Published by : pennydreadful.de

Interviewer :  Ed Graham

Published on : May, 2002

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Interview with Eric Adams of Manowar, May 8th, 2002, the Palace –by Ed Graham

I had the honor and privilege to meet Eric Adams, the God of all vocalists. I’m still in shock from meeting and talking to a Man who has been one of my heroes for almost 3-4 years, as well as being a reason why I’m still alive today. Eric Adams is a God among Men, and his words speak of the love between Manowar and their fans and the Magic of Manowar as they come straight from the bottom of his heart.

I taped the interview, from right after I introduced myself and the groups that I write for, up until Eric had to leave for a sound check. Here is the transcript of that interview:

Ed: It’s an odd webzine, it’s like for music with soul. We cover folk bands, classical groups, Manowars been in there frequently…

Eric: Yeah, Manowar’s really big in Germany

Ed: Well you guys pretty much epitomize Music with Soul.

Eric: That’s great man. Let’s do this.

Ed: Cool. Okay, so new album…

Eric: Hey, wait a minute. First, you gonna be at the show tonight?

Ed: Oh yeah.

Eric: Cool

Ed: Hels yeah.

Eric: We rolling?

Ed: Yup, we’re rolling. I bought 12 tickets a couple weeks ago. My entire, like, extended families here,

Eric: Great

Ed: Well friends mostly

Eric: Great, that’s great. It’s a hell of a show, it’s a kick ass show, right from the beginning, I mean, it’s just like a continuous medley of our songs, we don’t stop, it goes right into another and another and another. It’s really cool.

Ed: Yeah

Eric: It flies by, it’s unbelievable.

Ed: Awesome. You guys doing Warriors of the World United?

Eric: Mmhmm.

Ed: Yeah, I love that song.

Eric: Yeah, we do that . We also do, ah, you’ll hear it. It’s a whole shitload, we do 15, 14 songs.

Ed: Nice

Eric: I think the show is, it goes so fast, I mean the shows an hour and ten minutes, hour and fifteen, that’s about it.

Ed: Wow

Eric: But its, theres no bullshit in the show, it’s like another and another and another.

Ed No kidding

Eric: But it’s smoking, it’s a good set.

Ed: This new song, it’s a little different for Manowar

Eric: Warriors of the World?

Ed: Yeah

Eric: Man, you know, not really, because it’s like Kings of Metal almost. It’s got that driving beat, you know what I mean? We had to think more… stadium, instead of club, it’s got that stadium, arena feel. So you get that bomp kaw bomp kaw, yeah, you had to have that cause when you’re in a stadium, bomp kaw bomp kaw, it’s huge. If you do every song, boom click boom click, after all, it’s muddy in the stadium, in a big huge 30,000 seater, it’s muddy out there. You know what I mean? You need songs like that, just to show people, yeah I can do songs like that. But really, the ass kickers in the stadium where you get 30,000 people fist in the fuckin’ air, dam daka dam daka dam, ain’t nothin’ better than that. Nothin’ better than that. They’ll do it tonight. Cool.

Ed: Yeah, one thing, I tried learning how to play it, I play bass, and is it down tuned? Or even 5 stringed?

Eric: Yeah we tuned down, I think one step. I think it’s one step, I don’t know for sure. But it is tuned down.

Ed: It’s in d minor. I figured you tuned the low E down to D.

Eric: Yeah, you’ll have to check it out and see. Um, the video we do, Manowar:Warriors of the World United, you can see what we’re playing there. I don’t know if, I mean, I’m a guitar player too, but I never even paid attention to what we’re doing. If you see Joey later you can ask him.

Ed: Cool. There’s also no guitar solo. Is that a different feel, experimenting?

Eric: Well, we thought, we talked it over in the studio, we thought, the middle section where it slows down, is all the change it needed. The song kinda dictates itself where it was gonna go, and I think if you put a guitar solo in there after that, it would have taken away from the chorus, by throwing the chorus in right after the slow part, it’s like someone went poom right in your face, and you feel like, ohh, there it is. Y’know? You’ll see tonight when we do that song, we’ll do the slow part, and when I say “Die,” the whole band kicks in, “by Steel” and then everyone goes crazy. It’s a new song, nobody knows it yet, y’know, so imagine, when it’s really out there, I think the album gets released June 4th…

Ed: June 4th?

Eric: Yeah,

Ed: Oh, they pushed it back then?

Eric: Yeah, it was May 27th in Europe, and Japan, in America it’s June 4th. Don’t know why. I just found that out today from the record label.

Ed: Hmm. I got the single a couple weeks ago. I got home from school, I’m a student at USC, I got home, hadn’t eaten since breakfast, had a lousy day at school, see this box on my doorstep, upstairs, an hour straight just playing that song. I get on my computer to write a review, and hey, I haven’t eaten in like, 8 hours.

Eric: (laughs) That’s cool, that’s great man. That’s good. People like you all over the world man, that keep this band going, keep us rolling, cause most radio stations aren’t doing it. You know, radio stations aren’t doing it. In Germany they are, but…

Ed: You’re number 7 in the charts?

Eric: The single now, unless it’s changed, I heard it was 15. The single. The video, is number one, on Viva, most requested video on heavy rotation. That’s cool.

Ed: That’s awesome

Eric: That’s really really cool. And it works out perfect because we’re heading out there in 3 weeks. So, that’s really cool.

Ed: How do you like touring different between touring America and touring Europe? Is there much difference?

Eric: Umm, y’know, Manowar fans are Manowar fans all over the world. It doesn’t make any difference to me where I play. When the bus stops, I get out, and I tour, I play. Some shows this tour we’ve played for a hundred people. You know, which is ridiculous. When I can sit and say to you, in three weeks we’re going to play for 30,000 people in Milan.

Ed: God’s of Metal?

Eric: Yeah, or 50,000, that was the last time in Milan, at the Gods of Metal. That’s a lot of people! So to turn around in America and play for 100 people seems a little ridiculous, but you know what, they get the same fuckin’ show. You see what I’m saying? It doesn’t matter to me where I play. Manowar fans come to see Manowar. 100 fans sound like 1000 fans. Y’know? Particularly in America where we never play. They’re starvin’ for the band to come and play here. I can’t tell you how many times we sign autographs at the end of the night. We bring people right up on the bus to sign autographs. A lot of guys come up and say I’ve been waiting 10 years to see you guys, I been waiting 15 years to see you guys, I’ve got all your fuckin’ albums, y’know. That’s the way it is. That’s the way it’s always been, at the beginning of this tour. I expect tonight will be no different.

Ed: Well, I’ve got 12 people out there, we’ve been waiting for like 3 hours.

Eric: Good. There you go. There you go. They’re the ones that’ll be there right in the front row. So, I hope they can hear the vocals, cause the things set up above, going down.

Ed: Well, we’ll be singing along.

Eric: Yeah, the magic’ll be there.

Ed: How did you form that magic? Did you think about that when you were first starting off Manowar?

Eric: Y’know…

Ed: Cause there’s something about Manowar, there’s bands like Hammerfall, they use similar lyrics, similar chord structure, but they just don’t have that magic.

Eric: Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know what that is. I think that a lot of the magic comes from the creativity that you get from your fans. I know that’s hard to understand, but, when I’m playing a show, if the fans are dead and they’re not into it, then I’m just playing the show, and I’m getting by. If the fans are into it, like they are at our shows, then there’s a sponge. They’re sucking up my energy and I’m sucking off their energy too. You know what I mean? The magic is when you try out something new on stage only because you felt it, and the rest of the band didn’t know you were going to do that, and because you felt it, it works! That’s the magic. And the magics in the studio, it’s when you rehearse a song, and you rehearse it and rehearse it, a thousand times, and it’s down the way you want to record it. Then I record my vocals, and I usually record, like, 8 tracks of vocals. I record 4 tracks the way I rehearsed it, and the next four tracks, I’ll try different things that I’m feeling. Sometimes it’s it, sometimes it’s shit. But when it’s magic, it’s magic! Y’know? I don’t know, I mean, we’re pretty open minded, and we’re very creative, and everybody in the band is open minded, we all criticize each other’s playing, y’know, we really are critiquing each other, during the performance, and during the rehearsal, during the recording. Y’know, we’re critiquing each other, always striving for the best quality we can possibly make. Cause at the end of the day, the fan’s aren’t stupid, they’re smart kids out there, and those kids are the ones buying the records, not your record company, not people like you who get it for free. No offense.

Ed: No. Well, actually, I haven’t gotten any for free.

Eric: Well, I’m just saying, I’m just saying, most journalists, here’s a copy of the album, I want you to write a story on it. You know what I’m saying? I write, I do, I play my heart and soul for the people out in the audience tonight, you know, and I’ll do anything I can for the people out in the audience tonight, I’ll sign every fuckin’ autograph I can, if I don’t have to travel. Y’know? If we have to go some place, and we only have so much time to get there, then I can’t, and they understand that. I think we’ve got the strongest fans in the world, I really do, and that’s part of the magic. That’s part of the magic! That’s why we always have an anthem song on every album we do, because we want the fans to sing the songs. Tonight’ll be no different. When we do Hail and Kill tonight, they’ll sing it. Hail, Hail, Hail, and … they’ll sing it. They’ll sing the new song, Warriors of the World United, they’ll sing it. Even though they haven’t heard it, they’ll sing it, because I’ll teach it tonight, how to do it, and, oh God, you name the song, they’re going to sing it with me. Y’know, if there’s a part where the crowd sings on the record, they’re the crowd. See what I mean? It’s not like, Manowar, they’re coming to a Manowar show, no, it’s not like that! They’re coming to a Manowar show, with the crowd, with the Manowar fans. Because it’s, we try to be, like, when we say they’re out family, we mean that. They’re our family, they’re our brothers and sisters of metal, and we want to get together with them, y’know? We may ask people to come up on stage, we’ve always done that, to play guitar. Y’know? I don’t think we’re going to do that tonight, cause we didn’t rehearse anything like that, but normally, y’know, when we do a tour, we just pick someone, you play guitar? C’mon up on stage.

Ed: Any chance you might do that with a bassist?

Eric: We’ve done it with bass before! We’ve done it with bass, yeah. We’ve done it with vocals before. The only thing we haven’t done it before with is a drummer, we haven’t done it with a drummer, but everybody else has given up their instrument for the fans, and let them go ahead and do it. It’s too cool, I’m telling you, it’s too cool. So, I don’t know any other bands that believe in their fans as strongly as we do for that. And at the end of the day, without your fans, who the hell are ya? Without the fans that are buying the record, who the fuck do you think you are? Where the fuck do you think you’re going? It’s the fans out there that, that, that put you where you belong. Or where they think you belong. Y’know, it goes from there. So, we really believe that, strongly. With our heart and soul, y’know? We don’t play from the wallet. We play from the wallet, y’know, we’d write some hip song that’d be on the radio like that, we’d be millionaires like that, big fucking deal! It’s a song, it’s like going to work in a factory someplace, you get through the part, and that’s it, and don’t give a fuck. But a painter, who creates something, and he’s meticulous in every little design he does, he doesn’t want to sell his painting just to anybody, he’s wants to sell his painting to someone who’s going to appreciate his painting, because it’s his heart and soul in that, it’s the same way we feel, with our music, and our creativity. We play from the heart. Y’know? And everything we sing about, we feel about. You can hear it in the albums, all the emotion in our songs, in the new album, it’s a real emotional album. With 911 that just happened, c’mon, Fight For Freedom is a song on the album that was dedicated, not written for, the song was written already, dedicated to, y’know, the 911 families. Y’know, it’s a shitty thing that happened. It’s a shitty world we live in right now, so, just got to deal with it.

Ed: Was 911 a big influence on the new album? Doing songs like the American Trilogy…

Eric: No, the album was already done, at least, it was all written, ready to go, then that happened. But you know, it’s funny, cause when 911 happened, and fans up in Portland, Oregon, somebody involved with the NBA team up there…

Ed: The Trailblazers?

Eric: Yeah, the Trailblazers, sent us a letter, asking if it’d be okay if they did a song, if they took Courage and made a video out of it, and we said sure. They sent it to us, and you hear us singing Courage in the background, but you see the 911 firemen.

Ed: Yeah, I saw that one

Eric: The families, oh, you saw it, that’s good.

Ed: I’m a fan before I’m a journalist.

Eric: But what I’m saying is, that’s from a previous album, and any album we’ve done, y’know. Mountains. The song Mountains. The song, um, uh, ah Christ, I’m trying to think of the one we did acoustically live…

Ed: Heart of Steel?

Eric: No, but Heart of Steel’s another one. There’s another one. I mean, there’s a ton of songs out there that could correlate to this 911 thing, so I mean, our album was already recorded and done, not recorded but it was done before this 911 thing. So, we just picked Fight For Freedom because it made sense. The American Trilogy makes sense for this album because of the type of album it is, it’s more symphonic, it’s versatile. It goes from power ballads to the quick ass ripper song to the anthem songs that we always do. And it’s also got Nessun Dorma, which is an opera piece. So y’know, kinda sets us apart from any other band.

Ed: So you’re also doing a song, The March, a tribute to Wagner?

Eric: Yeah, matter of fact, it was first called Wagner’s March. When I first heard it…

John Pettigrass: Excuse me, Eric, we’re ready for your sound check.

Eric: Okay! Kay, I gotta go down, do the sound check.

Ed: Cool, thank you.

Eric: Alright.

Ed: I’ll be right in the front row, and I’ll see you after the show.

Eric: Okay, cool. Hey, maybe you could set it up, so we could finish the interview, maybe over the phone or something for the radio. Cool?

Ed: Okay

Eric: See ya later bro!

As I left, after talking briefly to John Pettigrass about finishing the interview, I walked by the stage and saw Manowar sound checking through Kings of Metal. Eric gave me a big thumbs up, which I returned. What a guy! If there is a single divine entity known as God, then his name is Eric Adams. Hail Eric Adams!

"Brothers everywhere, raise your hands into the air, we're Warriors, Warriors of the World! Like thunder from the sky, sworn to fight and die, we're Warriors, Warriors of the World!"