The last few years have seen quite a bit of turbulence in the HELLOWEEN camp. First of all their 'The Dark Ride' album saw a radical rethink in direction, it's moody, detuned riffs and angst ridden melodies taking the band into hitherto uncharted waters. Then, despite some fairly positive press, the hastily papered over cracks began to reappear on the last tour, ultimatey culminating in the departure of guitarist Roland Grapow and drummer Uli Kusch. However, after a period of reflection and rebuilding, the five piece are back to full strength again; and with new album 'Rabbit Don't Come Easy' they've once more rediscovered their classic roots. Dave Cockett spoke recently with affable guitarist Michael 'Weikie' Weikath about the split and their plans for the future.

Although personally I felt that 'The Dark Ride' was a great album, there's no denying that to the average Helloween fan it marked a radical paradigm shift.

"The majority of the band at the time felt that we should pursue a more modern direction," confirms Weikie. "Actually, I can tell you that I strongly disapproved of that direction, and I had a really hard time being in that particular version of Helloween at the time. And so eventually it led to Roland and Uli being fired from the band. Looking back at the album now, I don't have such a problem with it because it's all in the past, I finally got to figure out what it was all about … but at the time, I really didn't like it at all. To me it was like … if you lack your own identity to pursue your real Helloween thing, and you don't know any better than to come up with those dark riffs and everything. It's like a kid who doesn't really know how to write songs, chances are he'll come up with something dark because it's easier to hide the fact that he doesn't really know what it is he wants to do."

"And that's what I think was one of the main drivers behind the whole 'The Dark Ride' album," he continues. "I'm not trying to say that every twelve year old guitarist in the States could come up with those riffs, but there was such a fuss made about it at the time. "Oh, you've got to play it right, and don't let Weiki into the studio coz he'll just fuck it up!' … but later when I found out what it was all about with just those riffs, it was like 'My god, we've spent all that time on the production, and for what? A few simple riffs, and you guys have been making yourselves look like fucking kings because of this shit!' I'm sorry, it's just that sometimes the undercurrent of what went on still gets to me … I don't want to bash it entirely, it's just how everything came across, ha, ha!"

So it wasn't really something that Sanctuary pushed the band into?

"Not really," Weikie confirms," it's like this. If they're being confronted with material like that, what can a manager say? I mean, he can say 'This is a lot of crap, go back and do it all again' or he can say 'Oh, this sounds quite dark, so you wanna pursue that direction? I'm gonna push it quite strongly if you want me to …', what's a manager gonna say? So I mean, you can't blame Rod … and actually, he asked if there was anyone in the band who was against it, but I kept my mouth shut because I'd already voiced my opinions to the band earlier on. Funny thing was, when they came up with all those recordings and I said 'That's pretty dark', they said 'No Weikie, it's not dark at all really, you'll see that it's gonna turn out to be something different.' So then in the studio we had it recorded and everything, manager comes in and says 'Oh, that's pretty dark' and they say 'Yeah, great isn't it!' I mean … that's just bollocks isn't it?"

And from there on in, things just seemed to spiral downwards, ultimately leading to Grapow and Kusch being shown the door.

"Yeah, we fired them," admits Weiki, "because on the subsequent tour there was no real connection between the band anymore. I mean … if you're a band out on tour, as a unit, and the drummer wouldn't talk to you for maybe 2 or 3 weeks, you hardly got a word out of him, I don't call that a band. It's like if this guy is trying to circumvent me, or evade me completely, it's clear to me what is going on. I talk a lot, I'm a funny character, and I smell funny and all this … I'm not to be taken too seriously, it's sometimes better to get out of my way if you know what I mean. But for a band to function effectively, there has to be that chemistry. And if I hear things like 'Weiki can't play guitar', or 'He's too dirty', or 'He's old fashioned', what can I do … what am I supposed to think? So at times it was pretty much an unbearable situation."

"And it was like Markus," Weikie adds, "he tried to get along with all this because he also had the notion that being a bit more modern would help … blah, blah, blah … but on the other hand, you can't really change a concept like Helloween. You can't change what you have when you have so many fans, to entirely reinvent it with something like 'The Dark Ride' … and why? That means actually bowing to the media on all this, and that's something I don't like, Helloween has never been about that."

Once the dust had settled, the first task was to find replacements for Roland and Uli.

"First of all we were thinking of Henjo Richter from Gamma Ray," admits Weiki, "but that was just because he's a long time friend of the band, we've known him since '89 or something. Actually, the funny thing was that he sent us his demo back in '89 because he wanted to join Helloween back then, but there was a postal strike at the time and his tape never arrived in our office. So we've known him since then, and he's always been around when we've done stuff in the studio, but he couldn't decide. It was a very hard decision for him to make because on the one hand he was very happy in Gamma Ray, but on the other the prospect of joining Helloween was also very interesting … he didn't know what to say. Anyway, after about nine months of this I decided to give Sascha Gerstner (formerly of Freedom Call) a call on the recommendation of our producer Charlie Bauerfiend. And he came out to Tenerife, we played some serious guitar together, had a long chat with Andi, and that was it, he was in."

Finding a new drummer however wasn't that easy.

"Our first choice of drummer was Mark Cross," explains Weikie. "I met him somewhere in Hamburg and we just seemed to hit it off, we had so much in common. He was doing a great job in Metalium at the time, so I said to Markus 'Do you think it would be that much of a bad idea to get Mark into the band?' So that's what we did, and everything was going great until he caught this Epstein Barr virus which totally knocked him for six. The thing is, it affects your inner organs so you can hardly move, you're very weak and you have to go to bed and lie down all the time."

Salvation came in the shape of Motorhead drummer Mikkey Dee.

"Somebody had to come in and do the album," offers Weikie, "and once again we took Charlie's recommendation and asked Mikkey. Obviously, they'd worked together before on some of the Motorhead stuff which helped a lot. Basically he came in and did ten tracks in something like seven days - actually he did it in two parts because in the meantime we were still trying to get Mark back in so we could record something with him, which didn't happen because he was just too weak. And once the album was finished we had to find someone to come into the band permanently, and luckily we found Stefan Schwarzmann (ex Running Wild/Accept)."

Always known for their quirky sense of humour, new album 'Rabbit Don't Come Easy' has a rather odd title to say the least.

"It's pretty simple really," says Weikie, "it comes from the old English saying about pulling rabbits out of the hat. You know, if you want to create some twist or trick, or some kind of masterpiece that's not so easy to achieve, or which takes some kind of skill to achieve it, then you're said to be pulling a rabbit out of the hat. That's all there is to it."

Kind of mundane really given that in one interview Andi Deris is quoted as saying that the Spanish word for rabbit (conejo) actually also means dick.

"Yeah, I heard that too," laughs Weiki, "one or two people have told me that. But the other day someone said that it didn't actually mean the dick at all, but the pussy, which is even funnier when you think about it, ha, ha!"

Writing for 'Rabbit Don't Come Easy' started in earnest early last year.

"I can't remember exactly when," admits Weiki, "I had a few songs left over from 'The Dark Ride' sessions which I really wanted to do, and Andi came up with a few new tracks. We've been doing that since around February/March time, everyone just doing his own thing. Just as and when it came, there was never any time pressure or anything like that, no fixed point in time when we had to have everything done and completed."

New guitarist Sascha Gerstner also seems to have thrown himself into the songwriting process.

"That's really because he's quite a strong songwriter," offers Weikie, "usually his stuff wasn't really required by anyone before, but luckily enough he kept persevering. And he has a few friends, and they used to sit around and write songs as if they were in different bands, just like kids playing at doctor or something. Of course, one day he was hoping that he may have a band, but he got involved with this professional Top 40 covers band thing - well, he had a contract with them. They still play, and they still earn their money that way, but obviously his songs weren't really needed for that type of set up … so lucky for us because it's exactly the kind of thing Helloween are looking for."

Certainly seems to fit in with that classic Helloween style.

"Absolutely," Weikie agrees, "but you also have to remember that his former band Freedom Call wasn't that different to Helloween, their music wasn't that dissimilar to ours. Apart from that, he's an intelligent guy, and he understood exactly what we wanted after listening to all the CD's. We got him all the CD's out of some storage locker somewhere, and he actually listened to them all before he got into the songwriting. As much as time permitted him to anyway because he was also very stressed by the covers band thing. They always had to play and rehearse, so basically he hardly had any free time in his day at all. It also meant that he had to fly in and out for rehearsals and recordings. That would mean he'd be in Hamburg for three days, then he'd have to get on a plane and fly to the south of Germany just to play a few shows, then get back on another plane and fly back to Hamburg again … and also for the recording out in Tenerife. Imagine what a stress that must've been for him … sometimes he only really had time to sleep, and he couldn't really do much. But to him it was abundantly clear what Helloween is all about, he just understood and assimilated the concept completely."

Although stylewise 'Rabbit Don't Come Easy' is a real return to that classic 'Keeper …' sound, the band have elected not to go back to working with Tommy Hansen, hence Charlie Bauerfiend sitting in the producer's chair.

"The majority of the band didn't want Tommy as the producer anymore after 'Better Than Raw'," explains Weikie, " … and the majority also means Roland and Uli. Tommy had always naturally guarded that classic Helloween approach, and I guess that's what they didn't like. I don't know what went down in personal talks, but I guess it would've been something like 'I want to do this and that', to which Tommy would've replied 'No, because you're gonna do fucking Helloween shit, that classic stuff … now shut up!'. Something like that would've led them to believe that they didn't want to work with him anymore."

"Then again, I was against it," he adds on reflection, "but I said 'If we're going without Tommy, I'd at least like to have Charlie Bauerfiend.' Charlie had already recorded and mixed 'The Dark Ride' … Roy Z was merely the creative producer. Charlie was the technical engineer, and the mastermind behind the proper mix we had on that album. Then it went to Sterling Sound to be mastered and they changed the sound entirely, originally it was much more like the album we have now. But someone at that facility put so many warm filters on it or whatever that it came out sounding like it did … pretty strange really. That's why this time around Charlie did the mastering himself. He always knows what he wants, and he's got 100% control of his Pro Tools system and everything. He knows all the key shortcuts and everything … I mean, he knows things that even the programmers at Digidesign don't know."

Obviously much happier with the new Helloween set up, Weikie and the rest of the band are extremely pleased with the way that 'Rabbit Don't Come Easy' turned out.

"This is what it's supposed to be," he offers enthusiastically, "this is what it should've sounded like after the 'Better Than Raw' album. This should've been the follow up to 'Better Than Raw' actually, and to me 'The Dark Ride' was a big waste of time because we didn't really prove that much with that album in my opinion. I mean, it's not hard to prove that yeah, we can do some dark, new age metal … it's not a thing that's necessary to be proved. And why should we, because every kid can do it, you know."

And for once he's really happy with most, if not all the material that made the final running order.

"There's nothing I could point at and say that I don't like it," Weikie muses, "… except maybe for the melody of 'Never Be A Star'. To me that sounds too much like 'Perfect Gentleman' (from 'Master Of The Rings'), and I told Andi and the guys that. But they all felt that it should be there, so … but the rest of that track is just brilliant. I can't actually find a flaw on this album at all, and I don't expect to, even in a few years time. I don't have any problems with 'Time Of The Oath' or 'Better Than Raw', so why should I bash this one in the future?"

One track that is a little different is 'Nothing To Say', a quirky mixture of Led Zeppelin and Bob Marley which closes the album.

"Basically I don't know what happened," laughs Weiki, "maybe I've been sitting in the sun too long and it's dried out my brain, ha, ha! No, to me it's just a fell good song. I also demo'd it for 'The Dark Ride' sessions, but it never made it to the recording list. And it was something that I really wanted to do. To me it's just a logical extension of the stuff we did with 'Metal Jukebox', that was just a collection of classics we played in our own style. We had 'Rat Bat Blue' on there, and I felt this was just a logical extension of that. It shows our roots and where we came from, all those great 70's bands who wrote songs that stay with you forever. The main riff naturally derived from songs like 'Black Dog', 'Still Of The Night', Rat Bat Blue' and maybe even some of the later Beatles stuff because I always liked long riffs. Then the reggae part in the middle … it reminds me of 'Sound and Vision' by David Bowie, or 'Joe Walsh's 'Life Has Been Good To Me So Far', stuff which shows where I came from. And also, the first really good drummer I worked with, in the band I was in previously, he came from a reggae band. He was basically a rock drummer, but he'd worked with this reggae band just to improve his skills as a drummer. And sometimes when we were playing this heavy rock stuff, all of a sudden he'd throw this reggae bit in the middle which was kind of disturbing. So I kind of remembered that, and that's why that bit is in there."

Once the album hits the streets, the next step is to take it out onto the road.

"We've been told by Sanctuary Management that there's something from September on," confirms Weikie, "and that it's gonna be something that's a little more major. We're gonna do some warm up shows in the so called Eastern countries, then it'll be Europe as usual, Finland and all this … but we're also gonna play Istanbul and Zagreb finally … never been there yet. Then there's the Philippines, Malaysia maybe … anything like that in Asia we've got to cover a lot more. I'd also like to go to Australia at some point, maybe with a band called Pegazus from down there; but that's not confirmed, that's just a dream of mine. But we've been told we're definitely playing South America, North America, a few selected cities … and Canada as well. I hear that the scene is really building up again in America, just like the UK, so hopefully we'll get to play a few more shows there too."

Obviously it's early days yet for a final set list, but Weikie is adamant that this time there'll be a few surprises.

"We intend to play some stuff we've never played live before, or at least only rarely," he confirms. "We want to make the set list a lot more intricate and interesting again. What brought it home to me again before was that with no one really wanting to deal with me as a musician, when you want to play a lot of twin guitar parts, you have to sit down together and rehearse. And Roland often said 'Ah, nobody wants to hear that stuff anymore', so we just took the tracks that were easiest to put across on stage without that … and actually that kinda bored the hell out of me sometimes because I felt like we were becoming some sort of cabaret band or something. Thankfully we could still put on a fairly good show for the fans, and the fans liked it, but to me it left a lot to be desired."

On a parting note, I wondered if the apathy of the mainstream British press towards the band in recent years was something that bothered them.

"No, not at all," states Weiki, "because that's the same cynical approach they've always taken anyway. And it's like this, when they see a great thing happening in Europe or wherever, they just jump on the bandwagon anyway. It's like 'Ah well, we didn't actually want to tell you, but this album is really quite good' - it's just bullshit, they're saying it because that's what everybody else is saying, and they don't want to be left behind being called the dicks who never get anything, you know. That's how it's always been in the UK; it doesn't bother me at all because they normally bash the best stuff anyway, ha, ha! I think it's more important that we concentrate on our fans, the people who buy the records or who come to the gigs, not the magazines. They're intelligent enough not to believe everything they read. It's like the people behind those magazines are deliberately trying to block rock music, you know. They call themselves rock magazines, but actually they're trying to block it … I don't know what that's all about."