Interview With Peter Baltes: “Finland is a true, true metal country.”

Interview by Mohsen “Stargazer” Fayazi

He is an amazing bass player who has always dedicated his skills and talent for the benefit of the band. There is no doubt about his role in making the legendary ACCEPT successful. Peter Baltes was born on 4 April 1958 in Solingen, Germany. He started his music career when he was young and although he claims that he is not Billy Sheehan he was voted as the number one bass player in Burrn Magazine reader’s poll of 1985.

ACCEPT are heading towards the end of ‘The Rise of Chaos’ European tour and very soon they are going to bring their music to the land of metal, Finland. Peter shares his thoughts on playing there:

“Number one is the dedication of the fans, I mean Finland is a true, true metal country. It has true metal fans and it shows every time we play, we can feel this is like something special, this is something beyond you know. It’s just, you can feel it on stage and when you talk to the fans and people.

And everybody seems to know metal – even people in the hotel, people on the street. Metal is like a high standard in Finland, which is great.”

Whenever they were active, ACCEPT have always been on a high. Great quality of music and production on their albums, along with energetic and perfect performances on stage have always been true facts about them. But what makes ACCEPT work so well?

“I think there’s a couple of factors. One of them is the songwriting part, Wolf and I have been writing these songs for so many years and we have our little quirky ways how we do it, but what comes out in the end is somehow what defines Accept, from the songwriting part.

Also, our dedication to our craft and our work ethic – we really do strive for excellence. When we play on stage we want things perfect. And at the same time trying to achieve the human aspect – that we have fun and play, that it’s not so organised. So that’s difficult for us to do, but for some reason we’re doing this very very well.”

Not many bass players dare to play a solo on stage, but Peter Baltes has done, which has always received positive feed back from the crowd.

“Well we used to do a few bass solos a couple of tours back. It’s not really about the spotlight, it’s a variety for the fans. If you’re in the audience and you see a show, in the old days there used to be a guitar solo and a drum solo. A bass solo was a little unique, but it was something cool we could offer. We decided now it would be much cooler to have some sort of battle going on instead of play a bass solo – have a little guitar bass battle with Wolf going on, which I win every night (laughs), I’m just kidding.

I’m no Billy Sheehan, I’m not very technical. But most things I play come right outta my stomach, my gut and I’m always concerned about the rhythm of things. I see the faces of the people when I play and that’s pretty cool. Most of all, it’s just I prefer playing within the band.”

Those fans who followed the band from the beginning know that Peter also did some lead vocals on tracks such as ‘Primitive’ and ‘The King” and a few more. But would it be possible that he do it again in the future?

“Probably could in the future, but never had the opportunity at this point because Mark has such a great range and has a really nice clean voice. Which back in the day was the reason I started singing a couple of ballads because we wrote some and you know, I guess almost the band pointed at me and said ‘you try it’ because they knew I was singing a little bit, ’cause back then it made sense, it was kinda cool.

We have Mark now and he’s such an excellent singer, but who knows in the future? Maybe we do something together, I’m not opposed to it, no.”

You can listen to the whole of this interview on the Audio Player below and if you would like to win a pair of tickets for the ACCEPT shows in Finland, Peter said a secret code, fill the form with that code and you’ll have a chance to be one of our lucky winners.