Interview with King Diamond from King Diamond (vocals) conducted February 13, 2004.
Written by Alina Michelle.

PHOTOMISTRESS: In one word, describe each band member including yourself.

KING DIAMOND: In one word?  I guess I can give everyone the same word - dedicated.

PM:  What inspires you when writing the concepts and themes for your albums?  Do you do everything yourself or do you come up with three or four 'potential' storylines and then discuss it with the band?

KD:  All the lyrics I do myself - no discussions with anyone about the storylines or what's gonna go on there.  Inspiration is anything.  It can be something I see or something I hear - a conversation or situation between two people I might not even know.  It sits in my brain and I will write it down.  That happens very often.  I have a little box full of notes that are full of different inspirations. 

It could be so many things.  A lot of it is stuff you'd find in the stories is what you could call a life biography.  It's situations that I have felt or seen myself.  We are human beings interacting in such different ways, especially under pressure or in critical situations.  The way we treat each other - there are a lot of different stories out there.  It really could be anything.  There is nothing specific that will trigger a certain story.  Before I write a new story, I will usually go and look through all my notes and that's pretty much how the Puppet Master came about, too.  It all started with an experience in Budapest, Hungary when Mercyful Fate was touring in '99.  We were doing some shows where we opened up for Metallica on some big festivals on that tour.  It wasn't really festivals, but like the stadiums tours in Europe.  We had an afternoon off in Budapest and we took a walk in the city.  We went into the center of the city with narrow streets.  Suddenly we past a thing that was an actual Puppet Theatre.  It looked like a normal theatre, maybe 1600 capacity or 2000 capacity.  That struck me as really odd because I have always imagined puppet theatres being a tent in a park with a bunch of kids or something like that and here was a genuine theatre.  That just freaked my mind out and I was thinking, "How could this be?  How big are those puppets for everyone to be able to see them?  How does it work, is it like a walkway under the theatre where the puppeteers are working?".  It just struck me as very odd.  We walked further down the same street and we came upon a few shops that were selling puppets of all different sizes.  I think it was Sunday afternoon because all the shops were closed and there was no light in them either, but you could still look in the window.  In there, they were sitting on chairs, hanging on the walls - they were just full of puppets.  It was very eerie.  It gave me a feeling that I still remember today, like I wouldn't sleep in that shop if someone paid me.  It was almost like you knew they'd come alive and kill you.  So I got back to the hotel that evening and I started writing down all kinds of things on the hotel stationary for hours. Questions and feelings and weird scenarios and could it be this and that.  Then I put it away back in my box when I got back from the tour.  Then when it was time to do the story this time around, I went in there and saw these notes from '99 and reading those notes gave me the same feeling I had back then.  I hadn't looked at them because already at the time we were touring I knew what the next album was going to be about.  After that, on request from so many fans, we did Abigail II and so it was not until now that it actually came up to dig in that box and find something brand new. 

PM:  Do you plan to follow up the Puppet Master storyline?

KD:  I never plan for those kind of things.  The thing about doing a Part II is that it's actually dangerous.  I don't want to be looked upon by fans or the media as if "he's run out of ideas, he's run dry" because I CERTAINLY haven't run dry!  It could be looked upon like that, you know?  So it would have to be a STRONG request from the fans to want a Part II for me to do it, otherwise I would start fresh.  For my own self, there are certain characters that I really like, like Grandma, I like her a lot.   I would love to write more about her.  But I don't want to do that again because there are already two.  That one I did without thinking about anything else when I did Conspiracy. When I toured that, I totally felt like the story was so not finished and that there was so much more to tell, so I just did it on the next album.

PM:  Is it hard to keep Mercyful Fate and King Diamond going at the same time?  Does one have priority over the other?

KD:  Of course it's time consuming.  That used to be the hardest part to find time.  There was a time period where they were switching.  One would do an album and tour and then the other would do an album and tour.  It's different these days because of all the downloading and stuff that's really hurt the business and everyone sees it.  That's the thing that has made a change.  King Diamond is going to be a big bulk of the work and will be the busiest unit for sure.  Mercyful Fate   - when we released Abigail II, we were all geared up for touring and the tour was actually set up, we just had to sign contracts with the local promoter.  But that's when we got the news from Metal Blade that there were no tour funds at that time.  They were really hurting bad from the downloading and that then reflected in renegotiating contracts and things like that.  That's usually never a good sign.  The fact is that if there was only Mercyful Fate right now and no King Diamond, I would have to stop.  I cannot live off of Mercyful Fate, not today - that is physically impossible.  King Diamond is a different matter, it's still possible.  So for that simple matter, Mercyful Fate has to stay in the background.  The next album for Mercyful will happen when and if King Diamond has nothing else to do.  That's simply the way the downloading has altered two things.  I can only speak for myself, but I'm sure a lot of other people feel the same way.  So that's the actual fact of the whole thing is that Mercy has never been the band that sold the most.  King Diamond always sold more than Mercyful Fate by far.  It's always been the better financial profit as well.  I've always loved doing this stuff and still do big time, so it's also to have a job you actually really, really love.  On the other hand, it is a job too; it is what puts bread on the table.  So you have to look at it that way too.  You can't just say screw that side of it, we're just going to do another Mercyful Fate album - it doesn't work.  That's just the way life is.  No one could do that and just say "I'm going to concentrate on my hobbies for the next five months".  I might have to move out of my house or apartment.  You have to look at it in a realistic way.  That's unfortunately what has happened; otherwise I would probably still be switching back and forth between the bands.  So Mercyful Fate and King Diamond both signed new contracts.  There was a new contract for Mercyful Fate and we wouldn't have wasted that if we didn't intend to do another album. But when it's going to be?  It's impossible to tell.  Right now we are so busy with King Diamond.  The album has done better than the labels expected, both in Europe and in the US, so that's really positive.  We recorded almost all the shows and we are working to figure out and put together all the best versions of the songs that we did on that tour and release a live cd.  That will probably be ready to be mixed around mid-April.  We don't know yet when it will come out.  But that's what we're working on and we have a couple other projects going at the same time.  There was some talk to do a European tour for the Puppet Master album, but it won't happen until after the summer simply because of the projects we're working on right now.  It has to wait until then.  But from that tour there has been some talk, which still remains to be seen, they're in the early stages of planning to do a King Diamond live DVD.  Hopefully it can maybe be collaboration between Metal Blade and Massacre.  In the meantime, I have been looking at things in regards to a retro DVD - one for Mercyful Fate and one for King Diamond with old, never before seen good quality bootlegs.  They are extremely good quality and stuff we know that no one else has seen.  I've been busy looking at some of that stuff there were things I didn't expect to see since I had forgotten about some of those shows.  I thought I couldn't believe it.  There is way too much material actually.  For Mercyful Fate, which I have seen now, it goes all the way back to I think '82, before we ever got signed.  It wasn't even Michael Denner playing guitar, it was a guy that was in before Michael Denner.  There's a whole concert from a place in Copenhagen.  It was amazing, probably the fifth time we ever played live.  Then there's all kinds of different things like us supporting Metallica, etc.  These things haven't even been out on the bootleg market.  No one has seen it other than us.  So there are some very extreme rarities there.  At the same time, I'm looking through stuff for King Diamond, including actually an extra which is from behind the scene stuff that Andy shot on the computer, both in the US and Europe.  He put this together a long time ago just for fun and I am SURE it was over an hour long, I haven't gotten a chance to see it again, I just haven't had the time to.  So those projects are going to take up time as well.  It's going to be a very busy year.

PM:  Who actually comes up with the ideas for your stage props?  Do you contribute to them?

KD:  Andy and myself and then when we get a little further with our ideas we start talking to our lighting engineer who is, from that point on, very involved in how to materialize these things.  He works extremely close with us as we do our pre-production rehearsals since that's where we finalize things.  The main stage would have been built beforehand.  But then all the extras and all the last minute adjustments get done and our lighting engineer is very involved in this.

PM:  I love the stage props!

KD:  It's really working well. With the fence on this last tour, we got this really weird feeling on stage.  After the fifth song or so when the crew took it away, it was like a new concert starting.  It's a whole different look and it must've seemed that way for the audience as well as ourselves.  It felt like it was all naked or something.  The barrier was gone; it's hard to explain. 

PM:  In a hundred years from now, when you're dead, would you rather be hatefully remembered or totally forgotten and why?

KD:  I don't know, I don't think about those things.  I really don't think about death that much.  I don't know which one would be better of those two.

PM:  What types of bands do you listen to on and off the road?

KD:  When I do listen to music it's from the early 70s, that's my hobby, collecting everything from the early 70s.  That's been my hobby since before I started playing music myself!  I was always interested in finding obscure bands.  Of course all the big names too, but obscure as well.   The ones that were never at the right place at the right time or running into the right people. Awesome bands, but ones that made only one or two albums and they were probably forgotten before they were ever known.  I'm not very informed about the scene today unfortunately.

PM:  With your use of a dark wardrobe and makeup, do you wish to be perceived as an intimidating presence? 

KD:  No, it has nothing to do with that.  It goes hand in hand with what the stories are about.  It just enhances it.  The reason behind using that is entirely from seeing Alice Cooper in '75 doing a show I went to in Copenhagen.  He was not wearing that much makeup but the way he did it and his stage presence made him seem like he was from another world, to me anyways.  And if I could just reach up and touch a boot I thought he could disappear into thin air or something.  That was the kind of feeling I had, unreal.  Just today, I remember that entire show.  It triggers some things in people's brains; a lot of those pictures remain for much longer than had it just been me standing in jeans and a t-shirt.  In some way, it's more fun to me to do this - it's like it's Halloween every night.  But at the same time it's giving people more value for their money.  When they listen to the albums, they get a lot of those pictures back in their brains.  That's purely for entertainment.

PM:  Looking back, is there anything in your career you would've done differently and why?

KD:  No, it's a choice that I took.  You could sit there and ask yourself why did I do this when I could've gone straight and maybe it would've been different, but it splits up and gives you options.  If you take that branch and go up that way, there are so many more options you can choose just by going on that branch.  But if I had taken another branch, it would've been a whole different bunch of options I could take.  I don't believe in fate like that.  You can say to maybe a VERY tiny degree, like if you look at a street, there are only those ways you can go, but there are so many options.  You'll never have a chance to explore them all.  I think you have choices that you make yourself that's not the best thing, but that makes you very much in control there.  You can decide the path of your destiny.

PM:  Have you had any formal vocal training?

KD:  No, never.  I've had no training.  I write about 70% of the music, but I have no training whatsoever.  No one ever taught me.  I know what an E and an A string is in guitar but that's where it stops.  Sometimes I combine some chords so that Andy who is the one who's recording the rest of the guitars has a sense of what I'm doing.  I can't read music.  I play by feel and ear.  That goes for guitars and keyboards too.  I show the other guys what it is that I've done.  I'm not talking any theoretical way of doing music.  I would use different chords too if it feels right for a certain place in the music.  I'll do anything, there is nothing that I will sit and think that I shouldn't do that because it's wrong musically - it doesn't exist to me that way.  If it feels right and it sounds right, that's what I go by.  I can't tell you if you ask me what's the first five chords in Abigail.  You'd have to ask Andy because I don't know.

PM:  Do you stay in touch with Michael Moon, Pete Blakk and Mikkey Dee?

KD:  Mike Moon I haven't talked to ever since he was kicked out of the band.  I don't know what he's doing and there's no interest for me to know what he's doing.  It was not really a good experience.  I don't even know if he's still playing or whatever.  If he's doing something I wish him all the best, absolutely.  It's not like I have any bad feelings, towards anyone actually!  I don't hold grudges and things like that.  He did only one tour with us and it was not a good experience for anyone in the band at that time.  It just didn't work out.  Same thing with our bass player on the House of God album.  That tour then did not work out.  Two different personalities from that person to the rest of the band and when you get into that situation - you really don't usually find out until you're on tour.  You're under heavy pressure.  Some of those things will come to the surface then and you can see people for what they really are.  Those two are the only two that in the entire span of the career that was just not working out personality wise.  Mikkey Dee, yah sometimes I do talk with him, it's rare, but it does happen.  I think we both have a high respect for each other.  I certainly have for him; he's one of the best drummers I've played with.  I think Matt that we have now is as good as Mikkey Dee and Matt has a vigilant understanding with where we want to go with our music in the studio or on the road, for that matter.  He's extremely steady and can do whatever he's asked to do.  He's an unbelievable drummer, technically and personally.  So it feels like, for my part, that the lineup I'm playing with now is stronger than any lineup I have ever been involved with as a whole.  Having Hal back and Mike Wead and Andy on guitars, I couldn't think of a stronger lineup.  It's a really good feeling to have that lineup stay, it's been like this for a little while.  The lineup that did the European tour for House of God, that's when this lineup first came together, then Abigail II and the Puppet Master now, it's a great situation, really.

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