Losing a friend or a loved one is one of the hardest things we can go through as human beings. Especially if we lose them needlessly because their struggles get the better of them.
Michael Kiske is best known as a vocalist for Helloween – the German godfathers of power metal. Always is a song from his first solo album Instant Clarity, released in 1996.
The song was written by Kiske as a tribute to his former Helloween bandmate Ingo Schwichtenberg, who took his own life at age 29 after struggling with severe untreated mental issues for some time. He preferred to put a brave face on things, never fully embracing the help that was offered.
But, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s go back to the beginning.
Michael Kiske was only eighteen years old when he was asked to join the German power metal band Helloween in 1986. The band had formed in Hamburg two years earlier by Kai Hansen (vocals/lead guitar), Michael Weikath (lead guitar), Markus Grosskopf (bass) and Ingo Schwichtenberg (drums). They had released an EP and an LP, but Hansen was uncomfortable in the double role as lead guitarist and lead vocalist at the time. It was decided that a separation of these roles would be beneficial for the band, and Kiske became their target.
In a conversation with Headbangerslifestyle.com in 2017, Kiske recalled “I started very early as a singer, I got my school band and when I just barely got out of high school Markus from Helloween showed up in the rehearsal room telling me they were looking for a singer.”
Kiske actually rejected Helloween’s offer at first, as he disliked the sound of the band’s first album Walls of Jericho (1984). After seeing how the band was developing he got more interested, and after really liking the band’s arrangement and approach on his own song A Little Time, he joined Helloween in 1986.
Kiske’s first album with the band was 1987’s Keeper of the Seven Keys: Part I. It was such a massive step forward that the world struggled to understand that it was even the same band. It is widely considered to be one of Helloween’s best albums and a milestone in the creation of the power metal genre.
Helloween went on to release Keeper of the Seven Keys: Part II in 1988, which went gold in Germany and gave them international success. The band’s rise in popularity had been massive. Both of the Keeper of the Seven Keys albums were highly influential and spawned a new wave of European power metal bands, such as Blind Guardian, Stratovarius, Hammerfall, and Angra.
That was the end of their honeymoon period, though. Sadly, the following years would be filled with turmoil, legal disputes with their record company, personnel changes, illness, and creative as well as personal differences. Kai Hansen sussed out what was happening early on, and left the band as early as immediately after their 1988 headlining tour, finding a more harmonous working environment in his new band Gamma Ray. Ingo Schwichtenberg and Michael Kiske would hang on a while longer, but would be let go in 1993 and 1994 respectively.
Ingo was known as “Mr. Smile” by those who knew him. He was as famous for his ear-to-ear smile as for his high-energy drumming. As a founding member of Helloween he changed metal drumming forever. His mixture of fast, driving rhythms and technical proficiency has been imitated by countless power metal bands over the years. His fast, thundering rhythms gave Helloween something unique at the time.
Unfortunately, sometimes a big smile can hide the hurt that is inside. He struggled with untreated mental issues, which eventually cost him his role in Helloween as well as his life. The unbelievable rise in success was incredible for Helloween, but probably the worst thing that could have happened to the drummer.
Roland Grapow, who had replaced Kai Hansen as Helloween’s guitar player in 1989, opened up about Ingo in an interview with Truemetal.org in 1999: “He would go from [normal] one day to totally crazy [the next], because of a nervous breakdown. He was a proud quiet guy, who was very laid back and did not talk much. He never talked about his feelings or anything, and always had a beer in his hand. He told me he saw this and that and the devil, and was going totally nuts. It was really hard. It was my first experience seeing someone like this. When someone is changing over a period of a few months you realize there is something going on. It was getting worse and sometimes we would think he is getting better, then suddenly he would act all crazy again ten minutes later.”
Drink and drug use would be his crutch for a while, but that’s never a sustainable option. He was still an incredible drummer, more than capable of giving world-class performances – until a bad episode got in the way. When the band went on tour in support of the 1991 album Pink Bubbles Go Ape, they were nervous about their drummer, concerned that he would have a bad episode during one of their live shows. As it turned out, this was a well-founded fear.
Grapow continues: “We went to play a show in Hiroshima, Japan [2 October 1992] when he stood up on his drum riser in the middle of a song. Then he fell onto his cymbals, and we had to stop the show. That was one of his last shows, and we took him to the hospital. He was there for a while. We always hoped that he would get better and be himself again, but the problem still persisted.”
The band tentatively marched on, and in 1993 they recorded their fifth album, the looser and overall more progressive and multi-faceted Chameleon. It features the song Step Out of Hell which Grapow wrote about his bandmate’s problems with drug abuse, which only made the other issues worse. The song took the form of a direct plea to do as the song title says – to step out of the hell of addiction. They had tried talking to him, offered help, encouraged him to actually take the medication he was prescribed, and tried to wake him up to not trying to cope with things on his own. Now they were even trying to reach him through their own songs that he played on, probably oblivious to the fact that the message was meant for him.
These 1993 album sessions would constitute Schwichtenberg’s final contributions to Helloween. These were not happy times. Michael Kiske later said of the Chameleon album sessions: “Ingo was very sick. That was the last thing he did. After he did the drumming, he had a breakdown.”
Bassist Markus Grosskopf said in 1996: “It was like he had two people in his mind: the good and the evil. He told me the evil was always talking to him. It was very strong in him; he was very depressed. We decided to give him professional help, ’cause we could not help him. It was too serious.”
In an interview with Kingofdrums.net in 2021, guitarist Michael Weikath said “We started to notice something was wrong with him when we were on tour, with all that road pressure. Ingo had a strange behavior… he did strange things and we noticed something was seriously wrong with him. We lived with him and could see his changes.”
Drumming-wise, Ingo was as good as ever. The band managed to get strong performances from him in the studio on his good days, but it was obvious that they could no longer rely on him for touring. At some point after the album sessions, they were faced with making the only decision left to them.
Letting Ingo go was far from easy – he was a friend, after all, but Halloween was also a business, and you can either do the job or you can’t. Also, supporting him from within the group as they had initially hoped was not really working.
Weikath ended up calling Ingo to give him the bad news. He wanted to be as clear as he possibly could about how Ingo could not be part of the band anymore until he recovered from his drugs and alcohol abuse, and started taking his medications to help with the schizophrenia regularly. The hope was that this would be a strong wake-up call. Weikath wanted to give Ingo as much time as he needed the conversation to last in order to cover these things thoroughly, and for this reason, the conversation ended up lasting six hours.
In the end, the result was always going to be the same. After that call, Ingo would be gone. As it turned out, it was for good. He was replaced by session drummer Ritchie Abdel-Nabi on a temporary basis for the Chameleon tour – a signal that the door was open if Ingo straightened himself out.
Ingo was not the only one who saw the writing on the wall. Kiske had never quite seen eye to eye with Weikath, and during this time they were clashing personally, musically, and even over business. Things were particularly strained during the Chameleon sessions and tour, and by the end of it they were both ready to walk away from each other. Weikath, however, was the de facto leader of the band at the time. If anyone was leaving, it certainly wasn’t going to be him, and so Kiske was let go at the end of the tour in 1994. While they are friends again today, at the time they were simply not able to be in a band together, let alone in the same room. With the tour completed, Helloween found themselves looking for a new permanent vocalist and drummer.
A short while after this, I saw an interview with Michael Kiske and Ingo Schwichtenberg on MTV Europe, possibly on Headbanger’s Ball. They were poolside and chillaxing, giving an interview from their sunbeds which focused on the fact that they both had plans for life after Helloween, that new music would come from them soon, and it ended with the two of them raising their champagne glasses towards the camera in a toast for the future. It was a heartening and very positive clip, full of promise. For Ingo Schwichtenberg, however, this was sadly the beginning of the very end.
Kiske would have known that Ingo was struggling massively at the time, so the fact that he was not just willing to try to do something with him, but also putting it out there in such a public way that they planned to do something together, has to be seen as a gigantic show of support. While the interview carefully avoided saying exactly what their plan was beyond “new music,” a lot of people assumed that they would form a new band together. Realistically, that was never really in the cards given Ingo’s condition. It is overwhelmingly more likely that Kiske had invited Ingo to perform on his planned first solo album.
Unfortunately, things would quickly go downhill for Ingo after his point. His schizophrenia got worse, and then his father died in February 1995. This gave him such a downward spiral that it very likely was the main reason behind his suicide less than a month later. He died on 8 March 1995 when he jumped in front of an S-train in his hometown Hamburg. He was 29 years old.
Sometimes there is a feeling of inevitability about something, but this was still a shock to those who knew him. Ingo was a sweet soul with a big smile and a huge heart, and the fact that he was gone was unbearable to everybody who had ever worked with him, not to mention everybody who loved his music. Everybody had hoped it wouldn’t come to this – that it could be avoided, that he could be helped – that he would accept help. It had been suggested and discussed and insisted to him countless times, but Schwichtenberg never wanted that discussion. And now it was too late.
Michael Kiske was probably the one of all of Ingo’s former bandmates who had the closest relationship with him at the time. It hit him hard. Kiske was in the middle of writing material for his solo album, and there was no question that he had to do something in honour of Ingo on the album.
Instead of writing a song specifically about Ingo, the song Always became a tribute and show of support to anyone with mental struggles. It underlines the fact that their struggles are seen; that they are not alone. It is an encouragement, a show of support. It shows respectful acknowledgement of the hardships that come with suffering from these issues, while underlining that being ill is not a weakness. In fact, dealing with this is a solid show of strength.
Written from the perspective of the person who is struggling, it must have been a tough exercise for Kiske to put himself in that position. To imagine the pain that Ingo felt, and that anyone who struggle can feel.
It would be wrong to make it all about that, though, and there are some very nice touches in there. A line like “I was always tall and smiled” is definitely about Ingo, and rather than defining him by his illness, this is what those who knew him would want to remember about him.
There is no place for me
And no one to set me free
There is no way to go
There is no place for me
Where it’s warm and where I can be
At least there is no place that I knowSometimes it’s hard to see that you’re running out of luck
Right now it’s my own life I don’t knowWith everything I did I was the one who laughed
Yes I was always tall and smiled
Yes everything I did I thought would always last
And I felt always strong inside
A song with a sensitive message often gets a similarly sensitive musical expression, so it was inevitable that this would be the ballad of the album. It starts with a gentle, basic piano treatment, with more instruments joining in along the way. By the time the song has completed a couple of verse-chorus-cycles, it has gathered up quite some momentum.
Kiske has always had an incredible range, being able to deliver powerful screams even beyond the range where most vocalists are able to reach using falsetto. He never goes that high in this song, instead starting in the lowest register we had heard him sing in up to that point, reaching for a more vulnerable vocal than normal. As the song progresses and gains momentum he moves to higher scales, eventually giving a taste of how powerful and good-sounding his voice can be in ranges where others would start struggling, although this was never going to be a wailing song. The delivery is always sombre and more emotional.
The clincher both musically and lyrically comes in the bridge. This is where the protagonist reaches the point of no return – things are horribly wrong, and you need to try to turn things around. This is easier said than done, but the song takes the only viewpoint it can – the encouraging one.
When I look around there’s only broken glass I see
And everywhere I reach it’s hurting me
Looking back I find there was not much how it should be
It’s slowly killing me!
I got to go, kick all dust off my shoes
Take all that’s good inside and turn it ’round‘Cause with everything I did I was the one who laughed
Yes I was always tall and smiled
Yes everything I did I thought would always last
And I felt always strong inside
Ingo Schwichtenberg never got to play on the album, but there were still guests: former band mate Kai Hansen delivers a blistering guitar solo on several songs, as does Adrian Smith from Iron Maiden, and having them around really boosted Kiske’s spirits. Making the album was cathartic for Kiske and a positive experience.
Looking back at the album making process in 2013, he told Deadrhetoric.com: “I think the Instant Clarity record was rather easy because there was good money support, especially from Japan. Then I had Kai [Hansen] and Adrian Smith there for support. And I was renting a house and we had everything set up there. That was quite fun to do.”
Instant Clarity was released on 16 August 1996, three years after Kiske left Helloween. It was predated by two singles, though, released in different territories on the same date; 24 July 1996. While The Calling was released as a single in Japan, Always was selected for the UK market (which in practice also made this the featured song across Europe and America). Both are great songs, one of them showcasing Kiske’s metal roots while the other one showed his sentimental side.
Only one of the singles would get its own music video, however, perhaps indicating which of them was the main song from the album overall. Always was filmed and produced in New York City and became the featured track in TV programming.
The video shows Kiske walking around town amongst people of all kinds – some are together while others as well as lonely and clearly having struggles. He carries a frame which shows footage of people (including himself at times) in various settings. Possibly a reminder that sometimes the memories are all we have left, and that we carry them with us.
Kiske was not the only one paying tribute to his old bandmate. Kai Hansen wrote the track Afterlife for Ingo, which was recorded for the Gamma Ray album Land of the Free (1996). Helloween did not come up with a specific song, but dedicated the album The Time of the Oath (1996) to him.
In the years following the release of Instant Clarity, Kiske gradually lost interest in music in general, and metal music in particular. The bad memories of how things went down in Helloween was a very bitter pill to him. In 2013, he told Deadrhetoric.com: ”Looking back now, maybe the Instant Clarity album still had a bit of the drive of the past, it was still in there. Then I completely lost interest. I was interested in other things. I was studying things, reading books every day. There was this request for another record, and I made one, but it wasn’t until 2006 when I got interested again.”
Slowly but surely the bug came back. Kai Hansen, whom he always had a friendly relationship with, kept encouraging him. He did collaboration albums, and even an album of reimagined Helloween songs called Past In Different Ways in 2008. He started a few projects (Unisonic, Place Vendome) and also started collaborating with numerous artists just for fun, such as Avantasia, Gamma Ray, Timo Tolkki, Revolution Renaissance, MSG, and many others.
In 2016 it was announced that Michael Kiske would join Helloween, together with Kai Hansen, for a reunion tour that would combine old and new band members. It would take the band around the world and it would take place during 2017 and 2018.
In a statement posted on Blabbermouth, Kiske stated “For a long time, this was totally impossible for me, because I was hurt and full of anger and I didn’t want to have anything to do with it, or the metal scene. It went very deep. But in the last couple of years before the reunion, without me noticing, things changed somehow, and I realized something was different when I ran into Michael Weikath. It was a festival and suddenly I was standing in front of him. He said something like, ‘Michael, what have I done that you can’t forgive me?’, which I thought was a great line. Then I just said, ‘You know what? I think I have forgiven you a long time ago.’ That was just how I felt. There was no anger – I was totally relaxed.”
It would take another year for Kiske to agree to take part in the reunion tour, and once again Kai Hansen was the one who encouraged it. In a 2017 interview with Classic Rock, Kiske asserted: “We’d just played some shows in Spain with Unisonic. We were getting changed backstage, getting out of our clothes, and Kai said: ‘If we don’t ever do anything under the name of Helloween again, we’re just idiots.’ And I said: ‘You know what? I’m open.’ […] Helloween was the mothership and this tour somehow sums it up to me. It is almost like a circle that gets to the starting point. I got off the band, I have been through a lot of experiences, and I don’t want to miss any of it because I know how important it was to go through all this. I am not angry anymore and I can forgive and forget.”
If the tour was a test, it went so well that the reunited band also recorded an album together. The self-titled Helloween was released in 2021.
RELATED ARTICLE: Album review of Helloween’s «Helloween» (2021)
The expanded and reunited Helloween are still touring. There is obviously a big presence missing from the early days, but every classic member is still included in the show. During the drum solo every night, there is a point when the image of the drummer on the big screen suddenly change to footage of Ingo doing one of his classic drum solos. Their solos intertwine, and the audience always light up when Ingo appears. It is a lovely way of remembering one of the most innovative drummers coming out of the metal genre in the 1980s.
This was not an easy article to write, but I wanted to do it for three reasons.
Primarily, there is still a general need in the world to normalise how we look at mental health issues, making it easier for sufferers to dare reaching out for help, as well as making it easier for others to offer support to anyone who may be struggling.
Ingo Schwichtenberg also needs to be remembered for the pioneer he was as far as establishing the then new style of power metal drumming rather than for his illness and the way he went. His influence remains massive, as any of the bands who followed in the footsteps of Helloween in the 1990s and beyond will tell you.
Finally, the song Always remains a very touching tribute to Ingo, as well as offering encouragement to anyone who face similar struggles. It is a great track with a heartfelt backstory and deserves to be heard.
As always, thanks for reading.
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