“Hi Bill, would you like to interview Rudolf from the Scorpions?”
“Sure. What time?”
Sometimes you spend months setting up a musician interview, wading through management and publicists and labels. And sometimes they just come and offer it to you. Maybe it’s because most of the Scorpions success in the past decade has been outside the U.S., but it just doesn’t seem like getting an interview with the founding member of a band who’s sold more than a hundred million albums should be that easy. For whatever reason, it was.
Before I do a time-constrained interview with a celebrity I always try to find some prior footage of them so I can get a feel for their speaking patterns, how long their answers will likely be, whether they stop and think and then start speaking again, the kind of stuff that helps make for fluid conversation when you don’t have enough time on the line to chat it up with the person and getting a feel for those things on the fly before hitting the record button. But this one was a quick enough turnaround that I didn’t get the chance to do so, leaving me with no real expectations one way or the other going into the interview. Since Rudolf is the guitarist and not the singer, I’d never even heard his voice; I wasn’t even sure how thick his presumed German accent would be.
The guy’s been a successful artist for four decades so I figured he’d have some interesting stuff to share. But going into this interview I couldn’t have predicted that I’d end up having one of the more fascinating conversations I’ve ever had with anyone. By “conversation” I mean that I would ask a question and he’d give a wide-ranging answer which lasted several minutes, then I’d ask him a follow-up based on the most interesting thing he’d touched on, and so forth. He did ninety percent of the talking, but in this kind of situation that’s exactly what you want. Last thing you want is to face a bunch a short answers and be left having to fill the majority of the interview block with the sound of your own voice trying to pry something interesting out of your subject.
I knew I was going to get the kind of interview I wanted right from the get-go, when my initial warmup question (“How’s the tour going?”) was met with an answer that included answers to four more of my upcoming questions. Good, he was covering the basics up front, meaning that there would be time for things to go wherever they might go. Not only were we discussing whether their use of Desmond Child as producer on their latest album meant that the Scorpions were looking for more of a pop sound this time around (they decidedly weren’t), Rudolf was telling stories about playing in Leningrad back when it was still called Leningrad, the way “Wind of Change” ended up being tied not only to the fall of the Berlin Wall but also the fall of the USSR, a rundown of the various pro sports teams that use the band’s “Rock You Like a Hurricane” as their anthem, and we even got into the whole iTunes Store thing. Anytime you’re talking world politics, sports, and iTunes in the same fifteen minute conversation, I’m there. Especially when it’s guy you used to see on MTV when you were a kid.
By the time he got to Gorbachev I was just sitting there with a big goofy smile on my face because I knew I was in the process of being handed a special interview. I don’t feel like I even worked for it. Sure, I did the research and wrote the questions, but I needn’t have. All I had to do was sit back and let Rudolf steer the ship, with an occasional tug on the wheel from me.
This one’s worth your time whether you’re a fan of Scorpions or not.
Alright, unexpectedly well-circulated iPod touch vs. iPhone article wrapped, rock star interview wrapped, time for to go back to focusing on prepping for Podcast Expo. It’s nine days away and it’s all I need to be focusing on between now and then.
Unless KT Tunstall calls tomorrow and wants to do an interview 
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