It was an impulse, too. We were working on ‘Inner Sanctum’; I walked out from the recording room and I saw this guy. He stared at me, I stared at him, and everything was clear. It was like I cast a spell and he appeared. I told him that I needed a piano part for a song that we were working on. He agreed practically on the spot: ‘You know what … why not?’
We agreed he would visit us in a few days and record everything. When he showed up, he asked about the lyrics before he even sat by the piano. I showed him the words. This was some very honest stuff, taken from deep inside, but its undertone was rather far from Catholicism. But he didn’t mind. He didn’t want to play music; he wanted to play words.
‘I may see darkness in tunnels of light’—he stopped after reading this line, thought for a while, sat by the piano, and played a short intro. We were amazed; he played like a virtuoso. After a while, he asked if we could start recording, and he recorded his part. It was practically four sounds, which was exactly what the song needed.
Do you like jazz at all?
I hate it! It’s elevator music. Literally. These songs have no point. They never begin and they never end. I listen to jazz only when I’m staying in a hotel and I’m using an elevator to get to my floor. Or in some little bar in the middle of New Orleans where a jazz trio plays for you while you eat the best-in-the-world steak. I only like this kind of accompaniment when the context is right.
Wasn’t that an obstacle in inviting Mozdzer to record with you?
Absolutely not! I feel huge respect for this man. I think that musicians, actors, and people of the stage have this kind of universal code. They understand each other no matter what kind of art they each do.
Imagine this situation: I’m resting my head on the bar in the Radisson Hotel lobby in Warsaw. I’m more tired than drunk. It’s May, so it’s warm. I order another espresso, trying to energise myself, then I see this guy and I’m sure I know him. I know this face! He looks at me and I can see that he knows me, too. I don’t know him personally, but he comes up to me and shakes my hand like we’ve been friends for years. We started talking … and that’s what it is about.
The other night, I was shopping in some supermarket. Suddenly I’m back-to-back with some guy. We turn around, there’s a moment of consternation, and then we both laugh. We’ve never had the chance to talk before, but now we do a high-five. This time it was the Polish actor Borys Szyc.
Do you stay in touch with people you meet this way?
It depends. With Borys, we went to a few parties and danced all night. He’s a very sociable and rock’n’roll guy but I think I’m glad I’m not his neighbour or I wouldn’t get out alive. I have sporadic contact with Mozdzer. He was at our show in Gdańsk some time ago. Or, rather, he turned up prior to the show. He couldn’t stay but he brought us presents. I got underwear.
Are you joking?
He was in Brazil for a long time and decided to bring us something from there. It’s a beautiful pair of briefs—pinkish in colour. On the waist there are two two-headed eagles, very similar to the unholy phoenix—the symbol that we often put on our T-shirts. As it turned out, we had even infected Latin fashion.
CHAPTER X
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
Do you feel robbed when people download your songs from the internet?
No.
A lot of musicians do feel that way, though.
I take responsibility for myself, not for other musicians.
But think about it: you record something, you put your heart and a lot of money into it, and then somebody takes it for free.
If someone doesn’t know my music, downloads it, listens to it, then decides that it’s not his cup of tea and deletes the files, that’s OK with me. There will be others who will listen to it, they’ll like it, and they’ll buy the record. I see a kind of harmony in all that.
And if someone can’t afford to buy it but really likes it?
Then let them listen to MP3s. Maybe he will buy it next year? Who knows? And if he doesn’t, maybe he’ll come to our show and pay for a T-shirt? There are fans like that. The internet is like the radio. I understand it perfectly, and I’m not going to tilt at windmills.
Do you download music from the web?
Of course I do.
But you buy records, too?
I’ve got a few thousand records. If I’m waiting for something to come out or if somebody recommends it to me and I find it on the internet, then I download it. If it’s good, I buy a copy the next day. Or I buy three copies and I give two of them to my friends. If a record is awesome, I will also try to find a vinyl copy. I don’t think I cheat or rob anyone.
What do you think about artists who sue their fans?
That’s a tough question. I don’t want to preach to anyone as to how they are supposed to build their brand. I guess such artists must have a lot of free time, though, and I’d gladly borrow some of it from them.
So Behemoth fans needn’t be afraid of the postman appearing at their door brandishing a lawsuit?
Sometimes things that appear on the web irritate me, but what can I do? Nothing—the world changes. A few years ago, taking pictures at concerts was forbidden; nowadays nobody even thinks about such rules. It’s impossible to enforce them, anyway. People have mobile phones so they record what they want.
I go with that flow; I’m not fighting it. I adapt to suit my goals. I treat technical advances as a tool that lets me reach more people. Besides, recordings like that are nothing more than digital bootlegs, and I happen to love bootlegs. I sometimes pay a lot of money for a bootleg on vinyl.
Why don’t you upload your records to the internet so that everyone can download them for free, then?
I don’t think that’s a good way. I’m a musician; that’s how I make my living. It’s my job and my only source of income. If I put all my heart into something then my prize is my honorarium.
A director spends months taking care of all details of his movie. He fights for quality. Would you appreciate it if you had to watch that movie via a shaky-handed recording somebody made at the cinema? I don’t think so. A movie is not just about the plot, and by the same token a record is not only about sounds. It’s also about the lyrics, the cover, the photos, the smell of the paper … do you like the smell of paper?
But you download music yourself.
And I often battle my own thoughts. I was born in a generation for whom music was a source of wonder. It was physically difficult to get records. For me, the buying of the records was a ritual. You waited for an album; you grabbed it, looked at it from every angle.
Today, the world is faster, there’s no place for such deliberation. Before, one had to wait for ages for the release; then we had to physically run to the shop to buy the thing. If it wasn’t there, we had to go back the next day. And we would swear, get pissed at the shop owner, at the distributors …
I liked record shops. I loved roaming around the shelves, browsing through the records. I still like it, but I don’t do it as often as I used to because I don’t have enough time or patience. Today, we have auction websites where you can buy everything in a matter of seconds. It’s convenient. Is the world a worse place because of that? I don’t know. It’s just different. There’s less magic in it, for sure, but I won’t take any offence at technology and progress.
Did you track down the person who uploaded Evangelion to the internet before its release?
It wasn’t difficult. It’s common knowledge that journalists receive watermarked files. We quickly established where the leakage occurred. I knew this person well. I wasn’t as pissed as I might have been; I just spread my arms and sighed. Shit happens. It turned out that the person who was the chief editor of Terrorizer magazine at the time accidentally shared our recordings. She simply put them in the wrong folder, and off they went …
So it was genuinely an accident? Do you believe that?
Maybe I am being naïve but yes, I do believe it. It doesn’t matter much now anyway.
She apologised to us. Besides, she’s made it up to us many times over. It’s in the past.
Did you follow the fuss concerning the signing of the ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) Treaty?
I did look into it. I was closer to the protesters than to the people who supported it. I always feel closer to people who fight for freedom.
But you didn’t take a public stance on the issue?
I didn’t feel strongly enough about it. I have no legal knowledge, and I didn’t know if the deal would change anything. Most of my friends were against ACTA. They claimed that signing it might limit freedom on the internet. But there were people who thought that introducing these regulations would be profitable for artists.
Like Zbyszek Holdys, for example? People on the internet almost ate him. They attacked him like wolves attack wounded prey.
I like Zbyszek very much. For me, he’s an icon. And I’m not just talking about his life or music. I have a personal debt of gratitude to him. When the media started attacking me, he would always defend me. I didn’t ask him to do it; he helped me because he believed that everyone has the right to say what they want. So if someone bashes a person like that and makes an enemy of freedom out of him, is it normal? I don’t think so.
You disagree on a lot of issues—piracy being one.
Great! And this is what freedom is all about. He’s got his opinion and I’ve got mine. And we can both express them aloud. We don’t have to fight each other. And yes, the internet crucified Zbyszek. And people who supposedly fought for freedom tried to gag him. I don’t get it.
Let’s leave Zbyszek for a while. Weren’t you surprised how internet users mobilised themselves and conducted a global protest?
The range of the action surprised me—in a positive way. It showed how much we all love independence. The internet is a space that represents independence; information lives in it uncensored. Manipulation and distortion appear where the information is to be transmitted by someone. On the net, transmitters are unnecessary. You put information on a website and anyone can read it. Nobody manipulates the content. People see it and they defend that space.
Can anyone deprive them of it?
I don’t think so. It’s a revolution. It’s in progress, and it’s gone too far for anyone to say ‘stop’. Read the papers—the serious ones, not the tabloids. They’ve started to reflect what’s happening on the internet. Someone tweets something and the media tell you all about it, even the serious media. They’ve already sensed where the information is really born.
When we talked about the world of glossy magazines, you mentioned Zygmunt Bauman’s essay in which he compared modern forms of communication to ‘tweeting’. He meant the internet, didn’t he?
That’s right. The virtual revolution has its dark sides, too. Anyone can tweet ‘I just ate my soup’ or ‘I’m finishing work in an hour’ or ‘Look at my new haircut’. We’re being showered with pieces of information that have no meaning whatsoever. It’s difficult to pick out the things that are important in all this mess. We’re used to the fact that when we refresh the page, there is always something new.
The lifespan of information is getting shorter, too. When I update my Facebook status, on the first day it gets two hundred comments, the next day there might be twenty, and by the third day nobody comments at all. Everybody is waiting for new posts; the old ones are quickly out of date and dead. It’s not about the quality but more about the tempo.
So is the internet a good thing or a bad thing?
Neither. It’s just a tool. People forget what it actually is. Their lives take place on the net, not in the real world. One of my friends broke up with his girlfriend. First she removed him from her friend list, and only then did she break up with him in real life.
When I hear about situations like that, I’m really glad that I was born in the generation when there were no computers. Look: today, it’s even said that Facebook and Twitter will kill off email.
The traditional letter is obsolete. To sit down and write a multi-page letter—who would do that? But I did write letters like that. I know that sense of deeper relations. I appreciate the internet, but I always keep one foot outside of it.
The band’s official site, YouTube channel, Behemoth’s profile, your fan page, your private profile on Facebook, the web shop, the blog … that’s quite a lot. Do you have enough time to take care of all this with only one of your feet in the internet?
The band’s site and the shop are managed by my friend and our webmaster, Marcie Gruszka, aka Manticore. I help him, of course, and I co-ordinate everything. I take care of the rest myself, but only when it comes to posting stuff because IT is a closed book for me.
Weren’t you interested in getting to know the world from a technical perspective?
I treat my computer like my car. I know how to drive a car and that’s enough for me. I don’t have to analyse the structure of the engine.
When did you first recognise the power of computers?
I recognised it quite early on, but I started using it quite late.
You don’t like technical gadgets, then?
I like them very much, and I usually catch up instantly. Sometimes, my inner gadget-geek comes out in me. When mobile phones were introduced for the first time, I wanted to have one. It didn’t matter that it was the size of a loaf of bread. I had it, I could talk, send messages. At first it was only with two or three other people, because only a handful of my friends bought these thingies for themselves.
Communicating has always been important to me. But with computers, I admit that I overslept. At the end of the 90s, I would go on my bicycle to read emails. Manticore—who back then had already tried to convince me to go online—was always ahead of me in these matters. He had an email account; I didn’t, so I gave everyone his address. When somebody wrote to me, he would call me and say stuff like, ‘Ner, there’s an email from Metal Blade Records for you.’ So I would get on my bicycle and go to his place to read the message from the label. If I didn’t have time, he would read it to me over the phone, and I would tell him what to say in reply. I just didn’t get it back then; I was still in the Stone Age. I was sending faxes at the post office.
How long did that last?
Eventually I opened my own email account, but I still didn’t actually own a computer. I went to internet cafés. A lot of my friends already had their own PCs, so I would spend hours at their places, taking care of correspondence and even doing a few interviews. A few years passed before I actually got one of my own. I remember I was terribly proud of it when it finally took its place in my apartment.
How much of your free time is absorbed by computers today?
I use one every day. I check my emails in the morning; I visit a few news sites also. I don’t have to go to a newsagent to get a bunch of papers; I’ve got everything within arm’s reach. But I try not to overdo it; I don’t forget about real life.
Do you treat your internet presence more like having fun or work?
More like having fun with a weapon of mass destruction.
The posts you publish on your personal account are also mirrored by what you write on the fan page.
Don’t be surprised by that. My band is my life, 24/7.
Your emergence on Facebook was more private or professional?
I came there out of perversity. Before that, also out of perversity, I avoided that thing like the plague. People told me, ‘You’re not on Facebook? Then you don’t exist!’ I promised to myself that they would never see me there. I was proud of it.
You shouldn’t have wasted your words.
One day I just accessed the site. I didn’t want to log in. I just wanted to check something out; I was looking for information. Then, when I saw how many Nergal profiles there were, something broke in me. I thought that it was high time to rectify the situation and give people the real Darski. And I was quickly drawn in. I like how Facebook dethrones me and diminishes the distance between my fans and me.
I do.
The attractive female fans, too?
Also them …
Virtual love, flirting over the internet—are you turned on by that?
Sometimes I flirt. But it rarely happens with my fans. It’s not ethical, anyway. After all, if I were a gynaecologist, I wouldn’t try to fuck all the girls.
One in five, maybe?
There are always exceptions. But I prefer to keep a tight rein on my balls. I often meet fans that are willing to do this kind of thing. They’re young and attractive, enchanted by me, but also naïve. I try not to abuse it. I’m not particularly turned on by having that kind of advantage when I first meet someone. I prefer women who know who I am but, more than anything, they see a person in me, not just the leader of their favourite band.
When you talk to people on the internet, you can never be sure who is on the other side.
I realise that. I always keep my distance. I am popular, so people sometimes try to trick me. That’s not exclusive to the internet, either. Various people call me. I might be on the phone with a journalist, and I can’t be sure if he really works for the paper he says he does. I’ve been burned a few times so I always try to verify such things. There are lines I don’t cross before I make sure that it’s the right person at the other end. And that applies to every aspect of life. It doesn’t matter if it’s flirting, a business conversation, or an interview. I’m very careful.
What is your attitude to journalists generally? We heard that some once called you a buffoon.
Sometimes I actually am a buffoon. Deliberately. I like talking to journalists whom I know and respect. I value reliability. There are people like Tomasz Lis who represent quality. When I get a message from him, asking for an interview, I don’t decline, because I know he’s going to do a great job, and I will read what I actually said, not some bullshit that’s seemingly appeared from outer space.
It’s the same with Jarek Szubrycht, whom I’ve known since the time when he was a singer himself. I trust people like them—even if they were to ask me tough questions and press me a little. That was the case with Piotr Najsztub. He interviewed me for Przekrój magazine. When it was published, I had some reservations. I didn’t like the way he pitched the whole conversation. But there was style in it. And quality. So when he asked me for an interview for Wprost, I agreed, and the result was much better than before.
Confessions Of A Heretic: The Sacred And The Profane: Behemoth And Beyond Page 20