Metal Queen Doro Pesch Discusses New Live DVD ‘Strong And Proud’ + More

By Andrew Bansal

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Still reigning as the undisputed metal queen, German singer Doro Pesch has enjoyed a 30-plus year career, and shows no signs of stopping or slowing down. Having completed the 30-year anniversary touring cycle, Doro and her band are now gearing up to work on the follow-up to the latest studio album ‘Raise Your Fist’ (2012), but in the meanwhile, the band is about to release a comprehensive live DVD/Blu-Ray + CD + documentary package called ‘Strong And Proud: 30 Years Of Rock And Metal’ via Nuclear Blast Entertainment on July 15th 2016. This offering chronicles three 30-year anniversary shows in Germany that the band played in 2014 in DVD, Blu-Ray and CD formats, and the documentary takes fans through a journey following the band’s travels on the world tour that ensued after these three special shows. On July 12th 2016, Doro took the time to speak to Metal Assault in detail about this release, and much more. Enjoy the conversation below.

Doro, it’s great to have you again on Metal Assault. I wanted to talk to you about the new release that’s coming out, ‘Strong And Proud’. There’s a lot on this, including DVDs, CDs and all kinds of stuff. What can people expect from it?

It’s an eight-plus hour music movie and captures our 30 years in rock and metal, and has many, many highlights on it. It starts out with Wacken, which is one of my favorite metal festivals, and we did a big show there with many guests like Phil Campbell of Motörhead, Chris Boltendahl of Grave Digger and many other great people. We did a one-hour full metal show with pyrotechnics and big stage production, and all the guests joining us for ‘All We Are’. And then we did a show in my former hometown of Dusseldorf with many guests like Udo Dirkschneider and Blaze Bayley, and there was another show in Dusseldorf with Biff Byford from Saxon, and Udo again, and Hansi Kursch from Blind Guardian, and all our highlights from our last 30 years. There is also a two-and-a-half hour documentary on it, and it shows all the backstage stuff and is called ‘Behind The Curtain, Inside The Heart Of Doro’. It’s some real inside stuff about how it all really works. For fans we have everything really nice and interesting, and we also have a couple of packages for the diehard fans. There’s an yearbook with 100 pages of photos, and three DVDs (or two Blu-Ray discs) and one live CD, and I hope that it will make the fans happy.

That sounds awesome. You mentioned the show that you played with the orchestra in Dusseldorf. What was that like? It’s not something usual for you.

No! We did it ten years ago at Wacken and we did a small tour with an orchestra, and certain songs sounded so great. So I thought, how can we top our last DVDs when we did the 20th and 25th anniversary? Many people said that the tour with the orchestra was great, so we decided to do that again. It was like a metal classic night, and we had the same people we had ten years ago from all over the world, and we did great versions of all our favorite metal anthems like ‘Fear Of The Dark’, ‘Balls To The Wall’ and all the stuff to give thanks to all our metal heroes and favorite bands. It was great, and pretty cool and powerful with an orchestra. Certain songs sounded so amazing, in a way that a five-piece band couldn’t do. When you portray it using a 50-piece orchestra, you can feel its power and emotion.

Yeah, exactly. These shows that are on the DVD took place in 2014, so it’s taken a little while for you to put this stuff together. Is it just because of the editing process? What took so long?

Yeah, it took one-and-a-half years to cut and mix it and to fix certain things. It was a long process, but we wanted to do it really nicely and work on all the details, and to make sure it really looks and sounds amazing for the fans. We tried to top all the last DVDs, that’s why it took so long. But I think it was worth it. And then we toured for a year after these three shows in Germany, the guy with the camera was with us and took a whole year to film us. Everything is on it, from America, Brazil, Russia and all over the world, because we thought it’s kind of unfair if we just have the Wacken and Dusseldorf shows, and not the metalheads from all over the world. So we went everywhere and filmed a whole documentary movie, and I think that’s one of the highlights.

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I think it’s cool that you’re putting out this DVD package, because these days so many people are going to shows and taking cellphone videos, really low-quality videos that are all over the internet. Obviously you think it is still important for bands to release official, professionally filmed videos.

Yeah, totally! I think quality has much more staying power in the end. May be you can look at the YouTube video and think that it’s cool, but you will not look at those again. When you have something that’s classy and looks cool, and something that you will love, I think that’s different. When we started in the ’80s and ’90s, I loved all the videos that were released and they were top notch, and I’m still that way. I’m still old-school in many ways. I like to really take care of things the right way. A metal song filmed with your own cellphone could be cool too, but in this case, 30 years of rock and metal is being presented in a classy way, and it feels and looks really expansive. I think in the end that’s better, and the fans will probably treasure it for life. I know I’m a metalhead myself, and I like nice fan packages. The yearbook is fantastic and the artwork is so nice, done by the same painter who’s done all of our work, Geoffrey Gillespie. It really looks beautiful and doesn’t look like thrown together, but stuff like that always takes time.

So, you did these 30-year anniversary shows in 2014 and as you said, you also toured all over the world with a similar set list, even in America. Would you say that the 30th anniversary tour has come to an end, and you’ve done that show everywhere you wanted to?

Yeah, we definitely want to concentrate on the new record now, and we’re working on it already. I always love to play all the old-school classic metal songs and all the highlights, and the songs off of the ‘Triumph And Agony’ album will always be in our set list. But we’re working on something new, and the songwriting is going really good. I’ve got lots of experiences and adventures that I want to put into new songs. So, may be something new will come out middle of next year. For the 30-year anniversary we’ve played a long set list all over the world, and now I want to work on new music but in the vein of the ‘Triumph And Agony’ as well as ‘Raise Your Fist’ albums.

Right, ‘Raise Your Fist’ was the last studio album in 2012, so it’s been quite a long time and I’m sure people are waiting for new material from you now.

Sometimes it’s hard to finish something when you’re touring non-stop and playing festivals. In the ’80s and ’90s, we sometimes took one, two or even three years just being in the studio and making a record, but now we’re always on the road so much, which is great and I love it. But that’s the reason it takes longer to make an album. The first single is called ‘Love’s Gone To Hell’ and we put it out a couple of weeks ago. The song has so much magic, I wanted to make a nice video for it and put a maxi-single out, and I thought let’s not wait for the new record to come out, because who knows what will happen next year. So I had the urge to put out something already. It’s a beautiful video and has two versions of it. The maxi-single also has the ‘It Still Hurts’ duet with Lemmy, for people who may be still haven’t heard it. It was actually the last time Lemmy and I were in the studio together, and I wanted to give thanks to honor to Lemmy, so we put that on there. And there is some more live tracks on it too.

That’s awesome. I think one thing people probably don’t focus on as much, is your lineup of band members. I’d say you’ve had a really good lineup over the years, as we’ve seen on stage here in Los Angeles. All members of your band are really good musicians, and that’s really important for you. You cannot do this alone, and you need other people to be doing a good job as well.

Totally, totally. I love my band members. The bass player Nick Douglas has been with me for 26 years, actually. He was the first one who came into an audition. It was in New York and he was the first out of 120 bass players. I knew right away that he was the one. He looked great, sounded great, he was very sweet, he played amazing. So I went and told my manager and he said, but what about the other 119 bass players? Shouldn’t we wait and listen to them? I had already made up my mind but I did listen to everybody and still went with Nick. We’ve played together for a long time now, and same with our drummer Johnny Dee. He’s been in the band now for 23 years, and he’s awesome and always a great team member, and so are the two guitar players Bas Maas from the Netherlands and Luca Princiotta from Italy, who’s actually celebrating his 10-year anniversary with the band this coming weekend. We’re playing a big 3-day festival called Rock Fest in Barcelona, which Iron Maiden is also playing. We will celebrate his 10 years with the band. On the documentary in ‘Strong And Proud’, you can see that all the guys have nice things to say and they talk about how they came into the band. Actually, it was the first time I heard Luca say that he played air guitar to ‘All We Are’ when he was a young boy. It was so cool. So, everybody in the band plays a big part, and through the documentary I wanted to let the fans know that the band is great and very important. I always feel when we are on stage together that they would die for me and die for the fans. We are a great team and we get along without words. It feels really good, and I think that’s what makes great shows. The fans can tell too.

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Exactly. A lot of solo artists use different people to record and a different live band. But I think you’re using the same members on the album as on stage, right?

Yeah, yeah. But sometimes some guest musicians, specially guest guitar players come in to record solos, which is always a big honor. For the next record I definitely want to come up with some great ideas, something that people may be wouldn’t expect. I always work worldwide in all the studios where the songs get the right treatment, and wherever there’s magic, that’s where I want to go to make the best songs and records. That’s always the goal. Every record should always be the best. But I’ll say ‘Triumph And Agony’ is still the best because sometimes it’s hard to match something that had magic which you don’t even know where it came from. It’s hard to tell with music, and it just comes out. In my experiences, the songs that come out the fastest, they’re always the best and they have certain magic. If you sit down and say, OK let’s write a great song, it’s never like that. It just has to really shoot out of your heart, soul and gut.

Aside from working on the new album, what’s next for the band in terms of touring or anything like that?

We’re doing some summer festivals here in Europe and then we’re going to Ukraine to do a long tour there. I want to show the fans that we care for them. I know they’ve had lots of problems there and they’re not very safe, so we want to make a long tour. And then we’re going to America and we have a couple of festivals lined up in Chicago and New Jersey and eight gigs in total. Then there’s another European tour, and we’re often in the studio working on new material. I hope the new record will come out middle of next year. So, just non-stop touring and always putting on kickass shows and making the fans happy. I hope that we can have another 30 years!

That would be awesome. Doro, I think that’s pretty much all I had for the interview and I’ve covered everything I wanted to ask you. Like always, it’s been good talking to you, and hopefully we’ll see you out here on the U.S. West Coast sometime soon!

Yes, yes, there’s something cooking! I love to play L.A. and California, and I think may be early next year. Thank you so much for having me again, always great talking to you, Andrew. Thank you and to your team for supporting metal! I hope you enjoy the DVD and I’m sure you’ll find some magical songs and moments on there.

Doro links: website | facebook | twitter

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