Current Issue

eclipsed: The big surprise is that after seven years Mercury Rev has released a new CD. In the beginning it sounds completely different than earlier records from you, but with each further hearing the Mercury Rev sound comes better to the fore ...

Jonathan Donahue: The record came to us. We've been playing relentlessly in the seven years since the last CD and have been on tour. But we live in the mountains and have a different sense of time than usual in the music business. Seven years is an infinity in the music world. But that's nothing to us. We wrote a long time on the record. It took shape about a year and a half ago. We went into the studio, and what followed went really fast.

eclipsed: How did you avoid the Mercury Rev trademark traps?

eclipsed: Your project Eureka was the German answer to Mike Oldfield. Much time has passed since the last almost instrumental concept work "Shackleton's Voyage" (2009). "Great Escapes" now presents a new Eureka sound. Hardly any folk, symphonic prog and Oldfield bonds left. Instead of Claudia Sokollek, who sang on the first records until 2005, you now take over the mic yourself. What has the musician Frank Bossert undergone since 2009 for further development?

eclipsed: You are celebrating your twentieth anniversary at the moment and are travelling electrically with Pink Floyd music for a correspondingly long time. With "Barefoot To The Moon - An Acoustic Tribute To Pink Floyd" you now succeed in staging the bombastic classics of the art rockers in strictly acoustic garb in a completely new way and thus bring out unknown facets. How did this concept come about?

Steffen Maier: Yes, at first you think Pink Floyd acoustically, it's like a power station without electronics. The first time I had this thought was when I read that Nick Mason would have liked to do something like this with Pink Floyd. And if that's what Nick Mason thinks, maybe it's really possible.

eclipsed: David Gilmour actually gave an acoustic show at the London Meltdown Festival in the Royal Festival Hall in June 2001, which was also released on DVD as "David Gilmour In Concert".

He's smiling. Over and over again. He actually seems to be having fun on stage. From 2010 to 2013 he presents "The Wall" to the whole world. Make it clear that he and only he is the author of this monumental work. With its impressive concert scenes and bonus material, the new film "Roger Waters The Wall" documents even more: satisfaction with work. Joy with the people around him. I'm fine with myself. That wasn't always the case in Roger Waters' career. In 1965 Waters founded the band Sigma 6 with Nick Mason and Rick Wright. At that time he was still playing guitar, but was replaced by bass. "I was afraid to end up on drums," he was supposed to have said. It didn't get that far.

As is so often the case, at the beginning coincidence was the godfather. Until 1964, it was common for pop acts to appear on television to present their latest songs. When Richard Lester finished the Beatles movie "A Hard Day's Night" he omitted the performance of the song "You Can't Do That" at London's Scala Theater due to lack of space. At the end of 1964, the makers of the "Ed Sullivan Show", which had been the door opener for the US market for the Beatles in February, asked Lester to broadcast exactly this recording. Lesters employee John Victor Smith edited the recordings into a short clip that imitated the aesthetics of the film. It was the first time that the Beatles could be seen on television without being in the studio themselves.

Subsignal mastermind Markus Steffen seems relaxed and tidy in the interview. And so could the 47-year-old: The first reviews of the new studio album were positive throughout. A small release tour also lies behind the band around Steffen and the Dutch singer Arno Menses. "Beacons" was also very well received by the fans. After two changes of line-up, the quintet may feel at the temporary high point of its career.

eclipsed: "Masterpiece", "stroke of genius" - the album reviews are sometimes exuberant. How are you doing with that?

Markus Steffen: Of course you're fine with it. That's great for us as a band and for the record company. Personally, it doesn't flash like it used to. I make music first and foremost for myself. It is important to me to write songs with which I am satisfied.

Joe Elliott, the singer of the band, who belongs to the squad of eloquent English rock stars who radiate glamour and down-to-earthness at the same time, made sure in November 1977 that the band, which he joined at the age of 18, chose "Deaf Leopard" as its name. As a reference to Led Zeppelin, the musicians quickly renamed themselves Def Leppard and in 1980, during the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM), were flushed to the top of the movement together with Saxon and Iron Maiden. But while their supposed musical companions, with the exception of Maiden, could not spread their success beyond the old continent, the Leps took a full approach to the rock throne and released "Pyromania" (1983) and "Hysteria" (1987), two of the most successful rock albums of all time. The two works produced by Robert John "Mutt" Lange (including AC/DC, Foreigner, Bryan Adams) sold 22 million copies in the USA alone.

Of razor-sharp mind and weak physical constitution, Frank Zappa was a head man from earliest youth on. Even his humor was over his head, never through his stomach. At best he lived out his feelings in his songs. His surroundings would adore him all their lives, hardly anyone felt loved by him. Frank Zappa was a loner, and it is no wonder that he has many epigones, but never trained a school.