This next interview was an exciting one. I’ve been a big KING DIAMOND fan for some time, and so when the opportunity came along to talk to him, I jumped out of my seat. I got carried away with questions I wanted to ask him, and King, as you will soon see, likes to talk, so I didn’t get to all of my questions. Not a problem! The guy is very intelligent and very down to earth, and had quite a bit to say regarding religion and cars. Don’t let the length of the interview scare you away, this is definitely worth the read! 
-Rob

Paragon Rob: It’s been a while since your last live album. Since a large portion of your music is themed for each album, is it hard to figure out which songs you will play live? 

King Diamond: It’s always hard, only because there is quite a catalog now, and that makes it definitely harder to pick what songs you’re gonna go out and do on whatever tours. It would be great if you could go out and just do songs from the two Abigail albums, right? Just that theme and that story, but too many people would miss out on a lot of songs. Even when you do a live album, a double disc, there are still songs that are not there that a lot of people say, “Hey that should have been there.” And with this double-live there are several things that have something to do with the set list and the choice of songs. We didn’t want to record what is kind of like a best of live, but then “Abigail” is not there, “The Candle” is not there, there’s a lot of others that are not there. There are some albums that are totally not presented too. I feel that if you do a best of live, it’s almost like it must be the end of the career in some way. ::laughs:: That’s not what we were after at all. It was simply to document this tour live and it’s exactly the set that we played on that tour from beginning to end. That way, it just becomes, “This is King Diamond live on the 2003 U.S. Tour.” We would’ve loved to do this kind of a double-live a long time ago. We’ve been asking the labels for years now. The first one we did, in some ways I don’t consider a real live album, in other ways, I do. It was taken from cassette tapes and we had no control over that. We couldn’t mix anything, we couldn’t mix the audience up or down or set the levels between guitar and drums, we had no control because it was just a finished cassette tape that our sound engineer at the time recorded for our pleasure later and it was never meant to be released, and that thing came into the picture when we spoke with Roadrunner to be one of the things we gave them. This time we had more control, we could mix the levels, set the panning of the guitars, and really work to get a good sound picture and control over the audience. We ended up not using that control over the audience but we mixed them in the whole way at the same levels so in that way it becomes even more authentic. A lot of live albums you’ve probably heard, you can hear that they’re slowly fading down the audience once the song starts and it’s played and then you hear them come back in towards the very end of the song. Here you hear them all the way through at whatever level they were screaming at the time. 

PR: Speaking of the themes, how long does it take from the conception of a story idea to the actual lyric writing? 

KD: It varies so, so much, it really varies a lot. It really depends. Some of it has to do with the complexity of the story. The Puppet Master was quite complex in certain ways because I was trying to make it logical in the way these magical things were happening, how the blood works in these puppets, and finding a reason for one of the climaxes of course, where my character in the story actually sees my love, Victoria, fading away before my eyes. If all the puppets were alike, then as she fades away, so would I. So I had to find logical reasons for why I could see her and why she couldn’t see me. That was of course, early on and I had to go back into the story and change something with the ritual that was made by the Puppet Master with my soul, that I cost an interruption in the ritual when he turns around and screams something at me and that is not part of the words he should recite in this ritual and thereby, he changed the ritual but he didn’t know what he did and what he did then in the story was give me eternal life and that was the only way I could still see Victoria when she faded away, making it more tragic. You have to go forth and back all the time and depending on that complexity, once I have a short story finished, there’ll be a lot of going through that story in my mind and really questioning myself very hard to make sure nobody can come along and say, “Hey you said in song #3, this, and now you say this and that in #9. How’s that supposed to fit in?” I have to be able to explain all and that’s the hard part, to be super-critical of what you’ve done and make sure it’s explainable. But otherwise, it’s very different from story to story how long it takes to get done. After that, usually the music is written and then however many musical pieces we choose to put on the next album is how many chapters I will divide the story into. Then you take each chapter and you attach it to the music depending on the mood of the music and the story. Abigail is the only story that pretty came to me overnight during a thunderstorm in Denmark where probably 80-85% of the titles, characters, and what was going to happen in that story came to me and I wrote it down during that night, and I had written a bunch down and decided to go back to sleep and then I couldn’t fall back to sleep, so I had to get up, make a pot of coffee, and just continue writing all the ideas down. That’s never happened since. It would be nice. It’s never something that can be done right in a short time. It’s difficult also because you have very limited space on an album and it has to be done in a way that you don’t go over the top because then you take away from the musical element. You can’t have all these theatrical voices talking throughout the album; it is musical too. It’s not that easy, but that’s the cool thing about it, it’s a challenge to make it work. 

PR: You’ve been wearing makeup on stage since 1976. Over the years the face coverage and design has changed. What gave you the different ideas for the various designs you’ve used? 

KD: Probably can’t remember all of them. A lot of it comes from experimenting and usually during photo sessions, and from the album. For Abigail, I wanted the guy to look like he came out of a grave with all these pockmarks, so I tried something at a photo session and thought, “Oh this is kinda cool, this is different, it’d be nice, a little fresh.” And then for Conspiracy, I decided to take it a little further and tried to incorporate blood in the makeup and then it got real fancy and that was hard to put on everyday. What a job…filling in these white spots with the black pattern you had done and then add the blood, oh man. That was one makeup where after a while, it was like, “Oh God, why did I do this?!” And for House Of God, let’s put crosses in the face, total confusion in the mind, this guy can’t decide what’s right and what’s wrong religiously, so you put them both ways, and that really works. Trial and error is a lot of it, and sometimes trying to fit in a little of what the album is about. 

PR: The opening track on one of my favorite albums, House of God, is based on an unconfirmed theory by some unknown person. I have heard that the album’s theme is based on a very old book that is no longer in print. How true is this, and if it’s true, what is the name of the book, in case someone wants to research it? 

KD: That I don’t know about. I based it on very factual evidence actually, the wolf and my character I completely made up but the surroundings and all supposedly are there and I have photos of it. Somewhere in France and there are photos of it and you can find books about it too where all of this is described. The actual legend of that place and who was there, there are actual photos of that devil right inside the door of this church. Some person had been there and actually gave me little snapshots that he had taken himself and it was weird to see, I have to tell you. Because I’d not been there and hadn’t seen the landscape and what was written in the album fit in extremely well, and after seeing the photo, I was like “Oh wow.” So I’d say it’s my own story, my own characters, and experiences woven into that old legend there. 

PR: The ideas and the storyline of House Of God really fascinated me. I was wondering if there was anything more you could tell me about it, maybe there was something about the story that wasn’t put into the album? 

KD: It really came out very much because Andy and I had some talks about religion, not really discussions because there can never be a winner when having a religious discussion, you should always recognize that. No one has proof that what they believe in is the only true thing. If anyone had that, of course everyone else would believe in that because it was proven. And that’s why we have all these different religious directions that people have taken throughout the years and I always lived so, I don’t know how to say it because I don’t want it to sound like I’m better than anyone else because it’s not about that. Just as well as no one can prove that they believe in the right god, no one can disprove that there is a god. There’s no proof that there is not god either, that cannot be proven either. And when you’re in that situation with a religion and its beliefs, it’s more like, “I think it might be like this.” And then some people base a lot of their lives around that belief without actually being able to prove it to anyone else. It bothers me when people are fanatics and they judge other people by what they believe themselves, exactly for that reason that they can’t prove that they’re right. So how dare they judge others and you know as well as me that most of the wars that have ever taken place in the past, and still are going on today, have these religious themes behind them. That’s a big part of the problem whenever the countries have been at war with each other. Today, it’s almost nothing but religious crap that’s going on, all the bad things in this world. No one has the proof, so why can’t you just relax and take it as what it is – it’s a belief that you have, maybe you’re right, maybe you’re not, but why do you have to kill other people just because they may have a different belief and none of you can prove that you’re right? It makes no sense to me, none. And then you get into a whole different scenario also – Even if there was one proven, there could be another one on top with strings holding the one you were seeing. You can’t see the strings and the bigger hands from another one on top of it. It’s almost like when you get into the universe, we can see so much of the universe that we live in and we know so many planets, there must be more outside of what we can see and understand in our little brains. And still it seems like a lot of people think we’re the only living things in this universe and it can’t be. But as soon as you get beyond that, you can think there’s a wall there, but there must be something beyond that wall too, you can’t just put a wall up and have nothing on the other side. That’s why it’s eternal, our universe. For our brains, we can never understand what the universe is. We never will. Just as little as an ant will never know what it’s like to drive a car. There’s no chance in hell, ever, and that’s the same chance we have and our Earth with this population could be nothing more than a grain of sand on a beach of life in this universe. We have absolutely no chance of knowing and because of those kinds of reasons, that’s where the makeup came in with these crosses one way and crosses the other way. Prove to me you’re right. Why not, if you’re really there, why can’t you prove it? We’d avoid all this bad shit going on, and then everybody would know there is one that is right. But even if you’ve got that, there’s still the uncertainty about what’s beyond that one that you’ve seen now, there are others controlling that one. That’s why we won’t understand it, we will never know for sure. Who knows what it’s like being dead? Maybe at that point we will suddenly know what was going on here, why we were here, but it’s also a scary thought to actually recognize that you may be nothing but a grain of sand on a beach. You’re lack of importance in this whole big scheme can be a very depressing thought and that’s why sometimes for a lot of people, religion will help you distance yourself from that thought. And that was one of the things that Andy and I talked about, you know, how can I allow myself to write about this? How much detail can I go into, how many of my thoughts can I put in too? I don’t want it to be an album where it’s so depressing people start committing suicide. ::laughs:: So you have to draw a line somewhere, and say, “Okay I’m not gonna sit here and turn humankind into a grain of sand on the beach and say that we are totally without any importance in this whole universe, that it doesn’t matter whether you were born or not.” But there might be some reality to it. Those are the thoughts I have, but I’m not wanting to kill myself or anything like that, I’ve come to grips with my own unimportance in this whole scheme, I’m totally aware that it doesn’t make or break the world whether I had been here or not. It doesn’t mean anything, and for me, I know that, and knowing that, I tell myself, “Screw it man, it doesn’t matter. I have a lot of good times here, I have a lot of fun. And I think I’ll do more of the things that are fun, that make me feel good.” I try to emphasize those types of things and get something out of it, because hey, I know just as little as everybody else on this Earth about what’s going to happen afterwards. So why not take advantage of the good times? But it’s a weird topic to talk about because there’s no solution, it’s just coming to grips with some facts. Those things that I mentioned are facts, they might not be pleasant facts, but they are facts. 

PR: I’ve noticed that you’ve used the name Melissa more than a few times. Does that name hold any significance to you or am I looking too deeply into it? 

KD: It’s been a few times, not that much. It’s on the Melissa album and then on the reunion album, In The Shadows, and then there was a reference somewhere else on a King Diamond album. 

PR: I’m thinking of “Bye Bye Missy.” 

KD: Was it “Bye Bye Missy” that there was one called Melissa? 

PR: Well, Missy is usually associated with the name Melissa. 

KD: Oh see, I didn’t know that! To me, those are very different names. I can’t remember which song it was, I think it was on the Abigail II album where I said, “This is no Melissa who’s gonna die.” Originally, in the Mercyful Fate days, someone gave me this human skull and the top had been cut off but it was still there, attached with a little hook, and whatever happened, I don’t know, to this person, but it had a heavy blow on the forehead. In the inside of the skull, there had been a big piece that had gotten loose but had grown back onto it on the inside, and there was actually a tiny little hole that you could see through from the outside to the inside. So, that person had a heavy, heavy blow, maybe from an ax or something, right in the forehead, and didn’t die from it obviously. So I started thinking, “I wonder what happened to this person. What fate could this person have had?” For some reason, I had to make up my own little story to put my own mind at peace and that’s where the song “Melissa” came from, it was inspired by that skull. I think this could’ve been a witch, of course it could’ve been, it could’ve been anything, but that was just something to put myself at ease. 

PR: I know that you do not like to hold yourself to any particular organized religion; instead, you have your own set of beliefs that you live by. But I had read that your favorite meal is the traditional Christmas dinner. 

KD: Oh yea, the Danish Christmas dinner is my all-time favorite, it’s unreal. 

PR: Even though you won’t commit to a particular organized religion, are there really no presents for Christmas? 

KD: No, because I find Christmas very cozy. I think it’s a cozy tradition. For me, it’s not associated with any child that was born magically by a virgin. But my family has always had Christmas and a Christmas tree, it’s one of the coziest seasons of the year. Looking forward as a kid and almost getting sick because of the wait for the presents. ::laughs:: So the tradition of Christmas I find very cozy, all the shops decorated and stuff, it’s beautiful, absolutely. But again, that’s an old heathen tradition. The association with Jesus and stuff, I guess, is something that came later. 

PR: So, racing and cars is your biggest passion next to music, I assume you’re into NASCAR, is there a particular driver you cheer for? 

KD: Junior I really like a lot. Tony Stewart as well. And Michael Waltrip. Those 3 I really like a lot, those are the ones I’m always going for. 

PR: So what kinda car are you driving? 

KD: I just had a Corvette that I sold and exchanged recently which was tuned up and all that stuff, but it was 5 years old, the warranty had just run out. And I went and test-drove something that would probably blow your mind, but man, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the Mini Cooper S. BMW makes them but they’re built in the old Mini Cooper factory in London and then they beefed it up a little bit too with special air intake and a very special exhaust. It’s as loud as my Corvette was, this is more like a racecar and it’s extremely quick with a 6-speed gearbox and the handling is what blows my mind though. I had them test drive one of those and the guy that test drove the car with me, he first took a certain route around the car dealership and then he showed me all the things the car can do, all the computers that are in this car, it’s all BMW, it’s got a very high safety rating and all. I had read about this: a standard Mini Cooper that doesn’t have the horsepower or the sport suspension that the Cooper S has and with all-season tires, this is sick, the slalom test that they put all cars through, they find out what the average speed is, the Mini Cooper Standard beats all BMW’s, all Ferrari’s, all Porsche’s except 1 (I think it’s the GT3) in every speed through slalom. It is glued to the road, it is sick. They say it’s like a go-kart, and it is. And then I come into the Cooper S with these sport tires and suspension and they put a supercharged intercooler on mine and free-flowing exhaust and the guy driving 70 mph just slammed on the breaks, and the car didn’t even dip toward the front. Here came the thing that freaked me out, probably the most exciting ride I have ever had in my life, he was driving on this two lane road and said “Now I’m going to go in the left lane and there’s no traffic as you can see. There’s a corner coming up here, a 90-degree corner, not a sharp edge but it’s a tight curve. I’m going to take that corner at 70 mph, unless you object, of course.” I was in the front, my wife was in the back and I said “Go for it man.” And he took this corner right at the apex, crossing it at 70 mph, I could not believe it. That the car stuck to the ground, it was unreal, when he came out of that corner we were all just laughing out ass off, ‘coz it was like, something we experienced that just cannot be experienced. That must be the closest it gets to going around a corner in a real racecar. That car is phenomenal, it’s a different kind of fun, it doesn’t have the acceleration that I had, I had 420 horsepower in my ‘vette. The handling was amazing though, you might as well have magnets on the bottom of that car. That’s what I’m driving now, it’s just got 500 miles on it.