Herman Rarebell: "If the groove is good, the band is good"...

Herman Rarebell is very much the pleasant stranger you end up chatting with at the Pub, while the game is on. He is bright, welcoming and full of laughter. If you didn’t know, it would never occur to you that he is also one of the most accomplished drummers on the planet. Having played on more hit singles and albums than most people can count, he could be forgiven for taking life at a slower pace these days. Fortunately, for us, that is not the case. With the release of his latest album, What About Love?, Herman shows no signs of letting up anytime soon. Sentinel Daily had the good fortune to take a deep dive into the new album with the great man, learn about his all-star cast, and get inside what has kept his powerhouse drumming relevant for decades.

Typically when people are doing a covers album It’s based on the artist’s formative years, what you grew up listening to, or in some cases they’re trying to give some attention to deserving bands that are unknown. But You are focusing on a very specific portion of time, the eighties, when you were at your commercial peak, and what was happening then, which is kind of a unique perspective. This time period has suddenly become very relevant. I don’t mean just nostalgic to people who grew up during that time, but also to much younger people who weren’t even close to being alive then. From your perspective, why do you feel there is this resurgence of interest in this period? From your experiences and being part of it, what is it speaking to the world right now?

“For me, personally, since I lived in ‘the area’ before and after, it was basically the best music created in the last seventy/eighty years. For me, in my opinion, talking as a drummer, I’ve chosen twelve songs which are obviously heavily involved in heavy drumming, because that’s where I come from, my Scorpions days. The most important song, drum wise, was for me the first one, In The Air Tonight. I remember this from sitting in the tour bus with The Scorpions and I would hear it – it came out in 1981. And I hear this drum machine, going three minutes long, playing this pattern, then after three minutes of singing, suddenly this incredible fill comes in {sings the fill}. And that beat, I always wanted to play. So I was very happy to redo a new version. As you can hear, I’m heavily influenced by John Bonham. So my version is obviously more heavy now, but it was really great playing that song, you know, for me”.

In the song selection you’re going from Phil Collins to Guns N’Roses. Even though those may have been in roughly the same time period – the eighties – Phil Collins fans did not listen to G N’R and vice versa. You had a way of bringing this together. So, that song is kind of revered by drummers. It’s really quite ballsy for you to take it on as the opening track. Did you feel any pressure like, okay, I better do this right or else? “Yeah, I always thought, because I know the original. Don’t forget, a lot of those people were on the road with me in the eighties and I played, for example, many festivals with Foreigner then, so I put in there the best hymn for me ever from that decade; I Want To Know What Love Is – That song will still be played in a hundred years, that is what I mean. Those kinds of songs nobody wrote ever before or ever after, those really are hymns, which everybody could sing along to. And I figured also, why not bring a woman in this adventure from the eighties because I was always a big fan of Pat Benatar. But I thought, you know, she was a funny girl. I loved the video on MTV where she gets thrown out by her father, and the whole song which was then played by a drum machine, updated obviously here by Herman – I played a heavy beat in it. That was also a good song and it is also when we play live, we get a very good reaction for the song. I found this singer because my singer is Michael Voss. As you know, Michael is also the producer of Michael Schenker – and we are all families, so to speak. But this girl was just the backup singer, until I heard her voice and I said, you have to sing this Pat Benatar song. I think she sounded really good. Then our single is, What About Love. I’m very proud to have the original people with me there like Howard Leese on guitar from Heart. Jim Vallance, who co-wrote the song many, many years ago, he’s in there. Bob Daisley on bass from Ozzy and Gary Moore. And Dan Huff, who plays the first guitar solo on the song. You can hear the years with Giant and all the people he was involved in. So, I’m very happy to have them all aboard”.

The sound on this album. It sounds like a band. It isn’t session players who are playing songs you’re familiar with. Can you go back through that list and tell me what is the strength each of these individuals brought to the project, and the reason you wanted them? Because, obviously, you know a lot of people. You could have had your pick of the litter for people to come in and guest, but you went with these individuals. It sounds like a cohesive band. “Yeah, it is”.

It’s not fragments in the least. And at times you forget like, oh, wait, yeah, Phil Collins is next… That shouldn’t work, but it does. “Well, I think personally for me, when I do a live show in the future, I would definitely start with a song like this. Because I think it has great tensions right from the beginning and also the delights to open a show like this. You could do an amazing thing basically when that drum fill comes in. That must make every drummer’s heart laugh, imagine like… (sings the drum fill), and then a heavy beat. but I think also, I have also songs in there from Whitesnake because we toured with them. My favourite song was always, Here I Go Again. I did it again, but then we had Michael Voss, for example, played nearly everything on that song. So, basically those guys, the American guys, they were on the single because I felt that this is a strong single for the radio. That ballad also says the message to the world – what love, what happened to love? All I see here is hate around me, and how can I kill my neighbours, or whatever, it’s ridiculous. It got to a point where I think either it all got crazy or what’s happening. Don’t forget, I’m a heavy rock player in my heart, for me to do a ballad, it has to say something”.

That’s what I’m trying to get to the root of, again. You’re seeing a lot of hate in the world, but this time period, these songs are perhaps speaking to something a little more positive, a little happier?
“Yeah”.

And perhaps that’s starting to resonate with people again. “Well, we did the Moscow Music Peace Festival in 1989, on the 12th and 13th of August, with American bands like Mötley Crüe, Jon Bon Jovi, Cinderella, Skid Row, also a band from Russia called Gorky Park, and us, The Scorpions. We did this then, and you could feel that the music was making it’s way in the hearts of the people. I’m sure you know that a song like, Winds of Change, which came after, spoke exactly this. It felt like you’re playing in the West, like a Rock concert. They just wanted to be free, rock, and wanted to be like us. I could feel that the communism was over then, you could see it in the air. You could see it from the soldiers who made a human wall and they were putting their hands in the air when they’re singing along to Blackout. So, this shows you, you could feel the change”.

Let’s give a moment or two to each individual on the album: Michael Voss, what were his real strengths and how did you decide to bring him in? “Michael Schenker introduced him to me about ten, twelve years ago and we made the first album together then with the band called Temple of Rock: Mike, Michael Schenker, myself. Pete Way was then still alive and he introduced him as our singer. I always loved his voice, great voice. So, that was his strength. He’s also a great producer/co-producer because basically I picked the songs, but then I said to him, okay, put me a basic (track) together so I can put the drums to it. So, then, after three/four days, you usually have a playback for me to play, and I could choose that, maybe do three/four takes. Pick the best, you know what I mean – take one, make it to one take. And that I did with the whole album. So, I gave him the choice to send me a playback which i could play to. We usually play the guitar on there and the bass. That was his strength, he could play everything, keyboards also where we needed the keyboards as you can hear in, I Want To Know What Love Is. Our version I like very much because the interesting groove in there from the drums [sings the drum part]. I like all that stuff”.

Van de Forst? “She sang two songs – Love is a Battlefield, and another Heart song, These Dreams. I think she has a fantastic voice. I heard, I think, the backing for, What About Love. You see her in the video, in the red costume. Young woman, thirty, thirty one now, has a killer voice and from being the backing vocalist, she now comes to sing also two solo vocals live. She’s the daughter, so to speak of Michael Forst, because Michael’s mother is Eva Van De Forst. So, her name is Vanessa Van De Forst. She looks good too for the boys, for a live performance, I think. He works. She works”.

Dan Huff? “Well, Dan Huff, you know, I got to know to Michael Forst first, and we simply just phoned him. But we knew everything he had done and I’m following him as a guitar player for many years. I saw the work he did with Whitesnake. He plays on that song by the way, Here I Go Again on the original solo (on the US remix version). That’s Dan Huff from that time. He plays also the first solo on, What About Love? that intro solo, a killer solo for me. So a very, very good position. Bob Daisley, what can I say? Bass player from the old league, really, from Australia and right up there”.

Bob Daisley’s been with everyone, and then some. Howard Leese? “Howard Leese was just a phone call. I told him the story of what I want to do with this record. I’ll bring the message of love again to the people instead of hate. And he said, ‘I like that message, I’ll come along’. So, it was very easy. Nobody asked for any money, nothing, we just got together over the tape, wrote, so we each played our music in different places. He put his guitars on in America and I put my drums on in Munich in Germany, and the rest was done in England. So, this international thing is on the tape, not the complete studio. So, we’ve never been in a studio together, to record. The most time I probably spent with Michael Voss, going through the songs, making the arrangements and stuff like this”.

Remote recording has become pretty typical these days. The ability to have that do that across oceans has opened up a lot of possibilities for everyone. “Yeah, this is what I think”.

What about Neil Carter? “Neil Carter is an old friend from Brighton. He lives around the corner there. So, on the whole album he played the keyboards. He did that in Brighton, sent us the tapes, and we put it in for the mix”.

Jim Vallance? “I wrote with Jim Valance and Klaus Meine with The Scorpions back on the Crazy World album. When we did that album, I think that was in ’91, I wrote with Jim and Klaus, about eight songs. When you go on the album you can see all the ones. So we work together with that friendship which came from that time. And since he wrote What About Love originally, I phoned him up and I said, look, I want to do the song again. I sent you a demo now. And so then the demos where he heard the voice from Mike and he said it was much better than the original. He’s a drummer, too, by the way, like us”.

Then he’s a smart man. “Yes. Yeah. So, it was easy when we did the programming or when we played the drums. The same mind, so, a very good guy, good songwriter. Aerosmith, that’s him also, Bryan Adams…”

Was there anyone else involved? “Ah, have I got to tell you also about Vanessa Von De Forst – she sang I Love Rock and Roll. We had Joan Jett with The Scorpions in 1984 on the European tour as our opening act. And I listened to that song every night in the dressing room, because there they are, our opening act, and I hear them play in the set, I Love Rock and Roll, the last song. and then the audience was singing this for another ten-minutes. They’re already all coming back and we had to go on and perform our set. But this is a great song to stop the show. So, this will be my last song also, live”.

I’m just curious, obviously Joan Jett made a massive hit out of that., but did you reference the original version by The Arrows at all when you recorded it? “No, I have no idea, but i was very interested as a drummer because the beat changes in the set you know”.

That 3/4 (i.e. musical time-signature) there, it’s a subtle shift, but if you don’t know it… “Yeah (sings the part), so that’s where it twists around. I like this, you know?”

It keeps you on your toes. “Yeah, this is a great beat for life, gets everybody up. I remember the tour, so all my songs here were associated with people from touring, Also, I was a close friend of Robert Palmer. That was the reason for doing, Addicted to Love. My version – much heavier. I always loved that beat from that song, all of the lyrics. You might as well as face it you’re addicted to love – what a great line”.

The drums are just so boom, boom, boom in that. “That was also on MTV. You remember when the four girls played the guitar with their hair back and robot moves…”

Oh, everyone remembers that. “Yeah, that’s what I mean. And he became… we were next door neighbours. He lived Milano, me in Monaco, which is about two hours away. So, he visited me often. I did the same. Good guy”.

Let’s move on more a little bit about you musically. How would you define the Herman Rarebell sound, whether that be drums, or songs or, however you want to put it out there? “Well, for me, also, my years with Scorpions, the twenty years, was always to put good drums on there. For me it has to be like Bonham, big and fat and I want to hear my drums when I play. So, obviously, in the mixes you hear everything on the drums and they sound heavy. For me, that’s very important because if the groove is good, the band is good”.

How involved were you going into the studio as far as tones, gear selection and stuff? “Everything, I could go all the way from the beginning of the mixes till the end, all the new effects, I was sitting there day and night with Michael and then just say, yeah, put some more room on there or whatever, But basically, I played them live, what I had in my head and I took just the best takes always”.

How did you know, how do you approach the best take: When did you know you had hit it? Were you going back and listening? Were you going off feel or what just what was your process? “The feel is very important for me, once I have three takes, then I go back up in the listening room. I listen to it. Then I tell, for example, Michael, take from the first take this break, this break, and this break. Go to the next one, do the same thing. Then I have one new break, one new cut with the best fills, the best drum fills, and the best groove. Basically for me the most important thing is that the groove from beginning to end sounds good, like on, Addicted To Love. That groove goes all the way through, and everybody can groove along. That’s very important for me”.

Were you working with the click then? “Yeah, every time I’ll click. So, I’m spot on with the click. So, when I do a break, everything is in perfect time. So, if I have to put any new guitars over everything, everything has to be perfectLY on time. I learned that from (Scorpions producer) Dieter Dirks“.

Then how about as far as writing or crafting those parts? How much were you just going off of feel? or were you really sitting down with the material? Take something obvious, like the introduction to Rock You like a Hurricane, after that 2 & 4, those hits come in and they’re never quite where you expect them. Things are shifted an eighth-note. Was that very deliberate or was it just sort of an organic thing? “In the beginning, there’s one quarter more in this intro {sings the intro}. So, that groove, then it starts to groove. We twisted it a little bit around there”.

That’s what I’m saying. Was that something where you’re in songwriting and you did that deliberately or did it just sort of go that way? “For me, I wrote the lyrics in this song and Rudolph wrote the music so I didn’t want to change the music. They love the music as it is. We just changed it in the beginning we put another quarter on it. It’s a quarter of a beat longer so to speak”.

That would take us back to I Love Rock And Roll where they drop a quarter. Those things, as simple as they sound, become very signature. And also, when you have to learn it on a moment’s notice, they trip you up, too. So, it’s a very devilish detail. “(laughing) I like you!”

You also have a lot of co-writing credit in your time. As far as approaching it from a song, how does that impact how you were playing the drums? Were you doing that simultaneously? Were you focused on, say, the melody first and then I’ll take care of the drums later or how did that process typically go? “One of the most important things in my Scorpions days was to play along to the song. ‘Don’t kill the song, Herman’, I’d say to myself. Because it’s better not to play a break which is complicated. It may be much better just to go on with the groove so people are in the groove the whole time, the whole song. Don’t kill the song with too many breaks or too many unnecessary things. For me, it was the most important – a song moves from beginning til the end.
I saw once The Muppet Show, there was a drummer there who played to a ballad, complete drums all over, behind. This is exactly what I mean, it wouldn’t fit the song”.

As you were learning the drums when you were younger, where did you learn that focus on the song? Did someone really sit you down and point it out to you? Was that just from going out and gigging or how did this, how did the Herman style develop over the years? “I started to play along when I was about, what, twelve, thirteen? And in those days I had to play on pillows and stuff like this to dampen the room to make it quiet. I didn’t have a real drum set, but I played along to the beat. I noticed all the drummers in those days from The Beatles, from The Rolling Stones, to The Kinks, to The Yardbirds who really interested me because how they played the beat, so i could play along. Then I learned, Ah, they don’t do too much. They’ll just groove, just come together… until the day I heard John Bonham. When I heard on the radio (sings Whole Lotta Love). I said, what is this? And then I got the album and the first song I heard is, Good Times, Bad Times and I heard the foot pedal going. And I said to myself, this is the way drumming should be heard on an album. Then you really can hear everything. You can hear the cymbals, the high end, the snare, the foot pedal, and it separately was the first band, that got me to this listening experience”.

If we’re going from playing the song, where John Bonham took it to a much… his technicality came through in a much stronger way, which the world necessarily hadn’t heard at that point. “Yep”.

So for you, how much time did you spend working on your technique and rudiments and stuff? And where does that layer into the whole thing? “I’ll tell you probably eight hours every day, in the beginning. When I was around fifteen, sixteen in those days we had also our first small band, The MasterMen. We played on the weekends in small clubs and dust houses and stuff like these pubs, but we played. But also, then we copied The Beatles, we copied The Rolling Stones, and then we started to copy that separately. We started to play Heartbreaker, Dazed And Confused and all that stuff. That’s how I learned really the groove, how they’re grooved, and they were basically very funky on some of those things you know, Immigrant Song (sings a bit of the song).

Even just on, Immigrant Song, the question is always, how does your foot feel after the first time you play that? “Like everybody else as you know, you could feel the muscles, you probably couldn’t walk for days. But I think the secret is still if you practice every day, every day, every day… You get better and better. Your hands and feet they get used to it. I’m used to it until this day. I feel in my hands if I don’t play for a few days. I feel I have to go downstairs in my studio and play for an hour nowadays. I don’t play eight hours anymore now, that’s over. I go out with my dog, for example, and I walk with him for five miles”.

It’s great to know you’re still practising too. A lot of people seem to lose interest after a point. How about this? What do you feel is missing from rock drumming these days? Over the years, it’s evolved. Do you feel anything’s left behind that should come back or what are you hearing? “That the original playing would come back and people would stop using machines. This will be my first wish. And I think it would be good if then the drummers would be recorded live again, like in the old days because then you still can feel the energy that comes”.

You’ve obviously spent most of your life on the road. You’ve been in the studio nonstop. So taking the same song, regardless of which one it is, how do you approach that differently in the studio versus going out in an arena with it? “Well, I’m really happy I don’t have to play Wind Of Change anymore, okay, but those days are over (big laughter, all around). How I approached the song? Well, I don’t approach it at all. It is history for me. But it doesn’t matter. The days can come that you sit there maybe with the band and that song is what the people want to hear. I remember the days when it came out and we played the first live concerts in Munich at Olympiahalle. We sold it out three nights, every night, thirty-thousand people. Then we started our show, which are our normal songs. All the women who came because of those beautiful song Wind Of Change, they were all sitting there like this, and holding that thought. And in the middle of the set, we played, Still Loving You, and after that we played Wind Of Change. So, after, they’re over and up, eighty per cent of them left. They never came back ever, anymore. And those people… they didn’t come either anymore. Now, it’s Scorpions playing schlager. Schlager is like… a very low form of entertainment. For me this was a good lesson to learn. Probably the main reason I didn’t want to go in that direction any further. So, that’s probably why I left, thinking back in”.

We know sometimes what works in the studio doesn’t work in a live setting and vice versa. Was there any one song in particular where you found you had to change it drastically when you took it out on the road? “No, we could really, as a live band, we could perform very good live, everybody is awesome. That was our strength, but there are certain songs which I wasn’t too crazy to play live. When I think back of it now, Send Me An Angel was one of them. That was already too much orchestra and stuff like this in there which came from the tape, but, basically, no, not really. Most of the songs we had in the set we could play live, Rock You Like a Hurricane and also Passion Rules The Game is another one which works great live. Blackout works amazing live, they all sing along. Tease Me, Please Me works really good live. All those rock songs I think were very good”.

They still do, Big City Nights. I mean, it’s a pretty long list. How about producers? What do you feel is the value and role of a producer, from playing the drums or being on the other side of the glass. How has that helped you or has it ever hindered you or just your thoughts? “For me, the best one was Dieter Dirks, who really made me work behind my drums. Then, of course, Bruce Fairbairn. Bruce Fairbairn was happy very early, after two/three takes. I can hear in the headphones, okay, Herman, all good. I have everything I need, you know? Dieter, would have never done this with me – Play again! Play again! Play again! I’ve already done fifty takes. No, never mind, that kind of thing, that kind of producing. where Bruce was happy after two/three takes. Yes, I think the best time here also again was the productions coming out of the eighties, when you look back at all The Scorpions albums. Think about albums like Lovedrive, Animal Magnetism, Blackout… they are really strong albums out of the eighties. They were all gold or platinum, all of them”.

What I was getting at too, you felt having a producer helped? Because there’s plenty of stories about nightmares with producers and just what is their role or value in the process. “They have their say, they have their meetings. It doesn’t mean that they’re right. Dieter also had terrible ideas, but then he had genius ideas, so you take the best. This is a give and take situation there. He also then tells me in the middle of the day, can you play the drums like this? I go, no, it doesn’t feel right to play it like this, do not play my version again. And he sees it there, his version is better because it proves better again. As I said, I adjust to the song. The most important thing for me. Play along with the song. Don’t play along with yourself”.

Wise words, indeed. By this point we have gone well past our allotted time and Herman realises he is late for his next call. “Listen, I have another interview to go. So, you have a good time. And if you see me play somewhere, please come and visit me”.

Okay. Well, real quick then, well, how can our friends and fans get a hold of you? “You go to my website, HermanRarebell.com On it, you can see my latest videos, you can see everything I do. You go to the news, and then you have audio and email address info @HermanRarebell, you just write to me tell me your wishes, and I try to fulfil them”.