KING DIAMOND: 'We're Not Going To Play Without The Full Production, Pure And Simple'

Danish heavy metal singer King Diamond (KING DIAMOND, MERCYFUL FATE) (real name: Kim Bendix Petersen),was interviewed on a recent edition of Full Metal Jackie's nationally syndicated radio show. You can now listen to the chat using the audio player below.

To see a full list of stations carrying the program and when it airs, go to FullMetalJackieRadio.com.

Interview (audio):

Full Metal Jackie: First I want to talk to you about your health, because your first performance after triple bypass surgery was a year later with MERCYFUL FATE during METALLICA's run of anniversary shows. Was that overwhelming — not just METALLICA acknowledging your influence but that you were healthy enough to be there?

King Diamond: I didn't even know if I was going to be able to do it. It was a tough round, of course, with rehab and a lot of changes in your life. I cut out cigarettes completely — I had to do it; haven't had a drag since a year and a half ago — so changing of the diet, working out more and all this stuff. I have totally changed, I can also see in my body how everything has changed for the better. The first thing was, three months after, they're pretty tough on you. The surgeon said after ten days I was home from the hospital, first day he said, "You've got to go out and walk half a mile." [I was like] "Are you serious? I can barely stand up." I had to have help to get out of a chair. Everything was totally weird but that it how they do it. One week later I was doing a mile, so you're pushed out there and you almost feel like you shouldn't be here, that you've been given a second chance, but it's strange. I had to literally ask my wife when we were walking if she could really see me and feel me that I was actually there, and not as a joke, but really I had to have that confirmed so many times and that faded slowly down the road. Eventually, I got the chance three months after the surgery, I got to go down to say "Hi" to some friends, crew guys that also work with a band called VOLBEAT, and met them during the day and got the chance to get up onstage during their soundcheck and that made everything in my chest rattle. It felt so bad I had to get out of there that was then. Six months after that I got to go see what was going on with METALLICA — that was actually a year after with METALLICA — but still I did not know what was going on. My surgeon said everything in my chest looked good and it was back together well, 'cause they saw you open and open you like a double door practically and then when they put it back together I saw for the first time an x-ray. A month or two before going to METALLICA's anniversary I had like a braided metal rod, sitting all the way down and that's what was tying together the rib cage and had then had the rib cage screwed together around that. It's amazing what they do but the whole thing of learning how to breathe again was pretty hard. Breathing is completely different now. The voice is a million times better — it's like if I finally got to experience what it's like to drive a brand new car and always use to have used cars for instance. That's how my voice feels now. It's easier to sing all the things than ever before and it sounds clearer all because of the no smoking. It's so much better and easier but getting up onstage that afternoon of the show and see what the loud sounds and the vibrations are going to do to me this time. Am I gonna tell them it's not gonna work and I have to fly back? That was a possibility. So that was a pretty anxious moment when they turned the sound up and I felt nothing, no different and that's what my surgeon had told me a month or two before when I saw the x-rays and all that stuff. He cleared me for doing it so I did that and it worked and that was quite a big relief, but there are so many other things that you have to go through. Three months later I had a benefit that I participated in and sang three songs with some local musicians, two KING DIAMOND songs and one MERCY, and that was even better, so it was like, "Wow, this is going to be really interesting. It might be time to see if we can do a couple full shows." That's what we did two months ago and we did more than that actually because the rehearsals for it. We hadn't been playing together in a long, long time so I had a theater in Denmark and we rehearsed there for a week and in six days I did five full shows practically — had a day off then did Sweden Rock and no problems. The breathing and moving around on this new production which is really big, we've never had a production that big before and running around that set, not feeling out of breath at all was very new and very nice to experience. Now these last tests have been done and they went perfect, so now it's a matter of getting out there. We are arranging for everything now, setting everything up the right way. We have a new Internet store for the first time and I know the fans for good reason have been haunting us for this stuff because it's embarrassing. We've been so sloppy with that stuff, of course, for our own sake, too. You can certainly make some money off it to which is good for business, because we like to turn around and invest a lot of it, too. The money we made from these festivals and we invested the whole thing into the production. We're already getting invitations for other festivals next summer and I see us touring Europe, festival appearances, maybe even doing one before that here in the U.S., and then I hope we can do the U.S.and do shows, not club shows but with the full production, maybe sometime in October. We'll see, because they're working on all this stuff. For the U.S., we're just about to set up with a brand new agent over there, so that's going to be a powerhouse and doing things a whole different way. I would say a much bigger scale. Same lineup that we've had for years, so it's all good, and there will be new music, too, down the road. It won't be too long before we start writing some new stuff. So, yeah, a lot of stuff very busy. I'm trying to not be too busy because stress is not a friend of mine anymore.

Full Metal Jackie: Now being more conscious of your health, how has having triple bypass surgery been a life-changing event for you?

Oh, man, you have no idea. [laughs] There are so many things that go into it — just the way you look at life afterwards is certainly different. It's not like you become born again or anything life-changing in that respect; I'm totally the same person. The best way to explain it is, actually… Let's say I'm here at my house and I look out of the windows and now and then I see things through those windows — now it's like I have the double amount of windows. I see so much more, I pay attention to so many more things — the smelling sensation, the taste sensation are enhanced by a hundred because I don't smoke anymore. Taking walks sometimes bring back memories of my childhood because a smell might trigger a memory. For instance a wooden fence, I walked by and I smelled it and suddenly I'm with my parents who are dead now, and with my brother on a vacation in Norway when we were kids and we're walking the Viking ships somewhere, they've been sprayed by this special mist to preserve them and it just triggers memories like that suddenly. It's different, you're more alert, more aware. I don't take anything for granted anymore, I'll tell you that. If I'm not here tomorrow, well, so be it. I don't want that, but I'm much more prepared for that kind of scenario now. It is weird, but also the feeling in the beginning of not knowing. "Can you see me? Can you feel when I do this?" and my wife is like, "Hey, why are you being weird now?" You see people drive to work and we're out walking after the operation and you get that feeling of, "Man, I could have just as well not have been here." Then there's all the stuff that comes with it, the hardship of you can't lift a cup, you can't get out of a chair, you can't do anything. When they cut you up, all the nerves are trying to find each other again, and they still are today. You get these little pains here and there, but I've been told it's going to go on for years. The thing about them having punctured your lungs is that you have to learn to breathe again; it's a very, very weird feeling. I couldn't drive or doing anything in the beginning, of course. I love driving cars, so I went behind the wheel before I was allowed to do it. It was a matter of not being able to move around the steering wheel properly with your arms, but it's just these things that — I want to move on. I don't want to just sit in a chair, and that was the same thing in the hospital, two days after the operation I was up walking around with the help of a nurse, of course. Then when they set me free from that, I was off to a normal department to continue to get better. It was also the more you walked the sooner you'll get out of there and I was walking day and night. It reminded me of lyrics from "The Graveyard", for instance, walking the halls at night, no one was up it was just me walking these empty halls — such strange feelings, but I can tell you I brought so much with me out of there for the next album. I got some of the ultimate horrors waking up from the operation. [it] was the worst I've ever experienced in my life, but when I came to a little bit, my wife was there but I couldn't see her. What I saw was only in black and white and I saw doctors leaning in over me, it could have been in a spaceship, if they exist. They didn't look quite human, it looked weird and then I started remembering that they told me, "You will be on a breathing tube and very uncomfortable." You want to try and breathe on your own, but you can't because you are forced to breathe in a certain way and you can try and give signals to these doctors to let them know that you can breathe on your own but you don't know if you can, you have to learn breathing again. When I came to, I was desperately trying to signal something, but it was like I couldn't communicate; I had this tube in my mouth, I couldn't do anything, I was blinking my eyes, trying anything. I think panic was striking and I tried to pull this tube out of my own mouth and then they came in and tied me down to the bed, they grabbed my hands and my legs and they tied me down. That feeling of being tied down and not being able to communicate, I felt horror, I felt like I was being choked to death slowly because I couldn't breathe properly. I got so far out, had they been able to hear me they would have heard me begging them to please kill me because it felt that bad. I just really wished for them to kill me to end it. Then you wake up later on and find the wife is there and it's like, "Wow, you pulled through." I was on the operating table for seven and a half hours and I was on two days back to back. The first day they had to do an operation for four hours, the day before, where they go in your thigh through a vein — you're actually totally alert. That went well but it looked bad and it had something to do with the way its been in my family so it was hereditary. They said I couldn't have gotten such bad figures in my blood even if I tried eating the worse stuff and smoking 50 cigarettes a day, could not have given me that. I never really ate bad stuff, but there's a lot of things you find out afterwards now that I've been through meetings with nutritionists and my wife has become an expert on this stuff. You find out seafood is great, not shrimp, that thing has the most cholesterol I didn't know that before. Yeah, it's a weird thing, but it hasn't changed anything of my being, the way I am, how I think. It's just broadened my horizon, big time.

Full Metal Jackie: You mentioned new music earlier. Will everything that has happened find its way into this new music?

Oh I'm sure. [laughs] I'm sure there will be. A lot of that stuff that I experienced, that will be woven into a new album. It not be a story of what I experienced, but the feelings behind it, those will come across maybe in other ways. There has been so much in the old albums, too, throughout the career, much more than anyone will ever know is real or real feelings behind it, then you add something to it, to make the story fluent. There are so many more things in the stories and sometimes I really felt like, "Oh, man, you're showing way to much of yourself here," and then I think, "Well, no one's going to know if I don't tell them." It will be a lot of that here, too. It might hit home for a lot of people, maybe even deeper than before.

Full Metal Jackie: Coming from Denmark, your music and stage persona is very European. What's the most unusual way in which living in Texas has affected your songs?

Oh, man. See, the writing process, it doesn't affect it, because people write songs. Different bands use different inspirational moods to help create these songs. Some will like to sit by the ocean, some will like to this and do that for atmospheric influence. I just need a room that is dark, as dark as possible, with enough light to see — that's it. Even when I record vocals, I have just enough black light right over the lyrics so I can see the lyrics in case I need them. Otherwise, the room is black, and then there's a window into the control room. That way I can totally put myself where I want to be in the stories and create all those pictures. Each character that had ever been created, I know intimately, I know all their habits, their this and that. Knowing that while you create them and bring them into the studio when you record your vocals, it's essential so you can really put all your feelings behind what you're doing. So I need a dark room and I still can play guitar, of course, I can barely see what I'm doing, but that's what I need — that's it. A dark room in Denmark is the same as a dark room in the U.S., it's not a big difference for me in that respect. Texas, in some way, is a little closer to Denmark than, for instance, L.A. or New York is. It would have been harder for me to adjust to live in New York. I lived in L.A. for a year and a half and it was too different for me from Denmark. It's a bit more laid back in Texas, I feel. Some people have come and said, "Hey, what about all the Bible stuff?" and "Don't you feel this and that?" and not at all, I don't feel any of that stuff. I feel a lot of people seem to be extraordinarily friendly. I have no problem like that at all. One of my neighbors used to be a priest and very nice person and respectful person, too. He only once invited me to his church he said, "You're welcome anytime you want, if you want. I'm only going to tell you this once because I know what you're doing." [laughs] I was like, "Well, that's very nice of you. You won't see me, but…"

Full Metal Jackie: But that's a nice invitation.

Absolutely. He actually came by… He grew up with BLACK SABBATH and stuff, he liked that kind of music too. It didn't have to be weird just because he was a priest. It's a matter of how people are. I'm sure there are some priests that are so narrow minded that you wouldn't even want to wave at them because you feel like, lightening coming out of their eyes.

Full Metal Jackie: Is there anything you can tell us in terms of a timeline for new tour, new music and anything else, or is everything still up in the air at this point?

It's up in the air, because there's a lot of arrangements going on and negotiations going on, but we are talking next summer. Before that, we're working on finalizing the new record, it's so closed to being finalized. There's a lot of things that have changed, that's why. We went through this with a mindset that I'm going to pass a certain tests to do all this stuff and now it has happened. In the meantime we've tried to develop certain scenarios: if this happens, we should do it this way. Now we've gotten all the right personnel where everything looks so much better than it has ever looked before. So the way we're gonna do things it's going to be different. We're not going to play without the full production, pure and simple. If there's no room for it, then we don't play, it has to be all or nothing, no more playing with a half production and then the other half sits out in the truck, no more. It seems like that something has happened while we've been away, it seems like our style of music has come very full circle and for some reason it seems like we've taken several steps up the ladder without having done anything practically except for escaping death.

Full Metal Jackie: I think you guys have influenced so many bands that are starting to get recognized today and people are finally starting to take notice.

I think that's true, too. There's a lot of different components that are built into us being able to headline those two festivals we were at, at least those stages. We played the second to last band of all the bands on Sweden Rock Festival, headlined the second biggest stage there. MÖTLEY CRÜE headlined the biggest stage at Hellfest. It was packed as far as I could see, their arms were up, people were singing a long and it was mind-blowing — about 40,000 people right there. We played last that first night, the Friday night, but I think MEGADETH would have played last, to be honest, that night, but they had a schedule to catch certain things so they played right before us then they had to be somewhere else to play, I guess. We had full production on the stages we played on, and they were the ones that had the biggest audiences. It was really amazing to see and feel that and also the money that was there that we were able to put into finally doing this right and not just having to figure out to make ends meet and do a half-assed job. It's going to be really cool for the future to come up and really have a show that works out. We started a YouTube channel, too, where we did some interviews with some of the guys, I'm going to show some special footage we have from our rehearsal we have at that theater in Denmark. We were rehearsing the day METALLICA played in Denmark. We went to that show later on, but in the day we were rehearsing and we got to the last song, "Black Horseman", and it was the very end and something was moving out camera around – it was actually sitting on a flat case up, way up in the theater and our lighting engineer was standing in the center of this row and even have pictures of where the flat case was up there. The weird thing is was the camera was actually suddenly moving down, it was pointing downwards, meaning it would have gone into the case. I don't see that's possible and then it moved back up and it was moving a little and some inverted crosses were lighting up on stage and it started focusing in on those and then it stops as if nothing else happened from there on. If someone had moved it around even if there had been a person but there was no one but our lighting engineer there but if someone had moved they could not hold it physically, they could not hold it that still, it's impossible. There was no one there and twice that same day something had screamed at our lighting engineer behind him, there was no one in the theater. He showed me his arm with the hair standing and he said, "God, man, I'm telling you, there's stuff here," and then we show people the video and they're like, "Whoa." We also have a photo — I went out Monday I did a turn around and went to L.A. and [taped a guest appearance on] "That Metal Show" and it was just killer, so many cool people there it was Mark Tremonti was there [from] ALTER BRIDGE, Doug Aldrich from WHITESNAKE was there and the guys from the show and everybody there was just awesome. It was a great experience, but we got to show a picture from Sweden Rock Festival. It was the weirdest I've ever seen. It's me sitting with a lantern on a platform in front of the drum riser and our actress Jodi Cachia, she's from Philadelphia. She should have been standing behind me, but all you see [is] one leg up to her thigh the rest is not there. We'll post that up on our YouTube channel as well, so people can clearly see it. It was taken by a Norwegian called Håkan with a super digital camera; double exposure is not a possibility, you can't cut your leg off and leave it behind and then move the rest of your body so quick that the camera doesn't pick it up. The picture is physically impossible unless you're living in a parallel universe or something and she was in another universe for a split second coming in right when that photo was taken. I don't know if you're familiar with that show "Fringe"; I've seen it quite a few times. I like it, it deals with these possible parallel universes, and if that was the case, we should call "Fringe" [laughs] to take a look at this area, because it is freaky. I saw it at night time in my hotel in Denmark and we were discussing whether we should call Jodi at her hotel and ask her to be careful in the next couple days in case she has an accident and might lose her leg or something. It almost felt like seeing a snapshot of "The Omen" movie, but it's the weirdest thing. It looks like a shadow of her leg of that one leg that is shown, it looks like there is a shadow up against the drum riser, but when you zoom in a little that a black clone of it. There's a shape from the one kick drum where all the shiny metal stuff and the outside of the kick drum you can't see, it's shiny only on one of them. It's so weird, but you should definitely try to check it out once it goes up on our YouTube channel of if you can get a still picture from "That Metal Show". There's so many weird things that follow us. I could tell you more stories but it was so funny. [KING DIAMOND guitarist] Andy La Rocque said to me, "Well, duh, it's not that strange. Take a look at the set. It looks like a big antennae for the occult." It really does. It's a pretty big set. Very dark but it's fun.