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"At the age of 10 I played drums on old wash-drums, because at the beginning I wanted to become a drummer. At the age of 12 I got my first guitar (I did not get a drumkit because my parents thought it would be too loud). Then I took classical guitar lessons for 6 months and two years later I finally founded my first band together with two school-mates and I also had my first electric guitar (a white Ibanzez Les Paul) and a small amplifier. Shortly later, I bought my first effect-instrument, a distortion panel of course. Then I got to know Piet Sielck (today Iron Savior) and the two of us founded another band called Gentry. We played live in youth-clubs, schools, small clubs and so on and we got the first price at a amateur festival in Hamburg. Cannot tell how proud we were! We played music of Slade, the Sex Pistols and Uriah Heep but we also had two songs of our own. At that time I delivered newspapers to collect the money for a Marshall Amplifier. I was so proud when I was finally able to buy it. I changed my guitar with my friend, who was playing a Stratocaster as I always wanted to play a Strat with a humbucker.

After some time Piet and I got to know Ingo and Markus and later on we founded Second Hell, and after that we changed the name to Iron Fist. More gigs in small clubs followed and we started to record our music in the rehearsal room. After some time we got a rehearsal room in a church, which we gave up quite soon as there were no toilets and therefore we had to piss in the corner. Somehow our band split up when we didn't have any rehearsal-room anymore.

During my time at the army, from 1982 to 1984, I got to know Michael Weikath on a party and I entered in his band called Parefool. But as we did not get along with the other band mates too well, we again founded Iron Fist together with Ingo and Markus. We rehearsed at a army-barracks. I was stationed in Hamburg as I could give the Seargents a pleasure playing on their balls.


Anyway, we got to know Limp Schnoor who had some contacts with Noise Records. We gave him our recordings and we got the chance to record two songs for a Death Metal Sampler. The feedback to those songs was so good that we got more contact with Noise Records and as a result we finally recorded our first Mini LP Helloween and the first full-length album Walls Of Jericho.

Okay, well, what happened from then on can be read in the metal press. In a way, music has always been more important for me than anything else on earth. I am happy that I managed to finish school sucessfully despite of all the missed lessons due to all the rehearsing and band stuff. During my time at university (1984 to 1987) this was not much different at all and besides, Helloween got bigger and more successfull at that time. So I finally stopped studying as I had the big chance to turn my hobby into profession."

Kai Hansen