Former RUNNING WILD Mainman Is 'Not Thinking' About Possible Reunion

Metal.de has published a brand new interview with RUNNING WILD mainman Rock'n'Rolf Kasparek. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Metal.de: "The Final Jolly Roger", a DVD with the final show at Wacken Open Air 2009, will be published shortly. Afterwards RUNNING WILD will definitely be history. What are you feeling at this moment? Melancholy? Or do you even feel relieved in some way?

Kasparek: Neither of it. The thing is that I had already been thinking about it for several years, and when I then was offered this show at Wacken, I thought: "OK, that's perfect: 30 years RUNNING WILD, 20 years of Wacken what a great occasion to end my work with RUNNING WILD." I already knew two or three years earlier that I wanted to go into a different direction on the long run. I have been doing RUNNING WILD professionally for more than 20 years, and the band exists for about 30 years. It was just time to move on and start something new. Therefore I didn't feel any melancholy at all when I played the show at Wacken. I played this show like I played any other show with RUNNING WILD before, because, as I said, I already had made the decision to disband the band some years before.

Metal.de: Everybody, without exception, was wondering why you didn't invite any former band members to the farewell show, who could have played one or two songs as special guests. I'm quite sure none of the guys would have said "no"...

Kasparek: Very simple. I'm not a person who lives in the past I live in the present for the future. Those people used to be part of the band a long time ago. And the band, the guys who were part of it on this very evening, they wanted to play this show and wanted to finish the RUNNING WILD chapter together with me. I don't like bringing up former musicians, who haven't been in the band for 20 years or so, back on stage. And it would have been complicated concerning the organization prior to the show and its timing as well. I just wanted to perform as many songs as possible and give a two hour show, which is usually not common at a festival. We got a special permission for these songs from Holger (editor's note: Holger Hbner, organizer of Wacken Open Air),because we wanted to play this final show. I also gave thanks to those who had been part of the band over the time. Hats off to all those who worked on this project. But, like I said, when the band is on stage, you only see people who are currently part of it.

Metal.de: Will RUNNING WILD really be history after the release of the live DVD or is there a chance of a comeback sometime, if not live then maybe with a new album?

Kasparek: To be honest, I'm currently not thinking about this at all, because in the future I'm going to do a lot of other things. By the way, I finished working on the live DVD in July 2010 already, and at the moment I am in touch with Dirk Illing, who is doing the front cover artwork. It's almost done, just one more meeting with the guys doing the editing, and the DVD is finished. And there is another project in planning and several producers would like to do it and several record companies have already indicated their interest respectively. As the old albums from Modern Music and later Sanctuary Records are unavailable, because Universal Music is not interested yet in republishing them again, we had the idea of producing a double CD as a best-of album. And as I got back the copyright for the songs in 2006, I can record some old songs at least 22 or 23 tracks completely new. This is definitely a project I want to finish this year in order to publish it at the latest next year. This will be a good opportunity for newer fans to buy these songs, for example from the albums "Death Or Glory" or "Port Royal" and so on.

Read the entire interview at Running-wild.net.

"The Final Jolly Roger" will released on June 24 via Golden Core/ZYX and will be made available as a double CD, separate DVD or a special "deluxe" three-disc box set comprised of the other two formats packaged together.

"The Final Jolly Roger" track listing:

DVD:

01. Intro
02. Port Royal
03. Bad To The Bone
04. Riding The Storm
05. Soulless
06. Prisoner Of Our Time
07. Black Hand Inn
08. Gates Of Purgatory
09. Battle Of Waterloo
10. Der Kaltverformer
11. Raging Fire
12. Whirlwind
13. Tortuga Bay
14. Branded And Exiled
15. Raise Your Fist
16. Conquistadores
17. Under Jolly Roger

CD 1:

01. Intro
02. Port Royal
03. Bad To The Bone
04. Riding The Storm
05. Soulless
06. Prisoner Of Our Time
07. Black Hand Inn
08. Gates Of Purgatory
09. Battle Of Waterloo
10. Der Kaltverformer
11. Raging Fire

CD 2:

01. Whirlwind
02. Tortuga Bay
03. Branded And Exiled
04. Raise Your Fist
05. Conquistadores
06. Under Jolly Roger