Rock My Monkey: Hello, you are listening to the Rock My Monkey netcast on RockMyMonkey.com. Today we are speaking with the metal queen herself, Doro Pesch. How are you doing today, Doro?
Doro Pesch: Hey, very good, Mark. Things are excellent. We just had our DVD release party last night, so my voice is a little bit hoarse, but everything else is going well.
Rock My Monkey: Cool. To start out with I just want to say ‘happy birthday’ two days early.
Doro Pesch: Yeah. We had a nice cake, and aw, man, that’s sweet. We kick off the tour on Monday the 4th, so I will probably celebrate on the 3rd through the 4th.
Rock My Monkey: Okay. Now, are you going to be doing anything special on Sunday to celebrate your birthday?
Doro Pesch: Yeah, we just have a lot of work, and we want to get totally prepared for the tour. I’m so psyched about it. I’m so much looking forward to it. So rehearsal is priority, and then maybe the band and the whole crew, we have a little drink later. But yeah, gearing up for the tour, that’s better than birthday party. I want to do good for the fans, and get the show together, and get all the songs together. So we’ll fully concentrate on it.
Rock My Monkey: This is celebrating you having twenty years being part of the metal community. How does it feel to be such a respected and loved figure in the metal community for over two decades?
Doro Pesch: I mean, Mark, I never thought it would ever last that long. I’m so happy to just to, happy to just do it and know there are so many fans out there. We still have such a great fan base, which I could always count on, and I owe it all to the fans. I am so thankful, and grateful. It’s great to music. It was always a very difficult, hard way, but the payoff is sometimes massive, especially when you get good feedback. Yeah, I didn’t think I would survive it that long, but I’m planning keeping it up twenty more years. I hope the fans will go with me, and I will definitely want to work on that, and many, many more records. Actually when we started, I thought after my second record, it was the second record, I thought it was so difficult to make that, I thought, man, I’ll never, never do another record. And now I guess it’s like fifteen more records later.
Rock My Monkey: Cool. Now in December you had to cancel some in store appearances due to illness. Are you okay, and should us fans worry about you?
Doro Pesch: No, no, not to worry. No, no. I’m a tough cookie. It was just a little thing. No problem. Everything is good. Once in a while, sometimes when I get sick, then I really learn to appreciate when you feel good, then you don’t even think about how precious it is. It can all end in a second and stuff. And then sometimes I guess it’s hard to-actually, I guess it’s good to, yeah, to, it’s sometimes like a wakeup call. Life is not forever, and it’s sacred. You’ve got to do all you can do. Always give your best. Sometimes I think it’s positive, as well.
Rock My Monkey: So this had nothing to do with the endometriosis you battled in 2005?
Doro Pesch: Yeah, no, no.
Rock My Monkey: Good. Now, I heard that this DVD was filmed in something called DVD 9 format. What does that mean to the average fan? What is DVD 9?
Doro Pesch: Oh, man, Mark. (laughs) I don’t know, man. I just, it’s all the cutting and stuff, I was there every step of the way. I don’t know. I really-it’s, I guess it’s probably technical and for the people who know what it is, they’ll probably think, ‘oh, man, she don’t even know.’ But I’m just, I’m always into like, that it sounds good, that it looks good, the cutting and the filming. But I really have to talk to the guys at the record company what it really means. I guess it means something but I have to find out what. I’m so sorry.
Rock My Monkey: In a recent interview with Express Times you talked about you view your fans as your children. But you’re also notorious for doing things for children’s charity, such as the Charity Concert Rock For Children that you did in April. How did you hook up with them, and how involved are you with them?
Doro Pesch: Actually I really like doing charity work. Whatever I can do. I feel so blessed. I can do music, I can travel the world. I always feel there’s so much, so many people who are not so fortunate. And with children especially, they deserve more of a chance. There’s a hospital Germany, actually it’s a hospice. And that’s like the saddest thing. And I thought, if I can do something, you know what, makes them a little bit happy. Then we make these concerts and we collect all kinds of stuff, money and toys. We went into the hospital and gave it to the kids, and we tried it that they can always get better, more people take care, better doctors, and something kids can enjoy, like DVDs and videos and cd players. So that was what we just did. We will probably want to continue to do that every year and hope that it would grow bigger and bigger. I always like doing that. Then you really know, yeah, I was born with good parents and stuff, and sometimes man, like children, they are maybe not wanted, and they have little chance to lead a happy life. I always try to-if I can do little, little things, I always want to do it. And with the music I really feel it can make people so happy. You can forget about all kinds of problems, or even when you’re very ill. Music adds so much. It’s such a great thing to do.
Rock My Monkey: I hate to bring this up, but I do have one complaint about the DVD. I don’t speak German. (laughs) So pretty much-you have one disc that’s full of interviews, and there’s no closed captioning, there’s no sub titles.
Doro Pesch: Oh, there is sub titles. Mark, there should be sub titles. Oh, I hope they didn’t forget it. Because in Europe it came out a couple of months ago. It just came out on the 22nd of May, and actually you’re the second person who tells me you don’t speak German. There should be English sub titles underneath it. Or a section where you can choose it, English sub titles. I have to really check that, too.
Rock My Monkey: Hopefully maybe the retail version does, and maybe just the advanced version that was sent to press doesn’t. But maybe they added that later.
Doro Pesch: Yeah, Mark, that could be, but I will totally check into it after we do this interview. I hope so.
Rock My Monkey: As I’ve already said, I’ve got the promo version, but from what I hear the retail version is going to be much more intense for the fans. I heard that there’s an audio disc to it, as well?
Doro Pesch: Yeah. Actually, there’s one big box with t-shirt, cd, DVD, and there’s another limited edition with an audio cd. Then there’s the normal version. I think the limited editions they look so good, and the normal version is ok, but the limited are always the way to go for to all those fans that I think, like for the die hard fans. I think extras like the artwork is nicer and stuff.
Rock My Monkey: What exactly is on the bonus cd? Is it just an audio version of the live concert?
Doro Pesch: Yeah, and a new song. The new song is called Everything’s Love. It’s the highlights of the show, and great sound. Yeah, yeah.
Rock My Monkey: Now, Chris Caffery is a touring member of your band right now, but he is an extra guitarist, or was somebody from your regular band not able to make it?
Doro Pesch: Actually, he’s doing an American tour because Joe Taylor he’s not doing the American tour, and Chris Caffery was a really good friend of ours. He was a special guest on many, many concerts, and we did somethings on songs together. So we asked if he want to do it, and he’s doing it. He’s meeting us in October because he is doing TSO. And Joe is coming back.
Rock My Monkey: I hope I get this right, but one of your band members has a super hero identity known as Metal Man. I believe it’s your guitarist.
Doro Pesch: (laughs) It’s the bass player.
Rock My Monkey: The bass player. Okay. At the end of the DVD it said ‘to be continued’. Dare I ask, how far is he going to take his super hero identity?
Doro Pesch: Oh, man, I think he has a whole script in his head. On the next DVD we will find out more from Metal Man. Nick especially has many, many talents, and one of those talents is being an actor, and being The Metal Man. After he told me when we do the America tour he told me there are many, many more ideas, and we’ll find out on the next DVD. We have to wait a little bit. Nick is a sweetheart. He’s such a great guy. We’re together in the band now for seventeen years. Nick is an awesome and a great musician, and like I said, has many, many talents.
Rock My Monkey: When you start making people laugh, you know you have them in the palm of your hands.
Doro Pesch: Yeah.
Rock My Monkey: You’re currently doing a small East Coast tour, but when was the last time you played the Northwest, or more specifically, Seattle, WA, and how soon will you be able to get up here?
Doro Pesch: Now we are doing the first leg of the tour, and it has like 21 concerts. Then I guess in a couple of months we will start the second leg. I’m not exactly sure when, but I think in October, November. Then I’m looking forward to playing all those places you just named. Because we were there a couple of years with Dio. It was the Dio Evil Or Divine Tour, and I was so grateful, so much looking forward. Now we have ourselves 21 dates, and then we go back to Europe to do all the summer festivals, and then we come back.
Rock My Monkey: Last time I talked to Kory Clarke of the band Warrior Soul, he was actually pretty upset that you were calling your cd Warrior Soul. I was wondering if you two had ever been able to talk that over, and do you think there could be any confusion between the band Warrior Soul, and your album and DVD Warrior Soul?
Doro Pesch: Oh, man, I’m sorry. No, I’ve not talked to him, and stuff. I think we never met. I hope we will meet in the future. I definitely don’t want to make anybody upset. I thought maybe it like a big honor to call it that name, but I certainly want to talk to him. And definitely it was not my agenda to make him upset. I just thought it’s a great name, and it’s actually, now like it’s like how I feel, I would say it like a warrior soul. I thought it the perfect title for the record. And there’s a movie. It’s a Swiss production. It’s called Anuk Path of the Warrior, and I wrote the song Warrior Soul for the main character. He’s a warrior soul. So we came up with that. That’s-I hope he will forgive me. I would certainly talk it over with him.
Rock My Monkey: Personally I think it would be great to see both of you together doing maybe an American tour live.
Doro Pesch: Yeah.
Rock My Monkey: Hopefully that can be worked out. As far as the movie Anuk, have you heard anything about an American DVD release of that?
Doro Pesch: At the moment it’s playing in the European movie theaters. I hope it will come to America. I think the producers and the director are trying to find a distributor here. But I don’t know if he’s successful yet. But the DVD will definitely come out in a couple of months. It would be even nicer to see it in the movie theaters. The sound, the vision, it’s so nice to see it on the big screen rather than tv or a computer. So they’re trying. And the DVD will come out in Europe probably in the next couple of months. But in America, I don’t know, it will probably take a little while.
Rock My Monkey: The twenty years Warrior Soul DVD release party was held in New York yesterday. How many people showed up to that?
Doro Pesch: Oh, man, a couple of hundred. It was great. It was great atmosphere. We were playing the songs All We Are. Everybody was dancing to All We Are. It was a fantastic party. It was really good. We partied to like six o’clock in the morning. It was great. So many people came. Jean Beauvoir was there. He’s a guest on the DVD as well. He’s a great friend of ours. And of course my band and Chris Caffery and many press, and radio people, and many fans. It was awesome. We had a great time. And I got birthday cake already, even though my birthday is on Sunday. But a big birthday cake and roses. It was something.
Rock My Monkey: I saw some footage of you performing All We Are to introduce Regina, the boxer Regina, into the ring. And it was bombastic and so energetic, and pumped the crowd up so much for Regina, I actually kind of wondered if her opponent had anything even close to come in with.
Doro Pesch: He came in with a tank. His name is Stefan Raab and he came in with a tank. But I still think All We Are, it got everybody going. And Regina won the fight. Yeah, her opponent had not much of a chance.
Rock My Monkey: It was quite-you had the crowd quite pumped for that.
Doro Pesch: Did you see the bass player that was Schirmer from Destruction?
Rock My Monkey: Yeah, yeah, I saw all that. Yeah. Now, you’re on the newest release from the band After Forever performing the song Who I Am. How did you hook up with the band After Forever? Did you approach them, or did they approach you?
Doro Pesch: I met the guitar player-he actually played with me on All We Are when we did the performance for Regina. His name is Maas and I’ve known him for a couple of years. He’s from Holland, and he visited me on the promotion tour. Then he said that he has a band, After Forever, and I said, well, I heard about it. And I said, it’s an awesome singer, and he said yes. And then he asked me like a couple of years if he thought it would be possible if we would work together? And I said yeah, let me know when you do a new record. When we did, last year we did an awesome South American tour in Brazil and Argentina and Mexico, and we were playing on the same bill. It was the Live N Louder Festival. And so I got to know everybody, I got to know the singer, Floor is her name. She’s a great girl, a great lady. Then the last couple of days they asked if I want to sing a duet with her, and they sent me that song. I loved the song immediately, and I said yes, let’s do it. I went into the studio and did my part, and then I sent it over. I’m very happy. I think the outcome is really great. The sound is good. It mixed very good. These two voices are, I think, going really well together. And it’s a good story behind the song. It’s like a song about a quick cross melody and I play the aggressive part and Floor is like the angelic part. I think it was a good idea. We like each other very much, like the whole band. We’re cool. We’re good friends.
Rock My Monkey: I got to ask you about-I’ve been asking a lot of the artists that I speak with about this, but in America on July 15th internet radio in America is scheduled to be put out of business by fees above and beyond that of traditional radio due to the RIAA and their, and another leg of their business called the Sound Exchange. How do you feel this is going affect the metal community, and do you as an artist support this attack on internet radio?
Doro Pesch: Wow. Man, I didn’t hear about it before. Man, that’s heavy. Wow. I always loved internet radio. It brings the whole world together. I think it’s a great thing. We have to fight this decision on the 15th. Wow. It’s unbelievable. It’s the first thing I heard about it.
Rock My Monkey: Maybe when we go into-I believe in a couple of days you’re going to be in the KNAC offices doing an interview, correct?
Doro Pesch: I will call them up.
Rock My Monkey: Oh, you’re going to call them. Okay.
Doro Pesch: I have to call them. Why?
Rock My Monkey: Oh, they’re an internet radio station.
Doro Pesch: Oh, could they do something, or ask people to fight?
Rock My Monkey: Well, I know that all the internet radio stations out there are asking artists like you the same question I just asked, and trying to get the word out, and trying to get the fans to call their local congressman and their senator, and ask them to fight this bill, and to fight this legislation, and to make it so this doesn’t happen on July 15th.
Doro Pesch: Wow. Can you explain to me why do they want do it? What’s the reason for?
Rock My Monkey: What it is, is supposedly the way it’s supposed to go, legally, when an artist gets played on the radio, they get royalties, correct?
Doro Pesch: Right.
Rock My Monkey: Right. So what happened is, a court, because of something, a really horrible, awful thing we have in America that was signed in1998 called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, traditional radio is exempt from these additional royalties that are being imposed on the digital broadcasting outlets. Like I said, the internet radio stations, they’re going to get, rates that include a minimum fee of $500 per year per channel with escalating fees for each song played, and this is retroactive actually to 2006. So basically on July 15th they’re going to get this one huge bill. The applicable fee would actually be .0008 per performance, which means streaming one song to one listener. So if a webcaster has 10,000 listeners, they would pay 10,000 times the going rate for every streamed song. The fee would increase thirty cents per year, which amounts to .0009 cents per song by 2010. Like I said, this is all retroactive. On July 15th, this is retroactive to January 1st of 2006. Basically July 15th no internet radio station will be able to afford to stay in business, because they’re paying bigger fees than regular traditional radio.
Doro Pesch: Wow, Mark. Wow. That’s heavy. Man.
Rock My Monkey: On a lighter subject, I got to ask, who was doing the vocals with you on the song White Wedding during your live portion of the DVD?
Doro Pesch: Oh, that’s Jean Beauvoir. He was the guitar player for Wendy O Williams. He played with The Plasmatics, and his band Crown Of Thorns.
Rock My Monkey: Cool. Now, I did have one final question that we ask every single band at the end of every interview. This is just to end every interview with a real sledgehammer of a question, something real heavy, and maybe a little bit shocking to the person I’m interviewing.
Doro Pesch: (laughs) Okay. Okay, Mark.
Rock My Monkey: For this year’s question I’m asking people to look into their crystal ball and predict what political figure, world leader, musician, celebrity, actor, actress, anybody well known, who do you think might die before the end of this year?
Doro Pesch: Oh, god! That’s a heavy question! Oh, man. Oh, man.
Rock My Monkey: If there’s maybe a political figure or a world leader that maybe their health isn’t so good. It’s not necessarily wishing death on anybody, but it’s just kind of saying, yeah, I don’t think this person is going to make it, their health isn’t so good.
Doro Pesch: Oh, man, Mark. That’s real heavy. Of course I don’t wish that on anybody, but even to say it… That makes me feel, I couldn’t even do that. I don’t know.
Rock My Monkey: If you don’t have an answer for that, that’s fine.
Doro Pesch: Yeah. Even spiritually, I don’t know. It’s too heavy. the best for everybody. I don’t know. You know, I think it’s in God’s hands. Whatever’s meant to be is meant to be. We will see.
Rock My Monkey: Is there any final words you have for the readers of Rock My Monkey and the fans of Doro Pesch?
Doro Pesch: Yes. I want to say thank you to all the fans for all these years of support. I love them to death. That’s the real motivation. It always kept me going, and it keeps me going. And I really want to thank them for all their love and support. I will always try my best, and always give 150%, and I hope that I will see them soon on this tour. I’m very excited about the American tour. Yeah, they should all come out, and we will have the best time, I promise. We will see everybody soon. Keep metal alive!
Rock My Monkey: I thank you very much for your time, and for anybody that is listening to the audio version of this they can go to RockMyMonkey.com for the full featured version with clickable links, readable text, and all those wonderful features. I thank you very much for speaking with me today, Doro, and I hope everybody listening to this can click the album cover above and below this interview to purchase Twenty Years: A Warrior Soul, from the lovely Doro Pesch. And I do hope to see you on tour in fall.
Doro Pesch: Okay. Super, great, Mark. Have a good one, and I thank you for all the support. Keep it up. I hope the 15th of July, I hope we can change that. I support internet radio. I support all the things that brings the music to the people. So we hope.
Rock My Monkey: Thank you very much, and we will hopefully see you in the fall.
