“We only have one chance for a 50th anniversary” – Wolf Hoffman discusses 50th-anniversary album & tour plans

In a recent interview with Mark Strigel, Accept guitarist Wolf Hoffman discussed the band’s upcoming plans for touring beyond festival appearances and what to expect from their 50th-anniversary album. Wolf shared that they would not be working with longtime producer Andy Sneap for the album, stating:

“He will not be on this one, because he asked for a year off from us. I asked him, I begged him to produce his album, but then we found a good buddy of his. His name is Zeuss [Chris Harris]. He’s producing it […] [Andy is] kind of part of the family now, but he’s been touring so much with [Judas] Priest [as that band’s touring guitarist], and he’s been working so much in the studio last year. I think he did Saxon, he did Priest, he also did Dream Theater — he’s done a bunch of stuff. So when I said, ‘Hey, can we work this year again?’ He said, ‘Man, can I please have a year off?’, which is understandable.”

Accept, so far, has only scheduled appearances for a few festivals in May – one in the United States and three dates in Japan, but Hoffman let it be known that there is more to come than just these dates:

“We’re [planning] on another tour in the fall, which I cannot talk about quite yet, but there will be more shows in the U.S. later in the year. They haven’t been announced yet, so I can’t really say much… And other than that, we’re going to Europe. We actually tried to lay low this year because we’re gonna be very, very busy next year when we have the 50-year anniversary tour coming up and an album in the works for that. And so there’s a lot of stuff happening next year, and we kind of wanted to lay low this year, but then we aren’t. All these shows came in, so we’re still quite busy.”

And what can you expect at these not-yet-announced shows? Hoffman shares:

“It’s gonna be a retrospective of the whole 50-year career and, of course, it’s gonna feature a lot of the important stuff from the ’80s and some deeper cuts. And we’re gonna perform with guest singers and guest players, and it’s gonna be super exciting, like a once-in-a-lifetime thing. […] I mean, we only have one chance for a 50th anniversary. I don’t think I’ll get another one. With all optimism, I don’t think I’ll be around 50 years from now, or the fans will be, so we might as well have this opportunity and make use of it. And it’s gonna be fantastic. I know it. We’re gonna play some songs we’ve never played before, and it’s gonna be great.”