Chris Von Rohr – Krokus – Uber Rock Interview Exclusive
Written by Jim Rowland
Sunday, 11 May 2014 03:00
If you were around on the hard rock and metal scene in the early ‘80s Krokus was a name you would be very familiar with. A run of four classic albums – ‘Metal Rendezvous’, ‘Hardware’, ‘One Vice At A Time’ and ‘Headhunter’ – between 1980 and 1983 ensured Krokus headlined the biggest concert halls in the UK, often with very familiar names in the world of metal supporting them. They even made a memorable appearance on kids Saturday morning TV show Tiswas, which started this writer’s love of these Swiss rockers that has lasted over thirty years now. Krokus, after AC/DC and Rose Tattoo, were pioneers of that wonderful brand of straight-ahead, hard rocking, bluesy big riffing rock ’n’ roll that numerous bands have picked up on since, perhaps none more so that Aussie rockers Airbourne, who even ripped off the Krokus logo!
Sadly, the ‘80s took its toll on Krokus, and as the decade progressed they suffered from bad management, bad labels, bad changes in direction, and bad line-up changes which eventually plunged them into semi-obscurity. Salvation came in 2008 when the classic ‘One Vice At A Time’ line-up of Marc Storace, Chris Von Rohr, Fernando Von Arb, Freddy Steady and Mark Kohler announced they had reunited, playing several high profile concerts and festivals in Europe and in 2010 releasing a belting new album of pure ‘krok’n’roll’ in the shape of the excellent ‘Hoodoo’. Freddy Steady quit in 2011, but a third guitarist and another former member Mandy Meyer re-joined in 2012 for another new studio album ‘Dirty Dynamite’, released last year.
Now Krokus are back with an explosive new live album ‘Long Stock Goes Boom: Live From Da House Of Rust’, and the classic line-up of the band will be making their first UK appearance for a very, very long time at this year’s Hard Rock Hell festival. I recently caught up with the founding member, bassist and producer of Krokus Chris Von Rohr to talk about the good old days, the bad old days and a very good present day for the band.
How are you doing Chris?
Hey Mr. Jim Beam! It’s great to talk to you and bring back the ‘Krok’n’Roll’ to Great Britain!
So you have a new live album about to come out – ‘Long Stick Goes Boom: Live From Da House Of Rust’. Tell us about the album, and for those of us in the UK, what is the House Of Rust?
Ok, well I have to wrap it up like this. First of all there were the strong years at the beginning of the ‘80s when the band really were spot on. There were the four strong big albums that are going to be reissued by Rock Candy later on this year – ‘Metal Rendezvous’, ‘Hardware’, ‘One Vice At A Time’ and ‘Headhunter’ – that was what Krokus was all about. Then we had some fights and this and that, like any band, and there were some splits in the band. The original band from those glory years at the beginning of the ‘80s came back five years ago and we now have two studio albums and this live album in the back pocket. We really said “let’s go back to what Krokus is all about” – really strong riff rock and let’s concentrate on that, and it came out in my opinion really good, especially on the live album. If somebody doesn’t know Krokus, if you hear that album you will know what it’s all about with Krokus. The House Of Rust is basically a venue which is like a smaller Hammersmith Odeon or Glasgow Apollo. It’s where an everyday band plays here in Switzerland and it’s close to our home town so that’s why we recorded it there. We recorded about fifteen shows, and in the end we decided which one we were going to go for, but the magical night was definitely at the House Of Rust.
I’ve just listened to the album, and it is great – it’s very well produced by yourself.
What I looked for was that we don’t do too many overdubs. You know a lot of bands do live albums but they are half studio albums – I said as a producer let’s really try to shoot for how it is. The only thing we really had to fix were some backing vocals which sounded a bit like Lemmy or Keith Richards! So we tried to correct them and maybe some guitar parts that were a bit out of tune but the rest is really how you hear it when you come to a Krokus gig you know. For us the most important thing was for the energy and the feeling to come across, and as a producer I didn’t want to compress it too much or make it louder and louder and louder so to give it that warm feeling you have when you go to a show. The best place you can stand for the sound is on stage and what you hear now is basically what you hear when you are on stage. It’s a pretty intense sound I would say.
It’s interesting you mentioned venues like Hammersmith Odeon and Glasgow Apollo, because Krokus played those venues many times in the UK in the early ‘80s
Yes, that was like the highlight for us. Coming from Switzerland, we were growing up not with American bands but with British bands – bands like The Stones, The Kinks, The Who, stuff like that and John Mayall. They were our heroes you know, so for us, after the ‘Metal Rendezvous’ album to be able to come to your country and headline such venues was for us much more exciting than the later success in America. We feel closer to the British mentality, and the humour and everything, and let me tell you it was the highlight of our lives. For every musician, you do your job as good as you can and you never know where it leads to. I still have a poster here in my recording studio that lists all the venues we played in Great Britain, and if I have a bad day, I just look at this poster and just say “hey man! This was good! Maybe one day we can go back and play there some more!”
One very special moment for me and some of my Krokus-loving friends in our youth was an appearance you made on a children’s TV show here called Tiswas. You did ‘Bad Boys Rag Dolls’ surrounded by children throwing custard pies. Do you remember that?
Yes I do remember that! It was really something exceptional because we never did that again and I don’t know why! I have only become a father at 50 years old and now I feel that kids are changing the world. The elders should learn from the kids and not the opposite way. But yes for me it is a question mark, why not more shows like that because we really enjoyed that one, and we could give something to the kids as well.
You don’t seem to do that song ‘Bad Boys Rag Dolls’ any more.
Well towards the end of the ‘80s the band split it up and only single members went under the name so I can’t tell you exactly what happened as I was not in the band for more than twenty years you know. I was the founder and producer of the band, so when I came back five years ago I said “listen guys I want to bring back Krokus where they belong.” Not some strange Def Leppard-ish copy sound, we are a really hard rock blues band with blues influence and we are sometimes likened to AC/DC on one side, but there is another side with songs like ‘Tokyo Nights’, ‘Easy Rocker’, ‘Celebration’, ‘Bedside Radio’. But I wanted to produce and bring back the band to where they once were and I really hope the promoters and fans in Britain come to us and say “come to play for us again.” The only date we have on the agenda at the moment is the Hard Rock Hell festival in November.
Since the classic line up reformed you haven’t really come to the UK yet.
Not the original line –up. Some line-up played there a few years back with Hammerfall, but that was not the real thing. Now we are back with three guitar players, Fernando Von Arb, Mandy Meyer and Mark Kohler and this is really a different intensity now. I really hope that at least next year when it is the 40th anniversary of Krokus that we can do a whole tour, but not as the support to Saxon or something like this, but something that we can really do with pride and really play your place you know.
Well you do have fans here and we’re really looking forward to you coming back to the UK.
This is really great – everybody I’m talking to today is from Great Britain, they keep on telling me! We didn’t know, you know we almost forgot that there is a fanbase over there that still loves the Krokus stuff and it makes me very happy!
You are back to the classic old sound, and you have the classic line-up back, apart from Freddie Steady not being there anymore. Do you think Krokus lost their way in the late ‘80s with albums like ‘Change Of Address’? They tried to go a bit glam, didn’t they?
I mean, come on! When we look back at this it’s just a shame, you know. Let’s talk here, no bullshit, the honest opinion. At this time, when I was fired from the band, a manager took over the band and together with the label Arista, he basically dictated what the band had to play. At this moment Def Leppard was big in America, so they thought they had to create a second bullshit Def Leppard you know. This is not what Krokus is all about. Krokus is about what you hear from the ‘Metal Rendezvous’ album through to the ‘Headhunter’ album, and when I was leaving the band there was nobody who had the balls and the knowhow to say “No! Fuck Off!” to these guys. They pushed the band within two albums – ‘The Blitz’ and especially ‘Change Of Address’ and whatever came after – in a totally wrong direction. It’s just the wrong music, it’s not Krokus, so that was a big, big, big, big mistake. The fans of course checked out immediately, so then came the very dry years as we call them, and after twenty years I looked at this band and said “come on! – this cannot be a way to end this great band.” So I got in contact with Fernando and with Marc, and said that this had to end immediately that there are some bands playing as Krokus cover bands throughout the world that don’t deserve that. There was one band with only one original member going out under the name, so we said “stop, finish, end of story. We’re gonna start it really good again,” you know, so it was in 2008 when we played the big stadium reunion show here in Switzerland and started working on the ‘Hoodoo’ album as we had to start working on some new stuff – you can’t just play the old classics. That’s what you hear on the new live album, the old classic stuff is mixing very well with the new stuff which we did in the last four or five years, and that is very good news. That means the band is alive, the real Krokus sound is back and we are all very, very happy that this happened because you couldn’t end the band in a kind of glam field, or whatever, that is a joke. Fortunately, we could correct that, because we want to end the band on a high level and a good level, and now I think we’re getting to that point where we can say OK, if this finishes on health reasons or whatever, the end is up at least in a proper way, you know.
Well ‘Hoodoo’ was a great album to come back with, and ‘Dirty Dynamite’ was too so let’s hope there’s a few years left in Krokus!
We hope that too, but unfortunately like you see with AC/DC and a few other bands, hard rock is not like a blues band or Johnny Cash or whatever where you can go on until you’re 80. Hard rock has a lot of energy, at least when you play it like we do, so we keep the quality control and as long as it sounds like it does on the live album, we go on, but we will stop before we become a joke like many of those old bands who just tour for money with just one or two original members. We don’t wanna end like that.
Just one more question, and it’s just to do with the name ‘Krokus’ – how did you originally come up with that name and what does it mean? Is it to do with the flower?
Yes, we were looking for a name a bit different to most other bands. I remember it was February or early March, and I was on a walk over the mountain, and I saw this flower coming out of the ice – the first flower after a hard winter in Switzerland – this crocus flower. Now normally in English you write that with a ‘C’, and we said well that’s a little bit too soft, so let’s give it a ‘K’, a bit more rock! A funny thing was that when we first went to America, I gave my passport to the guy and he was asking what did I do. I said I played in a band, and the guy on the desk said “what’s the name of the band?” so I said “Krokus” and he looked at me and said “are you part of some political party or something?” and I said “no, why?”. He said well this means “Croak the US” and we weren’t thinking about croaking anyone! It was a peaceful name actually, and it was at a time when bands were called Cactus or Focus and we just thought Krokus sounds like rock ’n’ roll! It’s good that you asked that, it’s been a long time since anybody asked me that question!
Well that’s just about it Chris, but I would like to finish by reiterating that there is a still a good fan base for Krokus here in the UK, and we would dearly love to see you tour here again. You could even end up back at Hammersmith!
Well that would be the greatest – just full circle, I hope one day it’s gonna happen. But at least we want to come and play, even if they are smaller venues, we don’t give a shit. We just like to play for those people, because the British people know what it’s all about with rock ’n’ roll. It’s where it came from, at least the ones we like, so I dearly hope that we can come back soon and I’m really happy as well that the big albums are going to be released on Rock Candy in June.
As a big Krokus fan, it was a pleasure to speak to Chris Von Rohr for Uber Rock. What struck me most about him was his enthusiasm and his energy. This was one genuine, friendly and amiable man. My thanks go to Chris and also Nina Potthoff at The Noise Cartel for arranging the interview. The new live album ‘Long Stick Goes Boom: Live From Da House Of Rust’ gets a UK release on May 26th, closely followed by the Rock Candy re-issues of those four classic original Krokus albums ‘Metal Rendezvous’, ‘Hardware’, ‘One Vice At A Time’ and ‘Headhunter’. You can catch Krokus live at this year’s Hard Rock Hell, and hopefully beyond!
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