There's a very interesting interview with dEUS-manager Christian Pierre in De Standaard. It also contains some old dEUS-pics.

• Christian and Filip (Eyckmans) were schoolfriends of Tom
• They weren't musicians but they immediately started to manage the band
• Christian stopped school and became their manager
• They got loads of offers from recordcompanies after Zea, but they picked Island because they had Tom Waits and Bob Marley
• They made no commercial compromises: Little Arithmetics nearly made it to the UK Top 40, but the noisy part probably ruined that
• They started to make money independent from the recordcompany and copyrights at the time of the Ideal Crash-tour when they played all around Europe in rooms bigger that 1.000 visitors
• They sell more albums than Queens of the Stone Age in France and more than The Raconteurs in The Netherlands
• In the main cities in Europe they sell out venues from 2.000 to 4.000 places.They will go back to the States, but they're still looking for a good recordcompany that will support them 200%

Flemish (economic) newspaper De Tijd published an interview with dEUS-manager Christian Pierre and Klaas Janszoons today. They're mainly talking about the whole marketing-machine behind Vantage Point.

• They wanted to release a new album pretty fast after Pocket Revolution, so they could make profit from the things they built up with PR and the tour
• Christian consideres himself as a peoplemanager
• He summarizes the campaign (Slow on Myspace, two singles, The Architect on Last.FM,...)
• Klaas says they still have ambitious plan
• They have always been a healthy company although their results are depending on album releases and tours
• Touring gets more important
• The deal with Heineken crashed on a non-working IP-filter (they planned to make the pre-listen only available to Spanish surfers, but that went wrong)
• Christian says it's still important to score one big international hit and he's convinced there is one on Vantage Point

Christian Pierre reacts on the Heineken-incident in the Belgian media on the Knack-website.

• He confirms that Universal asked Co-Operative Music to disable the streams on the Heineken-website
• He says they Universal doesn't know everything about the international deals
• COOP is part of Universal so in fact it's one record company
• They've done a couple of other actions with Myspace (the Slow-video), Last.FM (The Architect), Les Inrocks (Oh Your God in the podcast),...
• dEUS thinks the internet is a very important medium to promote and sell music
• The deal in Heineken wasn't that exclusive, they've done other things in the rest of Europe
• They picked Heineken in Spain because their music site is the best way to reach the audience they're aiming at. It's not a marketing-website, it's a normal music site.
• They're not promoting Heineken, they're just using a platform offered by Heineken to promote their new album
• The embargo and the 25.000-euro thing for the Belgian media is just a way to prevent the media-battle they see each time the band releases an album. Three years ago they asked the media the same thing, but De Morgen broke it the day after.

Het Depot (Leuven) is organising a couple of (free) evenings about the music industry. Two journalists will interview different key players in the industry. On December 18th you can catch up with Christian Pierre. More info over here.

Christian wrote a letter to Flemish newspaper De Morgen after Sam Valkenborg (Fixkes) said dEUS has not that much success outside Belgium. The letter mainly states that they are making profit from touring (as already mentioned before).

Ik snap niet goed waarom Vlaamse rockartiesten in de pers toch zo graag het buitenlandse succes van dEUS willen minimaliseren. De eerste tien jaar was iedereen nog fier en kregen we zelfs felicitaties, de laatste vijf jaar gaat er geen maand voorbij of ik lees wel ergens een interview waar iemand het weer eens nodig vindt om onze verkoopcijfers en/of de opkomst bij onze concerten in het buitenland in vraag te stellen. Normaal laat ik zoiets passeren, maar nu wordt het toch wel wat gortig.

Naar aanleiding van recente uitspraken van Sam Valkenborg (Focus, De Morgen) wil ik jullie lezers graag juist informeren. Ik zal me beperken tot de feiten.

Tijdens de laatste tournee in 2005-'06 speelden we 150 shows, waarvan 6 in België. Dus 96 procent van onze optredens is in het buitenland. We hebben 27 landen aangedaan. Optredens in het Postbahnhof in Berlijn (capaciteit 1.200), de Olympia in Parijs (2.500), Shepherds Bush Londen (2.000), Aula Magna in Lissabon (twee avonden, 3.000), om er maar enkele te noemen, waren allemaal uitverkocht.

Er waren een 40-tal festivals waarvan we ruim de helft co-headliner waren. Roskilde, Sziget, Electric Picknick... Zeg maar de Pukkelpops van die landen. Tel daar nog eens 110 andere clubshows bij, waarvan de 12 in de VS de enige verlieslatende waren, en dat hebben we nooit onder stoelen of banken gestoken.

Wat ik wil zeggen: op tournee gaan (met 15 mensen, in prima condities, zonder toersupport van de platenfirma) kost ons geen geld, maar brengt op.

Tot spijt van wie het ons benijdt.

Christian Pierre, manager

Knack has an interesting article about Belgian bands having succes in other countries. There's a small interview with Christian Pierre about the subject. Most of the story is probably known by all of you, but i'll repeat it anyway.

• In the early 90's only Bang! was interested in dEUS
• They arranged a showcase in Londen (dEUS as a support act for Girls Against Boys)
• At the showcase they were discovered by Island Records
• They've started touring without loss at the The Ideal Crash-era. The earlier tours cost them between 1000 and 5000 euros for each show.
• By touring as much as possible at that time, they've built up someting
• Playing in small towns as Staffordshire wasn't a lot of fun, but they knew it was necessary to get to the point where they would like to be