Published by : lordsofmetal.nl
Interviewer : Ferdi
Published on : December, 2002

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Interview with Manowar-gitarist Karl Logan, just before their show in the IJsselhallen in Zwolle, Holland.

When I meet Karl logan it’s visible that he’s tired. Not tired in the sence of weary. Tired in the sence of: one bore battle, and then I can go home. Understandable of course, because the blonde-haired guitarist has been through several weeks of extensive touring, this being the last show, the last interview of the tour. Slowly he talks, but passionate.

We’ve done about 35 shows. One whole week we were caught up with preproduction –putting the stage together- and rehearsal. Fortunately we haven’t been touring non-stop after that, it has been four nights on then one night off. This week we do five shows in a row, which is pretty much.

And what has been more fun, the on- days or the off-days?
Hehe, that’s hard to say. The on-days are filled with a lot of waiting. Most people don’t know that. Most of it is filed with waiting for the soundcheck, waiting for the opening band to play, waiting to play ourselves. As for the offdays… It depends. Sometimes you just sleep all day, sometimes you go to see the town you’re in. Too bad that the weather in Europe has been really bad the last two months. I prefer to tour in the winter, but this time we’ve spend a lot of time in the hotels doing nothing.

And what is the first thing that you’re going to do when you get home?
Tear down all of the pictures of my girlfriend. Probably.

And why is that?
Because she broke up with me ten days before the tour. (laughs, then suddenly stops). So it’s going to be an interesting question. Actually, I think I’ll take my bike into the living-room and tear the motor down and try ro rebuild it. Those’re going to be my Christmas-plans.

What is your relationship with this country?
Mine, or the band’s relationship? I’ll start with my own relationship. I’ve spend a lot of time here, I love the country and I love the people. The language is great, it’s the land of the ‘lekkermuts’. I really like studying the history of it. I like to read about the battle of Arnhem, and the last time I was there I spend a lot of time visiting the battlesites.
The band’s relation with country is that we’re still trying to get more dates. We’ve got a large following in this country but… You know I heard that this place where we play tonight normally doesn’t host concerts. I don’t even know how we ended up here. One problem in this country is the size of the clubs. I’ve been in Tilburg once, and it has a great club there (013 – Ferdi). But it’s to small for us and our fans. We’re trying to get more exposure in your country. I hate to say it, but if you’d compare Holland to Germany… You’re next to eachother, and in Germany our album is going gold in a month or two and we just did 14 shows there. And just across the border you have Holland, and we do just one show there. We have a lot of fans in your country, and that should be all the more reason for us to come round here more often. In such a small country with so many people, it should be easy to get into the network of tv and radio and grow, one would suspect. And I’m pretty sure one day.

So you’re saying that even after 20 years, there’s still ground to conquer for Manowar?
Oh, definitely. Everywhere we go we’ve gained new ground. Every gig we played on this tour has literally had thousands more people showing up. There have been gigs that were sold out, and that were over-sold by 500 or 600 people. People couldn’t get in. So if this tour is a way of charting the growth of the band, then it’s definitely going up. And I like that. I’d rather be in a band that slowly builds up and keeps growing. That’s a lot better than those bands who suddenly rise to the top and all of a sudden disappear. The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long.

Now that the tour is almost over, how many speakers did you blow on this tour?
Joey blew eight speakers the other night. Eight speakers, during one evening. All at once. I don’t know how he did it, but I suspect that his amplifier or his power distribution just fried ‘em. The total amount of speakers blown. Actually, I don’t think it is as much this time. Our PA-system is brand new, state of the art. And the better the technology the less speakers you can blow. I don’t even think that we blew any of the PA-speakers at all. And that’s the good thing about these times, every musical thing you buy is so much better than a couple of years ago. It’s got all kinds of regulators and fuses to prevent that kind of things from happening.

But still, eight speakers is quite a lot.
Well, it’s because of the insane volume that we play on, and the massive amounts of power used to supply that volume. You know, there’s a LOT of power running through our rigs. I think my guitarrig is 4000 watts alone. And that’s on full! It’s not like I only use 3500 watts, it’s 4000 watts every night.

And what do you do with the speakers that you’ve blown?
We repair them. Our technician Doc repairs everything; he’s the man! He’s been with the band with a long time, and he’s still kicking. He knows exactly how to solve each technical problem.

The new album Warriors Of The World is really good. Is that also thanks to your input?
Well, thanks for the compliment. The band wanted to make this a very diverse record. Something very broad, showing the dynamics of the band. We didn’t want to make the same record as Louder Then Hell, which was a very straightforward rock-record. There was not much orchestration, just guitars, bass and stuff. I listen to a lot of soundtracks, a lot of orchestrated scores. So I was pushing the band a lot. ‘No guys, this part needs a dynamic break’. I can’t take credit for everything of course, I’m a part of the band who just plays his part.

The only point of criticism I had was the order of the songs: there’s no balance. The songs are great, it’s just the order should’ve been different.
Yeah, everybody says that. Well, Joey says he put the songs that way because he wanted it to be like a movie I guess. Starting fast then going slow, and then going fast again and end the thing. You start with a bang, then some quite parts, and as the plot thickens the music kills again. The nice thing about cd’s is that everybody can adjust the order of the songs if they want to, so you’re not necessarily bound to our order. But you’re not the first one to say this. But it’s like this, what has been done has been done.

And how is the album selling?
It’s not our best selling album, but it’s definitely the fastest selling record. About 150.000 copies in six months. Which is quite a lot for a metalband, especially with all the piracy going on and the recordsales being down.

Do you think mp3 filesharing is good or bad?
It’s fucking bad. I don’t care about if it’s for music fans or not. What is that programme called, fucking Napster? I hate it. It’s bad for the music from the industry’s point of view. Because the ones who are hurt by it are the young muscisians. Because muscisians are also people who need to pay they’re bills. When you’re in a band and you’re trying to expand, you can’t bother with a regular job. If you want to get better you need to practise, work hard on your songs and play two or three times a week. If you work a regular job that doesn’t leave you time to develop yourself as a musician. So you need to money from the cd-sales. In other words, once it stops being profitable to be a musician you’ll have less good bands and you’ll have less good music.

And do you think that with all the copying going on, other elements of the industry have become more important? Such as DVD’s, t-shirts and tours?
I think it all ties in together. Because let’s face it. A band may be a cool thing to be in, but in the end it’s also a business. Four of us means four trucks and fifty members. This band has to survive by recordsales. Most people don’t think of this, most people just think of the show and the costs to print a cd, but there’s a lot more to it that most people don’t see. So yeah, right now a band has to diversify as for what’s available regarding merchandising, promoting the band and playing live. And that’s basically what we’ve been doing the last couple of years, by bringing out four DVD’s, two live-CD’s, the tours, a nice selection of merchandise like shirts and hats. It’s all stuff that kids have been asking for in the last couple of years. So yes, like you say that stuff is really important nowadays.

Manowar has a big reputation for living the big life: booze, girls, everything. You’ve been part of this band for eight years now. How much of it is true?
Well, there’s always girls being around heavy metal bands. It’s been that way since metal began. Girls go to see bands, some go to see muscisians, and face it: its great to meet new people, especially woman. But you know, the actual reason why a lot of muscisians pick up woman on tour is because it’s so hard to maintain a stable relationship. It’s not just because they want to fuck them, because they want to forget about the fact that it’s so hard to stay in a relationship if you’re out on the road so much.

As for alcohol. At this point there’s people who indulge in it, and people who indulge less in it. We never go on stage drink or booze before the show. That wouldn’t be fair to the fans who paid a lot to see us. One thing of getting older has to do with being more professional and having a commitment to the show. As it is now we work so hard on stage that by the time we end the shows we’re dead beat, all hot and covered in sweat. You can’t booze if you’re trying to keep that up every night. But what people do after that, it’s their business. That part is private, you know. I can’t tell you who has been the biggest party-animal in the band, because at different times it has been different people. And it’s a kind of a band-secret.

On your last tour you had a special part of the show, where you picked out a guy and a girl from the audience. The girl had to show her tits, and the guy was allowed to play the guitar on one song. What I’ve been wondering is, did you actually pick those people during the show, or did you screen them earlier on?
Actually we’re not doing that on this tour because we don’t want to put on the same show every time. But it was a lot of fun to do it in the past. We just picked someone out of the audience during the show, 100% random. So we’d never know who’d show up on stage. Some days we got really nice chicks on stage, and sometimes they were really ugly. But that’s part of the deal. And as for the guitarplayer, hahaha… Sometimes we had people on stage who were SO bad, they didn’t have a clue what to do with a guitar. They just want to be on stage. But the guitar is always plugged in and amplified, so it’s not like it’s an unconnected instrument. Obviously it’s not mixed in as loud as Joey’s and me. Because let’s face it, you can’t expect someone to play along a song that they only know from listening. But at the begin of the song and the end of the song you can hear them, whatever they play –it’s them.

Okay, that’s about it. What are going to be your future plans?
First I’m going home, hehehe. We’re going to take a break, then work on the new album through the summer to have it ready by Christmass 2003.