Arjen Anthony Lucassen is a Dutch singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist musician and record producer best known for his many conceptual progressive metal/rock operas. His main project (and the best known one) is his long-running progressive metal/rock opera project Ayreon.
Arjen plays a wide range of instruments, with guitar and keyboards being his main ones. He has released a total of twenty-six studio albums, four live albums, two EPs and seventeen singles in his career.
He has also participated on several projects by other artists, including Shadow Gallery, After Forever, Within Temptation and Avantasia, and appears on over 50 further albums as a guest. His large output is explained by him rarely touring. He readily admits that he is severely uncomfortable on stage, meaning that in effect he is almost exclusively a studio musician.
Lucassen’s passion lies in creating intriguing and epic storylines set in defined worlds (often futuristic, but the past and present has also been explored), and crafting conceptual rock operas set in these realities. He is known for featuring a lot of guest vocalists on his albums, each often singing the part of one of the characters in the story.
He has cited inspiration from many classic science fiction/fantasy movies, and his music and stories is equally fantastic and expansive in scope. Over the top? That phrase does not exist in Lucassen’s vocabulary.
Lost In the New Real is however a different beast. Released in 2012, it was the second album he released under his own name (the first was in 1993), and he handles most of the instrumentation (drums aside) himself.
One notable guest is however actor Rutger Hauer, who provides narration between (and sometimes during) the songs. Because make no mistake about it: this is another concept album with a new story, and it is set as far into the future as any story ever has been.
“I grew up in a time before computers,” says Arjen, “and am amazed by how much the world has changed in the last 20 years thanks to the digital revolution. This got me wondering: What will the world look like in a few hundred years? What will technology, science, and society be like then? How will today’s pressing social/environmental problems be dealt with?” These musings inspired the overall concept of the album.
The story of Lost In the New Real follows Mr. L, a twenty-first century man who was cryopreserved at the moment of clinical death from a terminal disease. The album begins as Mr. L is being revived at a point in the distant future, when technology has advanced enough to cure his disease. Mr. L finds himself in a world that has drastically changed — to the point that the line between what’s real and what’s not is no longer clear.
Rutger Hauer performs the part of Mr. L’s appointed psychological advisor, who is tasked with helping him emotionally adapt to this strange new world. The songs follow the main character Mr. L’s emotional journey as he is confronted with both serious and comical aspects of the “New Real”, and desperately tries to decide if he can find a meaningful place within it.
“Working with Rutger is a dream come true,” says Arjen. “He’s not only one of my favorite actors, he also starred in my all-time favorite sci-fi movie, Blade Runner.” Rutger also enjoyed the collaboration with Arjen, saying that “it was marvelous work, very creative.”
Based on Arjen’s story notes, Rutger wrote his own narration script, choosing the Blade Runner reference “Voight-Kampff” very deliberately. While not inspired by the film per se, both Blade Runner and Lost in the New Real examine questions about the nature of reality and what it means to be human.
One of the things Mr. L wants to check out is what happened with his favourite bands, and what is going on with music right now. What he finds shocks him: no new music is created any longer. Why bother? Everything has been done. Every riff has been played. Every possible combination of notes and lyrics has been done. Everything would just be rehashing.
This is what Pink Beatles In A Purple Zeppelin is about – a future where every song that could be made has been made, every combination of styles have been heard, and it’s impossible to come with anything new that people hasn’t heard before (or that doesn’t already exist).
Every song’s been sung before
Every note’s been played
Every chord’s been strung before
And every melody’s been made
Every tune’s been hummed before
Every album’s been produced
Every rhyme’s been applied before
And every music style has fused
“It’s becoming harder and harder to be original in music,” Arjen says. “A lot of bands are harking back to the glorious days of the 60’s and 70’s. Myself included. I figured that if it’s already hard to be original now, after only about fifty years of rock music history, it is going to be virtually impossible in a couple of hundred years! My guess is that by then people will have invented a computer program that creates music for you, tailor-made. Just punch in – maybe even just think of – your favourite bands like Floyd, Zeppelin, Beatles and Purple, and the program will make a nice new composition for you with your favourite singer.”
In the song, the computer program that Arjen spoke of has become a reality. Mr. L thinks of his favourite bands, and the machine is able to make a perfect blend of them and feed it back to him.
I just think of what I like
Any blend will do
They reproduced what’s in my mind
But it feels like something new
Pink beatles in a purple zeppelin
Same old sound, different song
(And the song remains the same)
Pink beatles in a purple zeppelin
Sounds so right, feels so wrong
This is just one of many ways the main concept of the album reveals itself as you move through the album: what is real? “In the future world,” Arjen explains, “cancer and other diseases have been eliminated, and people live far longer than ever before. The social fabric of humanity has also changed tremendously: computers have developed emotions, most social interactions take place in virtual reality, and yes… Big Brother is watching you. It’s become a world where the line between that is “real” and what is not has blurred beyond recognition.”
The song itself has a lot of musical throwbacks to the 1960s and 70s, with a huge but simple sound. The song was composed on acoustic guitar, like most of the album. Consequently, the album relies less on metal and complex progressive patterns than normal.
“It was clear from the start that I would not make a metal album because I am not a metal singer. I like the bands from the sixties and wanted to look more in that direction this time. I like the singers of that time, like John Lennon, Syd Barrett, Ray Davies [the Kinks], Donovan, Marc Bolan [T. Rex] and stuff like that. I think I have a similar voice. That typical British hippie voice [laughs]. But no matter the style, my music always sounds like me. “
“I always have a typical sound in my productions,” says Arjen. “For example the analogue keyboards or a significant guitar sound. I think you can always see my sound. Star One, for example, is a pure metal project, whereas Guilt Machine was very dark and had post-rock elements. Ayreon albums are again very versatile and contain many styles, but you can always see that I am behind them.”
The album was released 23 April 2012. To mark the occasion, a video was made for Pink Beatles In A Purple Zeppelin. Just like the song’s title, the video would contain several references to even more classic bands.
Lucassen says, “The video was mostly shot in an area where I grew up in Holland near the sea. It’s a very ‘Dutch’ clip, windmills and all! So you could say this clip goes back to my roots, also musically. It features many visual links (at least 10!) to the bands and albums that I grew up listening to. Peace, man!”
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