HomeInterviewsAlphaville’s Marian Gold talks new symphonic double LP

Alphaville’s Marian Gold talks new symphonic double LP

Marian Gold, lead singer of the German synth-pop group Alphaville, was an adolescent in the early 1970s when he first listened to the hard rock classic Deep Purple in Rock. Gold was blown away by Deep Purple’s music. He wanted to listen to everything the heavy metal pioneers had released at that point, so the next record he bought was Deep Purple and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

“It was like a culture shock,” Gold told 360°Sound. “First, I heard all this hard rock music, “Speed King” and “Child in Time,” and all these absolutely fantastic songs, and then there was this otherworldly music, this orchestra. I said, ‘Wow, this is stunning. How can these long-haired, smoking, drinking guys do such a thing? This is fantastic.’”

Gold, who had been into classical music since he was a child, was intrigued by how the band integrated orchestral arrangements. He never thought Deep Purple could incorporate a seemingly higher art form. A decade later, Gold became a musician himself, penning such worldwide ‘80s smashes as “Forever Young” and “Big in Japan.”

That idea of reimagining pop songs as orchestral music never left him. His chance to do so came in the fall of 2021 when Alphaville teamed with German Film Orchestra Babelsberg and esteemed arrangers Max Knoth and Christian Lohr. The result was the symphonic double album, Eternally Yours, set for release September 23. The 23-track album features reworked hits with newly recorded vocals as well as one new song, “Eternally Yours.”

Gold said it was as if the Alphaville classics were made for the orchestra.

“It was just a revelation,” he said. “I’m really very, very satisfied. Everybody should listen to this album because it’s just a fucking great album. It is really a masterpiece. I can say that because I did not do it alone. There were other geniuses involved.”

This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.

360°Sound: Did you record your vocals with the orchestra?

Marian Gold: No, the vocals were recorded separately. It was quite a challenging job. Some of the songs were recorded 35 years ago or more. My ambition was if we record these songs, we should really record them in the original key. We recorded the songs in the original key, with one exception, “Sounds Like a Melody.”

It was really a challenge; some of the songs are really difficult for me to sing now. When we sing them live, we change the key a half note or a full note or so. I can do that. I’m still quite a reasonable singer, it’s not a problem. It’s my original voice. All the songs are newly recorded. The original version of “Sounds Like a Melody” was much too high. That was beyond my abilities. We tuned that down a third.

Were you surprised at how well the songs translated into orchestral music?

It was really not a big deal. Even in their original versions, they had lots of symphonic strings. All these classical licks and bits. “Forever Young” actually has a great similarity to Pachelbel. For a moment I was really tempted to include Pachelbel as an instrumental section into “Forever Young.”

Alphaville has a great repertoire of songs. We’ve existed since 1984 and started writing songs in 1982. We have a huge amount of material that we could use for this project. We could go in any direction we wanted. We just had to decide which direction. I imagined the whole project as a performance by an orchestra. It’s not a concept album in a literal way, but it is like an imaginary performance.

When you listen to the first song, “Time Machine,” the orchestra does really strange sounds. They’re not treating the instrument like they should. They’re taking the bows and clapping them against the bodies of their instrument. They’ll trample with their feet. Out of this noise comes the first violin, the first melodic lines, and then the song develops into a huge orchestral thing. And now the show begins. It’s like a recorded show, but it’s actually recorded in pieces.

What was the inspiration for the new song “Eternally Yours”?

I thought at least the title track should be a new recorded song. I wanted to write this song especially for the album. I thought that “Eternally Yours” is a fantastic title. We’re not the first to use a title like that. It’s also the ending of a love letter. It’s something very intimate between the artist and the listener. The whole album was intended to be a love letter from us to our fans in this orchestral symphonic disguise.

All the other songs have been written basically for different albums that we did and from the perspective of Alphaville, which is a synthesizer-based band, also with electric guitars and stuff. When we wrote the song “Eternally Yours,” we thought that we should try to realize our imagination about what the album should be in the end. I wrote these lovely, wonderful verses from Shakespeare, and I arranged them in a way that seemed to be a monologue of a musician who prays for the muses that they should not leave him.

When you’re looking for any theme, you will find it in Shakespeare’s writings, it’s just a universe in its own. This guy is probably the greatest writer ever. You can find every answer in Shakespeare’s works. So, we arranged these verses and made little changes here and there to make them singable rhythmically. It develops as a calm moment to really an aggressive and furious thing, and it contains all the different emotions in one song. That was the idea. The song was a short show of the whole show.

Any plans for orchestral tour dates?

Yes, we do, the shows will be starting in spring 2023. We’ll continue to do so in Europe over the first half of the coming year, maybe longer. I would really like to bring this project to the States if there’s any chance. But at the moment, we only have dates in Europe. We start in Germany. The last time we played North America was four years ago. We played two nights at the Whisky a Go Go in 2019. That was one of my childhood dreams.

What are your memories from the ‘80s when “Big in Japan” and “Forever Young” broke?

You have to understand that we were greenhorns. We were not part of the music scene of West Berlin at that time. We were just dirty little punks. Suddenly, there was a chance for us to produce our own music although we couldn’t play any instruments. That was the possibility – to buy a drum machine, a sequencer, and a synthesizer. And with these toys in the early ‘80s, we were able to play the music that we had in our heads. And we had lots of music in our heads.

We had this kind of inferiority complex because we were not really musicians. Sometimes we played for friends who played guitar and were part of a real band. They’d say, ‘What is this? Any of you playing on this?’ ‘No.’ And then, I’ll never forget it, in ’79 there was this British band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, and the song was “Electricity.” That song sounded exactly like the music we did. And they were a band. They had a record contract. And they had a single out and the radio would play it. From that moment on, we knew we could do that.

It was really an encouragement. Thank you, OMD. We were totally changed. We were confident, and we started to write songs, one after another. One day, we said we should probably play the music to the record company. I presented it to a couple of publishers in West Berlin, and although nobody knew us and we could not play live onstage, we had this cassette, that was everything we had. And everybody wanted to sign us. We got three record contract offers. I couldn’t believe it.

We made a decision and started with Warner Bros. and recorded the first single, “Big in Japan.” Within six weeks it was #1 all over Europe. It was like a magic trip, like ‘What kind of mushrooms have we eaten?’ And the journalists hated us! They’d say, ‘How can guys like you be #1? There are other people who work all their lives, and it just falls in your lap.’ It was a totally different world. It was just the beginning of this type of music. At that time, it was the future.

Anything you’d like to add for the fans?

We went through really hard times. Everything stopped because of the pandemic. After about two years, we finally could come back and stand on stage and play to our fans. That’s only because of you fans out there. That’s the reason we exist. Thank you very much. We will provide for you most wonderful music as long as we can.

Eternally Yours is out 23 September on double CD. If vinyl is your thing, that will be available 4 November.
Get current with Alphaville here – alphaville.info

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