Christoph Schneider

This article deals with the drummer Christoph Schneider. For the guitarist see Christof Stein-Schneider .

Christoph Schneider (2015)

Christoph "Doom" Schneider (born May 11, 1966 in Pankow , Berlin ) is a German musician . He is known as the drummer in the band Rammstein .

Life and musical career

His father is the opera director and university professor Martin Schneider . His parents taught him to play the piano. At a music school he learned to play the trumpet. He played in an orchestra for a long time. His family later moved, so he resigned from the orchestra. He built his first drum kit from buckets and metal construction kits. Even though Schneider's parents didn't like that he wanted to learn drums, they still gave him a drum kit when he was 14 years old.

He made his first band experiences from 1984 in school bands. At the age of 16, he played in the combo Sam's Dice Group with Steve Binetti , who was also of the same age and who, according to Schneider, was still called Stefan Bieniek at the time . According to Schneider, this band chose its name after a song by Jimi Hendrix .

At the age of 16 he left secondary school and completed an apprenticeship as a radio and telecommunications mechanic. During this time he also met his future Rammstein colleague Paul Landers for the first time , who was doing the same training without actually coming into contact with him.

In 1984 he began his military service , making him the only Rammstein member with army experience. After he had turned his back on the NVA , he played in various small independent bands from 1988 onwards , among others with Kein Aknung and the short-term project Cheeky . When the band Die Firma was looking for a drummer, he got involved. There he met Landers again , who played guitar with both Die Firma and the funpunk band Feeling B. About the first meeting with Landers, Schneider said:

“I saw Feeling B for the first time in 1983. At the time I was doing an apprenticeship as a telecommunications engineer. Paul learned the same trade, but was one year further. (...) I knew Paul loosely, we knew who we were, but I think he thought I was stupid. We really got to know each other at the company . That's how I ended up with Feeling B. "

From 1990 onwards Schneider was always a guest drummer at Feeling B , in which Landers and today's Rammstein band colleague Christian "Flake" Lorenz played. He played a key role in the realization of the third Feeling B album, The Mask of Red Death , and he had also worked intensively on the fourth album, which was no longer released. He toured the USA with Landers, Lorenz and Feeling-B singer Aljoscha Rompe as well as the band's (now Rammstein) sound engineer Andreas Vadda Vater in 1993 with the aim of touring there. In order to play, Schneider borrowed drum kits from local bands. In fact, the band gave several concerts, but overall with moderate success. According to a tailor, after a particularly chaotic Feeling B concert in the student bc club in Ilmenau , he angrily quit the band in 1993.

In 1994 Christoph Schneider lived with Oliver "Ollie" Riedel and Richard Z. Kruspe in a shared apartment in East Berlin.

Together with Till Lindemann they founded the band project Tempelprayers , which was initially still in English - later it was to be renamed Rammstein - and took part in a competition for young bands in Berlin. They won and thus got a week of recording in a professional recording studio, which took place in the spring of 1994.

When Lindemann and Kruspe spoke out in favor of accepting Paul Landers as a fifth member, Schneider was initially against it, as he had found him at Feeling B to be a “strenuous guy”. In the end, however, he accepted this, as the old Feeling-B colleagues had also "grown dear to his heart," as he said. Feeling B keyboardist Lorenz joined the group as the sixth member , and together they released their first album in 1995.

Role at Rammstein

According to his band colleague Flake , Christoph Schneider is considered the most disciplined and unpretentious member of the band. Flake wrote about him in his 2017 book Today is the World's Birthday :

“(...) He plays like a machine. Only better. It is a pleasure. Fortunately for us, we have a drummer who doesn't want to be realized in every song. (...) But the drummer is the heart of the band. He holds the band and the song together. And of course that works best with simple, clear rhythms. Schneider has the necessary discipline. "

- Christian Flake Lorenz, keyboardist Rammstein

According to Lorenz, this could have its origin in the fact that Schneider was the only band member to have done his military service in GDR times and learned stamina there. All other Rammstein musicians would never have had the experience of having to submit.

instrument

According to his own account, at the beginning of his career at Rammstein, Schneider played on drums made by the American manufacturer DW , which he bought himself shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. He recorded the first Rammstein album Herzeleid with it. These drums are in Berlin today in the home studio of Schneider's bandmate Richard Kruspe , Rammstein's lead guitarist .

In the following years he used drums from the Japanese manufacturer Tama and cymbals from Meinl . In 2008 he finally switched to the German drum manufacturer Sonor and to Canadian Sabian cymbals.

In January 2018, DW announced that the company would be supplying Schneider with drums, hardware and pedals from now on as the sole endorser .

Others

Schneider's sister, Constanze, who was two years younger, was at times the designer of Rammstein's stage costumes. She worked as a costume designer for the 1998 tour, while the band's two appearances were filmed in East Berlin's Kindl-Bühne Wuhlheide and later released as CD and DVD live from Berlin .

The nickname "Doom" comes from the computer game series of the same name : When Schneider needed a name for GEMA , Paul Landers suggested "Doom" because they liked to play this game. Today he regrets his name choice. Often he is also simply called “tailor”. Schneider was lyrically involved in the song Alter Mann on the 1997 album Sehnsucht . This comes at least in part from his pen.

In 1999 he played together with Rammstein singer Till Lindemann in a small scene in the film Pierre or The Battle with the Sphinx (French original title: Pola X ).

In 2003 he was responsible for the Sauerkraut remix of the Marilyn Manson song mOBSCENE together with Rammstein guitarist Paul Landers .

In 2011 Schneider cut his shoulder-length hair short at the request of his bandmates - his hairstyle, according to the musicians, influenced his playing style and made him drum too "metal-heavy".

Schneider is one of the financial supporters of the Berlin children's and youth theater "Murkelbühne / Meine Bühne - Dein Theater". He is married and a father.

Web links

Commons : Christoph Schneider  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Christoph Schneider in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin of July 6th, 2012 - "Whoever is good on earth during his lifetime": "Rammstein - With Germany's largest cultural export on tour in America". Page 12.
2. ↑ Manuela Müller: Christoph Schneider (Rammstein). New style, new luck. DrumHeads !!, October 2012, accessed on May 20, 2014 (German). 
3. ↑ Ronald Galenza, Heinz Havemeister: Feeling B - Mix me a drink; Punk in the East - extensive conversations with Flake, Paul Landers and many others. 3. Edition. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-89602-905-8 , p. 346.
4. ↑ Ronald Galenza, Heinz Havemeister: Feeling B - Mix me a drink; Punk in the East - extensive conversations with Flake, Paul Landers and many others. 3. Edition. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-89602-905-8 , p. 346/347.
5. ↑ Ronald Galenza, Heinz Havemeister: Feeling B - Mix me a drink; Punk in the East - extensive conversations with Flake, Paul Landers and many others. 3. Edition. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-89602-905-8 , pp. 213 / 292ff, 356.
6. ↑ Ronald Galenza, Heinz Havemeister: Feeling B - Mix me a drink; Punk in the East - extensive conversations with Flake, Paul Landers and many others. 3. Edition. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-89602-905-8 , p. 373.
7. ↑ Ronald Galenza, Heinz Havemeister: Feeling B - Mix me a drink; Punk in the East - extensive conversations with Flake, Paul Landers and many others. 3. Edition. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-89602-905-8 , p. 373/374.
8. ↑ Flake: Today is the world's birthday , p. 243f, S. Fischer Verlag, 1st edition 2017, ISBN 978-3-10-397263-4 .
9. ↑ drummagazine.com: Rammstein drummer Christoph Schneider joins DW on January 22, 2018, accessed on January 25, 2018
10. ↑ A DW COLLECTOR'S “JAZZ” KIT ON TOUR ON “FIRE WHEELS”. Retrieved August 14, 2019 . 
11. ↑ musicradar.com: Christoph Schneider talks about kit changes from July 22, 2010, accessed on January 25, 2017
12. ↑ sonor.com: Sonor welcomes Christoph Schneider on October 6, 2008, accessed on January 25, 2017
13. ↑ bonedo.de: Christoph Schneider (Rammstein) is now on the road with DW Drums and Hardware , from January 24, 2018, accessed on January 25, 2018
14. ↑ End credits concert recording, DVD Live from Berlin , 1999, Universal Music Domestic Division
15. ↑ 2010 interview with Metal Hammer
16. ↑ Booklet Maxi CD Marilyn Manson mOBSCENE : "Sauerkraut Remix by Schneider & Landers (Rammstein)", Nothing / Interscope Records, 2003
17. ↑ rollingstone.de: Exclusive interview with Christoph Schneider , December 2011, accessed on September 11, 2017
18. ↑ murkelbuehne.de: Aktion Theaterpaten , accessed on July 5, 2017