END OF THE ROAD
“Reaching the top is difficult, but staying there is much, much tougher.”
Chris von Rohr
“The combination of the success and white powder just wasn’t a good thing.”
Fernando von Arb
Reaching the top is difficult but, let me tell you, staying there is much, much tougher,” says Chris von Rohr.
As a co-founding member of Krokus, a band who, despite being from the rock’n’roll backwater of Switzerland, attained platinum-selling status in the 80s, von Rohr knows more than most about determination and persistence. Krokus defied the odds to create some of the finest hard rock of that decade and enjoyed a very brief spell at its summit, although a combination of ego-mania, over-zealous management, fast living and creative burnout caused them to slip back down the ladder. Perhaps more unlikely still, the band members, now older and wiser, have buried their differences and reconnected as both musicians and friends, and following a twilight-years renaissance are about to write the final chapters of an extraordinary story with a dignified and satisfying farewell.
“When Fernando [von Arb] and I recall those days, we wonder: ‘What the fuck happened? Were we really that off the rails?’” von Rohr says with a laugh.
“There were times when I could only shake my head at the kindergarten behaviour,” says von Arb. “The combination of the success and white powder just wasn’t a good thing – snowstorm alert!”
Krokus formed in the town of Solothurn in 1975, and von Rohr named the band after travelling past a field of the colourful flowers (‘Krokus’ is the German spelling) due to the name including the word ‘rok’. Over the coming years the unusual moniker would become a source of delight to the British music press, who filled their boots with geographical and horticultural puns, with story headlines including ‘heavy petal’, ‘Alp is at hand’ and even ‘Basle brush’.
“Nobody was waiting for a bunch of rock’n’rollers to come out of the land of
