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Interview with Arjen Anthony Lucassen - Ayreon
In these days of over the top musicianship, concepts, and other technical approaches are either hit or miss. With a career that spans years making conceptual prog-metal on his own terms, Arjen Anthony Lucassen has again pushed the envelope more on his latest release as Ayreon titled, The Human Equation, a record that takes a detour from the science fiction themes that he has created with his past projects, including 2002's Star One. On this record, which portrays a man in a coma dealing with his emotions throughout a dream, day by day, track by track, Lucassen includes well-noted vocalists James Labrie (Dream Theater), Devon Graves (Dead Soul Tribe), Devin Townsend, and Opeth's Mikael Åkerfeldt among others.
I asked Lucassen how he felt about his new record, which has been anticipated around the world of both metal and prog, and he started by surprising me.
AAL: Well, strangely enough, I don't have that. As soon as the album is finished, it's like I'm being sucked into a deep black hole, and It's horrible, people tell me "hey your albums being released, you must be excited," and I'm like. "Yeah, you must be proud of what you did," and I'm like. Strangely, I have been working on the album for about a year, and I put everything I got in it 24/7, everyday, every hour, It's finished and it's horrible, no creativity anymore and no inspiration. But luckily I have the interviews and so forth to bring me out of the black hole and so forth.
With Lucassen's discography being quite extensive with all his Ayreon projects, Star One, Vengeance, and guest appearances, you wonder how such a musician can evolve through the years with so many different projects under his belt.
AAL: I just know that I am getting better as a musician on a personal level, not that I am saying my music has gotten better, I know this because my previous albums like Electric Castle took me two years to make, while this one took me a year. Lyrics have become easier to write for me. Looking at the concept, being twenty days of the man in a coma, for which I also wrote the lyrics in twenty days. In the past I was a member of a band, so I had to do a lot of things that were concessions to band members, record companies, audience, we were always thinking, "what does the audience want, what does the record company want," so that is how I wrote songs when I was twenty, and did that for fifteen years, finally, when I was thirty four, I said to myself, "let's write something that I like, lets not think about anyone else, and throw all my different styles in one box," stuff like the sixties material, seventies prog such as Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, the Rock stuff like Zeppelin and (Deep) Purple as well as eighties stuff such as Priest and Maiden, so I mix it and made an album I really felt that was great, the first Ayreon album, and to my surprise it sold like crazy. So that's when I started to evolve as a composer, I could evolve without any limit.
With such musicianship that is performed by Lucassen, I then proceeded to ask him if he had any formal musical training, and to my surprise, he has not.
AAL: No, not at all, I can't even read music, no guitar lessons, no nothing. I just heard Ritchie Blackmore play and bought a guitar and try to figure out all the solos he did, so basically am self taught, which I believe is a good thing. I might do some things that are weird, that are not possible, technically speaking, and I might do things that are obvious, maybe not obvious to me, stuff that I might normally have done because either they are too obvious or just not possible, I guess that's a good thing.
Besides being the musician, he also handles all the production and engineering in his own studio.
AAL: I have my own studio, which is great of course, if I had to do an album like this in another studio it would be impossible and far too expensive, so I have my own equipment and play all the principal instruments myself.
TH: Has the advent of the new recording equipment, such as Pro-Tools or other computer programs really helped in your production?
AAL: I think so, yes. But if the music will get better, I'm not sure. For example when I listen to the Beatles "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," which was recorded on 4 and 8 tracks, It's just magnificent, I don't think that they could have done it with say sixty four tracks, having said that, I benefit from the Pro-Tools, it works so fast, you can copy stuff, you can easily mix it with an in-built mixer and so forth, so yeah, it helps. The Human Equation was the first album I did on Pro-Tools.
TH: Really, did you go analog for the others?
AAL: All others were done on ADATs.
The Human Equation is a departure concept-wise for Lucassen, so I asked him how he came up with the idea of the album, having even made each cut on the record not only evolve within the record, but yet center it set on a particular day itself.
AAL: I tried to be different with every album I make, the first Ayreon album I made was bombastic, kind of old fashioned, second was more modern with more electronics, the third, sort of a rock opera, the fifth and the fourth separating styles, a soft album and a heavy album, this time I wanted to come up with something new again, keep it fresh for the fans and for myself. I decided to use only new musicians on this record, the other thing I did was think, "maybe I should change the concept for this album," all my other albums are science fiction and fantasy. I got a lot of reactions from journalists saying, yeah the really cheesy, everything is great but the lyrics are about castles and spaceships" and it kind of irritated me, but that is what it looked like on the surface. The album "Electric Castle" is an album about human emotions sort of set into a science fiction setting. This time I thought, lets take away the science fiction aspect and leave the emotions, for which emotions was the key word for this album, also because I always write the music first and then write the lyrics to come up with a concept, This time I noticed that the songs were varied with many different styles and many different emotions, so basically I came up with a story actually take shape, where the singers can portray emotions. So I thought maybe if a man lives in a coma, maybe he lives in some type of strange dream and he meets his own emotions and is being confronted with his own past and that is how I came up with the story, It's basically about a ruthless businessman who has had a strange accident, he is crushed into a tree in broad daylight and slips into a coma and the story is set in two locations, one is in the hospital where he is lying in bed, with his wife and best friend sitting next to him, and the other is this well, where he is being fronted by his emotions.
Having worked with so many vocalists in the past, I was pondering why some of the choices were made on this record for the record.
AAL: I was really looking for emotional singers, who put a lot of emotion into their singing. I have been listening to loads of albums, mostly without looking at the albums and this is how I came up with these singers. As for Devin Townsend, I heard this record with this wall of sound, so original and so unique, and his voice came in, this screaming voice, very melodic, and it gave me goose bumps and that was the rule, all the singers had to give me goose bumps, same with Devon Graves, of course, James (Labrie), I have known him for a long time, he approached me, James really liked my work and said if I ever needed him to give him a call. So I contacted him for this album, told him I was doing an album about emotions, and he was very excited about doing it, so he did get the main part on the album.
Elaborating more on Devin Townsend, Lucassen explained to me that it was a little bit harder to get Townsend to add his vocal duties to the record.
AAL: I contacted Townsend via Inside Out Records, and I didn't expect him to do it, and indeed his first answer was "no way, I'm not going to." I was like, "why not," and he said the he was not going to sing other peoples music and lyrics, and I said "I really want you on this album, what about if you write your own material, and I will just explain the story and the character," and to my surprise he said, "okay, I will do it," so he was the only singer who did not record his vocals in my studio, he was the only guy I didn't meet. He ended up recording his own parts in his own studio, wrote his own parts, and when his parts came over here, I really got emotional, whoa, what's happening here, I feel that he did a better job with himself that I could have done working with him, so that was a good choice.
According to Lucassen the making of The Human Equation went very smoothly. Something that, after hearing war/horror stories from other bands is a rare occurrence.
AAL: The drummer I worked with was great, all the singers did their jobs really well, they came here, they were here for two or three days, the recorded within two afternoons, so everything went smooth. Everybody was prepared, they knew the mission, I worked with all of them on the songs, they are free to do whatever they want with the songs, if they want to change the melody completely, they should, especially if it fits their voice?
Having performed the Star One concept live, as well as releasing a live CD/DVD set, I proceeded to ask if Lucassen was going to perform this live and take it out on the road, but with all the different vocalists having so many other engagements at the time, it would nearly be impossible, according to Lucassen.
AAL: Well this will be impossible, Star One was possible because the songs were a bit straight forward and there were only four singers, this time I have eleven singers and eleven characters, that would not be possible, especially with these singers involved, I mean Dream Theater and Opeth are constantly on tour.
Being signed to one of the largest progressive rock labels, Inside Out, Lucassen stresses that they were the best choice to properly distribute and release his music.
AAL: I have been working with Inside out since my second Ayreon album, It was distributed by them. I was working on the Star One project and Thomas approached me from Inside Out Germany, he heard that I was making a record with Russell Allen, and wanted to know if I would like to release that record on Inside Out. I released Star One with Inside Out, and I was so amazed how they worked, they are big music lovers, they are also able to get it out to the fans. With the early Ayreon records on a small Dutch label, I got complaints that nobody was able to find it in the shops, and that nobody was getting promos. So with Star One, I got so many interviews, everybody got promos, everybody was able to buy it in every different country, it was great. I had dealt with major labels in the past and the people at those companies were more or less office clerks who really didn't have anything to do with my music and they were so hard to deal with.
And for the Hashman, spending time at Sony Nashville, which I like to refer to as Gehenna (Hell), I know exactly how he feels. With his guest discography being quite extensive, I then asked if he was planning on making any appearances with anyone else here in the near future.
AAL: It's hard to say, I have had a few offers, but I think I did too many appearances lately. I started reading reviews and they would say, "we found a review without Ayreon on it." At this point had have to be a bit more careful, a bit more choosy. I would love to go into a new project, but typically after the release of a new project, I really am empty of new ideas and never really plan ahead, I just let the ideas come to me, the next record I do could be a solo record, another Star One, I really don't know what is next, but I do know that it won't be another Ayreon album, I defiantly need a vacation from Ayreon, it's a lot of organizing and it takes a lot out of you, you know.
Wrapping up the interview, I asked Lucassen what he is currently listening to.
AAL: Loads of CDs, it could be singer/songwriter, metal, prog, alternative rock. The prog side I listen to Porcupine Tree, Spock's Beard, Neal Morse; alternative side Placebo or Muse. Stuff like the Velvet Underground or anything representing the Beatles or Pink Floyd, I like.
TH: Where do you see progressive rock and metal going in the future.
AAL: I see that people are becoming more open minded and that is great. Look at the eighties, it was horrible, you were not allowed to put keyboards in metal. That changed when Dream Theater combined prog and metal, that opened the eyes for metal lovers to listen to prog and prog lovers to listen to metal or more guitar based music. In think it is going in a good direction, there are no more limits, and that is what I like. I think there is a divided line between music and the shit you hear on the radio, I don't even call it music anymore, all the boy bands and computer stuff, and the stuff sells like crazy.
TH: Any Last Words?
AAL: Well I have heard a lot of people have to get used to the album, then they play it again and again and they say "forget what I said, It's your best so far," so I think it's an album that gets better with every listen. I am afraid that it might not get the chance, other people might hear it and say "whoa, this is too much or something," so this is an album for adventurous people with an open mind.
So with The Human Equation in the racks, you have the story of the record directly from the creator himself, which makes it even more interesting.
On behalf of RevelationZ, I thank Arjen Anthony Lucassen for his time to speak to me about the album.
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Written by Hashman - 5/28/2004 |
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RevelationZ Comments
| Comment by Mads Aanum (Anonymous) - Friday, May 28, 2004 | Got the album today...
and let me tell you that the album kicks ass... the vocalists are all great on noe seems out of place... a brilliant album no doubt about it...
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| Comment by elfin (Anonymous) - Sunday, October 24, 2004 | someone told me,one of Ayreon's menber has another band. I want to know who they are.... they had a very beautiful song which i did know its name.but maybe it is :days of the knight.....
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