“Recording in a studio was pretty exciting the first time, but after that it was rather boring. All the waiting around is so tedious! I’m not very comfortable in the studio, because I don’t play as well as I’d like. I play better live. I felt a lot of pressure recording the drums of Spanking Hour and felt very uneasy. I thought it was great fun rehearsing for that album though. I was so stoked – it was going to be the album of the century! There were so many people around us who said we sounded so promising.”
IA points out that the “many people” Joakim refers to were, in fact, their friends and close business relations: of course they will tell you that you’re the next big thing. IA continues:
“Having said that, I do think it’s a good album. It’s much more even than Appetizer with no instrumentals and no weird stuff. ‘Inner Revolution’ isn’t a great song, but the drum solo is awesome. ‘Haw, Haw, Haw’ was apparently very popular in Japan, a mini hit I’ve been told afterwards. When we finally played in Japan, we didn’t include it in the set list. That’s so us, somehow: totally missing opportunities.”
The recording sessions were fairly uneventful, and during the evenings, Christian would go to the local rock club Crazy Daisy. When Joakim hadn’t left for Gothenburg yet, the rest of the gang could expect little mischievous surprises from the sofa corner. Christian is still pleasantly plagued by the memories.
“I tried to do press-ups, but Joakim drew a caricature of one of our most supportive journalists, with a big cock protruding from his forehead. I was laughing so hard, I couldn’t continue. Unfortunately, I sometimes still remember it when I’m trying to get some exercise. Hopeless! And there was always something, he stuck flutes up his arse and would strut around with a false nose.”
When it was time for the mixing sessions, IA made sure that everyone was present this time around. However, Christian admits that mixing with all three members didn’t go very well: everybody kept increasing the volume of their particular channels, and once again, IA had to take the helm. But IA did try to include the whole band and talks of “us” and “we” when he describes the procedure.
“We mixed it in the Danish National Radio studio, and we were happy with the outcome, but then they bollocksed everything up in the audio mastering. We were sent a DAT tape where they had ruined everything we had worked so hard with. A nice little packet of anguish! We really had worked our asses off. Since then, I’ve been highly sceptical of mastering engineers. You really need to be a true expert to enhance the sound.”
When it was time to create the cover and the promotional video, Freak Kitchen kept it in the family as usual. IA’s wife Camilla had more or less grown up in her father’s advertising agency and had worked as a desktop artist for an agency in Gothenburg, and therefore it was natural that she made the cover and the graphical design. The video for “Jerk” was shot by Anders Bryngel who also did “Speak When Spoken To” and “Sloppy”, but it was pre-cut by the band. The video features the boys wearing rather un-stylish red trousers and blue T-shirts. Christian wasn’t entirely happy with the band’s lack of style.
“We didn’t have an image; we were as natural as one could be. It wasn’t something I was going on about, but I can’t deny that I wished the others could have at least occasionally made a little bit of an effort.”
IA agrees, but also saw this as an example of the band’s desire to be anti-everything you were supposed to be.
“But wasn’t it kind of cool in its own twisted way? I used to think that surely it didn’t matter what colour shirt you wore, but I’ve understood that sometimes it does make a difference. Björn and Christer have asked me why I get on stage wearing the most sloppy-looking, gigantic, white sweater with a logo from some delivery firm, when it’s so easy just to choose all black. So now I wear black and everybody’s happy. I really couldn’t care less about what I wear, but even I can see that some sort of unity looks better. I mean, I don’t exactly have to put on make-up – it’s not a huge effort.”
This time around, the band didn’t throw a release party, and the media presence was almost non-existent. The realisation that they weren’t going to make it to stardom with this album either was harder for some. Joakim had been ready for the limousines and chicks.
“I was so disappointed, because I thought Appetizer would sell a million copies. I thought that the day we release the album, I’m going to be famous overnight. I honestly thought so. And then it sold 6,000 copies. Perhaps I didn’t have a firm link with reality regarding record sales. Christian and IA said that if we’d sell 20,000 copies, we should be dancing. I thought, 20,000, what kind of rubbish figure is that, surely we’ll sell a few hundred thousand? Then Spanking Hour only sold 6,000 copies as well. I don’t know what the other guys’ ambitions were, but I wanted to break big. I wasn’t actually that interested in music. I don’t write music and I barely even listen to music. I wanted to make a lot of money, travel and meet babes.”
If we look at sales figures, it seems as if Joakim is understating the numbers for dramatic effect: Spanking Hour sold over 10,000 copies in Japan quite quickly, but it still wasn’t the millions Joakim had hoped for. Both Christian and IA remember this chicks-and-cash type of reasoning very well, and Joakim’s black and white attitude came across very clearly in this matter in particular. He was never interested in the middle ground: either lark about in the rehearsal room, or world domination. He continues:
“I didn’t have a problem with the idea of starting from scratch. When we played in Denmark once, I thought that at least it can never get worse than this. We heard the singer of the opening act shout ‘So you’re here to see Freak Kitchen!’…complete silence in the audience. That was the low point of my career. When we played Roskilde, we were joking about how we’d reached our peak. And then it turned out that it was our peak, at least while I was in the band. One of the few times we were on television, we met The Cardigans who shook our hands. ‘Wow, it’s really happening for you guys!’, they said. Soon after that, they went to Japan and became world famous stars. Really happening? Yeah right.”
IA admits that the third album was something of a protest against that period, and that they had to do something completely different. But he also tries to see the positive sides.
“We were nominated for best production at some award in Britain, along with Rush and Dalbello, which meant going to London to play the Astoria 2 during the ceremony.”
Mik Gaffney and Frontiers Magazine had championed Freak Kitchen right from the start and brought them over for their first UK show at Frontiers Awards in 1997.
“I spent the evening helping on change overs and hung out with the guys a lot during the day. I remember that Christian had cut his hair off and sold it to help pay for his flight over, or at least that was his story.”
That particular haircut was also noticed in that particular magazine when Christian was asked what he was most proud of. The answer? “My new haircut.” Sound familiar?
However, the trio started to feel seriously frustrated over the lack of success. Joakim more so than anyone.
“I knew that there would be another two years before we had a new chance with a new album, and I felt that time was running out. And I didn’t like the way we toured, it wasn’t even proper touring, just oneoff gigs. Always having to confront people who asked us why we played such small venues. I enjoyed our first real tour, because then it really felt like we were going places. But it just went downhill from there.”
If IA had another impression of where things were going, it’s perhaps because of the small detail where he was invited to Japan and treated like a young god. He held clinics at Musicians Institute in Tokyo and did a famous eight-hour marathon of interviews, photo sessions and showcases. He featured in the massively popular magazine Young Guitar several issues in a row, and had a chance meeting with Tak Yonemochi, who quickly called Itaru Kanno, guitar designer from a certain guitar make, Caparison Guitars, when he heard that IA was yet unendorsed. In the begi
nning of 1997, the Apple Horn signature model was born.
“My visits to Japan made all the difference in the world to me. Spanking Hour had sold over 4,000 copies in Japan already, and ‘Haw, Haw, Haw’ was a popular ring tone signal. So I got to experience something Christian and Joakim never could, because that’s not the kind of adventure you can pass on second-hand. And I didn’t even do anything in order for them to be a part of it either! I was happy, I got the recognition I wanted. Then I got to visit Japan a second time, and then a third time. But there were never any gigs on offer. I got a steady stream of confirmation, and I probably tried to convince the others that surely things were taking off now? They must have thought ‘right’ and that we weren’t even half famous in fricking Denmark. But it’s always a question of money. If they can only afford to bring one band member over, it’s always going to be me. Had I been more experienced and sensitive to the situation, perhaps I could have solved the problem, but I didn’t. I felt that things were really happening for us, but it wasn’t a vibe I could convince the others of when we were sleeping in some shitty hotel in the north of Sweden after a so-so gig.”
While IA admits to loving the attention he gets as a guitarist, he’s also surprised at the audience’s choice of focus. He points out that he’s a singer as much as he is a guitar player and spends a whole lot more time doing other things: writing lyrics, producing and editing.
“The Japanese would never cheer about a song they recognize; they cheer – no, they scream – when I play solos. It’s always click, click, click, look at his fingering! But I suppose this inequality in attention may have been one reason why the others weren’t that interested in going above and beyond for the band after a while. In the beginning, Joakim was very helpful with the practical stuff: had the car fixed and did backdrops. Christian managed to booze and lose a lot of stuff, on the other hand! Neither of them was that interested in building a drum podium, getting extra stage lighting and so on.”
Christian points out that because he was unemployed during most of his time with Freak Kitchen, it wasn’t exactly as if he had lots of extra cash to spend on cool stage stuff for the band. The little they made went straight into paying the rent. For many years, IA wanted to keep the number of crew members to a minimum in order to keep as much of the money as possible for the band. However, it seems as if Joakim would have preferred to pay a drum roadie.
“I was embarrassed to carry my own drums to gigs. People asked me why I didn’t have a drum roadie, and I was ashamed to admit that I had to take care of the drums myself. I remember especially when we opened for Rainbow and I felt like a rock star for half an hour and then immediately had to get back on stage and pack the drums. People were applauding because they thought we were doing an encore; it was so awkward and I didn’t like that one bit.”
One other aspect which may have contributed to IA’s feeling of progress was that he was constantly involved in other projects. Not only did he do guest solos on a number of albums, he also found the time to sing romantic tango music on Sven Olander’s album Air Bleu.
It was also around this time the Internet started happening on a large scale, and bands who knew someone who had HTML skills were a little bit ahead of the rest. Writing code for and maintaining a web page meant a lot more work than it would today, but luckily Freak Kitchen happened to know Patrik Ek, who was a fan of the band – but also the cousin of IA’s childhood punch bag and friend Lars Crook. The Appetizer Page, Freak Kitchen’s first fan page, premiered in 1997.
“I remember when Freak Kitchen made a promo video for ‘See You in Pittsburgh’; Lars was very proud of it and showed me the video lots of times. I didn’t become a fan on the spot, but when Appetizer came out, it was ‘The Healthy Man’ that got me hooked. Thanks to my work with the website, I have become friends with so many wonderful people over the years, especially Johan Falk who I still go to concerts with.”
Readers with a keen eye will also recognize the name Johan Falk as the photographer who has shot both IA and Kiss through the years. The Appetizer Page plans a re-opening in the form of an archive, with previously unpublished photos and videos.
Patrik Ek has also seen his fair share of Joakim’s escapades.
“Me and my best friends Vigfús and Sven hung around a lot in their rehearsal room in Partille around 1997-1998. It was a boiling hot summer’s day, and all of a sudden Joakim cried that he was going for a swim, ran out in nothing but his underwear and jumped into the river next to the rehearsal room. They had also received a disposable camera from a magazine in Japan, and they were meant to perhaps document a gig or something, but Joakim took nude photos instead. Everyone laughed their butts off and joked about how funny it would be when the Japanese developed the photos.”
If Joakim was envious of IA’s trips to Japan, you could perhaps imagine that this kind of behaviour didn’t exactly improve the drummer’s chances of being invited.
Freak Kitchen also surrounded themselves with plenty of illustrious people. One of the most prominent names is Mikael “Spritz” Fredrickson, known to Freak Kitchen fans from the lyrics to “Michael & the Syndrome”. Christian remembers their first photo session with Spritz.
“He’s been around since day one and for about five years, he tagged along to basically every gig we played. We had really made an effort to make those promo pictures a bit different, and had dragged along a gas cooker because we wanted to be a bit playful with the band name. The cooker was supposed to burn in the background, but you can barely see the weak, blue flame.”
Spritz also had another talent apart from photography: stealing the band’s liquor. He sometimes even forgot to bring his camera gear back home because he had hidden vodka bottles in his camera bag. Christian admits to encouraging Spritz’ behaviour somewhat.
“We were always maximising our taxfree limits, but Spritz really could make entire beer crates magically disappear. He followed us on tour for many years, and eventually other people started tagging along too. They all seemed to fall into some sort of wicked enthusiasm/ADHD category. There was also this really funny guy called Johan Sehlstedt who broadcast the student radio show Gordian Knot. He helped carry some gear, sold some T-shirts – but mostly helped Spritz drink our booze!”
IA remembers the early, so-called crew and one incident happened to be one of the first warning signs that Joakim hasn’t happy in the band.
“This one particular person in our crew had spent the evening of our gig binge drinking our liquor and got so far beyond pissed, he was basically lying in Torben’s shower, vomiting his innards out all night. It kept everybody awake, and it was such a miserable situation. Joakim said, ‘I can’t take it anymore!’ and I tried to be sympathetic. ‘Yeah, he’s a bloody nuisance!’ But Joakim just looked me in the eye and said, ‘No, what I mean is that I’m quitting the band.’ That was a real shock to me.”
Third Time Lucky?
IA, BEING THE MASTER OF PEP-TALK, managed to persuade Joakim into giving it another go – after all, they were going to record a third album soon! More fun rehearsals to come! And Joakim was back in line. IA had done his best to encourage the others by trying to get them as many live dates as possible. This, however, was easier said than done.
“Sometimes people ask me for advice regarding how to get gigs as a new band. But we barely got any gigs at all. Some years, all we did was play Sweden Rock Festival, or Karlshamnsfestivalen as it was called back then. In the beginning, we phoned clubs and venues asking for gigs, but they just wanted to know which covers we were willing to play. And we’d say ‘yeah, we play Kiss!’”
When the band first started out, they talked about how they were going to live together and die together, and the Swedish TV entertainment show Nöjesguiden even introduced them as such. Considering Joakim’s feelings for his bandmates, it’s not difficult to imagine that he indeed felt that way. IA claims that initially he was also true to the cause.
“It really did feel that way until a while after Sp
anking Hour. But then we did quite a lame tour in Denmark, and the venues were actually more like little cafés. All that made us want to try something which wasn’t hard rock, and so the third album was born. Initially we were going to call it Bull, but it ended up self-titled. In March 1998, we recorded guitar, bass guitar and drums completely live with no overdubs in this great big warehouse down by the harbour in Gothenburg: a few songs every day and that was that. Or so I thought.”
The idea was to make something completely different, something naked and honest, and the twelve original songs were recorded in a week. Whereas Christian and Joakim probably would have been happy with the rawer recording, IA had second thoughts. Christian remembers that this time, things went too far.
“We had this idea that we were going to record the whole album live – it was the ‘in’ thing to do at the time – but it sounded shite. Well, at least according to IA, because he is a perfectionist when it comes to production and sound. And he won’t allow a quiet moment on an album. We hadn’t planned it like that, but suddenly we found ourselves with an album full of accordion and whatever.”
It would take another four and a half months before IA felt he was done with the recording. He carried his hard drives in a backpack back and forth from the studio every day, and added more and more odd instruments. And the album wasn’t even finished – the mixing of the album remained.
“We mixed it at the Danish National Radio studio in Odense again. It had worked splendidly the last time! The day after we came back from Odense and listened to the result, I felt like ‘what kind of meek crap is this? It sounds like bloody Toto!’ We had worked so hard, and were nowhere near what we were looking for. The DAT master tape had already been sent to Japan, but my dad and I drove all the way back down to Denmark and fetched all the gear and I tried to mix it at home, in my own flat in Majorna. In a frenzy, I connected and wired all the gear in a pile all the way up to the ceiling, did a freaky punk mix and in a hurry sent the DAT tape off to Japan, because it was way, way after deadline and I wrote: ‘This is the right master tape – burn the first one!’ And then, I was like ‘What have I done!?’, and I did a new mix and sent that off: ‘Burn that master tape!’”
Freak When Spoken To Page 6