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Avantasia - Moonglow: Earbook Notes and Text Interview

I've been meaning to post these for a while. All the little extras from the Moonglow earbook, for posterity. This and Moonflower Society (which I'll do soon enough) have been collecting dust on my shelf for a while. May as well share them with the masses. Absolutely fascinating insight into Tobias Sammet's writing process and really got me to hear the album as intended, purposefully vague as that intent may be.

Moonglow: an interview with Tobias Sammet on the New Album

What made you decide to create Moonglow and carry on with Avantasia - when it was originally just a little side project?

Tobias: I had that music in me, those songs, those lyrics and the longing to somehow let it out. I believe that if you take art seriously and don’t do it just for what is expected or reasonable to the world around, you can’t really come up with a plan and a strategy. If you are honest, intuition tells you what to do.

When did you start working on the material and when did you know that there was going to be a new Avantasia album?

Some of the ideas came when we were doing our previous album Ghostlights, but sometimes it’s the wrong time to work on a particular song, sometimes you don’t find access to an idea and then you shouldn’t push things. On the other hand we had too much material for Ghostluight anyway, so I put some of it on the backburner. After Ghostlights was done I just kept writing music but I knew I wasn’t under pressure of delivering anything soon. I enjoyed the situation to be without a contract and deadlines for a new album. Of course, we had to come up with the 25th anniversary compilation of Edguy which was quite an amount of work, the book and the DVD and all that. But we didn’t have to deliver a complete new Edguy album, so there wasn’t any creative pressure. I kept compiling ideas in my spare time as always, and at some point I realized that these new ideas clearly were Avantasia songs.

The material sounds quite embellished and put together with lots of love for detail, almost sophisticated in passages, was that something you did on purpose?

No, I didn’t think much about it. The whole process spanned over two years, there was a lot of time to write something, put it aside and wait and think about it and go back to add something. I had built my own studio and I was really working a lot in there, a magical place with good old valve equipment. A cozy retreat, sounding great. I spent a lot of time there to think about the details and try out things. It was the first production I used it for. Even on previous albums we had always paid attention to every tiniest detail, which isn’t necessarily common in traditional Heavy Metal these days which makes our music a bit more… I don’t know how to put it, “fragile,” maybe? At least it adds an undertone of subtlety which I kind of miss in Metal music today. However, this time we went even further. Many things are layered, there are a lot of subtle things going on. Strangely the parts are rich in detail and subtle, while the sum is loud and flamboyant. That’s weird, isn’t it?

That’s why we’re given the instrumental versions on the bonus disc? To discover the details?

Yes, and even though we had done that with previous albums before, especially this time there is a good reason for that. You’ll hear it when you’ll listen to the instrumental versions of the tracks. But whatever is going on there, we only do what supports the main idea of the song. Nothing must interfere with the quintessence of the main theme of a song. I don’t get music where everybody plays against everybody and they’re all great players and in the end you wonder who in the band is playing which song. And why!

Usually, what do you come up with first, the music or the lyrics?

There’s no regularity. A lot of what U do happens subconsciously. Sometimes I just have an idea for a lyric, but mostly it’s the music first as I am a musician first and foremost. Yet, lyrics do mean a lot to me personally. There’s nothing wrong with an instrumental, but a bad lyric can ruin a song for me, and writing lyrics is important to me personally as a way to amplify the music and also to express myself. I have concepts and ideas, and sometimes I am furious or sad, angry or whatever. And I let it out. Every now and then a lyric is born from pure hedonism, but it needs to support the music.

Speaking about the lyrics on Moonglow, is there a concept behind the songs?

Yes, there is. But I don’t want to dissect it, because it is meant to speak to the listener. You will always fail reading someone an instruction to a poem. Lyrics unfold their allure just by their words, not by an explanation. I could give you hints, but you better listen and feel what’s in the words that speaks to you personally. Dissertations by the author ruin the impact.

The usual question would have been: what is the story of the album?

Now, the imaginary sub-title of Moonglow is “The Narratives of a Misplaced Entity.” Each song is a picture of a misfit that is thrown into the world of the bold and the beautiful. He’s confronted with a bright and glossy reality which he can’t find a place for himself in. He begins to seek shelter turning to the dark. And darkness seems to offer him a gate out of misery…

So is it a rock opera again?

I am not sure, I like the term “Rock Opera,” it sounds strong and it gives you an idea of the fantastic world that you are invited to step into, with different characters. Yet, these are individual lyrics, a collection of songs weaving together to a coherent world. I have been told by music industry people that “rock opera” is not a good term to approach kids, too old fashioned a term. But then, I don’t really care. My goal was neither to write a Broadway Musical with big drama, nor to be flavour of the week. I wanted to create a fantastic world that would be a great frame for very personal lyrics, maybe some of my deepest ever. I wanted each song to make sense of its own and fit in the bigger picture that is the entirety of Moonglow. I didn’t think about an arc of suspense because to me that would equal a limitation to the poetic approach.

But you have a strong line up of guest vocalists to sing different roles again? What are these roles?

Every singer is a counterpart giving a view from a different angle, an additional character in each song. Your imagination will connect the dots.

Where do you find inspiration?

In my own life, my childhood, my professional life and thinking of the challenges and difficulties we’re all confronted with. Feeling like a sore thumb sticking out. As a kid I felt different, then I seemed to find shelter in the Rock world where it took only two records until I felt different again. There are confines and conventions. In your life you are surrounded by people with expectations that a human being with an own vision is bound to fail. When you are sensitive it’s even worse, you don’t want to let others down but it begins to eat you up. You need to acquire a certain amount of stubbornness to protect yourself against burning out. To me writing about it helps, to let things out and weave a fantastic world around it. It’s easier to attach all the feelings to some anonymous homunculus freak in a Bram Stoker type story than writing “when I was a kid my friends put me in a trash barrel.”

Somewhere you said, you wrote most of the album in England…

Some of it. I need a certain environment more than a high gloss recording temple. In England they hesitate to tear down an old building for example. They rather call it vintage or full of character; and then they charge you twice as much. I love their respect for history and tradition. Recently I read an article about psychogeography and if I got it right some intelligent scientist folks have found out that people like me aren’t necessarily crazy. Certain landscapes, buildings, even light situations have a strong influence on my creativity. I was in England quite often recently, and I’d sit in an old pub with a beer, surrounded by Victorian buildings and after a while I was in a different world. And it had nothing to do with the beer. I love Edgar Allen Poe and occult ghost stories, Hammer Studio films and I’m also into the Victorian revival of the Gothic Novel. Moonglow is the world of foggy, eerie streets in Victorian England, its bridges and manor houses at night.

Do you consider Avantasia a project or a band?

It’s a solo project with treasured guests. I do things as I please without having to ask anyone, I make the decisions but it all couldn’t be done without the support of amazing guest musicians and a producer called Sascha Paeth who is the best musician I have ever met in my life. He;s a prodigy, the hands that translate my humming to riffs, he will suggest that we should cut off a part and he will make a huge mess of 120 recorded tracks sound great. Sascha helped me become much better as a musician because I had to rise to the challenge of clicking with him on his level which hurts when you are a young musician and you are not ready to work work work. He’s beyond words! Micheal Rodenberg is unbelievable too, especially when it comes to arranging an orchestra with all its details. Then of course the singers and the rest of the band, they are the cream. I mean, what would Starlight sound like without Ronnie Atkins? What would Alchemy sound like without Geoff Tate? Bob Catley has inspired me in so many ways. You can pick anyone who;s on the record. It’s a solo record but also a team, and when we hit the road it’s a family. These people are my friends and the foundation of our working relationship is joy and mutual respect. They have all earned their spurs a million times. To answer the question: it’s Avantasia! A solo-project-band-tribe with guest stars who become family members.

Are there any singers that you wanted to have that didn’t accept the invitation to be a part of Moonglow?

When outside people throw in names I am always a little confused. “Ask him!” “Get her!” “Invite Paul McCartney!” “Get Bugs Bunny!” Well, the term all-star-band is a tempting marketing phrase, but Avantasia shouldn’t be a trophy collection. It’s about songs that are sung by unique singers whose voices are special and suit a certain song, passage, mood or character. Yes, I write a passage, having Bob or Jorn on my mind, and then it's a blessing when these great vocalists finally turn a song into something unique. But it is always about the song and the singers with the type of voice that gave you the inspiration to write a certain passage. I do not want to make Avantasia gimmicky.

Your fans have been asked to submit questions to you, here are some of them:

How do you manage to change the song's keys several times in a song without losing the flow of the song? Is that something you do on purpose?

Not losing the flow certainly is. But the key changes happen naturally. I write on a piano which I believe makes understanding harmonics easier as opposed to composing on a string instrument. Changing keys makes it interesting. When you've written 10 or 15 albums in one musical genre, it's always a challenge to do something distinctively yours and not be boring. At some point you'll end up adventuring through different keys to keep things exciting and once you feel safe doing it you stop realizing you're leaving the original key beyond the typical Desmond-Child-three-half-tones-up final chorus thing. It's fun. Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, they all went through different keys in one piece. And classical music is still the foundation of what we do. Classical music and Blues, and Iron Maiden of course.

Some people think that you have moved away from Power Metal and become something different throughout the years. They ask if you consider returning to the sound of your first albums one day?

I don't think about those things, I let things happen. You can't force it, then it becomes insincere and you're not Metal but plastic. I can honestly swear that I never denied my roots and identity, I just laid off shackles and allowed myself to let in a bit of diversity. What's the difference between Hard Rock and Metal?

Was Dio Hard Rock? I read that Kiss were considered Metal when the term Heavy Metal was brought to the table in the early 80s. Who defines the terms, who is the doorman next to the pigeonhole deciding who's gonna be granted admission and who won't? Do I really want to go in a club that wants to keep others out who don't belong? And who makes the rules? Wikipedia? Will I listen to my heart or to Wiki-pedia? And then: Is taking Wikipedia as a reference Metal? Is Maiden Metal even though they don't use double bass drums? And - most importantly: who cares? I don't want to sound disrespectful, but I am 40 years old, music style discussions don't mean that much to me anymore. We got a little more diverse, I can't see any tendency towards a certain style or away from another. Call me Power Metal and I proudly agree, call me Epic Rock or Symphonic Metal, that's alright too. Avantasia is Avantasia. It feels great and if you ask me, most of it doesn't suck when you listen to it, too.

People are interested in the influence you have on the cover artworks of Avantasia albums, and how you got into choosing the painter of the new one.

It's been done by a Swedish artist named Alex Jansson who illustrates books for kids usually. I ran into his illustrations and I was blown away, because even though some were cute, some had a real grotesque intensity. They were enchanting and innocent, yet they had a shade of eeriness. And they were different to anything 1 had seen in the Metal world. I gave him some of my lyrics and asked him if he'd come up with something that would symbolize the main character of Moonglow entering a different world... The Moonglow world. He did it, and I love the picture.

When you write lyrics, do you first start out in German and then translate what you want to say or do you write in English from the start? The question was asked because you sometimes tend to use words that are not commonly used in the English language of today, how do you come up with your lyrics?

I write in English from the start. I do not have that much of an attachment to German when it comes to poetry, which is weird. I don't know why, it's programmed - English is the ink I am drawing with. Sometimes of course I look for a different metaphor or word and occasionally I have to take a dictionary. And sometimes my grammar is weird, but then I advocate artistic freedom and of course, I am Ger-man, my English speaking friends forgive me. I read English books mostly, and the books I read are usually old and deal with certain topics, that may bleed through in my lyrics. Eric Martin once joked about how he imagines me sitting at home all day with this dictionary "Encyclopedia of long forgotten words that nobody knows but that do rhyme to something common", trying to find words, but this is not the case. I lust love new metaphors, and sometimes I have to look things up.

1 don't try to use elaborate language, I am not such a person, not in German and not in English, I talk the way I talk, not the way I think I should talk to come across a certain way.

Are your stories based upon your own personal experience?

Yes, of course. I mean, I see art and creativity as an outlet for something I carry around and that needs to get out and be said, as if you write something off your soul, a letter that you don't send to someone. Everything I do is heartfelt, even the most simple hedonistic lyrics I write. Of course, The Metal Opera was a story based on the spiritual quest of a 20 year old with a limited vocabulary to create metaphors with. The good intention is there, but you are 20 and very young. You don't know how to phrase things and how to get your view on things in the right order. You don't even know what to think. That album was also fueled by my interest in the middle ages, in the devil, in the historical tradition of the dark era of the inquisition and persecution of heretics. Of course what you write is amplified and it has gone through a filter to anonymize things and create a story that is open for interpretation, but there is something of myself in there. You know, even the most angry lyrics like in Edguy's "2 out of 7" or "Space Police" are heartfelt. Some may think they are hedonistic or goofy, but some people are functioning on a different frequency and that's okay. Yes, my stories and lyrics are based on personal experience

Have you ever thought about releasing the stories of the Avantasia albums as books?

Not really. I mean, I could rewrite them and I am working on a story that would be home to all the individual lyrics on Moonglow. The Metal Opera would work as a fantasy novel, The Wicked Trilogy too, but down the line there is one issue. A book needs arcs of suspense. A collection of intertwining poems isn't necessarily a story with a flow and an arc of suspense that would meet the entertainment requirements of the 21st century, I think these things are different worlds. I am not interested in writing an opera that would work as a movie or book with individual songs portraying each bit of a storyline... "Noooow they gooooo across the wooooods". No, I want to write short poems in music and put them together within one frame.

Can you describe your writing day? Are you just writing during daytime like an 8 to 5 job or do you write when you have an idea? How do you combine your writing session with your daily family life?

I write whenever an idea pops up in my head. Then I capture it by humming it into my phone or computer or if I have a piano around, I try to find out, what the harmonics in my head look like on the keys. Because a great melody is always based on the right chords. They are mutually dependant. Sometimes I know the chords and hum the melody first and then the chords afterwards, tapping the beat on my thigh. When I really go playing around with ideas and trying to sort things and try out details, when I arrange stuff, I like to work at night or before noon and the light situation is very important to me. It depends on the right mood. My family are alright with it, they accept that I'm nuts.

You also do a radio show on German radio?

Yes, 3 hours every week, you can listen to it via stream or satellite radio wherever you are, and of course via normal radio in the middle of Germany and up in the Northern parts. It's great fun, I stumbled into doing it when doing promotion for something, I was at the station of RadioBob to do a live interview with some of their hosts and I said "look at all these knobs, I can do that too". And they hired me. My wife said "Alice does his show on RadioBob, Joe Elliott has a radio show, Nikki Sixx has got one, you will have yours". And here I am and I enjoy it. I listen to music again. As a fan, not as the singer of Edguy or Avantasia. It is great fun and they told me there are a lot of people listening from all over the world.

Can you tell us something about the forthcoming Moonglow World Tour?

Yes, it will be massive. We will play long shows, we will have a great line up of many well known guests, I am not sure I am supposed to talk about the guests yet, but a lot of the singers on Moonglow will join the tour. It will be hard to come up with a setlist, as I guess we'll have to play many songs off of Moonglow, but as we'll do this tour and then most probably rest for quite a while, we'll have to play a best-of set in a way, or a combination of our band hits, the big old songs and the new material. We're touring rarely and we don't know if and when it is gonna happen again, so we better deliver everything people will want to hear.

Moonglow - The Narratives of a Misplaced Entity

Track by Track With Tobias Sammet

GHOST IN THE MOON

"Ghost In The Moon'' is a wonderful opening track. Yes, it's 10 minutes long, and it's quite unusual as it has two different choruses. It starts with chorus A, then there are two choruses B after verse one and verse two and then there are two choruses A in different keys in the end again. The whole song structure is really different, a lot of harmonic changes, tempo changes, in the middle we have a break-down section where you get the feeling that a different song starts. It's quite cinematic I think. I call these kinds of songs Christmas songs as they have a Christmas-ish appeal, very wintry, very enchanting.

Originally I wanted this song to be a duet but after we had recorded it Sascha insisted that none of my vocals should be removed which I took as a compliment and even though I tend to fight for having things my way when I am convinced that something has to be done a certain way, I agreed in such a case. The backing vocals were sung by four amazing vocalists who are usually working for Musical and Theatre shows, very soulful voices that gave the song a Gospel feel. We had that kind of sound in mind, a bit Rocky Horror Picture Show but still Hard Rocking, and even though something is planned in advance, you aren't prepared for what you witness when you finally hear such voices in a room laying down the vocals of the real thing. It was mind-blowing. It took us quite some time to record the backing vocals for this one. The atmosphere is really unique, it's an epic version of "Mystery Of A Blood Red Rose.”

BOOK OF SHALLOWS

Book Of Shallows is one of the first songs of which we had arranged parts. It laid around and sounded quite simple and it was just half finished for a while, up to the second chorus to be precise. The whole mid section was attached much later.

Also the anthemic keyboard and guitars, the opening lead melody came only way later, when I was sitting in a hotel and listening to the song and found something was missing.

Usually I hold the opinion that in certain types of music you can't write the chords and the foundation of the basics underneath without a vision of what's happening in the foreground melody-wise. I know that some bands say"someone writes the chords and someone else the melody". To me that doesn't make sense, yet of course someone may end up getting good results working like that. But I rather want to know which effect a certain chord will have in combination with a melody. The idea of the big picture will give you the sole valid reason to opt for a certain chord somewhere. Chords are required by melodies and vice versa and it should go hand in hand. In Metal it's often like that: someone does a sausage of chords and riffs and leaves it to someone else to do something with it. This way you leave the songwriting job to someone who's gotta come up with something great having to deal with given parameters. Of course in certain music styles that may work, but not in anthemic music styles, in something based on the harmonics of Classical Music, I think.

Anyway, in Book Of Shallows the melody on the intro riff was a try and error thing that I put on there afterwards as the original idea sounded like something essential was missing. Now as a finished piece of music the song sounds very tidied up even though it's got many different elements. It's one of the heaviest tracks I ever did, even though the first verse sounds very melancholic. The whole song is one big increase of energy, Jorn and Ronnie did a wonderful job as always, just being them.

I always wanted to work with Mille Petrozza of Kreator again. He is a good friend and we've known each other for almost 20 years, a very intelligent artist and a great guy. I had worked with him 15 years ago when he sang some guest vocals on Edguy's Hellfire Club album, and "Book of Shallows" needed some extreme aggression vocally. It sounded scary and exactly the way it was meant to sound.

With Hansi of Blind Guardian I had worked in the nineties already, I have known him for a very long time. A very nice guy and a great singer. And I can't thank him enough.

When Edguy was starting out, when nobody knew about us he supported us, contributing guest vocals on our second official album back in 1997 and helped us get some recognition. If I remember correctly I thought about having him on the Metal Opera album as well, but he was very busy at the time. Now, years later, I had those songs that were a perfect fit for his voice. And he opens his mouth and it sounds like him and no one else. After the second chorus there is a passage for which he did his own backing vocals. It sounds like a massive Blind Guardian choir, so his voice must play a huge part in making Blind Guardian sound like Blind Guardian. Well, it's obvious!

MOONGLOW

There is a little bit of a Mike Oldfield influence in there I think. The instrumental basics of the song were written in 2015 but it didn't seem to belong on the Ghost-lights album, if I remember correctly back then the question was: Should we take "Isle Of Evermore" or the "Moonglow" song? As I previously said, it breaks my heart but you have to put songs aside sometimes to make up your mind or for whatever reason. And sometimes you have to put great songs like this on the backburner. It was a jewel in the rough from the beginning and Candice Night has made it shine. Now was the time to retouch the song and model it and release it. A song will let you know when it's ready to correspond with your creativity and when you're ready to complete it.

THE RAVEN CHILD

The song's basic key elements had been written around 2012 or 2013 but I couldn't connect to it back then. Sometimes you find access to an idea immediately and sometimes you feel that it has potential but you realize that it's simply the wrong time to work on it and you better put it aside for a while. I had so many other ideas for our previous albums Ghostlights and The Mystery of Time, I didn't see the necessity to fall back on this particular song. When we put it aside years ago its working title was "Fearraven" as we had thought it felt a bit like "The Scarecrow" even though that similarity wasn't intentional. Without having been told about our impression Jorn said in the studio that this could be a sequel to "The Scarecrow" So there must have been something universal about our perception.

I have to say that this song really benefited from the months and years we gave it to grow. I wrote a Celtic overture, a Celtic breakdown after the second chorus which Miro arranged beautifully. And I really enjoyed creating the middle section where the tension builds up, with the layered canon type vocals, the Gregorian elements and letting it explode into a Black-Sabbath or Heaven-and-Hell type up-tempo grande finale. Hansi Kürsch added so much magic to the song, and Jorn is Jorn, what else can you say? In the production we gave the song whatever it needed. We need Gregorian chants? Let's ask Billy King, the guy who does vocals for the World-music project "Gregorian" to do the monk thing. I wish I had been able to work with him for The Metal Opera! We need a Celtic Harp? Let's get a real one and get the greatest Celtic Harp player one can find, Nadia Birkenstock.

There is a lot of love for detail in that song; and on the whole record. And the result shows that it's worth it to give ideas time to grow, to simply put them aside when you can't find access to them. Lyrically the song is rooted in the psychic life of the main character, it's about conviction and the intolerance you have to face when you follow your belief. I have always been fascinated by the Cathari's fate and the myth of the last night at Montségur has influenced the song in a way. The whole legend is a manifest of intolerance clashing with the volition to be yourself. It's about conviction and strong principles to not let expectations water down your own conception of life. It's about hiding yourself away in the last retreat, being besieged and knowing that something's near to break your spirit and simply smoke you out if you don't fit in someone else's concept. The main character's last way out is turning to the dark... I think it's one of the best songs I have ever written, I am really proud of it.

STARLIGHT

"Starlight' is a paradoxical song. It has quite an easy-listening feeling to it, not too heavy, not too soft, a moderate tempo, conceivable chord progressions and har-monies, and yet it's got something intensely melancholic. In the beginning after it was written when it was in a very pure and raw form I never really had an idea what this song was and where to put it and what to think about it. But then with the lyrics and once it was all sung and recorded it was beautiful. The phonetics in the chorus are quite smart too. I am proud of this, because I think the amount of syllables and the phonetics add a lot of drive and get the song the right balance of melancholy, sadness and that uplifting powerful element as a counterpart.

This song is so Ronnie-Atkinsish. Because he also has those two paradoxical sides to his voice, something deep and melancholic and when a song needs to take off he switches to his roaring Metal voice. Once Eric Martin said on tour.

I advocate Ronnie getting twice as much as everyone else, because he is two different singers in one body." And he can party like four of us!

INVINCIBLE

This was originally just the intro to the song "Alchemy,” but it became a breathing entity of its own even though lyrically and musically it is closely attached to "Alchemy.” "Invincible" deals with what we're often told, in the music business but also in everyday life: be tough and don't let things get through to you. Frankly, the character in the story is confronted with requirements he can't meet, to not be subtle or fragile. Geoff Tate did such a wonderful job on it. He had delivered an amazing performance on the previous album and when we shared the stage for the first time I was blown away by how good he is. We talked about recording atmosphere and about how great it is to actually make music together in a room.

So we said let's meet in a studio and record parts for the next album together, old school. And that's what we did. Geoff is a very nice person, good sense of humour, a real artist, a wine lover, great to work with and it's uplifting to share the stage with him.

ALCHEMY

That's the song that gave birth to "Invincible", because "Invincible" is the overture to "Alchemy" in a way. It's a very powerful and heavy song, almost Rammsteinish when it comes to the riffing. Yet it has some very classic anthemic Metal and Classic Rock elements. I thought it would be great if Geoff would pull some of his theatrical trademark Queensryche-Empire-Mindcrime-style-vocals out of his hat - and wow! - he can still do that like no one else. A thousand vocalists have tried to sound like Geoff in the past 35 years, but he has that frequency in his tone that is distinctively Geoff. When I was a kid I wanted to be able to sing like Michi Kiske and Geoff, Michi had been influenced by Geoff too, we all tried to borrow from Geoff at some point in our lives, but Geoff is Geoff!

The song is about influential people trying to tell the character what is good for him, it's about someone trying to get the best of you by manipulating you, so you lay off your identity and do as you're told. Switch off your visions and Svengali is gonna make you happy! That's what you're told by megalomaniac art industry execs all the time, through the centuries I believe: Lay off your personality and bury your longing, because if you don't interfere but deliver, we can turn crap to gold. And if I turn on the radio, I am afraid they seem to be right...

THE PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN

It was song number 13 we did. I remember that because the working title was

"Song 13". It wasn't planned to be such a long song, I wanted it to be a powerful uptempo song that would get to the point immediately. And it got to the point immediately but then the midsection got longer and longer and we had two pre-choruses. And in the end it all made sense but it was over 7 minutes long. I tried to cut it short but wherever I tried to edit a part out, it didn't seem right. And of course who would I need to cut a song for? If it feels right the way it is, then it is right. What I like about the song is how it features so many guest vocalists and yet it doesn't sound as if it would have been put together artificially, to me the flow of the song is very natural and it sounds as if made from one piece.

The title has nothing to do with Pink Floyd, it's been inspired by the God Pan in horror literature. The lyrics itself belong to the world of our main character.

LAVENDER

That's so Bob Catley. I love him and I love Magnum. Bob is a true legend and whatever he sings is filled with life and his magical British storytelling timbre.

This man has sung so many legendary tracks, he has been so influential to me breathing his soul into Magnum songs like "On A Storyteller's Night" or "Don't Wake The Lion", and later into my songs like "The Looking Glass". "The Story Ain't Over" or "The Great Mystery", it's extremely inspiring to write songs with Bob in mind. I didn't try to copy any of the aforementioned songs, I just had Bob's voice in my head and let it inspire my songwriting. When I write a passage for another singer I come up with different things than I'd write when I'd do it just for my own voice. It's a creative boost and it's a key to the diverse songwriting for Avantasia. Writing for other singers makes it easier for me to step aside and try out new things.

"Lavender" sounds familiar and like something new at the same time. Bob's voice and the way we arranged the song is familiar, the song and the details are new.

It was also interesting to witness the whole thing lifted to a different level when the Gospel choir began to do its work. All of a sudden it became something Broad-wayish, something really massive and full of Soul. Most of the backing singers were native English speakers, so is Bob. The phonetics required to have it sung differently from what the word lavender is usually pronounced like. It was funny in the studio, people from South Africa, USA, England and Germany discussing the best possible compromise of pronouncing the word lavender so it worked in the song and it doesn't sound weird. In the end, I believe it is creative freedom. Whatever needs to be done needs to be done... The type of lavender in my song is a different one to the other lavenders out there, and therefore pronounced differently, okay?!

REQUIEM FOR A DREAM

Requiem is one of the last songs that I wrote for the album. I had a fast and epic song of which the instrumental parts were almost completely arranged. It was great! But I wanted something that would work good for Michael Kiske's voice and that old fast song had more of a layered chorus and some Celtic influence. I thought that it wasn't the perfect song for Michi's voice. So I put that other song aside and wrote a new one based on an older anthemic melody that I had a demo of. An idea that had to be sung as a duet with a singer like Michi, just like "Reach Out For The Light" or "No Return". But Michi was doing shows with Helloween at the time, so he wasn't sure he was gonna make it and I was prepared to take my demo vocals on the record. Fortunately everything fell in place when he managed to sing his parts.

You can hear the influence of Classical Music in "Requiem For A Dream". What I like about the song is that it's got the typical anthemic approach of Avantasia with fast guitars and hymnic melodies. But it feels like it almost has some sacral ele-ment, a certain sacred grandeur in the harmonies, something that is unique. And we made it even a little more colourful with elements like the slap bass passages which have been played by Sascha. Yes, he isn't just the best guitar player I know, he is also a great bass player, a much better one than I am I have to say. I am a sin-ger, and I love bass guitar, but I am not a very good player for those kinds of things.

Lyrically the song is what the title says, it's about a person's arrival in the world of what's commonly understood to be reasonable among adults. And it also deals with the spiritual challenges that go along with it.

MANIAC

I have always loved that song and wanted to do a cover version of it. Sascha said "it's been done several times already". But I didn't know any of the other versions and I didn't think of it as a problem. If you love something, do it! I said "Let's just do it for joy" and he arranged the song as a favour to me. What can I say? We both thought that it was about to become a great rendition. I sang it but something was missing, I thought it was too one-dimensional, and I immediately thought of Eric Martin joining me. In the meantime I had begun to consider that we should maybe take it on the regular album, as something light-hearted wouldn't be too bad. We already had several songs beyond the ten-minute-mark, some of them we simply put aside for later because I didn't want Moonglow to become a double album full of 10 minute songs. Of course everyone knows the movie that "Maniac" had been used for, and everyone has those distinctive associations, which are not exactly connected to the eerie world of Victorian England's occult writers. But deep down, it is a song about a maniac, who doesn't feel peace in life except when the lights go out and she can do what she loves. That qualified, so I said "why not, it's a great song, let's take it highly officially on the record, but let's make it the last song." So if Moonglow was a movie, "Maniac" wouldn't be part of the scores in the movie, but it would play during the closing credits maybe. Yet, after Eric had sung his vocals I knew, this was definitely going to be a track on the album. There are no rules in the art world, and if there is one it should be: If it feels right, do it! No matter what someone else's rules may be.

HEART

A bonus track. Writing bonus tracks is always great fun although I did it with a grain of salt. I thought the record was too long even without a bonus, I had already taken some other songs off, not because I thought they were mediocre, but because I wanted to have a 50 minutes album originally. That was my ideal con-ception. As a fan I rather want to start listening from start again after 50 minutes and not be burnt out after listening to an album for 75 minutes and not be done still, especially when there are as many different things going on as on an Avantasia album with all the styles and orchestrations and the different singers.

It doesn't get boring I think, but it can be a sensory overload and song 6 or 9 will not get the recognition they should get. Even after I had taken some material off the album again, the album is still over one hour long, but as it's quite colourful 1 think that it's good as it is. Anyway, the record label always asks you to deliver bonus material. Yes, "just" a bonus song. But if you deliver subpar material it will stain the whole album as the final impression, if you do a bonus song that belongs to the concept and is rated AAA by the quality control, why would I downgrade it to be a limited edition bonus only? The solution was - I had to write another song that was of good quality but a bonus. Bingo! Steve Perry was about to launch his comeback and even though I didn't approach him I thought I want to write a song in the style of 80s Journey. When it's just a bonus I can do it, just for the joy of doing it. A blatant rip-off of the sound and style and trademarks of Journey. This is what I did, I got in my lyrebird mode and tried to figure what Steve Perry would do. I really love that song, also the lyrics are very dear to my heart. They could fit in the concept too, but in a way they are worded in general terms. It's about someone who feels obliged to be unselfish and function at a certain pace while his heart tells him to not lose himself.

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