Europe are touring at the moment, and they are one of the main featured artists opening the Sonisphere festival at Knebworth at the end of July. Joey Tempest took some time to go over the build up to this year's main event!
Hi Joey – So how does it feel to be on the opening night of Sonisphere’s second year? You cant make this stuff up! You have to remember.....Five punks who grew up in the suburbs outside Stockholm listening to British rock, getting to play a festival like Sonisphere in the UK, is absolutely mind-blowing!....Knebworth! is like holy ground to us! Zeppelin's shows in ‘79, Queen's last gig with Freddy ’86... This could be the highlight of our year!
How did you get booked for this year? The chairman of LiveNation Europe Thomas Johansson thought we would be a great addition to the bill and helped us sort it out. Our manager Petri H Lunden has also been fighting hard for this to happen.
Had you heard much about Sonisphere’s reputation from the first year? If so was this part of the deciding factor to book for this year? Of course we heard about sonisphere 2009. The news of this festival was all over the place. We talked a lot about it in the tour bus and we wanted to get onboard then as well.
Do you have anything special in store for fans? We'll probably lean towards a more "heavy" sounding set. These kind of festivals cries out for that kind of thing. We'll burn off some of our new stuff like Last Look At Eden, The beast and Love Is Not The Enemy but of course some of our classic songs as well.
Are you looking forward to meeting any other talent there.. Gary Numan? Alice Cooper? Are you kidding! We'll be checking both those bands out. Festivals are a great place to check out and meet other artists you seldom come across....
The opening night has some mad events on – Including a world record attempt at Rocky horror’s “TimeWarp” with as many people taking part as possible. Do you think you guys will partake in this!!! That sounds like a blast! We’ll definitely try and see that spectacle in action!
Anything else you are likely to get up to whilst you are onsite? All kinds of naughty things I suspect. We love these kind of events. Recently we've started turning our own dressing room into a small rock club so if there is nothing else going on we'll just be hanging, listening to everything from Zeppelin to Them Crocked Vultures and behaving only like Scandinavian scoundrels can!!!
Moving onto the music – Are you going to be promoting any new material this year? We're still focusing on our recent CD Last Look At Eden. This album has really turned things around for us and we love playing it together with our older stuff. We'll be starting work on our next record in 2011. This year is for touring.....
Sonisphere is threatening to take over as the UK’s best Rock festival – But in your experience what has been the best Rock festival you guys have played at (worldwide?). JT. We're biased of course ;) "Sweden Rock Festival" has been very good to us – both in 2004 and 2009. Hellfest in France and Bloodstock here in the UK were both lots of fun as well......
After Sonisphere have you any other big shows lined up you’d like to tell us about? JT. We're really exited about playing the itunes festival at the Roundhouse this year. Two important festivals in the UK this year, hell......Maybe one of these days this band will amount to something!
Europe’s latest album “Last Look At Eden” is out now, visit [link]
