Keepers’ Days

Halloween

• About the long song on Keeper 1, Kai Hansen liked to listen to long songs like Rainbow songs. So he tried to do something like that. It was the song “Halloween” that had to do with their name, so it had to be something different. It was something he worked with Ingo Schwichtenberg for Keeper 1, he had the riffs and they worked it together. Naturally as you know “Keepers…” where going to be a double album, but finally… That’s why in the first part most songs are Hansen’s because it was closer to Walls Of Jericho, while they let Weikath for the second, because they said that it was a big step.
• Covered by Dark Moor (in Keepers of Jericho)

Twilight Of Gods

• In the matters of changing musical direction,  in “Twilight Of Gods” Kai wanted the refrain to start with opera, things he hadn’t done before like the backing vocals. He refused to add backing vocals before the Keepers. At Walls of Jericho Mike (Weikath) insisted to try, but he didn’t want to because he belived that backing vocals made the song sweeter and softer.
• Accept/Victory guitarist Hermann Frank is given thanks for INSANIA 2016.
• Covered by Axenstar on the album Far From Heaven

A Tale That Wasn’t Right

• Due to stress/mental breakdown, Michael Weikath didn’t play any rhythm guitar parts on Keeper 1. Tommy Newton played it for him. He only played solo on “A Tale that Wasn’t Right”.
• During Pumpkin Fly Free Tour 89 (Tokyo, May 30, 1989) they played intro Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” for opening “A Tale That Wasn’t Right”.
• Covered by Invaders

Save Us

• Written already in 1982, for the pre-Helloween band Gentry.
• The track was not on the original vinyl album, but served as a bonustrack for the CD edition.
• Covered by Cydonia on the album Keepers of Jericho

Savage

• “Savage” was meant as a joke song and went on as a b-side. Kiske wanted to make fun of thrash metal in a way and everyone liked the song in the end.
• Covered by Brainstorm on the album Keepers of Jericho

Rise and Fall

• Covered by Red Wine on the album The End

Future World

• There was a single released of “Future World”, as well as a music video of “Halloween”.
• The single cover is a homage to the comic book hero Judge Dredd.
• Covered by Gamma Ray for album Alive ‘95 and Labyrinth (in Keepers of Jericho)

Dr. Stein

• Kai Hansen did the vocals on “Dr. Stein” demo version. And with Kai on the vocals, it sounded very much like Judas Priest.
  And later on, when Kai came into the studio after they had finished the final version, he asked “Is that Dr. Stein? Man, it doesn’t sound like Priest that more any much.” “No, it sounds more like Helloween now… But it originally was meant to be a B-side.” said Weikath.
• “Dr.Stein” which was intended to be a b-side, same as “Heavy Metal Hamsters” was. But Karl Walterbach, the boss of Noise Records, liked this song very much because it sounded to him so much like Judas Priest and wanted the band to release it as a single.
• The band used the end of “A Day in the Life” of the Beatles (The “DUN” sound). The piano chord and the duration is almost the same (towards the end of that song (Around 4:21) the same “DUN” sound can be heard).
• Covered by Steel Attack (in Keepers of Jericho)

Eagle Fly Free

• Played live for the first time at Donington, and they sensed people may have enjoyed it, but many were simply mixed up, and so that wouldn’t have been a good indicator as to whether it should have ended up on Keeper of the Seven Keys II or not.
• There’s no doubt this song has influenced many young metallers out there. Great vocals, drumming about 160bpm, very cool bass solo and killer guitarworks.
• Covered by Vision Divine (in Keepers of Jericho) and Shaman for the album RituAlive (featuring Andi Deris and Michael Weikath)

Livin Aint No Crime

• Weikath wanted “Livin Aint No Crime” as a single, it ended up being a b-side. Everytime he wanted to do a B-side, it ends up on the A-side, like “Dr. Stein” and “Heavy Metal Hamster”.
• The song is basically about  a little revolutionary thing like Robin Hood for instance, come hither to the slaves, so imagine they are in the woods and they are having all of the guys together and just go about certain things like killing the Sheriff of Nottingham or whatever. It has a revolutionary feel like the old eastern block. It was a party song that was a party song during their  shows back in the Keeper 2 days.

You Always Walk Alone

• “You Always Walk Alone”, that Kiske wrote and recorded on a demo tape with his school band, Ill Prophecy. Then played them on the “Keepers” albums.
• Later on, Kiske made an accoustic version for Past in Different Ways album.

March of Time

Covered by Arwen (in Keepers of Jericho II)

A Little Time

• “A Little Time” also wrote by Kiske and recorded on a demo tape with his school band, Ill Prophecy. Then played them on the “Keepers” albums.
• Michael Kiske re-doings accoustically this song on his album Past in Different Ways. He could have worked on the original pre-Helloween version instead; but he had this idea far too late.
• Covered by Pegazus on Breaking the Chains album

We Got The Right

• “We Got The Right” was written by Kiske before his Helloween days, but it changed a lot for the Keepers recordings; like it should, being in a new band.
• Kiske wanted to orchestrate “We Got The Right”, although Kiske knew for over an year that Weikath wanted to orchestrate “Eagle Fly Free”. The tensions began afterward.
• Later on, Kiske made an accoustic version for Past in Different Ways album.

I Want Out

• Kai wrote about this song as an accumulate of situations within the band. After the successful of the first Keeper, they got ripped off by management and they were living on very little money and they had to ask the management how to spend their money and everyone but the band made money off of their records. Thats not the way it should be so Kai got sick of this. It took him one year to finally make the final decision to quit after he first thought about it.
• When he wrote this song, Kai had Michi’s voice in mind and that influenced him a lot. It wasn’t just the songs that defined the album, it was the whole chemistry they had at that time.
• “I Want Out” has been covered by Hammerfall (in I Want Out album It is notable for Kai Hansen’s appearance on guitar, lead vocals along with Hammerfall vocalist Joachim Cans, and keyboards) and Sonata Arctica (in EP Successor, Keepers of Jericho and Ecliptica or Takatalvi album).
• Skylark also did cover the song, in the same Tribute album, with female vocals, and this is widely recognised as the most “Kiske-like” version of the song.

Keeper of the Seven Keys

• About doing a long song, Weikath pretty much inspired by the band Nectar. He heard the album Recycle which has a very very long track on it and actually the album itself is one song so he thought it would be cool to do something super long like “Still I’m Sad” by Rainbow or “Stranglehold” by Ted Nugent and all of these epic concept songs from the 70s. So they came up with this Keeper concept and he told Kai Hansen he wanted to do a long song and so Kai also said he wanted to do a long track too. So they both knew if they did this they would have around a half hour of music so they had thought about doing a double album but that was not liked by Noise records so they did 2 records. It was good it happened this way anyway because they were not prepared to do a double album anyway by that time.
• During recording sessions, when Weikath wanted an orchestrated part on the intro for “Keeper of the Seven Keys”, Kiske said he didn’t want it because it was something classical, then they cut it off. They had the same problem with “Eagle Fly Free” and “We Got The Right”.