The Return of the Wunderschnitzel by E W Latham
Euro-Pop-Folk-Folk Rock legends Magnus Glocken and Ludwig Speil of Wunderschnitzel are used to performing in front of thousands of fans, but for the last five years they have taken time off and shied away from public life to raise children and tend to their various hobbies and business interests. Now, with the much-anticipated release of their fifth album entitled Wurst Calypso and a world tour about to start, I caught up with Wunderschnitzel at the Tea Rooms of the von Trapp family lodge in Austria.
EWL: I was listening to Wurst Calypso on the way here and, by the way thank you for sending the limousine...
LUDWIG: Did you get the little package too?
EWL: Yes thank you. I love sugared almonds.
LUDWIG: I grow them on my farm. Magnus did the package with the pretty bow.
EWL: Thank you Magnus.
MAGNUS: Don’t mention it.
EWL: O.K.
MAGNUS: No please don’t mention it.
EWL: So, your new album Wurst Calypso is a bold colour on your musical palette...
LUDWIG: Shall I answer that?
MAGNUS: You answer that.
LUDWIG: Yes, well we took five years off after the Space Schnitzel album. We wanted to do something else with our fingers and toes so we bought a farm, took our women there and bought them some stylish rubber boots. We tilled the land, grew beards and mated like rabbits. I remember we were having lunch outside after sawing a lot of trees down to make way for a runway, and Mrs. Ludwig was cooking some home made wurst sausage, and Magnus looked up and said "what’s that bloody sound?" and I said "It’s a wurst calypso." That’s really how it started.
MAGNUS: Ah, the cake and tea have arrived. Shall I be mother?
LUDWIG: Yes please. Five sugars.
MAGNUS: I know Ludwig. Really, how many years has it been?
EWL: Musically you’ve used a lot of new instruments on this album to craft a new sound. Who did you work with?
LUDWIG: Well I really got into a sort of tudor medieval sound, layering it with some Brazilian flavela rhythms and some brass band. Then Magnus layered electro harpsichord over the top, and a few new age jingles. We asked Hot Wee Wee Johnson to produce the album, for his bayou techno genius, although we will take the credit when it comes to the crunch. As for session musicians, we worked with a great keyboardist that Magnus found playing in a gents toilet in Frankfurt, didn’t you?
MAGNUS: Yeah, he was playing for pennies so I said don’t bother with this load of bankers. They may splash it around when they want to but how much lands in the hat and how much goes down the drain?
EWL: And the trumpet section. Where did you find them?
LUDWIG: They are the Leipzig Musical School for the Kleptomaniacs. That was the only problem. They produce a fabulous sound but you can’t tour with them. It’s a disaster. Eddie Grant tried and they stole everything he had, even his prized collection of painted eggs.
EWL: Your wives are still the back up singers aren't they?
MAGNUS: Yes, that’s right. Our wives have always been our back up singers, but they are not the same back up singers as on the Space Schnitzel album.
LUDWIG: Yeah, and those were different again from the ones on "Can You Take The Length" album weren’t they?
MAGNUS: Yeah, I think so.
EWL: So, how was setting up your own commune out there in the woods?
LUDWIG: Well, it took me a while to adjust. The sounds of something gnawing in the night scared me. Finding a mouse under the sink feeding a load of tiny pink baby mice from her titties was enough for me to nearly seek professional help, so we had the entire place incinerated and leveled to the ground and we built a fabulous marble mansion in it's place. It’s like a Turkish bath but built with hacienda floor plans. You can hose down the living room if you’ve dropped some cookie crumbs, or if the cat has coughed up a fur ball or something. Beautiful.
EWL: And you Magnus?
MAGNUS: Well, as you may or may not know, I was raised in the country by James Last so rural living came quite easy to me, apart from being able to walk to the garage for some smokes and a scotch egg.
EWL: You were brought up at the James Last Musical Orphanage weren’t you?
MAGNUS: Yes I was. We were educated by the Great One and all of us were bathed and talced by him every evening. He placed great importance on the use of talcum powder. It was there that I came to appreciate open spaces, surviving in them for many days when I occasionally left the school at a moment's notice to escape Heir Last’s extra music tutoring.
EWL: I recently read in Hello Magazine that you have just got your fishing license Ludwig?
LUDWIG: Yes that’s right. I’m a keen angler and I’ve been practicing on a man-made lake on my property and after some hard work I passed. Got the little slip of pink paper saying I can fish between the months of July and September and yes I’m very happy indeed. If you listen you can hear a reel being wound in on the new bongo heavy track “It’s a Big One”.
EWL: You recently both modeled in a fashion campaign for Karl Lagerfeld. How was that experience?
MAGNUS: Well it was great. Largie is a old pal from way back and it was nice to hang out together again. He wanted us to model his new line of tasseled leather man thongs, the hottest thing on Bulgarian beaches this summer. He wanted that folk rock attitude and back woods musician physique and we’ve got that in aces.
EWL: And with the new album you are also both starring in a movie...
LUDWIG: Yeah, that’s right. It’s a gangster flick by Italian director Ronaldo Fabulosi. We play a pair of traveling troubadour assassins who are employed by the Mafia boss Don Zucca.
EWL: Was playing the character hard?
LUDWIG: Do you want to answer that Magnus?
MAGNUS: OK. No, it wasn’t that hard. Fabulosi demands the cast drink litres of espresso before the shoot to get that edgy feel. Wearing the tights was fine although Ludwig had a problem with his codpiece. Family curse. The one thing I did have trouble with, was wielding the loot case converted to a machine gun. That took some practicing, but they had a military band consultant on set to help out and to get the right stance, although we ended up going for my signature big strum move I do on stage.
EWL: The Magnus Maneuver?
MAGNUS: Indeed The Magnus Maneuver. Ludwig has a pair of big maracas that double as space hoppers and that’s how we get around the Tuscany landscape looking for the Fongulo Brothers played by Chuck Norris and Hugh Grant.
LUDWIG: Chuck was great on set although the corset stops him from doing any of his real classic moves. The director had to get the blue screen in and the special effects boys for that.
EWL: How did you get on with fabled control freak Fabulosi?
LUDWIG: Oh Ronnie’s not that bad. It’s the coffee and his addiction to Sweet and Low that is really what makes him so intense, but when he gets on one of his tirades it's not pretty. He dangled the continuity manager by her armpit hair from St. Peters in Rome because she hadn’t noticed that my moustache had grown between lunch and afternoon takes. He was livid.
MAGNUS: But he’s OK. Just looking for someone to love him. He took us out; got us drunk, fed us some of the finest cold ravioli I’ve ever tasted. Plus he kept a ready supply of Tuscan schoolgirls coming in and out of the Wunderschnitzel trailer.
EWL: What was the town of Battona Chiappe like?
LUDWIG: They were very nice. A lot of the women, who were not out walking the streets, as is their profession, came by the set. After the second day of filming every man, woman and child on that set had a bed to sleep in and something warm to cuddle up to for the entire duration of filming. If that’s not hospitality even for a few hundred euros, I don’t know what it is.
EWL: Well, we are all looking forward to the world tour. Are any dates set yet?
MAGNUS: Well after the film premier in Rome we are going to take a few weeks to make sure the costumes and inflatable props are all correct and then its just a question of buying Euro rail passes and letting loose. We are going to do some warm up gigs in Austria and then we may go to Japan as Ludwig has got a craving for sushi ever since he saw Life of a Geisha.
EWL: Thank you Magnus, Ludwig.
MAGNUS: Cheers.
LUDWIG: Keep your schnitzel wunder you crazy guys and girls.
EWL©2006
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