Richard Kruspe

Richard Kruspe (2011)

Richard Kruspe (* 24. June 1967 in Wittenberg as Sven Kruspe ) is a German musician , lead guitarist of the band Rammstein and singer of the called him into being tape-project Emigrate .

Life

Kruspe, who is also called "Scholle" by friends, grew up with his parents and several siblings, including an older brother, first in the Brandenburg village of Weisen near Wittenberge in the GDR . He describes his childhood as beautiful and carefree, he lived in an "intact parental home". His parents later divorced, his mother remarried and moved with her children to her new partner in Schwerin in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania . Kruspe described the relationship with his stepfather to Rock Hard magazine in 2008 - but also in other interviews - as difficult. According to his own account, after escalations with this, he often ran away from home, slept on park benches or stayed with a friend. Because of his disappearance, the police wanted him several times.

In his youth, Kruspe was a successful wrestler. He wrestled with the BSG Lok Wittenberge .

According to his own statement, he earned his first money as a cashier at a bottle deposit box. After school he trained as a cook . He reported on this in a rock-hard interview in 2008 :

“When I got the chance to do an apprenticeship elsewhere, I immediately took it and went to Hagenow . Apart from a large army base, however, there was nothing there, so I spent all of my free time playing guitar for two and a half years. "

- Richard Kruspe

Because he made music in public in addition to his job without the official license to play in the GDR - he was the guitarist of the band Das Elegante Chaos - and also illegally earned money with self-made jewelry, he came under the focus of the Ministry of State Security , according to his own statement . This wanted to use these offenses - he had neither the necessary skilled worker training nor did he pay taxes for the secondary income sources - to oblige him as an unofficial employee . According to Kruspe, he was given the choice of becoming IM or going to jail - he was given a week to think about it and was sworn to absolute silence. He did not obey this, but, according to his own statement, spread the story among his acquaintances in order to be considered chatty and thus useless for the Stasi . According to Kruspe, his move was a success.

In 1988 he moved to East Berlin in the Prenzlauer Berg district , where he lived in a backyard apartment on Lychener Straße. Kruspe describes this time as "lonely" today, because he never really made friends and played guitar a lot by himself. On October 10, 1989, he happened to be involved in a demonstration against the GDR regime. He was arrested and, according to his own statements, held in a police station in Berlin-Weißensee , interrogated for hours and also beaten. Kruspe, who by his own admission had never thought about leaving the GDR, now decided to flee. He and a friend did this two days after he was released. The two fled to West Berlin via Czechoslovakia , Hungary and Austria . However, he didn't feel at home there, as he reported to Rolling Stone magazine in 2011 :

“In West Berlin I was lonely and always on the go. Mostly at concerts, ([I]) saw Nirvana in the loft and stuff. One evening at a party I wasn't invited to, I met a woman and through her the former drummer of Fehlfarben . I finally made some music with him again. In the long run the living situation with three people in one room was very stressful, and in the east there was endless cheap living space. So I'm back again. "

- Richard Kruspe

After the fall of the Berlin Wall , Kruspe first went to Schwerin, where he made contact with his old friend and later Rammstein colleague Till Lindemann , who at that time was still working full-time as a basket weaver and also played drums in the fun punk band First Ass . The unemployed Kruspe - he said he stayed there for five years - soon moved back to East Berlin .

In 1991 he became the father of a daughter who came from a relationship with Till Lindemann's ex-wife. The relationship broke up around 1993, according to Kruspe, his partner broke up with him.

At times he lived in Berlin with his future Rammstein bandmates Oliver Riedel and Christoph Schneider in a shared apartment.

On October 29, 1999, he married the South African Caron Bernstein , who works as a model, actress and singer. He took her last name and called himself Richard Kruspe-Bernstein. He moved to his wife in New York City and lived there for a total of eleven years. After the divorce in 2004 he dropped the middle name "Bernstein" again.

Kruspe has lived in Berlin again since 2011. He was in a relationship with the musician Margaux Bossieux and has had a daughter with her since 2011. He is also the father of the 1992 born actor Merlin Besson from a connection with the musician Tatjana Besson .

Musical career

According to his own statements, Kruspe was noticed as a child of a teacher because of his musical talent. However, since his sporting career as a wrestler was considered more important in the GDR, he was never allowed to take music lessons. According to his own account, before he started making music himself, he was initially active as a DJ . In order to be able to work as a so-called record entertainer in the GDR , he completed a course.

When he visited Czechoslovakia with some friends at the age of 16, he bought a guitar that he actually wanted to resell in the GDR in order to earn a little money. In the end, he rejected this plan and kept it. Today it is said that he started playing the guitar because a girl asked him to and that he realized that women like men who can play the guitar. In 2009, Kruspe answered the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung when asked whether he wanted to impress girls as a teenager with his rock and punk music:

"Probably. Though I've never had a problem getting girls. I wasn't the ugly, shy guy in the corner. My situation was more like this: I was often arrested in the room, and music was the only bridge for me to escape. I can remember exactly how I sat alone in this dreary room at home, looking outside and listening to tapes with music by Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and AC / DC. "

- Richard Kruspe

From 1987 until his escape in 1989, Kruspe played guitar in the band Das Elegante Chaos . After the fall of the Berlin Wall and his return to East Germany, he was a short musician with the Schwerin group Das Auge Gottes , then joined Lindemann's band First Ass as a guitarist . In this formation he recorded the album Saddle Up in 1992 with Lindemann , singer Steve Mielke and the then Feeling B guitarist Paul Landers . From the end of 1991 he was also a guitarist with the band Die Firma - where he replaced the aforementioned Landers . Until 1993 he also played in the crossover band Orgasm Death Gimmick , which he founded in 1991 with three like-minded people.

At the beginning of the nineties Kruspe traveled to the USA for the first time with Lindemann and Oliver Riedel - at that time bassist with The Inchtabokatables - and explored the southwest of the States there. In the years before he had become more and more enthusiastic about American music and wanted to experience the country and the music scene for himself. He reported about this trip in 2001 in the photo book Rammstein by the light artist Gert Hof :

“I realized that the music I'd been making up until then had nothing to do with me. So I returned to Germany and the idea came up to create a project that had to do with German music. I wanted to try to bring machines and guitars together, hard guitars. "

- Richard Kruspe

Together with Lindemann and Kruspe's roommates Riedel and Schneider - the latter was an ex- Feeling B drummer and also a drummer at Die Firma , where Kruspe met him - he founded a new band project. Schneider had also been to the USA in 1993 - at that time still with the band Feeling B, he was touring the southeastern USA with this band. There he, like Kruspe, was inspired by the music scene and gained new impulses.

The quartet initially named the whole thing Tempelprayers. While Kruspe was composing, initially strongly influenced by the musical style of US metal bands such as Pantera , Lindemann wrote the lyrics. In the beginning, however, despite Kruspe's idea of ​​“creating German music”, these were still in English. In 1993 there was the chance to take part in a competition organized by the Berlin Senate for young bands. The main prize was a week in a professional recording studio. The prerequisite for participation was the delivery of a demo tape, which, according to Kruspe, the four friends recorded in his kitchen:

“The problem with that was that we only had a 4-track device and a small drum machine. Till, he usually came at night, so he sang the things under the covers because we weren't allowed to be so loud. We then sent in the demo and won immediately. There were four of us - Schneider, Olli, Till and me. "

- Richard Kruspe

The official founding date of the victorious band, later renamed Rammstein, is January 1, 1994. Kruspe is still the main initiator of the group, which got a fifth member shortly after winning the competition in the spring of 1994 with the addition of rhythm guitarist Paul Landers and was finally completed by the initial guest keyboarder Christian "Flake" Lorenz . Lorenz was initially opposed to the chosen musical direction; but according to his own statements and statements by his band members, he was also the one who explicitly asked for German lyrics. Despite all these founding difficulties, Kruspe initially only saw Rammstein as a project, as he said in an interview with the music broadcaster Viva in the late 1990s.

Kruspe von Feuer frei during a live performance !

Side project emigrates & other collaborations

In 2004 it was announced that Kruspe was planning to start a parallel music project called Emigrate . In an interview with laut.de he said:

“Besides Rammstein, I always lacked a certain musical balance. I no longer wanted to be just the type of person who beamed myself into a primarily visual world surrounded by fire and missiles every evening. I'm primarily a musician. So I was looking for a project that was all about music. With Emigrate I found exactly this opposite pole. "

- Richard Kruspe

The debut album is also called Emigrate and was released on August 31, 2007. Kruspe not only plays the electric guitar, but is also the singer. Other members of the band were Henka Johansson ( Clawfinger ) and Arnaud Giroux . Various single releases followed ( My World , New York City and Temptation ). On November 14th, 2014 the second Emigrate album Silent So Long was released , which Kruspe recorded together with Giroux and the apocalyptica drummer Mikko Sirén. Kruspe engaged guest singers for a number of songs, including Frank Dellé von Seeed , the late Motörhead singer Lemmy Kilmister , Jonathan Davis von Korn , singer Peaches and Marilyn Manson on the album . In the video for the single Eat You Alive with Seeed singer Dellé , Kruspe's partner Margaux Bossieux , bassist in the New York punk girl band Dirty Mary , can also be seen and heard. She also takes on vocal parts on some tracks on the album.

According to his own statements, Kruspe does not want to go on tour with Emigrate. In the aforementioned interview with laut.de he also said:

“Now I have a terrific live band ( Rammstein ) on the one hand and a band with whom I am musically perfectly merging on the other ( Emigrate ). Everything fits. So the question arises for me: Why should I jeopardize this balance again? (...) Personally, the risk of losing balance is still too great for me at the moment. I mean, could I just go on stage with Emigrate without people expecting fire and spectacle? I have my doubts."

In an interview with Metal Hammer magazine in June 2017, Kruspe said that the third Emigrate album had already been finished two and a half years ago. Since then he has been waiting for the right time for a publication.

On October 19th, 2018 Kruspe released the first single "1234" from the third Emigrate album A Million Degrees . He announced the album for November 30, 2018. The Canadian Billy Talent singer Benjamin Kowalewicz takes on the lead vocals at 1234 . The album was produced by Sky van Hoff .

In 2007 Kruspe worked as guitarist on a song on the Apocalyptica album Worlds Collide . Together with the cellists and his Rammstein colleague Till Lindemann , he recorded the song Helden - a German-language cover version of the David Bowie song Heroes .

Instruments

Kruspe at a concert with Rammstein (2010)

At a music fair a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Richard Kruspe became aware of an ESP 901. He bought it and still plays it today.

Since 2005, three RZK Signature models have been available from guitar manufacturer ESP . These are the ESP RZK I in silver, the ESP-RZK I in Burnt and the ESP-RZK II in Burnt . The basic form of the ESP RZK I is a Stratocaster . In the silver version, all elements except for the fingerboard are silver, a Rammstein logo is attached to the body behind the bridge, the inlays on the fingerboard are in the form of the Rammstein cross. In the burnt version, the guitar is painted in beige. There are deep scratch marks in red in the wood of the body. The edge of the body is in a burnt style, the lacquer throws black bubbles. The pickups (EMG 81) have a red cover. The basic shape of the ESP RZK II is an ESP Eclipse ( Gibson Les Paul ). It is only available in burnt . In contrast to the RZK I, the pickups (also EMG 81) are silver and not red. In contrast to conventional guitars, there is only one single potentiometer that controls the volume of the guitar. The guitar is equipped with a tremolo system.

He gave a copy of his burnt version of the ESP RZK to the film and video director Jonas Åkerlund during the filming of the video for the song Mein Land , which was made in the USA in 2011.

Discography

• With Emigrate: → see Emigrate / Discography
• With Rammstein: → see Rammstein / discography
• 2003: Schtiel ( song by the band Aria covered by Till Lindemann and Richard Kruspe on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Harley-Davidson , the edition was only about 400 copies)
• 2007: Helden (Appeared on the album Worlds Collide ( Apocalyptica ) with Till Lindemann as singer and Richard Kruspe as guitarist, David Bowie cover)
• 2016: Move It with Tomoyasu Hotei

Filmography

• 2003: xXx - Triple X

Web links

Commons : Richard Z. Kruspe  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Richard Kruspe in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Emigrate : Official site
• Rammstein : Official site

Individual evidence

1. ^ Rammstein's Richard Kruspe - Wikipedia: Fact or Fiction? In: Youtube.com. November 5, 2014, accessed May 9, 2020 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} noz.de: Rammstein guitarist Kruspe: I tricked the Stasi , October 30, 2009, accessed on February 12, 2017
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} rockhard.de: Schwatzkasten mit… Richard Kruspe ( Memento from February 13, 2017 in the Internet Archive ), issue 256, September 2008, issue archive accessed on February 12, 2017
4. ↑ Viva Jam: Rammstein , episode 176, 1997, original sound from 24:35 min.
5. ^ Rammstein guitarist allegedly blackmailed by the Stasi ( Memento from November 1, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) In: RP-Online.
6. ↑ ^{a b c d} Gert Hof: Rammstein , Die Gestalten Verlag Berlin, 2001, ISBN 3-931126-32-3 , p. 16.
7. ↑ rollingstone.de: Exclusive interview with Richard Kruspe , December 8, 2001, accessed on February 12, 2017
8. ↑ Viva Jam: Rammstein , episode 176, 1997, original sound from 16:38 min.
9. ↑ Ulf Lüdeke: In the beginning there was fire - The Rammstein story, Riva Verlag Munich, 1st edition 2016, ISBN 978-3-86883-677-6 , p. 27
10. ↑ neuh.com: Rammstein guitarist Richard Kruspe , May 15, 2015, accessed on July 19, 2017
11. ↑ dw.de: Emigrate - Ein Rammstein on solo paths on Deutsche Welle, accessed on November 29, 2014
12. ↑ krone.at: Emigrate: “I have to prove that I am worth something” , accessed on February 9, 2015
13. ↑ she-wolf.de: Interview Richard Kruspe , December 6, 2014
14. ↑ schwäbische.de: Richard Kruspe in an interview from 3.13.2018
15. ↑ imdb.com: Merlin Besson , accessed March 27, 2017
16. ↑ bild.de: GZSZ star and Rammstein son shoot a nude film , May 21, 2015
17. ↑ Katrin Riedl, Lothar Gerber: Rammstein: Zwischen den Stühlen / Interview with Richard Kruspe, Metal Hammer magazine, June 2017 issue, p. 24
18. ↑ motor.de: Rammstein , accessed on May 22, 2017
19. ↑ NMI & MESSITSCH: We don't want that - Paul Landers on Feeling B , issue 1/1992, p. 51
20. ↑ Peter Richter: Rammstein , November 2011 for Universal Music, accessed on February 12, 2017 via fan-base.de (authenticity of the article confirmed by the author)
21. ^ Gert Hof: Rammstein, Die Gestalten Verlag Berlin, 2001, ISBN 3-931126-32-3 , p. 19.
22. ↑ Rammstein. In: Motor.de , accessed on January 9, 2017
23. ^ Gert Hof: Rammstein , Die Gestalten Verlag Berlin, 2001, ISBN 3-931126-32-3 , p. 19.
24. ↑ Viva TV, accessed on November 5, 2016 via youtube.com: broadcast Viva Jam - Rammstein , 1997, original sound from 4 min. 50 sec.
25. ↑ laut.de: Pack your balls and press! from November 27, 2014
26. ↑ Universal Music: Find out more about Emigrate's second album "Silent So Long" , October 14, 2014 here
27. ↑ metal-hammer.de: New Emigrate video "Eat You Alive"
28. ↑ laut.de: Pack your balls and press! from November 27, 2014
29. ↑ Metal Hammer magazine: Between the chairs - Interviews with Richard Kruspe and Paul Landers , June 2017, p. 25
30. ^ Metal-hammer.de: Emigrates new album
31. ↑ heavyhardes.de: Review Worlds Collide , accessed on April 14, 2017
32. ↑ Making-of Mein Land. Retrieved March 14, 2017 . 
33. ↑ Review of Worlds Collide on HeavyHardes.de