Former MOTÖRHEAD and current SCORPIONS drummer Mikkey Dee was recently interiewed on “Drum For The Song”, the podcast hosted by Dane Campbell, son of ex-MOTÖRHEADguitarist Phil Campbell. You can now watch the chat below.
Asked what the main difference is between playing with MOTÖRHEAD and touring withSCORPIONS in terms of how he paces himself for each individual band’s setlist, Dee said: “A lot of people say, ‘Hey, listen, Mikkey, you’re probably sleeping through the [SCORPIONS] set.’ And I’m telling you, this is so much more demanding than MOTÖRHEADever was, physically. Because, as you know, if I was starting to lose my breath here and there withMOTÖRHEAD, I could just shout at your dad or Lemmy and go, ‘Hang on, boys. Have a drink,’ and pretend to tune up the snare a little bit. And Lemmy and Phil, they were not very hard to [convince] to get a break. They went around their stacks and took a drink, and we said, ‘Cheers,’ and you could even actually have a chat on stage for a while. But with theSCORPIONS, it’s all on a click track, because of our screens — the production. And I do play around the click, but it has to work with the lyrics and stuff on the screens and what’s going on with the production, which we never had with MOTÖRHEAD.
He continued: “So every show [with the SCORPIONS] is exactly the same length — on the fucking second or minute… Klaus [Meine, SCORPIONS singer] cues whatever he says. So it could be one or two minutes difference between the sets, on two-and-a-half-hour sets. So it’s very demanding. It goes up and down, the set, and there’s a part in the set after we’ve done the acoustic medley, and then we come up and do ‘Wind Of Change’ — I’m actually freezing on stage. And then it’s about 40 minutes, 45 minutes of non-stop… We do heavy, heavy songs, and a drum solo, straight into ‘Blackout’, straight into ‘Big City Nights’. I mean, there’s 45 minutes where I don’t even have a chance to change drum sticks. So that is very, very demanding for me. But it’s great — it’s a challenge, and I love it. But the more tired I get on stage, the better I play.”
Mikkey added: “We usually did 90 minutes, with MOTÖRHEAD, and when we played with other bands, it could be 60 or 70 minutes. But MOTÖRHEAD, we controlled the set ourselves, and here and there, Phil ran outside and changed his guitar or took a piss, orLemmy disappeared off stage and no one knew what he was doing. We could run it ourselves more in a different way.”
In a new interview with Melodic, SCORPIONS singer Klaus Meine was asked how he keeps his voice in shape after all these years. He responded (hear audio below): “When we’re on the road, I do my exercises. And also, right now, being in the studio and singing every other day, recording [the new SCORPIONS album], I do my warm-ups and my vocal exercises. And so far, it got me through this pandemic times pretty good. We spent a lot of time this year working on songwriting and working on new songs in the studio.
“When we made the decision to make a new album, it’s such a challenge after all these years — from many perspectives,” he explained. “The voice — how you keep your voice going on this level; it’s a challenge for the songwriting; and for the whole process. And so far, I must say I’m very happy especially that my voice, when I need it, like just the other day in the studio, when it comes to a song with these high-pitched vocals, and you wanna hit the tones like you get there very easy; this is what you try to do. And when that works out fine, I drive home every night going, ‘Yeah. What a great day.’ I enjoyed myself so much singing a new song, recording a new song, and knowing my voice is there. I mean, we’re all getting older, but it looks like right now, my voice is still in a very good place, and that makes me feel really good.
“But it’s quite a challenge after all these years,” he admitted. “And it comes down to, once you make a decision, and we made the decision to make a new album last year — early in 2019 — but if we do it, then you wanna do it right. So in a way, we were lucky that we planned for 2020 to go into the studio. Except for a residency in Las Vegas in July, there were no other shows planned for 2020, because we said, if we wanna make a record, after all these years of touring like crazy all over the world, we have to take some time out and go into the studio and make a new album in 2020. In that way, we were lucky.
“I tell you, in these strange times we all go through, it’s such a privilege when you can work, when you can take a deep dive in your own creativity and come up with hopefully something brilliant,” Meine laughed and added. “You never know. But it feels really good. And we started last year writing, and we stopped around June last year when we picked up a tour… We knew this was now the time to write new songs and make a new record and then hopefully go back out on the road again with a new production and with a fresh setlist. So it was a good plan.”
Rock Talk With Mitch Lafon… and Alan Niven present the Scorpions’ Mikkey Dee (October 2020 interview). Alan and I sat down with the Scorpions Mikkey Dee to discuss the band’s upcoming new album, the Motörhead 40th anniversary deluxe edition Ace Of Spades box set, hockey and Alan explains to Mikkey why he wasn’t considered for the drummer position in Guns N’ Roses after Steve Adler left.
