SPOP: GYLLENE TIDER TALKS SAMMA SKROT OCH KORN
"Everyone knew this was the last record"
Daniel John
When the band first started in 1977 as Grape Rock, it was just Per and Mats. A year later, that’s when the band changed its name to Gyllene Tider, but it’s really another year later, when that version of the band was scrapped, that the Gyllene Tider we know today came about. It was a completely new band, but with the same name. What was actually the thinking behind that?
Memory from the late seventies isn’t the best, but the reason was that we, as Grape Rock, and later the Gyllene Tider that existed at the time, had different goals with our playing, which resulted in the breakup of that band. That was what then became the beginning of Gyllene Tider together with Göran Fritzon and Acke Herrlin.
Then I guess you don’t remember your first rehearsal either?
To be completely honest, no idea. Probably it was both a little tentative and half-awkward. But with big dreams!
Teenagers have continued to start bands, but in the late seventies, when it was all about punk and prog, you wanted to do music that came out of the lively and carefree tradition of popular music from the American West Coast. You could probably call Gyllene Tider a Halland version of The Beach Boys. Could you at all imagine that Gyllene Tider would still exist forty years later?
No, you know, if someone had told us that we would go out on a final tour playing many of the songs we rehearsed in 1979, and on top of that release a final record, which in our own eyes is among the best things we have ever done, we definitely wouldn’t have believed them. We just wanted to play the biggest stages in Halmstad and maybe get a record deal. Those were the immediate goals.
Which musicians did you yourself look up to in the beginning?
For first idols, Sweet were musical gods back then, and their other friends in glam rock.
GT40 is not only a farewell tour but also your farewell album. You left the studio, La Fabrique in Provence, in France, in the middle of March. What did it look like when Gyllene Tider started writing and rehearsing new music again?
We had received demos consisting basically only of acoustic guitar and vocals. And from those, everyone contributed their creative part, which makes it become, and sound like, the Gyllene Tider that you know. We have never rehearsed before the last three albums. In France, we arranged and recorded one song a day with lead vocals added, which is magically fast. Especially considering that we hadn’t played a single note together since 2013, for a full six years.
It has been stated before that Gyllene Tider don’t socialize as friends, was that perhaps exactly why recording together in France became an opportunity for you to get time to get to know each other again?
We haven’t socialized as friends since the eighties, we were always together during the early years and after we stopped in 1985, we have lived in different places and lived different lives. We have more of a musical friendship, but that is very special in its own way. And when we meet, it doesn’t take many seconds before we’re back on track. Again.
But it hasn’t all been “golden times”?
No, it actually hasn’t. The last tour in 1984 was a little tough because we had declined a little publicly and we were lost as to which direction we should go. Musically speaking, that is. We called it quits the following year.
Was it in that sense a somewhat ambivalent recording, now that you went in to make the final album and in the same way as forty years ago, even though back then it may have been more Halland rehearsal rooms than music studios on the French Riviera, starting to make music together again?
The recording became a little “blessed” by the fact that everyone knew this was the last record we were making together. We haven’t really existed in between the tours in 1996 and 2013, but we have never said that we wouldn’t come back until now. We don't feel any particular sadness that this is the last time, mostly joy that we “still can” and that we’re burning with the same musical flame after forty years. That we still want to continue developing, which is awesome. We're of course moved by it too, very much by pride in what we have accomplished with our musical legacy, but also by what our music has meant to those who listen to us. We have received and continue to receive many stories about what our songs have meant. Not least through social media and through meeting many people when we play, even in other contexts.
Is there any particular one of the new songs that you think has a chance of weaving its way into the Swedish, perhaps summery, collective soul in the same way that many of Gyllene Tider’s previous songs have managed to do?
Well, the album is out now. You know what it sounds like.
I mainly believe the songs 'Vid hennes sida' and 'Mannen med gitarr' have huge potential. Though, with Gyllene Tider becoming such a soundtrack for Swedish summer, what is summer music for you?
To be completely honest, there are no particular summer music of our own. We're fully occupied with playing our own summer songs.
Which songs were major “milestones” for the band?
If you look at the entire career, it’s 'Sommartider', because that song is probably forever synchronized with many of the things that we up here in the cold north associate with summer. There's both been more personal performances at children’s school graduations and at Ullevi, with just that song alone. Then there’s 'Gå och fiska', 'När vi två blir en' and so on. What we notice is that people most often have their own favorites among the songs, and that the favorites are often connected to events in their lives. Whereas for us it's basically everything we have done. Because it’s all the emotions, all the memories and so on that our songs have created among the audience that have given me the opportunity to work with music and performing throughout our entire adult lives. Which is a privilege.
Gyllene Tider have reunited many times. So has it really, honestly now, become time for you to call it a day?
Yes, this is the conclusion. When we were talking about this fortieth anniversary, we had a strong feeling that we should stop “at the top”. We've seen so many “old” bands where members pass away or lose their mojo, as Austin Powers puts it. We still have ours and are in full vigor so this is the best opportunity to do it and thank our audience for the fantastic and long journey we have had together.
How is life on tour different now compared to, say, Parkliv 1981, Återtåget 1996 or GT25 Live 2004?
Above all, more comfortable travel, and better food! And technology has changed incredibly much during these forty years. Just think about the fact that we did hundreds of shows in the eighties where we found our way to venues and hotels without GPS or mobile phones. It was road atlases and payphones that applied. Today you’re supposed to mix sound on an iPad, you couldn’t do that in 1981. The actual playing is the same, only more fun now. We appreciate it even more the older we get.
During your reunion in 1996, the entire Bernadotte family came into the dressing room after the show and hung out with you. And the story going around afterward is that they all left the room wearing Gyllene Tider shirts and caps. The evening may not have been a “page-turner” for the King, but merch is fun! You must have had many evenings to look back on, even though many of them have disappeared from memory?
The first Ullevi gig, we had a sold-out Ullevi, twenty-seven degrees and sunshine, and the audience was super excited, and we in the band were going to get to play where we ourselves had seen the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen during our youth. There was also Micke's proposal on stage in Halmstad in front of 27,000 people on the same tour, so that is one of the biggest things that will never be forgotten.
So this summer we are saying goodbye to Gyllene Tider. But as musicians, I am guessing that your journeys continue onward. All of you also have other things going on. Is there maybe more that you know is waiting after this farewell summer?
It’s over now, and we will continue to work, as before, with various other artist colleagues on Gyllene Tider’s songs, but also with new projects. So it will continue, in both the spirit of music and joy!
After Håkan Hellström, Monica Z, Ted Gärdestad and Tomas Ledin films just in recent years, I wouldn’t call it particularly far-fetched for the Swedish film industry to also cash in on a Gyllene Tider film adaptation. So who would you want to play Gyllene Tider in a film?
Oh, maybe our sons? We’re quite similar, or why not Håkan Hellström. He can wear a wig. By the way, there's already a little cute parody film about both Gyllene Tider and Roxette called 'Join the Flumeride'. That film is on YouTube!
Can we dare hope for a traditional live album from the GT40 tour?
There is a possibility that it will happen. But it hasn’t really been decided yet.
