162.
OKa
(18.07.2005 07:42)
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К сожалению не смогла найти куда я запрятала сылку на свежачёк :( , но успела скопировать его само :)))))
ROCK THE NIGHT
Joey Tempest interview by Dave Cockett
Yep, after a self imposed exile spanning more than a decade, EUROPE, Sweden’s biggest hard rock export ever, are back! Unquestionably one of the most influential bands of the 80’s, at their peak they sold in excess of twelve million albums worldwide, playing to packed arenas around the globe. And, unlike many of their contemporaries, they decided to call a halt whilst they were ahead, preferring to leave their public wanting more rather than risk it all by selling out to the latest trends. Now back with what many people regard as their classic line up, and with a brand new studio album ‘Start From The Dark’ about to hit the streets, the band are as fired up as ever. Front man JOEY TEMPEST tells DAVE COCKETT just why now was the right time to finally get things moving again.
Cast your mind back to late 1991, and the release of, what was for me at least, was the best album Europe had ever recorded, ‘Prisoners In Paradise’. Grunge was fast becoming the new medium of choice for most of the major magazines and TV channels, but even so, the band were still holding their own. Strange then that this would seemingly become their epitaph. "Well, in ‘92 we went out on the road and did the last Europe tour," Joey explains, " and as I recall we did a few gigs here in England actually .. Portsmouth, Hammersmith, and so on. And I remember in the tour bus afterwards, we were talking about where the whole thing was going, and I think at the time the consensus amongst the band was that we really felt ready for a break. After all, we’d been a touring rock band for years. We did our first album in 1983 and started touring almost straight away. Then when ‘The Final Countdown’ broke in 1986 … basically we never went home, ha, ha! We felt that it was time to put some roots down, and I was really into the idea of making my own solo album. So they guys all went back home to Sweden, but I stayed because by that time I had met my English girl. It was only meant to be a short break, but I made this journey into singer/songwriter territory which eventually led to not one, but three solo albums."
"But in the end," Joey adds, "I realised I was just missing the guys more and more. Gradually we began talking more and more on the telephone, and in ‘98 Mic (Michaeli) and Ian (Haugland) came over to see me in Ireland. Then whilst we were there, John (Norum) called from LA, and we were like ‘Yes, maybe now is the right time to get things started again’. The first thing that actually happened was that we did the millennium gig in 1999, and we realised just how much we had all missed it. At rehearsals we tore into ‘Rock The Night’ and it was just so much fun to be playing those songs again. After that we gradually drifted into more and more meetings, and finally in 2003 we had one last meeting, the upshot of which was ‘Yeah, lets do this. It’s going to be great … let’s write some new material, let’s look forward not back, let’s do a new album rather than just going out and playing the old stuff’. Hence the new album ‘Start From The Dark’. It’s been a much longer break than we anticipated, but it was worth it, we have a lot of fun now. These are the guys who did the ‘The Final Countdown’ album and we’re all great friends. We grew up in the same neighbourhood, we met when we were maybe 15 or 16 year old, we all went to the same shows … we went to see Deep Purple, we went to see Whitesnake, and we went to see Thin Lizzy together. It’s just great to be back together as friends, and the feeling in the band is unbelievable!"
After nearly eight years on the road, a break would have been the sensible option all round, but the changing musical climate also had a big part to play in the decision to call time out. "Absolutely," Joey agrees. "The whole scene had changed completely from when we first started out. I remember being in the main CBS/Epic offices in New York - it was called Sony by then - and I realised just how quickly things had changed because they had piles of stuff lying around on the tables, but it was all to do with bands like Pearl Jam. It was as if the old guard had been moved out to make way for all this new stuff, and I remember thinking that our days were probably gonna be numbered – it was a new time, and Sony had changed really quickly towards the whole grunge kind of sound. It was a reaction. It always happens when something becomes so big so quickly, you’re always going to get a reaction to it. And so it just felt natural for us to take our foot off the accelerator and take time out to figure our next moves. But the thing was, we were still playing big places, still doing big albums, so it felt the right thing to do would be to go out whilst we were still ahead. Contrary to what people said at the time, we never said we would quit; we always said we would take a break but we always knew in the back of our minds this was going to happen again, it was just a matter of timing and get it right."
The temptation must have been there to try and cash in on the new trend by jumping on the grunge bandwagon like so many of your contemporary’s did? "Yeah, I guess that a lot of bands did that in the 90’s," Joey muses, "but we were never inclined that way, we wanted to make the kind of music we wanted to make, and not be dictated to by any particular trend or fashion. There’s something funny going on right now in the music world because classic hard rock is sort of finding its roots again, and being played again. I mean, it was amazing to hear The Darkness played on Capital Radio here in London. All those long guitar solos, it was like ‘Wow, this is great!’. I went to see them live, I think they’re great guitar players, they have a great guitar sound and stuff like that."
There’s no argument that they seem to have put the ‘fun’ back into rock ‘n’ roll again. "Exactly," Joey nods. "They’ve made it sound entertaining again. But there’s also other bands who take it a little more seriously who are just as good, bands like Audioslave, Lost Prophets, and Velvet Revolver .. I like them a lot. There is some good music out there, but now it seems to be rooted in classic hard rock once more rather than the nu-metal thing which was a little more mixed in with hip hop. I think it’s gonna be a good time for hard rock again, classic hard rock."
After the demise of Europe, Joey immersed himself in a solo career, a career which produced three albums and lasted for the best part of a decade. "Yeah, I needed a change from the Europe sound," he freely admits. "I guess you could say that I had a reaction against the whole thing. I wanted to prove myself as a singer/songwriter for sure, but for me it was more of a journey to learn about making music. I went to see a lot of new young artists .. got into stuff like Van Morrison and Bob Dylan, so I went completely the other way. I wanted to know where everything came from and how things started, and so that’s what I did. After my first solo album (‘A Place To Call Home’) I went out to the States to work with Richard Dodd - who’s this English guy living out in Nashville – on the second one (‘Azalea Place’), which kept me away from home for a long time. But it was something that I needed to do, I had to get it out of my system. Then when it came around to the ‘Joey Tempest’ album, that was pretty much written here in London."
Finally released a couple of years ago, ‘Joey Tempest’ seemed to be on the cards for an awful long time before it finally hit the streets. "Yeah, it took four years!" laughs Joey. "I took some time out because I really needed to start over again and get a new focus … I do that sometimes. I did it with the first solo album as well. I write loads of stuff first, then I choose the songs I really want to be on there. The thing is though, if you listen to my solo albums, as a writer I’m gradually moving back towards rock again. As I said, in the end I really just missed the guys in the band, and it felt right to get back together again to try and pick up where we’d left off."
The first sign that a reunion could well be on the cards came on Millennium Eve when the band, including both former guitarists, got together to perform in Stockholm. "We got an offer to go somewhere else in Sweden to play on millennium eve," Joey explains, "but then we thought ‘Why don’t we just find out what else is going on?’ The more I thought about it, the more I thought it would be really great to go home to meet my family, friends, the band … for everyone to get together that new year''s eve. So that was the original idea, that was the first thing I wanted to do, and if that could be in conjunction with a show, that would be even better. So we did two songs, just before midnight - ‘Rock The Night’ and ‘The Final Countdown’ - and then we just partied all night. We met a few days before, I think we had two or three days rehearsal, it was just two songs and we knew them well, so it was a lot fun. But during those rehearsals we realised ‘This is great, we have to do this again’. That I guess was the real catalyst that brought it all back together."
On the subject of the reformation, much has been made of the fact that John Norum, the guy who quit the band back in the mid 80’s, has got the gig over Kee Marcello. "The thing with Kee," Joey says, "is that he has a lot on his plate right now. He has his own band K2, and he’s also a very talented producer … he’s a prolific man who does a awful lot of stuff, and I think his schedule is just too full right now. We did talk about maybe using two guitar players when we played live with Kee coming out to join us, but it all fell through. In a nutshell, we had progressed towards John, and it feels really good at the moment."
Fair enough, but John’s reasons for leaving the band in the first place back in 1986 centred around his dislike of the direction the band were heading in. "Yes, we talked about all that stuff," Joey admits, "and he now feels … he doesn’t really know what happened back then, he had some personal stuff to deal with as well. But everything was just crazy back then. I mean, as you can imagine, we grew up and our dream was just to tour like Thin Lizzy, that was the only dream we had. And we did so for a while, and then all of a sudden we had this song which was six and a half minutes long – which was only ever intended to open our show – but all of a sudden it became such a massive crossover thing. ‘The Final Countdown’ became so big that we had to go and do playback shows for months. We had to go and do photo sessions all over the world all the time which meant that we weren’t actually playing, and I think that irritated John a lot because he’s a player; he needs to play four or five hours a day, otherwise he just goes crazy, ha, ha! It became such a nig thing, and everyone wanted a piece of the band, and it was difficult for him to handle. Thankfully that’s all changed now. He’s done so many solo albums and he’s really professional … he’s like ‘lets do this, lets do that’, and he’s more positive than the rest of the guys, so he has changed a lot. We’ve also learned to communicate more as a band, because I think we drifted apart in the past by not really communicating enough."
Given that the Millennium show was the catalyst to kick-start the whole Europe thing again, three and a half years seems a long time to finally bring it to fruition. "Well, I had one more album to do," admits Joey, "contractually I had to do that album. So that came out in 2002, and then when that deal was over, I decided that I wasn’t going to renew it. I knew that by then I was ready, that the timing was right to do this again. So in the beginning of 2003 we had a band meeting, and from then on it was just a matter of moving forward and writing songs for the new album. That was always our intention. We though that if we were gonna make a comeback, we wanted to do it properly, and that meant we wanted to write and record some new songs, a new album. Sony knew that we were gonna do this anyway, so they decided that it would be a good thing to issue the ‘Rock The Night …Nest Of’ CD and DVD. We could never stop them doing that because they own the rights to the songs, so we decided to just accept it, and in a way it’s been kind of helpful to us. It sort of got people thinking about the band again and got the reacquainted with the old songs, which I think has really worked in our favour. The sales for the album and the gigs we played over the summer were great which was a really nice surprise .. to be honest, we didn’t know what kind of reception we were gonna get."
What did it feel like being back on stage as Europe, not just for two songs, but in front of a rock crowd after all these years again? "It was like wow!" Joey beams. "The first couple of shows we did were in Norway and then Sweden, we did the Sweden Rock festival which was a huge show. We didn’t really know what to expect, and we filmed a lot of stiff backstage for our forthcoming DVD … and as you’ll see we really enjoyed it, we were anxious but excited at the same time, not knowing what to expect or what would happen. But in the end it was incredible, a lot of fun, and we really enjoyed doing that particular show. After that we went on and did a few more festivals throughout the summer – 14 in all I think – and the audiences have been great to us all the way. Everywhere was really welcoming, and also, we got a whole new generation of people coming out who never saw the band the first time round … that was really cool, a great opportunity for us to introduce ourselves to these people."
Writing for new album ‘Start From The Dark’ got underway almost as soon as the final green light had be given. "We started writing, John and I .. I guess in the beginning of 2003, We started bouncing ideas backwards and forwards to one another, and the first two songs we wrote were ‘Start >From The Dark’ and ‘Got To Have Faith’, both of which originated from John’s riffs. I finished the songs off in my studio here in London, you know, I wrote the lyrics and came up with the melodies, move things around a bit; then I sent them back to John and he was like ‘Hey, this is great’. At that point we sent them to the management and to the rest of the guys in the band, and everybody was like ‘Wow, this is exciting!’ … so we knew we were on to something. Then it was just like pulling a plug. I started writing again for the band Europe rather than Joey Tempest the solo artist, and I wrote something like four or five songs on my own. I wrote four or five with John, and then one with Mic (Michaeli) … and then everybody kind of pitched in with their own ideas during rehearsal."
Can’t have been easy in the beginning switching from one writing style to another? "You know what, it was much easier than I expected," affirms Joey. "Obviously it’s a different thing, but you have to get into the spirit of things, and you have to know sort of thing your aiming for … that’s why its so good to be in a band like Europe where you know the band members. When I write a song, I’ll think of the drummer, I’ll think of the base player, and I’ll think of the guitar player as I am writing it. It becomes a song of the band, even if I’m writing it on my own, it becomes part of the band. We did the whole song writing bit in probably six to seven months, then we went into the studio and did the whole recording thing in 40 days. We didn’t want to drag this out. We called Kevin (Elson) in America … ‘Let’s not drag it out, let’s record the whole thing in 40 days and then mix it quickly to try and retain that vibe. Let’s make this a point in time and not drag it out for years’ … so we recorded it pretty much live. It’s just a mark in time really."
Kevin Elson of course was also behind the controls for the hugely successful ‘The Final Countdown’. "We had a meeting to talk about how we were gonna do this," Joey explains, "and obviously, who we were gonna get to produce it was one of the big issues. We could either go with a younger producer, or we could go with someone that we knew, someone experienced who is on the same wavelength as the band. So in the end we decided that Kevin would be the perfect choice. He’s very highly rated in the live album field, he knows about live acts and he’s one of the biggest sound engineers in the world … he goes out with people like Don Henley and Aerosmith in America. He knows everything about that side of things, so he was the perfect choice for us because that was the sound we were aiming for. We didn’t want to do too many overdubs, we didn’t want to over work it. So he came over to Sweden last winter to work with us. Nobody really knew we were doing an album at that time, so we could get on and work without anyone looking over our shoulders all the time … it was great."
Nice to see the management and record companies refraining from interfering for a change! "No, we’ve had no direction whatsoever," affirms Joey, " and we didn’t want that either, we made that absolutely clear to people. That’s how we made our first albums with Europe as well, completely independent of any outside influence, and I think it’s a good base to start from. That’s why it’s essentially a start in the dark, ha, ha! … who knows where we’ll go on the next album, but this is what we wanted to do at that particular time. We started with a completely blank page, everything is new ... all the riffs John sent me on tape were all fresh, so the whole thing is basically brand new material, which makes it so much more exiting. We were very conscious of the fact that we didn’t want to make another ‘Prisoners In Paradise’ or ‘The Final Countdown’, we’ve always tried not to repeat ourselves as far as possible. I think that we’ll survive and live longer if we try to come up with new ideas, try to find new angles, and just follow what’s within our hearts, you know. Speaking as a musician, you have to make music that you yourself are one hundred percent happy with first and foremost. You also have to be sure about playing it live, so what you do is when you write a song, you make sure you can rehearse it and enjoy it, and that everyone in the band enjoys it. If someone says ‘I don’t really like playing that song’, then you move it, and move on to new ideas so in the end it becomes a group decision."
Historically, Joey was always the main songwriter in the band, but listening to the last couple of John Norum solo albums, it would appear that he’s made his presence felt on ‘Start From The Dark’. "Absolutely," he agrees, "John loves to take things to extremes. I like to have strong melodies and a classic rock feel, so the combination between the two of us seems to work really well. If John comes from a darker side, I bring some elements of melody into the mix … that’s Europe, and that’s how it was for the first couple of albums. It’s just a spontaneity thing, with him and Kee coming from the darker side, and me coming from the more melodic side … it’s just a good combination that seems to work for us."
I haven’t seen too much feedback on the album yet, but my first impression of ‘Start From The Dark’ was that a lot of the old Europe fans are gonna be quite surprised with the direction it’s taken. "Yeah, it’s a little early yet," Joey agrees, "but of those reactions we have seen, the first thing people say is ‘What the hell is going on?", ha, ha! But then they listen to it a few more times, and they think ‘Oh yeah, a good combination of melody and heaviness ... it’s good to have you guys back’. I have to say, we haven’t really given much thought towards dealing with how people are gonna react to the album yet. We just did something really quickly, which was what we wanted to do, but it seems positive. We are very happy with the results, as far as we’re concerned, we’ve done something we believe will be successful, but we’ll have to wait and see, you know. Obviously, some of the old Europe fans may have loved all that keyboard stuff, and loved the softer side of Europe, but we also know that there are some people who preferred the heavier side of the band with songs like ‘Seventh Sign’. That’s just human nature, but as long as people get to hear it a few times, then I think everything will be okay. I think for us as a band, the album has been a growing experience, but as I said, we’ll see what happens when it gets out there."
After the album, comes the tour. "Yeah," Joey nods. " We have the Scandinavian leg of the tour in October, then in November we switch to the rest of Europe, and after that, it’s over to Japan in January. Hopefully we’re also aiming to go to America next year as well. That’s the plan anyway, and after that we’re gonna start working on a new album towards the end of next year. That might surprise a few people, but we never envisaged this as a one shot deal. If you’re a rock band, you have to throw yourself off the edge go with it one hundred percent. I can’t really see an end to it at the moment, we’re just getting such a buzz out of writing and playing together again."
Aside from the obvious musical differences between the old and new Europe, lyrically too, this new batch of songs seem much more challenging. "I think that has a lot to do with living abroad in English speaking countries for the past 17 years," offers Joey. "Also, I learned a lot from doing the three solo albums because the lyrics had to be much stronger than the old Europe stuff. With those songs from the 80’s, you just found words and expressions that fitted with the music … it didn’t necessarily have to have much to say, or even have much meaning. But John told me the other day that he thought these were the best lyrics we had ever done. They’re much more reflective than before because they’re about the band, about our relationship with the audience, about us as friends and what’s happening all around us. Its not so clichйd as it was in the past, it’s more about storytelling … for me anyway … it’s much more relaxed."
You could say that there’s more maturity at work? "Yeah," Joey ponders, "I think so. ‘Got To Have Faith’, ‘Start From The Dark’ and ‘Flames’ are pretty much painting a picture of the band being back together again and recapturing that mood, you know, that spirit we had on the early recordings. ‘Wake Up Call’ and ‘Song no. 12’ were both written in the studio, and those lyrics deal with all the bad things that are going on in the world right now … all the fear and the bombings and stuff. And it’s a bit of an affirmation thing, a bit of a positive thinking which is a little different for Europe. ‘Hero’ is about a meeting I had with Phil Lynott many, many years ago. I was only 18 or 19 at the time, I was just a kid, building up the courage to talk to him and I thought that all rock stars were cocky and angry and stuff like that, but he was really very friendly and gave me his time which was cool. ‘Sucker’ is about a girl we used to know from where we lived in Stockholm, who would only sleep with guitar players, nobody else, ha, ha! … that’s a kind of fun song which I think lightens the mood. But essentially, I think the album just reflects the spirit of the moment whilst we were making it … that’s what we were aiming for at any rate."
The summer shows were just a chance for the band to dust off the old classics again, but the forthcoming tour will be a baptism of fire for the new songs for fans to see just how well they stack up against the old. "We just played the title track over the summer as a taster," Joey explains, "and generally the reaction seems to have been positive. But as for the upcoming tour … I’m kind of just guessing now because we haven’t picked the songs or rehearsed them yet, but I would guess we’ll play something like five new songs maybe, and then some old stuff. And the big songs of course … but we’ll try to make a new feeling to it, so it feels fresh as well as just playing the hits. I think its going to be fun."
With Joey in London and, since John moved back from LA, all the other guys living in Stockholm, rehearsals could be a bit of a logistical challenge. "No, not really," Joey explains. "I go over there quite a lot anyway, and everything seems to be working out fine, so we’ve no plans to change things around. I’m happy living here in England with my gorgeous English rose so I have no plans to move back to Sweden permanently. I’ve always liked London anyway … the first time I came here was back in ‘88 when I bought a place out in Wapping East, and I thought it was a great place. It’s one of those cities like New York where you feel you can be who you want to be, or do whatever you want to do. Even at a time when Europe was just beginning to take off all over the globe, there was a kind of anonymity I liked about living in London … not that I had much time to spend in my flat of course, ha, ha! But it was different to places like Paris or Rome where we literally just couldn’t go out. I remember that we had to run from the car to the hotel just to get out of the way of the crowds of people wanting to get close to the band, it was kind of weird. When you’re in that kind of world, it’s almost surreal and you kind of get lost in it for a while, but when you come out the other side you sort of think ‘Wow, that was a just a circus’. And you realise that you need to get away from that kind of goldfish bowl existence as well, otherwise you’re in real trouble."
Given the current upbeat mood within the whole band, it seems strange to think that, assuming all the rumours were correct, you were the one reluctant to get things moving again earlier? "Yeah, I guess I had to get something out of my system," Joey admits. "I didn’t know what it was, I didn’t have a clue, but I knew that I needed to do some stuff for me, away from the band. In the 90’s I felt that I needed to do that to learn how to write lyrics in a different way, and to see music in a different way in order to appreciate what it would be to go back to this. Now I can employ that in my lyric writing, and I can employ some of that in my songwriting too. Whether I held things up more than the others, I don’t know … John was always quite busy, so to get him back in Europe might have proven quite difficult as well, so that might have taken time. In a way I might have slowed things down a bit, but I think that the timing is just right now, it feels so natural."
Whilst in some respects the band are starting again, their collective experiences from the 80’s and 90’s, both a s a band and individually, mean that this time around, they should be better equipped to enjoy it properly. "Absolutely," Joey agrees, "that experience is nice to have. Now we are our own masters, and we can plan our future working more for ourselves. We plan when we’re going to release a DVD, when we’re touring, etc … so its great in that respect. And also, I think that the band grooves much better on stage now. When you’re young, you play quite fast and you’re very excitable, which can be a bit unpredictable up on stage, but now all that sits very well, the band grooves and plays very well together ... its nice."
On a final note, over the years the Europe backline - John Leven, Ian Haugland, and Mic Michaeli – have involved themselves in a steady stream of projects (Brazen Abbot, etc.) as both a unit, and individually. Now, however, the focus seems to have changed. "Now Europe is everyone’s number one priority," Joey states emphatically. "No-one has any other plans beyond that. I think John Norum has to release another solo album at some point in the future. He had already started recording his last solo album when we started this project, so he probably has to release it, but other than that, nobody has any other plans for any other projects. We won’t have time for anything else basically, it’s going to be full on Europe from now."
July 4, 2005
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