UDO DIRKSCHNEIDER Talks New U.D.O. Album, ACCEPT Reunion

ber Rock recently conducted an interview with former ACCEPT and current U.D.O. frontman Udo Dirkschneider. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

ber Rock: I've listened to the album, and I love it, there's some good head crunching stuff on the album with a great production, so let's start with who produced it?

Udo: Stefan Kaufmann [former ACCEPT drummer and current U.D.O. guitarist] produced the album. He's produced U.D.O. since the "Faceless World" album; he's been doing it a long time. What can I say about Stefan and I? We're like one person. When we start writing songs, we start with the lyrics first then when we have the story you know much better what kind of music to put around the lyrics maybe a sad song yes, maybe a funny song. Strange thing is it's almost like we don't have to talk to each other, you know?! And that was like that also in ACCEPT; everyone writes Wolf [Hoffmann], Peter [Baltes] and Stefan and I but that's a different story. (laughing) I'm happy with Stefan, definitely.

ber Rock: Were you surprised by a new ACCEPT album? It's been very successful.

Udo: Yeah, it's been very successful. Of course, there has been a very big hype around it, and they did a very good tour, and, of course, people wanted to see what they were doing. We'll see what they do in the future when they don't have ten years to write an album.

ber Rock: Back in ACCEPT days, you did some very successful albums, then suddenly you went solo. Why did you do that and what made you want to put out a solo album at that time?

Udo: After the "Russian Roulette" album, the rest of the guys wanted to be more commercial and they wanted to break the American market, I don't know I mean, we were already selling one and a half million records there, and they played me the songs and I said, "Guys, I cannot sing these songs. This is too commercial." But at that time, you know, there was always a lot of business people around and what can I say?! It was like they wanted to have another singer with a more American style, blah blah blah....

ber Rock: It was quite a big move on your behalf to go solo at that time, quite a big risk.

Udo: Yeah, and so in a way the solo album was already written, the "Animal House" album, as they wanted to be friendly at this time it was made very easy for me to go solo. It was like, "Yeah, OK, you can use these songs. It's OK, we don't need them for the new album, we want to do something completely different." So that was the start of U.D.O.

ber Rock: You've done your solo career you moved away from ACCEPT, but you did do a tour with the guys back in 2005, and even before those dates you announced that this would be a short few dates and that was it.

Udo: Yeah, at this time we had finished recording the U.D.O. album "Mission No. X" and then some guy from Rock Hard was calling me on the U.D.O. tour saying can you maybe do a festival tour with ACCEPT. I didn't really want to say "no" so we started talking. And then it was like OK but we don't want to do anything of the latest albums just play up to the "Russian Roulette" album and do all the classic stuff.

ber Rock: Did you enjoy it yourself?

Udo: Ummm. Yes (long pause),but not always. I mean, U.D.O. had been booked to play a festival in Germany called Bang Your Head!!!, and they were not really happy that U.D.O. was doing a festival show, and I was like, "Come on, guys, U.D.O. is not dead," and after this festival I will carry on with U.D.O. it was clear from the very beginning. For me I think at this time it was like closure in my heart it was still beating (laughing) it was to play this festival with U.D.O. then the next day play Graspop [Metal Meeting] with ACCEPT. It was like I suddenly knew I wanted and liked U.D.O. more. Nothing happened, you know, we had a lot of fun on that tour talking about the old days, blah blah blah, but I don't know how can I explain it. It's just the feeling wasn't right, you know, so then after that festival thing...yeah.

Read the entire interview at ber Rock.