MANOWAR Guitarist Explains The Band's Massive European Success

MANOWAR guitarist Karl Logan recently spoke to Mark Uricheck of NEPAtoday.com about his rise from a struggling musician in Northeastern Pennsylvania to a position in one of the world's most prominent heavy metal bands.

Logan recalls initially hooking up with the band via an encounter with bassist Joey DeMaio at a motorcycle shop. "We started talking and found out that we had common musical ground," he says. "I found out that their guitar player was leaving the group at that point. I was coming out of several bands in the area that I had played in and I was looking for something bigger. We started talking and exchanged phone numbers and basically one thing led to another. We had the same goals and interests, and the rest is history as they say."

Joining a well-established band can sometimes be nerve-wracking and tedious, but Logan says he had a great time with it. "It was really like a dream come true, going from playing small local bars to playing in front of 30-40,000 people in arenas in Europe," he says. "It really surprised me to see how a band almost completely off the wire here in the U.S. could have such a huge career over in Europe." Logan says he completely understands how this is possible by pointing out the discrepancies in the European and U.S. music scenes. "America is so trend-driven, where in Europe they tend to hold onto a little more of a tradition." He likens a U.S. record label marketing a hot new artist at radio to buying advertising time; they try to fill the niche. "Over in Europe they're not really set up that way. There's a much greater diversity," he says.

How do you account for the loyalty of MANOWAR's fan base? Karl Logan feels that it's more of a universal theme that attracts the band's fans. "Metal fans are somewhat part of a disenfranchised group," he explains. "I think that a lot of the kids that turned to metal or still hold on to metal are used to being the outcasts. That's how I was when I was growing up, I was always the outcast. I wasn't part of any social group or clique. Just by nature of the lyrics or the music, it seems to appeal to that group. We're kind of the kids on the side that never get noticed." MANOWAR has a long history of empowering lyrical themes such as believing in yourself, the power of the individual, and finding inner strength that seems to resonate with fans worldwide.

Read the rest of the NEPAtoday.com article at this location.