much finished when it gets offered to the band.
Of course, the band is working it over in the rehearsal room. Everyone makes it his own, but not as much as it used to be. In the 80s, we’d be spending months in the rehearsal room. We knew how to play the songs. Everything was very well prepared before we went into the studio, other than songs that had been written quickly in the studio like “I’m Alive”. Kai wrote that in the studio, so that was a new thing. These days, and this is also answering the earlier question a little bit, being with Andi as two equal singers makes it much easier live, because you have your choruses. If you don’t feel well, you can swap a couple of things over to the other singer. We even have Kai doing some bits here and there, so it’s almost 2 and a half singers.
In the studio, it’s almost the same situation. When the songwriter has his song idea, most of the time, the songwriter has the singer in his head and knows, “That should be a Michael song.” or “That’s an Andi song.” Usually it works perfectly when that happens, but we have had situations where someone didn’t feel comfortable while singing a song. The next morning, when Andi came into the studio, I said, “You should give it a try. I don’t feel comfortable with this. This is more your kind of thing.” And the other way around! When something doesn’t feel right, we let the other guy do it, and that’s amazing. You have a lot more possibilities and you don’t have to torture yourself with something you don’t feel comfortable with.
I’m not much of a songwriter for Helloween because the others can do that way better than me. I’m not really a metal songwriter. I was when I was a teenager, but nowadays I just write songs. I pick up my guitar and I write songs. If I feel like it could be something, I’ll offer it to the band, but you have 4 full time songwriters in the band: Kai, Weikie, of course, Andi, who is an amazing songwriter, and you have Sascha (Gerstner) too. It’s 4 songwriters who know what they’re doing, so I don’t really have to worry much about writing songs.
Going back in time briefly, it was in 1987 that Helloween first stepped foot in America on a triple bill that also included Armored Saint and Grim Reaper. What memories stand out from that tour? Specifically, do you recall the Chicago date at the Aragon Ballroom?
MK: I do! I really have wonderful memories, especially about that time. We were young, fearless, and everything was working out. We did not know about the business cheating that was going on, and we didn’t care. Young musicians are usually in it for the music. That’s why they easily get screwed over. In those days, everything was perfect. The energy was great. America was especially exciting because everyone who has been to the States, that we talked to, not everybody, but the ones we talked to had difficulties.
I’m not gonna mention any names, but there was one German band. I think they were supporting Mötley Crüe and they got booed offstage. They had to be sent back home because it didn’t work out. They were trying to raise fear in us. “America’s difficult! It’s gonna be horrible!” When we went over there, we were not sure what would happen, but it was actually the complete opposite. As much as I love the guys from Grim Reaper, especially the singer (Steve Grimmett); he was a really sweet person and a great vocalist, and he just died recently, they were not the ones selling the tickets.
We played first, and then it was Armored Saint and Grim Reaper. The promoters were coming to us saying, “Helloween are selling the tickets.” After a while, Grim Reaper was sent home. It was Armored Saint and Helloween, and we switched whoever sold the most tickets on that evening. That’s how we finished the tour. According to that, it was a amazing, but it was a great time in general. In the 80s, you had a fully functional music culture. You could still sell records and stuff like that. It was an amazing time. I’ll never forget that. It was really, really great. It’s a lot more difficult these days for young bands to get anywhere. Everything’s corrupted.
Nevertheless, you persisted. Outside of Helloween, you kept yourself busy with many other bands and projects, including a personal favorite of mine, Place Vendome. If the opportunity presented itself, would you be open to doing another Place Vendome album?
MK: I personally like that project a lot. My favorite is Unisonic. Place Vendome is a little more AOR, in a rock area that I love, but it was really just a project of the record company (Frontiers Records). It was Serafino (Perugino) during the times I didn’t have much to do, where I wasn’t in a band. He was saying, “Would you be interested in an AOR record? We have great songwriters.” That was actually Dennis (Ward). On the first 2 records, he was the driving force. He was writing the majority of the songs and everything.
The karma thing is that I got to know him during Place Vendome, which led to Unisonic and all that kind of stuff. That’s how it works these days. There are a couple of things that I especially enjoyed, and that was Place Vendome and the Kiske / Somerville stuff. I thought that was a very charming thing to do stuff with Amanda. She’s an amazing lady, great voice and a great person. It’s something that I really, really don’t regret that I’ve done.
Since I’m back in Helloween, other than solo stuff I’ve been doing where I do mainly acoustic things that I enjoy, which I’ve been working on for a while. Other than that, which is completely off what Helloween sounds like, I don’t think it makes much sense. I’m back in this band now and we’re busy enough. I’m not saying it’s impossible. It really depends on what comes up. If something really interesting is coming up, I’d have to talk to the management and ask, “Would you be fine with it?” I did Avantasia though, because I’ve always been part of Avantasia. If Tobi (Sammet) wants me to sing something, of course I’m singing it. He’s family.
What is your advice for aspiring young singers and musicians in general?
MK: You gotta be true to yourself, regardless of what happens. The only music that has spirit, and it doesn’t matter what type of music, country, opera, metal, rap, or whatever it is that is your type of thing, is music that you believe in. Only when you do that does music have the higher force, that energy that can really connect to people. If you allow people outside of your creativity to control you, to tell you what you have to do, you will die. You will die artistically. It has to do with surviving as a musician.
I always like to say that creativity, art, is the fire that burns in a different world. If you kill that fire, you’re gonna lose it. There are many examples of people in the music world who have had it, and then they lost it because they lost the fire. They allowed other influences to lock them down. It’s difficult, especially when you get successful, and you are in that circle, and a lot of people make a lot of money with you. Their interests in continuing making that money is so big that they will try to influence you to do whatever they think would sell the most. It’s a very difficult thing.
If you’re a band that enjoys to do the same stuff all over again, and that’s what you wanna do, that’s OK. But if you want to move on, if you feel like you need to be creative, do it! It’s probably gonna be risky. Some people might hate you for it, but if that’s what you want to do, you gotta be true to yourself. In the end, all that matters is that fire in your soul. That’s the only thing that really matters.
Helloween sure took their fair share of risks. I was revisiting Chameleon over the weekend and it’s amazing to see the slew of 5 star reviews that album gets online today.
MK: It took a while *laughs*! Helloween had always been like that. You wouldn’t imagine the problems we had when we did Keeper I and II with the record company. They didn’t like “I Want Out”! They hated “Dr. Stein”. They thought we were ridiculous with “Rise and Fall”. They didn’t want “We Got the Right”. The majority of songs became classics later on. They hated them because they didn’t sound like Walls of Jericho, and Walls of Jericho was the blueprint, but we stood together as a band. We said, “Fuck you! We do this or we’re done.” We really did. We went on strike and said, “That’s it! This is the album!” That’s why we’re talking today.
That’s the thing. In those days, we were fearless. We just did what we felt like was fun to do. That’s the energy of those records. Look how far it has brought the band. It’s so important and so great when you’re young and you have this fearlessness. You just believe in yourself. You believe in yourself. That’s an energy that’s priceless. A lot of musicians lose it now, and it’s hard to regain if you lost it once. It’s so important to take risks. As long as it is good, as long as it has some sort of convincing energy, it might work, and it might bring you even further than the safety road.
In closing, do you have any messages for the American pumpkinheads as they patiently await this tour?
MK: Yeah, I hope they show up! I don’t know what the situation in the US after the pandemic is. Over here, it’s amazing. They all came. We even had more ticket sales than we did last time. We played to 9,000 in Stuttgart. We’ve sold out the Alsterdorfer Sporthalle in Hamburg, which holds 8,000. We’re even selling out 14,000 seat venues now, which is more than we ever did in the 80s. People showed up, which is amazing.
I haven’t got a clue what the situation over in America is. I hope they show up. We have about 13 shows or something like that, so it’s a bit more than last time and some of the places are a little bit bigger, but we’re also coming with another great band. HammerFall are just amazing guys, very unique. I think it’s worth showing up. We’ll see what happens. Whatever happens on this tour will decide what we do next in America. If it’s sold out, we might do even more next time. If it doesn’t we might reduce it the next time. That’s just the way you do it with every country you go to. Every country is different, but last time was amazing. I’m not just saying this to sound nice. It was really good.
The energy was very European-like. It was very different from the 80s really. In the 80s, people seemed to be more overfed. They’d be like *folds arms* and you had to work. It worked out because we had this naïve energy with the stuff we did. As soon as we played “Eagle Fly Free”, everyone was on our side in those days, but you had to work for it. Last time it seemed like they really wanted us there. They knew the band of course from the past and the energy from the audience was perfect, just the way it should be. It was a perfect rock show, and I’m only saying what I really think.
Helloween will play the Riviera Theatre in Chicago, Illinois on Friday, May 26. For more information on Helloween, visit www.helloween.org.
Dude, that was awesome!! Kiske is a legend!!