Freak When Spoken To

by Anastasia Jonsen

  “I think we’ve got such a monstrous picture of and attitude to sexuality. The reality of it is that you get numb and desensitized when you get bombarded with this shit. You become increasingly prone to challenge your limits just to get the same feeling of excitement. It quickly becomes absurd because of what’s out there, and you can get it anytime, anywhere and in any quantity you want, especially with today’s technology. Before you know it, you’ve lost the grasp of what real intimacy is. I’m terrified that my son will see something like that before he’s got thick enough skin to understand and process it. This shit turns you into a fucking hollow zombie. I see it in people all the time. It’s soul-killing.”

  Something much more positive which IA has written a lot about in his old blog is being a father. He says that his life has changed radically for the better since Gabriel was born.

  “Being Gabriel’s father is my main purpose in life. People ask me if it’s difficult to be away from him so much, but in fact I’m home with him three times as many hours as someone who works in the city, leaves early in the morning and comes home late in the evening. We waited until it was very nearly too late to have children, but that also meant that we were ready and knew what we were doing. I think I’ve become a better musician by having to be even more organised, and I think many of the musicians I know who are parents fade somewhat in their brilliance. Many people strive for things that ultimately won’t make them happy anyway, material things, which means they have to be away from their family just to make money.”

  Here we come full circle to the importance of family to IA. All the way from his first band Bedrock to when he left for Copenhagen to play with Fate, his parents were always there for him.

  “They sent me money, and to be honest, it was almost a bit of a burden to carry during the years when I didn’t know whether or not I’d ever be able to give something back. I’m not sure I’d be as liberal myself in encouraging my son going into showbiz. It’s been a long journey towards a decent financial state. Yeah, sure, I’ve lived off music since I was 19, but we’re talking kind donations from family and friends, turning every penny over twice for years and years. I’m now in a position where I do own my own house, a studio and a couple of cars, but believe me, they didn’t come easy.”

  IA often talks about how “the simple life” is more desirable than fame, status symbols and monetary wealth.

  “You may argue that it’s not a ‘simple life’ when you’re on stage in Chicago or Nepal, but that’s just such a tiny fraction of my life. I want to spend time with my family, read books with them, go for walks in the forest, train the dogs, chop wood, play with LEGO and swim in the stream outside our house. The other day we had a friend over, and we went out for a walk in the snow, and Gabriel and I were goofing around like madmen in the snow, and my friend just stared at his mobile phone. Gosh man, you’re missing out on what’s important in life!”

  When IA recorded the vocals for Land of the Freaks, he did it during Gabriel’s daytime naps. Camilla stayed with Gabriel and IA literally ran down to the machine room where they had also recorded the video to “Speak when Spoken To”. There he put down as much vocals as he could manage for one and a half hour in the temporary vocal booth.

  “Everyone who’s a parent knows that when the kids are small, you have to adjust, and you can’t wait for inspiration or until the stars are right – if you get a window of opportunity, you take it. And things were quite improvised for this album, as I was in the process of moving my studio. Radhakrishna who plays the double-violin and V. Selvaganesh who plays the kanjeera on Land of the Freaks recorded their parts in the basement room which was then being transformed into Gabriel’s room. These world renowned musicians squeezed in with building material and shelves, so focused and sweet and humble. I filmed it and it wasn’t exactly a studio report. More like a nursery report.”

  For Christer, becoming a father also meant some substantial changes. He says he had some serious issues, but fatherhood opened his eyes to what kind of person he wanted to be.

  “I realised I had to break a pattern and become less demanding as a person, because I wanted to be as genuine as possible and be stable and supportive. If you manage to get away from that constant quest for attention and appreciation, you will find that there are other, more rewarding, ways of getting confirmation: if I stand on stage, people applaud; if I paint a picture, people might tell me it’s great. That’s even more rewarding, because it’s something tangible, something concrete.”

  Perhaps it’s quite natural that Christer cherishes his family so much, having grown up without the kind of security a loving family affords. He says he values support, love and an attitude where individuality is encouraged.

  “I don’t for one moment believe that some people ‘have it in them’ to do something with their life and some don’t. I think everybody has potential. It’s just that some people strive to get there and others don’t. And out of those who don’t, there are a substantial amount of people who don’t do it because they’ve been told all their lives that they can’t do it. And if you’re told that enough times, you believe it’s true, and it takes a tremendous effort to break free from what you’ve had hammered into you all your life. It angers me when families brand their children after themselves. ‘In this family, we work with our hands’ or ‘We’re a family of doctors, why do you want to waste your life fixing cars?’ That attitude angers me, it really does.”

  Something else which matters a lot to Christer is his own band Eaglestrike. There he gets to call the shots and also write the lyrics. He sings and plays the guitar, just like he originally did in Road Ratt. Their music is more traditional 1970’s hard rock, and they’re signed to Thunderstruck Productions, just like Freak Kitchen. According to journalist Janne Stark, you can easily recognize Christer’s song writing style in Eaglestrike from tracks like “Razor Flowers” and the material he wrote in Road Ratt. Stark adds that they definitely carry their own flag and that this slightly more accessible style is probably more inviting to some.

  The other guitar is handled by Fredrik Eriksson, IA’s guitar technician, who therefore has a quite unique link to the current members of Freak Kitchen.

  “Christer is different in that he is rougher around the edges, so to speak. He is forward in a different way than IA, a bit more of a leader. His attitude is very straightforward and he doesn’t take shit from nobody, whereas IA is a bit more reserved. Christer and I have a very good relationship thanks to his direct and uncomplicated approach, since I’m more like that as well.”

  On Eaglestrike’s self-titled debut album, Björn Fryklund plays the drums, which was practical, as he was already in the drum studio recording Land of the Freaks.

  “I hardly remember anything from the recording of these albums, because my oldest son Sindre was in hospital, seriously ill, and everything was just unreal and completely exhausting. Today, and with hindsight, I would have stopped recording completely until Sindre was better. But I went in, did my bit and that was it. This approach works under less dramatic circumstances too: don’t think too much about the choices you make. Even though somewhere deep down you know that what you do will be documented forever, you have to let go a bit and not get stuck trying to outsmart yourself. Especially live, you have to be there, in the now. Have complete focus from the first stroke to the last. You have to be so in the music, you’re almost relying on muscle memory.”

  Björn’s guest spot has since been turned into a permanent position, occupied by Jörgen Tjusling. Now, Tjusling, doesn’t that name ring a bell? Correct, Jörgen is, in fact, married to Fiffi Tjusling, IA’s own chef at the Freak Guitar Camp. And where can we tie in Fredrik Eriksson in the Freak Kitchen web apart from being IA’s guitar tech? Well, among other things, he’s played on the yet unreleased solo album by Anders Treptow – the photographer of the cover of this very book, as well as plenty of IA’s promo shots. Needless to say, Fredrik, Anders, Linus Abrahamson and Demian Andersen all attended t
he Freak Guitar Camp a few years in a row. Who needs the Freemasons when there’s the Freak Guitar Camp?

  Apart from playing in Eaglestrike and Freak Kitchen, Christer also runs a tattoo parlour. A couple of years ago, he took a break and went to art school for a year and studied classical art where you really start from the beginning with traditional drawing. However, because it wasn’t a Swedish university, it required a tuition fee and therefore he had to go back to tattooing in order to support his family.

  “If I could somehow support my family and still take that master degree, I would. But I can’t, so I had to go back to tattooing. I had to do a few years’ apprenticeship to learn the trade, but I’ve done that before: I’ve worked as a carpenter for several years. But the freedom of tattooing is great. I’m just sharing the shop with this other guy; we don’t have a company together, which means that if I’m finished for the day at three o’clock, I can just pack up and go home to my family. I don’t have to justify anything to anybody. It’s not that I don’t like to work – I work more than most people – it’s just that I hate the kind of attitude you meet sometimes, where you just have to stay in the office until a certain time, just because.”

  Just like IA, Christer mentions communication and self-discipline as a means to get things done.

  “My family has to discuss what’s important and what’s not. I used to practice martial arts before, but I had to let that go to some extent, and when you have kids, you have to prioritize. It’s not always fun to give up things you enjoy, but that’s just the way it has to be. And that’s one sign of a healthier attitude in the struggle for recognition: before, I might have just done whatever suited me best, because it was me, me, me. Now I look at everything and evaluate what is best for my family. The only thing which is always free from discussion is recording and playing live with Freak Kitchen.”

  Christer also emphasizes that although his family might not stand on stage, the things they enjoy are just as important.

  “I have tremendous support from my family, but support is not all about people agreeing with you. Support is also to be questioned if you do things that need to be questioned and explained. Is that thing I want to do really so important, and why? Because sometimes you just want to do things because you’ve always done them, and once you start thinking about it, perhaps the answer is actually no; no, it’s not really that important anymore. But I can always justify playing rock music.”

  No Wi-Fi for Pagans

  JUST BEFORE Cooking with Pagans was released, Freak Kitchen went on a small warm-up tour. In interviews, on Facebook and in forums, the question was raised whether or not they would play any new material. This is an area where IA is unyielding.

  “I have decided that we don’t play songs live which haven’t been released on an album yet. The simple reason is that with the smartphone technology and YouTube, these live versions would end up online before we even finished the gig. I don’t want people’s first impression of our new song to come from some shaky video clip with terrible sound. I spend so much time working on getting a great sound for the album. I always tell people that it’ll be worth the wait!”

  Cooking with Pagans was delayed for a number of reasons, one being that IA has had serious problems with bleeding vocals cords. It was supposed to be out late spring 2013, but IA had to take longer breaks and wasn’t even allowed to talk to people. He says that just because the recording took a long while, doesn’t mean that it’s an over-produced album. “On the contrary,” he says, “I think we’ve managed to capture a certain nerve and attitude we deliver live.”

  His bleeding vocals cords may have healed somewhat now, but for a while the prospects for complete recovery looked bleak. IA does have a very special and straining style of singing. David Åkesson is a trained vocal coach and also sang in a Freak Kitchen tribute band, where Linus Abrahamson played the guitar. He describes IA’s vocal style as very rhythmical, aggressive and raw.

  “His preciseness in articulation is very admirable, but at the same time it is mixed with some kind of force-of-nature-way of singing which hits you like a punch in the face. My guess is that IA overstrains his voice over and over for long periods of time, doing gigs and clinics as well as studio recordings and interview sessions. His voice doesn’t get the recovery period it needs. This may lead to bleeding vocal cords or even ruptures which over time can cause quite severe problems.”

  IA is very much aware of the strain he puts on his vocal cords, but when he writes music, he doesn’t adjust it to any limits he might have. Only afterwards does he realise that he’ll be playing at the top of his abilities or that he has to sing it in a style which is “way past” what he’s physically capable of. He uses “Professional Help” (rather aptly) as an example.

  “I’m really forcing my vocals there and you can actually hear how painful it is. When I recorded it, I was spitting blood. I feared that I might have to stop singing altogether. When I went to the throat specialists and they shoved cameras down my throat, they gave me two alternatives: either they’d cut me open and do surgery and I’d have to be quiet for a year, or I’d have to take it seriously and see my healing as a long-term project. I’ve realised the gravity of the situation and worked on my technique, learned what I can and can’t do. I haven’t even shouted like a maniac on the spur of the moment live like I’ve done before. During this tour, my voice has held up much better than ever before. I’ll never have a crystal clear, classical voice, but that doesn’t matter, I’m a hard rock singer, so it should be raspy. But the difference is that my voice is not broken after this latest tour, as it’s been before. But we’re not playing ‘Professional Help’ live, because if we do, that’d be the only track we would play that night. We’re making a video for it instead.”

  Something else to avoid is alcohol. Not only does your body benefit from drinking water instead, you also become a much more alert performer.

  “If I avoid late night parties on tour, my voice improves somewhat. Even a couple of beers affect my voice. I don’t know how Björn and Christer can manage it, because they’ve partied very hard on and off. But during the very last date of every tour, I’ll drink the most expensive whisky on offer and everybody wants to take pictures: look, he’s really knocking it back! But I prefer to drink a fine glass of cognac at home by the fireplace instead. So I’m OK with skipping the binge drinking. It’s a lot more fun to bring home the wine bottles I get as presents, than to wake up in a foreign hotel room with a hangover and no voice. I haven’t got that big a vocal range to begin with either.”

  Much like Freak Kitchen’s songs may sound less complicated than they really are, IA’s vocals are not as easy to copy as you might think. As the whole of Freak Kitchen attended the one big gig Freak Show did in 2008, David Åkesson was meticulous in his preparation – in his own way.

  “The original idea with Freak Show was to get as close to the original songs in every possible way. I discussed the matter of phrasing and ornaments with Linus, who was the initiator of the project, and we agreed that I should try to sound as ‘IA-ish as possible’. I was provided with very detailed sheet music for the guitar parts by Linus, and that helped a lot. During the phase of learning the songs properly and not just listening to them like I had done before, the first thing I did was learning the complicated, rhythmical passages that the melody was built around. I did this to get a proper grounding for the rest of the learning process. I clapped the phrases until I got the rhythm right, then I read the lyrics in rhythm, almost like a rap song. This way I always had the rhythm to fall back on when trying to remember the often complicated and witty lyrics. When it came to melody I just hung the melody on the rhythm and lyrics and mostly tried to let it ‘flow’. As for the vocal technique or ‘artistic approach’, most of the time I just thought ‘fuck that’ and tried to imitate IA’s passion, brutal force and raspy rock ‘n’ roll-singing.”

  Linus also had quite a daunting job. He knew IA’s guitar playing very well after seve
ral years of attending the Freak Guitar Camp, but it’s one thing to know the music, and another to pull it off live.

  “Especially ‘Vaseline Bizniz’ was tricky. This guitar solo was actually created by IA through a very detailed ‘cut and paste’ process within the audio recording software. All the parts were played and recorded with a real guitar, but the phrases weren’t performed in the order they ended up being in the solo. Replicating this semi-fake solo during the Freak Show tribute concert was by no means an easy task!”

  If the third album, where “Vaseline Bizniz” is found, was a terribly complex album to record, Cooking with Pagans was a celebration of simpler ways, according to IA.

  “There is a general expectation on bands nowadays, that you have to reach a certain standard, or rather do certain things in order for your production to be seen as OK. And we don’t subscribe to that attitude. But with this album, at least we seem to have moved away from the tiresome ‘Spanking Hour is your best album!’ Nah, is it really, though? Isn’t it more a case of you losing your virginity to Spanking Hour and therefore cherish the memory of it? When I worked with Cooking with Pagans, my feeling was that it would become a good album, perhaps not a milestone in our career, but people have really taken it to heart. My guess is that it is because it’s a bit simpler, to be frank. It’s not as complex as Land of the Freaks, but at the same time, I’m incredibly proud of having written ‘Teargas Jazz’, which is a milestone in my whole career. But Organic and Land of the Freaks were buried in some grey overall goo and there were way too many years in between album releases. Five years between albums is absolutely no good.”

  On Land of the Freaks, the Indian influences were very obvious, but on Cooking with Pagans, IA has toned them down a little bit.