The Band

Early Days:

• Ralf Scheepers never played with the band. His only appearance was singing “Future World” with Weikath & Markus once or twice.
• Songs from this era include “Murderer” (1979), parts of “Heading For Tomorrow” (!) (1980), “Iron Savior” (1980), “Gorgar” (1981), “Metal Invaders” (1981), “Save Us” (1982), and “Victim Of Fate” (1982). Later in 1983, Michael Weikath came with his old piece with SAS-band (1982), “Sea of Fears”, an early version of “How Many Tears”.
• For the first time, Weikath met Kai, Markus and Ingo, under the name Ironfist when they’re performing “Gorgar” in a small club in Hamburg.
• At one point, Ralf Scheepers was invited to sing in the band, but he declined the offer.

Walls of Jericho Era:

• The monster shown on the cover of the album Walls Of Jericho never stuck around to be a Helloween trademark but rather eventually became the mascot for Gamma Ray.
• Michael Weikath did the cover concept, Peter Vahlefeld did layout and typography while Edda and Uwe Karczewski did cover design
• The song “Metal Invaders” on the “Death Metal” compilation and on the Walls Of Jericho album are two different recordings, they totally re-did it on Walls Of Jericho.
• The picture vinyl version of “Judas” contains a funny medley of Christmas songs. They did that to invite Michael Kiske into the band, to introduce Michael, just because it was the very first track he sang with Helloween.
• They recorded the live tracks from the “Judas” EP in the studio and mixed them in this kind of live direction thing.
  They are not really live tracks, they just used the sound of the audience for it. Same as with “Heavy Metal Is The Law”.

Keeper of the Seven Keys Era:

Part 1

• On Part 1, Kai Hansen did Front Cover Concept, Edda & Uwe Karczewski did Cover Design and Limb did Sleeve & Back Cover Concept
• Michael Weikath didn’t play any rhythm guitar parts. Tommy Hansen played it for him. He only played on “A Tale that Wasn’t Right”.
• “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.
  Some releases feature the track “Judas” between “A Tale That Wasn’t Right” and “Future World” (?)
• There was a single released of “Future World”, as well as a music video of “Halloween”.
• Markus met Jorn Ellenbrock in a holiday camp.
  There was the guy playing keyboards and that was Jorn. When we needed a keyboard player I just called him and up and asked if he’d like to do a tour with us. You know, I actually called him up to say, “Oh Jorn, would you like to play some tunes with us?” And he said, “Oh yeah, maybe, let’s do a nice jam session. Can we hook up next week and play something together?” That’s what he was expecting. And I told him, “No, I’m talking about an American tour for more than three months!” (everybody laughs) He said, “Oh, alright, let me think about this.” And since then, he’s in.

Part 2

• 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. While Weikath wanted “Livin Aint No Crime” as a single, it ended up being a b-side.
• “Eagle Fly Free” is both Michi & Andi favorite song from Helloween.

Pink Bubbles Go Ape Era:

• 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, Michi and Weiki 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”
  Weikath had this song very early in KoTSK part 1 but Hansen 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 of the way Michael Kiske’s singing. Then they used it as a b-side of a single and they thought it could have been a great song for the album, but not with Michael.

Chameleon Era:

• 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 not-working-album was “If I Knew”. 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. The other song was “Do You Know What You’re Fighting For?” from The Legacy.
• “Longing” was written in 10 minutes with keyboards & the orchestra arrangements did all by Michael Kiske himself with computer software help. Michael played acoustic guitar in this song.
• “First Time” was written when Weikath 19 and they played it as opening most of their concerts. It’s about his blonde-gf.
• “Windmill” was recorded during Pink Bubbles Go Ape, which was Ingo disliked and called it “Shitmill”.
• Nobody at the label heard the demos, and they had 100% control in their hands.
• “Music” was already recorded differently with the band Rampage in Love Lights Up The Night album.
• Michael Weikath did not play any guitars in “When The Sinner”, “Crazy Cat”, “In the Night”, “Longing”, “I Don’t Wanna Cry No More” and “Step Out of Hell”.
  Rhythm guitars were played by Michael Kiske.
• Logo by Michael Weikath and Sleeve design by Michael Kiske

Master of the Rings Era:

• “In The Middle Of A Heartbeat”, the music is from Andi and lyrics by Weikath, is about his girlfriend who leave him for an insurance guy because he made more money.
• During Master of the Rings, they only rehearsal two weeks before entering studio.
• The first song Uli Kusch did rehearsal with the band was “Sole Survivor”.
• The song “Mr. Ego” is about Michael Kiske, while “Perfect Gentleman” is a fictional character on the story.
• The band paid Karl Ulrich Walterbach (Noise records) with some profits from Master Of The Rings, The Best, The Rest, The Rare and some rights over Chameleon.
• “Why” penned by Andi while he was in Pink Cream 69, the band did not want to play because they thought it was too commercial.

Time of The Oath Era:

• The battle sounds at the beginning of “Before The War” was taken live in Yugoslavia.
• The band used old equipments from Walls Of Jericho during Time of the Oath recording. Also part of Master of the Rings used the same equipments.
• Top 5 album of the producer Tommy Hansen ever did. This record is so filled with good songs. Unbelieveable. The only complain he can think of, is actually a fault of his own. He used the compressors to heavy on this production. It was done at a time when the level could not be loud enough. Unfortunately by going to 160, he felt that the record lost some breathing space. He promised that he will never do it again. Later he apologized for that.
• Seven songs from Time of the Oath are influenced by Nostradamus‘ predictions. All lyrics wrote by Andi.
• Michael Weikath left a few parts open on “Mission Motherland” for the band to interact and do some teamwork.

High-Live era:

• They planned to take “Eagle Fly Free” as a single for High-Live.
• It’s Michael Weikath who came up with the title High-Live.
• High Live has been put through Tommy Hansen’s digital 24 track RADAR recording system which doesn’t sounds very warm…but High Live has its advantages – so much energy and it indicates the benefits that touring had on their playing abilities, whereas the UK one definitely brings across the magic of a band that had just toured nearly the whole world and sounds a lot warmer because it was recorded on an analog system.

Better Than Raw Era:

• The story behind the title Better That Raw,  is the Smurf series. It happened when Andi and Weikath hanging out at their  favorite bar, the Backstage in Hamburg, and they realized that everyone in the band hates the taste of pumpkins (they are often given gifts of pumpkin food). At that bar, they usually come up with stupid ideas for album concepts and covers. The witch on the cover stands for Gargamel, and the pumpkin men for the Smurfs. The witch is cooking pumpkin soup, and so Andi said that at least it’s better than [eating pumpkin] raw. So Weikath had the idea to call the album that [Better Than Raw], and Andi agreed. It is the most stupid album title there is with regards to its meaning. So they all agreed to keep it.
• Weikath dedicated “Laudate Dominum” for fans in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Brazil and Argentina. Also Honduras, Peru and Chile. First inspiration was when her mother played him two “Laudate Dominum” tracks off of Schubert and of Mozart. The chorus had been merely inspired by the syllables of the words “o laudate dominum” which instantly jumped to his mind.
• Grapow’s “Hidden Answer” was written for Better than Raw, but it was passed over and ended up on Kaleidoscope. Roland brought this song to rehearsal, but the band wanted a faster song and that’s when they picked up “Push” instead.
• Tommy Hansen, Uli and Jorn Ellenbrock need nearly two weeks to work at “Deliberately Limited…”, the old piece of Uli.
• Uli created the rhythm guitar of “Push” with his snare technic. “Push” was the last song they recorded during BTR session.  The band felt that some of the extreme fast songs were missing a bit. So Uli – the drummer – said that he had an idea, some riffs and stuff, and later on he came to the studio with a rough demo. He played it to Hansen, and Hansen felt a strong track coming. Fore some reason Hansen took all the parts of Uli song apart, and put it back in a totally new arrangement, making one little part, that Uli intended to be a transitionpart, the chorus part of the song. Uli solo part became the new verse, and his chorus became the solopart. They went on cutting and pasting for hours, and finally the song became clear to them.
• Uli had a bit more control over the sound on this album.

Metal Jukebox Era:

• Before they use Metal Jukebox, they had Dream Concert as the title.
• Uli did all the Mickey Mouse noises on the song “Hocus Pocus”.
• Jan S. Eckert rehearsed with Helloween a couple of times when Markus was on vacation.

The Dark Ride Era:

• “Deliver Us From Temptation” was one of the first songs they recorded or even wrote during The Dark Ride session. Unfortunately, management and record company did not pick the track.
• Weikath wrote three song during The Dark Ride session, “All Over the Nations”, “Salvation” and “Do You Feel Good”. “Do You Feel Good” had been recorded to a certain point, but it was a very boring and disappointing recording so it was put on hold. Also, “Nothing To Say” already been there too and had not made it onto the recording list.
• Before they changed the title into The Dark Ride, Weikath wanted to change both “All Over the Nations” and “Salvation” lyrics more negative, but Roy Z refused the ideas. So, both of them are original demos & lyrics.
• The Dark Ride cover came from Gisbert Royder.
• Before they use The Dark Ride, was proposed by Rod Smallwood a month after recording finished, they already had The Last Testament as the title.
• They planned to release “Mirror Mirror” as a single for USA. But, there in no single for USA (?)
• Masterplan’s “Into The Light” was meant to be on “The Dark Ride” album, but Andi never tried to sing it. “Into The Light” was written by Uli, lyrics by Rainer Laws and it’s Roy Z’s favorite song.
• “Escalation 666″ came very late and Roland wrote this the second week into the recording of the album.
• Roland arranged everything on “The Dark Ride” very late and was changing things around during the studio sessions.
• On “Salvation”, Weikath had to change the melody a little bit because it’s like Stratovarius‘ “Father Time”.
  Weiki got angry when Roland told him that the melody just like “Father Time” because he never heard “Father Time”, so he decided to change the melody a little bit.

Rabbit Don’t Come Easy Era:

• It was Markus who came up with the idea of the title Rabbit Don’t Come Easy.
• Mikkey Dee of Motörhead plays most of the drums with the exception of the songs “Don’t Stop Being Crazy” and “Listen to The Flies” played by Mark Cross.
• The first song Mickey Dee had rehearsal with the band was “Just a Little Sign”.
• Weikath wrote “Do You Feel Good” and “Nothing To Say” after they finished Metal Jukebox covers album.
• Jorn Ellenbroek recorded the ‘frog croak’ in the end of “Nothing To Say” with his Macintosh powerbook while Weikath recorded the bathroom door opening and closing.
• The strings right before the solo on “Open Your Life” are real violins. Sascha employed a female violin student and he recorded her at his place.
• During the recording session, Sascha got new electric sitar (Jerry Jones electric Sitar) and wanted to put the sitar on almost everything but Charlie only let him did on two tracks, “Never Be A Star” and “Sun for the World”.
• “Never Be A Star” was a song Andi wrote during “Perfect Gentlemen” days.
• “Back Against the Wall” is Andi’s song from The Dark Ride, but the refrain was not even nearly finished, and they did not have the time to finish it.

Keeper of the Seven Keys The Legacy Era:

• They decided to take the title Keeper of the Seven Keys – The Legacy about six weeks before final mixing after “King for 1000 Years” created.
• During The Legacy recording sessions, after five weeks the band had a kind of emergency meeting with Stefan Schwarzmann. He said that he can’t play parts of “Occasion Avenue”, “Silent Rain” and others. He tried hard but at the end of the day he told the band that he would like to leave the band.
• “The King For A Thousand Years” was the last song they wrote during recording session of Keeper of the Seven Keys – The Legacy. They did it in six days. In the first place there were some lyrical parts that were missing but they had to be there, so they wrote extra musical parts after the first seven minutes of the original track.
• The whole choirs in the Legacy are all programmed by Andi. The Narrator in the beginning was recorded and produced by Andi himself. The voice was from old man in a tennis club in Tenerife. He’s 78 years old, a very old English man named David.
• The demo of “Light the Universe” recorded with Austrian female singer, named Gabriella. They’re asking Amy Lee of Evanescence, Sharon den Adel of Within Temptation, Helena Iren Michaelsen of Angel, everyone they liked, unfortunately thet had problem to contact them, who were still on tour. Then Markus mentioned Candice Night.
• During the days of recording “Light The Universe”, the first idea was that it’s a great song to sing along with Michael Kiske. It’s a ballad kind of song, it’s a song that Michael would like.
• “Do You Know what You’re Fighting For” and “Born on Judgment Day” were 13 years old riffs.
• Martin Hoisler designed the cover artwork of The Legacy.

Gambling With The Devil era:

• The album was the result of pressure from their management; they said it would be great if the band could get out a new album very quickly. So they used the modern technology of the internet and basically the server was their rehearsing room. Everyone was sitting at home and uploading tracks and ideas, they also rehearsed that way. It was a kind of patchwork. Even Michael Weikath and Sascha Gerstner wrote lyrics this way, They used skype (chat software). And that saved a lot of time and money, it was a good idea to do it like that. For ‘The Legacy’ album they spent three months recording but for this one they just didn’t have the time.
• Marcus was recording in Hamburg and Michael and Sascha were recording in his studio so Charlie had to fly back and forth. The drums and vocals were recorded in Andi’s studio so there’s the patchwork thing again. They all work with the same systems though.
• Behind the title album: The Legacy album had a concept behind it and they thought they’d kind of go on with the subject, there’s a song called “Occasion Avenue”, where the devil is lurking around and getting people to try things, this is a strong theme on the album. They  think alike on many issues like politics and they’ll talk about this kind of stuff. When they were staying in a hotel, somewhere in Romania, and it had this casino style. They were talking and decided that life is like gambling with the devil, you turn the wheel but you never know what happens, you could walk outside now and get hit by a bus.They’ve all had to make decisions of which they knew they might be evil. So when they’d come up with this subject, Andi had the brilliant idea of making a wheel in the booklet and to add a scratch card, you rub it and you get a riddle and if you solve it, it links you to another riddle and if you solve the whole thing you can win a prize!
• About the song “The Saints”; which Weikath wrote was quite difficult to make indeed, with all the different parts that it includes – yet they decided to include it in their set list. Weikath admitted that the choice of melodies was such in order to impress their Japanese fans who like that kind of stuff. Although, he thought that it’s always difficult to come up with a song that sounds so fast and make it exactly as you’ve envisioned it the first time round. He had some particular solo melodies that he would have liked to have used in this track which were simply not performable at the speed that he had imagined them in the very beginning. He added, sometimes he wrote stuff at a tempo that is very difficult to recreate in a live environment and that was the case in this song. This version of “The Saints” is completely ‘playable’, still it’s already difficult enough to perform live because of the speed involved and personally speaking, he hates degrading human material and drummers. As a composer, he thought a song like that presents both sides of the knife. He can easily create songs with an average speed of 260bpm or even more, but these are not going to be feasible to perform live everyday – “it would be madness! Some bands tend to do that, especially musicians like Charlie Benante (drummer of Anthrax), but he would also be able to tell you a few things about the state of his knees.”

Gambling With The Devil Era:

• Andi Deris wrote a trilogy in the songs “The Bells Of The 7 Hells”, “Fallen To Pieces” and “I. M. E.”. Actually those refer to the one of the famous leader of German, that everything was good and nothing about the war. After the leader lost the war and the truth came out everything collapsed. “The 7 Bells” have to do with the seven deadly sins and all that stuff about how the leader convinces the people to follow him. In “Fallen To Pieces” you have the chance to put all the pieces together and stand for yourself and that tells you “I.M.E.”.

• The band used Internet and basically the server was their rehearsing room. Marcus was recording in Hamburg and Michael and Sascha were recording in G-Track studio. The drums and vocals were recorded in Andi’s studio. Michael and Sascha wrote lyrics by using skype. Charlie had to fly back and forth.
• Before they got Biff Byford (Saxon) did the intro (Crack the Riddle), the band wanted to have the old man on the ‘Legacy’ album (David) to speak the intro, but quite sadly he contracted cancer and he was not available.