“I always felt that Rammstein belongs to stadiums” – interview with Christoph Schneider

The Europe Drum Show gathered together people who share a fascination towards the art of drumming in the beautiful city of Friedrichshafen, Germany. As almost one third of the visitors wear Rammstein apparel, it is not difficult to guess who is the highlight of the event.

Rammstein‘s famous drummer, Christoph Schneider, met fans at the DW/Roland booth in a signing session. The excited fans formed a long line which took up almost all of the aisle. The allotted half an hour almost wasn’t enough to disperse the line of numerous fans, who were tremendously excited to see their favorite rock star drummer. 

Later in the evening, Schneider performed at the event’s main stage. His setlist naturally included songs with interesting drum parts, such as “Te quiero puta!” and “Bückstabü”. For the first time drum enthusiasts and Rammstein fans alike had the opportunity to see exactly how the Rammstein drummer plays his instrument, as the event provided a live screen with a bird’s eye view of the drums.

Chaoszine flew in to interview Schneider about the performance and you can read our chat in full below:

You usually perform with five other Rammstein members, but now you are on stage alone. How does it feel, are you nervous?

Christoph Schneider: Well, I’m very nervous. Because I’m doing this for the very first time. I have never done this before, doing a drum show or a fair in front of other musicians, especially drummers. But the drum community is a very nice community. People are very nice to each other and there’s a lot of exchange and hangouts. 

I also have a group of drummers in Berlin who I always hang out with. Mostly people are interested in what you are doing and appreciate that you are showing what your style of playing is. It’s not about that you could play everything for critiques. It’s not a contest or something. 

So I’m looking forward to it, but I’m nervous, because I’m leaving my comfort zone and doing something I’m not used to. When I’m in the band I know very well what I have to do and what others expect from me, and yeah you stay with that. But here I also can do a lot of other things I want to do.

What are you going to play tonight?

Christoph Schneider: I’m going to play songs of my band of course, because that’s what I’m known for and what people are hopefully expecting me to do. I’m using the backing tapes to play along to. There’s a lot of electronic stuff and there’s some edited guitars but almost no vocals. I can play with the songs and maybe I won’t perform them exactly the way I would play with the band.

Are you using the same drum set tonight as you would use in a Rammstein show?

Christoph Schneider: Oh yeah, I’m using the same set that I’m used to playing with in recent years. No changes. Well, I left some parts at home. Some parts of the drums are only for specific songs, which I’m not going to play tonight, so I don’t need those parts.

You have said before that Deep Purple’s Ian Paice was your first rock drummer inspiration, but who is your favorite drummer today?

Christoph Schneider: Who’s my favourite drummer today? Ah, there are many. You know, when you are a drummer yourself you get to know a lot of drummers, and there are so many good drummers out there. The first one who inspired me was Ian Paice, because I started to listen to Deep Purple, and I was so impressed by all the drums of the songs, and I played along to these drums. He made me think that: “Maybe I should become a drummer too, this is so exciting.” Of course I didn’t have that same perspective back in the days in East Germany, but I didn’t think about that. In that world, as a twelve year old or so I said: “I want to become a drummer too. I don’t know how but somehow I will.”

But yeah drummers of today. I love Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Thomas Lang, Danny Carey (Tool), Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters) and so many others who I admire and think that they are really great drummers.

You have said that your first instrument was a trumpet before you found your interest with drums, but how is it these days? Do you play any other instrument besides drums?

Christoph Schneider: Not much, I know a little bit of piano and used to play guitar when I was younger. Sometimes I play these instruments for my kids if they have lessons or something, but that’s it. I’m not playing them seriously, like other musicians.

Your father was an opera director and your mother worked as a music teacher. What was their reaction when you abandoned the trumpet and started playing drums in a punk band of the underground music scene of East Berlin?

Christoph Schneider: There was some time between when I decided to learn the drums, I was like twelve or thirteen when I asked my parents if they could buy me a drum kit somehow, or if they had any idea how I could collect money or something for that. They were really disappointed that I stopped playing the trumpet, but this had also something to do with that my family was moving to another city where this trumpet thing stopped, because I didn’t find a teacher and I lost the orchestra I was playing in. And the drums, they weren’t so excited about it. They thought it was too loud and not really an instrument. They weren’t very happy, and in the beginning they didn’t support me. I built up my own thing out of chairs and some buckets and whatever I found and played along to the music I loved to listen to.

But later they probably were very proud of you?

Christoph Schneider: Yeah, then they let me go my way. My mother was more concerned. She thought it’s not a good idea to become a musician, it’s not a very reliable job and very insecure. But my father said: “Yeah, just go your way,” and he gave me the money to buy a proper drum kit later.  

Was it hard to find a proper drum kit in the GDR?

Christoph Schneider: Yeah, we didn’t have much of a choice. There was one brand from East Germany which wasn’t very good, but there was one good brand from the Czech Republic and my first drum kit was this Czech kit called Amati.

Rammstein is known for its massive fire shows. How do you and your drum set handle the heat? Have you considered triggered drums?

Christoph Schneider: Ah, this is actually two different questions: I have been using triggered drums in earlier Rammstein stages. That was, when it came up to mix acoustic drums with triggered drums. We thought it sounded much better and harder, but when you listen to recordings from those days it’s a strange sound when you mix it. I’m not doing this anymore. I have triggers for certain things, or pads for certain effects, but the basic drum sound is not triggered. 

The heat is a problem, especially in clubs where you have fire and the heat is very high and it does have an effect on the drum tuning. It goes down usually, because drums have plastic. The drum heads become soft and the tuning goes down. Sometimes sparks are raining onto the drums and you even have little holes, but I never have had broken skin. The heat is part of the show, but it can be very hot, and when you are playing the drums you cannot go away. My colleagues, they can step back. When flames happen close to the drums, it can be very hot.

How important is rehearsing for you as a drummer ? How often do you rehearse?

Christoph Schneider: I want to play drums as much as I can, as often as I can. When you once have this passion, it never leaves you. You know, it is kind of dragging me into it. It’s like a kind of meditation to play drums. It never has been like a burden, like it was sometimes with trumpet. You have to rehearse, and next time the teacher asks you: “can you play this, and this?” But with drums it’s different. I always find something I can work on. These days I have my own studio next to my house, I can go there whenever I want.

You have mentioned before that you like jazz, do you practise jazz drumming too? 

Christoph Schneider: Not really. I love to listen to jazz music, but I probably would be a very bad jazz player. But you know you never know, maybe one day I will explore other music styles. And now that I have a little bit more time, the band is taking a break, I’m thinking about doing some collaborations with other musicians.

Do you agree that a drummer is the “backbone of the band” and in charge of the rhythms of the songs?

Christoph Schneider: Sure he is. A drummer needs to be very reliable and very steady. It’s good if he can hold the tempo, and not go slower and then speed up. Of course it depends on the music too. Sometimes it’s also natural flow, that you get louder or go a little bit up with the tempo. But not in our music, it’s very straight because we want to have that machine vibe. Yeah, you have to be very disciplined. And have a good base player who is doing his job.

You have toured with Rammstein for over 30 years, and even before that you were a part of the bands in the GDR. Could you share with us your best moments on stage from the past and from the present, please?

Christoph Schneider: The best moments? There are so many funny moments and good moments. In my career, it was for a long time like that it always seemed to get better and more exciting. Venues became bigger, and sometimes there was this very great feeling: “Oh, I have now played this club, there’s three thousand people in there. All the good bands of our town have played there and now we can do it.” It was the same great feeling when we played for the first time in a stadium.

I remember one really great moment, when I had one of my first own bands. We had a singer girl, a keyboard player and a guitar, bass and drums. We five people recorded our first demo tape in a real studio over one weekend. And when we mixed the tape on Sunday afternoon – I remember I was very, very happy. The first time I heard our music on this nice sounding recording… It was a long time ago.

The more recent example: When we got into the stadiums with Rammstein, that was a huge step. I always felt that the band belonged there. That it would come to full impact of what the show could be, and it made me very happy and proud that we could do that. The guys in the band had doubts that this would be too big and won’t work. We have all these discussions in the band about everything and arguing about everything, and sometimes it takes a lot of your energy. But in the end we made it that we did these stadium tours, and I can remember I was very happy on some of them.

Lastly, do you have any advice for young drummers who want to get better?

You should search what style is yours, what you want to do. Don’t be too impressed with what other people can do and what they show off. Every drummer needs to find their own thing. For every drummer there is something they are very good at, and they should follow that.