ACCEPT Guitarist Says Reunion Feels Like It Was 'Meant To Be'

Ruben Mosqueda of Sleaze Roxx recently conducted an interview with guitarist Wolf Hoffmann of reformed heavy metal legends ACCEPT. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Sleaze Roxx: You guys reunited with Udo Dirkschneider from 2004 to 2005 and had a string of successful appearances at various European festivals. What's the story behind Udo not being involved with the band now? Was he not up to doing new music with ACCEPT?

Wolf Hoffmann: No, he wasn't; that's really what it came down to. He wasn't into it. He basically gave a little bit of time to do the shows you mentioned and after that he wanted to go back and do his own thing again. In the end we have to live with that because he has been a solo artist for twenty some years. We always felt that ACCEPT was a stronger act, so we assumed that he'd want to continue to do stuff with us. We thought that by having all the original players in the band it would have been enough of an incentive for him to work with us. He just didn't want to do it. All the reviews for the festival appearances were favorable. If you get the critics and the fans agreeing you've got something there, it is just strange that he wouldn't want to be a part of it. We couldn't force him to do it.

Sleaze Roxx: Call me crazy, but there were some good songs on the 1989 album "Eat The Heat". I liked David Reece's voice on that CD, but obviously the consensus from most of the fans was very critical of the music and choice in vocalist. Thinking back now, would you say that you were invested with David for the long haul as the permanent singer in the band?

Wolf Hoffmann: Well, the plan was to take things as far as we could. To be honest, the thing was just doomed from the beginning. It was just something that we were so committed to that once we got going it spiraled and we couldn't pull the plug on it... it was just too late. We were so far into it that there was no turning back. We realized in the process that our personalities and David's personality just didn't mesh, yet we moved forward. I was hoping that the songs would be strong enough to make it work, but they simply weren't there. It was a different time — that was over twenty years ago and things were just so different then.

Sleaze Roxx: Right. One more question about the David Reece era if I could and then I'll let it go. As a fan, I have to ask... would "Eat The Heat" fared better if you had not placed the ACCEPT name on it?

Wolf Hoffmann: (long pause) I would say probably not because we were ACCEPT then. The way I see it is that we were still the same guys in the band who wrote all the previous material, we just had a different singer. I think it just wasn't meant to be and there is no other way to put it. That leads into the present with the way things have gone with how [bassist] Peter Baltes and I met [new singer] Mark Tornillo, how [producer] Andy Sneap got involved, or how the crew that shot our music video for "Teutonic Terror" got involved, makes me think that this is meant to be. Everyone just crossed our path and it worked out, like it was meant to be. This was the complete opposite of working with David Reece... we tried and tried and nothing happened.

Sleaze Roxx: I was just wondering. It would have been an easy call to get your friend [and former ACCEPT producer] Michael Wagener on board for this album. He lives in Nashville too, so why is he not involved?

Wolf Hoffmann: Michael and I have a long history together. In fact, he had been renting space from me on my farm for about ten years or so. I helped him build the studio there on the farm. And you're right, Michael would have been an obvious choice, but he didn't believe in it. But when we met Andy Sneap there was no other consideration. Andy was just what we were looking for and that is the God's honest truth. We weren't even thinking about a producer because we were deep in the songwriting process. Andy got involved when he got word that we were regrouping and he contacted us. We met and we hit it off... and here we are.

Sleaze Roxx: I interviewed you years ago. It seems like it was in 2005, but after thinking about it for a bit I think it was probably around 2000. At that time ACCEPT was on hiatus, or disbanded, and you were concentrating on photography. How did you do in that career and is it something that you'll continue to do after ACCEPT?

Wolf Hoffmann: It must have been around 1999 or 2000 I think. I am quite successful as a photographer. I don't do any of the landscape photography, because frankly, it's not very lucrative. I got into the corporate end of things and would shot things for corporations, whatever they needed. I'd shoot people in the board rooms and stuff like that. You'd be surprised how many of these guys in the board rooms are, or were, metalheads in the day. They were surprised when they found out who I was before I became a photographer. I never set out to tell them, if it came up it came up you know. One of the questions that always comes up is if I shoot music. I don't, I haven't been interested in it. I wanted to shoot things that were far removed from metal or music. It just never appealed to me at all. I'll definitely continue with photography in the future.

Read the entire interview from Sleaze Roxx.