INTERVIEW

Alpha Forum with Hubert von Goisern

Welcome to Alpha Forum. Our guest today is a musician, composer, lyricist, actor and traveller in various regards. It is Hubert von Goisern.

Hello.

We use the familiar form of you privately, and therefore we shall use it today in the programme. I remember the story that Hubert von Goisern, the Alpinkatzen and all that would not have been, had your grandfather not picked up a piece of chalk on a certain day in a certain place. What happened?

My grandfather had fled with his family, that is, with my mother, my grandmother and my aunt, from the Sudetenland and came on this escape to Salzburg. They arrived there in a freight train, in which they had all their property. "Vienna" was written on this train in chalk, that was the destination, that's where this refugee train was sent. My grandfather knew that Vienna was bombed and there would not necessarily be rosy times waiting for him there. Because he was a shoemaker by occupation, he asked around in Salzburg at the station, where there could possibly be a job for him. A friendly gentleman then told him, Goisern would be something for him, there would be a shoemaker tradition there.

That is an old tradition, the Goiserer is also a quite well-known brand of shoe.

Yes, exactly. He thereupon procured a sponge, and they rubbed out the word "Vienna" on their railroad car and changed it to "Goisern". And as officials do - they do what they are told, and the train went to Goisern. So I was a Goiserer. Perhaps otherwise I would have ...

... probably become Hubert von Vienna. I think it wouldn't have happened that way, because with it...

There something else would then have come from it, or perhaps not.

I know Goisern a little. It is squeezed into a rather narrow valley, the Traun flows through, the "Predigtstuhl" is there, and at the other end of the valley lies the Hallstatt lake. To what extent is one shaped by such a landscape?

It never appeared to me as such a geographical closeness. It was already rather the case from the mentality. But I was very happy during my childhood. I feel also very privileged to have grown up at such a place. Although I then had to leave when I was 21 or 22. I simply wanted to know more of the world than what people had told me. And so it was necessary to travel.

We go back briefly a small step. You began to make music in Goisern. You were in a brass band there.

Yes, they were my first musical steps. I always wanted to become a musician, as far back as I can remember. My parents did not consider this necessarily worthwhile and also did not account for the fact that I would have experienced the possibility of musical training. When I was then about twelve years old, I went myself to our brass band and said that I would really like to learn the trumpet. Thereupon someone put an instrument at my disposal and assigned a teacher: that all cost nothing. So I owe this brass music tradition great thanks, although the brass musicians also then threw me out.

There in your biography stands the word "rebellion" for the first time: "He rebelled against this narrowness and also against this music tradition, which was imparted there".

Yes, I rebelled particularly against authority, because at 18, 19 years old I began to no longer accept authority, if it appointed itself only to be authority: because he is the conductor, therefore he has a say, therefore he is always right. Or because he is older, or because he is a teacher. I did not accept that any more from then on. I argued and wanted to hear arguments for it, why something had to be like that.

We stop there for a while. Your first instrument was not the accordion, the Styrian instrument, but the trumpet.

Correct, it was the trumpet. Then came the guitar, which I learned at high school and the music school: classical guitar. However, I soon bought myself an electrical guitar, because the other one was simply too quiet for me and since I was about ten years old, I had been confronted with quite different music. That was music which came from the radio and was different from what people heard at home with me. It was the music of The Beatles, it was the Stones, Manfred Mann, The Who and these whole stories, and I had simply felt, that it was something that fascinated me.

I said at the start, "traveller in various regards". These first seven years, during which you travelled, were actually years of the travel. How can one imagine that? You must sleep, you must eat, you must drink, you must stay overnight somewhere: did you earn money at the same time, or what happened, because seven years is a long time? Most people have three weeks holiday in the year, in which they go away.

Yes, but they have a holiday, they are tourists. But I always wanted to travel to a place to live there. I looked for a job and worked with the people. I think it's the best way that you can become acquainted with another country, another culture, if you do something together with the people in this country, not just gape at them and you don't feel as if you have gone into a film and moved yourself into another culture there.

This phase was mentioned only briefly in all the documents we found about you. He was simply away for seven years. But in your young years, that must have been something which shapes you a great deal.

Yes, it has always shaped me, when I had the chance to experience adventures or to meet new people and new cultures. That also always gives the possibility of questioning and of looking - from the outside as it were - back on your own tradition, which you had considered irrefutable so far.

You also worked musically in this time?

No. In the first four years of my journey I did as good as nothing in music. When I left home, I had to give the trumpet back because it belonged to the band. With the guitar I eased the strings, oiled the grip board a little and locked it up tidily. I simply had the feeling, that was it with music. I'd only had opponents in my musical need everywhere at home.

That then also continued later.

Yes, my parents were against the fact that I made music. Also my wife at that time was against it - for her it had been very threatening, she had no access to music. I just thought to myself, if I'm making everyone unhappy with it, why should I practice it still further? I did not know at that time, how important the music was for me.

In my notes I've found that this exposure to other music cultures would have sometimes been the source for what you then did afterwards.

That's so. Particularly when I then went to Toronto in Canada , it was clear to me that I had to become a musician. I decided at the age of 27 that I must do it. Up to then I had let myself be told that it wouldn't be anything, but I thought that I was old enough now, to take responsibility. This was after the divorce of my wife, and so I had felt really independent then and thought that nobody could interfere any more now: "I shall simply do it now". I began then to occupy myself with music again and crept into everything, which was, for me, exciting or unfamiliar and looked like an adventure.

Somewhere the source is to be found, or have I misunderstood?

That is so.

This resolution was made at the age of 27. That is, at an age, at which many end their career in the pop scene - you began there.

I do not feel myself to be a pop musician. I like this type of music, and I imagine, that it also has a bit to do with my tradition, my musical tradition. But I feel myself to be a musician, as someone, who expresses himself with the help of music, that is my language. Pop music is only a small segment of it.

That was just a comparison, because there is such a thing like these boy bands, whose careers are usually ended at 27 years old. You then went to Vienna in 1982. And there begins the story, which we know partly or to a large extent: That was the Alpinkatzen part 1, co-operation with Wolfgang Staribacher. There was then the first record, Alpine Lawine. Was that already somehow fixed back then? I saw, in 1989, a television appearance: the styling was not as it later was. I saw you still dressed with black shoes - rather as a city person. That was not yet what was later associated with Goisern. To what extent had the footwear been important then?

I cannot really remember the footwear anymore. At the moment I'm even wearing white shoes, that's not so super alpine-like either. During the many performances, I came to realise that what I needed was a second skin around me, so that I felt happy playing the accordion or singing on stage. For that I need comfortable things. Only over the years, did I come to know what I needed for this and what I wanted. Many times, I sat together with Klaus Höller, a designer. We then sketched these things - and so over the years they developed.

Let us make a branch into what I call the 700 wild days: That was for me was the period from November 1992 to November 1994. Back then, when we met for the first time, approximately 3000 of your CDs had been sold in Germany. Then there was the first appearance in the Nachtwerk. That was in November 1992, and thus the rocket went off. How do you feel now in hindsight? Can you still remember it at all, or is it something that you rather saw in the two years in low-altitude flight?

Yes, but rather in high flight. It was rather the stratosphere.

I mean, it was just two years, these 700 days, but they flew past.

Yes, it was a wonderful time - really intense. It was a fast, intense life, as you imagine it will be, if you have success: where you then s then really only travel from hotel to hotel and from stage to stage and meet open arms and ears everywhere. You simply have something like a confidence bonus. That was an unbelievably great time, which I would not want to miss. It is just that after a while, I then noticed that now: there is nothing new happening to me, except 100 variations on the topic. But I am too curious a person, to want to mark time.

If I understand you correctly, that means that basically this principle had taken care of new folk music in 1994 with the records you had made: nothing new can actually come - or is that not it?

Not exactly. For me it presented itself in such a way that this environment, in which I moved - including my fellow musicians, the whole organisation of the printing and duplicating industry and naturally the public too -, it would not have been possible to do something really radically new. It was difficult to change something small because then people constantly said to me: "you can't do that, you may not do that, people only want to hear that, or we want to do that and that, and it has worked this way, why not any more etc.." I then thought, I don't want that.

I remember that there must have also been a fight with Hage, the manager, where you you refused to play Hiatamadl ever again. For me as a musician, it's almost incomprehensible that someone, who finally, after so many years, has a hit - it's needed about 10 years -, suddenly says, I won't play that any more.

I cannot remember exactly any more, but of course it is the case that we played Hiatamadl I don't know how many, a hundred or a thousand times. I would just like to play something else sometimes. It doesn't have to do anything with the fact that you don't like it any more. It's just like eating ham with bacon for breakfast every day. Sometimes you have had enough, and you want to have muesli.

Yes, I can understand that. One of the high points of these wild 700 days for me was the lightning tour which went from Munich to Paris, to San Antonio, to Austin and to New York. You had travelled before, you had lived in Canada: was it nevertheless something exciting again, or was it just simply a little odd? How do you judge that in hindsight?

It was always exciting, because my journeys beforehand had been journeys, and that was a tour. It is something else, if you go on a journey, because you would like to bring something to the goal of the journey: you transport your own culture to another country, not just yourself. There's already the feeling of the uncertainty about whether people will understand it, whether they want to hear it at all. But when we arrived and played our concerts, we encountered enthusiasm everywhere. That gave me a great deal of self-confidence, because I was already of the opinion that this so-called discussion about world music isn't exactly right: everything that it is exotic - whether it comes from Greenland or from Africa or from Asia -, is world music for us, but in the moment, where it's about our own musical tradition, it's no longer the case. It had always been my approach that it is very arguably also a part of the cultural spectrum on this globe and is also exotic in Paris or America and represents world music for these people.

Then - seen from the outside - the conclusion was very abrupt, although I believe that you'd had it in mind for a long time: 31st October 1994, the last concert, a catchup concert, in Münster. Had you already planned that on a long-term basis?

I had already said to my band one year earlier, that I would like to lead the project to an end and a conclusion. So they all had enough time to prepare for it, although that is not something for which you can really prepare - except to mentally adjust to the fact that the large free space or large hole will be just be there.

I also had the feeling at this time that, at the last concert, you were all already rather finished: everyone was somehow oppressed and exhausted and couldn't last any longer. The constant concerts, the tours and the hotels have certainly left their mark. Before we recorded this last concert, there was an interview, and I can remember that in this interview the word "Tibet" had already been mentioned. The presenter had asked, what plans you had for the time after the Alpinkatzen, and you quite harmlessly said: "I would like to travel once to Tibet." You then did that rather quickly too.

Yes. It is my belief that the adventures always start in your head: They do not take place in your head, but they begin there. You have something like desires, visions, dreams, and you don't need to use the sledgehammer approach at all, for them to fulfil themselves: What is important, will fulfil itself. You can't always get what you want, but you get what you need. For me it was an obvious necessity to travel to Tibet. I was in a situation, in which I had time, after I retired from the stage, in which a free space was suddenly there, so that things and meetings could again take place. And I met a Tibetan lady, who asked me, without knowing of my interest in Tibet, to support a tour of Tibetan musicians who had been in Austria on tour. I did that, I presented this tour.

That was 1995.

1995 was the first contact with Tseten, and in March 1996 was the tour. Within these two weeks I discovered so much about the people and their music that I still hadn't seen through them, but had become unbelievably curious. I did not understand much, but I simply wanted to penetrate more deeply: quite spontaneously, I said to Tseten, who hadn't been in Tibet since she was two, because she fled with her parents in 1959 and has lived in exile since: "Let's go to Tibet, we can see." We knew stories, that were told by the people who had been there. I considered them to be exaggerated and partly for propaganda. It may be an unpleasant situation of course, if one does not have total rule over one's own country and culture, if the country is occupied, but so surely it is not as bad as the people say. We went, and I'm afraid it was many times worse than all stories: There was really nothing exaggerated. I also felt there for the first time in my life, what freedom means. In my opinion, freedom is like health: If you have it, you don't think anything of it. The moment something twinges, you notice, aha, now I'm not healthy. I grew up in the western world, I was allowed to always say what I wanted. At worst there was a slap, if it did not suit someone. But I was never locked up for it. Here you can grumble about the police, about Federal Chancellor and about the Federal President, you can even grumble about the Pope. You are not shut in prison for it. At worst there is a dispute with someone, who is of the other opinion. In Tibet you cannot do that, you may not. There there is also no valve for the truth, and that is unbelievably oppressing. Until I was in Tibet, I had not yet experienced what freedom means: There I learned it - because in Tibet, freedom is missing.

That is, you were not allowed to say what you really think, you had to be very careful?

Yes, and an unbelievable distrust reigns. I had never been to the DDR (former East Germany), but I imagine that it was similar there - or in the thirties and forties here, which I however, thank God, did not have to experience. You simply don't know who is a friend, who is an enemy, who is an informer: There is a network of informants. This distrust, which prevails between people, just because they may not speak the truth, is something unbelievably oppressing.

What did you do after this first journey to Tibet, you were then in Tibet again ...

No, I did not go back there any more. I spent only these six weeks there in May/June 1996. I would very much like to go back there again one day, but I think it is still too soon. Accounts of my journey appeared in different newspapers and magazines, in China too: I did not know that such a wave would strike Peking. There were authors, who had planned a journey to Austria, in order to present their books here. Their journey was terminated due to the reports I had made, because Austria was considered as a dangerous and unfriendly country. I don't think it is possible at the moment to travel to Tibet. It was already very adventurous back then, until we made it. At the moment, I think, it would be taboo for us. I could perhaps travel there alone, but it was already like that. I could also have said there, what oppresses me or what disturbs me. At worst, I would have been locked up for two days or a week maximum and then would have been thrown out. But they would also immediately have investigated which Tibetans I had met beforehand. And I would have endangered these people with my frankness.

A record arose from the experience, which we will speak about later. I would like to talk about something else with you first. I had mentioned at the start, that you are a "traveller in various regards". Is it true that one day you received a call at home, saying that Jane Goodall would like to meet you?

Yes, that's what happened. That was in December 1994, a few weeks after I had stopped, the last concert was on 1st November. I then went into the studio, or actually into my house in Goisern, which I had re-designed to a studio, and mixed the live CD there with Wolfgang, my sound engineer. Then - I believe it was 22nd December - came a call from a friend, whom I hadn't seen for an eternity and he said to me: "Hey, I would really like to drop by, do you have time?" I said: "I'm sorry, I'm in the middle of work, but come by tomorrow or the day after tomorrow." Thereupon he said that that was a shame, because he could come tomorrow, but he would have liked to have introduced me to Jane Goodall. Then I said: "Michael, I don't believe you, but if it's really true, then don't be cross with me when I say you can come." But I didn't count on him knocking at the door half an hour later and there before me stands a woman in thick moon boots, whom I knew from books and whom I never imagined would ever come to this place, or would ever be standing at my door.

That was a surprise.

Yes, that was a huge surprise.

I read that back then and said to myself if it is not true, it is at least well invented. But it was really like that?

Yes, it was like that. I thought then, what do you do now? In any case, turn the tape off, ask her in and - with an Englishwoman you are never wrong with tea - put on some tea. I set up a pot of tea immediately. We then talked wonderfully for two hours - and time really stood still.

I have two questions. You knew her from books, but not personally?

That's right.

What made her want to meet you? There must have been a reason.

My friend, Michael, has known her for many years because he had designed and published a children's book about chimpanzees with her. What I did not know, was that for a few years she had almost always come to Goisern for a few days before Christmas.

Did nobody know that?

Nobody knew that, no. I didn't know it either. He once gave her a cassette or CD with my music, which she took to Gombe and listened to in Africa. She was obviously very impressed with it, and the two spoke about it one time. Michael said to her: "Hey, Hubert has stopped touring, I believe he is at home, if you would like, I will introduce you to each other."

You said that this first meeting had the quality of a reunion. What does that mean?

Sometimes it just goes like that with people: you don't know it beforehand, but there's no need for a principle discussion nor a sounding out, as to what mood the other one is in; how you can make yourself understood. Instead there is, from the outset, a common level, which you only achieve in most cases when you know people for longer.

There was chemistry from the outset.

Exactly. There were so many things in common: it occurred to me that we are both very optimistic, positive-thinking people, who do not, however, deny the truths and the many problems, which reality also holds. That was the great similarity.

Did the idea for the film, which you later made, develop then or only after you had visited Jane? As far as I know, you were once with her, without filming.

No. During my first visit in February 1996 I then had the desire to share the experience with my friends. And I had the idea of a television documentary, which I immediately rejected however, because I thought: "Hubert, you have never made such a thing, forget the idea, it's a giant expenditure to arrange such a thing."

You weren't wrong, I believe.

I wasn't, right. But the funny thing was: although I didn't take my own thought and desire seriously, it remained and after about a month it crossed my mind again. But I pushed this idea of a television documentary away again and again. However, the thought was so penetrative that I sat down and said to myself: "In God's name, I'll write a three side exposé and send it away to a few people, from whom I imagine I might receive a positive reaction". The work on the Tibetan story and the work with Africa then always alternated. I then flew to Dharamsala. When I returned from Dharamsala, Hage said to me: "The ORF would like to do it, they've had a programme drop out. They only have half the budget, but perhaps we can find another partner." We found this partner in Bayerischer Rundfunk. And within two months we were in Africa.

Does one have to be called Hubert von Goisern for a project to come into being so fast? I know the official routines, they normally last a very long time, when you first arrive with three pages.

Yes, I was unbelievably surprised that it went so fast. That proved to me again that everything works, if you just want it and you find the right people, who all pull together.

You already said that it was the first time. What experiences did you gain from it? It's always the case that when you do something for the first time, you ask yourself, what about now it is all over? Was it more hard work than you thought, was it more pleasing or can you now say, I can do that too?

I know now, how it is really done. I would do it differently next time. I sometimes regretted that I had got involved. During the work I thought, no, that is not my idea of co-operation. I am a person who knows to value a culture of debate, but no-one argued as much as in this team - I had never experienced such a thing. I even asked the people to treat each other more nicely, but they shouted at me that I am a mimosa, "things are always like this". I then thought, if it is always like this, then I don't want to make such a thing any more. In the meantime I know that the chemistry must simply be right and it can actually only be better, and will, if I select all the people myself.

Let me take the word "mimosa". I read a few days ago an article in AZ, in which this term occurs: the "sensitive soul". Are you a sensitive soul? I had never had that impression, knowing you from the stage. You seem to me to be sometimes rather stubborn, in that you say, 'I want that just so'. Sensitive soul or sensitive?

Surely not sensitive soul - there would be too many people, who would cry out and say: " What, you think!" But aggression gets terribly under my skin. If I am confronted with aggression, then it hurts me terribly. There are not seldom moments - I can do it only if I am alone, sitting in a corner or if I am in the car and stop - in which I simply howl away, because this pain must get out somehow. Afterwards I can continue as before. However, I don't like the fact that I cannot show my tears and my pain in front of other people, but I feel it and notice it - and I don't like it.

On the other hand there are also people, who say: "Look out, Hubert is a reactionary die-hard".

I am very stubborn, that is right. I just want to translate my visions. If someone comes and says: "Look, I have this idea, do that!" Then I can only say: "If you have this idea, then you do it, but do not tell me to do it. I don't go to people either and say: 'Do this'." I have my ideas and my projects, which develop also in communication with other people. But basically I come to people and say: "Look, I have an idea, would you like to join in?" Then everyone can say " no " or "yes" to it. But I believe also that it requires a certain stubbornness, so that the things are then put into action. There are also too many people, who are manipulative en route, for you to go your own way without stubbornness.

I must say, I do not believe in horoscopes, but you are a Scorpio. It is said of Scorpios that they cannot do many things at the same time, that they do wonderful things one after the other and are unable to keep many balls in the air. When something is finished, the next thing comes. But now you have done something - and we have spoken about these two things -, that surprised me very much. You made two CDs simultaneously: the soundtrack to the documentary Von Goisern Nach Gombe and Inexil, the Tibetan CD. How do they compare? Are they different, or do they have something common, a common root? What happened?

There is only one point at which the two projects meet: That is inside me. Apart from taking place on the same planet. But with that, what they have in common is already exhausted. I didn't know that Scorpios can only do things one after the other, but now I also know why I suffered so at the time.

You once said to me, I always do one thing after another. And that is really something, that one says of Scorpios. I do not know whether it is correct, but it is already a mode of operation for you. start something, finish it, then think about the next thing, do the next thing, finish it. Is it so, or do things interweave occasionally?

No, that's right. But I didn't know that it's a characteristic attributed to Scorpios. I really suffered from the fact that in these last two and a half years I constantly oscillated between three cultures: between my own, the African and the Tibetan. On the other hand it was good that I had not made the things separately, because the distance enabled me to see a new view again and again, so that I continued working with new enthusiasm and new ideas. I believe, however, that there is always continuity in the work and the things also mutually fertilised themselves. But it is not as if the rhythmic or musical items from each culture would have fitted in with each other. That was not the case at all. But simply the experience you have when dealing with another culture and when understanding another culture, was useful to me very often, when I had to deal with the next culture.

Are there responses to these two releases?

Not yet. They only really came out a week ago. The responses I have, come from my friends. Those are possibly not representative however.

But I have read something about it in the AZ, and that was only "rejoicing, rejoicing". The words "sensitive soul" also appeared there, but that was from the judgement that you could not reckon with this quality yourself, when you set off to plan or do these things.

The people, with whom I had personal contact and to whom I could also give a personal idea of my work and of the examination of these cultures, found it all very exciting and liked these projects . And now you must really see, to what extent those people, who did not have this opportunity, can nevertheless can find an avenue to it. Africa is surely not a problem: I do not know anybody, who said: "Africa, I don't know, that's not for me." All were inspired by the Gombe project. That is also a CD, which you can play and immerse yourself in another world for 40 minutes. With Tibet, it's the case that most people said: "that's very different, it is difficult and I find it very demanding." After two weeks everyone said: " I only listen Tibet now, I don't get to Africa any more at the moment, because I find Tibet so unbelievably exciting." You really need a certain readiness and also self-initiative, in order to get into it. If you manage it, then a new world really opens up.

That is a little unexpected. We come to it again at the end, because this interests me too: you simply couldn't count on it. Basically, the people counted on the fact that it was now four years since the end of the Alpinkatzen and now something like new folk music would have to come round again. Could you reckon on it? I mean, with you, we can count on anything, can't we ... ?

I did not reckon on going to Africa and to Tibet. Even as I travelled around Africa and Tibet, I was not aware that from this, projects would arise that would have a product at the end that would be comprehensible for many people. That simply developed and I believe, that I am unpredictable for myself too, not just for other people. I never reckoned on continuing where I stopped, because I wanted to withdraw and consciously make a break. I wanted make a start and make a jump rather than a step forward. Next year, I would like to go on stage again, I would like to make something totally new again - but something new.

I was at a press conference, where you said that it was very difficult handling this Tibetan music, the musicians, that you actually - that was my summary - treated each other rather too nicely.

Yes, obviously there is that you are too nice - you can hardly believe it. There two cultures have come together, which have quite different concepts of politeness, and this difference is the reason for the fact that you often appear not at all polite to the other one. Instead it often appears as an affront or ignorance. I had realised that we did not have the time to become acquainted over the years and to do this project over years - we live too far apart. I am here and the Tibetan musicians are in north India, in exile in Dharamsala They travel around Europe or America from time to time, but they are then busy too. You must just in a defined time - and even if it causes you a problem - create what you wanted to do. In the last production period, when the Tibetans spent six weeks with me in the studio in Salzburg, after two weeks I noticed, too little is happening, I'm getting too little feedback. At the start that was awkward for me, because I thought: "Hubert, as unbelievably dependent as you are from the praise or blame of your opponents, with it, you know where you are."

Were they polite to you, or was it simply that they did not know what you wanted?

Yes, they were unbelievably polite. They always said: " Yes, I think it's beautiful." Every time I asked, how it would be with that, then they said "yes", gave me a friendly smile and nodded their head. If I said then, but how would it be with that, then they said "yes" too.

Franzi was different?

All Europeans are different. After two weeks I said to them: "it has been two weeks and there has been nothing wrong. I don't know anybody, who does not find fault with me. There are things to be found wrong with me, and I would like to know, what bothers you, because only then can I move on, because I would like to meet your standards and make it as beautiful as possible for you. And it's impossible for me not to make a faux pas from time to time: perhaps it's my meal habits or my work rhythms." Above all, that of course concerned the music which we made together. I said to them: "You must tell me if you don't like something". That was very difficult.

I can imagine that, it's as if you run up against a rubber wall.

They have grown up in a culture, in which it is simply taboo to question elders or superiors.

In 1999, that has already been hinted at, you want to be on stage again. That should be the comeback, that many of us expect and desire, because four years is, after all, a long time.

Me too.

Yes, you must also go on stage again for yourself. Do you already have exact conceptions? Sometimes it is the case that you say, aha, that could be like that and like that.

Yes, that is right. I have a music making feeling, a conception of a music making feeling - not so much of a sound or a concrete proposition, which I would like to meet and musically package. No, I have instead a music making feeling. That is what it actually begins with. And I have an yearning for the stage. And now I must look: in the autumn I shall to begin to work creatively, I hope that the muse kisses me when composing and writing the lyrics and also when forming an ensemble. I have a few musicians in mind. I have already spoken to most, they must now decide whether they want to get involved in this project in the form that I have in mind. And then you just have to see that it works together. It is not just that I must get along with everyone, they must understand each other too. That is a history, which must develop first. I don't believe that you can design such things.

The normal date planned would have actually been 1st November 1998. That was actually your desired date: after exactly four years.

First of all I wanted to return after two years, but two years are too few, and so that's now became four years.

Yes, we can make arrangements now for 1st November 1999?

Why not? I would actually like to already be on the stage in March 1999. But my stage comeback has time and again been postponed, perhaps this time it is also the case, perhaps something quite important, quite significant will come to me again.

If I know you, it'll always take somewhat longer than planned. I thank you most sincerely for this interview.

You're welcome.