Plagues of Babylon dropped earlier this year, and Iced Earth have been out doing what they now do best: Write great music, and tour like crazy. Metal Exiles had the opportunity to chat with Iced Earth main-man, Jon Schaffer during the band’s stop at the House Of Blues, Sunset Strip. This is the band’s first North American tour in support of Plagues. Jon touched on the tour so far, a bit about his songwriting technique, and plans for the rest of the year.
An Interview with Jon Schaffer of Iced Earth
by John Knowles
Metal Exiles: It sounds like you guys have been extremely busy. You guys just seem to be firing on all cylinders right now. The camaraderie seems better than it ever has been before. What are your thoughts on the vibe of the band right now?
Jon Schaffer: Well, it's great. I think everyones tired right now because we've been putting in some serious long months and hours of work in the last three years really. It's not just the last 5 or 7 months, or whatever of actually being out on the road, there's a lot of stuff going on. But the camaraderie is great. I mean we still don't have a drummer in the permanent position. You know, Rafael came in and did the recording with us and did some of the Volbeat tour, and Jon Dette came in and he's our fill-in guy, and I really appreciate that they both came in to help the band out, but we really haven't found our guy yet. That's something that we're working on and we'll see what happens. We've got some guys lined up for the summer and we'll make that announcement soon, but we're kind of waiting to find "the guy" before we commit to something. But the camaraderie between the 4 of us is great. I mean, we're very good friends and we have a lot of fun together, and the chemistry is awesome, so its cool.
Metal Exiles: I've heard some stories of how the after show shenanigans would go down on the recent Volbeat tour. Lots of rum and whisky and just an all around good time. But obviously those guys are your brothers in arms, and you're very close. So how is being on the road now with Sabaton and ReVamp?
Schaffer: It's great. I mean they're really cool people too. I never had met the ReVamp people before, but I met Floor in Germany once when we were doing a show...I think on our headlining tour. She came out to see us and introduce herself, because she knew we were touring together. The Sabaton guys...we've done some festivals through the years, and I've seen a little bit of their show, but I never really got to meet them. And they're great, I mean they're really cool people. It's a good package. I think it's a really good, strong package. But you know the Volbeat thing, the relationship there really stems from Michael and I's relationship, and I think everyone sees that the leaders of the bands are like brothers and in a way it’s a really special thing. Everyone gets along, and it even filters down to the crews. That's one of those really rare things that I think very seldom happens. I mean I haven't had that kind of a relationship with another band since Blind Guardian, in the very beginning. There's that kind of brotherhood and friendship there that's really special.
Metal Exiles: You have selected some great songs on this tour that haven't been played in a while. What have been some of your favorites on this tour?
Schaffer: We've been moving it around a lot, actually. It's the cool thing about being an active band, and with a vast catalog like Iced Earth has you can really dig into it. There's so many eras that people love, from the beginning until now, so it's difficult to come up with a set list. Michael from Volbeat is the one that really came up with the set list that we've been doing in Europe and here, even though we've moved songs around and tried different things in different territories. I would say "Red Baron" is very cool...we're doing that off of The Glorious Burden. It's been a long time; I don't think we've done that since that tour happened. I like doing "Boiling Point" off of Dystopia; it's a raging one that's always fun to do. We were doing "Disciples of the Lie" every now and then, that's another cool one to do. In Europe we were doing "Jekyll and Hyde," and we did "Wolf" for a while...we did a lot of different things through the catalog. But most of this tour has been focused on new stuff and Dark Saga and Something Wicked. The last album cycle we did "Dante's Inferno" and we did more Dystopia. We did a varied set list...it's a big catalog so it's difficult to really do it all. But I think on the next album cycle we're talking about bringing "Gettysburg" back...at least 2 of the 3 parts or something, because there's a lot of demand for that, and I think it would be great.
Metal Exiles: What songs for you guys are especially difficult, or maybe not able to be performed live? "The Reckoning" comes to my mind as being a real beast.
Schaffer: We've done it back during the original tour. It's a challenge, normally for the drummer...a song like that is a real bitch. And it's one of those that if it's not lining up - I'm so anal about timing and the details that if it's not really in the pocket, you know. And there are some songs that just translate better live than others. I mean "Wolf" is another one of those, where we're executing it pretty well, but to get that to happen through a PA system...that kind of speed, that kind of tightness, and control. If you're not in the right room, it just sounds like a mess. You have to be in a controlled environment to hear all of the (hums complex rhythm pattern)...it's a lot going on. If you do have it in a room that acoustically sucks, than it can be more frustrating than it can be productive. And then a song like "Gettysburg" you have to have backing tracks, because I wrote that song and the symphony parts. Those two things are not separate; it's part of the composition. So unless Iced Earth starts playing arenas and we can have an actual 60-piece symphony with us we have to use tracks. It does work, we did it, and it's cool. It's a very epic sounding piece, because we did it on the Glorious Burden tour, and I think we did a couple parts of it on the Crucible tour. It's just a different thing, man. Some songs I feel like are never even worth considering live. I don't know, you can just tell when an album's out what songs are gonna really speak to the people and then obviously we hear from the people and then we know. A lot of times that dictates it.
Metal Exiles: A lot of bands are doing the whole anniversary thing where they are playing an entire album. Has that idea ever come up with you guys?
Schaffer: It's come up from other people. I'm really not in to doing something like that right now. The problem is there's too many records and I just feel like if the band's going to go on tour I don't know that it makes sense to focus all of any record. Maybe someday that will make sense, but it doesn't right now. There's just too many eras that are very popular with the fan base. And I feel like in a way we're giving them a good chunk of Something Wicked, giving them a good chunk of Dark Saga, and then a lot of new stuff. So yeah, it's really not something I am very interested in doing right now.
Metal Exiles: Your songwriting approach is pretty focused. And it seems like you set up time to specifically do that, but do ideas ever come up on the road that you just can't help but lay down?
Schaffer: Sometimes there's riffs that are worth laying down and recording, but there's a lot more to songwriting than that, and the same thing with scratching down lyrical ideas. But for me - the kind of writer that I am - all the shit that we do out here is a gigantic distraction to my creative spirit. It’s a whole different thing. So yeah, if I come up with a cool riff, we may catalog it, and may look at it again, or we may never look at it again, you know? I have hours of that kind of stuff. But to actually get into the songwriting mode is not just about the riff, it’s not just about the lyric, it’s about the arrangements and it’s about actually having a vision of what the whole package is going to be from the album cover to what the live show's going to look like, and that's why for me, I have to get into a certain headspace to really make that happen, and out here it’s distraction after distraction. Somebody’s pulling me in one direction and there's the live show and there's interviews. It’s constant people in your shit all the time. And that's not a place for me to think that there’s going to be any real songwriting going on. Some guys do it, but it just doesn't work for me.
Metal Exiles: On kind of a side-note, I wanted to say to you that your approach to songwriting has changed the way I look at a song. You've said it’s all about the song, and I believe in metal sometimes that's forgotten. Aside from all of the speed, technical skill, and fluff that goes into a lot of recordings, at the end of the day there has to be a song in there somewhere, and your music has always made that clear.
Schaffer: That's cool man. Like, I've written many songs that don't even have a guitar solo...because I don't really care about guitar solos. I mean, if it makes the song go somewhere, if it fits, if it makes sense, cool. But if it doesn’t, than fuck it, who cares? It’s about the vibe of the whole thing and the arrangement and the lyrical content. It’s a mountain of details, and that’s the actual song. It’s not just, well I came up with a riff, I'm a songwriter. It’s not it, there's a lot more, way more. And arrangement is hugely important, and the production of the whole thing, the order of the record, all of these things. It’s a gigantic mountain of details, it all counts, and that's why for me, being out here, and really thinking about doing something like that, and achieving the kind of standards that I've set for myself as a writer and I think for what our fans expect out of the band...this isn’t the place to do serious arrangement decisions or anything. It gets in the way of rum and whisky night too (laughs).
Metal Exiles: What do you guys have coming up by way of tour schedule and recording plans?
Schaffer: We're doing some festivals in Europe, but after that we're taking some much needed time off, because the last three years have been really, really intense. We're going to take a break, and I actually have to have another surgical fusion...neck surgery again. It’s really fucked up, and has rapidly gone down hill in the last couple of years. I had the first one in 2000 and now its time. We knew back then I was going to have to deal with it again, and now its time. So that's got to happen and the soonest I can do it is September. And I think the rest of the year we're chilling. And we do have some stuff on the agenda for next year, but that will be announced in time.
Metal Exiles: This touring momentum, is it more about the exposure at this point? Or, is there some element to it that stems from the fact that you haven't ever been able to tour with this frequency, and it's just a lot of fun?
Schaffer: Well, it's a mixture because we've got a group of guys that really enjoy doing it, and that makes it fun when people are enjoying it. On the other hand, I really miss my daughter. I hate it, you know? And we get together whenever we can but, with the band it’s kind of the drive that I’ve always had, and it’s always been there. And now there's a group of guys that are willing and wanting to do it, and having fun doing it. And also, man we're just going to so many different places around the world, because the music has just spread, and sometimes it takes years for us to know that wow, we have fans in China. Or we have fans in Israel; we have them in Moscow and St. Petersburg. We've been to so many different countries in the last 3 years. New Zealand, and we played Australia for the first time a few years ago. Lots of places in South America, Central America, and it’s one of those things where the music is really global. Maybe it always has been, or we're just now in the last few years finding out about it. But, we basically have done some touring in the last few years like Maiden did back in the Powerslave and Somewhere In Time era. You know, where they were really going full force. Now of course they were playing arenas, so they were traveling a little bit more luxuriously than us, but you know, the spirit is there and we are having a fucking blast together. We really do, but it is time for us to rest a little. Everybody needs it. I mean, my crew needs it, and the guys in the band need it, and I need it, because my job involves a lot more hours that just the instrument and going on stage. There's many other things, and it’s kind of all consuming Iced Earth 24/7, and I haven’t had a vacation since 2009 so it’s time to step back and I don’t want to hear the words "Iced Earth" for a few weeks. I need to disconnect for a little bit. But having said that we're still having fun, it's just a very tiring lifestyle, and when you hit it the way we have been, I think at some point the people just start to burn out. And we don’t want to get to that point. We don’t want to burn out, we want to rest and come back stronger than ever so that’s what we're going to do.
Metal Exiles: Some rest time is very well deserved. Jon, thanks so much for your time and speaking to us before the show, and I look forward to the set tonight!
Schaffer: No problem, take care.
Visit Iced Earth’s official Web page here.
Purchase Plagues of Babylon here.
Purchase Plagues of Babylon on VINYL here.
An Interview with Jon Schaffer of Iced Earth
by John Knowles
Metal Exiles: It sounds like you guys have been extremely busy. You guys just seem to be firing on all cylinders right now. The camaraderie seems better than it ever has been before. What are your thoughts on the vibe of the band right now?
Jon Schaffer: Well, it's great. I think everyones tired right now because we've been putting in some serious long months and hours of work in the last three years really. It's not just the last 5 or 7 months, or whatever of actually being out on the road, there's a lot of stuff going on. But the camaraderie is great. I mean we still don't have a drummer in the permanent position. You know, Rafael came in and did the recording with us and did some of the Volbeat tour, and Jon Dette came in and he's our fill-in guy, and I really appreciate that they both came in to help the band out, but we really haven't found our guy yet. That's something that we're working on and we'll see what happens. We've got some guys lined up for the summer and we'll make that announcement soon, but we're kind of waiting to find "the guy" before we commit to something. But the camaraderie between the 4 of us is great. I mean, we're very good friends and we have a lot of fun together, and the chemistry is awesome, so its cool.
Metal Exiles: I've heard some stories of how the after show shenanigans would go down on the recent Volbeat tour. Lots of rum and whisky and just an all around good time. But obviously those guys are your brothers in arms, and you're very close. So how is being on the road now with Sabaton and ReVamp?
Schaffer: It's great. I mean they're really cool people too. I never had met the ReVamp people before, but I met Floor in Germany once when we were doing a show...I think on our headlining tour. She came out to see us and introduce herself, because she knew we were touring together. The Sabaton guys...we've done some festivals through the years, and I've seen a little bit of their show, but I never really got to meet them. And they're great, I mean they're really cool people. It's a good package. I think it's a really good, strong package. But you know the Volbeat thing, the relationship there really stems from Michael and I's relationship, and I think everyone sees that the leaders of the bands are like brothers and in a way it’s a really special thing. Everyone gets along, and it even filters down to the crews. That's one of those really rare things that I think very seldom happens. I mean I haven't had that kind of a relationship with another band since Blind Guardian, in the very beginning. There's that kind of brotherhood and friendship there that's really special.
Metal Exiles: You have selected some great songs on this tour that haven't been played in a while. What have been some of your favorites on this tour?
Schaffer: We've been moving it around a lot, actually. It's the cool thing about being an active band, and with a vast catalog like Iced Earth has you can really dig into it. There's so many eras that people love, from the beginning until now, so it's difficult to come up with a set list. Michael from Volbeat is the one that really came up with the set list that we've been doing in Europe and here, even though we've moved songs around and tried different things in different territories. I would say "Red Baron" is very cool...we're doing that off of The Glorious Burden. It's been a long time; I don't think we've done that since that tour happened. I like doing "Boiling Point" off of Dystopia; it's a raging one that's always fun to do. We were doing "Disciples of the Lie" every now and then, that's another cool one to do. In Europe we were doing "Jekyll and Hyde," and we did "Wolf" for a while...we did a lot of different things through the catalog. But most of this tour has been focused on new stuff and Dark Saga and Something Wicked. The last album cycle we did "Dante's Inferno" and we did more Dystopia. We did a varied set list...it's a big catalog so it's difficult to really do it all. But I think on the next album cycle we're talking about bringing "Gettysburg" back...at least 2 of the 3 parts or something, because there's a lot of demand for that, and I think it would be great.
Metal Exiles: What songs for you guys are especially difficult, or maybe not able to be performed live? "The Reckoning" comes to my mind as being a real beast.
Schaffer: We've done it back during the original tour. It's a challenge, normally for the drummer...a song like that is a real bitch. And it's one of those that if it's not lining up - I'm so anal about timing and the details that if it's not really in the pocket, you know. And there are some songs that just translate better live than others. I mean "Wolf" is another one of those, where we're executing it pretty well, but to get that to happen through a PA system...that kind of speed, that kind of tightness, and control. If you're not in the right room, it just sounds like a mess. You have to be in a controlled environment to hear all of the (hums complex rhythm pattern)...it's a lot going on. If you do have it in a room that acoustically sucks, than it can be more frustrating than it can be productive. And then a song like "Gettysburg" you have to have backing tracks, because I wrote that song and the symphony parts. Those two things are not separate; it's part of the composition. So unless Iced Earth starts playing arenas and we can have an actual 60-piece symphony with us we have to use tracks. It does work, we did it, and it's cool. It's a very epic sounding piece, because we did it on the Glorious Burden tour, and I think we did a couple parts of it on the Crucible tour. It's just a different thing, man. Some songs I feel like are never even worth considering live. I don't know, you can just tell when an album's out what songs are gonna really speak to the people and then obviously we hear from the people and then we know. A lot of times that dictates it.
Metal Exiles: A lot of bands are doing the whole anniversary thing where they are playing an entire album. Has that idea ever come up with you guys?
Schaffer: It's come up from other people. I'm really not in to doing something like that right now. The problem is there's too many records and I just feel like if the band's going to go on tour I don't know that it makes sense to focus all of any record. Maybe someday that will make sense, but it doesn't right now. There's just too many eras that are very popular with the fan base. And I feel like in a way we're giving them a good chunk of Something Wicked, giving them a good chunk of Dark Saga, and then a lot of new stuff. So yeah, it's really not something I am very interested in doing right now.
Metal Exiles: Your songwriting approach is pretty focused. And it seems like you set up time to specifically do that, but do ideas ever come up on the road that you just can't help but lay down?
Schaffer: Sometimes there's riffs that are worth laying down and recording, but there's a lot more to songwriting than that, and the same thing with scratching down lyrical ideas. But for me - the kind of writer that I am - all the shit that we do out here is a gigantic distraction to my creative spirit. It’s a whole different thing. So yeah, if I come up with a cool riff, we may catalog it, and may look at it again, or we may never look at it again, you know? I have hours of that kind of stuff. But to actually get into the songwriting mode is not just about the riff, it’s not just about the lyric, it’s about the arrangements and it’s about actually having a vision of what the whole package is going to be from the album cover to what the live show's going to look like, and that's why for me, I have to get into a certain headspace to really make that happen, and out here it’s distraction after distraction. Somebody’s pulling me in one direction and there's the live show and there's interviews. It’s constant people in your shit all the time. And that's not a place for me to think that there’s going to be any real songwriting going on. Some guys do it, but it just doesn't work for me.
Metal Exiles: On kind of a side-note, I wanted to say to you that your approach to songwriting has changed the way I look at a song. You've said it’s all about the song, and I believe in metal sometimes that's forgotten. Aside from all of the speed, technical skill, and fluff that goes into a lot of recordings, at the end of the day there has to be a song in there somewhere, and your music has always made that clear.
Schaffer: That's cool man. Like, I've written many songs that don't even have a guitar solo...because I don't really care about guitar solos. I mean, if it makes the song go somewhere, if it fits, if it makes sense, cool. But if it doesn’t, than fuck it, who cares? It’s about the vibe of the whole thing and the arrangement and the lyrical content. It’s a mountain of details, and that’s the actual song. It’s not just, well I came up with a riff, I'm a songwriter. It’s not it, there's a lot more, way more. And arrangement is hugely important, and the production of the whole thing, the order of the record, all of these things. It’s a gigantic mountain of details, it all counts, and that's why for me, being out here, and really thinking about doing something like that, and achieving the kind of standards that I've set for myself as a writer and I think for what our fans expect out of the band...this isn’t the place to do serious arrangement decisions or anything. It gets in the way of rum and whisky night too (laughs).
Metal Exiles: What do you guys have coming up by way of tour schedule and recording plans?
Schaffer: We're doing some festivals in Europe, but after that we're taking some much needed time off, because the last three years have been really, really intense. We're going to take a break, and I actually have to have another surgical fusion...neck surgery again. It’s really fucked up, and has rapidly gone down hill in the last couple of years. I had the first one in 2000 and now its time. We knew back then I was going to have to deal with it again, and now its time. So that's got to happen and the soonest I can do it is September. And I think the rest of the year we're chilling. And we do have some stuff on the agenda for next year, but that will be announced in time.
Metal Exiles: This touring momentum, is it more about the exposure at this point? Or, is there some element to it that stems from the fact that you haven't ever been able to tour with this frequency, and it's just a lot of fun?
Schaffer: Well, it's a mixture because we've got a group of guys that really enjoy doing it, and that makes it fun when people are enjoying it. On the other hand, I really miss my daughter. I hate it, you know? And we get together whenever we can but, with the band it’s kind of the drive that I’ve always had, and it’s always been there. And now there's a group of guys that are willing and wanting to do it, and having fun doing it. And also, man we're just going to so many different places around the world, because the music has just spread, and sometimes it takes years for us to know that wow, we have fans in China. Or we have fans in Israel; we have them in Moscow and St. Petersburg. We've been to so many different countries in the last 3 years. New Zealand, and we played Australia for the first time a few years ago. Lots of places in South America, Central America, and it’s one of those things where the music is really global. Maybe it always has been, or we're just now in the last few years finding out about it. But, we basically have done some touring in the last few years like Maiden did back in the Powerslave and Somewhere In Time era. You know, where they were really going full force. Now of course they were playing arenas, so they were traveling a little bit more luxuriously than us, but you know, the spirit is there and we are having a fucking blast together. We really do, but it is time for us to rest a little. Everybody needs it. I mean, my crew needs it, and the guys in the band need it, and I need it, because my job involves a lot more hours that just the instrument and going on stage. There's many other things, and it’s kind of all consuming Iced Earth 24/7, and I haven’t had a vacation since 2009 so it’s time to step back and I don’t want to hear the words "Iced Earth" for a few weeks. I need to disconnect for a little bit. But having said that we're still having fun, it's just a very tiring lifestyle, and when you hit it the way we have been, I think at some point the people just start to burn out. And we don’t want to get to that point. We don’t want to burn out, we want to rest and come back stronger than ever so that’s what we're going to do.
Metal Exiles: Some rest time is very well deserved. Jon, thanks so much for your time and speaking to us before the show, and I look forward to the set tonight!
Schaffer: No problem, take care.
Visit Iced Earth’s official Web page here.
Purchase Plagues of Babylon here.
Purchase Plagues of Babylon on VINYL here.
