Back in 2015, with Lucky and Marcos joining the band, the lineup was not the only thing that changed for Rage.
Other than giving Rage a much needed and powerful drive from behind the drumkit (which he does on the highest level) Lucky predominantly took over as the manager of Rage. It might have been coincidence or it might have been fate that we met again on the Rage anniversary tour in 2014, where Lucky’s band Tri State Corner was one of the support acts. Lucky and I had been friends since 1988. Back then he was taking drum lessons from Chris Efthimiadis and toured with us as a roadie for a few years.
As time went on, life took us in different directions and we lost contact for a while. Once on the tour bus, we instantly rekindled our friendship and it quickly became apparent that we both were unhappy with the turns our lives had taken and the current situations we both found ourselves in. Lucky promised to help me with the business side of Rage. Together with his friend Andreas Bob he founded the LUCKY BOB Music Agency which took over the managerial tasks and the tour bookings.
When Rage was back on track and we had negotiated a new record deal with Nuclear Blast we started working on “The Devil Strikes Again”. Writing the new material, it got me thinking about the rights to our back catalogue which were entangled with BMG. I started talking to Andreas about this issue who, after reviewing the old contracts, was sure there were steps that could be taken to rectify the current state of affairs.
Together with an attorney and threatening a lawsuit he was able to get back the rights to our old records. Both Lucky and Andreas were invaluable in the process and helped secure a future for Rage. They both have my deepest thanks for this and many other things.
After we got the rights back, the plan was to make the material available to the fans again. This sparked the idea to found the Dr. Bones label.
Primarily I wanted to create something of worth instead of simply re-releasing records that many of our long-time fans already possessed. I started going through ungodly amounts of old tapes to find as much bonus material as possible in order to give even the most diehard fans of Rage something new for their collection. The first release we focused on was the “The Refuge Years” box set which as soon as it come out hit with a bang. The box contained all the records from the legendary Manni & Chris era from ‘87 to ’93 with tons of bonus material. Ten records as well as a DVD were included to make this truly special release.
As the response of you, our loyal fans, clearly shows we got this one right and had to have multiple new pressings of the boxset over the last five or six years. In the wake of its success and fueled by the positive results we continued to re-release more albums from different eras of Rage.
But this process takes a lot of time and we are still busy with some of the records which you can expect to come out eventually. My hope is you will enjoy them all.