This is the first half of the original English version of the interview done for www.jerusalemetal.com.
Interviewer: Yochai Davidoff
Transcribers: Yehi Zaken and Hillary Claussen
You were born in 1956 in Copenhagen, and by 1973 you had already started your musical career. Did you always aspire to be a musician or do you have other interests or hobbies?
Well you know I played soccer, you know, for quite a while when I was young I played soccer at a pretty high level, you know, and I can’t really remember how old I was at that time, but I became player of the year in the club that I played in, one of the years. And it was … the music really started as an interest for me, just playing for fun… I didn’t think much about what would happen, but it was hard to balance both things, so I had to give one up, and I gave up the soccer at that time and started concentrating more on the music and eventually it started to be more and more serious…
Steve Harris from Maiden was also into soccer, but when it became more serious he developed his own soccer team… you didn’t find any time to do that?
No, it’s just way too much. There are a lot of things I’d like to write, like horror novels, but I don’t quite have the time at the moment, b/c it’s just been too busy, there are a lot of things going on all the time. I mean, I haven’t been on a vacation since 1993, I think. I mean, it was 12 years ago that I was last away, on a vacation when no one couldn’t call me regarding business. But that’s of course a good thing, you know, that after so many years I still have a career, and being so very very busy. It’s a good thing. One of my big hobbies these days is racing, car racing, I love to go see the Indy cars race… I’ve seen a lot of those races…. I go to them when I can. That’s a big hobby.
I’m aware that you immigrated to the US from Denmark a few years ago, that in order to receive American citizenship you needed to pass a number of exams. Please tell a little about the kinds of examinations you had to undergo, and can I congratulate you on receiving US citizenship?
Oh sure, absolutely, thank you. Now I’m dual — I’m both a Danish and a US citizen now, you know, you don’t have to lose your Danish citizenship just because you become a US citizen. The big thing is that you have to been in the US for a certain number of years before you can even apply. I had been in the US much longer than that before I even applied. I moved to the US, immigrated in 1992, so I have been here for 13 years now, so it’s a long time, and I applied 1 ½ years, 2 years ago, and it lasted a little over a year before I got the citizenship.
The biggest things, well, the tests are nothing, I think anyway. I already knew most of it, just because being interested in history and all, I knew a lot of it already. Just take a little time and learn it, it’s not that hard at all… The biggest thing is the waiting… that they research every little thing about you, like, they probably know what I did as a child. You really have to open up the vault, because they have to know everything. And if you are not honest with them, and you don’t give them things, and they find out later, you can kiss the whole thing goodbye. They are very very strict, and it’s a long process, because you’re being checked by the FBI and CIA and I don’t know what… but that’s what they have to do, of course. Especially in these times it’s important that they know they let in and who they give citizenship to. So that’s the worst part, all the waiting and all the checking that they do. The test itself is nothing, though they did tell me that sometimes people fail the test. I couldn’t believe it, but then you get another chance to take it again and you can go and practice extra hard on those issues you weren’t so good in …
In recent years you have been working on the project King Diamond and you haven’t been investing as much of your time in the band Mercyful Fate, at least as far as we know. Are there any plans for continued work with Mercyful Fate, or are you planning to focus exclusively on King Diamond?
Time will tell, at the moment we are focusing on King Diamond, and there are some very specific reasons for this. The way that the music business has taken a turn because of all the downloading stuff — a lot of these sites that say that they pay artists money, well, they don’t pay shit. They don’t do accounts and they just sell it and they ask you for a license to sell it, and they have none and it’s a mess! I think most of the labels have lost 30% of their sales, and that a big thing.
And when it comes to Mercyful Fate compared to King Diamond, well, King Diamond always sold more albums than Mercyful Fate. King Diamond always had better record contracts, more people at the shows and this and that, in general has always done quite a bit better.
In these days we do have a contract for Mercyful Fate, so if we were ready to do an album we could do it, but the thing is that today, because of how the scene is, it’s impossible for me to live off Mercyful Fate. I still love what I’m doing, otherwise I wouldn’t do it, I’d do something else. But I still love the music so much, but it is also a job. I’m fortunate to live off my hobby, you could say, but you have to put bread on the table, you know, and if there was only Mercyful Fate today I’d have to do something else. Mercyful Fate — I could not live from. I can still live from King Diamond, and since that’s what I love to do we’re continuing that way. Mercy might do an album if suddenly there is a time period where there is nothing to do for King Diamond. Because it has to be like just a hobby, not a thing where I can take time out and do Mercyful Fate because I’ll make no money in it. It would be the same like if I said ok I’m going on vacation for 5-6 months and have no income at all — you can’t really do that with King Diamond, it’s a different thing. So, that’s the reason why there has been no Mercy for a while. It’s the way it has to be with all the free downloading and stuff, it hurt Mercy more than King Diamond. It became much more difficult that way.
From where do you get the Middle Eastern influences in “Mercyful Fate�?
Well, Hank writes half the music and I write the other half of the music. But there is a certain… what can I say… its a special mood when we use those kinds of, I mean you can do it, a lot of bands do it, you know, you get a certain kind of atmosphere, a certain feel to it, like Rainbow and Deep Purple, I mean, a lot of bands have been in over there… and there is a certain mood that is very cool in the music. It gives the rhythm a certain mood. The same with classical music — there is a lot of classical music that gives a very special mood, you know. So for us, especially with King Diamond we use anything that enhances the feel of what we are about, for the current album. You know, there is a certain story, and whatever enhances the feel of that story we will do or use. That is whether we use certain, as you said, Middle Eastern or classical influences or this or that — for a mood. That is, whatever the story needs. Same with the instrumentation, you know, sometime we will use an old Hammond organ and sometimes strings or cellos. But of course the band is built up around two guitars, bass, drums, and vocals, that’s the main thing, but added to that we will use anything, it can be a little glockenspiel or whatever, if it creates a certain eerie mood that fits the story we will use it.
Do you contribute to writing King Diamond’s guitar riffs, or primarily vocal lines and lyrics? What about with Mercyful Fate?
I write about 70% of the King Diamond music, and all the lyrics of course. And Mercy is about 50% of the music that I write, and all the lyrics there as well.
So you’re doing most of the guitar riffs?
Yeah, yeah. When I write I write on guitar, keyboards. I use a drum machine to write my demos and stuff like that and then it’s presented to the other guys in the band. Andy writes about 25% of the King Diamond music, and I write the rest. So yeah, I write all those guitar riffs.
Including all the instrumental parts, right?
Yeah, everything. The only thing I would not sit and write for my own songs is the guitar leads, but all the harmony guitars, all the keyboards, yes… Bass guitar – Hell has a very free hand. He is amazing, you know, when it comes to what he adds — he doesn’t always just follow guitars like a lot of bass players do. He has this old fashioned way of moving around, but it always fits perfect!
And Matt the drummer also has a very free hand. But I am very involved with that too. When we record the drums probably at least half of the ideas are mine, and the other half are Matt’s. It is in the arrangement of the songs. Me and Matt work so well together in the studio. He knows when I’ll tell him, “You know, there are too few kick drums in this riff we are doing right now. There’s not enough slow ride when you do it that way, could you try and put more, and maybe switch the snare to the back beat, that might give it that punch we need,� and he will try it. He knows exactly what I’m saying mean and he’ll say woooah, yeah, exactly. And sometimes he’ll do something just when he is playing through stuff and he will be like, woooah, that thing that just happened, let’s go back and listen to the tape to hear what it was, and we record until we feel it is good. And he will listen and say, oh, I know exactly what I did there… and I’ll say keep doing that it was so good, and he will say that he thought it was too much, and I’ll say no, what a feeling it gave! So it’s a very good two-way work relationship.
That’s the thing with Hell too, you know, sometimes he’ll go all out, and sometimes you have to say aggh, there it might be a little too much, because I know what the vocals will be later. I’m the one with the biggest overview of a song, because I already have the idea of what the vocals will be before they are recorded. I can better tell the guys it will be something like this here, in the vocals, so that could be too much there and will make the listener not understand what the hell is going on… and of course we talk about it. They all understand where we are going. And sometime, yeah, it’s perfect, the more the better, but sometimes less is better. It all depends on what part of a song it is.
I’ve been, since “Don’t Break the Oath,� that album, even when we did the “Melissa� album I had some songs that ended up on “Don’t Break the Oath.� I wrote all of the guitar parts, everything for “The Oath� and for “Come to the Shabbos�. And then me and Michael Denner wrote everything together for “Gypsy.� Some of that stuff was already definitely written at that time, you know. Hank had so much material, that all of thi material got on the first album. And then me and Denner contributed somewhat on the second, you know.
The song “The Mad Arab� speaks of Abdul Alhazred, the man who wrote the Necronomicon. What is your own connection to his morals?
To his morals?
Yeah!
Well, you know, that the thing about Mercyful Fate. A lot of what Mercyful Fate writes about is legends, you know, sometimes a little bit of history, but mainly legends and myths. Some people say that ooooh, Mercy is so satanic, but I think that King Diamond is much more satanic than Mercy ever was. It’s true, if you think about it in the way that Anton LaVey was describing his ways of Satanism, because his ways were very much down to a life philosophy of how human beings treat each other and what not to be ashamed of and what is a natural instinct in one’s body. I mean, if someone hits you, you’re not going to just stand there and turn the other cheek and say ok, hit me again here. You’re going to hit back, that the natural instinct of a human being. And that is what LaVey was very much into and was writing down in a very smart comprehensive way, in this Satanic bible. When I read that bible for the first time it was like reading exactly how I was living my life. It’s not like it told me anything new, but it was very confirming to see that someone has put down all that type of lifestyle into writing. And that’s what that King Diamond album is about – they are horror stories, of course, but there is also this basic life philosophy. It’s all how human beings treat each other in these very stressful situations. That is what King Diamond is very much about, and that is extremely satanic, in the vague way.
So you see, it is quite different from when Mercy starts writing something like the Mad Arab. Did it ever really happen? I don’t know, but its an interesting legend. I have a special version of the Necronomicon here, not that I use it for anything, it is not a thing, that particular thing I don’t believe in. Crowley is another supposedly Satanic magician, which I could never get into, I could never get into his philosophy which was like, I have to be the most wicked man on earth, and most of the time he climbed mountains and got high on heroin or something like that. I’m not really into what he does, I don’t know much about him and when I started reading up on him it didn’t appeal to me at all, but we could still write a song about Crowley or some what he thought for Mercyful Fate. But not King Diamond.
King Diamond is very… even though the stories all take place in the past, 100, or 500 years ago, what happens in the stories between the human beings you can definitely use today, you can see it in your own life. King Diamond is very up-to-date with the life philosophy that is in there, even though the stories might take place a couple hundred years ago. And I think it’s a good way to do it, because that way more listeners can better relate to it than if I wrote about, say, a hospital where a certain nurse is killing patients, it could be a thing that has happened for real. It does happen. I know the story behind that… but people say like, why don’t you write about other modern things, AIDS, for example, is a horror, the worst horror you can imagine. But that’s too much. I don’t see that as an interesting horror thing, it’s a horrible horror thing. Stuff like that is not going to give anyone a good time listening to it. But a horror story about voodoo and Louisiana and how the voodoo religion works, and you put people in there, suddenly you get a story about how people don’t respect each other just because they may be different.
That is the basic thing, which still today bothers the snot out of me, personally, that human beings can’t accept that we believe religiously in different things. That there is no human being who has the proof that he believes in the right thing. That’s a fact. That’s not just something that I’m guessing. There is no human being who can prove to the rest of the world that he believes in the only true G-d. If someone could prove it we would all believe in that, of course. But is not true/proved, and that’s what it’s called a “belief�. It is something that I think might be like this, so now I’m going to believe that it is like this. But you still don’t have the proof. Me personally, I’m not a religious person. I don’t follow any religion. Whatsoever. For me it is because I have never had the proof of anything. For me, I must have that proof to believe. I respect that other people believe in different gods simply because it helps them in certain ways, you know, but when they start killing each other just because they believe in something that is different from someone else, and they cant even prove that they are right, that’s insanity to me! I simply cant understand it, I simply cant understand it.
I could tell someone that there is this yellow flower out in my yard, and it’s G-d, and it told me that I must kill anyone who doesn’t believe that that yellow flower is G-d. It’s insane! That’s why we have so many wars today. Almost always there is a religious background behind why we are killing each other. And that never makes sense to me. And that’s one of the reasons why House of G-d is written the way it is. Why do you have to judge people who just believe different from you, just because you think you’re right? But you can’t prove it. On the other hand I can’t prove it, and would never try to prove, that there are no gods. I don’t say that I know that there are no gods, or I know which one is right. Nobody knows if there are gods, and if there are, which one is the only true right one? We don’t know.
PART TWO COMING SOON
