Quotes

[when being told something fell off while he was being fitted with a costume for a music video] It was my ear!

The plan is that there actually will be two versions of the "Ich Will" music video, one where Flake [Lorenz] gets blown up at the end, and one where Paul gets blown up at the end. In other words, a nice version and a nasty one.

[on-set while filming the "Ich Will" music video] We are here in the former state council building of the state council of the GDR... and "GDR" isn't some kind of computer thingy but what it actually is - you won't know it anymore but it was a country, located right here, it was called GDR, [and was] really small and cute, and bad Erich Honecker governed it, and even from the inside of this house right here.

[all Rammstein members but Till have finished filming their scenes for the Rosenrot music video in freezing conditions] [Richard: Of course we will wait (for him).] ...in the hotel! [both laugh]

[Where do you get your inspiration for the songs and the show?] We keep asking ourselves the same question.

[What do you miss about the GDR?] Naturalness, helpfulness; getting annoyed but not worrying.

[Do you think your music would be different if you had grown up in the west?] Yes. More cowardly.

[What do you think of the east German/west German conflict?] The story is similar to that of the Native American Indians and the whites. The whites brought glass beads and the Indians forfeited their country. The whites classed the Indians as stupid and dirty and think themselves better. The Indians lived a simple but happy life etc.

How was it to stand in the rain [filming the "Haifisch" music video] ... it was awesome! Was the question dumb? Or did it just seem that way to me? I'm just feeling a little giggly.

I am not really concerned with religion and believe more in ourselves.

[If you could be any animal in the world, what would you be?] I would be a tiny cross-breed dog that's permanently yapping at you. While we're on the subject, Till would be a dog the size of a calf with a lazy eye, and Richard would be a boxer dog. If you tried taking food away from his bowl, he'd really growl at you.

[If you weren't the guitarist in Rammstein, what would you be doing?] I'd have a company called 'Unasked-For Advice.' You could come to me and get hints and tips on anything from feeding birds, to the color of your car, to how many children you should have, to fixing a problem with your shower.

[Who would play you in a film?] Danny DeVito.

[Is there anything the band wouldn't wear onstage?] No. We have, in fact, performed naked before. It was at a Halloween show on tour with Korn and Limp Bizkit. Korn dressed as a 1980's metal band and Limp Bizkit dressed like Elvis. We don't have Halloween in Germany, so we couldn't think of what to do. Everyone had made so much effort we couldn't ignore it, so we decided to play in the nude.

[1998] We started off as friends. By now, we have put the friendship to a real harsh test, because you see your friends every day. This is pretty hard indeed. But I am sure the friendships will come into being again when Rammstein at some point cease to exist for six months.

[behind the scenes of the "Keine Lust" music video, which has 5 out of 6 Rammstein members wearing fatsuits] First we tried being funny, which was nonsense, as we already look funny enough. Now we try to pretend that it is perfectly normal that we look like we do.

[behind the scenes of the "Keine Lust" music video, upon seeing Oliver Riedel wearing a fatsuit] Which one are you? [points at Oliver and gets laughing fit]

I compare us with a gang of teenagers destroying a phone box with beer bottles, or something. Well, we're not on a higher level.

[2004] I have a problem. I should go to the doctor, because I don't trust anyone. I don't know what the reason is. It must be something in my childhood... But I don't trust anybody but me. And that's not good for me, and not good for a band like us.

[2001] It is very difficult for us to relate to the mass media. For this reason, it is far better for us to make music, concerts and videos. It is not that we deliberately hide anything, we would like to participate in 'talk shows' on television, but it does not go with us, so we do not do it. We prefer to stay in the shadows.

[2001] Generally it happens that what amuses us, other people take very seriously and what we consider serious, others find amusing. Keeping this in mind, we do not comment about what is amusing and what is serious, since we are always contradictory.

[2009] [What tends to inspire you outside of music?] It's interesting because the band is made up of six really different personalities. There's a quite a bandwidth of influences that end up coming into the music. Ollie and myself are both avid wind surfers for example. Till is big on hunting. Flake likes to go on trips to the mountains and he also reads a lot. Richard likes watching movies, and Schneider does Yoga, so there's a huge range of influences that end up in the music.

We enjoy being far away to be able to concentrate fully on the music [when recording], because it is annoying when you are in the studio yelling 'Fleisch, Fleisch' and suddenly your phone rings and it's your dentist on the line.

[on meeting Richard Kruspe] Scholle, Sven or Richard Kruspe-Bernstein, had a bleached blond mohawk. The rest of his hair was black and he looked like a polecat. It looked disgusting, but it also impressed us - it was punky and cool.

Our ass-kicking band with self-dyed clothes looked dangerous. In the East there were no real black clothes, everything was self-dyed and washed out over time. In used condition, they quickly looked shabby. In addition, we had bad shoes, some of which we sewed ourselves. It wasn't that we didn't have money for shoes, shoes weren't important in our circles. A westerner spent money on a shoe, that was not plausible to us! So we just looked in the rubbish to see if there was a pair of shoes.

For the "Sonne" music video we had 40 video ideas, no, I am exaggerating, it was only 38. And one was better than the next.

[How many times did you have to repeat the song for Feuer Frei video recording?] Not much, only 40 to 50 times from start to finish.

[An album you'd have loved to have played on?] Nine Inch Nails, any album, I love NIN but I think they would have been better if I'd been part of them!

To say too much is to break the myth, the magic. And then, when you see some interviews with bands, and I put us in that group, you often feel embarrassed.

We are not your average popstar, and we are not into miming to playback.

Musically we have loads of ideas. But Till is the only one writing texts. And if he does not supply us, we cannot work properly. You cannot sell a BMW without a motor. So we really do hope Till does not run out of ideas, although it is much tougher than in the beginning.

[on Christoph Schneider's first impression that Oliver Riedel was "a dangerous type, because he was always silent, but six months later, he spoke"] I also had a similar feeling about Olli. I always tried not to say anything unnecessary so that he would not shoot me down. I still think this.

When the band learned that someone's ass would have to be spanked [in the "Sonne" music video], everyone unanimously and oddly decided that it should be mine. I also can't explain why this is the case.

I think musicians should avoid describing their work. They often do it quite badly. Let's just say that our interviews can't match what we offer on stage. I prefer that our show and our music speak for us. It's like the Eiffel Tower, you can admire it without any further explanation. We follow the same logic as in our videos: we appear a lot in them, and as long as we don't talk, it works. It's a bit like when football players speak after a match: There is no point!

[1997] Nobody expected such a success, otherwise we wouldn't have called ourselves Rammstein and sung 'Ich will ficken'. Then we would have behaved. Of course you can be happy if you get more money, but I don't have those expectations, I have enough money. I have no car, no television, nothing, I don't need more money. We're not so crazy about money. I see it as a godsend that we get money for a thing we enjoy. I never thought we'd ever make money with Rammstein.

In the bands I played in, they never talked about what kind of music you make. So you don't think about any style of music, you just do it. I also don't sit down and think about what my next wife will look like. That's not going to happen. You take the one you fall in love with. It's the same with music. You make music with people you like. Then the music becomes good.

We never had role models. We have little in common in the band, but one thing we do have in common is that we never wanted to be like anyone else. We always wanted to be like Rammstein. You can always learn from everything except from bands, from those you can only learn what you don't want to do.

Everything began with the union of six friends. At the beginning, Rammstein was a side project to realise things that we couldn't do in our own bands. But we enjoyed working with machines. It satisfied our German character.

Rammstein has been around for seven years now, and like in agriculture when you plant potatoes, you do it for four years and then you give up monoculture to grow tomatoes, for example. Then, after two or three years, you can go back to potatoes. We follow this concept: We try to vary so we don't get bored, so that we can interpret our songs with full energy and enthusiasm.

It's true that there is a private persona and a public persona - the working persona - but when I'm on stage I am still 100 percent myself. I do enjoy both worlds, but I try to separate the two. It may sound arrogant, but it is like being an actor and having to play a character like Mephisto or a serial killer in a film. You need a sense of that inside of you to be convincing and I hope that comes across.

Sex has always been our problem. I have the theory that sex is the motor for the whole world. I tend to think that nobody would go to the discotheque if there would be no sex; or nobody would go into a club or a restaurant - well, for eating, yes, but not after eleven in the evening - we wouldn't have any bars then. No bands would exist to make music. Why should I make music when there are no women in front of the stage? Three or four bands with only female musicians, nothing else.

It is no different with image than with music: A thousand notes bring sixteen spectators, but sixteen notes bring a thousand spectators. The clearer the image, the more likely it is to stick. We have the strong men from Schwerin, who are not afraid to reach into the power socket, and the band members from Berlin, who know what happens then...

My hope was to get to the West one day. But I never wanted to leave the country, I wanted to go there normally.

Before Rammstein we were all fairly normal.

A house is on fire or someone wants to jump off the roof - the gawkers promptly gather. It's a magical attraction. People are built that way, they like it. They may act outraged or affected, but they are bad, they want to see trouble and gloat over the misfortune of others. The protagonist [of Rammstein's song "Spring"] didn't actually want to jump, just stand on top of the bridge and look at the sun. Though maybe he wanted to, and didn't know it.

But the amount of pictures from our private life is still very small. I would have liked some explanation with the photos [in Gert Hof's 2001 book], but I was pretty much alone with that opinion. With Oliver, you wonder what kind of girlfriend he has, but it is his mother. The band wanted the photos to stand alone, so that the fans could guess who was there.

We wanted to make a song that only works when the audience really participates. Unfortunately, that didn't work out very well [with "Ich Will"], especially the sing-along parts. The song was also discussed a bit in the band. For some, it is too shrill. Not me. I am one of those people who like it shrill.

[on the filming of Rammstein: Benzin (2005)] I had to stomp on a treadmill that seemed to be just endless. At the same time, it was necessary to carry a woman, to manage to look left or right, and even pretend to smile as if it's not at all difficult for me, plus to watch that I do not go too fast or too slowly, and, of course, try not to fall forward or backwards. A couple of hours later I was exhausted , I must say. Then I thought: Oh, next time I'll leave it to Till.

The average Western band is commercially oriented. They want to sell records, just like everyone else. The opportunism ruling these bands can be merciless, 95% just do what they are told, they simply adjust. We're all from the GDR. Over there a totally different reference and value system applies. It's always looking for boundaries. Not for the sake of provocation but confrontation. That, I think, is the truly exciting thing about it. Provocation per se tends to be boring. It exposes itself and is too artificial.

Back then, with this "Ich will ficken" [in Rammstein's song "Das alte Leid"], it was three against three. Eventually, the opponents said, "Alright, but only this one time", then the proponents said "Ok, once", and so we ended up leaving it in the song.