The Horror From Indiana

  JON SCHAFFER and ICED EARTH are in an extremely strange place right now and the frustration is beginning to show in Schaffer’s voice.  Understanding that Iced Earth has spent the last decade crawling from pit to pit to play in front of a modest but growing number of faithful here in the States while enjoying arena status in Europe is the first step to empathy with Schaffer, taking a listen to Iced Earth’s latest disc, "The Horror Show," is the second. 

            "The Horror Show" is a phenomenal record with every aspect of the Iced Earth talent pallet represented in both broad and finite strokes which is enough to both satisfy the older fans while making some new ones and that would seem to be a demonstrable fact given the very respectable entry at number 21 on Billboard’s Heatseeker’s chart. 

            Still, it is perhaps too little too late and something has got to give. What is giving is the relationship between Century Media, Iced Earth’s long time record label, and Schaffer.  As Schaffer will explain, Iced Earth are now free agents looking for a home that will give the group the time and effort needed to take them from contenders to champions in the true-Metal marketplace. 

            After having been denied the lifetime dream of opening for JUDAS PRIEST on their North American tour by the events of September 11, Iced Earth regrouped with MEGADETH for a short run of Stateside secondary markets before heading to Europe for headline shows.   

            With that done, the band is back to the States to see if "Horror Show" has taken hold enough to fill the larger clubs that are booked for a Spring tour and then the process of signing a new deal will commence in earnest.   

            Though it be a time of great transition, Schaffer does see light at the end of the tunnel, particularly with his DEMONS AND WIZARDS side project, and it is this light that he is focused on rather than the dark that is behind him.  

            Iced Earth also has a five-disc boxed set called "Dark Genesis" that is forthcoming later this year which contains their first three albums ("Iced Earth," "Night Of The Storm Rider" and "Burnt Offerings", a disc of early demo recordings and a cool disc of Iced Earth treatments of cover songs by the likes of KISS (“Creatures Of The Night”), JUDAS PRIEST (“Screaming For Vengeance”),  ALICE COOPER (“Dead Babies”) and AC/DC (“Long Way To The Top”), to name but a few.  The collection also has an extensive booklet containing lyrics, rare photos and an extensive history of the band. 

            MIDWEST BEAT correspondent David Lee Wilson reached Schaffer by phone at his rural Indiana home just prior to their current tour, which brings them to Chicago’s  METRO on  April 17. Open the entire tour will be the Swedish metal band IN FLAMES and Colorado’s long running prog-metal group, JAG PANZER. 

BEAT:  After the 9-11 tragedy, much of your tour plans got sidelined, but you picked up the tail end of the Megadeth tour.  What have you been doing since getting off the road just before the holidays. 

JON SCHAFFER (J.S.):  I was just writing and recording the Demons And Wizards demo stuff.  I have been working on that pretty steadily and doing a bunch of press as usual. 

BEAT:   You still live and work in Indiana right? 

J.S.:  Yes.  I live just south of Indianapolis in a town called Columbus.   

BEAT:    Having done that tour with Megadeth you still had the chance to play in front of more people than if you had headlined your own tour in the States?

 J.S.:  Oh definitely.   The terrorist thing f*cked up the Priest tour, but we got offered the Megadeth thing the day after the Priest tour so it was pretty cool anyway.   [Editor’s note:  Dave Mustaine personally invited Iced Earth to open for Megadeth]   We’d been waiting for years and years to be a support band in this country and then within a forty-eight hour period we get two major offers.  The idea was to go out and do the Priest thing and then go out and do the second leg of the Megadeth tour and then come home for a little while and do Europe in January.  Well, obviously things got screwed, but at least we were still able to do Megadeth and though we were only able to hit a small area of the North-East and a fair amount of the Midwest it was still really decent.  On the average, [we played in front of] fifteen hundred people.  There was a really good response on most nights, so I really think that we did make some new fans. 

BEAT:    Your Midwest shows seemed to do quite well from all reports .  Were there any notable problems? 

J.S.:   Yeah. I was under a tremendous amount of stress on this tour because my normal crew wasn’t working for us because of the scheduling screw-ups.  They were there and ready for the Priest tour, but then they had other tours lined up after that so we basically got stuck with guys that we weren’t familiar with.  The tour manager caused me a serious amount of headaches and we had problems with the driver and the bus company,  so I was dealing with way too much of the business and I did not have much fun on the [Megadeth] tour at all. But hey...shit happens! 

BEAT:    When you sit down to write your book you will have some interesting stories to tell... 

J.S.:  You have no idea! (laughs)

 BEAT:   When they rescheduled the American leg of the Priest tour, many of the venues still had you on the bill but that was never the case was it?

 J.S.:  No.  We couldn’t let down the European fans again, that was just out of the question.

 BEAT:   You have basically worked your success backwards. You are huge in Europe, but still get little notice here.  Any ideas why?

 J.S.:      There are a couple of things.  Actually, a lot of bands get their start over in Europe and that started with the Beatles.  I mean, they were known in Germany way more than they were in England.  There are a few reasons for that and the main one is that if you have a good product and you are a good band you will get good reviews.  If you put on a good live show and give it your all, in Europe that will be enough to get your career started.  It is not a matter of money and force feeding and shoving shit down people’s throats like it is over here. 

            Integrity, honesty, none of it has anything to do with finding success in the United States.  All that it does have to do with is money – Who is backing you?  Who do you know?  Who is pushing the station managers at commercial radio stations to, basically, buy your airtime?  Though it is illegal, that is the way it is here.  There are always ways around it and that is the biggest reason that a lot of bands that are really underground over here are able to build and maintain a career over there.  It is a much more honest system. 

            Over there, commercial radio doesn’t mean anything, MTV doesn’t mean much and neither have much to do with record sales.  In Europe, it’s kind of the way that it was in the old days over here, where if you get good reviews on your records and put on a good live show then the word of mouth spreads like wildfire.   I also think that there is something kind of special about being from the States and going to Europe and performing in Europe.  They look at that as if it is something pretty cool, like there is something exotic about it, that might be a little of it as well.

 BEAT:   Well, the origins of Iced Earth do go back to the “good old days” of metal where kids would bring tapes to school to trade with other metal heads.  That was before the Internet, which has kind of eliminated that whole scene or at least moved it from the schools to the Internet.  Do you think that maybe there is an over accessibility for bands like yours here in America? 

J.S.:    I don’t know about that because we are so small in the big picture here in the United States.  We haven’t had enough exposure, so overexposure, to me, doesn’t seem a problem. 

            Now as far as people out there being able to access anything, that has hurt the industry as a whole in a lot of different ways and most people not in the business do not understand that.  The people on the record industry side and the artist side can very clearly see that this whole digital world is hurting us big time. It is ultimately putting record companies out of business and it is basically keeping royalties out of artists’ pockets, so there is a lot of negative effects to it. 

            Luckily for a band like Iced Earth, the majority of our fan base want to have the real product, they want to have it in their hands and they want to look at the art and they want to see the lyrics, they want the real thing.  There is definitely a percentage of people who are going to buy the bootlegs or are going to get the stuff off of the Internet for free, but the majority of our fans do not do that and I think that is very fortunate for us.  They know that we are not the kind of guys whose next album will be rap or industrial or any bullshit.  They know that there is a very intense dedication to what we do.  Therefore, there’s a very intense loyalty from our following to us and that is a very cool and a very rare thing.  I mean, we put out a quality product and they know it. 

If we were a band that put out an album with only a couple of good songs and the rest was filler crap then we would have a lot more of that kind of stuff going on but I would say that us and BLIND GUARDIAN are two of the fortunate bands that don’t have a lot of problem with this whole Napster-type thing. 

            So many other bands, the majority of bands actually, their sales are going down and yet ours are continually going up.  It is at a slower rate than theirs are going down, but they are still going up and that is a sign that everybody in the industry will be looking at us and going – ‘Huh, what is going on here?’   And that is why we have so many people offering us record contracts right now.  We have a steady track record of going up.

 BEAT:   This is probably a good time to ask... Your time is up with Century-Media now isn’t it? 

J.S.:  Yes it is.

 BEAT:   So, any idea where you will be next?

 J.S.:  It will definitely be a big independent, I can say that.  We are dealing with a bunch of people and I don’t feel that it would be a smart move to go with a major.  Majors are pretty evil. (laughs)  I want to have enough clout going into a major deal that there is never a temptation there for them to try and tell me how to write and record.  I don’t want them to tell me how to write or record or anything else that has to do with the artistic integrity of the band and I will not waver on that.  They like to have that kind of control in contracts and in order to have enough clout to be able to avoid having that in a contract you have to be able to prove that you have had success doing it your way.  That is the thing you see, I feel like if we get up to 100 or 150,000 in sales in the United States on our own, that is saying something to a major label, ‘Look we did this without you and this proves that my way works.’  That’s kind of the plan. And besides that, I would rather be on a smaller label and be the most important thing on that label than being on a huge label and them saying, ‘Well, we are going to do this for you...’ and it is really like throwing shit against the wall.  If it sticks cool, if it doesn’t then you are done and they will drop you like a hot potato.  I mean, it is an ugly business and I hate it with a passion but it is just one of those necessary evils that you have to deal with and I have now for over a decade. 

            The whole thing for me, I never cared about all of this ‘rock star’ bullshit or the ‘guitar hero’ thing, I am a songwriter.  That is why I started this band and that is why I have kept it alive and have kept it together through numerous lineup changes. The focus has always been the same, it is all about the music.  Iced Earth is just a vehicle for my songs and my guitar is just a tool to write with and all of the other stuff just doesn’t matter to me.

 BEAT:   As far as Iced Earth, the group, is this going to be the same group that records the next Iced Earth record?

 J.S.:  I would imagine so, yeah.  It is going to be quite a while before the next Iced Earth album, but anything goes I guess.  At this point, with all  that I have seen and dealt with, nothing surprises me anymore but I do expect that everyone here will be onboard with the next one.

 BEAT:  Have you reached a sense of stability within the band?

 J.S.:  I think so but like I said, anything goes.  Any time I have said different in the past there has been a change for whatever reason. The one thing that I can always guarantee is that it will always be Iced Earth.  The sound is always going to be there and the vision is always going to be the same, I see to that and if there is a change in personnel very rarely does it effect the ultimate outcome. 

BEAT:  When you came to the recording of "The Horror Show," did you find that you would come up with songs that were great Iced Earth songs but not quite what this record needed?  If so, how do you suppose those songs will be used at a later date?

 J.S.:  Yeah. ‘Ghost of Freedom’ was one of those kind of songs. It was something [the music] I had written and I was saving it for the next Demons And Wizards album.  But Matt came up with the concept of the song and I really liked the idea and I said, ‘Well I might have some music for that idea...’   We started working on it together and I began to think that we did need some kind of a slower, ballad-like song on the album because there isn’t anything like it.  That is something that the majority of Iced Earth fans really like, that we have that kind of variety in the albums and there will always be a couple of songs that are ballad-like along with the really aggressive and the epic and whatever.  Dealing with the horror theme, you can’t really write a ballad about Jack the Ripper. (laughs) It just doesn’t work. 

BEAT:  Come on now Jon, Spinal Tap did. (laughs)

 J.S.:  Yeah, but we are not a joke band.  In the end I decided that we’d put something on [the CD] and make it something completely different and it didn’t have to have something to do with the whole horror theme. So it ended up there.  There’s another song that I wrote and that we actually recorded parts of called, ‘Hollow Men,’ which is something that doesn’t have anything to do with horror themes.  It’s a personal song about struggling with inner demons and that kind of thing and it is one that I am singing lead vocals on.  We all just felt that it was a very, very  strong song and we didn’t want it to be wasted with Century Media because at that point we were arguing with the label about numerous things and we were afraid that they were going to drop the ball on this record anyway which is another reason why I put the ‘Something Wicked’ concept on hold. 

            That may not even be the next Iced Earth record.  I just want to be sure that the next people that we are in business with are taking [the band and the music] very seriously and I would almost hate to gamble that on the first album with any new company.  I would almost rather do a record that has a lot of different songs and is not necessarily a concept. Just a strong record to see how we work with that label.  If it goes well, then the next one would be the ‘Something Wicked’ concept.  So that is kind of where that is at right now. 

            We all felt that ‘Hollow Man’ is something special and that it even has real radio potential, but it is still heavy and dark and definitely Iced Earth.  I just had to hold off on it because, at that point, I thought that they were going to drop the ball on us.  I had already told them, ‘There is no way in hell that I am going to re-sign with you.’

 BEAT:  You were there for a long while too.

 J.S.:     Yeah.  We’ve had some problems over the years, but there has been a lot of good times and a lot of bad and they know and I know that they have never had a more dedicated artist on their label.   Nor someone who has delivered consistently, and who since the beginning, has ran their end of it completely professionally. 

            I have answered every phone call, every e-mail and done everything that they have asked me to do and there are so many musicians who are just plain fuck ups.  That is reality because musicians, typically, are not the brightest people in the world and don’t make the smartest decisions in the world.  Over the years, I have tried to build my band and that label into something really strong.  If I had felt that through the years that the loyalty was there and that they really treated me with respect, then I would probably be re-signing with them just because I am a very loyal person.”

 BEAT:  This is all surprising to hear because if I was asked to name THE marquee band for Century-Media it would have been Iced Earth.

J.S.:  Well, to this point we definitely have been the band that has sold the most records and had the most consistent career and that is why they hate to lose us, for sure and I have to say that there are some people at the label that I really like and that I have grown close to over the years who have done the very best that they could with the tools that they have been given. But at the end of the day, it is all up to the guys that sign the checks, the guys who make the big decisions and those are the people that I have a problem with.

 BEAT:   Do you own the Iced Earth catalog?

 J.S.:  Not until so many years after the contract is finished.

 BEAT:   They are here too but Century-Media is a European label and that is where your power base is so do you think that you will go for another label that has a presence here but is based in Europe? 

J.S.:      We have thought about it and my manager and I have even spoken about breaking the markets up and trying to get the best label for any given territory but it just depends.  It will probably be months before we sign a deal, this stuff takes a long time and we have got to make sure that every ‘t’ is crossed and that every ‘i’ is dotted and that the contract reads the way that we want it to read.  It is really all a big game, it is all a record company game and all the people that we have dealt with in the past know that we are not going to be fooled.  Like I said, this is a long process and it will be months before I sign anything. 

BEAT:  Can you give us a preview of the new Demons And Wizards disc, will it be a “Vol. 2” kind of thing or something totally different?

 J.S.:       Well, it is never going to be completely different because it is me and Hansi, so it’s not going to be us experimenting with rap and country or some shit like that. (laughs)  We can guarantee people that it is going to be a strong melodic metal record.  So far I am very, very excited about it. 

            The cool thing about [Demons And Wizards] is that beside the fact that Hansi and I have been friends for eleven years now, we just discovered that we can actually write songs together a few years ago which is a very special thing.  It is something that doesn’t happen very often, two people having chemistry writing together.

That first album was just the beginning. It was just the first one and it was a really strong record.  In some territories we blew away the sales of Iced Earth and Blind Guardian records and we got a Grammy nomination in Germany.  So it was a big deal, but it was still just the beginning.  Even after being friends for over a decade we are just now discovering the artistic bond that we have, so I am very excited because I know that we can destroy that first album with this next one.  We are still learning about each other and what we can do.

 BEAT:  When do you guys get the chance to write or is it strictly through the mail that you exchange tapes?

 J.S.:     The last time we did the album all through the mail except for one song, which was the first song that we ever wrote back in ’97.  It was when I had a couple of days off of a promotional tour for, I think, for the ‘Days of Purgetory’ thing.  I ended up hanging out at Hansi’s house for a couple of days and I just started messing around with his guitar and he just started singing and we looked at each other and went, ‘That is cool as shit, let’s record it!’  So, we went over to the studio and we wrote ‘My Last Sunrise’ and at that point we didn’t know what we were going to do with it. That is the only song that we wrote in-person with each other.  The rest of them, I did all of the music stuff and sent it over to him and he would work on the vocal melodies and some lyric ideas and we worked on the lyrics together. 

             This time, he is going to come over here in July between the festivals that he has got going on and we are going to do some more face to face writing and, hopefully, have things pretty much done by the time he leaves here.  [We’ll] record the music in maybe late summer/early fall and then Hansi can do the vocal parts whenever he gets the chance.  It is going to be cool, I am really psyched about it.  I can just imagine what he is going to bring to the table.  It is so nice having a partner like Hansi because he is very experienced in all facets of it.  I mean, he has been dealing with the business facets of it like I have for the entire history of this band and then we have this artistic thing together that I have actually never felt with anybody else, so it is a very cool thing and it is a lot less pressure on me. 

             In Iced Earth 90% of the weight is on my shoulders and in Demons And Wizards it is definitely a fifty-fifty deal.

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