“My favourite aspect of being an artist is that you get to spend a lot of time thinking” – interview with The New Roses

The New Roses are a German heavy metal band about to release their new album “Attracted to Danger” at the beginning of October. We chatted with lead singer Timmy Rough, and you can read what we talked about right here!

Good evening, how are you doing today?

Timmy Rough: Great, thank you. 

“Attracted to Danger” is about to be released: what are your goals with this record? Is there anything that you want to accomplish with it?

Timmy Rough: Of course, we just want to make a good record. When it comes to music, I never have aspirations for commercial goals. I want to achieve something internal; I want to get some lyrics out or some topics that I want to talk about, and I want to get it right. I want to have the feeling in the end that I got it right, and then I’m okay. Then, I don’t care what happens next. You would lie if you wouldn’t say you’re not aware of the fact that it’s your job; you have to pay for your house, and everybody pays their rent and their families on how good the record is going. You can’t just go and say, “Oh, fuck it, I’m gonna make a jazz record because I feel like it.” So, you have to stay on your path. You have to use certain tools that you know that are working. Although, sometimes I would like to try things out that I don’t try out, because I know it’s still a job, it’s still something that people depend on.

Are there any songs in “Attracted to Danger” that started in a way and then completely changed over the creative process?

Timmy Rough: It happens to me all the time. The first single, “When You Fall In Love“, was one of those things. I wrote it as a ballad. It was a very fragile, very emotional ballad. I went on writing the lyrics, and I kept on having these ideas where the lyrics turned out to be more funny, more not serious, more playful. I had these ideas, and I thought that they sound so good. The lyrics sound so good if I write them down. But if I use those lyrics, I can’t finish it as a ballad, because it’s too funny, it’s too playful for that. So I changed the idea.

So what is your favourite aspect of being an artist in 2024?

Timmy Rough: I don’t know if it’s something very different to another time. I don’t think that the year is really important, although I never really thought about it. Would it be different if it was another time? My favourite aspect of being an artist is, of course, for me personally, you get to spend a lot of time thinking. You’ve got a lot of time thinking; you actually get paid for thinking about your feelings, thinking about your life, thinking about relationships with other people. I would do this anyway. I’m a very emotional person: I think about how is he doing, how am I doing, where’s the universe, and all these things. I read many books about philosophy and history and novels, all classic Shakespeare. I read whatever I can get my hands on. I love to read, and I love to turn those phrases and ideas into lyrics. It’s not obvious because we’re still a rock and roll band, and I sneak those ideas into the song. I think that’s a specialty of The New Roses. It’s not 100% party rock. It’s not like Kiss, where every line is a party slogan. I sneak more three-dimensional thoughts into the songs, although I never try to make it too obvious, like demanding. So it’s a very cool thing. I get the time to sit down and turn my thoughts into lyrics, and that demands a lot of thinking and a lot of processing, playing with words, and finding the right words for emotion. So it’s cool that I get money for that because I would do it anyway. I love the fact that I never work when everybody’s at work. When I go to the gym, I’m always alone in the gym. It’s one of those self-working gyms. There’s no staff there. You have your card, and you go in, and there’s nobody there. No employees. I’m always alone in the gym when I go in the morning. So I always bring my Bluetooth speaker, my big one, and I crank it up, and I listen to rock and roll music. I’m all alone. All the machines, everything’s free, and I can scream, I can shout, I can take my shirt off, and be like a super gym nerd, and nobody sees me. It’s like I have a huge home gym. When I go to the swimming pool, it’s the same, I’m always alone. When I go to buy my groceries, I’m always alone in the shop. When I go to the movies or whatever, I’m always alone. And then I’m home, or I’m working when everybody else is doing their groceries and everything. So, on the weekends, when everybody’s going out and waiting in line somewhere, I work, and I make people wait in line to see my show. So, it’s really cool to have this totally contrary lifestyle to the whole society because you spend way less time waiting in line. I’m not a real people person. I love to be with the audience and stuff, but I don’t like to be just always around people. Maybe that has something to do with the job when you’re always meeting people, and you’re never alone. At least four other guys are always around you. So when I’m home, I like to have my space and my quiet. When I come home from touring, I feel like I need some pension, you know. I feel like I’m 80 years old.

Do you remember the first concert that you attended as an audience? Which artist did you go to see or which band?

Timmy Rough: Yeah, it’s definitely not metal. Yeah, it’s a German musician. I guess I don’t know him. He’s one of the most successful musicians worldwide but ever. His name is Udo Jürgens, they call him. He wrote for Frank Sinatra, and he wrote for Earth, Wind and Fire back in the day. He was something. He wrote in German, but he was a very unique musician. He always traveled with a whole orchestra and a big band. He performed all the way from old-school boogie-woogie to classical music to swing music. It was so broad and it was till the day I saw him. This was the first show I ever saw. My mom was a big fan, so she always took me when I was a kid. And when I was old enough, I would take her, and I would give her a ticket for a birthday. We probably went to see him like every year when he went on tour. I’ve seen him 20 times until he died. And until this day, it’s still the best-sounding concert I’ve ever seen in my life. It really influenced me a lot. It’s not really rock music, but it was so good. So it was just well played, well written, well performed, very thoughtful, very detailed music. I would say it really sharpened my mind as a kid. The first time I saw him, I was three years old. While all the other kids were listening to just silly child songs, I was already used to hearing trumpets and saxophone arrangements and string arrangements. That was my day-to-day music. Because he was so broad, it was very easy to go from there to Frank Sinatra. It was very easy to go from there to Elvis and to classical music. So, at the same time, I was interested in Mozart, Beethoven and Bach, and I was interested in Elvis, Jerry Lee and Bill Haley. I was interested in Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin and all those guys. So this is how I grew up. And of course, when you turn 15-16, you think rock and roll is my thing because it’s the wildest kind of music and it’s the only way to get a lady or something. You can’t impress girls in 2003 or something with the Frank Sinatra records. So I decided to stick with rock and roll, but I was always super interested in all these things. And I guess it comes from this guy. It’s very important who you pick as your idol, that can change everything. If you pick the wrong idol, let’s say, or something that leads you in a totally destructive direction, that’s very dangerous, especially with rock music. I wasted a lot of time over these issues later in my life, but I always had that spirit of you have to be good to go out on stage. I always wanted to be good. Attitude alone was not enough for me. It can be enough, no doubt about it. There are a lot of punk bands or whatever that can sing or play, and they’re still great, and they have their right to be there, no doubt about it. But for me, I always had that approach that you have to be really good at what you’re doing. If you want to play guitar, you have to play really well, and if you want to sing, you have to sing really well. If you listen to the Sex Pistols or the Ramones or something, they’re not good as musicians per se. They don’t sing, they don’t play very well, but of course they’re the Ramones, so nobody would argue that they are a very important band. I played the saxophone for ten years, and I was really good because I wanted to. My big dream was to play in his band, in that big band, but he died right before I could apply.

Who is the messiest person of the New Roses?

Timmy Rough: Good question. So I would say in the dressing room, probably me. I’m not messy; I throw trash around, but I unpack my bag, and then I just put a little here and put a little there. I don’t realize that when I come back, it’s all over the place. But we learned pretty well, pretty early, that we have to keep our shit clean; otherwise, we all kill each other. And like I said, we come from a very hard way. We started with nothing. We played in bars. We played on the street, and we played for no money. We would get dressed in the van; we had no backstage, no dressing room, no green room. So, sometimes we would set up our gear on the street in the rain, and then because there was not enough space for the opening act to have a dressing room or to have somewhere to store the gear, we would get dressed in the van, and then we would set up our shit behind the car, and then we would wait for the sign when the back door opens, and then we would carry our shit in and start playing. So we have to learn very early on to be pretty clean and pretty precise with our stuff; otherwise, we would kill ourselves. And otherwise, many times, we just lost stuff because we couldn’t find it anymore or something. I remember one night we played in Hamburg, and we lost the key to the van. So, we would spend four or five hours the next day looking in every corner of the venue, of the club, to find a small car key. And I ended up that I put it in the camera bag. Nobody would ever put it there, and I put it there, making no sense. I just wanted to drink a beer, wanted to smoke a cigarette, and I thought, okay, I just put it here for now, and then I forgot about it. So I put the whole band into trouble, we came very late for the next show. I’m the messiest, but I’m not really messy because nobody is super crazy.

I wanted to play a little game with you if that’s all right. So if every song from Attracted to Danger were to become human beings, which one would be your best friend?

Timmy Rough: Nice way to say it. Definitely “Natural Born Vagabonds” would be my best buddy. Yeah, because I love it when songs have energy, when they have strength, they have muscle, but still, they show emotions. So, I don’t like it when it’s all whiny, you know, and all hurt, like limitless emotion. That would be definitely the guy I would drink a beer with because you laugh and you can cry in one session. So who wouldn’t like that?

Timmy, thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview with me. Is there anything else that you want to add to our readers?

Timmy Rough: We’ve just been in Südtirol, in Stetsing, we played a festival. We would love to come more often, we’d love to do a whole tour. We love the country and we love the fans there. We’ve been there with the Daisies I guess once, and it was amazing. I hope you spread the word and make everybody aware of the band, so we can come down and have a rock and roll celebration together.