AC : What do you think is the rôle of a musician in society, in the world?
KH : To warn people. To tell them that the world's getting worse, that they should change, that they should try to make things better. It's different from the whole hippy thing with everyone clapping and singing the lyrics. That comes down to "we're all human so let's get on with each other." But if you reduce it to just a human level then you can't expand that feeling to anything outside the human world. That's why I hate sing-alongs.
AC : Has there been any change in the musician's rôle over the centuries?
KH : People often call me a shaman. Their form and style may have changed, but I definitely believe that shamans still exist in this world. I really flatter myself that I am one of them. People called me a shaman back when I was in Lost Aaraaff, when I was about twenty, but I didn't understand what the word meant then. But even if I didn't know the word I still had some idea of what they were getting at. I realized that maybe there was something like that within me. A musician's rôle doesn't change. The evil that was there at the start is there for all eternity, the same with the good that was there at the start. If it wasn't like that then one would prevail, the balance would be destroyed. The world isn't completely evil, there's no way that could happen and it would have no meaning. But it's not completely good either. That's why I used the word "warning."
AC : How do you visualize yourself in your sixties or seventies? What do you see yourself doing?
KH : I'd like to be totally white-haired and still be playing hard rock.
(laughs) That's the way I'd like to be–I mean if I was doing percussion shows with white hair down to here, the image would just be too close.
(laughs) Rather than that I'd like to keep on playing hard rock, though I don't know how long I would be able to sustain the intensity. That would be cooler, I think. People might think it was stupid though, this old guy singing and playing guitar. The problem is my body–there will be a physical difference between the toughness of my body now and twenty years later. Physically I'll be a lot weaker. The sound I could make will probably be the same, that doesn't matter. My feeling of putting in 100% will be the same. So the sound and feeling will be the same as twenty years previous, and maybe the attack will still be the same. The sound and consciousness will be the same, but what will be different is the toughness of my body–how hard I will actually be able to perform.
AC : You don't think that your increased consciousness will compensate for any physical deterioration? That it will enable you to find new, different techniques?
KH : I don't want it to be like that. In one sense, if I wanted to I think I could. Maybe it's wasted effort, but I want to put my all into my playing. That's why on the surface it looks like I'm performing extreme acts of violence on the guitar. Depending on who's listening, it can look like someone cursing, or like an extreme prayer. But I want to put my all into everything. It's hard on the guitar though–they soon break.
(laughs) But that's the way it's got to be. In that sense, maybe the guitars are resigned to destruction from the moment they come into my hands. What's different about my approach is that I think it's unfair to the guitar to use pliers or hammers to play it. That's too easy–I don't feel any pain. But I use my hands and that can hurt. In the same way it's pretty uncool to kill someone with a gun, but very cool to do it with a sword. Because there's an equal chance that you'll get killed first. I like to be prepared for the worst when I do something. Not because it's good or whatever, just because I like it that way. I'm sure about that. And that's the way I want to play guitar. I think that my guitar-playing now is very tough–even if it hurts or I cut myself, I can just about keep on playing.
AC : Do you think your music will continue to exist after you're gone?
KH : I don't care. In one sense, if I'm going to try and look cool then I want that to end with me. No succession. And for me, expression has got to be like that if it's not going to be a lie. The point lies with the individual. By the individual I don't mean egoism and vanity, I mean how much the individual is capable of offering up himself to the universe. If you do that, individual convenience doesn't enter into it–and if it does then you haven't thoroughly offered yourself up. If you've done something that other people can imitate then you've shown your weak point. In other words, what you were doing had no tension to it. Maybe there is one part of me that wants someone to succeed me, but my methods are designed so that no one can imitate them. For example, even now there's no one who can play guitar like Jimi Hendrix. There are certain
parts of what he did that continue to exist in various types of music. You can copy his rhythms. But the way his harmony depends on the fingers half-fretting certain strings, barely touching others–that's amazing because it was something that he
didn't sit down and think up. Music that came after him has been analyzed more and more, been explained in really fine detail. Going back to what I said earlier, the reason why people want to go back to a primitive state is that they think that requires no thought. People are tired of having to think. In their minds, they don't want to think but they are thinking all the time–about their families, about what to eat. And that's why they came up with this idea of "world music."
AC : You don't like to talk about what the future will bring, do you?
KH : If I'm making music properly then the future doesn't matter.
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