Jimmy Kay and Alan Dixon from The Metal Voice spoke to legendary guitarist of Accept about the bands tour plans, new music, the status of their documentary and the possibility of ever doing an Accept Fest
Watch here
When asked about North American Tour
"I'm currently in Europe as we have we all have been here for the whole summer because it's summer festival season here and we played more shows than I can remember ever playing. I mean we usually do festivals for a few weeks here and there but it's been almost three months for us now because I think there was all this pent up demand because of the pandemic. So this summer has been busier than ever it's been awesome. So now we're getting ready to do this U.S. tour which is coming up soon. It's actually the first full-blown U.S tour for Accept in a decade, it's time I don't know."
When asked was it a good idea to release their last studio album 'To Mean to die' during the pandemic
"It went really y well, I have to say people love the album and I think that we're very grateful that we didn't hold back until times got back to normal. People got to enjoy the album and the fan reaction was fantastic. We sold really well, of course nobody knows what it would have been like had we had the tour to support the album."
When asked about the upcoming set list
"We incorporate a whole lot more songs than I had anticipated at some of these festival shows that we did. We played like five new songs and they all had a great reaction from the fans because normally a lot of times when we have a new album we play only two songs sometimes three but there's so much good stuff on this album, so much good live songs, that it's really fun to do and people really appreciate it. I do put the setlist together every night but we do make stuff up sometimes last minute. I make a small adjustment and we also like to mix it up sometimes more than we've ever done before. A lot of times in the past we arrived at what seemed to be the perfect set list and we kind of kept it as is. Lately we all said why don't we just mix it up a little because it's also fun for us and if somebody comes to more than one show they get a slightly different set list. I can tell you this some songs we will always play like 'Princess of the dawn' , 'Fast as a shark', 'Metal heart', 'Balls to the wall'."
When asked if he ever heard the AC/DC original Demo of the song 'I'm A Rebel' which was given to Accept to record for their second album
"I have yeah and Bon Scott singing on it from what I remember. It's unreleased and they probably will keep it in the archive or their vault or whatever forever I can tell you why it will be unreleased because it was a demo. Apparently AC/DC did not like the song enough or they didn't want to record it properly they just had the demo and said, we are not going to do properly record it. So that's how we ended up with the song. I thought their version was fabulous. I thought it was much better than our version, sorry. I remember that was clearly Bon Scott on it, kind of a rough demo. I believe it was recorded in Hamburg at a demo studio or maybe not. I know that Alex Young (who wrote the song) lived in Hamburg at the time or at least he had a really close connection to our publisher that's how we ended up with a song. They said we've got these unreleased songs and I think the song would be great for you guys and we actually met him (Alex Young)."
When asked if they would even do a tour playing a whole classic album from start to finish
"I'm not a huge fan of all these anniversary things because it always reeks a little bit of desperation, like I don't have a new album we've got nothing else to say, so we celebrate something that happened 40 years ago. Maybe if we've come to the point where we don't have a current album and it happens to be anniversary? I don't want to really get caught up in that too much and as far as like playing an album in the entirety we've done that once or twice but an album is an album and it has a certain running order and the show has a different running order to me and it's not necessarily the best live show. But it doesn't say we don't want to do it, actually we committed to do to that in Japan but that show never happened. We were supposed to play the entirety of 'Metal heart' and 'Balls to the wall' in two different shows in Japan as a special thing. We rehearsed for it but then pandemic uh put a stop to it it never happened. "
When asked if he would ever consider doing an Accept Festival brining back the former members, like Schenker Fest
"I mean anything is possible but at this point no interest, no thanks. I learned to say never say never because one day you might look like a fool otherwise."
When asked if you have been inspired to get ideas ideas down for a new album
"I tell you what is inspiring, it is to be out on stage and to see the reaction of fans. When you ask me was I creative during this pandemic time, no. I wasn't, I kind of fell into a slump. I'm totally honest I didn't know when life would resume and I didn't know when the tour would actually happen that we had planned and there were so many unknowns and so I didn't feel inspired. But now that I'm back out on the road and we're on stage every night and I'm fired up and I actually wrote a bunch of stuff already sitting in hotel rooms and such. That's when I get creative. Time just flew by doing this pandemic and I wasn't really creative at all. I wish I would have been but you can't force it."
When asked about the status of the Accept Documentary
"I don't know where it stands, I need to check but I think it came to a halt because there wasn't enough stuff (video footage) that that we could find. We wanted some fan footage but there really isn't much fan footage yeah it's kind of disappointing in a way."
"Too Mean To Die - Tour North America 2022" dates w/ Accept
Sept. 29 - Nashville, TN - Brooklyn Bowl
Oct. 1 - Houston, TX - The Concert Pub North
Oct. 2 - Fort Worth, TX - Rail Club
Oct. 4 - San Antonio, TX - The Espee Pavilion
Oct. 5 - El Paso, TX - Rockhouse
Oct. 7 - San Luis Obispo, CA - The Coach House
Oct. 8 - West Hollywood, CA - Whisky A Go-Go
Oct. 9 - Las Vegas - Vamp'd
Oct. 11 - Denver, CO - The Venue
Oct. 13 - Milwaukee, WI - The Rave Ballroom
Oct. 14 - St. Charles, IL - The Arcada Theater
Oct. 15 - Westland, MI - The Token
Oct. 16 - Toronto, ON - The Phoenix Theater
Oct. 18 - Vineland, NJ - Landis Theater
Oct. 20 - Jim Thorpe, PA - Penns Peak
Oct. 21 - Patchogue, NY - Stereo Garden
Oct. 22 - Peekskill, NY - Paramount Theater
Oct. 23 - Teaneck, NJ - Debonair Music Hall
Oct. 25 - New York City, NY - The Gramercy
Oct. 26 - Derry, NH - Tupelo Music Hall
Oct. 27 - Harrisburg, PA - XL Live
Oct. 29 - Columbus, OH - King Of Clubs
https://www.acceptworldwide.com/