RIA Novosti, April, 22, 2009     
Photo: Beilie

Thomas Anders Conference

This press-conference was held for Thomas Anders on April, 22, 2009 in an office of the information agency “Ria-News”. The style and expressions of Thomas and those who asked questions were kept almost as they are. Unfortunately, the interpreter didn’t know Russian language perfectly and couldn’t translate all questions to Thomas accurately. That’s why Thomas’ answers didn’t always correspond with the questions. However, the whole atmosphere of the conference was quite warm and sincere; Thomas had a nice mood and tried to answer all questions (even tricky ones) minutely and even gently. By the way, Thomas looked very good, he was fit and neat – a young gentleman with chuckling eyes and a bit tousled appearance.

Thomas Anders: Hello everybody! First of all, I wanna say I’m very happy to be here. And this is very special to me because my show tomorrow in Kremlin Palace will be the tenth show for me, and that means that no other foreign artist ever did more shows at the Kremlin Palace, so I was really surprised by that, to be honest, because I didn’t count it on every year. When I’m looking back, it’s now ten shows! And I’m very thankful for this, and thank you for being here, ladies and gentlemen!
Let the game begin!

- Tell me, please, how do you spend this day?
Thomas Anders: This day?

- Yes! How do you spend it?
Thomas Anders: To be really honest, I got up at 4 o’clock in the morning after 4 hours sleep. Then I went to the airport, and now I’m here, and the way from the airport to the press-conference took me even longer than the flight from Germany to Moscow!
So, this is Moscow traffic, right?

- Can you tell us about the program of the concert and the album that you’re representing now? Will you have old songs in the concert, or will there be new ones?
Thomas Anders: Well, all my concerts are in a certain way different. For sure there’ll be always a standard of the biggest hits, because this is what the people are waiting for. A concert with Thomas Anders without “You’re my heart, you’re my soul” wouldn’t be a concert at all. So, every time I’m working, even when I’m touring all over the world, and when I’m doing my private events, the concert changes every two years its concept as well.
So, I pick up songs from the older Modern Talking times; I choose them, and I take songs from the solo Thomas Anders’ career, and I change them with other songs. This time is very special because I will sing a few songs from my forthcoming album.

www.moderntalking.ru / www.thomas-anders.ru: Do you have plans in your musical creative work to cooperate with some instrumental bands like the one of Paul Mauriat or Glen Miller? Maybe, some collective records with them?
Thomas Anders: Oh, yes, yes! Yes, this is true. We were ascent the process of doing some shows with Glenn Miller, but this is, you know, specially for Germany, because this is a very big band, around twenty or twenty two people, musicians. We’re working on a special swing concept, but only for shows, not directly for an album.

- Thomas, tell us, please, what is the reason of the second cancellation of your concert in Perm which had to take place in the end of April? Does it somehow attribute to the crisis, or there’re some other reasons?
Thomas Anders: Oh, this is a good question. So, I really have to answer this. Sometimes it happens that some promoters are doing a bit their own thinking and going their own way. From my side I was really aware and I would really love to do the concert in Perm. But we had one problem: we never had a contract with this guy. And he started selling tickets without even having a contract. And this is really hard for us, because my management is sitting in Germany and getting a contract with him, because we need a contract, we need all of the travel details and stuff like this. But at the end he cancelled it for whatever reason, and I have no clue.
This makes me a kind of sad and upset because of fans who bought the tickets. So, from this point I can only give the advice that all the people who have interest for the shows and for the concerts, they should look at www.thomas-anders.ru (or www.thomasanders.ru), because they’re very informed what’s going on on my site, www.thomas-anders.com, and there they can really read if this show will happen or not. So, this was a really bad circumstance we had and I can apologize from my side even if I had nothing to do with that because it was a problem of a contract.

- Good afternoon! I’d want to ask one thing. You have a tradition to give Christmas concerts in churches in Germany. Do you have plans, as you’ve mentioned before, to record a Christmas DVD with a concert of Christmas songs performed in a church? Is this idea still alive? Thank you very much.
Thomas Anders: For the moment it’s not still alive, this idea, because I don’t have time to do another concert tour. I’ve been asked for doing some Christmas shows, but my schedule is really packed. But I was thinking about it, this is not the fact that I don’t wanna do this.
For DVD you need a really perfect location, you need a really perfect church, where there’s an allowance to make a DVD. You can’t do it in every church in Germany, so I don’t know how the situation is here in Moscow or in Russia.
It’s still in my mind, and it’s not gone, but not for this year.

- Dear Thomas, my name is Sergey Biryukov, the newspaper “Trud”. Tell us, please, who do you think you are mostly – Thomas Anders or… the label “Modern Talking”? And one more question: the issue of the reuniting of bands is very urgent nowadays in the world. I know that you’re strictly flat concerning the unification of your duet; nevertheless, are there some attempts to offer you a contract and some huge sums of money for the unification of your legendary band? Thank you.
Thomas Anders: So, the last question is pretty short to answer: NO! And the first one… I never felt I’m not Modern Talking, because Modern Talking is a fantasy name. It’s a brand. And Thomas Anders is a human being. You know, Modern Talking didn’t breathe, didn’t eat, didn’t sleep and didn’t go to the toilet. I was a part of that group, but I don’t reflect myself as Modern Talking.

- You sad “NO” – that means that nobody even asks you already, or there were some attempts to approach you and you said “NO”?
Thomas Anders: No-no, we were not talking at all, because we have completely opposite lives, and there’s no crossing in a way, so I think that people should really… in the memories of the people… Modern Talking and their music should stay in their minds and in their memory. But the 50% of it – it’s pretty much! – is still alive, still singing and performing!

- Thomas, the company “KM” has a tricky question: whom of the Russian “stars” do you know, and if you know someone, whom do you consider to be really talented?
Thomas Anders: So, this is the question I’ve been really often asked, to be honest. We all know in Germany, definitely, t.A.T.u., or I know Alla Pugacheva. I know personally Philip Kirkorov. But sometimes when I’m watching MTV-Russia, I hear a lot of good music, but I can’t read the names. So, it makes it really difficult for me to know who is singing.

- Good afternoon, Thomas! Thank you very much that you’ve come to us! I have a question to you. Few years ago, pretty long ago, together with “Chain Reaction” you have performed five songs, and one of them was “Out of the blue”. However, no one of your fans could listen to it in a good quality. Don’t you have a plan to collect all these songs that were not recorded and to finally release them in order for us to listen to them and to take delight in them fully?
Thomas Anders: No, it’s not planned to release them. You know, I’m a kind of musician that really loves making music and to be in a studio. I have a lot of people whom I know, my close friends, and we work in the studio. My main part is to sing. And there’re so many songs on several servers, in so many studios, but a lot of these songs will never be recorded. Some friends ask me, “Let’s sing a song together”, whatever… let’s make it together. But it’s just for fun.
Maybe, this is a really good situation, because there was one work that was working out; this was a duet with Sandra, which will be released in the next weeks. Maybe, now we’ll have a chance to have a look at the video.
Music would be good?
(The clip for the song “The night is still young” is shown on the screen)

- RIA-Novosti, Irina Gordon. We would like to hear from Thomas something about the forthcoming album – what is it about? Maybe, it differs from others by its music or whatever? Or there’re some experiments? Thank you.
Thomas Anders: Well, you’ve just heard an example what does this music like. This is more Eurodance, Europop; it’s a completely different album than the last one, “Songs Forever”. It was more into a concept, more in this very lounge-style. And the next album will be more into dance, more into commercial tunes.

- On May there’ll be the next Eurovision contest in Moscow. As far as I know, you’ve been asked to be a presenter of the broadcast of this contest for Germany. Did you agree to do that? And how do you evaluate the opportunities of Germany, which is traditionally not very successful in this contest, and of the contest itself? Does it have some development prospects?
Thomas Anders: Well, three questions in one, perfect! Yes, I’m the host of the show in Germany, and I did it four or five years ago. This is really very exciting, but it’s very-very tuff to do this. For your question, I don’t know which place Germany will have at the end. It wouldn’t be worse than the last year, because it was the last place. (Laughter)
So, we have a really good chance to be better than last year, but for me, to be really honest, it is not that important – to be in Top Ten or Top Five, because this is a great show. It’s a show for Europe and for all the European countries, most of them. So, we have a chance in between three hours just to look and to listen to the music in all of these countries, to see what’s going on there musically.

- (The following question was asked on German, and the interpreter couldn’t understand it at all. The lady said on German that she was a representative of the Russian SIB site and that there’d be a festival of German culture and language in Novosibirsk on August. The question was if Thomas could take part in it as a special guest).
Thomas Anders: So, now you want me to translate it into Russian? (Burst of laughter)
(Interpreter’s note: Will you let me know what’s going on?)
Thomas Anders: I know what’s going on! I think we’re the only two who really know what’s going on now! So, she said she is completely in love with me, she wanna have a baby from me! (Burst of Homeric laughter)
No-no, this is a joke!
She was asking for some shows in Novosibirsk; you know, this is my manager somewhere around, outside. This is his department.

- The next question will be on Russian. RBK, an information agency. Thomas, tell us, please, did the financial crisis somehow affect your creative plans? Maybe, it has influenced the touring? Can we hear now a kind of Thomas Anders’ anti-crisis recipe?
Thomas Anders: No, it doesn’t affect my music, and I’m not singing now only sad, sad songs, so I’m still pretty happy, and I’m a really lucky guy. I’m the one of the lucky ones who didn’t lose fifteen or eighteen billion dollars and have still five or six left…
I think it is something for everybody worldwide, maybe not for the people in the jungle or whatever, but all other people were infected by the crisis. We see it every day in news, and we can read it in newspapers. But, to be honest, this economic crisis didn’t push me into the personal crisis at all.
I think that for you in Russia it’s more special than for us, because when we just make a Schlagbaum (lift gate) on the political borders so many years ago… We’re really used to this kind of crisis. And we learned that it will always go up. After a deep valley you will have the chance to go on the mountain!
I really think and I hope that tomorrow in my show nobody will think about economic crisis!

www.moderntalking.ru / www.thomas-anders.ru: Thomas, the question is about the show that takes place in Germany. Do you look after the show “DSDS”, and if so, do you agree with the jury’s opinion concerning the issue of who will win? Or maybe you have some alternative opinion concerning the participants and you think that there should be another winner? And the third question – do you think that these kinds of shows are really needed? Because the artists in the 70-s had to go the long path for becoming an artist, and maybe because of this they could stay on top for a long time; on the other hand, the “stars” that appear due to this show can turn to be short-lived “stars” whose heads were turned by success and who can quickly fall down…
Thomas Anders: Yes, this is the way I think. First of all, we have to know and really should think about it. This is a show. No one is really thinking seriously to create a “star” for long terms. I don’t know how it works here in Russia, but in Germany none of these winners ever survived longer than two or three years. There were some winners whose period was only six or eight months. And we don’t remember the names anymore.
So, for me definitely the best way to have a long term career is to learn it, to learn it really from the bottom. These young talents who are in the show, they have absolutely professional surroundings. And we’re old enough to know that life circumstances never will give us all perfect surroundings. So, these new singers, they’re addicted to this! They have always perfect marketing and perfect people around. It’s a perfect show and it’s a push from a really big TV-channel. And from that point on when this people have to concentrate on a new winner, then the former winner didn’t have time to learn in between one or one and half year how this business works, and so he’s lost! This is the main reason why it’s pretty hard for them to survive.

www.moderntalking.ru / www.thomas-anders.ru: The question was if you watch these shows or not!
Thomas Anders: Sometimes. Sometimes I watch these shows, and sometimes I’m discussing with my wife when we’re at home. I really often say that these young people have to learn so much more. I’m in that business for forty years. I started at six. I had my first record contract in fifteen. That means I had nine years of development. When Modern Talking showed up, I was twenty or twenty one. It took me fifteen… or five to six years, and then I had a big, big career.
I had so many ups and downs, and these ups and downs helped me in the end to stay where I stay now and to learn from all my experiences. Nobody can tell me that in between these shows in Germany, for five or four months, that you have a chance to learn in between four months, while other artists have to learn fifteen years. This is not possible.

www.moderntalking.ru / www.thomas-anders.ru: The show DSDS is presented by Dieter Bohlen. What kind of feelings do you have towards this fact? Do you watch it with negative feelings, or do you feel that this show is presented by just a kind of your acquaintance? Maybe, something appears inside of you at the sight of him? (Laughter)
Thomas Anders: I watch this show and I don’t switch it on just to watch Dieter Bohlen. But what he is saying of music is ninety percent right. I agree with him in so many things.
But when you’re in Germany like me, when I’m in Germany, and I know all the things behind it, and I know him very well and I know why he is talking against one talent and for one talent. From the very beginning he is selecting which talent for him is good to produce and which one is not. He will never ever push a talent he can’t make money with.

- Tell me, please, how will you prepare to the tomorrow concert? I have heard that you’re a bit sick. How are you planning to take treatment, or maybe you’re going to rest? And did you ever have a kind of friendship or whatever with Russian women?
Thomas Anders: How close?

- The closer the better! (Laughter)
Thomas Anders: I think that tomorrow will be a really great show. At the moment I have still a little problem – maybe you can hear it – with the nose; I’m an allergic because of blossoms in springtime, I don’t know the expression on English – pollen? Yes, so. To be honest, from your weather circumstances and from your springtime you’re at least four weeks behind Germany, so I don’t have the problem hopefully tomorrow in Moscow.
This was the first part, right? Ok. The second part might be more interesting for you, because you don’t want to listen to my allergic problems. In all other human parts of my body I don’t have an allergy at all. I really love Russian women; they are very, very beautiful! There’re beautiful women in your country! You have so many worldwide models and really great women. You know, what is much more interesting for me that most of them are really nice, even if they’re not models.
Once… I don’t wanna tell you the name, but once I was here in Moscow, and I just came to my hotel. My hotel suit was shown, and I entered the suit… My luggage was dropped down, and I was just looking. I saw big plates of food, and on a stand it was an evening gown, black from Gucci. I thought this was very kind of Gucci to give my wife such a present! I went to the sleeping-room, and the sleeping-room wasn’t done. So, I thought that here’s something wrong. I called at the lobby and said: “Are you pretty sure that this is my room?” And it was a room of a very known, worldwide known Russian model. But the major problem was that she wasn’t there!
I’m pretty sure that she will never know that I was in her hotel suit. And this guy from the hotel had just mixed up the floors, so I was one floor higher…
Anyway, I have a really funny story to tell you.
And I didn’t take the Gucci gown!

- Few years ago you have already came here to Russia and performed on a Red Square together with the band “Scorpions”. As far as I know, you have quite friendly relations with Claus Meine. Don’t you have plans to record a joint project with “Scorpions”? Maybe, a song or an album?
Thomas Anders: No! We know each other, and sometimes we have shows. We’re in a show, and everybody is a part of it, so we had it some years ago on the Red Square. I think it was in 2003. I think that our music style is quite different.

- Can I ask you for an autograph after the conference?
Thomas Anders: If this is your wish – definitely, no problems!

- And what about taking picture? (Voice from the audience: “And what about singing?” (Laughter))
Thomas Anders: Yes!

- Thomas, don’t take my words wrongly, there was a second question for you! What are you planning to do before the concert? You’ve got all evening and a whole day tomorrow!
Thomas Anders: You know, this is a typical thinking that I have nothing to do just to make myself fresh for the concert! So, today there’s lot of more interviews, and the first interview tomorrow morning is at eleven. And then there’s the next one coming, and the next one coming, and the next one… Then I have my sound-check, and I think this sound-check will be till five, then I’m going back to the hotel, taking a shower and then – to the 2-hours show. On Friday I have a shooting for the German TV from eleven o’clock on. So, this is the complete day on Friday as well, and I’m going back on Saturday. It makes reason why my wife doesn’t join me so often when I’m touring. She says she knows how I act on stage, and on the other side she says: “To be alone I can be in Koblenz as well, so there’s no need to go somewhere to be alone”.
Now you’re surprised, isn’t it?

- Do you have your favorite places in Moscow and what kinds of Russian food do you like? You told us about your packed schedule this time, but maybe during your previous visits you could see something – some night clubs, museums or something else?
Thomas Anders: I’m not so into clubs because when I had my show I really love the silence more. But I’m always invited for some restaurants, and my favorite food is the mixture between European and Asian food. And I always like it very spicy.

- May I ask one more question, please?! A very small question!!
Thomas Anders: What will she do for that? (Laughter)

- A small question: what ringtone do you have on your telephone?
Thomas Anders: My ringtone? Do you wanna call me? (Laughter)
I don’t know… This is like a guitar or something like this. I don’t give my number!
It’s a guitar from the IPhone. I’m not into the special ringtones, bla-bla-bla, because I need one specially – I have to hear it, it doesn’t have to be complicated. I’m not so into the ringtones.
What’s your ringtone?

- “Geronimo’s Cadillac”, the remix!
Thomas Anders: She has a good taste, and it’s a perfect answer!
Spasibo bolshoe! (Thank you very much!)