We were lucky enough have a quick chat with Within Temptation lead guitarist Ruud Jolie, just before the band’s first Wembley gig on the 12th April. We talked tour, his inspirations and for some reason Justin Bieber also popped up in conversation…
Hey! How’s the tour going?
It’s going well, yeah I think so. Last night Manchester was great, it was sold out and English audiences have been treating us well so far, so hopefully tonight as well.
And so this is the first time you guys are doing Wembley?
Yes.
Are you guys are excited about it?
Yes of course, it’s not the prettiest venue – the dressing rooms aren’t the best – but it is Wembley and we’re very, very happy to be here, so it’s definitely – for me personally – a career point.
Excellent, so you’re a couple of months into your Hydra tour, aren’t you?
Yeah, we started at the end of February.
6 weeks then…how do you keep your motivation levels up throughout such a long tour? We know you guys are playing though to September aren’t you, on and off?
On and off yes, and beyond, because dates are being added as we speak. Am I motivated? Yeah, um, lots of beer! No, I’m kidding; you know sometimes you have better days than others? For me personally I hurt my back last week – like really badly – so I’ve been walking around like Ozzy Osborne for the last couple of days, which sucks. It’s getting slowly better…I have a bad back, so sometimes I hurt my back when I’m at home as well, but then it’s just three days of absolute rest, not do anything, then I’m fine. But now it’s been for a week already. It’s because I’m in the bus, you know, the bunks aren’t that great for your back and you’re working. But motivational wise, you know, it’s just great…once in a while when I have a feeling that I want to go home, I just tell myself that I’m one of the luckiest people in the world, to be able to do this and that helps. And we also keep ourselves occupied; normally I do some sports, unfortunately I haven’t been able to do that this last week but you know I try to read a lot, work a little bit, play guitar and then it’s already time to do some dinner. And then we do some playing on stage and one of the things that motivates us is looking forward to spending the evening in the bus playing GTA on the PlayStation and that’s all good.
Everyone likes GTA!
Yeah, Stefan (Helleblad) introduced me to it; I’m more of a typical shooter.
Call of Duty?
Like that yeah, and I love Metal Gear Solid and Dead Space, and those kind of things. GTA was always too realistic for me, but now I’m playing it, it’s definitely not realistic. Fortunately! Because then we would be living in a very fucked up world, of course…
That’s true…So moving on, on the Hydra tour, on the Hydra album rather, you’ve done a lot of collaboration with different singers. Who was the most fun to work with?
I really can’t tell because during the recordings of those people, I wasn’t there…I met three of them – Tarja, Dave Pirner and Xzibit - and I met Piotr (Rogucki) from Poland so I met four of those people, so the only person I didn’t meet was Howard Jones. Because he got sick when he was flying over to the Netherlands, so he couldn’t make it…they’re all different people and I only met Xzibit very, very briefly but Tarja? She was great, very nice person – and Dave Pirner as well he’s a really cool guy, they’re really down to earth, really down to earth and I really hope that when people meet us that they will say the same thing, because you know in a way it’s always cool to have your heroes. I said it yesterday in an interview – I’m still a fan-boy myself and I like that. I like that I still have that feeling; I’m friends with the guys in Metalica, they’re one of my biggest influences. Whenever I see James Hetfield, standing two metres away from me in the backstage area, I’m like “ow ow dude that’s James Hetfield”. Actually I’ve never talked to him, well I’ve met with Steve Harris from Iron Maiden, and that’s the reason I’m here, why I started playing guitar. And the first time that I met Steve Harris I was like “wow dude, wow”, but he’s such a nice guy, he’s a really down to earth person so I don’t have to, I’m not starstruck anymore whenever I see him, fortunately, but I think that’s cool…I don’t know why I’m talking about this right now…what was your question? Oh yeah it was about the collaborations. No, I like that because we’re all musicians in for the music and yeah that’s cool.
You’ve actually helped us out cos one of my questions was going to be who’s your inspiration!
Iron Maiden, Rush big time, Metallica all the big 4, Megadeath, Anthrax, Slayer, Metallica. After that Dream Theatre – that was actually the band that helped me decide to become a professional musician, even though I’m not that much into Dream Theatre anymore, I kind of lost track of them…but yeah, those bands were huge influences.
Where are the best crowds in the world? You’ve performed all over, haven’t you?
I would have to say South America, those people…they go insane, I really feel like The Beatles whenever we’re there, or Justin Bieber!
Don’t say that!
Those crowds are e so passionate you know, it’s in their culture, it’s in their personalities and obviously it all comes out when they come to a concert, whenever they go to a gig and it gives you so much energy. And I think the more north you go – in world – he more stoic the reactions might be.
More sedate?
But that doesn’t matter or say that much about whether or not they like it; it’s a different way of expressing it. Like myself, when I go to a concert, I’ll be standing in the back with a beer, listening and all “yay” and the occasional “ahh”, that’s pretty much it, so I’m not exactly great audience material myself but…
So not the extrovert in the middle of the mosh pit going at it…
The last time I did that was in 2006 when Anthrax played in my hometown, in their original – well pretty much original - Among the Living line-up. You know, the most famous line-up and that’s when I gave my brand new watch to a friend of mine and said “hold this, I’ll be right back” and then I went to the mosh pit because I felt like a 17 year old.
And you haven’t seen the watch since?
Oh yeah! He gave it back to me, no it was cool, it was nice, and that’s what I mean by being a fan-boy myself. But that’s almost 10 years ago, 8 years ago, so I don’t see myself doing that especially with my fucked up back.
Of course, you’ll make it worse; so what’s the craziest thing you’ve seen on stage?
On stage?
So looking down…
That’s a very, very good question, with Within Temptation or any?
Any.
Well I remember I was in Brotherhood Foundation, a band from The Netherlands in 1997 till 1999, Mike also played in that band and I don’t think it was with him because he joined the band later…we were booked in Rotterdam but we were advertised as Brotherhood, as The Brotherhood, but The Brotherhood in Rotterdam is more like a gangster-rap kind of thing, so when we entered the stage, there were only gangsters. like a lot of coloured people, and we were like “hmmm, this is interesting” and then this fight happened, all hell broke loose and there was a guy reaching for his gun and that’s when we said “OK, we’ve had enough here, that’s it, time to go home”. Yeah that was a very interesting thing. For the rest I don’t know, Within Temptation crowds are pretty decent. No girl has ever shown her breasts unfortunately.
This is Wembley, you never know!
Really?!
Yeah, you never know, just ask them…
Well, let’s face it, that’s the reason I got into rock n roll, of course! And that’s why I envy Steel Panther because they get it done, but they don’t have a female singer. I think that’s a big factor why we don’t ever see any tits from the audience because all the girls are maybe a little bit ashamed, they are afraid that Sharon (Den Adel) will think they are sluts, and maybe they are, but we as guys? We don’t mind…
No, no, of course not, well fingers crossed; hopefully we’ll see some tonight…So, what is your advice to aspiring musicians, people who want to get into the industry?
I get that question a lot, and I never have a good answer except for the standard ones; don’t try to copy anyone and that’s a cliché answer but it’s really true. Of course you need to have influences because Frank Zappa once said it’s better to – how did he put it – I don’t know how he put it in English, I know the Dutch translation…something like, “it’s better to steal a good thing, than to come up with your own crappy stuff”, something like that. Like I said, I don’t know exactly how he put it and there’s some truth in it and everyone steals, that’s why they’re called influences. You know I’ve been practising my Kirk Hammett licks as well, but as a musician, as a band, it’s really important to do whatever you think is great and I see it with younger people. It’s usually a total copy of the bands they are listening to. You know when I started my first bands, my first band also sounded like Anthrax and when I got into Dream Theatre all of the sound merged into this progressive (indistinguishable) kind of stuff, which was good of course. For instance if you’re really into Avenged Sevenfold, check out their influences and check out the influences of the influence so you’ve got like this…
Pyramid?
Pyramid! Exactly, and eventually it all comes down to Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin…probably…but maybe you can get some different influences and make your own stew of the bands they’ve been listening to. And if you’re into heavy metal listen to some other stuff, you know, get into your blues, jazz and also that’s a pretty cliché answer but I really think it helps.
I suppose it takes time for you to develop your own style.
Yeah, unless you’re so immensely talented but that’s…
Once in a generation?
Exactly, that’s one in a million. You know for instance Jason Becker, we were talking about him yesterday, he was like 19 or 18 we he joined David Lee Roth, unbelievable the talent, you know if he would be able to play right now then I don’t know what would have happened. There are a lot of musicians, but that’s why they are on top of everybody…and the each other. Work hard, definitely work hard, learning instruments really takes time and you know maybe in the beginning of the 90s it was really destructive for the musician, I think. Because Nirvana, you know, Kurt Cobain, awesome song writer awesome, but you know he sucked as a guitar player. Of course he got the feeling across and that’s also a very important thing, he was good at that, but his skills…there weren’t any. So musicians, guitarists were like “yeah I don’t need to practice on my guitar because Kurt Cobain”…yeah but Kurt Cobain was so fucking talented, unbelievably talented, with writing music and stuff like that and I also know, I’m a teacher and I teach music theory and what I sometimes get from musicians is “yeah but if you know theory then you won’t play with your heart anymore, you’re playing with your head”. And I think that’s the biggest bullshit because it like learning a new language; of course at the beginning you’re struggling with the grammar but once you know a language really well, then you start talking and forgetting about all the theory.
It just flows…
Yeah, and that’s when music theory becomes helpful so don’t get stuck in that theoretical thing; keep playing music from the heart, that’s of course the most important thing, although I don’t think that knowing your theory hurts.
Well it’s been really great interviewing you and I hope the tour goes really well!
Thank you very much, will you be sticking around for the show?
Of course.
OK, you can make sure that some girls lift their shirts?
Oh yeah sure, we’ll sort of point at some; tell them “lift your shirt”!
RJ: Yeah sure, with that laser thingy, you, lift your shirt, that would be great! Because English women have pretty big breasts…
Yeah, we’ve noticed that as well…
Well anyways…
It’s your birthday next week isn’t it?
Yes!
Happy Birthday!
Oh thank you very much, thanks a lot, see you later Omar.
Interview By: Omar Malick