Gig Reviews
Cult Leader
Stengade, Copenhagen, DEN - 15/4
Album Reviews
Dragonforce
Previous Nextauthor PP date 22/12/07
Some readers might remember our interview with the Dragonforce keyboardist about a year ago when the band played at The Rock. We figured that wasn't enough, and since Herman Li is one of the most famous guys in the band, we wanted to sit down with him next time they would come around. It took about a year but here we are again, sitting at the back stage press area of KB Hallen, together with one of the best guitarists in the world. Herman Li is a bit of a joker, and made a bunch of jokes about trying to score some Danish girls tonight, and spiced up the interview with lots of humor as well. Although his combined London/Asian accent was difficult to understand at times, I think I was able to quote him pretty accurately for the purposes of this interview. The task wasn't helped by that our laptop, which we usually use for recording these types of interviews, broke down seconds before the interview started so we had to use a telephone instead - not exactly the ideal recording devices let me tell you that. But anyway, enjoy the read!
RF.net: Drama? Can you elaborate?
Herman Li: Well, you know, Machine Head.. Phil left home because his dad passed away so other band members are filling in for him.
RF.net: So what do you think about all the other bands on this tour? There's a lot of quite different bands from you?
Herman Li: What I think about them?
RF.net: Yeah, do you like one of them better than the others in terms of musically or?
Herman Li: I like some people better than the other people. Some people are more kind of like stupid like us, like to hang out, and some people don't want to do anything, they just want to sit in their bus and not do anything. Fair enough, everyone go their own thing, so.. you know, I definitely think that most people get on, most bands.. everyone from different bands get on together. So it's been cool and pretty crazy some of the nights.
RF.net: ...so basically I'd like to hear a little bit about your development as a guitarist, you know, when you started, when did you first start noticing you were good, and maybe finish it off with some advice to younger kids that one day wanna be as technical and as good as you?
Herman Li: Well I think the better you get the worse you think you are as a player. And I actually read that from a book recently, and I thought that's so true. I mean I think I'm totally horrible at playing, you know, and some people like it and say "that's cool". We don't think about ourselves as great guitar players in the band. No, we actually laugh at each other how badly we played last night or whatever, you know. When you play, you're never satisfied how good you are. I think any player that's learning how to play, the better they know the guitar, the more they understand the music, the more they realize the little amount of knowledge they have, because it's such a wide world and there's no way you can learn everything. So I think that's what they have to keep in mind. I think everyone should just play, and this sounds really lame, but really get the feeling. You can't replicate someone else's feeling, you know. Don't be a copycat of a music style but actually just feel it. And I'm not getting mystical or anything stupid like that. But just don't try to play someone else's song like someone else plays it, but in your own way, and you can actually play better your own way. I have tried to play cover songs, trying to play like someone else, and I'm like a robot. But if I try to play myself, it's not 100% how they play it.. there's things that I cannot do that they do, have been compensated by the feeling of playing, so you see the person expressing themselves, even if it's not their song, but they're putting their touch into it. Get better than all your heroes. You aim to be better than all your favorite guitar players.
RF.net: Who are some of your favorites then? Who have been your idols, so to say?
Herman Li: Steve Vai, Satriani, Marty Friedman.. you know, loads of players. Obviously I'm not actually better than them.. I try to, and fail [laughs], you know.. but I think everyone should try to be better than their heroes. You might not be better than them in most of the things that he's doing. What you like of him is usually their strong point. You can't be better at them at what you like about them. But you can excel in other areas that they try to work on. I actually had thought last night. Who's the better guitar player, someone who can play really well, say music theory, or some guy who is really not that great player, but he influences and inspires thousands of players around the world to pick up the guitar. I mean neither of them is better than the other, they're just better in different areas.
RF.net: So I have to ask, have you tried to play it yourself? Your own song?
Herman Li: Yeah, I played it even before it came out actually, I was at the game studio where they developed the game, and I thought it was really cool
RF.net: Can you get through it?
Herman Li: I can't because.. when I hear that song, my fingers play it like a guitar, I cannot break the pattern of what I'm doing, matching the numbers.. I'm probably the worst at it ever in the world, so I haven't played it that much. But I thought the picking the right hand side, is definitely very close to the real thing. The fast picking on expert level. It's easier to play the expert level for me than the easy level, because my hand moves like that already.
RF.net: So have you started working on your new album yet? It's been what, eleven months since the last one?
Herman Li: Even longer than that, January 2006! We started, but there's not much to talk about it because we've only just started before this tour, and now we're on tour. We haven't done anything, we took the portable studio on the bus, but I haven't opened it once yet.
RF.net: Yeah but might it be like some kids grow up and think that "one day I wanna play this and this festival, maybe this and this stage, I wanna support Metallica I wanna do this and that", so some kind of dream for you guys, or just you personally?
Herman Li: For me personally, I actually achieved all the ones I wanted when I was a kid. I've played with Steve Vai, Joe Satriani who are my favorite guitarists. We've played with Iron Maiden, we've toured around the world, you know, done some other things [laughs].. you know, things change and your ideas change when you grow up, so obviously now.. the next step.. when you are a kid you might think of a dream which is so far away.. I didn't even dream of that for ten years, I dreamt about playing with Satriani in my early days, and I had to realize it's not gonna happen, so I kind of let it go but it happened anyway fourteen years later. Now it's make a great album and see what happens. I'm not dreaming imaginary things, not dreaming about my fans or anything like that.
RF.net: A funny anecdote that my friend told me was that at one point when he wasn't quite sure if it was you guys or not, he said that some really drunken English man shouted "oh look guys! IT'S THAT GUY FROM DRAGONFORCE", I don't know if you remember that at all. But just try to imagine that scenario in your mind, how would that make you feel, you're in a show, and some guy goes "oh that's the guy from Dragonforce" and kind of like idolizes you?
Herman Li: Come on man, we're used to that, we're super rock stars now, come on, happens every day [laughs].. except in Germany!
RF.net: Why is that?
Herman Li: We got boo'ed so much in Germany it is amazing. Honestly, stuff thrown on stage, people going "boooo", after the gig "boooo", before we started "boooo", there's some kind of hatred going down there, we don't know why, what have we done to them. But actually, one of the funny things that I was gonna go back which I forgot to say, the most famous video of us on YouTube, is not actually Guitar Hero, it's the one where we play really shit, and some other one that we're totally drunk and couldn't play songs and were falling over. Our faults, or the bad things that we've done, are actually more famous than all our achievements. So the haters are really good at it. But lets see what happens tonight. It's all been good except for certain places in Germany!