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By the Grace of God
LIQUOR AND POKER
By Bonnie Spanogle
Two years ago, a record called By the
Grace of God was released in Sweden. It
went gold. Now, it has finally made it to the
United States and blessed is our good fortune.
The Hellacopters are true rockers, a fusion
of 70’s arena shredding and punk attitude
that hits like a bolt of lightning. Few bands
do it better. Their catalog of material is nothing
short of prolific; this is their fifth full-length
release, but I can’t even say how many
records they’ve put out if you include
singles, EPs, 7-inchers, and compilations.
Started ten years ago as something of a lark,
the Hellacopters had no idea they would be as
successful as they’ve become. Long-time
childhood friends Nicke Royale and Kenny Håkansson
had soaked up musical influences like KISS,
The Ramones, and Slayer and learned to master
classic blues and rock sounds in their youth.
The Hellacopters formed in 1994, while ‘copters
singer Nicke was writing songs and drumming
in the Swedish death metal group Entombed. One
day, he asked three of his former drum roadies
to start a band for fun, maybe play a few live
shows. From the beginning, it was apparent that
the Hellacopters were destined for more. From
their first 7” to 1996's Supershitty to
the Max! and 1997's Payin' the Dues, their early
work was loud, brutal, overdriven rock. Grande
Rock in 1999 and High Visibility in 2000 both
saw the band tighten up and provided some of
the best live shows the US saw in those years.
Not too much has changed, but the songs have
become progressively hookier, tighter, and more
definitive of the Hellacopters’ unique
style. The title track is a Hellacopters classic,
and the album runs the hard-rock gamut, peppered
with Yardbirds, Skynyrd, Sabbath, and MC5-style
grooves. The band is in top shape, with lead
guitarist Robert "Strings" Dahlqvist
attacking hard on "All New Low” and
“Better than You”. “The Exorcist”
goes full-bore, about as catchy a death metal
tune as you can imagine. Boba Fett's keys add
an unruly Faces boogie to their powerful guitar
sound, and the rhythm section (bassist Kenny
and drummer Robert) is tight as a tick. Nicke’s
vocals are better than ever, and lyrically this
is as strong a bunch of songs as they’ve
yet to write. Seems the hunger for their brand
of straight shooting rock has built a phenomenon
that’s hopefully going to keep producing
hard-hitting music for years to come. But the
Hellacopters still don’t worry too much
about record labels or sales figures; they just
play rock- n-roll because they were born to
do it. I spoke to drummer Robert Eriksson about
their plans:
RE: This record that just came out in the US
has been out here a year and half, so we’ve
been already through touring, and we're in the
middle of writing new songs actually, for the
next record. It’s a little bit weird,
doing interviews for the record that’s
already been out…but it’s fine.
PCP: You had a lot of songs already written
when you went in to the studio to do Grace of
God… so you must really have a lot of
songs now.
RE: Yes- I think were gonna just keep those,
save them for other times. We’re gonna
make completely new songs for the next record.
When we started rehearsing for Grace of God
we had 30, 33 demos for that, and 20 got recorded-
the 20 best of course- but we don’t want
to have 20 songs on the record. We’d already
decided, there’s gonna be 13 songs on
the record. So there’s 7 left over, and
one is a bonus track on the American record.
The other 6 that are left over sooner or later
are gonna be out, but we don’t know when.
We’re thinking about putting out some
sort of a Grace of God outtakes record later
this year, but we don’t really know yet.
PCP: Any thoughts as to what label might put
that out?
Here in Europe it will be Universal. We have
our recording contract with them, so we put
out everything through them here, but for some
reason the American Universal did not want to
pick up the option. We kind of expected that
for whatever reason. The American major labels
are kind of… I don’t know what to
say… they’re a bit picky.
We sort of knew, since Nick was in Entombed,
and a lot of our friends being in other bands
and all that, they might not want to put it
out. Universal has six months to pick up the
option, and if they don’t, then we can
sign a new contract. So, that’s why it
takes so long, which is a little bit of a shame,
but it’s all right. We want it to get
released at the same time, of course, but we
do what we can. At least it’s out now.
We’re in between records, and we put out
the Cream of the Crap CD that we do between
every record.
PCP: You have a lot of records.
RE: Yeah, I’m starting to get confused,
myself!
PCP: The record’s already gone gold in
Sweden. How many records is that in Sweden?
RE: Two years ago it was 40,000. Now it s 30,000,
don’t ask me why they lowered it. So the
last one was gold when it was still 40, and
this one was 30, so we got a gold for this one
quicker. What is it in America? Like 250,000?
I don’t think we’ll ever reach that,
but you never know.
PCP: Did you start out being pretty high profile
since you had members of other well-known bands?
RE: Well, not really. When we started out, it
was not really big or anything. It was sort
of a side thing of Backyard Babies and Entombed
- not a side project, I wouldn’t call
it that - but Backyard Babies and Entombed were
like the main bands for them at the time. And
then things started going,…well, we never
really expected to do anything, except maybe
a seven-inch, and maybe a live show. And then
we did a few more live shows, and then we did
the debut record Supershitty to the Max which
was put out by Man’s Ruin. Then the next
thing you know, we won a Grammy award. And we
just started touring more and more, and it just
was all fun, so we just continued doing it.
We never had any bigger plans, so that’s
why were still free; we still do things on our
terms, if you know what I mean. Nowadays it’s
like there’s a lot of people saying, “you’ve
gotta do this”, “you gotta do that”,
“you gotta go on tour”…but
it’s all down to if we want to do it.
If we want to, we do it, if we don’t,
we don’t.
PCP: That’s one thing I admire about you
guys, you seem to do what you want. When you
have a record ready, you just put it out with
whoever and don’t just wait around for
somebody else to take the initiative.
RE: We had a little bad luck with the American
labels. That’s why it’s all spread
out on so many labels there. But here there
is always a lot of talk, people telling us “you
want to do this, you want to do that”,
and um… no! Right now we have a vacation.
We all are doing some other things, playing
in other bands....
PCP: Tell me a bit about those other bands.
I’ve listened to some of them on the internet,
and they’re all really good and all very
different.
RE: There’s a million! To start with me,
I’m just jamming with some people around
Stockholm, and I’m playing with a band
called the Wild Kings, which is basically a
very low profile band that plays once a month
here in Stockholm. We have different vocalists
every month. I’m playing drums of course,
in the ‘backing band’ so to speak.
Every time, we have four, or five, or six guests,
that sing one song each. It can be everything
from traditional Ramones, Sex Pistols, to Blue
Oyster Cult, Devo…pretty much everything.
It still comes down to rock music. It’s
really fun…Nicke of course was up, Maria
from Sahara Hotnights, Howlin’ Pelle from
the Hives, a bunch of Swedish people that you
probably don’t know, but it’s fun.
The club is held by Nicke, our singer, so once
a month we just get together two days in advance
and rehearse a bunch of songs, and it’s
fun. Boba, our piano player, was playing guitar
with a group called Diamond Dogs, but he just
quit that and now he’s out fishing full-time.
He’s fishing up North, North Sweden, sort
of like Canada for you. He’s also doing
some demos for the new record we’re gonna
get together. Strings, he’s playing with
a Swedish band, I guess you’d call it
a singer-songwriter, Stefan Sundström.
He’s also got a solo band with a bunch
of friends called the Thunder Express; they’re
gonna play their debut gig next month, I think.
And then Kenny is playing with Sophia and the
Needles, kind of an art-rock band with some
people from the Sonic Youth crowd, jazz improvisation,
that sort of thing. I've seen one of the gigs,
sort of Patti Smith style, which is really good.
And then Nicke’s playing guitar with the
MC5 next month, and doing a project called the
Solution, which is really good I think, sort
of Stax/Motown style soul. So he’s been
touring with that, plus he’s gonna do
the MC5 thing, and he has the club. So we’re
busy.
PCP: No, you’re not on a “break”
at all!
RE: No, not really! Well we said when we first
started that we should take breaks; we should
take six months, nine months, completely off,
and let everybody do whatever they want to do.
And we just set a date, and that’s the
date we get back together and record a new record
and go on tour again.
PCP: That sounds like it’s really healthy.
RE: I think so. We went on tour four times in
America in one year. For American bands, it's
such a big country, so you can go out, do the
same tour twice, three times a year, and maybe
play for 200 bucks a night and not even have
a regular job back home, just do that. But then
the band will last maybe three or four years
before you wanna kill each other! There’s
a lot of good American bands, but there are
a lot of them that don’t last. We don’t
wanna get stuck in that. We’ve been touring
heavily for the last seven years, actually.
PCP: You tour a lot in Europe, I know, but not
too much in America.
RE: We tour a lot everywhere, but not so much
in the United States lately. Sorry for that.
PCP: Yeah, you always hit the west coast and
the east coast, but not the middle.
RE: Actually one of our best shows ever was
in Austin. We played a few years ago at Emo's
with the Nomads and the Quadrajets, and I think
the New Bomb Turks. It was hot as hell of course
but really fun. But yeah, I think that was maybe
the only time.
PCP: I was out of town for that one, but saw
you guys in 1999 at CBGB’s with the Black
Halos.
RE: Every time we do a record here, we start
off with Scandinavia, of course, because that’s
the closest, then Europe and that takes a month
or two, and then Australia and Japan, and last
year we went to Brazil for the first time. So
that’s four, no five continents; that’s
a lot of touring. And next time, we’ll
be doing a lot of touring again, everywhere.
So that why we really need this time off in
between to basically keep healthy. It’s
better for the band, instead of just touring
and touring for years, and then you don’t
want to do it anymore.
PCP: You’ve also had the chance to play
with some really big acts: KISS, the Rolling
Stones. What was that like? Handsome Dick (Dictators)
even put out one of your records. You have a
lot of heavy hitters that count themselves among
your fans.
R: Yes! I, wow when you mention it like that,
it’s really amazing that we’ve done
all these things, because as I said, from the
start we didn’t really think of doing
anything except maybe a few shows in the Stockholm
area. And then like the third show, we were
opening up for UK Subs. We were like WOW- that’s
something! And for back then it really was something;
we couldn’t believe it. And then the stakes
got higher, and then one day we were opening
up for the Rolling Stones. That’s amazing!
You don’t really expect for anything to
like that to ever happen.
PCP: Do you have any good stories?
RE: Not really. We got the obligatory photo.
I thought “Wow, that’s so cool,
I have to put that up on my wall!” I haven’t
really done it yet though. But I have it framed.
It’s a great picture. I love it. A great
memory. Same with KISS, we took a picture, just
said “Hi.” They gave us some advice.
PCP: Like what?
RE: “Don’t ever get married”
was number one from Gene Simmons, and “Be
sure to make lots of money.” So, you don’t
really hang out; what are you gonna say? But
it’s still fun. You get to meet them and
talk a little bit. I’m very rarely star-struck,
but with the Rolling Stones I was like, “Oh
shit!” What are you gonna say to them?
"I like your records. I liked you better
before?" Ha ha.
PCP: So in Sweden are you really big stars,
very successful?
RE: Well, yes, we are successful in the sense
that we get to live regular lives, go on a vacation
once in a while, but it’s not really that
big. We still live in one-room apartments and
stuff.
PCP: What’s the climate like for artists
in Sweden compared to other places? Is it better
for artists to pursue creative work there as
opposed to other places? There’s all that
talk over here about the “Swedish Invasion”
and whatever, but there do seem to be a lot
of good rock and roll bands there that have
been around for a long time. Here there are
a lot of bands of course, but maybe not as many
per capita. Is there some kind of a spirit there
that fosters rock n roll?
RE: Yeah, the "Swedish Invasion,"
people have been saying that every time a new
band comes out from here. I can’t really
compare it to other places we play. When you
go to Germany or Spain or anywhere, there are
good bands everywhere. There’s just that
gap between the garage bands who play in front
of fifty people, and ones who are arena bands,
so you don’t notice all of the bands that
exist. I wouldn’t say we have a million
clubs to play here, but people really see that
you can actually play music, and you can go
outside of Sweden and play music. People start
at a young age, and it feeds off the older generation.
Ever since the seventies, ABBA even, people
can see that possibility. There’s all
kinds of music like Ace of Base and Roxette,
dance music; they were very popular, and they
got the rock bands to strive for something as
well. To say to themselves "Hey you can
do this." You can have a day job back home
if you want to, and then once you’re big
enough, you can quit your day job, and just
tour and play music. I think there’s just
a good atmosphere for that. I don’t know
if it’s different in America..
PCP: Is it politically easier, or is there more
support from the social systems?
RE: I think people just don’t give a fuck.
I mean, if you really want to play in a rock
band, you just do it. And there’s nothing
more to it. And if you’ve gotta have a
day job, you do that. Or you can go in between
jobs. I started out like that. I didn’t
want to work. I didn’t want to do anything
except play. I was like 13, 14, and there is
a good social security system, which basically
allowed me to move to Stockholm and start meeting
people, playing with people. In the meantime,
I was sort of on the dole. I got money from
the state, on and off for maybe a year or two,
and that was enough time for me to meet people
and start playing and making a living. I only
had one job, and that was like ten or eleven
years ago. It may not be…the “right”
way to do it, but a lot of people do that. It’s
a good way to get by. It’s not a lot of
money, but enough to pay rent and to eat on
a starvation level, and a lot of people are
satisfied with that, as long as they can play
music.
PCP: It’s difficult when artists have
to work full time and play full time, so it’s
nice there is something for artists to fall
back on.
R: It’s not for artists; it’s for
everyone. It’s if you had a job and lose
it, then it’s a couple months with no
money, then you get social money for 300 days.
Then you have to get a new job within 300 days
otherwise you’re fucked. But to get back
to your question about the atmosphere, there’s
a healthy competition. There’s not really
envy; there’s room for everybody. Like,
the Hives are super big now, and it’s
like “Wow that’s great! I’m
happy for you!” but now we’ve got
to make an even better record. It’s friendly.
Everybody knows each other; it’s such
a small country. Everybody hangs out together,
and not just rock music, pop music, the techno
people hang out with the death metal people.
It’s the musicians together unified! (laughs).
PCP: Did you all know how to play your current
instruments when you got together?
RE: Ha ha - Kenny didn’t even get a bass
until after the second record! He borrowed one
from the Backyard Babies. We all shared a rehearsal
space (with Entombed, of course)
PCP: So with a break, a new studio record, and
a ten-year anniversary party planned in October,
you’re booked pretty solid. Will the Hellacopters
be coming to the US this year, or next year?
What are your future plans?
RE: I’m really proud of what we’ve
accomplished, I really am, especially since
we had no plans. But that doesn’t mean
I'm ever satisfied. I’m having fun doing
Wild Kings, but it’s never enough! Everyone
else has to finish the tours they’re on,
and the other things they are doing. I'm ready
to get in the studio again, and get on tour
again. The sooner the better for me.
The sooner the better is right. The Hellacopters
take it as it comes, they rock like hell, and
they never tire of paying the dues because …
“if you really want to play in a rock
band, you just do it.”
through the darkness and the haze, a straight
and narrow fall from grace;
they need, they yearn, they lust with cheeks
unturned;
hands shake and heads will nod –
they get by by the grace of god.
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