On promo tour in Paris, Joey tempest answered my questions about the making of Bag of Bones during a 30 minute interview over the phone. In order to make this interview (the last of the day for him) a bit more funny, I asked stranged questions from time to time, inbetween normal questions about music. So that's why it's called "the underpants or boxer short" interview. Enjoy...
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| (c) Patric Ullaeus Revolver - all rights reserved |
Are you more beer or wine ?
I really like red wine, in particular French wine.
What was the starting point for Bag of Bones ? The song Dog House, the choice of Kevin Shirley as the producer, some lyrics ?
Doghouse was the first song we wrote for the album and we played it live on the Last Look at Eden Tour. And we felt it had a great feeling. It was more straightforward rock’n’roll with a bit of a bluesy sound. It was a great approach and we all felt in the band : « this is something we would like to explore for the next album ». That was the starting point. And then I started writing some stuff in London by myself, like Not Supposed to Sing the Blues, Bag of Bones and I started working on From Riches To Rags. And that was the beginning really. And then I got a great riff from Mic for Firebox, I got some great stuff from John Levén like My Woman My Friend’s riff. Levén and Norum worked on that riff. And Norum sent me Mercy You Mercy Me. So I worked on these tracks a bit and then we met up in Stockholm in our rehearsal place. We tried all the ideas and i began to sound really good. And we knew we had something special going on, something deeper and deeper, a new expression, you know ?
So, right from the start, you knew where you wanted to bring the album to ?
Yeah, and it’s a funny thing, we all started to listen to more seventies style bands, like Rival Sons and Joe Bonamassa’s stuff and… There’s a great band from Gothenburg called Graveyard that I like too. There’s an expression there – coming from the seventies – that is really cool, that is beginning to happen now and we were lucky to sort of feel it. We felt it a few years ago already.
How was the writing process ? Did you exchange files by e-mail as you did before or did you write songs together in the rehearsal room ?
We did a little bit of each. I worked a little bit in London on lyrics and on some song ideas. And then Mic and John Levén and John Norum sent me a few riffs but we did work a bit more in the rehearsal place this time, in Stockholm. So everybody was more involved in the arrangements this time. It is really a family affair, you know. Everybody has been so helpful and we really enjoyed doing this album.
Has each one of you written at least one song on the album this time ?
Almost. The only person that is not really writing yet is Ian but he has very good arrangement ideas instead and he has very good ideas for the songs in general. So he’s a great help anyway. I’m gonna see if I can write some stuff with him as well.
When you insist on « yet », does it mean that you urge him to propose more ideas ?
Yeah, of course ! That would be great. But I like to work with him, you know, I like standing in the same room with him behind the drums and me on guitar and see if we can find an expression together. Ian has such great arrangements ideas. We’ll see what the future has to offer.
I really like red wine, in particular French wine.
What was the starting point for Bag of Bones ? The song Dog House, the choice of Kevin Shirley as the producer, some lyrics ?
Doghouse was the first song we wrote for the album and we played it live on the Last Look at Eden Tour. And we felt it had a great feeling. It was more straightforward rock’n’roll with a bit of a bluesy sound. It was a great approach and we all felt in the band : « this is something we would like to explore for the next album ». That was the starting point. And then I started writing some stuff in London by myself, like Not Supposed to Sing the Blues, Bag of Bones and I started working on From Riches To Rags. And that was the beginning really. And then I got a great riff from Mic for Firebox, I got some great stuff from John Levén like My Woman My Friend’s riff. Levén and Norum worked on that riff. And Norum sent me Mercy You Mercy Me. So I worked on these tracks a bit and then we met up in Stockholm in our rehearsal place. We tried all the ideas and i began to sound really good. And we knew we had something special going on, something deeper and deeper, a new expression, you know ?
So, right from the start, you knew where you wanted to bring the album to ?
Yeah, and it’s a funny thing, we all started to listen to more seventies style bands, like Rival Sons and Joe Bonamassa’s stuff and… There’s a great band from Gothenburg called Graveyard that I like too. There’s an expression there – coming from the seventies – that is really cool, that is beginning to happen now and we were lucky to sort of feel it. We felt it a few years ago already.
How was the writing process ? Did you exchange files by e-mail as you did before or did you write songs together in the rehearsal room ?
We did a little bit of each. I worked a little bit in London on lyrics and on some song ideas. And then Mic and John Levén and John Norum sent me a few riffs but we did work a bit more in the rehearsal place this time, in Stockholm. So everybody was more involved in the arrangements this time. It is really a family affair, you know. Everybody has been so helpful and we really enjoyed doing this album.
Has each one of you written at least one song on the album this time ?
Almost. The only person that is not really writing yet is Ian but he has very good arrangement ideas instead and he has very good ideas for the songs in general. So he’s a great help anyway. I’m gonna see if I can write some stuff with him as well.
When you insist on « yet », does it mean that you urge him to propose more ideas ?
Yeah, of course ! That would be great. But I like to work with him, you know, I like standing in the same room with him behind the drums and me on guitar and see if we can find an expression together. Ian has such great arrangements ideas. We’ll see what the future has to offer.
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| (c) Fredrik Etoall - all rights reserved |
Are you more underpants or boxer shorts ?
I am definitely more boxer shorts !
What did Kevin Shirley bring to the album ?
I was great to find him, really. We knew about him. We knew that he’d done great stuff with the Black Crowes, Aerosmith, Black Stone Cherry and many more. We knew about him but we heard songs like the Ballad for John Henry by Joe Bonamassa, we were like “who is the producer ? This sounds great !”. This was just the sound we all were working on, you know. We found out that it was Kevin Shirley. So we called him up and he was very interested. He said : “you are a very underrated band and I’d like to work with you !” And that was it, that was the ticket. Then we invited him to Stockholm to come over and we found a studio that we really like. We invited him to come and work with us for a month.
Is Stockholm the only place where you can finish recording an album ?
All of our four comeback albums, we’ve done them more or less in Stockholm. It’s easier for us because the four of the guys live there now. I live in London but it’s more practical to do it in Stockholm. And also we’ve found some great studios there, we know them so well that we really feel at home. Atlantis Studios, where we recorded Bag of Bones… I knew this place before because three or four tracks of A Place To Call Home were recorded there. And I knew how great that room was, I knew how great was the mix desk, how great the sound was. So it was a good choice. The band Opeth just finished recording before us and they loved it as well. And The Hives went in just after us, in the same studio. It’s really a good studio. It’s got old stuff, it’s got old gear from the sixties and the seventies. It really warms the sound up and it makes it great to hear it.
So you chose this particular place for the vintage vibe you were looking for ?
Yeah, absolutely ! But also we’ve learned over the years that, these days, you record digital and you have to warm up the sound before you record digital. That’s the mistake a lot of bands do. They record it through a digit editor (à verifier) and they record it in modern studios and it sounds cold. What you’ve got to do : you have to go back and use old tubes, old mixdesks, old compressors and you have to make that warm sound before you record it to digital, which means you really ends with a nice sounding record. That’s why we wanted to work with this in the studio.
When listening to Bag of Bones, several qualifiers came to my mind. Could you please tell me if you agree with these qualifiers ? First I’d say “no bullshit, pure rock n roll”…
Yes, the sound of this album is more straightforward, it’s more of a rock-blues expression really. I think … show and a lot of… and also you come to place where you automatically express yourself with a bit more depth and that gives more meanings to the lyrics. You add more meaning to the lyrics when you express yourself like this. Also we didn’t overdubbed much, we didn’t fix much in the studio. We worked very spontaneously, we did four or five takes on each song. The idea behind Kevin Shirley’s way of working is that you work on each song and you finish each song, which means each song has a royal treatment. Every song you work on and you finish it and then you move on to the next one and the beauty of this as well is that all the band members are there to the very last day and coming up with ideas. It sounds really like a team work, everybody is there all the time. So, yes, Kevin really created a really nice atmosphere for us.
How was the recording process ? Do you all record at the same time or each member of the band doing his part one after another ?
We stood together in a big room with headphones and playing the songs live and doing four of five takes and then we would choose one or two takes, our favourites, and then we worked and finished the track. So we didn’t do much fixing and overdubs. There’s a very spontaneous and live feel to the album. It’s very honest.
Are more Sweden or Britain ?
It’s impossible to say . I’m really in between.
I am definitely more boxer shorts !
What did Kevin Shirley bring to the album ?
I was great to find him, really. We knew about him. We knew that he’d done great stuff with the Black Crowes, Aerosmith, Black Stone Cherry and many more. We knew about him but we heard songs like the Ballad for John Henry by Joe Bonamassa, we were like “who is the producer ? This sounds great !”. This was just the sound we all were working on, you know. We found out that it was Kevin Shirley. So we called him up and he was very interested. He said : “you are a very underrated band and I’d like to work with you !” And that was it, that was the ticket. Then we invited him to Stockholm to come over and we found a studio that we really like. We invited him to come and work with us for a month.
Is Stockholm the only place where you can finish recording an album ?
All of our four comeback albums, we’ve done them more or less in Stockholm. It’s easier for us because the four of the guys live there now. I live in London but it’s more practical to do it in Stockholm. And also we’ve found some great studios there, we know them so well that we really feel at home. Atlantis Studios, where we recorded Bag of Bones… I knew this place before because three or four tracks of A Place To Call Home were recorded there. And I knew how great that room was, I knew how great was the mix desk, how great the sound was. So it was a good choice. The band Opeth just finished recording before us and they loved it as well. And The Hives went in just after us, in the same studio. It’s really a good studio. It’s got old stuff, it’s got old gear from the sixties and the seventies. It really warms the sound up and it makes it great to hear it.
So you chose this particular place for the vintage vibe you were looking for ?
Yeah, absolutely ! But also we’ve learned over the years that, these days, you record digital and you have to warm up the sound before you record digital. That’s the mistake a lot of bands do. They record it through a digit editor (à verifier) and they record it in modern studios and it sounds cold. What you’ve got to do : you have to go back and use old tubes, old mixdesks, old compressors and you have to make that warm sound before you record it to digital, which means you really ends with a nice sounding record. That’s why we wanted to work with this in the studio.
When listening to Bag of Bones, several qualifiers came to my mind. Could you please tell me if you agree with these qualifiers ? First I’d say “no bullshit, pure rock n roll”…
Yes, the sound of this album is more straightforward, it’s more of a rock-blues expression really. I think … show and a lot of… and also you come to place where you automatically express yourself with a bit more depth and that gives more meanings to the lyrics. You add more meaning to the lyrics when you express yourself like this. Also we didn’t overdubbed much, we didn’t fix much in the studio. We worked very spontaneously, we did four or five takes on each song. The idea behind Kevin Shirley’s way of working is that you work on each song and you finish each song, which means each song has a royal treatment. Every song you work on and you finish it and then you move on to the next one and the beauty of this as well is that all the band members are there to the very last day and coming up with ideas. It sounds really like a team work, everybody is there all the time. So, yes, Kevin really created a really nice atmosphere for us.
How was the recording process ? Do you all record at the same time or each member of the band doing his part one after another ?
We stood together in a big room with headphones and playing the songs live and doing four of five takes and then we would choose one or two takes, our favourites, and then we worked and finished the track. So we didn’t do much fixing and overdubs. There’s a very spontaneous and live feel to the album. It’s very honest.
Are more Sweden or Britain ?
It’s impossible to say . I’m really in between.
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| Europe, Saguaro Studios, Stockholm, March 6, 2012, Photo by Michael Johansson - all rights reserved |
Your voice sounds a bit different on this album. Any change in your way of singing ?
I just came off the road after the Last Look At The Eden Tour and I noticed that my voice is changing a little bit, it’s more raw and a bit more husky. Our road crew is telling me that my voice is changing a little bit these last few years and they like it and the band like it too. It’s a bit deeper, a bit grittier. I just sang the songs straightforward in the studio. I didn’t really think up to much. It was more or less one take most of the time, you know.
Are the vocals pushed forward in the mix ?
I don’t know, I don’t think about that very much. I just think about the mix as a whole and it sounds very much the way we like it. Kevin was mixing in Los Angeles, sending all the mixes, and we were emailing each other, saying “this sounds great, fantastic !”. So, yeah, we’re really happy with the mixes.
Did you do something particular to get this voice on the recording of Bag of Bones ? Did you sing for twenty hours without stopping, did you drink whisky ?
No, we were just rehearsing and trying the songs a lot. And as I said earlier, my voice has been changing the last few years, notably on the Last Look At Eden Tour. The crew likes it and the band likes it. It sounds like that now, I’m afraid, so this is the new Joey sound and I can’t change it because it’s just the way it is.
It’s not a reproach, because I like your voice this way too…
Me too, I like it too ! It’s changed a little bit, but it’s not a problem, I like it !
How did you get that special sound on your voice on A Drink And A Smile ?
I recorded it in the middle of the night by three or four in the morning in my own studio and I had just a bit of fun with it in the middle of the night and It was just a relaxed feeling. It was the last vocals I did for Bag of Bones and I wanted to have a bit of fun with it, you know. And it’s a new expression as well. And I like that with this album. We’re finding a deeper and more interesting expression, I think.
Is there a kind of filter on the voice ?
I think Kevin put it through an old Leslie, you know.
Another strong impression about this album is that there is something epic in the songs, something unheard since the Final Countdown era ? Is that something you were looking for ?
Maybe you’re right, I hadn’t thought about it. I think that Bag of Bones is a magnificent rock album. It’s my favourite Europe album so far. It’s got a very honest expression, it’s kind of majestic, it’s powerful ! but it’s also very warm and it feels good to listen to, because we were groovy and recorded it live, trying things together. It’s not perfect sounding or perfect laid, but it’s got that right vibe and that right feeling.
I said “epic” about Bag of Bones, because the choruses, for example, sound a lot like anthem, maybe more than in the two or three previous album.
Yeeees ! But we like big choruses, you know. It’s always there ! I don’t know if the choruses are bigger in Bag of Bones. I think that Last Look At Eden was quite a majestic album as well. This album is maybe more powerful and rootsy, you know.
Don’t you think that these new songs are gonna be very challenging this time, because your vocal work was apparently demanding on this album ?
Maybe. I haven’t thought about it. I just sang this song, you know. We have to wait and see. So far I have been lucky with my voice, it’s been holding up and I don’t think much about it. So I just go out there and sing !
Do you plan to sing all these new songs during the next tour ?
We’re gonna probably try all the songs, I think. In the summer, we’ll play three or four tracks. Like we did in Poland, we played four tracks : Riches To Rags, Not Supposed to Sing The Blues, Firebox and Demon Head. And when it comes to the Bag of Bones Tour in the autumn – the world tour and the inner door tour – I think we will play five, six or seven tracks, eight maybe. It depends. We would like to build an interesting show, maybe bring it down in the middle with an acoustic bit, making it really interesting and a great entertainment as well. So we’ll be mixing some big songs with the new songs. It very exciting for us because we got a lot of songs to choose from now.
And you’ve got the perfect song with A Drink And A Smile for an acoustic break…
Exactly ! And the best thing with a ballad is the song that comes after, because then you just kick the show in again and you build it up again. It's fantastic !
How many dates are you gonna do in France ?
It looks like we’re gonna do three shows in France, that will be in Paris, Strasbourg and Lyon.
Are you more car or motorcycle ?
These days, more car ! I used to have a motorbike, an off-road motorbike that I was driving in London. I was crazy ! But these days, only car…
I just came off the road after the Last Look At The Eden Tour and I noticed that my voice is changing a little bit, it’s more raw and a bit more husky. Our road crew is telling me that my voice is changing a little bit these last few years and they like it and the band like it too. It’s a bit deeper, a bit grittier. I just sang the songs straightforward in the studio. I didn’t really think up to much. It was more or less one take most of the time, you know.
Are the vocals pushed forward in the mix ?
I don’t know, I don’t think about that very much. I just think about the mix as a whole and it sounds very much the way we like it. Kevin was mixing in Los Angeles, sending all the mixes, and we were emailing each other, saying “this sounds great, fantastic !”. So, yeah, we’re really happy with the mixes.
Did you do something particular to get this voice on the recording of Bag of Bones ? Did you sing for twenty hours without stopping, did you drink whisky ?
No, we were just rehearsing and trying the songs a lot. And as I said earlier, my voice has been changing the last few years, notably on the Last Look At Eden Tour. The crew likes it and the band likes it. It sounds like that now, I’m afraid, so this is the new Joey sound and I can’t change it because it’s just the way it is.
It’s not a reproach, because I like your voice this way too…
Me too, I like it too ! It’s changed a little bit, but it’s not a problem, I like it !
How did you get that special sound on your voice on A Drink And A Smile ?
I recorded it in the middle of the night by three or four in the morning in my own studio and I had just a bit of fun with it in the middle of the night and It was just a relaxed feeling. It was the last vocals I did for Bag of Bones and I wanted to have a bit of fun with it, you know. And it’s a new expression as well. And I like that with this album. We’re finding a deeper and more interesting expression, I think.
Is there a kind of filter on the voice ?
I think Kevin put it through an old Leslie, you know.
Another strong impression about this album is that there is something epic in the songs, something unheard since the Final Countdown era ? Is that something you were looking for ?
Maybe you’re right, I hadn’t thought about it. I think that Bag of Bones is a magnificent rock album. It’s my favourite Europe album so far. It’s got a very honest expression, it’s kind of majestic, it’s powerful ! but it’s also very warm and it feels good to listen to, because we were groovy and recorded it live, trying things together. It’s not perfect sounding or perfect laid, but it’s got that right vibe and that right feeling.
I said “epic” about Bag of Bones, because the choruses, for example, sound a lot like anthem, maybe more than in the two or three previous album.
Yeeees ! But we like big choruses, you know. It’s always there ! I don’t know if the choruses are bigger in Bag of Bones. I think that Last Look At Eden was quite a majestic album as well. This album is maybe more powerful and rootsy, you know.
Don’t you think that these new songs are gonna be very challenging this time, because your vocal work was apparently demanding on this album ?
Maybe. I haven’t thought about it. I just sang this song, you know. We have to wait and see. So far I have been lucky with my voice, it’s been holding up and I don’t think much about it. So I just go out there and sing !
Do you plan to sing all these new songs during the next tour ?
We’re gonna probably try all the songs, I think. In the summer, we’ll play three or four tracks. Like we did in Poland, we played four tracks : Riches To Rags, Not Supposed to Sing The Blues, Firebox and Demon Head. And when it comes to the Bag of Bones Tour in the autumn – the world tour and the inner door tour – I think we will play five, six or seven tracks, eight maybe. It depends. We would like to build an interesting show, maybe bring it down in the middle with an acoustic bit, making it really interesting and a great entertainment as well. So we’ll be mixing some big songs with the new songs. It very exciting for us because we got a lot of songs to choose from now.
And you’ve got the perfect song with A Drink And A Smile for an acoustic break…
Exactly ! And the best thing with a ballad is the song that comes after, because then you just kick the show in again and you build it up again. It's fantastic !
How many dates are you gonna do in France ?
It looks like we’re gonna do three shows in France, that will be in Paris, Strasbourg and Lyon.
Are you more car or motorcycle ?
These days, more car ! I used to have a motorbike, an off-road motorbike that I was driving in London. I was crazy ! But these days, only car…
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| (c) Patrick Ullaeus Revolver - all rights reserved |
The album’s artwork is really nice and cool. What was the inspiration and who did it ?
We wanted to do something more detailed, because these days you can use the Internet and blow things up. You can find details, you know. Also, we found that the album had a nice depth to it, lyrically and musically, and we wanted to have a more interesting cover. So, I think it was Mic Michaeli who played me this band called Graveyard. The album is called Hisingen Blues. And the album cover was fantastic. I saw it and I thought : “We have to call this guy, this is fantastic, we love this cover !”. We gave him the title, Bag of Bones, we played him four or five demos and then he sent us suggestions. There were a few suggestions that we didn’t agree on but, after a while, he came up with this “desk of doom” and this person dead or sleeping, that has been through hell or whatever he’s been through, lying on his desk. He started working on this and it was a fantastic work, because he borrowed and brought all those details, all those things and he built it in his studio and he photographed it with a real camera. Day by day, he photographed all the details and then he worked on it on a computer afterwards. He’s a very talented guy. There’s a lot of… sort of details in there. A few of them, we asked to him, and a few the artist himself put in as well. There a up a big draw up in the right-hand corner where the artist… Ulf Lundén I think it’s of the first drawings he made as a kid. He put that little picture up in the right-hand corner. There’s also a small details in there that we put in that you can discover over the years.
We can read the song titles here and there on that cover, but are there other references to the band members or the history of the band hidden somewhere ?
Yes, there are some small references that are linked somehow to the records and to us. There are few things.
Who’s that “bag of bones” who gave his name to the album ?
I was writing the lyrics of Bag of Bones in London and I was very exhausted after the Last Look at Eden Tour. And the first word that came into my head was : “I feel like a bag of bones”. That’s how it started. It kept flowing to my head, I don’t know where it came from. I built a song around it and then the London riots happened, and I put in the chorus : “City lives in ruins…”. That track became sort of an epic journey, it became bigger and bigger. It think it was Ian Haugland that suggested in the studio : “Maybe we should call the album bag of bones”. I was his idea, I think, and everybody agreed : “yeah, that’s great !”. That’s how it came about, really !
Let’s review the songs of the album one by one, if you don’t mind, and please give us anecdotes or explanations about the tracks
Riches to Rags
I love this attitude song. It’s just about… Sometimes you have to fall apart and to start again. It’s just about completely ignoring the past and just let if all fall apart to build it up again and completely disregard for what anybody is saying. It was mainly a “fuck off” song from the beginning and I didn’t think anybody would like it, you know. But it turned out to be a pretty cool track. It’s one my favourites !
Not supposed to sing the blues
It’s a great song ! Lyrically, it means a lot to me. On the one hand, it’s a tribute to the persons that changed the music world like Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix and Malcolm and Angus Young, Elvis Presley, the Beatles… all that stuff. It’s a tribute to our likes that we lived with, this classic rock music we grew up listening to. And the other side of it is that, you know, we were not supposed to do an album like this. Europe comes from a suburb outside Stockholm and we have come back. We’ve created a comeback for ourselves and we’re getting some success again. And we’re not supposed to express ourselves like this, you know it’s kind of crazy but we did it and we’re very proud ! A lot of people in the beginning were saying : “You have to sing in swedish”. And a lot of record companies stabbed us down. But we believed in ourselves all the way. It’s also a little bit of a thing up to these people.
It is a sentence that someone really said to you once in the past ?
No, it came to me when I was in London in my rehearsal room and I was playing the chords over and over again and it just came to me after a while : Boy, you’re not supposed to sing the blues !
Are you more Fender or Gibson ?
I’m more Gibson.
Firebox
Firebox was a great surprise for me. It was Mic Michaeli who sent me the riff. He’d done it on keyboard ang guitar and I just sent him an e-mail : “This is absolutely fantastic ! I have to write a song with this”. So I started writing the verses and the chorus and the chords for the solo and then it put it all together. And then I came back to Stockholm. We were in rehearsal and I showed the guys what I came up with, and we started playing and we all thought it was great ! It’s like a firecracker, you know. It stands out and it’s great to have that on the record. It’s a great great song !
We’ve already talked about Bag of Bones. So let’s talk about Requiem and My Woman My Friend, two pieces of music that are linked together.
They’re linked because of the key. They’re linked because Mic wrote Requiem when we were working on My Woman My Friend. I think it was in between takes of My Woman My Friend. All of a sudden, Mic started playing this really sad, melancholic , dark piece of music. We all said “it’s great” and I said to Kevin :
- Are you rolling ?
- Yes, of course, I’m rolling !
So he was recording it. And then, we did work on it a bit more and it was actually called “Requiem For the Eighties” first. Because we had the sense in the studio we were making a raw expression and we were saying goodbye to the eighties really. It was a ceremony. But we didn't call it requiem for the eighties. We called iit Requiem only. It’s a beautiful piece of music.
And what about My Woman My Friend ?
It’s about relationship and it’s quite a spiritual song. It’s quite about the miracle of relationships between a man a woman. It’s really a thankful song about that and also about the difficulty and then the glory of relationships. My Woman my friend was originally a riff from John Levén. It put it together with an old idea I had. There are only two songs that come from old ideas : My Woman My Friend and Bring It All Home. Bring it all home was a jam. It started out as a jam like New Love in Town, back in 1992, in San Francisco, between me and Mic.
Demonhead
It started out with a riff John Levén sent me. I started writing the verses and the chorus and the lyrics. Then we met up in Stockholm and we tried it and John Norum changed the riff a little bit to make it work and even better.Then we tried it with the band and it's one of my favourite, it’s a really cool track and I like playing it a lot !
A Drink And A Smile. It sounds like Led Zeppelin invited itself into the studio…
Yeah, it was a last minute song. I wanted to have one more song on the album and I called the other guys and said:
- “Come on, let’s do one more ! It would be great to do an acoustic stomper, a seventies style stomper song, Led Zeppelin style song”.
And they said :
- “Are you crazy, we don’t have time ! Kevin Shirley is already starting mixing !
I replied :
Come on, we can do it ! (I sometimes have crazy ideas…)
And then they started working on it. And I really liked it, the five of us playing on it. Mic was playing the mandolin and Ian was making these interesting drums. And it turned out as a nice track. It was the last song that we wrote the lyrics for and finished. And it’s kind of an uplifting song. So the album process started really dark and melancholic. We were exhausted from the Last Look At Eden Tour and looking like “bag of bones” but it ended up on quite a lighter side, a brighter side with A Drink And A Smile. It was a big journey, you know, the whole thing.
Doghouse, a pure rock’n’roll song…
Yes, straightforward rock n roll. It was written more or less on the road and we played it on the LLAE Tour. It was the beginning of Bag of Bones, that song.
Mercy You Mercy Me
It was a riff by John Norum. We were in Stockholm doing rehearsals for the album and I asked John Norum :
- “Do you have anything to play me ?”
- Yes, I have this riff. And he started playing it for me.
I said :
Yes, I think I can do something with that. The guys came back in the room and we started disbanding on this idea immediately. Then I went to back to London to work on the arrangements and the lyrics a little bit. And we brought it together, Kevin changed it around… or he didn’t changed it. He said: “Maybe we need another bit here”. So he went out for a walk.. So we sort of fixed up the chorus for it and then he came back, listened to what we’d done and he said: “Oh yeah, it’s great, let’s record it !”. Kevin was really good doing this whole thing. Songs like Firebox and Not Supposed To Sing The Blues have got some interesting breakdowns where we improvise and we extend the breakdowns and play some of our licks. Those were Kevin’s ideas. He thought : “Let it breathe, sometimes, guys ! Extend this little part in Firebox”. That’s how Mic began trying the sitar sound how we were doing a bit “out” notes and stuff. All that was suggested by Kevin and he did some great suggestions for the songs and the arrangements as well.
Tell me more about Mic playing the sitar
It’s as sample. It’s a real sitar but it’s sampled. Mic’s got all kind of great sound samples. So he improvised something. We didn’t have time to go and get a real sitar ! The five of us recorded in one or two days and we were done. So he just improvised and put that sound in there and it’s really cool !
When making love, do you prefer to be above or below ?
Ah, that’s a secret !
Bring It All Home
This song was inspired by the movie The Last Waltz. Martin Scorsese directed this movie about this band called “The Band” actually. And they did a last cover show. I really liked the movie and I thought : “Maybe I could write a song that’s gonna be the last song we would have to play”. So that’s Bring It All Home and it’s thank you to the business, to the band, to the fans, to everything. It will be the last song we ever play, whenever that is : in two years, in twenty years, I don’t know !
We wanted to do something more detailed, because these days you can use the Internet and blow things up. You can find details, you know. Also, we found that the album had a nice depth to it, lyrically and musically, and we wanted to have a more interesting cover. So, I think it was Mic Michaeli who played me this band called Graveyard. The album is called Hisingen Blues. And the album cover was fantastic. I saw it and I thought : “We have to call this guy, this is fantastic, we love this cover !”. We gave him the title, Bag of Bones, we played him four or five demos and then he sent us suggestions. There were a few suggestions that we didn’t agree on but, after a while, he came up with this “desk of doom” and this person dead or sleeping, that has been through hell or whatever he’s been through, lying on his desk. He started working on this and it was a fantastic work, because he borrowed and brought all those details, all those things and he built it in his studio and he photographed it with a real camera. Day by day, he photographed all the details and then he worked on it on a computer afterwards. He’s a very talented guy. There’s a lot of… sort of details in there. A few of them, we asked to him, and a few the artist himself put in as well. There a up a big draw up in the right-hand corner where the artist… Ulf Lundén I think it’s of the first drawings he made as a kid. He put that little picture up in the right-hand corner. There’s also a small details in there that we put in that you can discover over the years.
We can read the song titles here and there on that cover, but are there other references to the band members or the history of the band hidden somewhere ?
Yes, there are some small references that are linked somehow to the records and to us. There are few things.
Who’s that “bag of bones” who gave his name to the album ?
I was writing the lyrics of Bag of Bones in London and I was very exhausted after the Last Look at Eden Tour. And the first word that came into my head was : “I feel like a bag of bones”. That’s how it started. It kept flowing to my head, I don’t know where it came from. I built a song around it and then the London riots happened, and I put in the chorus : “City lives in ruins…”. That track became sort of an epic journey, it became bigger and bigger. It think it was Ian Haugland that suggested in the studio : “Maybe we should call the album bag of bones”. I was his idea, I think, and everybody agreed : “yeah, that’s great !”. That’s how it came about, really !
Let’s review the songs of the album one by one, if you don’t mind, and please give us anecdotes or explanations about the tracks
Riches to Rags
I love this attitude song. It’s just about… Sometimes you have to fall apart and to start again. It’s just about completely ignoring the past and just let if all fall apart to build it up again and completely disregard for what anybody is saying. It was mainly a “fuck off” song from the beginning and I didn’t think anybody would like it, you know. But it turned out to be a pretty cool track. It’s one my favourites !
Not supposed to sing the blues
It’s a great song ! Lyrically, it means a lot to me. On the one hand, it’s a tribute to the persons that changed the music world like Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix and Malcolm and Angus Young, Elvis Presley, the Beatles… all that stuff. It’s a tribute to our likes that we lived with, this classic rock music we grew up listening to. And the other side of it is that, you know, we were not supposed to do an album like this. Europe comes from a suburb outside Stockholm and we have come back. We’ve created a comeback for ourselves and we’re getting some success again. And we’re not supposed to express ourselves like this, you know it’s kind of crazy but we did it and we’re very proud ! A lot of people in the beginning were saying : “You have to sing in swedish”. And a lot of record companies stabbed us down. But we believed in ourselves all the way. It’s also a little bit of a thing up to these people.
It is a sentence that someone really said to you once in the past ?
No, it came to me when I was in London in my rehearsal room and I was playing the chords over and over again and it just came to me after a while : Boy, you’re not supposed to sing the blues !
Are you more Fender or Gibson ?
I’m more Gibson.
Firebox
Firebox was a great surprise for me. It was Mic Michaeli who sent me the riff. He’d done it on keyboard ang guitar and I just sent him an e-mail : “This is absolutely fantastic ! I have to write a song with this”. So I started writing the verses and the chorus and the chords for the solo and then it put it all together. And then I came back to Stockholm. We were in rehearsal and I showed the guys what I came up with, and we started playing and we all thought it was great ! It’s like a firecracker, you know. It stands out and it’s great to have that on the record. It’s a great great song !
We’ve already talked about Bag of Bones. So let’s talk about Requiem and My Woman My Friend, two pieces of music that are linked together.
They’re linked because of the key. They’re linked because Mic wrote Requiem when we were working on My Woman My Friend. I think it was in between takes of My Woman My Friend. All of a sudden, Mic started playing this really sad, melancholic , dark piece of music. We all said “it’s great” and I said to Kevin :
- Are you rolling ?
- Yes, of course, I’m rolling !
So he was recording it. And then, we did work on it a bit more and it was actually called “Requiem For the Eighties” first. Because we had the sense in the studio we were making a raw expression and we were saying goodbye to the eighties really. It was a ceremony. But we didn't call it requiem for the eighties. We called iit Requiem only. It’s a beautiful piece of music.
And what about My Woman My Friend ?
It’s about relationship and it’s quite a spiritual song. It’s quite about the miracle of relationships between a man a woman. It’s really a thankful song about that and also about the difficulty and then the glory of relationships. My Woman my friend was originally a riff from John Levén. It put it together with an old idea I had. There are only two songs that come from old ideas : My Woman My Friend and Bring It All Home. Bring it all home was a jam. It started out as a jam like New Love in Town, back in 1992, in San Francisco, between me and Mic.
Demonhead
It started out with a riff John Levén sent me. I started writing the verses and the chorus and the lyrics. Then we met up in Stockholm and we tried it and John Norum changed the riff a little bit to make it work and even better.Then we tried it with the band and it's one of my favourite, it’s a really cool track and I like playing it a lot !
A Drink And A Smile. It sounds like Led Zeppelin invited itself into the studio…
Yeah, it was a last minute song. I wanted to have one more song on the album and I called the other guys and said:
- “Come on, let’s do one more ! It would be great to do an acoustic stomper, a seventies style stomper song, Led Zeppelin style song”.
And they said :
- “Are you crazy, we don’t have time ! Kevin Shirley is already starting mixing !
I replied :
Come on, we can do it ! (I sometimes have crazy ideas…)
And then they started working on it. And I really liked it, the five of us playing on it. Mic was playing the mandolin and Ian was making these interesting drums. And it turned out as a nice track. It was the last song that we wrote the lyrics for and finished. And it’s kind of an uplifting song. So the album process started really dark and melancholic. We were exhausted from the Last Look At Eden Tour and looking like “bag of bones” but it ended up on quite a lighter side, a brighter side with A Drink And A Smile. It was a big journey, you know, the whole thing.
Doghouse, a pure rock’n’roll song…
Yes, straightforward rock n roll. It was written more or less on the road and we played it on the LLAE Tour. It was the beginning of Bag of Bones, that song.
Mercy You Mercy Me
It was a riff by John Norum. We were in Stockholm doing rehearsals for the album and I asked John Norum :
- “Do you have anything to play me ?”
- Yes, I have this riff. And he started playing it for me.
I said :
Yes, I think I can do something with that. The guys came back in the room and we started disbanding on this idea immediately. Then I went to back to London to work on the arrangements and the lyrics a little bit. And we brought it together, Kevin changed it around… or he didn’t changed it. He said: “Maybe we need another bit here”. So he went out for a walk.. So we sort of fixed up the chorus for it and then he came back, listened to what we’d done and he said: “Oh yeah, it’s great, let’s record it !”. Kevin was really good doing this whole thing. Songs like Firebox and Not Supposed To Sing The Blues have got some interesting breakdowns where we improvise and we extend the breakdowns and play some of our licks. Those were Kevin’s ideas. He thought : “Let it breathe, sometimes, guys ! Extend this little part in Firebox”. That’s how Mic began trying the sitar sound how we were doing a bit “out” notes and stuff. All that was suggested by Kevin and he did some great suggestions for the songs and the arrangements as well.
Tell me more about Mic playing the sitar
It’s as sample. It’s a real sitar but it’s sampled. Mic’s got all kind of great sound samples. So he improvised something. We didn’t have time to go and get a real sitar ! The five of us recorded in one or two days and we were done. So he just improvised and put that sound in there and it’s really cool !
When making love, do you prefer to be above or below ?
Ah, that’s a secret !
Bring It All Home
This song was inspired by the movie The Last Waltz. Martin Scorsese directed this movie about this band called “The Band” actually. And they did a last cover show. I really liked the movie and I thought : “Maybe I could write a song that’s gonna be the last song we would have to play”. So that’s Bring It All Home and it’s thank you to the business, to the band, to the fans, to everything. It will be the last song we ever play, whenever that is : in two years, in twenty years, I don’t know !
Vraiment excellente cette interview !
RépondreSupprimerhttp://www.facebook.com/LeGroupeEuropeEnFrance
Hello Nicolas,
RépondreSupprimerBravo et merci ! Grande, belle et amusante interview à laquelle s'est plié Joey ! On sent bien ta patte d'artiste dans les propos...
Au plaisir de peut-être se rencontrer à Paris en Novembre ?
Bonne continuation...
Bises.
/N.
http://www.facebook.com/nadesdja