AYREON INTERVIEW

One of the most exciting releases in the past years have been Ayreon's "Universal Migrator". A concept album written by Dutch guitarist Arjen Van Lucassen and performed by a host of incredible musicians and vocalists from around the World. We didn't pass on the opportunity to speak with Arjen, so one late September night 2000 the phone rang, and at the other end of the line we had mr. Ayreon himself...

Interview by Claus Jensen and Lars F. Larsen

C : First of all, I'd like to go a long way back. What happened when you left Vengeance?

"Well, that was in '92, I think. In '89 we kicked out our singer, and then we tried with a new singer called Ian Parry (now in Elegy), but unfortunately we couldn't get a deal with him, so we shopped the new record for about 2 years, and in '92 we stopped by doing a "farewell tour", which became a success, so everyone wanted to start again, but I had enough of it. I wanted to do my own thing, and from the beginning I had planned to do a Rock opera, or something like that. But then first I did a solo album. I recorded a few songs where I was singing, and suddenly there was a record company who wanted to release it, and I was kind of surprised, coz' I had only written those two songs. They asked me, if I had more material, and I said "Of course, I have a whole album"!! They wanted to hear it, so I told them "Ok, I'll play it for you in a month", and so the whole album was written within a month."

"The album was released under the name "Anthony", which is my middle name, but it was a big flop, coz' it had nothing to do with Vengeance and nothing to do with Rock in general. It was a bit like The Beatles, - some weird stuff on it. It sold a couple of thousand copies. That's it."

"Then for a short while I was in a band called "Planet 9", and we played some music in the vein of Rainbow and Whitesnake, but already then I knew I'd do this rock opera, and in '93 I started working on that, and decides that this was something I wanted to do. I didn't want to compromise with other musicians, who wanted to play AC/DC or whatever. I didn't want to compromise with the companies who'd try to commercialize it. I wanted to do something I like, and I'd put all my influences from different decades into it, from The Beatles in the 60's, the prog. like Pink Floyd, and rock like Rainbow, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and Uriah Heep in the 70's, the Heavy Metal in the 80's - such as Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. And on top of things; my own style. I thought to myself: "Even if it's the last thing I do, I'll do this 1 album that I'll really be proud of, and play for my children, to be able to say: This is what daddy likes"! hahaha..."

"So, I made the first AYREON album. I really didn't have a big budget, so I tried to only involve ex-singers that I had worked with in the past, but then I asked a few other guys like the singer of Golden Earring, Lenny Wolf of Kingdom Come, and they all said yes. So then I recorded "The final Experiment" in '93 and everybody said: "You're crazy doing a rock opera - and making it progressive is even worse". But I told them that I didn't care what they said, I'd done it, and that was it. Maybe I'd be cleaning toilets from then, but...hahaha..."

"Anyway, I didn't get a record deal with it. The record companies all said "Fuck off man, Nirvana is the hot thing. What are you doing with your silly rock opera"?? I shopped it around for a year, until JVC in Japan showed some interest, and a very small record company in Holland that hadn't done any releases before this showed interest as well. But I had no choice and this company REALLY liked the music, and was ready to work very hard for it. It was released and everybody was surprised, because it was well received. And that was the first AYREON album."

C : To me, it sounded like bringing King Crimson into the 90's??

"I love the 1. King Crimson album, it's great. I'm not a big fan of the later stuff, but I guess you could be right after all. But obviously, there's also a lot of Pink Floyd, Emerson, Lake and Palmer stuff in it, and somehow people were waiting for that. I was surprised myself!"

C : I remember all of the press was going crazy. Did you have the feeling of creating something out of this world - something not done before??

"I had decided for myself, that I had to do it really "big", to make an impact, coz' if you do something as big as that, and it's not good, the press will kill you off. For instance, I went to England, to look through the whole story of King Arthur, because I didn't want to make any mistakes anywhere, not in the story, history or the music. I had a feeling that I needed to do it perfectly. But I didn't FEEL that I was doing something new. I was summoning up on what I grew up with, but the mix of all these things, and the sound on the album - even a death metal singer - did actually create something new!"

C : You also created this whole concept about the magician/minstrel called AYREON??

"Yeah, AYREON is a minstrel that receives messages from the future. In 2084 the world is destroyed, and, the people at that time feel, that the only way for them to save the Earth is, to send messages back through time, about how the world is destroyed by war. The messages are received be AYREON who is blind, and therefore has developed a 6th sense to pick up these transmissions."

C : You must have a god imagination, to come up with a story like that??

"Actually, I always start out with a small and simple story. It just started with someone, who could see into the future. Then I started writing, and thought: "Why didn't his visions come from the future"? And it just grows. It's there in my head 24 hours a day - even in my sleep, so it doesn't come easy. It's not like I had the whole story in my head to begin with. I worked on it for a year or so."

C : On the second album, "Actual Fantasy", you did a whole new concept, lyrically as well as musically??

"Yepp, I don't like to repeat myself. I hate that. Every album is different from the other. Everyone was expecting "The final Experiment" part 2, but I felt like: "let's do something different". This time I wanted to do the whole thing myself, without guest musicians, and I wanted to make this record a little more modern, so I made a little more electronic stuff, and only used 3 unknown singers. I wanted to use them as instruments - not as singers. The concept was fantasy, because it is the opposite of Virtual Reality! I guess, I was being a little arrogant, and the album didn't sell very much, even though it was as good as the first one."

C : In the lyrics of the album, it seems to me, some of the songs are taken from novels and movies. One of them is: "The name of the Rose"??

"Well, suddenly, I had to come up with 9 stories in stead of 1 whole story. I thought about it, and figured I couldn't do it, so I thought: "Why not steal these stories from novels, etc."? So I used "The name of the Rose", "The never ending Story", and a couple of unknown films like: "The navigator", "Medieval Odyssey" - weird movies!!"

C : So you're a film freak??

"Absolutely."

C : On that cd, you included an extra track with a video. Nowadays a lot of bands are doing that, but back then it was pretty uncommon??

"It was kind of new. It cost me a lot of money, and I don't think it was worth it. I mean, I don't regret it, but financially it was not worth it. The clips was done by 3 students who worked on it for ½ a year, so you can imagine how much I paid, plus I bought the computers they used. By the way: They got a big company now!! To sum it up, the video was played only one time on television!!!"

C : Do you know how much the cd sold??

"No, my record company told me not to mention any numbers, due to the fact that if I tell anyone: It sold 20.000, then in 5 years time everyone still think it only sold 20.000. They forget that the album could have sold a lot more in that period. But I do tell people that the album entered the German charts, which is a proof that it did very well."

C : And you can live out of it??

"Yes, because I'm alone and don't have fellow musicians to split things with. I have the copyright stuff for myself. I have my own studio to do things in. I do all parts myself, apart from the drums, keyboard solo's and vocals."

C : And you do a fantastic job on the production!!

"Thank you. It's all the small factors. I couldn't produce another band. I start with the drums and they have to be brilliant. Then I'm adding the bass, and it has to be brilliant too, then guitars etc. And if just one of these elements are not good, then the production won't any good either. If I had to produce another band, and I for instance didn't like the drummers performance, then that's it. I'd tell him: Please go away, and find another to play those drums - hahaha. So I've decided not to produce other bands, although I've had many offers."

C : You've been involved in the last 2 Vengeance albums??

"Involved...? I made them myself alone!!!"

C : Even if you're not in the line-up, you're still helping them out??

"I played everything on the latest album, hahaha. The drums are on computer - oh, I'm telling you too many secrets now, hahaha. Only in the end, we dragged in a few guitar players, who did some solo's. In fact, it was never meant to be a Vengeance album. I just helped out the old Vengeance singer. He came to my place and asked me, if I could write him some songs. So, I went to my studio and threw a few songs out of my sleeve, so to speak, recorded them like a demo, and said: "well, here you are - find a band". But suddenly a company was crazy about the stuff, and wanted to release it as Vengeance. I said: "I did it all alone, and it doesn't sound like Vengeance", but I told them that I didn't want anything to do with it. They would have to find a band and promote it and do everything else themselves. That's the story of that album. I'm not happy about it, 'cause the album isn't good enough."

C : Actually, the latest Vengeance album, "Flight 19", reminds me of what Dream Theater did on "Falling into Infinity". It has the same vibe/feeling. It's more progressive then Vengeance ever were, but at the same time, it's melodic??

"...but dark. The reason I don't like it that much is, that it could have been done better. I could have used real drums and so on, but it was just helping out a friend, so....it was never meant to be an official album."

C : On to the new album "Universal Migrator". This is the best album, I've heard in the last 10 years!!!

"That's a great compliment, thank you very much."

C : It's so fantastic. It has the best song I've ever laid my ears upon!!

""My house on Mars"??"

C : No, "One small step". I love that song, but as said, the whole album is blowing me away!!

"I have to admit that it's probably my favorite album too, but I'm not objective enough to conclude that. I believe there are no weak songs on it. Maybe "Temple of the Cat" could've been better."

C : First song is "My house on Mars". You chose to work with Johan from Tiamat. The song is very Pink Floyd'ish, and I know that Johan is a huge Pink Floyd fan. Is that the reason why you chose him for that song??

"I think so. I think it's also the reason, why I love the 2 latest albums so much, because there is a lot of Pink Floyd there, and also a lot of Sisters of Mercy, which I like. I love the combination of the two, and I had this dark depressive song, with depressive lyrics, and I then needed a really depressive guy, and the first one who came into mind was Johan. I heard a lot about him: "We don't know about this guy", and so on, but I wanted him. I love his albums, so I tried to get him, by emailing his manager. Within 2 days, I had an answer, that he was interested. He had heard AYREON, and liked it. "It's very god and progressive" - that's what he said. Then I called Johan, and he is a real nice. I told him, that I wanted HIM to do the vocal melodies, 'cause I like what he has done on his own albums. He did them on my answering machine and a month later he took the train, and stayed at my place for 2 days. It worked out great. It's such an atmospheric song."

C : I was in the studio with Johan, when he did "A deeper kind of Slumber", and I asked him where he'd like to be the most. He told me, he wanted to be alone on the moon!!!, so this song is like taken out of his mind - in reverse. But the song is fantastically suited to his voice and vocal style!!

"At that moment I thought:"It HAS to be him". It's a success."

C :Next song is "2084", and you used Lana Lane on that one? She's involved in her solo stuff, as well as on the Eric Norlander album??

Here, we were told a secret by Arjen, that we cannot reveal on our page...hehehe.

C : Next song is "One small Step". It's so amazing. You really captured the atmosphere about the moonlanding??

"Well, it's the only self biographical song on the album. It is true. My father did take me out of bed. I'm very tall - more than 2 meters - and already back then I was tall. My father dragged me down the stairs, and my legs were bumping against the steps. I really remember this. I didn't want to see it, but eventually I did, and it made a big impression on me at 4 o' clock at night. And I believe I've been able to make you feel you were there. That comes out in the song. Then of course the voice of Edward Reekers, who's on all the albums. It's THE voice of AYREON, I think."

C : Everytime I hear that song, I'm almost crying, because the feeling is so huge.

"I love my emotional solo in that song. One of the best things, musically, I've ever done."

C : Next song is "The shooting company of Captain Franz B. Cocq". That's a really weird singer you found for that song??

"I got John Lennon!!! That's another secret. I'm telling you al the secrets today...No, I heard an album with this guy, and he's completely unknown. I thought: "Well, this sounds like John Lennon", and I had this melody for another Pink Floyd'ish song, but I wanted it to be a cross of P.F. and The Beatles, and I wanted to finally write a song about Holland. You can always write about King Arthur and all the legend stories. I've never written about Holland though, so I'd like to write a song about "The Golden Century" - Rembrandt, "The Nightwatch", which is his most famous painting. If you know King Crimson, you know "The Nightwatch". Then I read some material about it, and found out that the original title was not "The Nightwatch", because the painting wasn't painted at night. The original title is: "The shooting company of Captain Franz Benning Cocq, and Leutenant William de Reiter, who are walking through the gates", so it's a very long title!! I then suddenly had that "Sergeant Peppers lonely heart club band" - feeling. That's how that song was created."

C :On "Dragon of the Sea", you're using Lana Lane again. You can't get enough of her or what?

"Well, Eric Norlander really liked that song, and he asked me, if he could write lyrics for it. He had thought about letting Lana sing it, and since "2084" originally was meant for Anneke Van Giersbergen (The Gathering) who unfortunately wasn't allowed by her band to sing on my album, I agreed on letting Lana do both "2084" and "Dragon Of The Sea"."

C: "Temple Of The Cat" is sung by this young girl that doesn't exactly sound like she has had anything to do with metal before?

Well, that's a funny story. I met Jacqueline Govaert accidentally when I was in another studio to mix some different stuff. When I got into the studio, there was this band called KREZIP, with some young girls in it, recording a demo. They were very shy as they were not more then 16-17 years old, and when I heard this girl singing, I immediately wanted her to sing on my album, so I asked her if she was interested? She was, and I invited her to my home, so she could listen to the song that I wanted her to sing. In my house I have this huge jar with lollies, and when she visited me, the first thing she did was saying: "Whauw, can I have some candy?" - hahaha, which made me feel like this dirty old man! Well, she turned out to sing the song perfectly, and the funny story is, that afterwards her band signed with a major company, and they have sold more than 150.000 copies of their debut album!!! So, I thought that her appearance on my album would help her band out, while it actually turned out the other way. I'm getting huge free advertising every time they sell a record.

C: "Carried By The Wind". Do we have to talk about the singer on that one (sung by Arjen himself)?

No, he's horrible - hahaha.

C: This song is more like a metal-ballad thing. I think it ought to be on the second album.

I think it belongs on the first because of the melodies and also, it reminds me of "The Final Experiment", and then I put the person Ayreon into it, thus adding a link to the first AYREON album.

C:"The Druids Turned To Stone". Lars and I had a big discussion, because I'm a huge fan of this singer, and Lars is kind'a not crazy about him.

That's the first person I hear, who doesn't like Damian Wilson. He's an absolutely fabulous singer, and the favourite singer of the fans.

C: I'm a big fan of him as well, and I also have his solo album, which is so great. I think of him as the typical progressive singer, who could have sung in Marillion or something like that.

I sent the song to him, and he didn't like it at first. He said:"You know I'm an AYREON fan - you know I want to sing on the album, but I don't like it, I don't like it!!" I told him not to do it then, but he wanted to do it, because it was AYREON. Then he came over here and did his vocals, and now he's very satisfied with the result. But I think I'll use him on all future AYREON albums.

C: GOOD!!

I don't really like his singing style on "Threshold". He shouldn't sing high-pitched all the time. Do you like "Cosmas"?

C: Yeah.

Well, there he shows a lot of different styles to his voice, but on "Threshold" it's up in the high notes all the time, and it gets a bit tiring. I wanted him to use the full register, and he does suit my style of writing with that.

C: "First Man On Earth", sounds like a Beatles song, huh?

Yeah, absolutely…

C: It sounds as if you've found the 5. Beatles member?

I called up Neil and gave him a choice of singing on either the very heavy/power influenced album, or the album with a "Beatles song", and he didn't have to think twice. "I'll go for the Beatles-one", he said.

C: This is also a fantastic song. Lars and I immediately thought: Go make a video for that song - it's a hit!!

That's what I thought as well, but the record company said no, and the distributor said no, coz' they wanted to release "Temple Of The Cat" as the single. I know that Neil himself love "First Man On Earth", and the problem is that we do not decide these things.

C: I believe that since the song is "Beatlesque", it would go for a brit-pop song almost.

Maybe we should have OASIS cover it, hahaha.

C: Then you round up the album with a song leading into the next album. A very wise move, in my opinion, Arjen.

L: How did you manage to get all these singers (Bruce Dickonson, Russel Allen, Timo Kotipelto etc.) to sing like 10/15% better, than they normally do in their respective bands?

Well, I made them sing different. If it's better, that's your opinion - and mine too, of course. I did not want to use them as in their bands. I didn't want to put Timo into a Stratovarius inspired song, because then the fans would be better off buying "Infinite", and not my album. And the same with Bruce D. I put him in a song where he has all the space in the world to sing, and to show off, and of course I called up all these guys and told them how big a fan I was, and asked them if they wanted to sing on my project. When they finally came to my studio, they wanted to show off, and to really impress me - nothing negative about it at all. I'm a big fan of all these singers and they had never sung the songs before, and it creates a certain chemistry between the involved parts.

L: You didn't stand behind them and kicked them in their butts, saying:"Do this, do that". Did you let them improvise?

Absolutely. On the first AYREON album, I wanted the singers to do EXACTLY what I'd written. If they tried to change the melody line, I'd have them stop singing, but that's stupid, because you can't limit these great singers. I'd be crazy to dictate Bruce, saying "Do this - do that", because he'd be locked. Having said that, there were singers, who did exactly what I told them to do. That's also OK. Ralf Scheepers or Fabio Leone did what I'd written on the paper, whereas Russel Allen, Bruce and Timo just went for it, so it depends on the singer.

L: Sir Russel Allen???

Hahaha - I haven't heard anything from him since, so I hope he's not angry. He's a "Knight" in his normal job ( acting as a knight in this Dungeon and dragon restaurant ), so it was kind of a joke from my side, you know. So I put "Sir" onto the cover, hahaha - but he actually hasn't called me since, and before that he was on the phone every week telling how much he liked the music!! But Russel has done a fabulous job on "Dawn Of A Million Souls".

L: Yeah, he certainly did. That one, and the Bruce Dickinson song "Into The Black Hole" are my absolute favorites on the album. How long time did it take to record these two albums?

Writing, recording and mixing took approximately 2 years. I got my own studio, so writing and recording are a bit of a mixture here. Sometimes I'm in the studio writing stuff, and sometimes recording stuff. It's a long time, but I'm a real perfectionist. I work with all these different kinds of equipment and that takes a lot of time. It's not like a digital synthesizer, and then just using one program, and that's it. I use a lot of analogue synths and I can spend several hours on finding this little sound. I really love fooling around in my studio.

L: In the booklet, it says that the different singers have been singing their stuff at different places? Did you travel around to record them?

Yeah, I did Neil Morse in L.A., and I went to Germany a couple of times, but most of the guys I had flown in - Fabio from Italy, Timo from Finland and as far as the instrumentalists, I just sent them tapes, and they recorded at their home. The instrumentalists are playing solo's and if it should be a personal solo, it wouldn't be good if I was there during the recording. And it would be too much traveling.

L: So they had total artistically free hands?

Yes, absolutely.

L: I noticed in the info sheet, that you have been studying the works of Stephen Hawking, just to get to know everything about quasars, black holes, supernova's etc. How long time did you spend studying that?

Well, studying is a bit overrated, I think. I rented all his 8 videos, each with a running time of 1 hour, and I saw them all twice, and I made a lot of notes. Because you see, I can't read. I've never read a book in my life, so when it's on TV and there's this voice explaining, it's a lot easier. So I had it from TV documentaries. I've always been interested in the universe: where does it begin, where does it end, what lies beyond the end of it, and so on. And being a perfectionist, I didn't want to make any mistakes. As I told Claus, I went to England for the first album, to investigate the whole "King Arthur" story, and this time I didn't want to get emails from astrophysics teachers stating that I've made mistakes, like "A pulsar is not like that", or "the Sirrah is not in Andromeda".

L: Your interpretation of how Stonehenge has been build is like: WAUW! I went to Stonehenge myself, and when I read the lyrics for "The Druids Turned To Stone", I totally freaked out:

It was very dangerous to write about. I don't know if you saw Spinal Tap? They made this joke movie about HM bands, and they use Stonehenge in it, coz' it must be the stupidest thing to do a song about, so it was hard to do it, but I didn't mention the name "Stonehenge" anywhere.

L: On "Planet Y", there's this electronic voice. Is this some kind of living entity from that planet?

Do you know my previous album "Into The Electric Castle"?

L: No.

It's a link to that album, which is about this alien who has abducted 8 people from the Earth, and this alien is called "Forever". So we find out on the flight of the migrator that this alien lives on planet Y. That's why you hear the computer voice saying "Remember Forever".

L: How come you didn't contribute on the Pink Floyd tribute that's being done now?

They didn't ask me. I once did this Arcade thing called "The Pink Floyd Songbook", and I sang 4 songs on it.

L: What about tourplans? It must be pretty difficult to set up a tour with all the different people at the same time?

With all these musicians, it would be impossible. Just to get Bruce Dickinson into my studio, took me a year of calling him, calling managers, calling hotels. So just to get these musicians even one day into my studio, arranging flight tickets for them was so hard organizing, which means that getting all these guys on the same stage at the same time would be impossible. There's always gonna be one, who's on tour or in the studio with his own band. But who knows, maybe I'll do it one day - maybe I'll wake up thinking "I have to do it now".

L: We'll definitely arrange the show in Copenhagen, hahaha. Future projects? Do you have anything going on now?

Well, usually after each album I fall into a black hole, like on the cover of "Flight Of The Migrator", and I've got no inspiration and no ideas. It's horrible, but I just have to go through it. I'm in that period right at the moment. But I had a lot of offers from musicians I worked with, to do something - for example Damian Wilson, but you probably wouldn't like that, hahaha…

L: No, it's not that I don't like him, I just believe that his voice sounds strained when doing the high pitch.

Yes I agree, but it's not true. This guy can keep on singing. He's incredible. On my previous album, he sang 9 songs in one day - 12 hours!! He works on this theatre show in England "Les Miserable", and he's doing the show 8 times a week, so…but I agree. It does sound like he's pushing sometimes. It's very strange. To finish your question: I also had an offer from Bruce Dickinson to do a concept thing. That would of course be great. A couple of weeks ago I did an interview in Belgium, and they asked me about Bruce, and suddenly he sat beside me. He came to that interview just for me, so I'm very flattered…

L: Well, from Intromental a big BUY THIS ALBUM goes out to everyone reading this interview, and a thank you to Arjen for spending his evening with us on the phone.

Thank you very much. !!!!!