When Fool's Garden released their Dish Of The Day album in 1995, the five-man band never expected it would open new horizons outside their home market in Germany. Lemon Tree, which was the first single taken from the album, has become a big hit in Europe and Southeast Asia. Formed in 1991, the five members include Peter Freudenthaler, who is the lead singer and song-composer of the band, guitarist Volker Hinkel, bassist Thomas Mangold, keyboard player Roland Rohl and Ralf Wochele on drums. They recently visited Hong Kong for a short promotion and to accept The Best International Pop Song Of The Year award in a music award presentation organised by local Hit Radio. There are apparently about 17 versions of Lemon Tree on the market, including the Mandarin version performed by Taiwanese singer Tarcy Su, and most of them are special remix dance versions of the song. Even though the band have not listened to all of them, they were quite happy with the other versions. 'When we did the promotion tour in Taiwan, we were standing beside the girl [Tarcy Su] on a TV show and the feeling was very strange, because you knew that she had sung a cover version of your song,' he said. Among all the different versions there was only one which they thought was not good enough - 'the German version is really awful', they said. But even though the success of the song has brought them fame and fortune, they said they would not make another similar song in the near future. 'I don't think we would write 'part two' of Lemon Tree intentionally,' said Hinkel. 'You cannot plan to write a song, you should ignore your previous works and you should not pay too much attention to how people would expect you to write, we try not to think about it. 'We all realised that it was impossible to make a follow-up of the song - if we deliberately wrote a similar song, then everybody would say that we were copying ourselves, so we just write whatever we want to but not what people want us to do, I think that's the best way for us to go on.' The band have also released two other singles: Wild Days and Ordinary Man. 'When we found out that [Lemon Tree] was so successful, we were quite afraid to be completely identified with only one song. But then we realised that the sales of the album were very good and our concert tickets were sold out, even here in Asia. It surprises us, that people can also sing the other songs along with us apart from Lemon Tree. It's true that we always have to play Lemon Tree in our showcases, but still it is satisfying when you see the audience know about the rest of your songs,' said Freudenthaler. Talking about the band's music philosophy, they admitted that they preferred acoustic music to computer-generated sounds. 'I think harmony and melody play a very important part in our music, it is true that sometimes a computer can help us to make a lot of different sounds, but still we would rather play acoustically because it sounds more natural to us,' Freudenthaler said. Apart from this, the band members agreed that their present format gave them a greater flexibility in live performance. 'If you want to play live or reproduce things from the record live, you have to do it in the band's full format,' Freudenthaler said. The band stress they do not want to be stereotyped as one kind of music group and they are hoping to offer the audience variety. 'I think one of the secrets of our success is to give our audience a large variety of music,' said Freudenthaler. After the band have finished their promo tour in Southeast Asia, they will go back to Germany and will start working on the next album. They firmly believe they can prove they were not just a flash in the pan. 'Last year we spent most of our time in promo tours and concerts, and we did not have time to sit down and think about our future, so I think after we go back to Germany, we will concentrate on the preparation of our next album,' Freudenthaler said.
