- [commenting on the rainy, cold weather during the shooting of the music video for "Haifisch"] I really like rain. I was born in November, meaning I am half amphibian.
- [Echo 2011 acceptance speech] We would like to thank... [electricity provider] Vattenfall, because without them it would be dark in here.
- We would love to sing with Helge Schneider but we haven't asked him yet.
- I disapprove of religions which are made into rigid institutions. I also think that religious fanaticism and missionary work are dangerous.
- [2014] I miss the GDR even today. More so than the bands from that time.
- I prefer playing in the USA because the attitude to music is more relaxed.
- [on the United States] It's a sick and decadent country with no culture.
- [What do you miss about the GDR?] It was pleasant not always having to choose between so many different makes of a product. My life was more natural, for example, you only had strawberries in summer.
- [When Till hits himself on the head with the microphone during "Sehnsucht" does he use artificial blood or is he genuinely injured?] The blood is real because Till hits himself on the very same place every evening. I don't understand it either. He can take a lot it seems.
- [How do you spend your leisure time? Do you have any hobbies?] Eating, drinking, sleeping....
- [How did you look like when you were teenaged?] First I was a long-haired blues fan. Then I became sort of a punk wearing colored pants and stuff from the west I got in exchange like Doc Marten's and Shell-Parkas.
- I would like to live some place at the ocean nearby hills.
- I grew up in the Prenzlauer Berg area in Berlin. That's the district I still live in. And when I go to our rehearsals for instance I always pass my old school building.
- [2009] I can't think of anything I wouldn't do for the band.
- I once lived in Fehrbelliner Straße 7. Now fancy that: In the same house, there lived Frau Fett (Mrs Fat) and Herr Fleischfresser [Mr Meateater]. I swear it's true. Astrid Fett in one apartment. Wolfgang Fleischfresser in the other. I also have witnesses.
- When I joined my first band, I noticed that I couldn't play modern music. I still can't!
- I only joined when the band already existed. It took me about a year to decide whether I want to be a part of Rammstein or not, I have [...] only featured as a guest. [...] The Schwerin gang [Oliver Riedel, Till Lindemann, Richard Kruspe] had recruited Schneider as a drummer. [...] I hardly had any kind of emotional relationship with Schneider. Scholle [Richard] I didn't get along with. Olli I was scared of, I thought he was a bit strange. I only liked Till. Paul I had lived with for eight years, he got on my nerves terribly. [...] I would have liked to not see him for a year.
- Even if the GDR survived, I still would've stayed a musician. The increased size of the world also brought the danger of being compared to all of the international acts. The bands which were in the east were the only ones there, and if you were successful there, you were successful. I miss the simplicity. You went into a bar, ordered a beer, and you got a beer!... They didn't ask if you wanted... with a head or without a head, foam top or bottom... It really gets on my nerves having all of these choices I really don't want.
- It would be implausible if we were to hold onto this "evil guys" image forever, devil may come. We are old men now, we have families, we have responsibilities. If you get inauthentic as a rock band, then you'd better stop - by then it doesn't matter if you can play well or look good. Our fans like us because we don't fool them.
- [What music do your children use to provoke you?] Techno, for example. Miley Cyrus is also hard to listen to, or the rapper Pitbull. These high-pitched voices and autotune experiments just wreck me.
- [asked about people recognizing him when he is out and about] I would never get recognized. If I walk through Berlin I look like a homeless person with a dog. Just without the dog.
- We never could be a western band, because we learned in our youth that it's important to work together and one person is not that important. And that is why we are still together.
- After the second record, people remembered the first. We had a gold record with Sehnsucht and about five years later, the first record went gold.
- After we released the first record, nothing happened. Nobody wanted to buy it because nobody knew about it. We just played and played and played, and slowly the people in the crowd got more and more.
- The record company told us we had to choose a producer. We didn't know what a producer was, because we didn't have them in East Germany. Nobody needed a producer for anything.
- I saw a lot of East German bands that sung in very bad English to people who didn't understand English - it was absolutely stupid. But if you really want to tell your emotions, you have to speak in your mother tongue. It's not possible to tell your emotions in another language.
- It {German reunification] changed so many things. Nobody in East Germany wanted to listen to East German bands, because now they could listen to the real thing. Everything was possible now, where it had been forbidden in the past. And so everybody tried to make new things.
- This [Rammstein] is how I fight the system. I take the money away from them.
- [2009] We are astonished how many people are still scared of Rammstein. But we are also shocked. If freedom of speech in the Federal Republic of Germany means that Nazis are allowed to shout "Foreigners get out", yet our CD is being withdrawn from circulation, we haven't advanced much [since the times of the GDR regime].
- [Which 3 things would you take to a desert island?] Ick würd da garnet hinfahrn. / I wouldn't even go there in the first place.
- Already as a child I didn't really like dogs. They probably sense that I'm terribly afraid of them. Furthermore, what bothers me about dogs is that they always bark so loud and eat so much and then poop everywhere. And so much. And when a dog is wet from the rain, it smells. This devotion to the owner also seems strange to me. The owners are not that great that you have to adore them as a dog. The dogs can't help it that they are only dogs. And some dogs are really great.
- But I prefer cats because you can also snuggle up to them or they snuggle up to you, and they only do what they want anyway. In fact, I often get the impression that people do what the cats want them to do. And they bury their poop themselves in the garden. Cats also look as strong and proud and also as puzzling as otherwise only women.
- We [Feeling B] showed that it was possible to have a lot of fun in the GDR. We made very light and easy-going music. And with that we brought in a bit of freshness. In addition, we saw the funny side of every situation, were happy about it, and made fun of it.
- I like to fly to my concerts with very little luggage. [He once travelled to an eight-week long tour in America with only a cardboard bag for his necessities.] However, I was later defeated in this competition by our bass player [Oliver Riedel], because he only took a book and a toothbrush in his jacket pocket to a studio session in Sweden.
- I refused [to do compulsory military service] because I was afraid. My brother was in the army and told horrible stories of how the newcomers were sadistically tormented by the higher ranks. I was prepared to pay the price of never being able to study and never having a decent job. I didn't want to save the world, I wanted to save myself. But you always have to save yourself before you can save the world.
- I often lack the courage to change something. As a result, I open fewer doors in life than I could. It's a question of type. I don't proclaim it, but personally, I'm happy when everything is the way it is. If it were up to me, I would still be living without a computer today. When I write an email on the Macintosh, I feel like I'm driving to the bakery in a tank. I don't like talking on the phone either. I am torn between the desire for change and the hope that everything will remain as it is. Permanence and fear of loss belong together.
- For me the book [Heute hat die Welt Geburtstag] is not a Rammstein biography, I would rather categorise it as a novel. We accompany a band on a fictitious day. The big thing is not more important than the smallest thing. The fact that I am presented with a platinum record as an artist has little meaning for me when I urgently have to pee on stage.
- Because the cities in which we, or rather Kiss, were set to play [in 1999] were so far apart, we didn't get a bus; instead we took a plane to each different stop. There we stayed in hotels, which we still weren't used to, but which was very pleasant. In Buenos Aires, we wandered around town, happy to be alive. Olli even forgot his own birthday. So then of course we didn't remember it either. Something like that was possible back then, because we didn't have cell phones. An innocent time.
- Oliver Riedel didn't care about anything, he came from the Inchtabokatables, he had no clue about anything, he just didn't want to play with the Inchies anymore. He wanted to be in a real band, but I was afraid of Olli, I thought he was a bit weird.
- The most important thing after all these years is that we understand each other well within the band and have learned to deal with each other. We don't argue about financial matters, we don't let ourselves be talked into it, and we don't let ourselves be ruined from the outside. As a band we stand together. That's the trick. An 'elbow society' in which everyone fights against everyone is the wrong way if you want to be happy or successful in life.
- [on making the "Mann gegen Mann" music video] We got so used to being naked that I even wanted to go like this to buy food!
- When I joined the band, I wasn't worrying about whether I would get along well with everybody. I just assumed that when people played music together, they got along well automatically. To be honest, I would have stayed even if the other guys had been smelly, violent sociopaths. Only much later did I notice how well-matched we all were. From the start we were serious about trying to clear the air of anything that caused discord in the band.
- [After live performances of "Mein Teil] Till comes toward me in the best of moods and gives me a pat on the ass. We grin at each other.
- I hate advice and know-it-alls. You have to go through all the important things in life yourself, you have to get lost ten times to reach your destination. That's the only way you can experience that feeling of happiness when you arrive. It's no different in a relationship. There are things in the world that no one can take away from you.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content