Accept guitarist Wolf Hoffmann recently sat down with Made In Metal for a new interview. During the chat, the rocker talked about his decision to move to the USA from Germany more than 30 years ago. He said:
“Well, luckily, America is a very open country, very welcoming. So you never feel like a foreigner, because as soon as you come in — and I’ve got dual citizenship, so I’m both American and German at this point, but you never feel like a foreigner. You always feel like an American.”
He continued by saying that people become a part of the country once they move in and that it’s not a problem:
“Once you’re in, you’re part of the group, where in some countries, especially in Europe, like in Germany, there’s people who lived in Germany for 30, 40 years, and there’s still… some people say, ‘Well, he’s a foreigner.’ But in America, it’s different. Once you’re in, you’re an American, and that feels very good, but at the same time, I can just open my mouth and people say, ‘Where y’all from?’ They know that I’m not born in the United States. They can hear my accent and they know — to them, I’m very German still. And to my German friends, they think I’m a bit American now, so I’m somewhere in between. I’m like a bastard.”
Hoffmann Couldn’t Find Anybody To Bond
Hoffmann moved to Nashville and has been living in the city for years. In another interview, the guitarist revealed that when he moved to the city there was no one from the music scene he could bond with:
“I wound up there the first one ever, I think. When I got there in ’93, a long time ago, there was nobody in the metal scene or even rock world out there. I remember the people, the locals telling me, ‘Oh yeah, there’s another guy that’s sort of heavy’ [who is living in Nashville]. John Kay from Steppenwolf’ was supposedly [out there]. To me, that’s not really… Well, it’s kind of heavy… He’s all right. I mean, I never met the guy. But whatever. But that was the only other name that was considered maybe heavy.”
Hoffmann could have easily found people to bond with, but apparently he didn’t move to the city just to ‘be in the local scene.’ He continued:
“But I didn’t move out there to be in the local scene. I just liked it because it was involved and it was a city that was all about music and it seemed to be the right place. Even though shortly after I moved there, or sometime after I moved there, I left the music scene altogether. It was still a decent place to live. And it wasn’t until maybe 10, 15 years ago that everybody and their sister started to move to Nashville. And now it’s the Mecca of musicians, period. I mean, a lot of people that you never in a million years would think would move to Nashville, they’re all there now. It’s crazy.”
You can watch the interview below.