The wild heads have grown up
Rozhovor z Piranha.tv, který sice nepřináší nic nového, ale stojí za zmínku...
A night in Berlin, beginning of September. The mood in the lobby of the Berlin Union-Filmstudio is relaxed. Mando Diao have just marvelously passed another trial by fire. The former garage rock´n´roll band has not only flawlessly and without any mistake played its MTV Unplugged show which they rehearsed for months. They celebrated it as an inspired, even magic performance.
It was a show where Mando Diao performed both their greatest hits and b-sides known only to the fans. It was a show full of unexpected guests, from Ray Davies to Julliete Lewis to the Beatles-artist Klaus Voormann who made drawings live right on the stage.
It was a treat for the eyes: fine outfits (Swedish national costumes!), lavish stage decorations, to say nothing about the five favourites of the girls. It was a career summary of the Swedes up till now and a look into what can come still. It was an event.
Those who caught this show on MTV these days, know what we are talking about. Resolved, relieved and euphoric, drummer Samuel Giers, bass player CJ Fogelklou, keyboarder Mats Björke and the two frontmen Gustaf Norén and Björn Dixgård mix with the guests who stayed, friends and partners from the industry who are dancing to the DJ programme of their producers, the Salazar brothers.
People pat each other on the shoulder, hug each other, go through the show one more time. People do small talk-and big talk. Then Björn lets something out which makes us prick up our ears: ´I tell you something man! Today is the first time for one year that I´m really so proud of Mando Diao. You know in the last months it was sometimes like... I asked myself: must it go further? But now Iím full of confidence for the future.´
A couple of weeks later, in an official interview, we had of course to pick it up. Björn answered: ´This was naturally said in euphoria. Of course there´s always pride for Mando Diao- otherwise I would have left the band! But hey, I still don´t know how we managed this so precisely with the unplugged show! I was so high after it, I didn´t care about anything what we had achieved so far. I was absolutely high on music.´
An offer to do an unplugged show for a band is like being dubbed knight - and a logical step in the career for the obsessed Beatles fans. A short view in the past? In 2002 the five who were then in their early twenties stormed with their debut ´Bring ´Em In´ from the garage of a small Swedish town of Borlänge.
Impetuous guys in leather jacket, they didn´t simply establish themselves in the run of the next four albums. In ´Hurricane Bar´(2004) and ´Ode To Ochrasy´(2006) the heroes of girls´ dreams perfected their fresh Beatles-meet-Strokes sound and became frequent guests of the main stages at indie festivals.
´Never Seen The Light Of Day´ (2007) was a sort of deviation which experimented with melodic folk influences. Finally there was ´Give Me Fire´ (2009) which rushed them to the top of German charts, not in the last place due to the hit single ´Dance With Somebody´ which even secured them an appearance in the show ´Wetten, dass.´
Naturally, such uplift can not go forward without mistakes. The oldest fans less and less recognized in the established professionals who completed their latest tour with a background choir and brass band, the band in which they had once fallen in love with.
Were these still those young heads whose singer Gustaf Norén would start a dispute with everyone and in the interviews claimed that only the youth can make relevant music? ´It won´t be the same anymore when we´re in our late twenties or thirty´, he argued in those times.
But today Mando Diao are exactly in this position. Björn, the all-time royal sphinx, grins about Gustaf´s earlier drive. ´I think he was a bit obsessed with the idea of being young. But that´s only because so much was written about how young we were. But I think what he meant was that at some point we wouldn´t be able to deliver this naive punk/garage rock so convincingly.´
But: ´When it comes to music, we both are obsessed. That´s why we write songs together, that´s why we are such good friends. Today the chemistry between us is even better. For Gustaf it´s all about the music too, not our external image. We became more balanced and have exactly the same aim.´
Thus the simplified back-to-basics approach which brings along such an unplugged gig is exemplary for the further development of the old values of Mando Diao. Björn: ´So of course we´re happy about the success of Give Me Fire and Dance With Somebody. How could such success be anything but fantastic?
But success brings along extremely many appointments and touring. At that time we had two back-vocal singers and the wind instruments - and okay, it was an interesting experiment for us and we had lots of cool moments. But this summer we had only seven or eight festival shows and said from the very beginning: we play these shows without the choir and the wind instruments. We wanted to get back to the five of us as one unity.´
Then: ´We are at our best when it´s only us. The recordings in our careers of which I´m most proud are all live recordings when it was only the five of us playing together.´ The acoustic unplugged arrangements belong to the ipenî of the five musicians and were done without any help from outside.
´This acoustic thing was always in our blood. This is how Gustaf and I write our songs, this comes natural to us. We had no producers, just the recording equipment. Because we knew: we give our best when we have played together and the song goes well from the first take.
If you ask me, it shouldn´t be further mixed. If somebody hits the microphone or gives a feedback - so what? This belongs to the entire recording! I see it as dogmatic.´
But this dream wouldn´t come true. In Stockholm´s studios at least the roughest moments would get corrected in the final mix. For the record companies release is the most important thing. But how important the show itself was for Mando Diao, you can get from the guest who would be the least expected: Daniel Haglund, German teacher.
Or: ex-keyboarder Daniel Haglund who was thrown out of the band after the first album and about whom Gustaf Norén said the ´Piranha´ cover story to ´Hurricane Bar´: ´He has lost the Mando Diao game!´
Björn clarifies: ´It was important for us to have Daniel there. He has done so much for the band n he has founded it! Everywhere it says that I was the founder but itís not right. When we threw him out of the band at that time, there was simply clash between our personalities. He didn´t want to tour so much, he didn´t care about our style.
He said: ´Hey I play music with you but I´m not doing the rest.´ It was difficult, we were all friends, even Mats who replaced him. There were four years of complete silence. But at a certain point Samuel called him, to clear it up, and after that we had good relations again. When we record the next album weíll definitely take him again, even if he doesn´t go on tour.´
Can there be a better way to show that Mando Diao are about to find their inner peace? And when they are wild on stage, itís a positive development n because it keeps the band. Look, Mando Diao grew up, and it´s good that way.
´There´s no reason to play only sitting gigs from now on n but combining the acoustic style with our other style, this would be classy´, thinks Björn and looks optimistically forward to the next album.
´Gustaf also has now a summer house there in Dalarna, like me. We meet there and concentrate on writing songs as we haven´t done for five years. As long as we develop further and further, we can make music forever.´
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