Rammstein - Interviews

Deutsche Version lesen As a child he experimented with „World War ammunition, homemade pipe bombs and other adventurous constructions“. Today Nicolai Sabottka is not an invalid, but a pyrotechnic developer for RAMMSTEIN – and their production director. In the fourth part of our series „RAMMSTEIN – Behind the scenes of the stadium tour“ Sabottka reveals his favourite effect of the stadium tour, the hurdles in the development of effects, and how he became a pyrotechnician in the first place.

As a tour manager you are the main person responsible for this tour. Do you have a number for us how many people are involved in total, from truck drivers to musicians?
It is 265 people in total.

On small tours, as a tour manager, you are the contact person for everything and everyone – with a tour of this size, this is probably no longer possible. What is your main focus during, but also in the run-up to such a tour?
This is now called „production director“ and includes the entire technical and personnel planning in the run-up and then the coordination on tour. In principle, the fact that you are the contact person for everything and everyone, even on larger tours, doesn’t change much. My team is of course bigger and tasks are distributed accordingly.

In general, a large part of your work will certainly take place before the start of the tour – what consumes the most time, what do you have to take care of most urgently?
Tell me about it. The preparation time is always by far the most intensive. The production team isn’t usually complete yet, and I’m busy at the beginning with creating the basics. That includes checking the routing suggested by the promoter with the trucking company, requesting and booking hotels before the ticket presale starts, and confirming buses and trucks.

Then we move on to the main work, which is coordinating the design with the band as well as the design team, and selecting the appropriate service providers to implement it. During or even before the actual implementation of the design, all venues must be visited in order to check on-site whether everything can be carried out in this way. As much as you sometimes want to throw the computer against the wall at night because there are many situations that drive you to the brink of madness, this is still the most exciting time, because the band’s suggestions, which are sometimes only recorded on beer mats, napkins or in the form of small do-it-yourself models, manifest themselves piece by piece in cooperation with the design team.

In the current case, we had to completely revise the design again while we were already inspecting the stadiums, and suppliers were waiting for order confirmations – a nerve-wracking situation. But it’s also a very satisfying task when you see the result a few months later and look into the happy faces of the band.

RAMMSTEIN’S elaborate pyro show certainly requires numerous permits – has this become easier over the years, thanks to increasing popularity, or more difficult because you use more and more wacky, bigger pyro effects?
When I joined the band over 24 years ago, it was almost impossible to get approval because my colleagues didn’t always follow the rules. It then took many years to regain the trust of the authorities and organisers. Since we always provide our effects with a security concept and spend a lot of money to always be up to date with the latest technology, my company ffp has worked out a position over the past few years which now enables us to get such eccentric shows approved. The key, I think, lies in the fact that we always deal openly with all questions of the authorities, and that we pursue all possible concerns with the patience of a saint, and clear them up. Sometimes the name of the band helps and sometimes exactly the opposite is the case. I can do similar effects with another artist in town X and nobody seems to be particularly interested … but when it’s RAMMSTEIN, there will be dozens of requests.

Not only are you a tour manager, but as a pyrotechnician you are also the developer of all pyro effects. Developing pyrotechnics for RAMMSTEIN sounds like every little boy’s dream. Do you sometimes feel the same way when you are once again allowed to blow up ans ignite everything?
Yes, that’s exactly how it is. I can’t complain – I do exactly what I always wanted to do, and that’s what a good 20 permanent employees in Berlin and Los Angeles live on. Now I even get money for something I would have been arrested for as a boy. As a boy I always dreamed of becoming a pyrotechnician. To the displeasure of my parents – without the well-founded knowledge of today – I did countless experiments with World War ammunition, homemade pipe bombs, smoke bombs, and other adventurous constructions. It is a sheer miracle that I still have all my fingers. But my professional career first led me to a mine and then to civilian service. Then I started working for my brother’s concert agency. That had nothing to do with pyrotechnics anymore. Only when I got the offer to work for RAMMSTEIN did the circle close again.

However, you also pay a certain price: in principle, there never is a moment when the telephone couldn’t ring and an employee reported an incident. Fortunately, we have been spared major accidents so far, but the risk naturally increases with the increasing number of events and the increasingly extreme demands of the artists. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to show all employees again and again how important safety is in touring and individual shows. Our biggest enemy is „routine“.

Till Lindemann also trained as a pyrotechnician himself. How can I imagine your cooperation? Do the two of you think about possible effects together or is it you alone who makes suggestions?
Working with Till is simply fun. Some suggestions come from him and some from us, the company, but sometimes ideas also come from the other band members. In the early years we still had hours of creative meetings, whereas today we understand each other almost without words. We were always annoyed that we couldn’t have the pyrotechnics we had imagined.

A lucky circumstance then brought me together with one of the leading chemists in the pyro industry: Russ Nickel had just left his former company and was looking for a new partner in Europe. We then took over the distribution and approval of his new label Evolution Pyrotechnics in Europe. So I went to the factory in Montana very often, and I have a direct line to the production and development of all the effects we use. It is an invaluable advantage that we can have effects produced according to our ideas. The same goes for the hardware. We started developing our own flame systems early and now have our own „Research and Development“ department where pretty things like Till’s flame backpacks are developed and built.

I get bored very quickly and I always have the incentive that our shows look different than those of other companies … but for that you always need something that others don’t have. As a rule, you have one or at most two years‘ lead until your competitors catch up. And of course you also need the appropriate customers – RAMMSTEIN being a stroke of luck, of course, because you’ll always fall on sympathetic ears here, even with the craziest ideas.

How do you approach this, how does the creative process work – and how does it continue until the finished effect is achieved? Many effects, even from previous shows, have never been seen before and probably had to be developed from scratch?
We always build on the foundation of existing effects. Many songs have dedicated pyrotechnics or flames – but this requires a pre-selection of which songs will be played on the tour … and sometimes that’s not that easy.

Once the setlist is reasonably complete, we sit down with Till and discuss which effects we should keep, which should be further developed, and which we should let die. Then the whole thing is introduced to the band and then changed several times if necessary. That’s the theoretical part. Then the whole thing has to be tested extensively. There are always surprises, because often not everything works the way we want it to. This can sometimes be very frustrating and above all quite expensive. We have already sunk one or two detached houses, only to find out that certain effects cannot be realised the way we wanted them to be. That always involves the risk of getting into a financial imbalance that you can no longer control. But as we like to say: „No risk, no fun“.

In the current show, you rely on an almost ironic exaggeration of the flamethrower effect: Till unpacks three different sizes until he finally sizzles Flake in a protective suit on a mobile flamethrower. Do you have any technical details about this flamethrower … size, range, consumption, temperature in the flame as well as in the suit, and the like?
I always find detailed questions about the effects boring, and we don’t necessarily want to bring technical details into the public eye. But the flamethrower is based on our standard flame system and the idea with the protective suit came to me a few years ago during a series of the „Dexter“ series. There was a maniac who got into a public bus, put on such a suit and then poured gasoline over all the passengers and set them on fire. Well, here we are with our cannon, Till, and Flake …

So you may have reached the limit as far as this effect is concerned. Is that in a way also a pressure – to have to deliver more and bigger to satisfy the fans?
Yes, you’re right. It gets a little more difficult every time to add to that. But that’s what makes it so attractive. With the current show design, our biggest concern was that with flames and effects we could no longer be adequately proportional to the massive stage construction. In order to develop and build appropriate systems, you have to act before it becomes clear what the show should look like. So it takes a certain willingness to take risks to produce systems that you don’t even know will be approved by the band.

The open-air stadium tour also made possible quite different, gigantic pyros on the speaker towers. How are they operated and how much fuel goes through in the context of a show?
As I said: We like to spare the reader technical details, but we use about 1000 liters of test fuel per show.

And what produces the dense, black smoke in „Was ich liebe“? Can’t such a swath of soot even be unhealthy?
I don’t want to comment on the details here either. One can assume, however, that the effect is not harmful to health if it is used as we do, as it has been approved by the Federal Institute for Materials Testing on the one hand and the local authorities on the other.

Which effect was the most complicated in development – and why?
The large flame systems are very complex devices. Since we had decided at relatively short notice to develop several previously non-existent systems, we had to step on the gas to complete everything on schedule by the start of the rehearsals in Berlin. For months the camp looked like a secret rocket factory. Technicians with tense facial features and deep rings under their eyes … and a never-ending flood of orders for individual parts, and functional tests. The success now proves us right – but that was really very intense.

And what is the most spectacular moment from a pyrotechnician’s point of view, your favourite pyro moment of the current show?
Very clear, simple answer: „Sonne“!