Freak When Spoken To

by Anastasia Jonsen

  “Perhaps it’s as simple as being a contrast to the third album. I wanted to play hard rock again, we all did. But I don’t think you can read anything into it regarding my mental state. I’ve always been pretty calm and collected, and I keep myself balanced through music. Catharsis through distortion. I thank my creativity every day and I get the same kick out of composing today, as when I started out all those years ago. I read a lot about the creative process and it’s breathtaking when I look at all the things I’ve done. Where does it all come from? I’ve never had a creativity crisis or writer’s block. But I also use lyric writing as a kind of therapy. I interpret, revise and cultivate my thoughts when I write lyrics. I know it sounds hideously pretentious, but there you go. Sometimes I succeed in transferring my thoughts to the listener, other times I fail miserably.”

  As a lyricist, it is difficult to know how people will interpret what you’ve written. Even though IA’s lyrics can seldom be accused of being obscure, there is always a risk that the listener misunderstands the original intention.

  “I remember when a British reviewer totally bashed Dead Soul Men because of the lyrics to ‘Super Model Baby’. The problem was that he had completely misunderstood the meaning of the lyrics. ‘What right does Mattias Eklundh have to criticise super models? I have a friend who’s a model and she’s not at all like that’ and so on. I wanted to tell him so badly that it’s about fucked up ideals, young girls who are forced into anorectic behaviour. I am in no way criticising the girl. But I listened to the wisdom of my father: never comment on reviews.”

  You also have a certain amount of power as you get to voice your opinion to people who will listen to you. Although both Joakim and Christian say they weren’t particularly interested in contributing, they both make it clear that IA’s lyrics were his own opinions – he wasn’t speaking for the whole band.

  When the album they had worked with so hard was finally released and there were no tangible signs that things were going to be any different this time around, Joakim finally gave up. Although the album was licensed to more countries, the tour schedule was still meagre, and fans, press and the industry singled out IA to an even greater extent than before. On the ferry home from Denmark, Joakim quit the band, and that only meant one thing for Christian: he too handed in his notice.

  “In the beginning, Joakim and I were so caught up in the fact that it was cool just to be in a band that seemed to go places. We didn’t really think about it then, but after a while, small arguments started brewing. IA got all the attention and all the decisions were made by him. He was very democratic in the sense that everybody should get the same pay cheque, and he made that very clear to anyone who would listen. But in reality, what we wanted wasn’t that important. Of course, with hindsight, it’s not difficult to understand why, because he is one of the world’s greatest guitar players, he’s funny and crazy and socially skilled and there’s no way you can compete with that. When we did the four first albums, Joakim and I were really pushing our limits musically. We weren’t that good, but we did our utmost to reach higher levels. That gave the music a certain nerve, a feeling that it could almost break out into chaos – and sometimes, when we were playing live, that’s exactly what happened. But when you’re right in the middle of that magic, you just play for all you’re worth.”

  It wasn’t primarily that IA was the indisputable band leader that made things difficult for Christian and Joakim. Successful bands are rarely perfect democracies and you need someone who takes the lead and finds new paths. The big problem was that they had stopped in that limbo state where they were an underground name, but with no possibility to make a living off it. If you had no insight into the band’s situation, the split may have come as a complete surprise, but Christian explains that he too had thought about leaving for a long time.

  “I think we all felt that no matter how hard we worked, our chances of making it big just seemed to slip through our fingers. Sure, we had our steady gigs at Sweden Rock Festival, but no real tours and sometimes we had an audience of three, and sometimes a thousand. We didn’t have a solid fan base. IA had a fan base, sure, but we could never be sure that they would show up at our gigs. At that time, perhaps there was a certain amount of bitterness; Joakim and I turned into two grumpy men and I don’t want to be like that! Immediately after we left, it felt very odd that IA continued as Freak Kitchen.”

  To Joakim it was a mystery that things never took off with the band, and after he had left the band, things were particularly tough for him. Christian had a family and other bands, but Joakim felt lost.

  “I was so crestfallen when I quit the band. All that hard work amounted to nothing. My longest tour was three weeks. Nothing turned out the way I had dreamed.”

  IA admits to understanding them completely. Late nights and carrying heavy gear, and a marginal difference in audience numbers if you play a club a year later, takes its toll.

  “If you never ever get a pat on the back, it just becomes too bloody taxing. When you only get a handful of people in the audience, you laugh about it, but deep down, it feels like shit. We did anything for a laugh, and laughing was easier the first couple of years, when we didn’t have a lot of emotional baggage or tension hanging over our heads. On the other hand, there’s been so much love in the band, and during certain periods when people envied our band spirit, they really did have something to be envious of.”

  Some of the things that brought the band down were things they actually had an influence over. IA mentions their lousy vehicles and failing to get a proper crew. Christian points out that they had an unrealistic DIY attitude.

  “We were so fixated on the idea of it just being us; we were so independent, we didn’t realise that sometimes you need other people. We wanted to be so unpretentious it backfired. And then when you were supposed to pick it up and make a real effort, it felt like it was too late. Everything you’d goofed around with before, you now had to try to catch up with.”

  IA adds that his dislike for rehearsals may also have affected the band. He wasn’t always happy with their live performances and the quality suffered sometimes towards the end. The slacker attitude rubbed off on more and more areas, and IA almost sounds upset when he talks about it.

  “We could also have dealt with our fans in a better way. I can’t remember that we were very appreciative. I guess we didn’t give a crap. I don’t remember us shaking very many hands or signing autographs. We could have had a merchandise booth where we could have talked to our fans, but I guess we couldn’t be bothered. There were so many things we couldn’t be bothered with. It all adds up. If you can’t even be bothered to find a case for your instrument, sure, maybe that’s cute in a way, but it went too far and then there was no way back.”

  To Freak Kitchen’s newer fans, this must sound like a completely different band, as they spend a lot of time showing their love and appreciation for their fans nowadays. It’s also important to remember that they were only just over 20 when Freak Kitchen started, which means they were very much in their formative years as adults. If you’re assigned the role of the charmingly careless chap and those are the facets of your personality that people notice, chances are that you’ll start behaving according to expectations. If you have unrealistic hopes and wishes and nobody tries to talk serious sense into you, chances are you’ll just grow more and more discontent, not understanding why things never go your way. If you associate your companions with problems and tension, chances are you’ll spend even less time with them, and instead find your positive energy elsewhere, which of course leads to even more tension and unhappiness. IA’s wife Camilla remembers the frustration IA displayed.

  “Joakim and Christian didn’t take responsibilities as seriously as he did, and when things don’t get done, you stop sharing the tasks, which leads to even less involvement for the others. It takes him less time to do the task himself instead of explaining in fool-proof detail to someone else.”

  IA claims that he took car
e of more and more chores primarily in order to better the situation and that he pep-talked and persuaded his friends that things were going their way.

  “They were sick of the situation and had to be dragged along. I got tired of myself sometimes too. I’d say ‘Keep it up, lads!’, and the next moment I’d present them with something they hadn’t even been a part of, and that just ended up pulling us further apart. I think our problem was that we never argued over things. We should have laid the cards on the table much earlier. Why does this situation make us feel like this and what can we do about it? Why did we compromise with so many things? The general attitude was that you can sort everything out with a fart and a laugh. Except you can’t.”

  When three so extremely different personalities try to walk the same path, arguments almost seem unavoidable. IA was bursting with creative energy and initiative, and Christian was more easy-going and fairly flexible. Joakim was…well, he was being Joakim.

  “For so many years, I saw myself as thoroughly simple, uncomplicated, like an open book. But now it’s a complete jumble. I think I’m a pretty complex person. I’ve called myself ‘the master of phases’ because I tend to oscillate between extremes. I think others see me as a handful, a complicated person to deal with. But that’s just one side of me. I think they see me as kind too.”

  Although Joakim himself uses the words “handful and complex”, IA nowadays describes him as “dynamic”, which is a much more positive word. Joakim, however, is well aware of his ever-changing personality.

  “I picture it as some sort of soft, bendy curve. I have had many personalities over the years. As early as the mid-80’s, a friend of mine said: ‘The old Joakim would never have done that!’ I wasn’t very old, but had already managed to change so drastically. IA has been so angry with me, because he couldn’t keep up with me. So I guess people have a difficult time keeping up with me, handling me, especially in relationships. I’m probably pretty difficult to live with. And I don’t have any interests anymore. I hope it’s just a phase, but it doesn’t feel that way. It’s boring not having something to long for, to care about. But the eagerness I’ve felt before, which has been my driving force, it’s gone. A few years ago, my passion just died, evaporated. It’s difficult to explain how it happened. I’m still interested in girls, though.”

  Since the break-up, IA and Joakim have drifted apart and Joakim has changed his name to Envind Redin. IA says that while he never thinks about getting back together with his old band mates, he thinks it’s a shame that Joakim didn’t continue to play the drums.

  “He’s a superb drummer and always had great ideas. If he heard me say that now, he’d punch me in the teeth. He’d rather burn down his house than start playing the drums again. Christian is a lot more stable and at peace with what he does now. When we see each other, we hardly ever talk about Freak Kitchen.”

  When IA talks about Joakim and Christian as people rather than musicians, focus easily falls on Joakim, because of his quirky – and sometimes extreme – traits and behaviour. Christian has been described more broadly as a happy-go-lucky party dude, but the general view among other musicians and people in the business is quite varied. He is seen as someone with integrity and a diverse musical background; someone who knows his stuff but perhaps didn’t get the recognition he deserved. Those who know him now, as opposed to those who knew him when he was throwing beer cans at bikers, emphasize his sense of humour and outgoing nature. IA calls him balanced and enjoys catching up with him once in a while, and Christian himself has processed the difficult times and ended up in a place where he’s comfortable talking about his past.

  “I think I got a lot of respect from being in Freak Kitchen. Not everyone likes Freak Kitchen, but I think most people respect the band. People know that if you’ve been in Freak Kitchen, you’ll know how to play fairly technical and dynamic, groovy music with plenty of genre variation. It’s been a good experience for me to have that foundation, but also to be forced to step out of it and find new ground. I learned so much just from rehearsing those songs over and over for ten years; that gave me very useful technical skills. I’ve been playing funk, rock, soul and metal all my life and if you master those genres, I think you can play most other genres as well.”

  After Christian left Freak Kitchen, he put his effort into a band called Mos Eisley, which has in turn transformed into Gods Favorite, now his main band. Other members are Fredrik Stenberg and Mattias Starander, because, as we’ve seen, Christian likes to stay close to the members of his large musical “family”. After some problems replacing their old singer, they are now back on track.

  “Recently we got in touch with Louise ‘Lollo’ Gardtman who has this amazing bluesy voice, and we’re right in the middle of writing and recording new songs. We seem to attract lots of creative people and it’s almost become like a small collective. I’ve also been involved in a Slipknot cover band and band called Body Snatchers, a hip-hop/funk band, and I played with them for fifteen years. We played at breakdance battles, for instance. That’s great fun: you just jam for four hours straight, and get a rapper or two on stage for variation. But Slip(k)not and Body Snatchers are temporarily on hold, because I’m concentrating on Gods Favorite – it’s just too good to remain a side project.”

  Life when you’re an unemployed twenty-something rock musician is quite different from being a steadily employed father of two who balances all of life’s roles and responsibilities while still being a rock musician. The most obvious sign of maturity, and perhaps the healthiest, is that Christian doesn’t party as hard or frequently as he used to. He has gone through several crises and separations, and he is now in the same situation his parents were.

  “I guess I miss having a nuclear family, no matter how ‘alternative’ I may see myself. I live with my son alternate weeks and I see my daughter every other weekend. I get a much closer relation with my son, because it’s only him and me during my weeks. I got the same close relation with my parents, because during their respective weeks, I had them all to myself. Even though you may long for a traditional family setting, I see the immense value of dedicating your time to your child. My separations, among other things, have affected me spiritually. I think that happens to most people as you grow older. You start questioning what’s important in life, existential questions. What’s important is to have a creative outlet, which I have at my day job in marketing. But, sure, I sometimes think about what I could accomplish if I put all that creativity into music; that’s the niggling question that bugs me now and again. That decision still remains to be made.”

  At Second Glance

  ON THE 23RD OF DECEMBER, 2000, a local morning paper, Nerikes Allehanda, announced that Freak Kitchen had split up. Both Christian and Joakim openly and honestly described why they had left the band. Christian had to support his family and Joakim wasn’t interested in playing in a band that was never going to be the next Bon Jovi. Christian was going to concentrate on his day job and his new band Mos Eisley, and Joakim vowed never to play the drums again. Not a lame “musical differences” excuse in sight. However, in a few interviews afterwards, IA has stated that they left because they were tired of touring and wanted to stay at home, which is not strictly true. In fact, quite the opposite, especially in Joakim’s case. For at least a month, everybody involved were told to keep the split-up a secret until IA had found replacements. IA gives his reasons why he asked Joakim and Christian for one last favour.

  “I had to try and save what I could: Dead Soul Men was basically just released and it would have been a disaster if word got out before I had managed to find a new line-up. It was quite a taxing time and I didn’t listen to the album for a long time after that.”

  Camilla, IA’s wife, remembers this period clearly and explains that there is another reason why IA took the split-up so hard. It wasn’t just the ordeal of finding new musicians; IA had been shaken to his core.

  “Mattias was shocked when they left. He went through a grieving proces
s. Perhaps people think he simply replaced them, but he was truly grief-stricken. There had probably been a thousand warning signals, but somehow he hadn’t fully understood where they were headed. To him, Freak Kitchen were the three of them and not a solo project with a couple of extras. He loves being in a band. Staying true to band members and the band is a serious matter to him. When he was younger, if a member of a band he loved quit, he cut out that member’s face from all pictures he had of them. You weren’t allowed to leave a band, because if you did, you didn’t exist anymore. But the new member wasn’t truly a part of the band either. I think that was one of the most difficult things for Mattias to accept when Joakim and Christian left, that he was now in a situation he would have hated as a fan of the band. I think that was a humbling experience for him.”

  IA spent a few days licking his wounds and thinking about where to go next. What had seemed so final just a day ago, he now saw as a problem to be strategically solved. Finding a drummer was fairly easy. He had known about the versatile Björn Fryklund for several years, and knew he didn’t have a steady band at the moment. He was tour-proofed and stable and said yes on the spot when IA phoned him.

  “I first saw IA play on the Spanking Hour tour, Anchor Bar in Stockholm, October 1996. I stood right in front of the stage, all ‘yeah, I’ve studied in the States and won lots of prizes, show us what you’ve got!’, and that he did. I didn’t pay a single second’s attention to Joakim and Christian, it was all about IA. He was completely bonkers and I loved that, I could relate to that. When I met my wife, who is also a musician, she asked me what my goals in life were. By then, I had travelled around the world and played live in so many countries others only dream of. I replied that I wanted to play with Mattias Eklundh! Three months later he rang me.”