WOLF HOFFMANN Says UDO DIRKSCHNEIDER Is Standing In The Way Of Future ACCEPT Plans

Metal-Rules.com recently conduced an in-depth interview with ACCEPT guitarist Wolf Hoffmann. Several excerpts from the chat follow:

Metal-Rules.com: Well I must ask again. After this [reunion] tour is over, is that the real end of ACCEPT?

Wolf: "Well, I hope it would happen again, honestly. I wish we could do this every ten years, or every five years. But it's pretty unlikely, the way Udo's [Dirkschneider, vocals] behaving and shit. He's making it really hard for us. We're trying everything we can, but it's always us against Udo."

Metal-Rules.com: That's strange?

Wolf: "I know. I can't understand it either, because I think he would help himself with his own career, if he was more cooperative. He's just totally counter-productive every step of the way."

Metal-Rules.com: Because then he would sell more copies of his brand new album, which is soon coming out…

Wolf: "I know! You would think so. I don't see why he can't say, 'Yes, this is ACCEPT, this is the real thing.'"

Metal-Rules.com: As you know he plays mostly ACCEPT songs on tour with U.D.O. What do you think about that?

Wolf: "I know! But he's trying to think like he's as good or better than ACCEPT. Which is silly, because history teaches everybody that if you, imagine like Bruce Springsteen, I mean Bruce Dickinson, and IRON MAIDEN — if Bruce Dickinson had his own band and played 80 per cent or 60 percent IRON MAIDEN, he still wouldn't be as good as the real thing. You never can be, because the real thing is the real thing. You're best off, if you start your own band, to be totally different from what you've been. That's kind of why, about ten years ago, I walked away from this music scene. I had the choice too — I could've started my own band, but I could already see that people would always compare me to ACCEPT. I'm 'the old ACCEPT guitar player,' and if I did anything that's rock-related, people would almost force me to play ACCEPT songs at my own shows. It would be very close to ACCEPT, but it wouldn't be the real thing. It never can be, so I think the only choice you have, once you've been in a successful band like ACCEPT for that long, once you start you're own band you have to be totally different."

Metal-Rules.com: Is there going to be a live album or a DVD from this tour?

Wolf: "I don't know about a live album. My hope is that we can record some material for a DVD. That's my big hope. And hopefully, Udo will agree to that? So far, we're still fighting. If he says no, we can't do it. We'll see, hopefully. Like I said, he's difficult every step of the way. I hope that he will agree to that, 'cause that will be something for the fans that people can remember for a long time, and it could be sort of a testimony — 'this was the last version of ACCEPT that you saw.' Hopefully we can release something, because we never really made any good DVDs."

Metal-Rules.com: Tell us something about your photography career?

Wolf: "I've been taking pictures for almost 20 years now. It started as a hobby, and I got more and more involved in it during the 80s. I was a serious amateur, taking pictures on the road when we were travelling, and I got bigger and bigger cameras. Even in that break we had from '89 to '90 or whatever, I was trying to start working with other photographers as an assistant, and I wanted to be a full-time photographer, and then the band got back together, so I stopped. When we really quit for good in '96 I said, 'I wanna walk away from everything, but what else can I do in life?', and this is what I thought I could do."

Metal-Rules.com: You have been making a living doing that?

Wolf: "I have been making a living for the last eight years with just that. It was very hard the first three years, but for the last five years I've been having a great career and having a fabulous life just doing photography for advertising agencies and magazines and things like that."

Metal-Rules.com: How does it feel to be on the "other side" of camera?

Wolf: "It feels great, and what I like about is the fact that it's not a group effort. I'm just sort of my own guy. I hire an assistant, I hire a makeup artist for the day, but other than that I'm my own one-man company. A one-man army. I love that aspect of it. Whether the photo's great, or if it sucks, it's really up to me, in a way. Not because the singer is pissed off or the drummer didn't show up, you know what I mean? At the same time, it's a totally different field that nobody knows me in. I'm a schmuck just like everybody else. I don't get any special treatment just because I've been in a metal band. Nobody knows what I've done. There's no crossover. There's no crossover ever, except for I did a very cool project where I photographed the personal guitar collections of world-famous guitar players, like Chet Atkins and Les Paul. I went to their homes and photographed the personal guitar collections of Les Paul and Chet Atkins. Those are sort of collector's books that come out, with beautiful, glossy pictures. That was a lot of fun, because as a guitar player I had a special interest in all these prototype Les Paul guitars from like 1953."

Read the entire interview at Metal-Rules.com.