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There's many who say the internet has been the death of decent rock
music, however for Eden's Curse the internet was actually a blessing from
the gods that brought lead singer Michael Eden and songwriter/bass
guitarist Paul Logue together to create a band that have caused not only
ripples of excitement amongst the AOR and Hard Rock community, but bloody
big tsunamis with their debut album 'Eden's Curse'.
Today we catch
up with this extremely charming and very entertaining duo to find out more
about the guys, the band and the music behind Eden's Curse.
MM - Welcome
back guys and apologies for cutting you off!
(In true blonde style I'd accidentally
cut the guys off seconds into the interview.
Oh crumbs!) Ok, let’s start at the very beginning, how did
Eden’s Curse come into being?
Paul – Well
actually we landed in a space ship from the
planet Zorg and we noticed the way the rock
world was looking so Mike and I went back to
planet Zorg and got a couple of others to join
us. No, I’ll start that one again!
(Did I mention as well as being extremely
talented, these guys also have a very wicked
sense of humour?) |
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One of the
first guys to come on board was Carsten Schulz,
who suggested we contacted a guy he was managing
at the time called Thorsten Koehne. We
did and Thorsten became our guitar player soon
after. I’d previously been on the same
label as Pete Newdeck and we’d always agreed
to work together if something suitable came
up, so I gave Pete a call and he was in
straight away. This took place over the
course of about three weeks and by the middle of
January, the four of us began to play together
and eventually we had most of the songs for
the album ready. By the middle
of February we had the whole album written
and so we started recording straight away.
We’d
always planned to use a keyboard player as
well and by this time we had to start moving
very quickly. Once again Carsten, who
seems to have this huge diary of fabulous
musicians we could just call upon, suggested Ferdy
Doernberg. Michael’s a huge supporter of Axel
Rudi Pell and he already knew how great this guy
would be. So we called Ferdy and he joined us. I guess
that's in a nutshell how we got all
together!
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MM - Your debut album 'Eden's Curse' is pure hard rock.
Was this the road you wanted to go down
from the beginning, or it was it more organic that just developed along
the way?
Mike – Well that’s a tough one to answer because when Paul first wrote
back to me I was seriously thinking about doing something a little funky,
or maybe something like Simon and Garfunkel … and if you buy that ...
(That mischievous streak I mentioned earlier is now in full flow with
more merriment and mirth than a Lambrini fuelled hens night).
No, seriously we both have the same kind of influences and grew up
listening to the same kind of music. We thought that most of that music
still stood up strong today, so we decided that hard rock was definitely the way to go.
Paul wrote these incredible songs and sent them my way and I put my stamp
of approval on them. They then went out to everybody else to listen to.
I think there was only one song out of maybe forty that we weren’t sure
on.
Paul has loads of songs kicking about, he writes songs nearly
every day, he’s amazing. In fact I think by this point he’s probably
written the third album already. But it was always going to be hard
rock right from the very beginning.
I had thought of joining Journey
and becoming Neal Schoen’s puppet, it’s true, I want to be a puppet and be
told what to do. Paul has told me right from the start that he won’t
make me a puppet, he’s rather have it that we were buddies and we do this
the right way. I'd told him I’d always had this thing, it’s
like a childhood dream where I wanted to be a puppet and have like strings
that people would pull, and these people would just tell me what to do.
It’s true! It’s always easier to work somebody when you're just be told what to do,
and
when the pay checks a good one ... Unfortunately the pay check is never
quite that good though, even as a major label band.
(That
last statement made me laugh because being a fellow regular on the MR
forum I have seen many posts from both Paul and Michael and I know that
Michael in particular is renown for his very passionate views on the
scene. The idea of someone who fights so hard to support the scene
and right the wrongs throughout the industry wanting to be anyone's puppet
just doesn't sit with me).
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MM – That makes
me laugh Mike because I’ve seen some of your posts on the Melodic Rock
forum and there’s no way you're a puppet!
Mike – Oh whoah! You’ve seen
of my stuff on there?
MM – Yes, I’ve seen some of your stuff on there.
Mike – Hey I’m a really nice guy, honest! I am a beautiful person, I have
a beautiful heart and I just absolutely adore Andrew McNeice. |
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(Mike is indeed a very big supporter of Andrew McNeice and the work he
does to support the scene, so much so that's he's been helping Andrew
right from the very beginning to promote the Melodic Rock 10th
Anniversary show in South Bends, USA). |
Paul – I’d like to clarify something to you Linda,
something that happened with
another earlier band that I was in. I was about to get married and my wife
actually lived quite far away from where we were living, so I had to move
away and took a kind of 2 year hiatus from the band. I said to the other
guys ..."do me proud, go and do something, go and get the record out there"
... I came back two years later to find that they’d done nothing and that
kind of feeling really disappointed me.
I was actually still working
on some stuff with this previous band when Michael and I got together. I
don’t think I had truly realised until I hooked up with Mike that he was a
guy that shared the same commitment and passion that I had. My other band
members just didn’t have that at all. It was all very frustrating so
when I met Mike and we got together and started to plan out the things
that we wanted to do, we were basically like a couple of excited school kids.
We both sat down and said who would we like to produce the record, to
which we both
said Dennis Ward, so we got him on board and working with him was
absolutely fantastic. Then we decided to sign with AFM and here we are
now, probably four weeks after the release of the album and I think it’s a
tribute to us all that we’ve managed to achieve all this.
MM - The album brings a lot of different influences into the mix, do you
think this is because of the varied talent within the band?
Paul
– Well
I think that there’s certainly an element of that because
something like 98-99% of the music we’ve written has actually come from
myself. Certainly I am influenced by the bands I grew up with in the
80’s, but I'm also influenced by the bands I came across later on when I
discovered the whole
European genres with bands like Pink Cream 69, Evidence One
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and Edguy.
Bands like Queensryche have also influenced. So they have all been the
main influences that have all given me the ideas of how I would want the
album to sound and the lyrical content.
I
think Thorsten in particular has brought forward some great guitar playing
in the vein of Paul Gilbert and Yngwie Malmsteen. He plays in that kind of
style, but mostly I would say the writing has been shared between Michael
and myself. In a number of reviews we’ve had people comparing us to the likes of
Bonfire, Fair Warning and even Europe. Now I love Europe, but we
just don't hear those things in our music.
Mike – Yes, we
both love all those bands, I think these bands all have amazing singers, but really I’m just
trying to do what I do! Yet some people are coming up with these really
crazy off the wall comparisons. Maybe with Bonfire it’s the guitars and
because we’ve also got these driving songs, but vocally I don’t think so.
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(We are briefly interrupted as Michael has to
take a call from the bands label in the States. While Michael's
chatting to them Paul and I discuss the interview we did with him in his
previous band way back in 2002. Rather ironically we actually
discussed the film 'Rock Star' during that interview, the film that
included the song 'We All Die Young' which features on the new Eden's
Curse album!).
Mike – I’m really
excited about this whole South Bends thing. I’ve been helping out with
a number of things and now I’m become involved in opening the show!
I’m going to go out and play a couple of songs in my Eden’s Curse t-shirt
and I’m going to be throwing cd’s and stuff out. It’s going
to be a great start to a great day. (It has to be said Mike's
enthusiasm for this Festival is second to none and if he doesn't
spontaneous combust before the day, I'm sure he really will kick
start the days events off big style).
MM - Any chance that we might see Eden’s Curse hit the road in the not too
distant future?
Paul
– Well we are lucky to be signed to a label that
works hard to get it’s bands out on the road. That was one of the reasons
we signed to AFM Records in the first place. We’d like to go out on tour
so we'll have to see how things pan out. We’ll definitely be playing
some dates in support of the new album but god knows where or when,
although we have had a few tentative discussions about the possibility of
playing a couple of festivals next year, so we shall have to see how it all
works out. I guess it’s a case of just watch this space. Mike
– I’m watching this space too! (Homing in on the good
humour these two guys have and the tremendous banter shown throughout this
interview I decide to move on to some lighter questions).
MM – OK, now I have a fun question to ask you guys.
If one morning you woke up
and discovered you’d changed into a woman over night, what would you do
for the next 24 hours?
Mike – I guess I would like to attempt to get into
the minds of all these record people who think it's fine to mess with
bands. Well you know quite a few of these guys think they are ladies men, so as a
women it would be cool to just walk up to these guys and say ... "hey I'm
in this band" ... then just as I had them hooked, poof! all of a sudden I
wouldn’t be a woman any longer and I’d have this baseball bat in my hand.
I
wouldn’t go whoring around the streets or stuff like that, I’d be a classy
lady. If I could turn myself into somebody then I’d like to know why
people do the things they do. I have to say I think that is one of the
craziest most insane questions I have ever been asked to answer!
MM – What would you say your motto in life would be?
Paul
– Basically I
would say my motto in life would be one of Ted Nugent's line’s ...
"Whenever
you find success you will make false friends and many enemies easily" ...
Mike – I would say that if someone knocks
you down don’t get discouraged just start over. When you get knocked down
and hurt in life you may feel that you have failed, but you only failed if
you don’t get back up after you've knocked down.
MM – Thanks again guys for taking the time out to chat to us today and to
close off this interview, do you have any final words for all our readers
out there?
Paul
– Well I’d like to say thank you on behalf of all the
readers that go on The Mayfair Mall to you Linda for running such a great
site. I’ve read it for absolutely years and I think it’s fantastic.
Mike
– Yes I can confirm he’s not kidding!
Paul – I know you’re doing this
totally off your own back and I know we don’t get paid glorious amounts of
money for doing these things. We get exactly the same deal as hard core melodic rock fans.
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One of the
first things we wanted to do when we first got together was to write an
album that we as fans would absolutely want to hear and buy. I think I
speak for both Michael and myself when I say we’ve been kinda blown away
by the reactions by the reviewers. |
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I don’t know how many reviews we’ve had so far,
maybe around 50 or 60, but I’d like to say
thank you to all the readers because all I
can do is write songs and play my guitar,
but without you I am nothing. |
Mike – Eden’s Curse is a very special part of
my life and we really appreciate all the support everyone has given us.
It’s good to know that people actually get what we wanted to do. Andrew McNeice
had the demo of the record for six months and has really supportive
towards us. He’s a very special guy.
MM – Well we
really appreciate all the great songs you guys have put together on the
new Eden’s Curse album and we look forward to hearing lots more of it in
future. We’re also really looking forward to seeing you guys perform
the songs live too.
The band's debut album 'Eden's Curse' is available from AFM Records and as
I said earlier has blown the melodic rock/hard rock community away.
You can check out samples of the songs off the album and keep up to date
with those forthcoming tour plans by visiting the bands website
www.edenscurse.com and their
MySpace website
www.myspace.com/edenscurse . Be
sure to stop by and say hello while you're visiting.
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