{"id":328994,"date":"2025-12-22T01:13:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T01:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/328994\/"},"modified":"2025-12-22T01:13:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T01:13:11","slug":"i-want-out-by-helloween-the-story-behind-the-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/328994\/","title":{"rendered":"I Want Out by Helloween: the story behind the song"},"content":{"rendered":"

Helloween<\/a> guitarist Kai Hansen was in hospital recovering from Hepatitis B when he realised he was going sour on the band he\u2019d founded a few years earlier. It was the end of 1987 and Hansen had gotten sick on the US leg of the German power metal trailblazers\u2019 tour in support of that year\u2019s masterful Keeper Of The Seven Keys, Part 1 <\/a>album.<\/p>\n

\u201cA girl,\u201d he says of how he picked up the infection. \u201cOne of them. We were young guys, we were running wild, we had opportunities. You have to piss on every tree, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The \u2018hows\u2019 of the matter aren\u2019t as important as what happened next. Finally discharged after two months, he realised something had to change. Helloween had been running full pelt for the past few years, and a gruelling tour schedule combined with Hansen\u2019s lifestyle weren\u2019t exactly helping his physical and mental wellbeing<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an honest song. I wrote it from the heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kai Hansen<\/p>\n

\u201cI was thinking, \u2018OK, this is not going to work out,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cSo I suggested doing shorter tours: \u2018Can we cut it down?\u2019 But the other guys said, \u2018If management want us to play, we will play. We only have one chance in life.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

He may have been disillusioned but Hansen didn\u2019t quit. At least not yet. Instead he poured his frustration into a song that would appear on Helloween\u2019s next album, whose title barely disguised the fact that it would become his resignation letter: I Want Out<\/p>\n

\n

\"Helloween\n<\/p>\n

Helloween in 1987: (from left) Michael Weikath, Kai Hansen, Michael Kiske, Ingo Schwichtenberg, Markus Grosskopf (Image credit: Paul Natkin\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Helloween were part of groundswell of German metal bands that emerged in the first half of the 1980s, alongside the likes of Kreator, Destruction and Sodom. Hansen had formed the group in Hamburg in 1984, alongside fellow guitarist Michael \u2018Weiki\u2019 Weikath, bassist Markus Grosskopf and drummer Ingo Schwichtenberg.<\/p>\n

Their first album, 1985\u2019s Walls Of Jericho, was raw and thrashy, with Hansen doubling up on vocals and guitar. The follow-up was something else. Keeper Of The Seven Keys, Part 1, saw Hansen handing over vocal duties to 18-year-old wunderkind Michael Kiske, a man with a voice that could shatter stained glass windows.<\/p>\n

Sign up below to get the latest from Metal Hammer, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox!<\/p>\n

Musically, too, it was a huge step up. Thrash was out, replaced by a newfound sense of musical ambition and a set of powerhouse anthems to match. Nearly 40 years on, Keeper Of The Seven Keys, Part 1 remains the template for power metal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hansen rolls his eyes at the suggestion. \u201cWe chewed heavy metal<\/a> down and spat it out our own way,\u201d he says. \u201cSomeone came up with the idea to call it \u2018power metal\u2019. I mean, what the hell is that? I always thought power metal is fucking cheesy. And we are not cheesy, fuck that. Well, maybe we can sometimes be a little bit cheesy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"Helloween\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Bernd Muller\/Redferns)<\/p>\n

Taxonomy aside, Keeper Of The Seven Keys, Part 1 was a winner. Suddenly, Helloween found themselves bundled onto a tourbus with guitars, passports and a mission to introduce the world to Germany\u2019s next big band. That\u2019s when Kai Hansen realised that life in Helloween wasn\u2019t the joyride it promised to be.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe did extensive tours of Europe and America and Japan,\u201d he says. \u201cThere was no internet, you couldn\u2019t be in contact with your loved ones \u2013 you had to go to those shitty phone boxes. And of course, we were trying to party as much as we could. Then you get the bill at some point. For me, it was an extreme bill. I got sick, and spent two months in hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n

It took a while for Hansen to verbalise his feelings about his situation within Helloween, but the signs were there on both sides. If the band had been reaping the rewards of the album\u2019s success, things might have been different.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had no fucking clue about the financial situation of the band,\u2019 he says. \u201cWe got paid a little dough every month, that was basically it. We didn\u2019t know who was being paid for what, how much money was coming in, how much was going out for what. I didn\u2019t like that: \u2018Can we have some information? Who\u2019s working for who?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

HELLOWEEN – I Want Out (Official Music Video) – YouTube
\n\"HELLOWEEN<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

There were tensions with his bandmates, too. Hansen and Weikath were chalk and cheese \u2013 the former ebullient and brash, the latter taciturn and possessed of an oddball sense of humour. New boy singer Kiske was strong-minded in a way that belied his youth. Factions and rivalries began to form. As Hansen puts it: \u201cHelloween was not a strong union at that time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI always thought power metal is fucking cheesy. And we are not cheesy, fuck that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kai Hansen<\/p>\n

His wavering commitment could be measured by his songwriting contributions. Hansen had written or co-written most of the songs on Keeper Part 1. For the follow-up, inevitably titled Keeper Of The Seven Keys, Part 2, Weikath shouldered much of the songwriting duties.<\/p>\n

\u201cWeiki and Kiske were saying, \u2018Do you want to do this metal stuff forever?\u2019\u201d says Hansen. \u201cKiske was into more singer-songwriter stuff, Elvis stuff. Weiki was more like, \u2018We have to be like The Beatles.\u2019 Ingo, Markus and me were hard-heads: \u2018We want to rock. We want to do metal.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Ironically, Hansen didn\u2019t completely want out of Helloween when he wrote the song that would ultimately become his kiss-off to the band. But he couldn\u2019t shake a piece of advice an English aunt had once given him.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe said to me, \u2018Kai, whatever you do, to with all your heart. Love it, change it or leave it,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cThose words kept ringing in my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"Helloween\n<\/p>\n

Helloween in 2025 (Image credit: Press\/Mathias Bothor)<\/p>\n

After finishing I Want Out, he took his concerns to the rest of the band. \u201cI said to the guys, \u2018We have to change something. I said, \u2018We\u2019ll do the tour, if nothing has changed, I might quit.\u2019 It was my baby from the start. I didn\u2019t want to quit it.\u201d<\/p>\n

I Want Out laid its cards on the table. It might have been written for Michael Kiske to sing, but the sentiments were all Hansen\u2019s. \u201cShut your mouth and take it home \/ Cos I decide the way things gonna be,\u201d runs one lyric. The chorus was even more on the nose: \u201cI want out \/ To do things on my own \/ I want out \/ To live my life and to be free.\u201d<\/p>\n

The message was hard to miss but easy to ignore, and that\u2019s what the rest of Helloween did. \u201cThey were indifferent,\u201d says Hansen. \u201cWeiki was happy, cos we were in competition. And Kiske was like, \u2018You\u2019re stupid to do that, how could you?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

I Want Out was released, appropriately enough, on Halloween 1988, three months after Keeper Of The Seven Keys, Part 2. Any doubt in Hansen\u2019s mind had evaporated by that point. By the start of the following year, he was no longer a member of Helloween. The self-fulfilling prophecy laid down by I Want Out had come to pass.<\/p>\n

\u2018I was feeling so confident and free,\u201d says Hansen of his departure. \u201cOn the other hand, I was, like, \u2018Shit, it could have been great.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

HELLOWEEN – I Want Out (Live in Wacken 2018) | HELLOWEEN – YouTube
\n\"HELLOWEEN<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

Post-split, Hansen put together a new band, Gamma Ray. Helloween themselves carried on without him, though both Michael Kiske and Ingo Schwichtenberg followed him out the door a few years later (tragically, the latter died of suicide in 1995).<\/p>\n

Tellingly, the new iteration of the band didn\u2019t retire their former guitarist\u2019s resignation letter from the setlist \u2013 new vocalist Andi Deris continued to sing it live. And following the band\u2019s unconventional reunion in 2016, in which Keepers-era stalwarts Hansen and Kiske merged with the band\u2019s current line-up, it retains pride of place in their set.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an honest song,\u201d Hansen says now. \u201cI wrote it from the heart. I guess I had to leave to eventually come back.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Helloween guitarist Kai Hansen was in hospital recovering from Hepatitis B when he realised he was going sour…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328995,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-328994","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}