Batttttty rides the road with
Andre Bargmann
and after the day's work is done, we share a can of beans around the rocknroll campfire

OK Andre, firstly tell us a bit about yourself - your musical background and how you got started in this business. Name some of the bands you've worked with - and tell us what led to you getting the UFO gig. I was always interested in music and instruments, played in several bands, did covers and also my own material. While I was at the Drummers Institute in Düsseldorf my interest in the gear led to me working as a drum-tech at some of the workshops. Doro rehearsed there, and when they needed a drum-tech fhey offered me the gig and we did a lot of touring together. Through word of mouth I started working for other bands as well - Dio, Savatage, Saxon, Threshold, just to name a few. A stage tech called Jesus, who'd worked for UFO, once did the guitars in the Doro camp and he was the one who led me into working with UFO.

On a gig day the paying public's first glimpse of you is probably during the change-over a few minutes before UFO's set, when they arrive back from the bar just in time to see you sashaying onstage with your Mr. Muscle spraygun ("they're just dis-infecting the mics"). I would hate people to think that you're having the time of your life, AND earning huge dollars, AND gettin a squirrel's-eye view of the gig for free, just for flickin a duster around and handing musos their operating equipment. So... take us through a day in the life of a stage-technician, from the time you spring nimbly outta your bunk at mid-day like a vivacious gazelle, until the moment you switch off the dvd player just before 7am the next morning and head back to your bunk to knock out one last tune on the old music-machine (your i-pod, of course!) before falling into a deep, restful sleep. Hahaha… like a vivacious gazelle you say? Well, not bad to look like a four-legged gazelle after you’ve been legless the night before, huh? OK, let me create a typical day on a UFO tour...

If we’re at a club where we can’t park the bus we have to get all the gear unloaded straight away - so the first question is orientation. “Where am I? Which city? Which club? Have we been here before? Where are my pants?"

Bleary-eyed, we walk into the club, have a look at the stage and more importantly... search for the catering - if there is any - to have a nutricious ham'n'cheese sandwich. Unfortunately, the food issue is never straightforward. A lot of venues in the UK don’t think that crew-members need to eat at all. In Spain, they can’t imagine that people eat so early. But in some venues in France they are surprised you actually want to do anything else but enjoy good food!

Meanwhile, still sleepwalking, we check out the facilities for unloading, along with Tonio the tour manager - this poor guy has been up for hours already, checking the band into the hotel, and then at the venue trying to turn a mess into a smaller mess. 

The local lighting technician is often not there yet and the PA is not quite what we’ve asked for, etc…  but for the sake of this interview, today we are lucky.

The helpers are there and they seem to know what they’re doing. The good thing is, after travelling to the same clubs with different bands, you get to know the house-crews and it's great to meet up with them again.

So eventually, we get the gear onstage, taken out of the cases, and set up. That doesn’t sound very exciting, but usually we are very silly, joking around during that period. It must be weird for the locals sometimes - especially at the end of a tour when there are so many running gags and in-jokes amongst the crew that you can have a complete conversation with the venue-guy standing next to you and he doesn’t have a clue what the hell you’re talking about!

OK, now let’s fire up some incense to put us in the right spirit - the maintenance of the gear can take quite a while.... maybe something didn’t work the day before and you've gotta get it back into mint condition. Change the heads and strings, clean the cymbals etc, while Martin the sound-engineer EQs the PA - every day the same bloody songs! That's good if he chooses some you like! Martin uses Keb Mo's Keep It Simple... Blimey Andre, just hearing the words 'two cheap tickets on the internet' puts me right back into warm soft fluffy t-shirt-folding mode!

“Anyone need anything from the runner!?” Good question. “Hmm… let me think… no, I've got everything I need.” It goes without saying that you think of something vital ten minutes after he's left the building. A lot of venues are on the outskirts, so there is nothing around. If there is, you can only hope there will be time after soundcheck to stroll around and discover the city a bit.

But first, the holy soundcheck. Start by checking the lines, and making sure that all the leads are plugged in right. And what are all those cables lying around? Remember - a clean stage is a happy stage! The challenge is to find the right balance for the monitor. If you don’t carry your own system it can be painful, because one night you have a great rig and the next day it might be some cardboard boxes with tin-can speakers wedged inside them. The skill is being able to decide whether or not Vinnie’s guitar level in Andy’s mix is good in relation to Paul’s.  Sometimes all this preparation seems like a waste of time anyway, cos the monitor engineer is so busy talking to his latest girlfriend (yes, even monitor engineers have girlfriends!) that he doesn't pay attention to the monitors. It's like Russian Roulette, hahaha!

After soundcheck, we grab a bite to eat, but only (again) if available! A shower is a good idea at that point, because we'll have to leave straight after the show - long drive tonight - so better have one now cos there might not be another chance. It’s quiet in the hall now, the only thing you can hear is our lighting engineer Tobi, who is finally getting a chance to focus the lights, and the barely-audible chant of an old woman counting t-shirts.

Our main meal is usually some kind of pasta with chicken (?) and a mystery sauce. But we have a vegetarian in the crew. Oh, well... for him, there is just pasta. Believe me, food is an important issue on the road, which is why the major topic on a day off - well-discussed and argued about - is: where are we gonna eat? And does the restaurant have a washing-machine we can do our laundry in?

While the support is on, it’s time to have a look around. Go into the hall, have a look at the stage, check if there are any cuties in the front row? Ah… there is one, no, two… awwww, too bad, wrong angle - that one's a guy!

When the band arrives I go to the dressing room and check how they're doing. That is important for later on. If your artist is in a “not amused” mood, you might wanna triple-check the monitors during the changeover.

After that comes the most important task of the day, a visit to the back of the hall to attend to the needs of the merchandise-seller and make sure she wants for nothing - bottled water, oranges, bananas, chocolates, wine, roses etc.

Then back to the dressing-room to collect the towels, including a spare one in case any of the bandmembers decides to bring a toy squirrel on stage with them wrapped in a towel..... you never know what to expect with UFO!  I also fetch the drinks and the pee-cups (the toilets are never near the stage!), then disinfect the mics! Truly, in some venues there could be any kind of dangerous subcultural fauna living in the mics! I am amazed how entertaining the disinfection of the mics is for the people - they always laugh when they see that being done!

Time for a quick line-check, just to make sure the acoustic guitar didn’t end up on a keyboard channel while the support band's crew had control of the sound-desk. Then I check the tuning on Paul’s Les Paul - and then, immediately before stagetime, we deal with the urgent issues such as one of the bandmembers not being able to find his stage-pants, the keyboard needing to be reloaded, or finding that the smoke machine doesn’t work. Of course, if anything is wrong, it’s always the stage-tech’s fault!

Once the final crap has been dealt with (hey, doesn’t 'final crap' sound a lot like “Spinal Tap'... ) we're on our way! I take my torch, give Martin a sign to start the intro, and he replies to that with a flash of his torch back to me. Then, the houselights go down and the intro runs.

Now, here starts the two hours we worked for the whole day! Let’s hope it’s gonna be a good show! The monitors seem to be alright, Andy looks over and nods his head. Whewww! Paul needs his keyboard-amp up a bit, which Pete is gonna hate, but… I check the setlist, deal with tuning the guitar for the next song, switch the programs of the guitar amp for the chorus, run over to the drums, keep the bassplayer's hydration levels level.... see, it’s not just leaning back and following the show from Mr. Squirrel's perspective! The musicians need to feel your attention, and you'd better watch out, ‘cause it’s Murphy’s ( or *somebody's* ) Law, that when you relax a bit, something is going to happen!

Oh, time for Pete’s visit behind the amp. I will never forget the time he came up to me in Liverpool and said “Andre, I am sorry, but I feel a bit…”  - and then he puked, because a hair was stuck in his throat.  " Sick?” I asked - a few seconds too late. And then he went straight back out there and played on - hardly missing a note! But tonight it seems to be going well. Phil delivers some fine sarcastic British humour, Vinnie had the right amount of Red Bull, Paul is on the corner of the drum-riser (he only jumps on there when he’s in a good mood) smiling at Andy, who has fun watching Pete successfully working the crowd. They're having fun!

After the show it’s always a rush to break things down as fast as possible. We've been at least twelve hours in the venue by now. Enough! Let’s hope it’s not raining during load-out! Once the trailer is locked, we go back to the dressing room and open up a beer. But the venue staff want to go home as well, so we get ushered out, salvaging whatever's left of the rider, and then it's back on the bus, stopping off at the hotel to pick up the band's luggage. That’s the time to get out of our work clothes and put on something clean and comfortable. Of course, we could go to bed now, but that wouldn’t be very rock’n’roll. So everybody chills out in the 'tourbus lounge'. Stories from the past get told (Andy has an incredible memory) and eventually one by one we go to bed - and the Last Man Standing is usually you, Batttttty! Yehhh.... but somebody has to make sure the rider doesn't go to waste!

When you first started working with UFO, Jason was drumming with the band. On the tour that followed, Andy was back. Tell us the differences between their styles, from a drum-tech's angle. How different/similar are they to work for? From a drum-tech’s angle? Well, let me start with gear, then. One thing they both have in common is that they care about their equipment.
When we set up, the band is in the hotel, but Jason used to come down every now and then just to be in touch with his drums, and play around a bit. Andy is very much interested in how the drums are built. He’s interested in woodwork as you know, and if something needs fixing, he also comes down from the hotel and wants to do it. Not necessarily because he doesn’t trust me (I hope, hahaha) but that’s the way most drummers are.
I think more than some other instrumentalists, drummers have a very intense relationship with their instrument. Jason and Andy certainly have.

< Click on this picture to find out more about Andy's kit and Jason's kit

During the gig, they are both pretty easy to work with. I check with them whether the monitor sound is correct and as long as there are no incidents like broken pedals etc., it's straightforward. Which is good, because I also have Paul's guitars to take care of - but unfortunately when there ARE incidents, on either front, they tend to happen at the same time. No time for a cup of tea at my workstation, which we call the 'tea-kitchen' because I always carry tea with me - just in case there's ever time to put my feet up and read the newspaper - yeh... right...

Playing-wise, Andy and Jason are clearly different players. That of course adds different flavours to the music and then it becomes a matter of taste. Needless to say Andy created the original UFO drum-sound and style. Jason was smart enough to pick up important fills of that - however, he interpreted those with his very own feel.

One of the other major bands you work with is Dio. Yeh! We know that Dio looks up to you... and Simon has also played drums for UFO of course - small world! Tell us what it's like to be on the road with Dio. Oh, yes, mighty Dio! So actually I have worked for three UFO drummers then, haven’t I? Well, it could have been very difficult cos Simon’s previous drum-tech, Big Scott, stayed with him for about seven years, and then along comes a new guy… that was a difficult heritage. But it turned out to be great. Simon is a great guy and a great drummer. We really get along very well, especially in drumworld, hahaha! But not just there. The whole entourage has a great spirit - we are all great friends on the road. It’s a good crew with no animosity. Ronnie himself is just the nicest guy you can meet. He is professional to the bone and he’s got a heart bigger than his body. At my fourth Dio show the last encore started, Man On The Silver Mountain, and he came up to the drum-riser, turned to me, and put his index finger underneath his eye-lid and I thought: OMG, what did I not see? What should I watch? But actually he was just asking whether my eye was better - because I had a very dodgy eye that morning before we flew, and the air-conditioning on the plane made it worse. And HE went to the tour manager to make sure there was a doctor coming to take care of my eyes. So here we are… 9000 Greeks going nuts, and Ronnie James Dio, mid-song, asking me whether my eyes were doing better! I love them, and I love being on tour with them!

Do you enjoy the traveling? What are the good things about being on the road for weeks at a time? And the bad things? Wow, how much time do we have? Honestly, I LOVE travelling. Of course there are more comfortable ways and less comfortable ways of doing it. If you are going by plane, it can be quite painful because you have to get up way too early, and then there's all the hanging around at airports, ridiculous security controls - hey, EVERY airport has different security rules, sometimes you think: hold on, where’re we at? For example...
      Lübeck: I can’t bring any duct-tape and only one lighter.
      Varna: Tape's okay, but NO lighters at all,
      Hermosillo: Oh, better wash your underpants, ‘cause you have to open your luggage and they’ll go through it.
      London Heathrow: Better don’t fly at all. Seriously, see this picture, a bomb warning threat form which you'll find at Heathrow. No words to it, is there? Hahahaha, that's priceless!

Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes… travelling on a tourbus is fairly comfortable compared to that. A mobile home. I love to sit somewhere near the front window when we are taking off to the next city. The coach starts moving, the first tasty drink is poured, and then there are some special songs on the playlist that I have on my headphones. Plus, you have your own bed, even if it’s just coffin-sized. Very fortunate if you fit in there! I’m kinda tall, so a lot of bunks are too short for me. Mostly at the end of a tour you finally find a position you can sleep in! Did I say comfortable? Hahaha!
Nevertheless, at least you get some kind of private space! And that’s why the bus is sanctuary - and guests on there are mostly well selected. Sometimes people - mostly drunk - try to get on the tourbus, and I’m not talking about band and crew here, hahaha, but strangers, who think it must be cool to be on a tourbus. Okay, I do understand that curiosity. But when I am walking around in some town, I can’t just enter any house because I think “Oh, I like that person” or “Oh, that looks kinda cool”. You just don’t do that!  So... my bus is my home is my castle!

What are your favourite countries to visit, and which countries have the most inspiring audiences? I think I wanna quote Keith Richards on that: "Great to be here - great to be anywhere!" There are so many wonderful places all around the world, and touring puts you in the fortunate position to see and experience so much! But, as for the audiences, I think the South American enthusiasm is overwhelming. I mean, here have a look at this!  This was filmed in Buenos Aires - seems like it’s not just a concert that is played - it is a big party! That is amazing, I think.
As for my favourite country, I have to admit I loved our five-week tour in Russia in ‘05. We all loved it! We went all the way from Khabarovsk in the east, right to the very west, and then to the Ukraine and Belarus as well. There was so much to discover and it was way different to what we expected. Like Simon said on the dvd: "People think of Russia, and they think of a dark country, that it’s cold, grumpy people and all those clichés - but it wasn’t anything like that!!

How do you feel when you get back to the four walls where you live? Oh, that’s the hardest part of all, to be quite honest. Especially after a long trip. Your state of mind is somewhere else and your day/night rhythm is fucked up. You look at your watch and think - hey, about time for soundcheck, where is the catering and where is everybody else? You try to catch up with sleep and with your friends.

Your friends have to be very loyal as well. I mean, you are not there for most of the year so you can’t expect them to go "Oh, so you are back here in your home town and now I have all the time in the world for you!” In your absence, naturally, their life goes on, and you haven’t been part of that except for maybe a few phone calls or emails every once in a while... ugh quite a bit of the 80s, actually! It’s no wonder that a lot of these relationships split up. Although, some wives would probably be happy not to see their husband for a while - and the other way around, hahaha!
After one tour, the bassplayer in Bombay Black, Ingo, handed me a copy of Bob Seger’s Turn The Page, which I didn’t know until then. Coming home, I put it on and the saxophone in the intro instantly caught my attention and then I heard the lyrics and couldn’t believe it. I played the song over and over and I couldn’t stop crying for a long time! Shortly before that tour I'd split up with my girlfriend. And now all the pressure and the diversion was gone, those emotions came out on top of that. Blimey mate, yeh - the long and lonesome highway certainly does give you plenty of time to think - but NOT being on the long and lonesome highway can sometimes be a lot emptier. Oh well, I hope that page has now turned for ya.

Does it bother you that all the 'glamour' seems to belong to the band members, and yet the technicians work much longer hours than any of those fellas but are hidden in the shadows. (Mind you, UFO often think they're also hidden in the shadows when Tobi's on duty, haha). Is the anonymity something that you like or dislike - and why? The first part of the question can only be answered with 'no'. Because, if you think you should be in the focus, you could not do your job properly. Plus, though it’s true that the crew is in the venue a longer time and seems to be working harder at that time - hey, most bands I have worked for have a long history and went through a lot of things. They fought very hard to be in that position. And before the tour, they gotta write new material, record the cd and do all the promo stuff, which is hard work as well. So let them do whatever they want during the day, as long as they put on a great show. Dio for example has a strict rule about technicians not being seen on stage during the show. And I totally get it! Nobody goes to the show to see a bunch of technicians fixing stuff on stage during the performance. “Hey, I’m gonna go to a gig tonight. They have a great drum-tech!” Hahaha! And don’t forget - wherever we are I can go out, see the city, go to the pub, restaurant, hotels etc without “panthers” following me, watching me how I do this, or that.

Well darlin, that may have been true before, but now you've been interviewed for SITN you're gonna be stalked by autograph-hunters the world over. Maybe you should think about wearing a disguise! Ah - I see I'm already too late with that advice!

OK, now tell us about your time with PowerQuest, and your part in the album Neverworld. Oh, it was a great time, a great experience, and I think the album is quite good as well! We recorded it at the Thin Ice Studios, it was produced by Karl Groom and parts of it by Richard West from Threshold, whose tour-manager I was. So we somehow changed sides! Would you re-join if they asked you? The decision not to play with them any longer was indeed a musical one, so I can’t really imagine going back. Maybe some guest-appearance, but that would be it. I’m still in contact with all of them, and we have fun when we meet. And actually, Steve Williams and I had the idea to record some more material in the future, not as fast, a little more proggy, ‘cause we had quite some good chemistry in that direction. We'll see. Actually, the guys are going on tour very soon, and I’m sure they gonna have a good time. I hope they get a good reaction, because they really deserve it! So go and see them!

What bands would you join at the drop of a high-hat if there was a vacancy on the drumstool? I’d like to be in the Rolling Stones, hahaha… only joking! Honestly, I couldn’t come up with a name. There are a lot of great bands out there. But either it would be impudent to want to be part of it or you would ruin it for yourself! I mean, for example: I like this or that band. And surely it would be great to have the chance to jam with them at a certain occasion. But I would never like to be the drummer in that band. You know what I mean? If I join a band I wanna be involved in the creative process, go out on tour and play with them - but let's not forget, it’s gotta pay the rent as well!

You play lots of instruments, but your weapon of choice turned out to be a drumkit. Why? And how do you think your all-round experiences of playing keyboards, guitar etc have influenced your style of drumming, and the way you listen to other drummers' work? Remember once, we had a conversation once about the 'sensual' aspect of drumming. I think that's what I'm asking you to expand on. Ah yes - for me, it was always more about the music than about showing off on a certain instrument. That’s why, when we had a drummer, I played a different instrument, like guitar or keys. So when I play with a band today I listen very carefully to what the others are doing. And I do look at the drums in a melodical way as well. Simple example, but... everybody can literally sing the major fill (Phil?) in Mr. Collins' In The Air Tonight, or take Toto’s I Will Remember. That’s how I tune drums as well. Drums have something pure. You don’t need an amplifier or effects for them, it is you and the instrument. It allows you to express any of your feelings. And I don’t mean you can bang the hell out of them when you’re angry. No, for example, at the Drummers Institute we had a course in solo-drumming. I always liked that. A friend of mine however, never really felt comfortable with it and asked if I could have a listen to what he’d come up with. I did, and I thought it was total bullshit. I said “Hey, don’t just combine groove #87 from that book, with fill in #34 from the other book. Let it out, tell me a story! Just PLAY the drums!” “What do you mean?” he said. So I asked him to tell me a story. “Play a solo, and think of how you felt when you returned home after your one-year-trip to the USA” He thought about that for a while, and then played. After he had stopped, I told him what I have understood and that was absolutely what he was trying to express! When it came to the exam, he walked up to the kit and whispered to me “I’ll take a walk in New York now…”. That was wonderful! And there are certain drummers, who can play a few bars and I can tell you exactly how they feel.

When you were starting out, what drummers inspired you? You've worked with some of your heroes - has working with them changed your perception of them, and if so, how? First of all, there were the local drummers. Looking back, they might not have been that good a drummer but they seemed amazing to us kids at that time, when we formed our first bands! Later on, I went down the typical road of “Oh, it’s gotta be complicated” and a drummer had to play odd meters, a high amount of notes in only one bar - or he could not be in my list of favorites. And a while after that, I discovered that a simple groove - 1 & 3 on the bass-drum, 2 & 4 on the snare, together with an 8s note hi-hat pattern - played well, can be a wonderful thing! Jeff Porcaro’s video was quite inspiring for that.
For me, Simon Phillips found a great 'symbiosis' between straight ahead and complicated playing. In that direction, a great step for me was to go to the Drummers Institute in Düsseldorf, which is related to New York’s Drummer’s Collective. That took the blindfolds away and opened my ears and my mind for all kinds of music, and different styles.  One of my drum-teachers there was a guy called Manni von Bohr (he played with “Birthcontrol” and the British band “Message”). Modern Drummer magazine called him “the German pope of drumming” - he is a drum-encyclopedia!
Really good drummers have a trademark, something which makes them recognizable. They pick up things and create their own meaning out of it. For example, there is a groove by Buddy Rich, triplet feel, quite a lot of ghost notes. Billy Cobham takes that groove and puts it in a binary feel and Simon Phillips picks that up and creates an odd meter out of it. And you can see the history of a groove!
Erm, right, but I guess I should come back to the question, huh? Yes darlin, you're going off on one, I can tell! I like it though! Hah! Fortunately, a lot of “heroes” - at least when you are young, they are! - turned out to be very nice, down to earth people when Ifinally met them. Plus, and that is a great advantage of the tech work, I can work with them, observe them, and learn from them about their approach, their technique, attitude etc. Did I mention that I love my job!!

You get a very interesting view of the gig (if you can call Pete's backside interesting) and you're able to take photos that no-one else is in a
position to take. You also keep a photo-diary during a tour. What are the favourite photos you've ever taken, and where can we find them? Well, my favorite pictures are probably the hidden files on my harddrive… hahaha. No, seriously, most of the pictures I like can be found in the yellowdrums gallery. There are all kinds of pictures, from several tours. UFO, Dio, Doro, Threshold, Savatage, Symphony X… not just the conventional gig-pics, but also of gear, backstage, travel, typical tourist pictures, as well. Every single one reminds me of great moments on tour - which doesn’t mean I’m living in the past. Au contraire - I’m looking forward to taking a lot more!

As we all know, 'what plays on the road stays on the road'. But... got any jolly anecdotes that you'd like to tell us about any of the UFO fellas? Tell us about any practical jokes that you may have been involved with... Well, indeed there are a few that should certainly stay on the road! Most of them, actually!!!!! But one thing that was definitely funny was on a day off - in Karlsruhe, if I remember correctly - the hotel bar was taken over by a major part of our entourage. As the evening wore on, Paul, along with the rest of us, was bored by the soundtrack-muzak, and 'cheered up' by some encouraging drinks finally commandeered the white grand piano and played some classics. The UFO has landed, so to say! Oh yes, I remember that occasion very well! I think we started off quite sedately with Imagine (a la John and Yoko) but got more and more 'cheered up' as the evening grew on, and eventually the whole bar full of Swiss, Germans etc were singing along, in English, to some of Tom Jones greatest hits - but with errrr..... let's just say 'amended' lyrics. Did we end up gettin thrown out? I'd lost the plot well before that!

What has been your most surreal onstage moment - and your most embarrassing moment. Concerning UFO it’s clear. My most embarrassing moment was my first show with those guys! It was the Silja Rock Cruise. I was the only tech for that, and we had rental equipment where everything had to be dialled in, a drumkit to set up out of the box, and five artistes on stage.

Pete’s basses, Vinnie’s guitars, Paul's guitars, the keyboards, the spares, all the vocal mics, the whole monitor situation - I had to take care of all that alone! Hey, my very FIRST show! I didn't know what they would be like on stage and wasn't comfortable with the situation cos I would be unable to predict any reaction.

Obviously, there was a lot of uncertainty on my side. Plus, there was not much space to set up, everything was quite tight. What happened? At the start of the third song, Pete gets tangled up in a cable and dives backwards into Jason's drums! So, the drums were torn apart, I had a bassplayer lying on the hi-hat and the monitor - and he was continuing to play the song. Gee… what am I doing here!? Haha, a baptism of fire - but now you take all that kinda stuff in your stride. Like we said before, with UFO you have to always expect the unexpected!

What are your five favourite UFO songs, and what special feelings'n'memories does each song hold for you?
Baby Blue - a lovely ballad, great arrangement.
Love To Love - Battttty’s favorite! Great writing, and coming back to the musical aspect we talked about before: nice odd meter appearance.
Rock Bottom - I love when Vinnie goes off and lets it all out. Sometimes during the solo Paul comes back behind the amps, has a drink, and we have a little chat - see HERE!
Lights Out - a nice high energy piece. With Dio we played an outdoor festival somewhere near Valencia. The light company forgot to fill up the engine which powered the light, so the light literally went out during the show, until the engine was refuelled. Chris, the sound engineer usually plays Frank Sinatra’s That’s Life and the end of each show, and that would have fitted this time as well. But in this case, he chose Lights Out!
Black & Blue - I’m loving the Who-esque intro. I think it would make a perfect opener on upcoming shows.
And I should also mention Shoot Shoot which always marks the end of the show. Plus I’m waiting for the Stones to cover it!

OK, now this wouldn't be a proper rocknroll interview unless I asked you what your favourite drink is. So.... what is it? Without a doubt, it is 'Loup di Crümy' - a fine cocktail of which the ingredients are so secret that not even the makers know what's in it! It's also very rare, so if you ever see a bottle of Loup di Crümy on Ebay, bid HIGH! (Sorry everyone - that's one of those in-jokes that we were talking about earlier!)

What would you like to be doing in 5 years time? And in 10 years time? And would you be willing to stay at home and look after our babies if it meant me being able to go on the road and sell UFO t-shirts, hahahaha. In five and ten years time I'd still like to be doing this job because I love it so much - and as for our babies, how about if you sell them some t-shirts and we take the kids on the road with us! We could train them up to be the next generation road crew!  Let's do it!

And now ..... drumroll.... what's coming up next in your career? This year, I will be pretty busy doing a tour with Heaven & Hell, which is basically Black Sabbath with Dio singing. The tour kicks off in Canada in March and will take us right round the planet till November. I’m really looking forward to that, as the circumstances seem to be very good - and the music of course. the drummer on that one will be Vinny Appice, another legend!   Unfortunately therefore... I will miss the next UFO tour. Whattttttttt????????? You're not coming with us??????? You're deserting Meo for Dio??????  Blimey. Interview over! And next time I'm lookin for a drum-tech to interview, you will be ... the.... LAST IN LINE! (Did ya see what I did there....?)

This interview © Batttttty - 1st February 2007

All photos on this page © Andre Bargmann and Batttttty