Information
Date: 2001
Source: Making of Ich Will
Interviewed: All of Rammstein
Translator: English translation from German by
Tanja
Interview
Christoph:Probably everybody's dreaming of being the bad guy once in a while in a movie or being a member in a gang that robs a bank. That's exactly what we're doing in our video.
scenes from Ich Will video
Richard:Normally when you're creating an album you always want to change things...you'll think soon that you could have done that in a better way. With this album now I can't think of anything like that...it's - like it is now - completely satisfying for myself and I'm completely happy with it!
Flake:We've been touring almost without stopping since the album had been released and that was much fun because we could play our new titles at last.
Oliver:We're much more self-confident now concerning our relation to the songs; at our last video we were a little bit unsure, couldn't tell so much about it and I think now that we got some resonance from the audience - and the album has been received very well.
Christoph:Playing live is very important for me, I think a band only exists when playing live on stage, anything else is theoretic.
Paul:Sometimes you think: there is one guy who thinks that what we're doing is awesome - one boy or a girl and then you play as good as you can for that one guy.
Flake:You may already have heard that we're very successful in Iceland compared to the number of inhabitants there...250,000 people live there and 12,000 people attended our concert and everybody knows us there...that would be the same as if 30 million fans came to our concert in the US - in comparison.
Paul:Two days ago we were in Mexico and something really stupid happened: people there sang the lyrics louder than people in Germany...we will have to produce the next live album in Mexico City.
Till:For me...at the tour in Germany there's been a lot of emotion because the song "ich will" is pure communication with the audience and I can remember very well when we had thought about the song before the production of it - if it worked at all and if it fit to Rammstein and if it was maybe too silly and it's normally not our style to do something like this and then we stood in front of 12,000 or 14,000 people and then really every single one of them put their hands in the air ....it's somehow strange but you get a goose flesh.
Paul:In America when we sang "Wir wollen Eure Hände sehen!" nobody put hands in the air - but we'll work on that - maybe we'll put subtitles to the video that people in the US know what they have to do when we'll come again.
"ich will video" shooting
Christoph:We normally don't talk with the audience...the singer doesn't announce anything, doesn't say hello and good- bye and nothing in between.
Paul:The song is ironicly meant for this old rock star-thing "Hehehehehe" "Ohohohohoh"
Till:What do people do in a concert? They clap their hands, they sing and the doubting of the band is the double-meaning with "verstehen" - we don't understand that they actually take part...for me it would be a little bit too dumb actually...and then this phonetic thing: "Ich verstehe Euch nicht"...and in this connection it has a good solution.
Paul: It's again typical of Rammstein - is it seriously meant or not - actually we poke fun at it but despite that we do it - that's really mean.
Christoph:Videos have always been an interesting medium for Rammstein and we've been very successful in creating an even more startling video - compared to the song and create some kind of art, like with "Du hast" and maybe we'll achieve that again with that video.
Till:It's maybe a try to do sort of a remake of "Du hast"...to do a more concise thing with a little bit more movements and action.
Richard:At this point we go back to where we started from with "Du hast" - that was a kind of story, a gang story somehow in which we six were together and that reminds me to "ich will", to the equipment and how we look like.
Till: ...back to the tough part of the story...
"ich will"-video
Flake: We want to cause trouble, we were evil as humans in that video.
Richard:The best thing is when we can show that bad boy-image that's kinda inside us and we can pretend that very well...
"ich will"-video
Flake: In every movie there are murders and people are slaughtered, run over and killed - everybody thinks that this is okay and normal and if you show a weapon in a music video, everybody will get upset. I think this is ridiculous!
Oliver: We'd want to create an even more brutal video...but we are limited by MTV for example...we have no problem with people thinking this would be glorifying of violence...it's simply a way of expressing yourself through art nowadays.
Jörn:
ProducerThe world consists not only of flowers and beautiful tiny
clouds and we want to create some action becasuse we all love watching
crime movies; that's a part of reality and I don't want to withhold that
from the audience, even not from the music audience...Rock music often
contains tougher pictures, when watching a metal band, you'll soon miss
the black color when it is not there...
Christoph:There will be two versions of the video: one censored and one uncensored. The uncensored version will probably be played only at nights or on our homepage.
Paul:Two versions are planned: one in which Flake will explode in the end and one in which Paul will explode in the end...a nice version and an evil one!
Oliver:We don't invent things for provoking people, we do that because of a sort of naive impulse.
Flake: The funny thing about us is: most things we've created for provoking people - those are the things people will laugh about and those things we've created with the intention to be funny will be taken as very evil in the end. We almost never know how it will received by the audience finally.
Till:We were very happy when we saw a report on the last page of "BILD": "Totes Baby - Wider-lich!" (dead baby - disgusting)...we were very happy about that...we didn't intend to provoke with that - we simply liked the picture...but it was a big scandal.
Richard:I think it's important that Rammstein works without provocation as well - only as musical theme...it's very important...when you're listening to the album...the music's enough.
Till walks on by: "Guten Tag!"
Flake: I interpret the video like this: we're the evil ones and despite this we're receiving appreciation from the masses because they are interested in the evil through the media and adore us...that you'll get more appreciation through violence than by doing good deeds.
Richard:This shows...the attention through the robbery...that you became the "darling" of the media - through manipulation of course - because all the media wants is to show those pictures, this is kinda absurd, decadent, fucked up in the end...that you'll be rewarded...
Jörn:The media will pat themselves on the shoulder when being able to show the awards; they nearly support the band, the band has reached everything finally - they lost everything as well because they had to go to jail, but this is the smallest sacrifice they could have made for their publicity and Flake becomes immortal; he's hung up there as a drawing at the award scene...he didn't get there, but he's the one that gets the most because he's immortal now.
Till: I don't think that anybody would go that far...it's an imagination. But in retrospect, we did all to get attention...for example Paul had poured gas into the audience and then small fountains burned everywhere in the hall and it spread very fast...or the burning coat and a bit of pyrotechnics and we let some things explode...attention is important so that people remember your name and that you'll be talked about...but there's a limit now.
Oliver:I don't think that the video reflects the way the media is dealt with or how we're dealing with the media...we don't use the media...we're the victim...we're misunderstood all the time, but in the video it's the opposite: we're using the media. Maybe that's kind of an unconscious wishful behavior.
Till: I think that going on stage and playing and producing a CD in a studio are the sense of being a musician and not to play/say nonsense...and...you know that there are a lot of so called artists who only exist through the media, but haven't done and cannot do anything - qualitatively seen - that's the big difference.
Jörn:It was my wish that the Rammstein members have stains, that they're a bit the lepers of society. Till's got a club-foot. This is sort of a symbol to me...when he appears, Satan comes, the horse's foot comes. Additionally, Richard's got a plastic hand. He can't feel with this hand - he takes the hand of a cashier and rings the alarm with it. Those are attributes that I wanted the guys to have got for stressing this a little more because we don't produce a whole movie, there's no dialogue and those few things express much about them.
Paul:In "Edgar Wallace"-movies, the
bad guy usually has a scarf or wears a contact-lense that makes one of
his eyes look scary...first you can normally see the side of his face
(Paul shows one side of his face into the camera) and when he turns around,
everybody says: "Oooooooh!"
Symbolicly our deaths are caused by the cameras - which means: normally
you die from the bullets a policeman shot into your body, but we die
because of the flashes, through the media! ...they killed us...those
pigs!
We're now in the former building of the Privy Council of the GDR - GDR
is no computer thing - you don't know that anymore - that was a country...was
right at that place here...was called GDR. Really small and cute. Evil
Erich Honecker governed it - exactly in this house here.
Jörn:It's easy for me to understand the guys' ideas, they're very close to my own ideas - but that's because we have certain things in common and we like the the same kind of music or the same kind of movies - so it's easy to finally agree on which things to do.
Richard:What I like about Jörn is...when I watch him is that he is not self-centered, he only cares about the product that is to be created - he's not someone that only wants his ideas to be translated into action - he's someone that can easily and fast take the idea of another person and do it that way.
Jörn: I'm part of the media, I'm part of the media industry, I create something for the audience, I manipulate people, I want to frighten people, I want to make them happy, I want to make them cry - if I can reach to that point, I'll have manipulated perfectly and at the same time there's my emotion that goes with it and that's all we want to achieve and that's what Rammstein wants to achieve with its music, like I want to do it with my pictures that I'm creating to their music.
Richard:"It's about entertainment. We want to make people happy...fascinate people."
Oliver: Of course, exaggeration and martial things have always played a role at Rammstein and we love pretending to be evil guys - but that's the way we look at us and as entertainers playing different roles you have that possibility of doing that in a video. This is more this kind of game: we're hiding in the closet and then we'll jump out and scream "booh" and then we'll have a look at who's gonna be scared!