By David Perri

I’ll be honest: three months ago, I had never even heard of one of Germany’s premiere ‘80s hard rock bands, Bonfire. At the time, any mention of Bonfire immediately opened up the AC/DC folder in the brain, as I recall peripherally looking at AC/DC’s Bonfire boxset in a record store when it was released during the ‘90s. Little did I know that Bonfire - over the course of three pretty solid and very listenable melodic hard rock records (in chronological order: Don’t Touch The Light, Fireworks, Point Blank) - was Europe’s great glam hope, a claim echoed by the fact that Bonfire was granted the opportunity to conquer all by recording with famed producer Michael Wagener in L.A. at the height of glam’s dominance.

Ex-Bonfire bassist Joerg Deisinger has always had fond memories of his days as a rock star, but only as recently as four years ago did everything come crashing into perspective. While living and working in Thailand, Deisinger came close to dying in the devastating tsunami that caused horrific loss of life and terrible damage in December of 2004. Prompted by his newfound appreciation of life’s fragility, Deisinger returned to Germany and set his sights on writing a memoir that included his days in Bonfire, as well as his pre-Bonfire life.

While creating the initial seeds of the book, Deisinger enlisted friend and rock journalist Carl Begai to co-write and the result is the immediately likeable Fire And Fame. Even if you’re not a Bonfire fan (I am now; I wasn’t when I began reading), Fire And Fame is a really cool and eminently readable tale of a kid who makes good on his rock star dreams. The book is written in a casual, stories-over-a-beer style which adds to its charm and appeal: surprisingly, you find yourself rooting for the affable guys in Bonfire during their music biz trials ‘n’ tribulations, and the book’s quick pace keeps your interest anchored throughout.

Deisinger took the time to chat with BW&BK about his Fire And Fame collaboration with Begai, making sure to mention he’d be missing the German winter entirely while spending nine weeks in Thailand. As the arctic deep-freeze currently hits parts of Canada, I could only be jealous of Deisinger’s positive fortunes in the weather department!

BW&BK: What was the process behind Fire And Fame? How did you and Carl Begai form this team to write the book?

Joerg Deisinger: “Well, Carl and I have been friends since we met back in 1998. I live in Nuremberg, Germany and he had just moved from Canada to Nuremberg. We met at USG Records. A friend of mine started USG Records in Nuremberg and Carl was there; he was doing some reviews. We became friends because we’re both movie fanatics, and I had this cool place back then that had a Dolby digital sound system and he came by once or twice a week and we’d watch all these mob movies like Scarface and The Godfather. After I left Bonfire I was in a band called Soul Doctor, from Berlin. We toured with Alice Cooper and Dio, but after a while I decided to stop with music because I realised the ‘80s weren’t there anymore. With Soul Doctor, we had a really hard time - we were only successful in Japan. I said to myself, ‘I want to do something different now.’ I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I decided to leave the band. I needed something totally new, so I moved to Thailand in early 2004 after 15 visits since 1989. I fell in love with the country and I decided to stop my job as a professional musician. In my opinion, the whole music scene had changed and I was ready for a change; ‘80s rock was dead, so I decided to do something totally different. Over there in Thailand, I was living on a beautiful island in Thailand and I started a successful English school with my Thai girlfriend back then. Life was good. There was nice weather, there were nice people, I had good money and didn’t think very much about the past anymore. In early December, 2004, my girlfriend and I booked a trip to a small island in south Thailand, a beautiful place with palm trees and beaches and crystal clear water. It’s really amazing, and it’s where Leonardo DiCaprio’s movie The Beach was filmed. Anyway, a few days before we started our trip my girlfriend wanted to cancel the trip because she wanted to do a Christmas party for the Thai kids in our school. Most Thai people are Buddhists and they don’t celebrate Christmas, so she wanted to do something fun and Christmas-related for them so they could trade gifts. We cancelled the trip, and on December 26th I was waiting for the ferry and suddenly my cell phone rang. It was a friend of mine, Sven from Germany. He lived in Bangkok at the time. He said, ‘Hey Joerg! Are you OK?’ I said, ‘Yeah, what’s going on? I’m waiting for my ferry.’ And he says, ‘You haven’t heard about the tsunami?’ I had no idea, because we were living near the jungle. We didn’t have any TV or anything. He told me thousands of people were dead and that there were huge waves. At first I thought he was kidding, but I went and found a TV and watched CNN with hundreds of other people and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I realised he wasn’t kidding and everything he said was true. I was totally shocked. The whole area and the island I was supposed to go to with my girlfriend was a total mess. The wave from hell was hitting the island. And I just thought about how damn lucky I was. I could have died in the tsunami. And I started thinking: why do we worry so much sometimes about all these little things in life? I was a lucky bastard. I have a great family. I had pretty good money. I had a fantastic past with Bonfire where we sold nearly a million albums globally. We went on tour with Judas Priest and ZZ Top and played all these festivals. And I was living in a dream paradise in Thailand. So why complain? Life could be over in the blink of an eye. A couple of weeks later back in Bangkok I decided to write my story from the very beginning of my life because of this experience. So I started the book because of the tsunami.”

BW&BK: You must have a real appreciation for life after an event like that.

JD: “Of course. Sometimes you think it’s all normal, and every day is just another day. But it’s not. You have to enjoy every day. I travel a lot, and I see different cultures and people. Some people are lucky, and some people are not. I think after this experience, I see the world with different eyes. You have to enjoy every second of life, because it can change any time. You’re lucky, you’re in a country like Canada and I’m lucky here in a country like Germany and we’re alive. Something can happen tomorrow; we never know. It can happen, so we should all enjoy life and not take it for granted.”

BW&BK: In terms of the book itself, what was the method? Did you and Carl sit down and write it together?

JD: “When I decided to write it, I took a couple of months just to research. I have a good memory, but I never wrote a diary about what happened. So I sat down and just collected all this information about what happened here and what happened there. I tried to put it in some kind of order. I returned back to Germany on March 17th, 2005 and I called Carl and told him about my idea. He thought it was great and I asked him to help me out. He asked how I wanted to write things, and I told him I would write and then we could get together twice a month to read what I had. Parts of it were in English and some parts in German, as Carl understands German too. He has a lot of experience as a journalist, and it’s good to have somebody else involved who also has a lot of experience in the music business. Because of that, he could add a different opinion to it because sometimes you’re just too focused on it. I read what I had and he recorded it and transcribed it and every week and every month we worked on it. I was creating the story but he was a huge help, and he’s definitely the co-writer. It was like I was baking my own cake, but Carl was putting extra cream on top of it (laughs). A lot of people out there want to write a book but they have no idea how to do it. They just know they want to write a book so they get a professional writer and they do one or two hours of interviews. Then they just want to be called when it’s done (laughs). I never wanted that, because it’s my personal story. I wanted to sit down and I really wanted to write. I finished it in Egypt, because I went to Egypt for a month to complete the whole thing. Then I went back to Germany and Carl and I kept on writing for a couple of months. After more than two years it was finally done. We were both busy while we were writing: I’m a photographer now and I travel a lot and Carl is busy, so it finally got done.”

BW&BK: What were your goals with the book? What were you hoping to accomplish with it?

JD: “It’s not a financial thing. It’s just a personal thing, because of my experience with the tsunami. And I had this dream and ambition when I was kid that I wanted to be a rock star. A lot of people out there have dreams, but some people are maybe too shy or they listen to other people who tell them they can’t do it or that they’ll never make it. This isn’t only in music, it’s in any area. My book is dedicated to everybody out there with a similar dream. If you have a dream, I think people should keep going and do what they want to do. They shouldn’t listen to other people or what those people say. Because those are the people later on who show up when you’re successful and give you a pat on the shoulder and kiss ass.”

BW&BK: There’s always the hangers-on.

JD: “Of course, of course. I always say, opinions are like assholes - everyone’s got one. If somebody tells you it will never work, maybe in his life it won’t work. But what about in mine? It’s always your decision.”

BW&BK: Looking back at the ‘80s hard rock scene while writing the book with Carl, did you feel a lot of nostalgia towards the era?

JD: “Oh yeah! I was an ‘80s kid, and I loved the scene. When I came to Los Angeles for the very first time in 1987 when we did the Fireworks album with Michael Wagener, it was a dream come true. The Sunset Strip, Hollywood Boulevard, and the whole scene… it was totally different back then. People now mock ‘80s rock and say it’s all about hair and image, but a lot of people copied that scene at the time. Like Pantera, for example, they copied ‘80s rock. And a lot of other people. And now they talk badly about ‘80s rock. But for me it was always important to have a good song. A good song was the most important thing. If you didn’t have a good song, big hair wouldn’t help you. Maybe it helped for one album, but that was it. When I was a young kid I had problems with my father, because he didn’t believe in my dream even though he was a musician himself. There was no support from him at all. But I wrote songs and I had fun And as I was writing the book, it was almost as if I re-lived my own story. I had a great time. A lot of people say I’m trying to cash in. Hey, if the book sells well… fine. And it’s got great reviews so far. But it’s never been a financial thing. It’s a personal thing because I’ve closed the musician chapter of my life. I personally see life like a book, it has many different chapters but the end remains open.”

BW&BK: You mentioned Los Angeles before and I think it’s an interesting point to explore. Now that I’m familiar with Bonfire and I’ve listened to the records, you can tell from Don’t Touch The Light to Fireworks that there was a huge change in Bonfire. There was a lot more confidence on Fireworks. What role did L.A. have in giving you that extra confidence?

JD: “A lot! We produced the first album on our own in Germany, and we were young. I was 19 back then, and at the time we met Michael Wagener while he was recording the Russian Roulette album by Accept. He said we should stay in touch, and after that we went on tour with ZZ Top in Europe and we started to sell records. He heard about it, and he wanted to produce the second album. Of course, everyone was really amazed (laughs). We thought he would come to Germany, but he said we should go to L.A. He said he liked our sound, but he wanted us to smell the rock ‘n’ roll feel in L.A. He wanted us to go to all the clubs like the Roxy and the Whisky and all these places, because he knew they would have a positive impact on Fireworks. We went out and experienced the Los Angeles scene and we went out and met people and checked out concerts and all that. It was great. And of course we have to give credit to Michael because he’s a great producer and he was just amazing. The whole scene helped a lot to create Fireworks and the way it sounded.”

BW&BK: It’s really surprising that certain of Bonfire’s songs didn’t become hits in the States. I think there’s three songs particularly that could have been big in the US: ‘Hard On Me’, ‘American Nights’ and ‘Sleeping All Alone’. Why do you think your European success didn’t translate to the States?

JD: “We were very successful in Germany, parts of Scandinavia, Switzerland and all these countries. But in America, they really didn’t give a shit about us. In America, they wanted us to come over and play clubs. We knew that clubs didn’t make sense. Don Dokken told me years ago, he said with an American tour you can start in New York and then play like 200 shows until San Diego, but you’ll never go anywhere. If you don’t have a huge stadium tour and massive airplay on MTV - at least back then - then there’s no chance. It all just costs money. But the record company said we had to play clubs and that they’d work on our career and then we’d get a big tour. But they never did that. They were just empty promises.”

BW&BK: What are your thoughts on the big singles you guys had in Europe? What do you think of the songs in retrospect, 20 years later?

JD: “I like ‘American Nights’ a lot. It reflects the way we felt when we came over from Germany. We were like, ‘Oh my God! Look at this! A huge limousine!’ And seeing the big hair on the street, we were just like wow. The song reflects our feelings in a way. I was 21 back then, so I was impressed with everything in L.A. It’s like if you have a kid and the kid never got a nice gift or never got anything at Christmas. And then suddenly there’s one Christmas where everybody comes with a gift for this kid for the first time. The kid is going to be so happy. We were the same way, especially with me because I was the youngest in the band. That’s why I was so disappointed when grunge became popular in America and worldwide. I went back to L.A. in ’91 and I was really frustrated. I was walking around on Sunset Boulevard and it was like a ghost town. The glamour was missing, nothing was there anymore. That why I like the ‘80s so much. You can say there were a lot of band with no talent and they were just hair, style and image, but there was a positive vibe there. People had fun, and that’s the most important thing in my opinion. It was like a party. Can you imagine if you go to a party and everyone’s depressed? (laughs). So ‘American Nights’ represents how happy we were in L.A. In America if you work hard you dream can come true, which is never possible in Europe or in Germany.”

BW&BK: Speaking of parties, one of your biggest party songs and probably one of the catchiest songs I’ve ever heard is ‘Hard On Me’. That song was in my head for weeks.

JD: “Funny story, the record company said we should get together with some song-writers to get some extra songs together for the American market. First we said no to the idea of songwriters because we had our style, but then we thought about it and figured it could help. So we went to New Jersey and wrote the song with Jack Ponti. He had a hit with Bon Jovi on the first album; I think it was ‘Shot Through The Heart’. He wrote some songs on Hey Stoopid from Alice Cooper, also. So we got together and wrote the song and we also did a song with Joe Lynn Turner called ‘Sweet Obsession’. And also our good friend Mark Ribler from Brooklyn, he worked with Lee Aaron and Helix. You’re Canadian, you should know Lee Aaron and Helix (laughs) (note: here’s wishing I had never heard of Lee Aaron). It was a good experience, because you get good influences from these American professional writers. It was fun. As long as it’s a good song that fits the band, it’s cool. And I like the lyrics to ‘Hard On Me’, too (laughs).”

BW&BK: Do you ever see yourself returning to Bonfire?

JD: “No. I never look back. The only thing I concentrate on is today and tomorrow. Even if we had an offer for a Bonfire reunion with original members (note: Bonfire is still active on record and on the live circuit, with vocalist Claus Lessmann and guitar player Hans Ziller at the helm) and with good money I would say no. It’s not the same anymore. It’s a different time, and people change. The style has changed and the whole world has changed. I would be disappointed. We were successful and we were friends and we had a good time and everything, and I think when you do a reunion you expect the same thing to happen again. It’s like leaving your girlfriend and years later you still think about her, so you think maybe you could get back together. And then you do, but it’s not the same anymore. It’s just not the same anymore. You know what I mean?”

BW&BK: Yeah, it’s not the good old days.

JD: “Yeah! The fire isn’t there anymore. And why? Because time has gone by and everything has changed. It’s 20 years later.”

BW&BK: One of the most entertaining parts of the book is when you discuss your infamous “cow pants.”

JD: “I don’t think they look ridiculous (laughs). They were a sign of the times, and people loved them. Brigitte Nielson, she loved the pants. Rudolf Schenker loved them and the guy from Mr. Mister loved them, everybody loved them. They become a kind of trademark for me, because people remember you. When you look at it now, bands on stage just show up in jeans and simple t-shirts so the cow pants might look a little funny. But that’s normal. If you look at Bon Jovi on the first or second album, they had big hair and all those different clothes. Everybody did that at the time. It was a fashion thing.”

BW&BK: What’s really interesting about the book is that it’s not like The Dirt by Motley Crue. It’s not stupidly trashy and it’s not full of sensationalized tabloid stuff like The Dirt. Fire And Fame is more about good times with friends and music, sort of like you’re having a cool conversation with the reader. Did you and Carl consciously, while writing the book, try to stay away from the type of trash tabloid stuff that’s in The Dirt?

JD: “You know, we’ve never been Motley Crue. I wouldn’t say we were angels, but we weren’t even close to Motley. For me, it was more important to tell the story about the dream I had and the couple of years while realising my dream. I don’t like when people out there write books and say bad things about other people. It’s not necessary. And it’s not necessary in my book to say that this guy did that and I don’t agree or that he’s an asshole. Why would I do that? It doesn’t help the story. The same with myself. A lot of people write books and talk about themselves and say that they’re the greatest and nicest and most handsome guy or whatever. I didn’t do that in the book. Remember the story in the bathroom in Phoenix? (laughs). Or the story with Samantha in the UK? A lot of people write me emails and say what they like about the book is that I haven’t said I’m the king or that I’m the best. They like that sometimes I talk about and mention embarrassing stories. Other people wouldn’t do that. But that’s what makes it authentic, in a way. It’s what makes it human.”

BW&BK: Do you think it’s more difficult nowadays for bands with a dream of success - much like you had - to accomplish that goal? Do you think the ‘80s were a simpler time, in that respect?

JD: “Oh, of course. Back then, record companies were looking for the next big thing like always. But the industry expected you to play little clubs and get experience and grow as a band and develop your own style and image. Now bands don’t have the time anymore. Trends and styles change so much, so when people get started six months later they’re already done. They’re like, ‘Yeah! I won this TV show contest! I’m a star!’ but then six months later people don’t remember them anymore because there’s this other guy now. Being a star became a joke for me, because everyone can be a star. Back then, you had more of a foundation and more of a solid ground when you had a record deal. People believed in you and supported you and now you have only one chance, maybe one single or one album. That’s it, and if you’re not successful… bye bye, buddy. Next in line. With the opportunity of the internet, a lot of people put their songs on MySpace or other places and get attention but I prefer the old days. It was more solid.”

BW&BK: Do you foresee being in any more bands in the future?

JD: “Well, never say never but life for me has moved on. I was successful in the past. I did everything: I toured little clubs, I played huge stadiums, I have a gold album (note: for Bonfire’s Fireworks), and that’s why I wrote the book. It was to finish the story. Now I’m a photographer. A lot of people talk to me and ask how a professional musician of 17 years who toured the world could just stop being a musician so quickly. But I tell them that times changed, and I wanted to do something new. I’m a photographer now, and it’s not so different from being a musician. I can still travel, I meet great people and instead of songs I compose pictures. It’s great, because you can be creative if you do a good job. It’s not so different from making records. I’m having a lot of fun doing wedding photography, wedding photo journalism. It’s big in America and it’s a growing field here in Europe. I could never be a photographer who stays in the studio taking pictures - that’s boring. In a way, I’m like the paparazzi when I’m hired to photograph a wedding: I want to catch the moment (laughs). You can’t repeat the moment, but I want to catch it.”