I’m just not a very material person

Interview: Björn Dixgård (škoda že Gustaf je nějak nepřitomný při celé propagaci...)

Chartbreaker with a Lidl guitar

He knows how to write masterpieces pleasant to your ears: the Swede Björn Dixgard. The singer and guitar player of Mando Diao tells in the interview to FR about his idol Ray Davies from The Kinks

Mr. Dixgard, Mando Diao is now considered as the most successful Swedish rock export. Before you, artists like ABBA, Neneh Cheery, her brother Eagle Eye and Roxette made international career. Where does this Swedish talent for hits come from?

Music was always very important in Swedish families. When you look at old Swedish family photos of the 19  century, you’ll always find a violin or a guitar somewhere. This is definitely connected with the natural environment:  the darkness  in  Sweden  and how you can drive  it away…

Writing music pleasant to one’s ears is clearly easy for you.

I really don’t have to strain myself too much for that. I write all the time. Thus, it doesn’t look now like we’ll run out of the ideas for the next Mando Diao record.

You’ve played your hits for an unplugged show and made an album of that for the first time. Is this your version of the Greatest Hits collection?

For me it’s not a Greatest Hits album. I don’t like this notion either because it sounds like a name of a record which will come out when we’re already dead. Some time there will be something like  that  but  not now.  Because  I  think  that  for  two-three  years  we’ve  been  going  greatly songwriting-wise. It feels that we as a band are at our highest point.

At the same time you reject the pompous rock’n’roll style. Instead of appearing in pictures from parties and in stretch-limousines you gladly hang out with people like Ray Davies of The Kinks who was a guest of your unplugged album.

By the way a very friendly, polite man – exactly how you’d imagine a British gentleman. The Kinks are a very important influence for us, we admire Davies as a songwriter – not only for his songs of the 60ies. So his name came up quickly when we were considering whom we’d like to have at the unplugged thing. We recorded his song “Victoria” and sent him the demo. This was our first contact.

What was his reaction?

He said: “Okay I’ll be there if you’ll also participate in my new album”. Two hands wash each other.

You’ve been for a long time rock stars yourselves, with shouting girls in the first rows. Will you disclose to us a typical rock star purchase that you’ve made in the recent years?

This is difficult. I’ve bought a summer house in the country near Stockholm. Does that count?

A lot of Swedes have that.

I can’t offer you more, sorry. Maybe our bass player… He turned into a real champagne lover with years and knows a lot about the matter. As to me – it may sound clichéd though – I’m just not a very material person. 

 

And what about your instruments? It sounds like you wouldn’t use a guitar newer than 40 years old on principle.

We don’t exaggerate it. Did our debut album Bring ‘Em In sounded like a quite lousy small garage band? We recorded it on a simple recently made digital recorder. The songs actually appeared in the garage, in the parents’ house of our former keyboarder, Daniel Haglund. And you can hear that too. My guitar was brand-new, I had bought it in the shop, a kind of wedish Lidl for hobby equipment and musical instruments. At that time everyone would ask us what kind of old equipment we’d been using, and it was just the cheapest. When a band says that they can only make good music with old vintage  instruments   am amazed. An expensive guitar doesn’t make a good song after all.

Is it actually true that you say in Sweden: who achieves nothing here, goes to Germany?

I don’t wanna sign under that statement. In general Swedes like Germany. Presently a lot move to Berlin. And these are not losers if you ask me but   lot of good musicians. Among them several friends of mine, who like the art-friendly atmosphere in Berlin.

You yourself live in Stockholm, but keep loyalty to your hometown Borlänge. You may even get an honour award of the city soon.

True, from the city council, for the cultural input of the band in the city. Before there was Mando Diao, there was really nothing. Presently there are several good bands and clubs too, where they can perform, plus a cool festival: Peace and Love, where we play every year, kind of a “home band”. Today it’s the biggest  festival  in  Sweden.  If  somebody had told  me  when I  was  a teenager, what would happen in Borlänge concerning rock, I’d have laughed my head off.