Seen by many as one of the finest voices of his generation, American born singer DC COOPER got his first big break when he teamed up with Danish symphonic rockers Royal Hunt. Although their collaboration was to come to an end in less than amicable circumstances after just two albums, it proved to be the catalyst for an ever increasing stream of offers by those who recognised true talent. Now fronting Silent Force, and with a parallel - albeit temporarily on hold - solo career, he still finds the time and energy to embroil himself in numerous other projects. The latest is the extremely ambitious, critically acclaimed rock opera Missa Mercuria, a project which teamed his songwriting abilities with some of the cream of the European progressive/power metal community. Dave Cockett tracked DC down recently to his Pittsburgh home.

With both 'Moving Target' and the fantastic 'Paradox' picking up some amazing press, especially in Japan, the DC Cooper fronted Royal Hunt looked set to conquer both the European and American hard rock markets. It therefore came as a bolt from the blue when it was announced that DC had been unceremoniously dumped from the band.

"Jeez, that's so long ago now," he recalls. "The "Paradox' situation had gone really well - we'd done quite an extensive tour on the back of that in the late fall/early winter of '97 - and at the end of that tour Andre (Andersen) had said that he wanted to take a break for a year. So at that point in time I saw a golden opportunity to do something that I'd always wanted to do, and that was to make my solo album. Besides, I couldn't understand taking a break for a year because let's face it, we weren't Van Halen, and whenever you do this for a living and it's your business, you can't just get up and walk away from it and expect the fans to understand. So as I said, I tried to take advantage of the situation and put a solo team together, and I'm extremely proud of everybody and all the hard work they put in to it. To me it wasn't a solo album, it was a team of great people, and everybody just worked their asses off - to this day, even four years later it's still selling pretty well. So from there," DC continues,"… in fact I'm still working right now on trying to schedule the production dates for my next solo album. Obviously it's taken quite a while, but I've had myself involved in quite a few different things, Silent Force being one of the main things. So at the end of the solo tour I'd come back into the US to try and take a look at where I wanted to take things, and I felt that I needed to get back into a band situation again, at least for my career. I didn't have the financing to spend years in the studio, or to spend tons of money like people such as Peter Gabriel or Steve Winwood - I mean it would be absolutely fantastic to do something like that, but with my background and my situation I needed to get into a band again. So that's when I hooked up with Alex (Beyrodt) and Silent Force."

Released to praise from almost every quarter, there were strong rumours circulating in the gossip columns that Cooper had been fired from Royal Hunt because his solo album was doing significantly more business than Andersen's own solo album 'Changing Skin'.

"I really wish that I could answer that question because I've heard that numerous times," DC laughs. "If there was any truth to that then I'd just have to shake my head in shame because this is a professional business you know. Something like that … well, it would just be ridiculous if that was the case. I don't know if that was the case, but I really don't think it would be true in Andre's case, someone of his stature. I always respected him as a writer and composer, and if that's the case then it's just too bad. I worked really hard on that solo thing, and one of my main things was to make sure that I separated myself from the Royal Hunt situation, that was my biggest goal and I think I achieved that."

All of which brings us inevitably to the real reason for the parting of the ways.

"Basically my contract with the band was up in the middle of the year when I was recording my solo album," DC explains, "so we went back to the drawing board and started negotiating a new contract for me to continue on. At that point I had every intention of staying with Royal Hunt, there was never any intention on my part to quit. And we were pretty close to closing up negotiations and having an agreement - in fact we were at an agreement - and then I got a phone call from a friend of mine in Europe. He said to me 'Man, you'd better log on to the internet and take a look at the Royal Hunt page'. So I went on there and there it was posted in good old black and white, they fired me over the internet, ha, ha! That's a true story, no fax, no phone call or anything, they just basically fired me on the internet, which technically I was already out of the band because my contract was up. That was about one of the lowest things that has ever happened to me in this business, but in a way I took it as a blessing in disguise. It didn't bother me at all, and in a way I was kinda amazed by that because I thought that it should bother me, but I knew that things were going well for my solo record, and that anything for the future would be good. I did however feel extremely bad for the fans, they'd supported us for so many years and then the whole thing just got down to pointing fingers, which was sad because we'd made some great music together."

Staying with the 'DC Cooper' album for a moment, one of the things that really struck me was the remarkable writing partnership which had developed between Cooper and former Conception guitarist Tore Ostby.

"We were gonna carry on and do another record right away," DC admits, "but then Silent Force came along and that became my priority, and I guess Tore got caught up with Ark. In a way I guess that's the good thing about solo contracts because they're a little more relaxed in the timing. Now this one is extremely relaxed, and it's probably gonna be up towards five years between solo albums and that's unfortunate, but between Silent Force and other projects or guest appearances I've just been so busy. And also, over the past coupe of years I've built a studio here in Pittsburgh so I'm producing, I'm doing vocal coaching … I've got myself involved in quite a few different things."

Diversification, a hard fact of life for most rock musicians these days.

"Absolutely," DC agrees, "because you can't just sit and survive on one thing unless you're selling some serious numbers, and there's not a whole lot of newcomer bands doing that. I've managed to build myself a fairly decent career, and my biggest thing was to gain respect amongst the fans and amongst my peers; that's something I'm really proud of. Hopefully that's gonna carry over and keep me in business for quite a few years yet. Pretty much everything is written for the second record right now. It's just about ready to go to Dennis Ward my producer for him to review, then I'm sure we'll have changes to make and improvements here and there. I'm negotiating with a couple of people right now … it's gonna be a change in people from last time. I'd love to work with Tore Ostby again and somewhere down the line I'm sure I will, it's just the whole thing is down to timing. I have an unknown guitarist I found right here in Pittsburgh two years ago, he's an absolutely phenomenal guitar player and I wish I'd met him years back. He's gonna be my new guitarist, and he's really been working hard with me in the studio putting all the material together. It's most likely gonna be Gunter Werno (Vanden Plas) on keyboards, I had a quick meeting with him when I was in Europe a couple of weeks ago, and he's likely to be staying. Everything else is kinda up in the air until we have some numbers worked out."

On the face of it, Silent Force was perhaps not quite the next move most fans would've expected.

"Well, part of that was the brainchild of my management team," DC confesses. "They'd known Alex for quite a long time, and they'd known me, and the situation just presented itself for us to do something together so I just got on an aeroplane. First off they sent me some material, the first album 'The Empire of Future' was already finished as far as the music was concerned. That was a huge challenge for me, to absolutely take everything that was written because I couldn't make any changes whatsoever, I had to work the lyrics and melodies into something that was already finished … I'm real happy with the way things turned out though. And the great thing is that Alex and I ended up becoming the best of friends, business partners, and musicians together. So that was a pretty smart move on the part of Kosta (Zafiriou), he was the drummer on my solo album - he's working with the management team now and it was pretty much his idea. I've put my hand on his shoulder on a number of occasions and said 'Good call' because I think he had good intuition on that one."

Although 'The Empire Of Future' was pretty much finished by the time DC joined Silent Force, the follow up 'Infatuator' was much more a band effort between him and Alex Beyrodt.

"Yeah, and pretty much the same for the third one which we've just finished pre-production on," DC affirms. "We finished the pre-production work in Europe a couple of weeks ago, and we're just about to schedule the drums so that we can start the recording proper. He (Alex) throws me out the basic ideas and lays down a few rough demos, and then I'll say 'let's do this', or 'I need another bridge here', or 'cut this short' … we're a great team at working stuff like that together."

As I said earlier, Silent Force was quite a surprise to many DC Cooper fans, not least because it's without doubt the heaviest thing he's been involved in.

"It was a little bit of a shock to some people I guess," he nods in agreement. "I'd say that the 'Infatuator' album was a little bit more aggressive, not the whole album, just a couple of the tracks like 'All Guns Blazing'. Those were the songs that seemed to stick in people's mind for some reason which kinda bothered me a little because others such as 'Hear Me Calling' were more the kind of melodic/dramatic stuff that people know me for. So it was a little bit harder for some people to accept - some people outright hated it, whilst other's turned round and said 'Oh, this is great!'. It's always the same when you try to please the masses, you're always gonna have your positives and negatives. So for this next one were trying to take a cross section of all those opinions in an effort to try and make it towards something that'll make everybody happy, but you can never please everybody all of the time. In general, I try to explain to people that my solo stuff and some of the other things I've been involved in, I see that as doing a bit more of a mellow angle, whereas with Silent Force I'm kinda getting all my aggression out. I think it's good to have that mix, it's not like one day I'm doing country then the next I'm doing rap or something … sometimes people are just a little bit too critical on the artist."

Issued in Japan a couple of months back, and now on the verge of a European release, DC's latest project is the exquisite rock opera 'Missa Mercuria', a bold and daring venture which teams him with some of the most exciting names in the business.

"Karin Forstner, she's the creator of the whole story and concept," DC explains. "She had come to me and asked me if I was interested in singing the lead parts for the piece. So we sat down together and I said 'Okay, who's gonna be writing the music for the project', and she told me that it was gonna be someone from my past who would be writing it. And I said 'Well, if he's writing the material then I won't perform on it,' and she replied 'I definitely want you to sing, what can we do?' In the end we agreed that she'd give me a couple of weeks and let me see if I could put together a team of writers and musicians to come up with the music... and that's basically what happened."

It would therefore seem that DC was instrumental in putting the whole thing together from the beginning.

"I brought in Gunter (Werno) and Stefan (Lill) from Vanden Plas," he says. "Alex was one of the writers… pretty much everyone that was involved. That was another thing I worked pretty closely with my management company on - we started throwing ideas around, they came up with the contacts and we went from there. Then when they all started writing there was a lot of material written, but we just chose that which we thought would be best for the album, you know, the stuff that would give that whole wide spectrum of sounds and moods. I mean, there's a couple of things on there that have a jazz feel, through to metal, to melodic, to operatic - I think we have a pretty wide selection of material on there."

The Missa Mercuria story with its symbolic blending of fantasy and mythological imagery can't have been the easiest of tales to turn into a meaningful lyric.

"It was extremely difficult," DC confesses, "that was another one of those great challenges in my career. If you read the story itself, what I basically had to do was to play around with words to try and get it to work as a lyric. I had to twist the words to the point where they became more understandable and meaningful to the people who were expected to buy it. It was a bit of a compromise between Karin and me, we're two very different people from different backgrounds, we have two very different political views, as you'll probably notice from the story she's very feministic. And I basically said 'Look, you're really trying to narrow the audience down. Give me some room to work here, and let me come up with something that's acceptable to everyone'. I think I did a pretty decent job, at least I hope I did … from the reviews so far I guess I did what I was supposed to do. Karin and I … we definitely butted heads quite a few times on different things, but there were a couple of things in the story where I just said 'Look, I will not sing this, and I wouldn't expect anyone else to', because I had to keep in mind that by this stage I was writing for other singers. So I had to be real careful not to twist the story so far out of whack that it had nothing to do with her synopsis, yet at the same time I had to present it in such a way so as not to alienate a large part of the potential audience."

At what point did the idea to involve other singers besides himself enter the frame I wondered?

"Well, I guess when I started to understand the point of having all the different aspects," DC offers, "of the elements, of the earth ... and Mercuria herself. I sat there and thought to myself, whenever I was beginning to write it was always 'He' and 'She', or 'they did this …', it wasn't working because I was playing a narrator and yet I was narrating the whole story by myself. So at that point the sensible thing seemed to be to bring all these other people in. And I think it works, especially with the female voices, just having those different characters. David's (Readman, Pink Cream 69) voice is so warm, he's got that strong, throaty, barrel-chested voice … everything really … and Andy Kuntz (Vanden Plas). There's so many different aspects of the vocal qualities on that album, I'm just really pleased with the final result. It took us about a year to put the whole thing together, from starting writing to the final mixes."

Already the subject of some very favourable reviews, 'Missa Mercuria' is slowly starting to gather momentum on the streets.

"I'm very pleasantly surprised at just how well it has been received," says DC. "Everything that I get involved in I work as hard as I can at, but I always try to keep my feet firmly on the ground because I know just how nasty this business can be. Something that you pour your heart and soul into … for example, during the final mixes of the 'Infatuator' album I was sitting in the studio with tears rolling down my face saying 'Man, this has to do something'. I just felt it in my heart because we'd worked so hard on it, but then when it came out it didn't do as well as we expected. So you know, there's all kind of excuses with the economy and this market or that market, but the bottom line is it didn't do as well as we anticipated - so from that point on, I'm going to keep myself very grounded in everything I do. I'm gonna work as hard as I possibly can so that I know in my heart I did a great job, but then everything that happens above and beyond that will come as a pleasant surprise. Like with this album, I kept myself very calm and relaxed about it, and basically just waited to see what happened … and it's turned out great so far, way better than I'd ever hoped for."

Unfortunately for US fans, a domestic release at this point looks unlikely.

"Nothing has been mentioned to me so far," DC affirms. "We just finished up this small tour we did here last week, and I probably … I don't know how many copies I signed. I believe there were about 3,000 people there for this small festival, and I probably signed a couple of hundred of them, so I know that the imports are already coming in. So I don't know what's really happening with any kind of American release but if they don't do it soon, it wouldn't really be worth it. The imports are already here, and actually, the people who bought them tend to get pretty pissed off if the thing then gets released because US releases tend to be about half the price of imports. For some reason that seems to make 'em pissed off at me, ha, ha!"

As ever, whether the Missa Mercuria story continues to a second release or even to some live work, depends on the level of sales the debut generates.

"We'd love to continue," admits DC, "but it's all down to financing. You need financing for anything like that, and that's all Karin's department. Whatever happens from here with the success of it, we'll just have to wait and see."

With such a patently vivid concept, one thing that strikes me is that it would translate well into a screen play of some sort.

"That would be really cool," agrees DC. "In fact, not to step away from the story, but I'm working on something right now that we're shooting for a screen play. I'm working with Gary Werkhamp from Shadow Gallery, he's writing all the music, and Mark Zonder (Fates Warning) is playing drums … and I'm writing all the lyrics and the melodies, so that's what we're shooting for with that situation. But with Missa Mercuria, you never know in this business, one minute it could be a piece of dog crap, and the next somebody grabs hold of it and says 'Hey, this is a great idea!' At first when I was writing, I was writing with a live stage performance in my mind because it's easier for me to visualise something like that, especially when I'm working with different singers. I'm thinking in terms of acts, and scenes, and costumes … expressions of their face, you know, I went through the whole gamut to make sure I was able to get the emotions down correctly."

At the end of the day however, whatever happens with the Missa Mercuria situation, I'm confident that DC Cooper will remain a powerful force on the hard rock scene for many years to come.