< Previousdo with the guitar. I thought: ‘This is what I really want to do!’. And when I heard the first Yngwie Malmsteen, it was a game changer. Were your parents supportive? Fredrik Åkesson: My dad, rest in peace, he was very supportive. I started working in the factory after ninth grade to buy my first Marshall amp. My dad worked at the office of that factory. He told me: ‘If you don’t have a proper gig until you’re 19, you will have to start studying again.’ And just when I was 19, I got the gig with a Swedish band called Talisman with Jeff Scott Soto and Marcel Jacob. They were quite big at the time in Sweden, everybody knew about them. So I managed to get that ‘proper gig’ my dad talked about. After that I was able to survive financially on music for a few years, but then for a while I couldn’t. I had different jobs until I got the gig with Arch Enemy in 2005. Since then I’ve been able to just play. I haven’t had any extra jobs. Was that the moment you felt you made it? Fredrik Åkesson: That didn’t really happen until after a few years with Opeth. When everything was stable. We had been working so hard to be able to have our monthly salary like in a proper company. We’re not millionaires or anything, but we can live off it, which is fantastic. As a musician, you always kind of have to search for the new gig or get some extra gigs to pay your bills. That’s why it is a good feeling when you know that you don’t have to worry. W:O:A has one of the world’s biggest competitions for up and coming metal artists from all over the world. It’s called ‘Metal Battle’. What’s your advice for young bands or solo musicians? Fredrik Åkesson: Practice and rehearse a lot and don’t be an asshole. Do you practice every day? Fredrik Åkesson: I try to, yes. This morning I played for 2 hours and then I went to do workout and now I’m going to play some more on the new songs. I try to develop my playing all the time. That’s also a good advice: try to develop, raise your bars. On a good day I practice and play like six, seven hours. When I was about 14 I played about eight hours a day because I read that Yngwie was practicing that long. Do you now live the life that you dreamt of when you dropped out of school? Fredrik Åkesson: Yeah, I do, in a way. I’m very fortunate to be able to live my dream. Sometimes I could of course complain about things, but it kind of annoys me when somebody complains on tour. I had a lot of small jobs in between and I think that was a good experience for me, because I can appreciate what I have now. So, yeah, I’m happy about it. If there’s anything you wish somebody would have told you before you got into the music business, what is it? Fredrik Åkesson: Don’t walk half drunk down the stairs in a tour bus on a bumpy road right before the bus has to stop. Otherwise you hit your face and have to get stitches in a hospital late at night. Oh, really? Fredrik Åkesson: Yeah. It happened recently, actually. About two years ago in Serbia. I fell down the stairs and I hit my lip. Blood was just everywhere and I had to go to the hospital. They stiched the inside of my lip three times and the outside as well. Luckily my two front teeth are still there. So far at least (laughs) credits: Promo, Wacken Open Air After joining Opeth Åkesson was able to fully concentrate on musicW:O:A without a DKMS booth? Hard to imagine – at least for the last ten years now. 11,700 Wacken fans have signed up at the Holy Ground since 2014, 77 of whom have already been able to donate stem cells. One of them is Hans Rüpcke from Schenefeld near Hamburg. He was just 19 years old when he discovered the reg- istration booth at the festival. “I thought to myself, I’ve been helping with the volunteer fire department for many years – I’ll just do this too.” The son of a farmer heard nothing from DKMS for quite a long time afterwards. But then – unfortunately, in this case –there was another point of contact. “My little sister Paula was diagnosed with blood cancer in 2017. She was only 16 years old and on her way to gradu- ating from high school. But suddenly nothing was the same. The diagnosis shook the whole family.” Together with friends, acquaintances and the Schenefeld volunteer fire de- partment, Paula’s family and DKMS set up a donor drive to help. 3048 people registered as potential stem cell donors in May 2017. To date, 20 of them have given patients somewhere in the world a second chance at life. Paula also found her ‘match’ in the global search, i.e. a suitable donor. Today she is doing well! DKMS was represented at the Wacken Open Air for the first time in 2014. Metalhead Hans Rüpcke (28) was one of the first to register ten years ago. It was not to be his last meeting with the DKMS (German Bone Marrow Donor Center) photos: privat, DKMS Hans Rüpcke is a metalhead and Wacken fan who donated bone marrow himself after registering at the Wacken Open Air Holger Hübner and Thomas Jensen visit the DKMS booth at the W:O:A 2023Towards the end of 2021, Hans’ cell phone rang. A DKMS employee was calling to ask if he was still available as a donor. His tissue characteris- tics matched a pa- tient somewhere in the world – a rare match. “That was a very emotional mo- ment for me,” says Hans. “Now I could be the person that my sister and our whole family had been so desperately looking for a few years earlier. I didn’t have to think about whether I would do it.” The donation went smooth- ly. “Afterwards I was pretty ex- hausted, but a week later I was in top shape again.” Of course, the fes- tival team is also de- lighted that another one of the Wacken Open Air registrants gave a sec- ond chance at life. Last year, 717 people spared neither mud nor sludge and registered. And for 2024, the DKMS crew is once again hoping for many metal- heads to respond to the appeal from festival bosses Holger Hübner and Thomas Jensen: “We and the Wacken fami- ly are counting on you. Join in. Maybe you’ll soon be the right donor for someone suffering from blood cancer!” DKMS has entities in the US and the UK as well. For information click: www.dkms.org or www.dkms.org.uk Hans with his sister Paula, who was saved thanks to a stem cell donationhe sentence “I’ve want- ed to be a musician all my life” sounds like a cli- ché. But it actually applies to the three sisters Dany, Pau and Ale. Since childhood, they have been doing everything they can to make their dream come true – as millions of people have seen on the Internet. Their parents are always by her side. They even accompany their daughters on It all started with a video on YouTube: three girls, the youngest just nine years old, play ‘Enter Sandman’ by Metallica with golden sandals on their feet. More than 25 million people watch the clip. But it doesn’t stop there: sisters Daniela “Dany”, Paulina “Pau” and Alejandra “Ale” Villarreal Vélez from Mexico actually make the leap into the professional music world. Today they call themselves The Warning, perform as headliners in sold-out venues and reach fans worldwide. This summer they will be playing at the Holy Ground for the first time This „sister act“ is rocking big time! The three siblings at a show in L.A. last year With their cover version of Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’ the three sisters had a viral hit in 2014tour. And so the TheWarning Nightliner becomes a real family coach, as Dany and Pau explain in the interview. How “rock’n’roll”, how wild is your life on tour with your whole family by your side? Pau: Not very! (laughs) Because it is not only us three, but also our parents and our whole team. It feels like we’re going on a road trip with our family and our extended family… Dany: We’re living with them 24/7! Pau: Yeah, all the time. But we’ve been touring consistently for almost three years now. The whole team has gotten used to the process of being really understanding all the time. Because we are nine people living in a tiny little bus that could barely be called a bus. Dany: The good thing about our people and the tours that we’re doing together is that it’s the first time for all of us. None of us have ever done this before. And while everyone is still coping with the situation, we’re all trying and learning together. This summer you will experience something new: You will play Wacken Open Air. What did you know about the festival? Dany: It’s legendary! Pau: We were really hoping that we would get the invitation and we would be able to play. It was something that we had on our minds for the whole year while we were playing Europe for the first time. We went to Germany and were just hoping that people would like us enough for us to be invited to Wacken. So when we were confirmed it was just so exciting. Is there anything in particular that you look forward to? Pau: Just being in front of a German crowd again… Dany: Yes, definitely! We had such a great time last time we were in Germany. We can’t wait. You guys are amazing! Are you still nervous about playing in front of 85,000 metalheads? Dany: Yes, I’m not going to lie, we are. But I feel that rock and metal fans are very accepting. It’s just like a very big community, like a big family. Pau: We’ve been in similar situations before. The Mexican metal crowd is very specific about who they like and who they don’t like. And very vocal about it. Many times we were on stage and very scared of the crowd’s reaction. Thankfully, in our ten year career, people have reacted nicely. So hopefully that happens in Wacken as well. Dany: We’re going to give it our all! Are you going to focus on your heavier songs? Pau: We haven’t talked about this yet, but I would lean towards the heavier sounding things. More than anything, I need to start practicing my German! I have learned two phrases so far: “Danke!” (Thank you) and “Alle die Hände hoch” (Put your hands up). But I want to be able to tell people to open the pit (laughs). How was your childhood as far as music goes? Dany: It was always full of every type of music. We saw concerts on TV, AC/DC, Pink Floyd, The Killers, Muse, and so on. Pau: Our parents are very big music lovers. They’re not musicians themselves, but they just really liked music all the time. And we started playing the piano and classical music. After that, we bought the video game “Rock Band”. And that’s how our love for rock music and playing rock music was really born. Danny picked the toy guitar, and I picked the drums. Ale was only three years old and watched us play. Dany: She was a baby! Pau: But when she was old enough she wanted to play the bass. That’s when we started doing it together. Alejandra (19), nicknamed Ale, may be the youngest, but she is obviously also the strictest. “She’s the one with the whip! She has the best timing of the three of us and immediately notices when one of us is slipping,” her sisters say about her. “Then she looks at us with that ‘I know exact- ly what you’re doing’ look.” Paulina (22), nicknamed Pau, is the creative one. She comes up with most of the song ideas. “Sometimes I come up with a lot of fresh new ideas and concepts, but it is only with my sisters, that I can fully grow those ideas and start working them out”, she says and adds the trio’s most important working rule: “We can’t take comments about our job into our personal life. We are good at this, which is super healthy.” Daniela (24), nicknamed Dany, is the oldest of the three sisters. She says of herself that she is the one who gets on everyone’s nerves when tasks need to be done. “I have to remind them of every little thing that there is to do,” she says and laughs. “In that respect, you could probably say that I’m the one who organizes things.”Was it always clear who would be playing which instrument and who sings? Dany: It was very set, yes. And it’s crazy how well our instruments fit our abilities and our personalities as well. Pau: It’s one of those things: the cosmos just aligned. It was such a coincidence for three sisters to be born into the same family, like the same music and then pick different instruments for them to play well enough to form a band. How do you handle getting mad at each other? Do you fight? Dany: We let it go on stage (laughs). But I think more than being mad, the overarching feeling that can challenge us a little bit, is being tired. Pau: But sometimes when you’re in that state, somebody else in the team isn’t. So we try to balance each other out. More than anything, it’s just about being really understanding and compassionate with the people around you. Everyone is tired. Everyone has families that they miss, food that they miss, beds that they miss. So we’re all in this together. What’s the best advice your parents ever gave you when it came to your career in music? Pau: To always look out for each other, to always check in that the three of us are doing okay, and we’re all okay with what we’re doing, where we’re headed, what our goals are, to just be a united front emotionally. Dany: No one is going to look out for us better than ourselves. Pau: My parents also never sugarcoated how hard it is going to be, what I really appreciate. They explained to us, that we will have to work hard, put in the hours, but that it is going to be so worth it. Dany: Ale would say that discipline always overcomes talent. Always. If you’re not disciplined and you don’t put in the work, people are going to just forget you. credits: Head of PR, Tom Delgado Even as a child Alejandra wanted to play bass Paulina sets the beat. And sings Guitarist and singer DanySEASIDE ENTERTAINMENT PROUDLY PRESENTSAfter the end of the legendary Kiss, bassist Gene Simmons (75) is coming back to Germany for one single show – at the W:O:A. He last toured with his solo band in 2018 or 50 years, his stage life consisted of the re- ally big show: pyros, make- up, fire-breathing, costumes, flying interludes, floating platforms – everything that goes with a mega production. In Kiss, Gene Simmons was the “Demon” on bass, the “God of Thunder” with the longest tongue in the business. On De- cember 2nd last year, Kiss bid farewell to this circus of superlatives with a show at Madison Square Garden in New York. Now Mr. Simmons is returning to the stage. Without the circus, but with his solo band. We spoke to him for one of the first interviews after Kiss.How was the first day waking up after Kiss? Gene Simmons: It was easy, because being in Kiss was like going to a gym and working out for two hours. The next day your back hurt and your feet killed you because those heels were just not comfortable. So everything about Kiss was pain. The day after the show you took hot baths and did all kinds of things to let your muscles relax a little bit before you had to get back up on stage. I’m lucky I never had an operation. Paul had three, two knee and one shoulder operation. Because of the band. Being in Kiss wasn’t easy, but the Gene Simmons band is. And it is fun. When did you decide to do solo shows again? Before or after your last Kiss concert? Gene Simmons: It actually happened accidentally, I didn’t plan it. The Summer Breeze festival called and asked if I wanted to headline their festival in Sao Paolo. I said ‘sure’. As soon as that happened, Wacken called. The W:O:A will be my only German show, but I will play in Scandinavia and other countries. So far we have about ten shows lined up. What have you planned for 85,000 Metalheads? Gene Simmons: I have no plans. I decided just to have some fun. I will bring my friends, who are also the best musicians. This is a chance to be up on stage, play songs that Kiss didn’t play, but also have fun and not worry about what people expect. The set is going to be much heavier than what Kiss played and I’m going to be doing songs that have never been released before. Solo songs of mine. Unreleased songs –does that mean that there might be a new Gene Simmons solo album coming? Gene Simmons: Anything is possible… But can you really go without the big show, without pyros? Gene Simmons: There is no production, no show, just music and a lot of fun. This is a different vibe. Kiss was 50 years of blowing up stuff. When we first started, nobody was doing pyros, but we just decided to do more, give fans more. Now is the time to just come out and have fun. In fact we don’t have a road crew, no trucks, no road manager, nothing. We just show up, carry our own guitars, we don’t even have drums. They are all rented locally. Do you still think of yourself as “The Demon”, the blood-spitting Kiss guy with the long tongue – or are you just Gene now? Gene Simmons: The touring band has stopped but there will always be Kiss. We are planing things now that people won’t believe. A caterpillar is an interesting animal. When you think it dies, it actually goes into a cocoon. And when it comes out, it is even more spectacular. It becomes a butterfly. That is what is happening with kiss. And usually at festivals people come up to me and tell me how they grew up with Kiss. That means a lot. What other projects do you have planned? Gene Simmons: We have a film company called Simmons/Hamilton Prods. and our first movie is coming out in August in America. It’s called ‘Deep Water’ and Sir Ben Kingsley and Aaron Eckhart will be staring in it. The second movie is coming out in September or October called ‘ The Canyon’ with Bella Thorne and Mel Gibson. There are lot’s of other things I’m doing as well. Do you ever relax? Gene Simmons: You have time to relax when you are dead. Before that, you are alive. So get up and do something, enjoy your life. Before you know it, it is too late. I don’t know about you, but if I am running a race and I see the finish line coming up, I go faster, not slower. I can’t stay in bed all day and be lazy. And I’m lucky because I never loose No make-up, no costume, just Gene! This is how he will play the Wacken Open AirNext >