A somewhat elusive figure, not least because he so rarely sets foot on stage, Arjen Anthony Lucassen is something of a legend in prog and metal circles. The Dutch-born singer, song-writer and multi-instrumentalist has a remarkable list of achievements to his name including The Gentle Storm, Stream of Passion, Star one and, of course, the mighty Ayreon.
Remarkably, despite a following that borders on the rabid, Arjen resisted the temptation to take the band on stage, preferring to develop individual rock operas characterised by ambitious arrangements, guest singers and so on and, although Ayreon material has appeared in live performances courtesy of other Arjen projects (notably Star One and Stream of Passion), no Ayreon band had ever taken to the stage until 2017 when Arjen finally took a band to the stage for the special Ayreon Universe shows. Now released as a special live set – ‘Ayreon Universe – the Best of Ayreon Live’, we took the opportunity to discuss the project with Arjen in a free-ranging discussion that took in Ayreon, Arjen’s dislike of touring and the nature of progressive music as a whole.
Hi Phil!
Hey, how are you doing?
I’m fine thank you very much. I had a couple of interviews earlier and they go on longer than you expect, but all is good.
This is a fantastic opportunity to talk to you because you have this amazing live release out…
Oh thanks man, you enjoy it?
Very much, yeah, and the first thing that I wanted to say about it is that it’s very different form a lot of live albums because you’ve drawn music from across a very progressive career and then reworked it so the album flows in the same manner you expect from an Ayreon studio album…
Cool! Cool!
So, I guess, the first question that I had was, when you came to put this album together, did you work on sequencing the set list way in advance, or did you move certain things around post-production?
Oh yeah, we change songs every now and then. We started to work on this like two years in advance and then I started picking the tracks. I didn’t pick my favourite tracks, or what I thought would be the fan favourites – I picked the tracks I thought would be good live. That’s both the big, really heavy tracks and also the very small, fragile tracks, like ‘Valley of the queen’ and ‘comatose’, so, yeah, I wanted a lot of dynamic and contrast on stage.
I’m really interested in the art of the album – as someone who grew up with physical media, it’s always been about the album and the thing I really loved about this release is that it’s like an album in the sense that it takes the listener on a journey.
I think it should be one big journey and songs should flow into each other and we really worked hard on that. I think, after a year, we had the flow and we had the perfect songs and we had all the singers who’d fit the songs. Then we made a visual storyboard. It was very… it was a two and a half hour little movie which showed exactly when this person comes on stage, what’s showing on this screen, when that pyro goes off… and we had it mapped out form second to second, so basically, we could already see how the flow would be and if something did not fit, we’d just change it.
That pre-empts one of the questions and obvious the difference between what you achieved from this show and what you’d expect from a “normal” band, is that you bought in all of these amazing singers. I guess it was a considerable challenge, not only getting them to appear, but also incorporating them into the show?
Um, well, I thought it would be a challenge but we actually planned to only work with five singers, because I did this tour with Star One like fifteen years ago with only five singers and it worked really well. So, I thought there’d be a lot of singers who couldn’t do it, or didn’t want to do it or who were already playing themselves. So, I approached like fifteen, or sixteen singers and they all said yes! So, that’s basically how we ended up with sixteen singers on stage. That was easy, actually, and arranging them was easy. And also what I set out to do – I wanted to work with singers who really wanted to do it – who didn’t do it for the money, or for the fame, or whatever, but who really wanted to be part of that. Because I think that, with people like that, who are really into it, you’re going to see it on stage. You’re going to see the charisma and you’re going to see people having fun on stage and I’m sure the audience can see and feel that. So that was very important.
Especially as they were the first and, so far, the only Ayreon shows, it’s so important to have that passion and energy and I agree absolutely that it comes across to the audience really well on the DVD and on the CD – you can hear that the whole project was something that people really wanted to be involved in…
Great, yeah! Great! Well, I’m really glad that you can see that. Also – did you watch the behind the scenes thing?
No, I’ve not had a chance to yet I’m afraid…
Well there you can see interviews with everyone, with all the musicians and at some point it becomes quite annoying because everyone is saying “it’s like one big happy family!” But, we kept it in because it’s just the way it was. It was just so positive, and there were no egos and… believe me, there are egos! But we didn’t come in contact with them, there were no egos and I really did not want that, I wanted the ambience to be perfect.
This series of shows came off the back of what seems to have been a very good time for you and for Ayreon, because you started life on a new label, and you came back with the ‘the source’ early last year – when you came to thinking about doing the live show, you said it was like a two year process, did reactivating Ayreon and the new label spur on the desire to take it on stage?
No, no, it was more the theatre equation thing that we did a couple of years before that. I don’t know if you know about that, but it was a theatre production of my album, the human equation, and I was… I did not arrange it myself, but I was involved in it. It was arranged by my former manager, but I was involved in it, so I picked the singers and I helped with the story and I helped elsewhere, and I think that’s where I saw the reactions of the people who came to that show. It was like a theatre show, so everyone was sitting down. It was four shows. But people… you know, when I saw the emotions of people, it was like “oh my god! This is so great that I can do this with my music…” That was the point where I thought that we could do this again and then I would want to arrange it myself and be involved and be 100% responsible for the outcome, which I wasn’t with the Theatre Equation.
Is it difficult for you to take a back seat role when it comes to the live production, because obviously there are various projects that you’ve been involved with that have gone out on the road without you – there’s obviously a huge difference between the studio environment where you work to get those amazing soundscapes and then the live environment where you’re less controlled but have the instant gratification of an audience response – are there times when you miss that?
Not at all! No! It’s not my thing at all. I did it for fifteen years, ever since the late 70s to, let’s say the early 90s, I was touring the world and it just wasn’t my thing. I don’t know; I felt like an actor on stage. It was like doing the same thing over and over again – the same stupid songs, the same stupid jokes… Lots of annoyance with band members and, of course, lots of drugs and alcohol and… and… aggression and… it just wasn’t my thing. Also, I’m not really good at it. I think I’m good in my studio and doing what I do – composing, producing, stuff like that and performing live just isn’t my thing. So, no, I’m really happy that other people are doing that for me. I would not have other people involved in my writing or producing. I want to do that all on my own. There, I’m a complete control freak! But for the live thing, there are other people who are better than me and also other people who can… like Joost van den Broek, the keyboard player = he basically arranged everything, you know, and I was really happy that he did that because I haven’t been playing live for ten / twenty years and I don’t know too much about it, so no, I’m really happy to give the control to someone else.
I think it’s very difficult as a songwriter that, when you’re creating in the studio the responsibility lies with you but also the spontaneity of creation lies with you and, when you’re in a band environment, particularly going out on stage, you inevitably have to compromise with people and it’s difficult, I think, for a song writer to easily let their ‘baby’ go…
Oh yeah! I hated that! I hated it! I hated the compromising and, you know, for fifteen years I’d been doing what I thought band members wanted and what I thought the audience wanted and what I thought the record company wanted. And you compromise because, OK, the drummer likes Rush and the guitarist likes AC/DC and the singer likes Saxon and the bass player likes Judas Priest, so you find something in the middle which is like nothing and I was so glad when I did my first Ayreon album that I had complete control and basically I thought, you know… obviously I thought, or I would have done it earlier, that just doing my own thing was never going to work. Just doing what I like and getting all the strange music that I like – all those different styles from Beatles to Floyd to Zeppelin, to Jethro Tull and Thin Lizzy and throw it all together in one melting pot of different styles… I figured people would hate it! Who’s going to have such a wide taste as me?! And then, I did it, and then it was the biggest success I had never had, so that was unexpected but very welcome.
The other side of it is, because you aren’t forcing yourself to repeat, night after night, the same songs, it allows for a very different type of creativity because you can just be in the studio and focused on creating new music – so do you think that’s helped to make you more adventurous and prolific in that way?
Oh yeah, yeah! Because I don’t have to think about it. I don’t have to think about anything when I write these songs. With Ayreon, I never thought like…I basically started Ayreon because I didn’t want to play live anymore, so I didn’t have to think whether something was possible live, so I could look to the weirdest things and the weirdest tunings and the weirdest instruments, from sitars to mandolins to dulcimers… I could do it all because I didn’t have to worry. I can imagine a band like AC/DC or Iron Maiden always worry about how to do something live… I didn’t have that and that’s a lot of freedom.
I read an interview with you a while back and you were talking about composition and you were asked whether the music or lyrics came first and you said it was always the music. But obviously, a lot of your music is so emotive and evocative – aside from a story, when you are composing, do you have images in your head to create a visual landscape to go with the soundscape?
Oh yes, yes. Images and art are always in my head, already when I have the instrumental ideas. That’s when the vision already comes – what it should look like and what atmosphere it should be. At that point, I have no idea about the story, the singers or the lyrics, but yeah, it’s very visual what I do and I think that it adds an extra dimension to the music and I’ve always had that. I always saw things, as a kid even, when I was listening to music. Especially with the rock operas – like Jesus Christ Superstar, or War of the worlds, Tommy and the wall and Operation Mindcrime – stuff like that. Yeah, my music has always been very visual. I think it adds an extra dimension.
I think, in the same interview, you were talking about some of the sci-fi that influenced you and I think that, for me, perfectly suits that kind of amazing, visual side. I think it really suits the music that you make.
Well, that’s a good example because Blade Runner I like because it’s so visual and because it looks so great and because of the whole atmosphere. I’m not the kind of guy who likes sci-fi movies where people are killing each other “choo choo choo” with their laser guns! And people chasing each other, it’s not my thing. It’s all about the atmosphere and the visuals and when I think about Blade Runner, I think about these apocalyptic scenes. You see a lot of sci-fi movies where everything is white and there’s loads of space – no! It’s going to be very busy and there are going to be ads everywhere and people everywhere and smog and smoke and… yeah, so that’s the kind of thing I like, yes.
That ties, way back to what we were talking about at the beginning about flow, where you have tracks like ‘comatose’ which creates a wonderful sense of space and then you get the big, heavy metal set pieces… and that’s something that the wall did so well and you mentioned Operation Mindcrime as well and that’s a great example of an album that restrains itself so that when it does unleash something more metallic, it hits home hard…
It’s the great thing… it’s the contrast, the adventure and all the albums that I like from the past have that. Take the Beatles – Sgt Pepper or Magical Mystery tour – you go from one extreme to the other. The same with the other rock operas I mentioned and even bands like Zeppelin. They weren’t just a metal band or a rock band or a blues band – you went from Gallows Pole, a really folky song, to Immigrant song, the rock song, to the blues – since you’ve been gone. For me, music always had to be adventurous. I’m not the AC/DC guy. I mean I can appreciate it and I can understand why people like it, but it’s not the stuff that I put on every evening when I lay down with my headphones on my head when I want to listen to music. I really want to be taken somewhere.
There’s also a nice sense of humour that appears form time to time – one of the songs that really surprised me on the live album was ‘loser’ which, coming off the back of ‘comatose’ is quite a surprise the first time I listened through…
Well, the humour should be there, you know. My music is close to cheesy. Let’s face it, like I say in my speech, it’s stories about hippies and barbarians in space! It should be done with tongue in cheek. That’s what I told all the singers as well – I said, when we do a song like “everybody dies” it’s terrible! Everyone is dying and the whole world is dying… but, it was funny! People were on stage laughing and joking around and I thought it was very important that also, the narrator, like Mike Mills who has to do all these very bombastic lyrics: “you have entered the portals of the electric castle…” I said to him: “please do it tongue in cheek!” because it’s a very thin line to walk there. It’s a thin line between being cheesy, or making it into a parody and we had to stay in the middle there.
It’s really cool when you get that juxtaposition between the great, grandiose music, but then there’s that twinkle in the eye because, as you say, it kind of disarms any potential criticism that it’s edging over the line…
Oh yeah! It’s escapism! Really, my music is escapism. People often ask me if there are messages… there are, you know, but they’re between the lines. I always hated it as a kid when bands would put messages in their music and they would force it upon you. I really wanted to be entertained and then, it’s an extra plus if you can learn a lesson and see some message, but like I said, between the lines. No, I would not be the guy forcing my opinion upon people. I really don’t like that.
I know I’ve taken up a lot of your time, and I really appreciate your time. I just have one last question which is that the term “progressive” seems to have a lot of different meanings to different people, but for me it was always about pushing boundaries beyond what was perceived as possible – so what I wanted to ask is, when you’re composing music, do you have any conceptualisation of boundaries, or are you content to let anything go?
When I started Ayreon, I totally let go of all boundaries, absolutely. It was scary, because I really thought that people would hate it, but I let go of all boundaries and the only boundary now is to do the kind of music I like. I would not do a reggae part simply because I don’t like it, but I would do R&B stuff. You can find blues, folk, metal, classical, electronic. Everything – I’ll use it as long as I like it. That’s the thing of prog for me – no boundaries and, again, like we said before –adventure. There’s just one thing for me – melody is very important for me; prog bands that are purely technical and all these weird time signatures and stuff… that’s really not my thing. I like it when it happens, but it should always be that the song is the most important. So, yeah, there’s a lot of prog where I just go “no, no, that’s not for me!” It’s still about the song and the melody, but just the song and the melody is not enough. That’s like pop music – it’s not enough for me. It has to be adventurous.
That’s why I enjoyed this live album particularly, I knew it would be exciting, but I think it really adds to the Ayreon journey.
Great Phil, well that’s exactly what I set out to do.
Thanks for the time to share your thoughts with me and all the best.
Great man and talk to you next time for sure.
