Interview Sharlee D'Angelo (face to face)

Hi Sharlee, thanks for answering a few questions for auxportesdumetal.com. How has this tour been so far? Has it not been too complicated to organize bearing in mind that you all play in different bands?

The tour has been going for two weeks now… This was the time when we all could do it. It had to be organized according to everybody’s schedule, Ludwig being with Grand Magus, Apollo being a teacher, etc. And I want to say that this time, it was not complicated because of Michael or myself… because usually we’re the ones who are super busy. But no, this time, we said “we’re free, we’re free… whenever you want to do it, it’s fine”… Ha ha ha!

How do you find time to get together and rehearse?

Well, we can’t over rehearse, that’s for sure. Just like we can’t overproduce our albums because we only have a few weeks to put everything together. But, for good or for bad, it still leaves some spontaneity in there… And it’s fun.

The line-up has been steady for three albums in a row now…

Yeah, we’ve had the same line-up for a while, which is almost record-breaking… I think the band had the same line-up at the beginning for the first three albums… So if we manage to do a fourth one with the same guys, the record will be broken!

Has this stability helped as far as writing your new album “Sunrise To Sundown” is concerned?

I think it has, in the sense that we know each other inside and out musically now… Like, for example, it’s the third album with Apollo and it’s easier now for Michael and Per, when they do vocal arrangements or when they write melodies for Apollo to sing, because they know exactly what he’s capable of. They can really write for his voice whereas for “Return To Zero”, it was more like an experiment, to see what he could do… So it’s a lot simpler.

I actually felt, while listening to the record, that Apollo was more comfortable and that the melodies really fit his voice and range. The vocal lines are not as high as they were on “Earth Blues” for instance…

It’s true that with a song like “Wise As A Serpent”, for example, it’s all good and well when you record it in the studio but then you realize as you go out on tour that it might not be such a good idea. For example, this song could have a been a great opening track live but we just can’t do it because Apollo can’t go in cold and fuck up his voice for the rest of the evening… So that’s why it has to appear later on in the set. Things like that… you know, you live and you learn… When you’re not a vocalist yourself and you write stuff, you just think it’s going to sound great but you don’t always think about the poor guy who’s got to sing it!! (laughs)

Do you know if Apollo’s going to make it to four albums with this band?

Well, you know, hopefully…unless he says at the end of this tour “That’s it for me, I hate you guys!!” ha ha ha… Right now, we’re all really happy and comfortable with each other. It’s like a bunch of old guys on vacation basically, ha ha ha! That’s what it is. We’re all sort of leave behind what we normally do, we just pack ourselves in the van and go around the continent, playing music, having fun… And it’s cool to play another type of music also. What we do with Spiritual Beggars is so different from what Michael and I do with Arch Enemy. Especially if you take into account that we’ve recently toured a lot with Arch Enemy. It’s also like taking a musical vacation, so to speak. You get renewed energy from it, from playing something else, you get in touch with different sides of your musical self… which is great.

Back to the new stuff. Some songs do sound like old Deep Purple, Rainbow or Black Sabbath. Are these songs sorts of tributes to these legends?

It just comes out as it comes out… It’s not that it’s intentionally a tribute but sometimes, depending on how you play it, the references become really obvious. For example, “Diamond Under Pressure”, it’s like you take “Woman From Tokyo” and “Might Just Take Your Life”, right? Per came up with this riff and as everybody started to do their own thing, it sounded a little bit more like Deep Purple because we all grew up with the same music! And we were just like “why not?”…

Talking about that, some bands are sometimes judged or criticized for not bringing anything new or showing their influences a bit too much… but not you. Whatever you do, people seem to love it. How do you explain it?

It’s not like we sound like one band. Not all our songs sound like Deep Purple songs. If all the songs on “Sunrise To Sundown” sounded like Purple songs, then we’d have a problem. But we’ve got lots of different sounds and different directions, you know… And sometimes, there’s a general idea like we want to have a kind of Rainbow sounding song but then when everybody steps in, it might take a complete different direction. For example, on the “Demons” album there’s a song called “One Man Army”, when Michael wrote the guitar riff, he was thinking Black Sabbath but more “Never Say Die” era, late 70s, but I heard a little bit of Alice Cooper or even The Who in there as well, and Ludwig had a different idea. So when we all came together, the song was completely different from what Michael originally had in mind. It’s all extremely random, we just see what happens and if it’s good or not… there’s really not a lot of thought behind it.

I was wondering if it was more or less difficult today with the current technology to come up with an old-school sound such as yours.

Well, I mean, I think the only type of technology we’re using that wasn’t available back in the day is actually the recording medium because we are recording into a computer. But the rest of it: old microphones, everybody in one room recording together, not too much polishing and, of course, the playing style… So I don’t think it’s more complicated to record an album like that. If you try to do it the way everybody does it now, the cheaper type of recording with everybody recording their parts at home in their bedroom, you know, then it’s more difficult to get this type of old-school sound. Because this kind of sound very much depends on the room sound, the ambiance and things like that, which you can’t really get if you record everything at home… even though there are programs for that as well. But even if you can do wonderful things with today’s technology, it will still sound a little bit digital. Now, we haven’t really strived to make our record sound retro, we just try to get the most natural sound we possibly can and it just turns out like that. We do it like people did it back in the day. The only difference is we have a computer to save everything we play.

You’re playing heavy rock music which is totally influenced by the seventies. And in the past years, numerous bands have followed the same path. Would you say that we’re going through a kind of nostalgic era?

You know, I think there is always nostalgia around… there are just different types of nostalgia and you have to be careful. For the last five years, there’s been a thing with retro hard rock. Actually, when the band started in the 90s, Beggars were not a retro band, the stoner thing had not really been invented. There was a couple of bands who did similar things… it was rooted in Black Sabbath basically. What has happened recently with new bands is that they go full on like “ok, this needs to sound old”. Some bands do it like we do, taking all sorts of different influences, throw everything in a bowl and just mix it. But some other bands just take something and try to copy it completely… and that might be good for an album but then you need to develop as well. For example, let’s say you want to sound like old Thin Lizzy… Ok, that might be good. People are gonna say “Wow, it’s really good, they really sound like Thin Lizzy, it’s great stuff” but then, where are you gonna from there? You can’t go on sounding like that because the novelty of the first album is going to wear off. You have to evolve. If you listen to the early Beggars albums from the 90s and what we do now, it’s vastly different.

Talking about the seventies, what are your personal favourite hard rock releases from that era?

Hmm… how much time do you have? Ha ha ha…

Well, I’ve got all the time in the world, but at some point, you’re gonna have to leave and get on stage with your band!!

Ok, we’ve got an hour and nine minutes before the show, let’s start… ha ha ha!! No, no… More seriously, I think the first band I really liked as a kid was Sweet… if you remember them.

Well, I know the band, I’ve heard a few things… but I can’t say I remember them, I wasn’t even born when they started… When were you born?

In 1968. The first record I got from my grandparents for my third birthday was “Papa Joe” by Sweet. And then, a bit later, I listened to Deep Purple. Then, Thin Lizzy, Rainbow of course… And Black Sabbath, UFO… Early Whitesnake. I was six when I bought my first Deep Purple, it was “Burn”, I remember.

No DVD has been released so far with this line-up. As your musical direction has evolved and Apollo has been here for a bit more than 6 years, now... do you plan to document this tour?

No, there’s no plan so far… There’s not really a big interest in it, I think… unless you’re a big band that sells a lot of records, of course. I would love to because – it’s a bit of cliché what I’m about to say – I think we’re best as a live band… but more than doing a DVD, I’d like to release a normal live album, double gatefold on vinyl only, ha ha ha… maybe on cassette as well!! I’m not sure exactly how spectacular we are, you know, to look at…

You’ve recorded two cover songs (Mountain's "Thumbsucker" and Ten Years After's "Stoned Woman"), how did you choose them? Were there any other ideas that might see the light of day in a more or less near future?

No there weren’t. Actually, it was Michael and Ludwig I think who came out with those songs. I had heard the songs before but they’re not like my favourites. But I think it’s cool because they’re not too obvious.

Yes, it’s not like listening to another version of “Smoke On The Water” or “Stargazer”, for instance.

Exactly, what’s the point in doing that? It’s all been done before and so well… Unless you turn it into something completely different, a different style of music… With the songs we covered, we did it quite naturally, we did not rehearse a lot so it was quite fun. It’s also coming as a vinyl single by the way.

What’s next for Spiritual Beggars after this European tour? A hiatus so that everybody can go back to their own band?

We have a couple of shows in the summer, like festivals, but not that much because it’s hard to get everybody in one room… or on one plane. We’re getting more and more offers but in the end, it just comes down to if everybody’s free or not. But yeah, we’re going to do a couple of things and then we’ll go back to work with different bands… and hopefully release a new album in a couple of years.

Any other things to come? Any projects? A new Arch Enemy album, maybe?

We are going to start recording a new Night Flight Orchestra album in the beginning of May, we’re going to record it in several different studios here and there and mix it all in one place when it’s done. We’ve started working on a new Witchery album as well, we’ve got a few rough demos so far… we’ll see how it goes… And yes, at the end of the year, we’ll rehearse and start recording a new Arch Enemy as well…

You’re a busy man.

Yeah but I don’t complain… there’s always stuff to do but at least, most of the time, when I’m not touring, I’m home so I can still see people and do stuff, go out once in a while… it’s better than being gone for 18 months straight!! I’m happy with the way things are.

Thank you Sharlee, it was great talking to you. Have a great show tonight.

Thank you, man. Thanks for your support. Enjoy the show!