Metal Covenant spoke to legendary guitarist Wolf Hoffmann about the new album Humanoid.

If I would say that it’s really easy as a fan to recognize this as an Accept album, what would you say?

I think that’s good, because that’s what we’re going for. I mean, I always think it’s great if fans are gonna recognize it within the first few bars, and, “Oh, that must be Accept.”. That’s great. It’s the guitar riffs, and the vocals, and all that, I guess, that make that happen. And it’s supposed to be like that, because when we write songs we always wanted to sound familiar, and old-school, and we wanted to sound like it could have been written years and years ago, only as a brand-new song, with a brand-new sound, and a brand-new theme. It’s brand-new, but at the same time sounds very familiar.

When you start working on an album, is your idea always crystal clear when you get down to business?

No. I mean, the idea for the album, certainly not. When we start working on songs, nobody has any idea of what kind of songs will turn up in the end. We just basically all start collecting ideas individually, and then we bring all that to the table, and play it to Andy Sneap, and he will sort of suggest which songs are the most worthy for us spending our time on. And then we’ll start working away. He calls it chipping away, which is kind of what we do. You know, we’ll make it a little better, we do a proper guitar recording, then we put on proper drums, and then we change stuff, and then we need another part here, so it’s a lot of tedious step-by-step work that makes these songs complete. It’s kind of rare that a song that is written during the songwriting phase is all the way ready from start to finish. It happens, but it doesn’t happen often.

To what extent do you work on your guitar playing when you put those little hooks and licks into the melodies. I mean, how much do you work on them to get them in a perfect spot?

It’s kind of obvious a lot of times where the song needs it. Once you know where the vocals are going, it kind of dictates it from there. And quite often I have melodic ideas, I have to say, that are just little melodies, and at that point when I put them down on tape, I don’t really know if they will be vocals or if they will be guitars. We have a lot of choruses, and little hooky melodies in the background that are part of the songwriting, and basically we have to try that out, “Does it sound better on guitar, or should that be a part that somebody sings?”, and then we try it, and we go like, “No, maybe not.”, or maybe, “Yes.”. So it all depends. But often these melodies are just there from the beginning.

I’m not gonna talk about former members, but I know that Peter (Baltes) used to be your, like, go-to guy when you were writing songs. Which guy do you have in the band that has taken that position nowadays?

Luckily, some of the guys contributed some stuff. Uwe wrote some songs on this album. One of which survived in the form of the song Frankenstein. And then Martin Motnik wrote a bunch of lyrical ideas, which is equally helpful, because actually you need that as much as you need input to the vocals. Anything is welcome, and I wish that the guys in the band would contribute a lot more. But not everybody is a songwriter. It’s just like that. Some guys are just more performers, and they are happy to be that. It is what it is, you know. You work with the guys that you have. Peter was very talented, and I miss him like a brother, but he’s gone, and I do the best I can without him, and I think it’s working out okay.

There are thousands and thousands of great guitarists, but what is hard is to write great songs. That’s the hard part, as I see it.

Yeah, I agree, and that’s why I see myself not as the best, or most virtuous player in the world, because I know I’m not. There’s other guys who can do amazing stuff on guitar that I can’t do, but I’ve realized over the years that that’s okay. I don’t need to do everything. There’s room and a place for everybody, and I see myself as much as a writer and a creator of music as I see myself as an amazing guitar player or performer. I don’t even think I’m particularly good on guitar, to be honest. I know I can do certain things quite well, but I don’t think I’m anything amazing, special, whatever, you know. But I don’t care. I mean, I don’t wanna sound arrogant, but I don’t think I have to prove myself anything anymore, because we’ve done a lot of albums, and we like what we do, and people seem to enjoy it, and that’s enough for me.

You just said that Uwe wrote some stuff, but you usually play all the guitars on the album, so.

I did on this one too, yeah. It’s just because it makes the most sense, and here’s why: A lot of times people think we all go to the studio together, and that it’s great camaraderie, and it’s like a summer camp, and everybody is always in the room, and we all play everything together all the time. And we used to that in the ‘80s, but man, that’s not easy. That is really tedious, because the workload is not distributed evenly, so if we were in the studio together there’s weeks when somebody hasn’t anything to do and he just sit around, and it’s not fun. It’s much more efficient to have just the guys in the studio that have the most work, and a lot of that is guitars, and the other thing is vocals. That’s really what takes the longest on an album. And the way that we record guitars: Rhythm guitars are basically, like, the foundation of each song. A lot of times we put those guitars down first on those demos, and that kind of dictates how everything else falls, like how the drums play, how the bass plays of course, and all that kind of stuff. But the guitars have to just be right and correct, and that’s the foundation. Since I write most of the stuff, I put them usually down for all of us. I mean, on solos it’s different. I like to invite the other guys as much as possible to play solos, which makes sense, because with the solo you hear somebody’s individuality much more than in a rhythm guitar. You wouldn’t hear the difference between me and Uwe playing everything. It just needs to be correct and tight.

How do you try your best to enhance the songs live as you used to be two guitarists before?

Well, you’d be surprised, every song, ever since the Stone Age, had more than two guitar tracks. You know, overdubs, solos, different parts, and in the past, we could only pick two tracks that we represent live. But now that we have three, we can do things like twin solos and a rhythm guitar, we can do overdub parts that we normally couldn’t do, and we pick out fun parts that are fun to play and that make the most sense. So we actually went through the old catalogue, the old songs that we play, and we listened to the albums a bit, and decided, “Oh, there’s a part we can play now, now that we have three guitar players.”.

I love twin solos and I did when I was, like, ten years old as well.

You know who inspired me initially when I was a kid? Wishbone Ash. That was the first band that, that I realized, had twin guitar players. And I believe that both had Flying Vs, or at least one of them did. I can’t remember if they both did it. But in any case, Wishbone Ash. I forget about that, often. Yeah, they were definitely out there, and we wanted some of that. Those twin leads we found quite inspiring.

I think my two first experiences with twin solos were Kiss’ Detroit Rock City, and your song Fast As A Shark. But back to the new record. If Andy Sneap wasn’t helping you guys out on coming Accept albums anymore, would you just throw in the towel then, now that he has been on six records in a row?

I mean, this is the most consistent collaboration with anybody that I can think of, ever. Even in the ‘80s. I mean, we switched from here to there and there, and every album was slightly different. But man, with Andy we’re totally on target. We’re happy with him. I think he enjoys working with us. We always had a good laugh together, and it’s a fun way of working, so I don’t see any reason to ever even think about any other producer. And what we would do if the day was to come where he wasn’t available. I don’t know, man. It would be hard. It was close this time, because he initially said, “Well, I’m gonna be on tour with Priest. I don’t know if we have the time. We might have to use somebody else.”. But in the end, it all worked out, which is great.

Is it easier for you to write songs nowadays than what it was back in the day?

No, it doesn’t get easier with time. It was never easy, no. It can be sometimes quite frustrating actually. There’s times when you have no ideas, and everybody knows the dreaded writer’s block, when you just sit there, and you don’t have the right ideas. It frustrating as fuck. And you think, “I will never have a good idea. It’s over.”. You know, you can get into, like, a deep mindfuck about it, when you think, “Everything I’ve done so far is a bunch of shit. I have no good ideas.”, and, you know, sometimes I’m pretty hard on myself that way. And there came a time actually on this album where I felt… I mean, I had recorded, I don’t know, maybe 20, 30, 50 songs. Or half songs, or riffs, and stuff like that. I had no idea, man, “Is there anything here that’s worth recording?”, and I asked Andy for help. I basically said, “Hey, man. Can you do me a favor and listen to all the stuff I have piled up here?”, and he said, “Well, let’s just get together in a room, and we’ll start working on stuff, and we’ll see what happens.”. So I flew out to this place in England, brought my hard drive, and we listened to all the ideas I had, and we started to pick stuff apart, and put it back together, and after a week or so we had six or seven songs.

Does he pick up a guitar as well, and you’re sitting there looking at each other, and trying things out together?

Sometimes, if he wants to explain something, like, “Hey. Can we play it like this?”. He does it very rarely, actually. But he does it on occasion, where he just, “Let me try something.”, and pick up my guitar and does it, you know.

How do you guys help out Mark with the vocal melodies? Can you, or Andy, actually sing?

We try our best. We do it a lot actually. I sometimes sing a bunch of demo vocals, the way I hear that the song needs, but basically only to give a pattern of how I think it should be. ‘Cause I think that makes a big difference. You know, if you have a playback, and you don’t have any reference, whatsoever, no idea, you could sing a million different vocals on top, and it could change the song dramatically, one way or another. So as a songwriter, obviously, you have something in mind. Because to me, it’s all about the vocals really. I mean, the riffs are fine, and all that stuff, but people are paying most attention to what the singer sings, and there, a little change can make a huge difference. So I see it as part of my role to suggest the starting point for the vocals, and say, “This is what I hear in the chorus. This is what I think needs to be sung there. See if you like it. Try it out. If you come up with something, the best idea wins.”. To me, vocals are, like, 80 percent of everything. I mean, some people look at the vocals as the annoying breaks between solos. But I don’t see it that way, at all. The vocals is the most important part. The performance is important, but also the melody, and how you phrase it, ‘cause that’s what people hook on to. And of course, another big part in our songs is a lot of times just little guitar melodies that I have. I mean, ‘cause there’s a lot of sing-along parts in Accept songs that audiences really like, whether it’s Für Elise in Metal Heart, or it’s, like, the middle section in Balls To The Wall, or there is Princess Of The Dawn with all these melodies. They are basically all guitar solo melodies. So the guitar play has an important role too, with the melodies and such, yeah.

Are there any other lyrics, other than in the title track, that are in some way connected to the album title, Humanoid?

Just by coincidence. I mean, we have that song, Frankenstein, that I mentioned earlier. And obviously, Frankenstein and Humanoid, there’s a bit of an overlap. But that’s a coincidence, ‘cause those songs were written individually without knowing whether the other song would even make it on the album, and at no point did we sit and make a decision to make, like, a concept album, or anything, no. These are just individual songs that made it onto the album.

You guys have never been so much into making a concept album, right?

No, I don’t think it’s the right thing for us, man. I think that’s not our style. I don’t think we ever will, no. I don’t know, but it just never felt right for us. We just want individual songs, and it has just never interested me to do a concept album.

And now of course, looking at Humanoid, and all the AI that everyone is talking about all over the world…

Yeah, that’s why we chose it as a title track, because that seems to be the topic that’s on everybody’s mind right now, and actually, when we made that decision, almost a year ago, it wasn’t even as relevant as it became later on. But it felt Humanoid was the one song on the album that is best suited for title track, for an album cover, and all these things. Because we have other songs that are really fun and great, but, like, how do you do a cover for Southside Of Hell for instance? You know, that’s not a visual title, is it? You know, it doesn’t really roll off your tongue as nice as Humanoid. Humanoid is just one word, and that sounds like an album to me.

About ten years ago I asked this question, and now with AI around, I’m asking you the same question again. Do you think that there will be a time when people stop playing guitar and program everything through a computer instead?

Hm. No, I think people will always play guitar, because it’s a lot of fun. Yeah, I mean, if you were just a producer and you just needed a guitar track, and you don’t care about the playing part, then yeah, I guess you could probably do it that way. But that’s not why most people play guitar. We play guitar because it’s fun, and we enjoy doing it, and sort of because of the feeling that you get through the instrument. That’s why we do it. That’s why I started playing guitar all these years ago. Because I was sort of fascinated with the sound. (Starts to contemplate profoundly.) Yeah, sometimes I can’t even remember why I started playing. I just remember I was fascinated by it. Yeah, why do I play guitar? I don’t even know, man. It’s a good question. (Laughs) Well, I guess it’s an expression tool nowadays, because for songwriting, for being on stage, that’s why we do it. But all these years ago, a friend of mine had an acoustic guitar, and I was fascinated, and I just wanted one really bad. But if you’d ask me now, “Why?”, I don’t really have a good answer. Interesting. Hm.

Do you think that AI will soon be able to copy, like, your guitar style, so you wouldn’t know the difference if AI was writing the guitar parts?

It’s probably possible already. I mean, they’re making music with AI already, and they’re making visual art with AI, and they’re making lyrical content with AI that’s shockingly good. And that is something that I find a bit concerning, ‘cause I always thought, like, only humans can do art, and expression motions, and stuff. And then of course there’s also the debate now, you know, when an AI creates a new song, or a new picture, or anything, it’s based on somebody else’s previous work. It’s not original, ever. And maybe that’s the saving grace, that only humans can create really original art. But who knows what technology will do in five or ten years, or a hundred years. I mean, as so often, technology is much faster than we all anticipate, and then we can’t even keep up how to deal with it, and what kind of rules, laws and regulations that should be in place in regards to copyright and all that kind of stuff. And we’re basically in the middle of it all. In front of our very eyes, this shit is developing in a pace that’s scary. And I don’t have the answer. Not at all. No idea, man.

I think the scary part about our development is if we look at what we have done in the last couple of hundred years, and then we look at how fast everything goes today, then what will happen, not in the next ten years, but in the next, like, thousand years? I don’t think we even can imagine what is gonna happen. It’s gonna be so far off.

I mean, it’s an exponential thing, isn’t it? It goes steeper and steeper and steeper, at a speed that nobody could have anticipated. But one thing is for certain, we can’t stop it. Nobody can. I mean, there’s these people, like Mark Tornillo. He calls himself the Analog Man, and he wishes it all would go away, but guess what, Analog Man, it’s not gonna happen. I mean, you can bitch all day long, but you can’t stop it. You can’t stop progress. And, you know, at the same time, I find that quite good to think about. You know, anytime anything technology-wise was introduced, there was always a certain amount of people who said, “It’s gonna destroy everything.”, like when the cars were introduced, people were thinking, “It’s bad for people to travel at that speed.”. You know, that kind of stuff, like the planes, or telephones, or whatever was invented, there was always people who were afraid of it, like, “It’s scary. It’s too much.”. So maybe it’s the same thing with this kind of stuff. We just haven’t learned how to deal with it yet. And maybe twenty years from now we look back and think, “You remember when we were scared about AI? Hahahaha.”. Maybe it will seem like laughable then.

Do you remember all the hoaxes, or whatever I’m gonna call it, before the millennium change?

Yeah, I remember that. I remember sitting there thinking like, “The world is gonna end.”, and then nothing happened. That’s a good example actually. I remember that. The big bug; the Y2K.

It’s just insane how time flies. You know, Accept has been around for about fifteen years now with Mark. And looking back, your first album was in ’79, and fifteen years from that was 1994, and then we’re up on Death Row, and that seemed like a long time when I was younger. And now, fourteen years since Blood Of The Nation have past just like that (I snap my fingers).

This is why I wrote that song, Ravages Of Time. I was sitting there thinking, “My God! I joined Accept when I was sixteen years old.”. I’m 64 now, and I still feel like I’m sixteen, I still behave like I’m sixteen, I’m still as dump in a lot of ways, I still have the same amount of fun, but clearly, I’m not sixteen anymore. You know, I was just thinking, like, “I wonder how much longer this will go on, and can go on?”, because, like it says, “Nothing lasts forever.”.

But the Flying V is still there. How often do you use other guitars than a Flying V when people don’t see you?

Never anymore. Even on this record I think I tried a Strat, once or twice, as an overdub because I wanted a slightly different sound. But even that was hardly worth it. I’ve really gone away from using all these different guitars, ‘cause that V is pretty much all I need. I’m so happy to have this custom model by Framus, that they make for me. It’s really all I use. It’s wonderful.

And ever since the Breaker and the Restless And Wild albums, it’s been like a trademark for Accept as well.

Right. But back in those days I actually did use a Strat. I never used that Flying V, that everybody knows. I never used that in the studio, ‘cause it didn’t get the right sound for me, in the studio. It looked great on stage, and I loved it for playing live. And even Balls To The Wall and all these things that people thought were played with a Flying V… That’s a Strat that you hear. It just has a different feel, and more attack, so it does sound different.

You guys release albums quite frequently, I would say. You didn’t remember why you started playing guitar, but can you see where your creativity comes from to make all these songs, and even songs that don’t end up on the albums?

That’s a miracle to me, because, I mean, I know I have to make myself work. Like, there’s a time when I know it’s time for a new album. Because that’s kind of the natural cycle of things in the metal and rock world. You know, you make an album, you do a bunch of tours, and then it’s time for a new album a few years later. New material, because that keeps it fresh, that keeps it exciting. So, I know it’s time, but then the songs don’t just fly out of thin air to my thing. I just basically have to tell myself, “Get your ass in the studio!”. It’s almost like going to the gym actually. You know, when you’re fat and lazy, you sit on the couch, but then there comes a day when you say, “Okay, now I’m gonna do it.”, and then you go to the gym. You feel like shit the first time, you feel like shit the first week, but after a while you get into the swing of things, and you start feeling better. And it’s very similar with the songwriting. At first nothing comes, but then you have to remind yourself, “Just stay with it, and work on it for a few weeks.”. And then, shit starts to happen. You get into the sort of creative zone, and ideas start to pop in out of thin air. And where do they come from? I have no idea. Sometimes I just sit there, and, “Boom! There’s an idea.”, and you wonder, “Why did I just have that idea? Where did it come, from?”.

Do you get ideas too, that just don’t work for Accept?

Oh, many. Tons of them. Yeah, stuff that’s too slow, too poppy, too nice, too evil, sounds too much like somebody else. Yeah, I have them all the time. And that’s why I play all that junk to Andy, and say, “Hey, man. Which are the songs we should focus on?”. ‘Cause sometimes I’m just lost.

To what extent, if you have, have you been writing stuff for artists outside of Accept? Stuff that people don’t know about.

No, I have not. Have I? Very, very little? No. Oddly enough, now that you say that, I worked with a band in Germany once. I had even forgotten about it, but all of a sudden, I get this call, and I was asked for the BRIT Awards on TV. All of a sudden, I had this song that had won the BRIT Awards, and I’d completely forgotten about it. Apparently, I played a small part, and recording it, or something, all these years ago. So I must have done stuff that I even forgotten about. But anyhow, that song ended up being played on those BRIT Awards shows, and I was like, “Really?”. I don’t remember the song, I don’t remember doing it, but it was registered in my name, in part, so I must have participated in it. (Laughs) In any case, no, I never really do that, to answer your question.

It’s not totally uncommon that metal guitarists and songwriters write stuff for other artists outside of heavy metal, because it’s their profession besides playing guitar.

I mean, if I’m looking for a personal outlet, that’s when I focus on my classical, instrumental stuff that I do. I’d love to do that more, because that to me is almost like taking a vacation musically from Accept. That’s a bit of a challenging, fun side project that I really enjoy. It’s so different from Accept that there’s no crossover, you know. ‘Cause I wouldn’t wanna write songs for other people that sound like Accept, if you know what I mean? ‘Cause I’m very mindful of Accept, and that’s almost like holy ground, and I don’t wanna mess with that.

Accept certainly has its own style, but from the first record up until Metal Heart, I would say. Like, six records. You developed kind of to something new with each and every record. Then maybe Russian Roulette was kind of the same thing. But then you started developing again with Eat The Heat, and Objection Overruled, and Death Row, and into Predator. In those days there were big changes, but nowadays, I wouldn’t say that they sound the same, that would be rude, but now it’s been six records in a row that really sound like Accept, and nothing but Accept.

That’s on purpose. That is by default. I’ll tell you why. When we got back together in 2009, and Peter and I started writing songs, they were pretty much all over the place initially. There were demos with, like, weird stuff, and stuff that we thought, like, “Well, a bit of that sounds like Accept, but this other stuff don’t.”. And we played all that stuff to Andy, and he said, “Man, I’d love to make a record with you, but I want it to sound like Accept.”. He made us actually listen to our own old albums, and he said, “That’s a killer moment there. That is cool. This is cool.”. And then, “Okay, that’s what you like.”. And from that moment on, we kind of realized, “Okay. We can write that sort of stuff more.”, and the result is Blood Of The Nations. And since that worked so well, and people really loved it, we thought, “Okay, we got our marching orders. Let’s do more along those lines, and stay on course.”. We found an audience. I mean, the audience was still there, but we found new people. We found our sound with Andy, and we found our singer with Mark, and, “Those are the tools. Let’s just march on straight from there.”. We don’t have to find a new style. We know who we are, we know what Accept should sound like, and there’s no reason for us to, like, really deviate from that. That’s why they are so consistent. And I consider myself a bit of the gatekeeper on that. I mean, I make myself write on target as much as possible. And I remember having quite a few discussions about it, even with Peter sometimes, when he came up with songs that in my, or Andy’s way of thinking didn’t really fit Accept. We said, “No. It doesn’t really sound like us. Let’s focus on something else.”.

Like, “Make a solo album.”, like you do.

Yeah, exactly. That’s okay. I think it’s totally legit to do that. I mean, we’re not making the music because we in the spur-of-the-moment go, “Oh, we wanna make something completely different.”. I think we make it for the audience. The same with live shows. I mean, if you think about the setlist, I don’t pick songs just because I feel like, “Oh, I wanna play this obscure stuff tonight.”, but I think about the audience, and say, “Okay. What would they like the most?”. We’re not just playing for us; we’re playing for them. It’s a two-way thing.

Everyone pretty much knows that Wolf Hoffmann has two big interests, music and photography, but is there a third interest in your life, that people aren’t aware of?

Um, I’m a handyman. I mean, I like to build stuff, and I always have. I like to do carpentry, I like to work on houses, I have remodeled bathrooms, I have remodeled whole houses. I mean, there’s not a lot of things that I can’t fix. I mean, I don’t do cars, and mechanical things. Like Uwe, for instance, he’s a car mechanic. He can look at a car and say, “Oh, it needs this and that.”. He knows all of that. I have no idea about cars. But when it comes to houses, and stuff, electricity, and water lines, and shit, I can do the job. I like doing that. And I’ll tell you something else, that hardly anybody knows: In the ‘80s we used to have this huge backline, with Marshall cabinets all over the place. Like, we built those things ourselves. ‘Cause it was so expensive to have, like, a massive wall, and we thought, “You know, let’s just make them ourselves. They’re easy to make.”, and then we did. They sounded great, they looked great, and yeah, we made them all ourselves. (Laughs)

By Tobbe – Published April 17th, 2024