At the end of Keeper tour, guitarist Kai Hansen decided to leave the band because he disliked long tours. In 1990, this would translate into Kai Hansen’s Gamma Ray. This band was then fronted by none other than former Helloween temporary vocalist, Ralf Sheepers. Later, after cementing a stable line-up (including drummer Uli Kusch), the band would simply be called Gamma Ray. To fill Kai’s vacant spot, Weiki & Co.turned to former Rampage guitarist Roland Grapow and the new improved Helloween then finished up the tour. And then they went to rehearsing, they had to do the whole stuff within two months. Because then they had to go on an American tour and Japan meant two hours of playing.
After all, they can handle that, Roland is a very nice guy. He’s doing a big part of the band with his character, and his kind of being. According to Ingo Schwichtenberg: “I think having Roland in the band is.. we are as lucky as we have Michael Kiske in the band by that time, we are lucky having Roland in the band. And he’s just doing great songs and great guitar work he’s doing. And a good pal as well. He’s a nice fellow. And he just fits in the band very much. I think the fans will accept him of course.”
Michael Weikath also added, “Well, the nice thing about Roland being in the band is that I saw him like, I don’t know, fifteen years ago or so on stage, and I thought that was pretty impressing, what he did there, and I could never forget about that. And that’s why actually I called him up then when we needed another guitarist, “Remember that guy?”. And so it took me, like, four hours to find out the number, like I had to phone up musicians I knew and suddenly somehow I got the number, and phoned him up: “You might not know me, but I know you. How about playing guitar in Helloween?” And he didn’t even know the band. So I had to give him some examples of our songs, like really loud, cranked it up. And so, well, he was interested, like it quite a lot. And it’s quite a difference too how the whole thing worked before, because he is a completely different character. He is a lot more calm and very critical. He’s always got his own opinion and that’s exactly what we need.”
In an effort to gain a wider audience with a greater distribution of their albums (although Markus Grosskopf, Kai and even Weikath admitted that the reason they broke their contract was because everyone (e.g. Karl Walterbach, Noise owner, but the band was making any money), they wanted to go to a bigger label, and with the help of the Sanctuary group management headed by Rod Smallwood, that helped bring the rise to Iron Maiden, Helloween left Noise Records and turned to EMI.
Noise filed suit that Helloween had broken their contract and in December 20th 1990, Court decided that Helloween’s contract with Noise was still valid, result the band was disallowed to release their material anywhere where Noise was able to, outside of Germany, the U.K., or Japan. This meant no Helloween in the America’s and left the dwindling number of metal fans in the States wondering, “What happened to Helloween?” Rumors about the band breaking up were widespread after the tour for this album. Tensions began to build up between the band members as well.
Another reason Why it’s taken Helloween so long to come up with a new studio album. And again, basically because they didn’t have any ideas. And because so many pink bubbles went ape. There were a number of very good reasons. Since they got Roland in the band to replace Kai and it also took the band quite some time to get Chris Tsangarides to produce the album. Chris was working with Judas Priest and they were tracking longer and longer to finish their record.
The band were originally supposed to start recording in October 1989 but they actually didn’t start until June 1990. It turned out to be worth the wait because Chris was doing Priest album.
About breaking the contract with Noise Records, that was a complete mess up but this did inflict the trouble onto the band, it was just like the different characters they have and they wouldn’t fit. Weikath added, “Well the other thing with Noise records came to me as a natural thing because my parents were always at court ever since I could think. So some people in the band were afraid because they didnt like the thought of being in court with anyone and for me it was natural and I just wanted to get out of the contract you know..”.
Pitting Kiske and Ingo against Roland and Weikath with Markus in between them both. They were tired of all the crazy record-labels, contracts an lawyers. Then they received a good offer from EMI, which helped them a lot. But they thought that because EMI were a big company and the band were well known artists, they thought EMI didn’t need to spend a lot for publicity with the band.
On April 1991 “The Best, The Rest, The Rare” compilation released during Helloween’s legal troubles, this album was meant to keep the money flowing in. It is a combination of greatest hits and non-album material. The non-album songs are “Livin’Ain’t No Crime,” a catchy song by Weikath, “Victim of Fate,” sung by Kiske, “Savage,” a make-a-fun song for heavy metal by Kiske, and another Kiske’s “Don’t Run For Cover.”
They just over-rehearsed the upcoming new album for over a year until it was finally dead. Then they recorded. Weikath wasn’t really interested in that stuff. As a guitarist, he didn’t like it, except for the tracks Roland has done because he’s done a great job. He added, “On my behalf, I think we could have skipped all the rest. Sorry. That also includes mine.” It’s amazing the album even got recorded with all of the bullshit that was going on at the time. There are some high notes though, as Roland came into the band with his first set of songs, of which “The Chance”, “Mankind” and “Someone’s Crying” are some of the most popular Helloween tracks ever written.
Many disputes between the producer, bandmembers, management and the record company ensued. Weikath laid much of the blame at the feet of veteran Brit Metal producer Chris Tsangarides. Weikath said, “Straight away, I could tell things were going wrong,” Weikath groans. “The show was being run by Michael and Ingo, and Chris simply didn’t like my songs. He couldn’t understand that certain cleverness they had.” Also the band spent close to 600,000 dollars recording the new album.
Helloween start their UK campaign this month with the release of “Kids of the Century” as the first single from the forthcoming album. Why that particular track? According to Ingo, they could’ve taken a different one but they really wanted to start with a very hard song because people were expecting the band to put out the wimpiest, most commercial thing they could have come up with.
Kiske explained, “”Kids of the Century” is the first life sign of them after two and a half years. And after all those rumours going around about this band – me leaving the band, me splitting up, or the band splitting up, and all that stuff, which has been quite a lot. Maybe that’s normal when the band’s not on the scene for a while. But after that it feels really good to have, actually, a new album ready and a single out. So the kids know we are still there. And with the music you can prove what you can do still even without one guy that just left the band. I think we found the right person there, Roland. And I think the album says everything. Yeah, I wrote “Kids of the Century” about more than two years ago now. And remembering that time I feel like, when I wrote that song, I was in that feel of that all the kids today, they just feel like they haven’t got anything to do with the problems. Everything goes wrong, the nature or whatever. Just came out of that feeling actually. And that’s what the song’s all about, I think. What the kids today… Because I feel like everybody’s responsible, especially the kids. If they don’t feel like they have to change anything or have to make things better, nobody will.”
The direction of this album is misguided and in some respects the band does progress in their songwriting. According to Marcus, it was a really weird time, Michael (Kiske) would tell him trivial things behind the other guys’ backs, which was very confusing. It was obvious him that Kiske was trying to split the band up. There was also this rumour that was continuously going around that Steve Harris was interested in replacing Bruce Dickinson with Michael, but anyone knows them and Maiden could tell all of that, character-wise, it just wouldn’t work out. As you simply couldn’t put a 25-year-old German guy in with a bunch of Maiden football fanatics.
So around the Pink Bubbles record the bubble burst a bit and they thought Pink Bubbles Go Ape!! This record company dispute was also shown later on for a bit in the “When The Sinner” (from Chameleon) Video. The first single from this album to take a whole new direction for the band was released. The single was “When The Sinner”, which featured distorted vocals, keyboards, and a sapprano saxophone outro.
Everyone was into their own problems. Not one of them looked into the interests of the band. It was totally unproffessional and really stupid. It was like a kindergarten. Everybody was totally confused by the whole situation. Sadly Ingo never really recovered from Kai leaving the band. Ingo always sided with Kai. There was a roumor that Kai had approached him to join Gamma Ray but nothing ever came of it. Then Markus played in a band called Mr. Prouster, that was the band that later became Shockmachine. It’s almost the same guys. That was the story with Shockmachine, they were close to doing some recordings with Mr. Prouster, but then Helloween started again, and Markus had to save these songs. Later on that band became Shockmachine.
Now, 1991, EMI released the first single from the new album, Pink Bubbles Go Ape, with a message from the band explaining where they had been for the last 3 years since Keeper II. Pink Bubbles was the first album not produced by Tommy Hansen, but by Chris Tsangaris.
Pink Bubbles Go Ape was recorded in Puk Studio in Denmark for 3 months. The most expensive album done by Helloween, it’s about 400,000 pounds. Before they had the title, Kiske and Weikath had these: “Pink Bubbles”, “Pink Bubbles Go Wild”, “Pink Bubbles Go Nuts”. Storm Ferguson designed Pink Bubbles Go Ape’s cover and the girl on that cover is his niece.
“Les Hambourgeois Walkways” is Weikath song had very early in Keeper I but Kai refused to include it in the album, and then they did “Follow the Sign” which is have the similiarity in few part. The title inspired by Gary Moore’s “Parisienne Walkways”.
They had to cut a song off “Pink Bubbles Go Ape” called “I Don’t Care, You Don’t Care” because they (Weikath) thought “Not with this singer (Kiske). The americans would laugh all over the country!” Then they used it as a b-side of a single and it could have been a great song for the album, but not with Kiske.
April 12th, 1991 – Pink Bubbles Go Ape was released in United Kingdom and Japan
May 1991 Helloween plan to tour Europe from the beginning of May which, of course, includes UK dates, before departing for the States and Japan.
Weikath totally weren’t happy with Chris production. As you know, he was the main songwriter on ‘Keeper…II‘ which was quite successful, while on this album he was responsible for just one and a half tracks. That was the first album where things were tried to be run without Weikath’s input. Even he had a few tracks prepared. He thought that they could work just like they did on The Keeper Of The Seven Keys records and that would have been a great outcome. The thing was they were there with producer Chris Tsangarides who doesn’t run the thing the way Tommy Hansen does. This had been a bad manifestation of everything. Tsangarides was proposed to the band by the management.
The band also progressed as songwriters and there were a lot of musical ideas Weikath came up that weren’t used but would later resurface on later albums. “Heavy Metal Hamsters” was originally suppossed to be a b-side. Weikath said, “Chris was running the show. They only included the joke song ‘Heavy Metal Hamsters’ to wind me up. That song was only ever intended to be a B-side.” Calling a song `Heavy Metal Hampsters’ is pushing it a bit though. But that’s the story of the band. Sure it was only written as a B-side to a future single just for fun. They just fooled around but the vibe was so cool and fresh. The thing about that song is that it was written during a time when things were a little uncertain for the band. There’s a line that says, `Where’s the field to run for the Heavy Metal Hampsters?’ Where was the field for us to run to then…?”
which was intended on being a b-side for the Pink Bubbles album and instead Weikath also took a lot of shit because of the song “Heavy Metal Hamsters” it ended up being an album track.
Weikath said, “I wrote a song called ‘Number One’ that Ingo didn’t like, so consequently he didn’t play it properly! Then Chris said: ‘This track doesn’t ROCK!’ But surely it was his job to make it rock!’ “Sadly Chris was very set in his ways. Plus there was trouble brewing in the band, although I wasn’t really aware of it all the time. It later bacame obvious that Michael was trying to take over a leader.”
Well with the “Introduction” Weikath actually wanted to create some kind of Spinal Tappish impact like a German rock star who has lost track of reality and also he wanted to take some shit out on some people he knew. Which is more or less a private way to take it out on them, so it was basicially fun. During that time he was so unhappy with many things and he (claimed) was not behind the whole Helloween thing because he thought they were going in the wrong direction, and well being in that situation he just wanted to have some fun. There’s some bootleg videos you can watch from shows in Japan where Weikath behave very odd, and still he played his stuff but it was quite obvious that he wasn’t with the thing or with the game and this was merely aggression in between Kiske and Weikath with fronts being built up inside the band with different camps that made the whole time very hard for everyone.
Especially for Weikath in particular and Kiske as well. Then Weikath tended to do a lot of stupid stuff to irritate Kiske or anyone else, and thats how the “Introduction” came about and the whole song “Get Me Out Of Here”. Funny thing is that Michael Kiske liked “Get Me Out Of Here” so much that he thought Weikath should always write stuff like it, even for albums.
And Weikath said “Yeah well thats taking it a little bit to far maybe” and he said “Why?”, and I said “Coz we simply cant do it, so lets close the subject please”.
About “Step Out of Hell”, it was one of the older tracks Roland had done with his old band Rampage. Which was released originially as a track called “Victims Of Rock”. So he changed the lyrics and he remade it as a song with Helloween. The lyrics obviously dealt with Ingo”. One song entitled “City Cries” was also recorded but never mixed nor released on any album or single. The Japanese bonus track for this album was “Shit and Lobster”.
April 20th, 1992 – Helloween, EMI and Noise reached an agreement. Pink Bubbles Go Ape was released in Germany and thoughout Europe.
July 1st, 1992 – “Number One” single
August 26th, 1992 – “Number One” single was released in Japan
The band really dislike this album, they’re just being a little hard on themselves.
Chameleon (Spring 1993)
Spring 1993 on Chameleon sessions, tensions began to build up between the band members as well. They mixed some styles in Chameleon. They wanted to change the musical direction and try some new material. That was the main reason. There wasn’t any pressure from the label or from the outside. Nobody at the label heard the demos, and they had 100% control in their hands.
While learning the songs, Kiske songs that he wrote for the Chameleon record; he was showing the guitar parts to Roland and he played the songs he liked for the album. Songs like “Music”, and “I Dont Wanna Cry no More” and he did not know if they were completely finished but the basic structure was there and Roland played them to Kiske and it was great stuff and then Roland said, “Now I am going to write some songs for Helloween!” And Kiske replied, “If thats the stuff you wanna do then why not do it?”
This is how it happened and it was how they encouraged each other. Kiske always did what he wanted to do and as you can look at his songs on all of the records he did they were all different, you had “We Got The Right”, “Your Turn” and stuff like that was never speed metal and he did “Savage” song but this was meant as a joke song and went on as a b-side or something like that. It was taken seriously but he wanted to make fun of thrash metal in a way and everyone liked the song in the end and this is how Chameleon got together.
It was an honest record but it was very risky. The thing Kiske do not like about this record is the whole feel, the band was not really there anymore and it was like the magic was gone. It has a lack of originality, it was an original record when you look at all the records but generally it was not really a Helloween record in a way. A mixture of this record and Pink Bubbles Go Ape would have made the perfect record.
There was nothing wrong with Tommy Hansen though. They could have done it with him and they went on doing things with him later on, but there were wimpy things on the Chameleon record too.
For instance, “In the Night” is just an utterly wimpy song. It can’t be any wimpier than it is and even “Your Turn” on Pink Bubbles is just very wimpy – country music doesn’t belong on Helloween records. There is a quotation from Michael Kiske from that time where he said “if you don’t like this well, I like country a lot and you can expect a lot more country from me in the future” and that was reason behind all changes musical direction under Kiske as leader.
Well there never really were problems before but Kiske started living differently and had this religious beliefs and stuff which does not bother anyone else in the band but musicwise he just was not fitting with the band and where they wanted to go and was not on the same page with the band. He wanted to always later write stuff that they did not want to write. The band wanted to be harder and more aggressive and he wanted the opposite, because they tried to change the style and be melodic as possible.
Kiske wanted to stay on this path, but they’re would not only lost their fanbase, and a lot of money because the record company would not promote the album, but people would watch the band on stage and it just did not fit at all.
Kiske is a strong character and he would not make any compromises and in the end the band had loads of fights and discussions about little things and talk about things they get worse and worse and they could not go any further. They could not record any tracks, they just sit there discussing and arguing and fighting and stuff like that. Kiske wanted to go a totally different direction anyway. But the band wanted to do more heavy stuff so they needed to make a change.
About “Windmill” song, it has that country touch and that is not the way Weikath wanted it to sound. He wanted it to sound like a “Long and Winding Road” from the Beatles as he’s a huge fans of them, a bit more evergreenlike and this (album) version is more countrylike so you can imagine Kiske loved the idea. It has not been recorded properly though and Weikath hated that version (that was recorded during Pink Bubbles), but he had to force Ingo to play it, because he didn`t wanna play it at all. But Weikath couldn’t help him if he didn’t understand important songs. Many people hate it but Weikath think its a nice ballad. Weikath asked some girls if they like the song. Weikath was not supposed to use an orchestra for it because Kiske had “Longing”, which is a good track but having a classical orchestra play has been Weikath wish in the first run (of Windmill),but he was not supposed to put it on “Windmill” because Kiske was ‘being their classical genius’ (by arranged “Longing” in ten minutes or so) and it only belongs on his tracks, no one elses. The arrangement for all orchestra stuff on Chameleon was written by a German professional arranger who did great stuff ever since the early sixties, and he worked for a lot of hits and evergreens. He cost a shitload of money, and everybody in Helloween by that time was too stupid to arrange a notation for orchestra, and still is, even Kiske.
Anyway, Weikath played the Eric Clapton-like guitars on there but it’s not what he wanted to do with that song. So later Kiske was coming up with “Longing” and it was obviously he wanted to use all of the orchestra people that the band invited to record in the studio which was expensive and someone has to write the orchestrations, it also seemed like Kiske wanted to keep all of those people for his productions because Weikath had no chance to come up with the idea to use some of those people in “Windmill”. On the other hand Weikath didn’t think they needed it since the sounds could have been made by a synthesizer. Just for that track they got a hold of an old selena or strings instrument and not a sampler. It was the real instrument and it was used just for “Windmill” (demo version). Weikath apparently had been trying to persuade Andi Deris (who have known each other for 9 years ever since) to join the band.
Chameleon was released in 1993, and the tensions in the band got worse and worse. Noobody, even the management would have given @!#$ about it, cause everybody was keen on a commercial megaseller album, and they had several million Marks debts from their court case and the fact that Pink Bubbles sales had been shitty-there was a payoff of several hundred thousand marks for each record being produced due to NOISE Records… even with Master Of The Rings that was minimal by then, but nevertheless there. To add to the problem, the situation was very hard on everybody in the band, because Ingo took a lot of drugs and would go from one day to another like totally crazy, because of a nervous breakdown. He was a proud quiet guy, who was very laid back and did not talk much. He never talked about his feelings or anything and then he always had a beer in his hand.
Then one day Roland saw him crying, this guy who was so cool and laid back and who was a good drummer and he was crying!
Ingo was telling Roland how he saw this and that and the devil and was going totally nuts. It was really hard and it was Roland first experience in seeing someone like this and when someone is changing over a period of a few months they realize there is something going on from one day to another. It was getting worse and sometimes the band would think he is getting better then suddenly Ingo would act all crazy again 10 minutes later.
They started to notice something wrong with Ingo when they were on tour, with all that road pressure. Ingo had a strange behavior, he did strange things and the band noticed something seriously wrong with him. They lived with him and they could see his changes. They had to cancel a show in Hiroshima because he had an attack and started to cry backstage. The band didn’t know what to do, because he had serious mental problems. They consulted three psychiatrists and they said his problem was hereditary schizophrenia. And to make the situation worse, he was heavily into cocaine, drank a lot, and smoked hash. He was destroying his own brain and he didn’t notice this! Once they were in a restaurant and he climbed on the table and jumped, trying to fly while he was saying: “I can fly, I can fly!”
It lead to a point where the band couldn’t live in that situation anymore, because his sickness was incurable.
They went on tour again with him and they felt insecure because they did not know what would happen with him and they were scared something bad would happen while playing live. Sure enough we went to play a show in Hiroshima Japan and he stood up on his drum riser in the middle of a song and he then fell onto his cymbals and we had to stop the show. That was one of his last shows and we took him to the hospital and he was there for awhile and we had always hoped that he would get better and he would be himself again but the problem still persisted. It was really a bad experience for me.
Mid 1993 when Ingo got ill and Weikath piloted a colleague of his into the band, Weikath fed Ingo a fixed image of Kiske. These intrigues against Kiske grew worse and worse, until Kiske finally said to Roland carelessly that he couldn’t stand it anymore – the atmosphere was simply fucked up. Kiske hinted at his hoping for Ingo’s comeback too, and an improvement in the climate of the band because of it.”
Kiske had to tell him that he was not to play in the band anymore. He was given a break for the therapies and all that, and then he wanted to come back. We were sitting there with the rest of the band and they wouldn’t say much, and I was merely telling him for about six hoursthat he was not going to get back in the band again if I could somehow avoid it. And so that’s what it was.
About two months later he would jump. But from his girlfriend we know that it was not exactly because he was angry at us. He was merely angry at himself. And he was a bit crazy, you have to understand. Like, every simple thing must have been quite complicated for him and so therefore life was no longer fun for him, I would guess. Whatever he might have felt like, you can’t exactly know from the outside. Just from the problems I had with hashing away and some DDTs I had some nine years ago, I can quite imagine how he must have felt. Was he on medication for the schizophrenia? Yeah, but he didn’t take it very often because he was not exactly accepting his fate in a way. He was saying, “Ah, it’s all crap what they tell me. Why should I take medication? I have to get healed myself somehow.”
The whole shit just made Kiske considered seriously not to participate in the next record and asked Roland to keep this conversation to himself because Kiske didn’t want to demotivate anyone. Unfortunately, Roland made it clear to everyone else, and then it really got going.
It was another person who told Kiske that Ingo was out. Kiske had told Roland he wanted to leave the band before but he didn’t mean it, while he just was expressing his frustration and then Roland told them and a couple weeks later Kiske was fired.
Kiske said, “The way it happened it really hurt me. I dont think I am a person you cant talk to and I dont think I am an asshole where you cant have a meeting with me. Maybe the situation was so bad for everyone in general that they did what they did. Actually the only thing I hated about it was that they didnt talk to me really. When things like this happen they should happen on a grown up level. When musicicians cant make music anymore with each other this happens and this was what I wasnt mad about. I was mad because when you part ways with people you should treat people with respect as a human being especially when you had been together all the time. It hurt me a lot when there was all this shit said in magazines around this times. Anyway if they want to talk to me and if they want to be friends with me thats fine, i have no problem with it! I dont feel i had a problem with anyone, Im just myself and I have the right to be myself and I dont want to scare anyone but if my opinions scare people its not my fault. I think the whole bullshit thing is old now and I think they think that as well so I have no problem with that. However if the whole reason they may want to talk to me is to help with promotion and to sell more records then I dont want anything to do with them. I only care if they talk to me because of me, its got to be real!
During a Japanese gig, Weikath admitted that everything felt so slow and boring. Nothing was happening. It was weird. There were a lot of people looking at him with kind of expression that said, ‘Michael, can’t you change anything?’ And I was like ‘Sorry folks, but this is what we’ve done!’.
“But those vacant stares got me thinking. I knew they were right and I was wrong. Two hours of slow tedium is not what Helloween are about! Where have all the good times gone? Y’know, like the ‘Walls of Jericho’ and ‘Keeper…’ albums. I decided it was time for a clear out and return to Helloween as it should be; melodic, powerful, aggressive metal! I hope we’ve captured that should on ‘Master of the Rings’.”
Inside Helloween there was nothing else than quarrels, in a particular way between Kiske, Ingo and Weikath. It reached the point that Weikath was so stressed and exasperated of that situation, even if he knew to be in the right, that he started to doubt about the band’s future. Personally, he was prepared to the worst, and started to work on a solo album, hardly inspired by the Deep Purple sound, and on which he thought he had to work with some Hamburg musicians.
In fact Kiske was working on some new songs that had to be on the next album after “Chameleon”, but nobody in the band liked that stuff! Maybe they could be good to obtain success in the English Charts, but they were not good for their intention to come back to the power metal: it wasn’t hard rock, it wasn’t heavy metal, it was only a disaster. By the way, Kiske was very offended when they refused to do a record with that kind of songs.
1993 – “Keeper Of The Seven Keys Parts 1 & 2″ (2 CD edition)
Kai said, “Because Ingo may took sometimes drugs but not at the end. The whole point is that he was very sensitive and the whole stress with the band worsened things. He had problems when I left the band and I didn’t wan’t to convince him to come with me because he would have done it. He had problems the period that they had frozen because of the problems with the company. He was running around to play but he couldn’t because at that time Helloween didn’t existed. He tried some projects but he wasn’t satisfied and that really fucked him. I could see it… It’s very easy to blame Michael but no, there are some points that it was a fault of all of us, maybe I’m responsible too, that I left Helloween or that I didn’t do anything or for other reasons. If a person decides to commit suicide, it’s his decision, maybe it was the time to depart.”
Winter 1993 – During the subsequent tour, Ingo Schwichtenberg fell very ill and Richie Abdel Nabi was hired as a session drummer to finish the Japanese tour. After the tour, Helloween reluctantly asked Ingo to leave the band and sent to hospital due to drug addition and schizophrenia.
Weikath always goes to shows and sees musicians in Hamburg. He told the band there was a nice drummer around and that he was a good guy and ad a nice feel with the drums and they agreed to check him out. He was a very nice guy and a great drummer but the problem was at the time he could not play double bass and he had to learn it in a short time. It was a little bit too much for him and how they worked songs out was too fast for him, he was taking a long time.
However Ritchie was still a very nice guy. He didn’t become our drummer partly because it would take too long to learn play together. Later it came clear that there were plenty of things which were more important for him than the band. It was nice to play together but we noticed that he didn’t match with us. The music we play wasn’t music for him. It was pretty hard for him to learn to play all what had been composed by other people, all what he had never taken part in. He didn’t match with Helloween at all. Maybe there was not enough passion. Something was wrong although he knew what Helloween was. And when they were doing this, Andi was already in the band and said that he was too slow for the band. He was working on one song for days so they had to change drummers and they got Uli Kusch.
The reality was that, after Chameleon, it was clear he wouldn’t be back to play drums. When they decided to make him go, just after the album release, Weikath had a six hour phone conversation with him, in which he explained Ingo why they did that hard decision and told Ingo that they didn’t want him as a drummer anymore, if he didn’t clean up himself from drugs. The only one that wanted to maintain Ingo as Helloween’s drummer was Kiske, and Weikath think his behaviour was particulary stupid, because he didn’t look at the reality of the facts. One day Kiske came to Weikath and said “Hey Weiki, one day you promise Ingo to come back in the band, then you change your idea”.
December 16th, 1993 – “Step Out Of Hell” single was released in Japan
Roland spoke to Weikath and Markus after the Chameleon tour and Roland was just upset and the whole situation was bad because they lost their record deal in Europe and the Japanese label was not happy and the singer wanted to stay on this type of music when they did not want to do the same style on Chameleon anymore. Roland also was going to go look for an actual 9-5 job because they were all broke. It was really bad so they decided to make a change. So before they started rehearsing they had the new demo tapes for the next album and Kiske had the same type of songs he did on Chameleon and the band just did not want to do that stuff anymore so they decided to not work with him anymore, it was not Kiske as a person, but it just was a musical conflict.
“We just didn’t want to work with him any more, pure and simple. So we asked him to leave the band. He was forever pulling the band apart and putting us down.”
Winter 1993 – Band’s contract with EMI expired, Helloween started to search for a new label and besides the deficient advertising, their old fans didn’t like Chameleon and Pink Bubbles Go Ape, which were different from all they had done before. Obviously the sales weren’t as good, and then label became dissatisfied with the band and vice versa. They decided to leave EMI (or dropped by the label).
Weikath said about Kiske firing, “Because it was all we had, I mean one can always go out and say that -I am doing a solo project now- and everyone would have laughed. Thats crap because we spent too much time and put too much work into Helloween and to stop it by that time because of the obvious reasons of why it was so shitty. Meanwhile, the relationship between Andi and Pink Cream 69 had apparently been heading downhill since the rest of the band had “changed musically and personality-wise” and “it was hard to communicate with them.”
Weikath said, “Well I called him (Andi Deris) up….but ive already known him for 7 years. I already had permission to approach him during the Pink Bubbles Go Ape era and I already called him by that time. because the situation in the band had become so unbearable. Ingo was the one who actually wanted to stay with Kiske and Andi for himself actually wanted to stay with Pink Cream 69 because he saud there was no reason why I should leave the guys because they are behaving well, they are nice guys and we have a nice band here. Andi is a very social guy….we all knew at the time he was the perfect choice for Helloween. He also said there was no way out because of the situation in his band was going similar…so we had a paralell thing going. Helloween was going down and Pink Cream was as well. I think I placed the call at just the perfect point in time, but still I thought I sounded pretty stupid because I was like “If you’re not going to sing for us we’re going to end the whole Helloween thing….so think about it. However if we go out there with you as our singer we can go out there and put this stuff into people;’s faces and just kill. You know?? Think of it?”
So they had 2 or 3 more meeting to convince Andi or convince him further and he just didn’t want to say anything that particular year because it was a shitty year and he wants to make his decision next year, and that was like new years eve. So 3 minutes after 12 new years eve the next year Andi calls up and says “Alright, I’m in!”.
So and thats when the band gave Kiske a call and said they wanted a meeting and he said “A meeting again? What for?!” and Weikath said well its “Something important” and he said “We have so many meetings we dont need that, just do your meeting and tell me what its about”. Their personal manager said “Well its about you Michael” and so that meeting didn’t even take place because then it was plain clear.
During Chameleon era, Weikath started to work on a solo album because he started to doubt about the band’s future. This not-working-yet-album hardly inspired by the Deep Purple sound and mostly 70’s bands. One of track for this album was “If I Knew”, something very 70’s style, because that song had born whitin this intention. When things for Helloween were going well again, he put this track to Time of the Oath album, because he thought it’s a good song for Andi’s voice.
Then, for Master Of The Rings, they decided to separate also from Kiske, and then many poisons and polemics followed; and Weikath was to be accused by people that didn’t ever care about Ingo. Even they tried to help him in all the ways, doing anything they could, and Ingo known this fact. His girlfriend confessed to Weikath that Ingo told her, few days before his suicide, that he wasn’t angry at all with the band.
End of December 1993 – Michael Kiske was fired from Helloween
After his leaving, he started to have some unlikeable interwiews about the band and Weikath in particular. In fact Kiske gives Weikath all the fault of what happened, infact Roland himself told the band that it was not in his intentions to record another album with Kiske.
1 January 1994 – Andi Deris became the new singer
About 5 days prior Weikath was giving Andi a call as if he would have smelled it! So Weikath asked if they could meet up in Hamburg and Markus called Andi 2 hours later asking him to join Helloween and that they wanted to have a discussion with him to join the band and that they didn’t want to go on with their old singer. They didn’t know Andi made a decision to not go on with Pink Cream since he didn’t tell anyone and it was just a coincidence. So Andi went to Hamburg and had a discussion with the band and they told him what was going on and then Andi told them he didn’t want to go on with Pink Cream anymore. Andi also have known Weikath and Markus for years before he joined the band which made it easier to join Helloween since he already knew two people really well. Everytime they would record a new album with Pink Cream he would always be meeting Weikath and Markus for a drink every night and stuff.
Andi was kind of put the whole thing back in order as well because he was the sole one the band wanted. They certainly weren’t going out to place adds that Helloween was looking for a new singer because they wouldn’t trust anyone. The thing that happend in the misunderstanding that went down with Kiske, Weikath and the rest of the band was so heavy that the band really didnt feel like inviting someone they dont know into the band to sing. They thought they wouldve laid the band another koo koo’s act and so if not for Andi joining Helloween they would have dissolved the band probably. They wouldve done something else and they would have waited the whole thing out, but they would have dissolved the whole thing if Andi hadnt have come in. It was plain clear to everyone in the band that they didn’t want to go off with Kiske for the next record.
The band needed to make changes and when they did, they came back with Master Of The Rings, and so there was no good reason to skip the whole thing because in Weikath mind he had a whole view and a picture of what Helloween is supposed to be and there are other people, people in this world who had a whole clear view of it as well, even the fans. So why destroy the whole thing then and take the easy way out and quit.
