David Reece is open to performing with Accept again for the band’s 50th anniversary

In honour of Accept‘s 50th anniversary, David Reece says he “would love to” perform at some reunion gigs, as per Blabbermouth. After Udo Dirkschneider left Accept in 1989, Reece was hired for the “Eat The Heat” album. Dirkschneider‘s unique manner contrasted with Reece’s higher-pitched delivery, and the album was a commercial and critical failure. Disagreements between the band and Reece reached a breaking point halfway through the “Eat The Heat” tour, which resulted in an incident between the vocalist and bassist Peter Baltes in Chicago. Accept had given up by the end of 1989. Reece responded as follows when Nejc Zupančič of PodRaznoKast asked if there has been any discussion regarding him returning to Accept for a special performance on the band’s recently announced 50th anniversary tour.

I hear rumors of ‘Accept fest’, like Michael Schenker did. But I’ve never had any hard contact. I’m really good friends with Udo, I’m good friends with Peter Baltes, but I’ve never been actually approached about it. It wouldn’t surprise me. And I’m okay if they say, ‘Okay, we want you to do a few shows.’ I’ll just ride in a rental car and follow the bus. I don’t care. I would love to do it. I mean, that part of my life is the reason I’m talking to you. That’s what brought me to the forefront publicly in the music business. That was my breakout moment. So I would love to. I mean, I play [‘Eat The Heat’ song] ‘X-T-C’, I play ‘D-Train’, I play ‘Generation Clash’, ‘Hellhammer’ live in my set — even now. I would love to. But it’s up to Wolf. I mean, it’s Wolf’s band now.

David continued by saying that he is not holding out hope for an Accept reunion with every former member of the band.

It would be a massive undertaking, trust me, there’s so much history with that band, and let’s say good blood and bad blood. I mean, to get everybody to agree to do it would be a really big job. But my door is open. Call me, find me. I’m there.

David had previously performed with Dirkschneider, who Reece also commended.

The man, he’s in his early seventies, he’s a Panzer tank. I mean, I did the U.D.O. ‘Steelfactory’ tour, David Reece solo, as a special guest, in 2018, ’19, and I think we played 38 shows together, and it was fabulous. And every night he was the same. He’s not lost a step. But I can tell you this — he had a bone infection that he had contracted in Spain, and the doctors told him, ‘You need to go home and get well.’ And he said, ‘I never cancel.’ So most of the tour I did with him, he used a cane on stage. And it was unbelievable. I mean, I respect that man to no end. I’m dear friends with him and his son Sven. Sven’s band Damaged used to open for me in Germany. And if Udo was home, he would come to the shows, and, of course, people would go, ‘Oh, David Reece is playing, and Udo’s here.’ So it was kind of an event. People get to see us together.

David made this statement about his personal friendship with Udo.

We never had a problem. When I joined [Accept], he was doing ‘Mean Machine’ next door to me in Dierks Studios, and that’s where I met Andy [Susemihl]. And Udo never, ever treated me weird. He was always a gentleman, said, ‘Good luck. You’ll see what I’m talking about. It’s not easy. I wish you the best.’ And we’ve always been gentlemen.

David addressed the issue of “Eat The Heat” sounding more commercial than Accept‘s previous endeavours.

Sometimes I look back in retrospect and think maybe we should have changed the [band] name. But again, it goes back to branding. I think the first released single, the video for ‘Generation Clash’, was a terrible mistake because it’s a heavy metal band. If we released ‘D-Train’ or ‘X-T-C’ as the first single, keep the fans that were devout followers: ‘Oh, they’re still heavy.’ But we came out with kind of the polished American blonde singer Americanized version, which all came from corporate. ‘Cause basically the after ‘Balls Of The Wall’, they started moving in the direction of that sound, like ‘Metal Heart’ and ‘Russian Roulette’. They started to kind of get more commercialized, and Udo’s voice did not suit that. So the record companies all said, ‘Hey, get a singer that’s got this vibe, and we can break this record into a million seller,’ which was a mistake. I mean, people that wear suits and ties and record companies, they don’t know what fans want. They have no clue. All they think about is money. And it was a shock for the band that it wasn’t that successful, and a shock for me that I wasn’t taken in and loved. I was either hated or loved — there was no middle.

Reece offered this explanation for the brief duration of his partnership with Accept.

I’m an American. They’re Germans. Number one, you’ve got cultural differences. One thing I learned from Accept, you go from playing five shows [a week at clubs] to joining a band like Accept — they were the second-largest metal band in Germany, Scorpions being number one — that was a whole different game for me. I was, like, you know, ‘I can do this.’ Well, [‘Eat The Heat’ producer] Dieter [Dierks] said, ‘You’ve got a great voice, but we have to discover what it is. We have to find the identity.’ And I didn’t understand that, but when you’re trying to sing like [Rob] Halford or [Ronnie James] Dio or David Coverdale and doing cover songs, you really don’t have an identity, where Udo, that’s just how he sings. That was the voice when he started the band in 1974. So that’s what it was.’

The hardest part of the process was being accepted in the band, no pun intended. The final audition was a live show in Cologne, and they invited a lot of heavy people there to give their opinion. And there was about a thousand people at the show. I was convinced that that was my last day there, that it won’t work. And I did the show. It went really well, and we had a guest house and I heard everybody talking in the morning. So I got up and said, ‘Well, I better go say goodbye.’ And I walked into the kitchen and they all said, ‘Welcome to Accept.’ So I was hired. That was pretty terrifying, because I had been there for a long time, and they were really nervous about making the change, because they had a singer before me from England named Rob Armitage for a while, and he didn’t work out. And you never really knew with them what they were thinking. They kept things very much in their private circle. Nobody would say ‘yes’, nobody would say ‘no’. So that was really the final test, if I could fit in the band. And I made it.