You have an impressive track record as a multi-tasking journalist, author and musician, but firstly, let's talk about BALLS. The band's new name comes from an inspired observation of the bandmembers' initials (what's good enough for ABBA, etc...). It must have been quite a 'Eureka moment' when one of you noticed that fact and realised its potential! Please introduce the band to us and tell us what your plans are for recording, touring etc. Yes! Actually we opted for a much lamer name initially - Salt (which Björn came up with). I tried to find a meaning to the letters and thought - Stark - Andersson - Lodin -… The other two… Continuing this chain of thought, I happily figured our initials would form “Balls” - Björk - Andersson - Lodin - Lundkvist - Stark. Figured that would be a suitable album title! However, when we found out there was another Swedish 80s band called Salt, now re-uniting, we figured we’d change the name, and and it now came quite naturally! The background is actually when singer Björn Lodin (Baltimoore) asked me if I was

into forming a new band/project. At the time I was working with Mikael “Nord” Andersson, co-writing stuff for his forthcoming solo album. We go back quite a few years, and he also played and sang on my Mountain of Power album - we even did a live show at Sweden Rock last year.
Mikael is foremost known for playing with Roxette, producing The Rasmus, writing with Scorpions, plus he’s a highly acclaimed session guy in Sweden. He’s however a rocker at heart, and coincidently he actually sang backing vocals on the first Baltimoore album. We asked, and he was in!
Drummer Robban Bäck and bass player Björn Lundkvist are two of Lodin's findings. Great young musicians both of them! We actually started out as Baltimoore, but soon found out this was something new, and we decided to start on a clean slate, as Salt, now Balls. We are currently recording our debut album, no title as yet but the name can give you all types of ideas…. It’s 11 tracks and there's basically only some bass work, lead guitars and a bit of vocals left before it’s mixing time. We would obviously love to get out on the road, so we’re currently trying to find a booking agency to work with.

You've worked with many high-profile musicians such as Uli Jon Roth, Bobby Rondinelli, Ken Hensley etc. Which musicians inspire you the most (amongst those you've played with and those you haven't), and who would you like to work with in the future? Playing with Uli was definitely one of the heights of my career! I've loved his playing since the first Scorpions releases! Jamming with Frank Marino in a music store in Kalshamn, Sweden was a blast, too! Right now, playing with Mikael "Nord" Andersson is also incredibly inspiring. He such a great guitarist, a lovely person and we musically just clicked and work really great together. People I would love to work with - well, there's many. Some of the people I've "played with", like Rondinelli, Daisley, Appice, Travers etc. sounds good on paper, but we've not even met, just recorded in each of our studios on different continets (as it often is these days) and appear on the same song. I'd really like to sit down and jam with people like Brian May, Mike Slamer, Robin Trower, Pat Travers or Paul Gilbert. They have been a great inspiration at various times, besides guys like Ronnie Montrose, Andy Scott, Snuffy Walden, Michael Schenker and Leslie West.

Over the last few months you've played some shows in Mexico and also the Sweden Rock Kick-Off. How did those go? Starting with Mexico, it was awesome! The whole show was planned and handled by Italian singer Chris Catena who did an awesome job with the whole production. The musicians were myself and Michael Gapys (guitar), singers Chris Catena, Mia Coldheart and Katiuscia Nardi, The Innuendo Band, backing singers Mia Berndes and Helene Wäneland, plus the Guanajuato Symphony Orchestra. We did two sold out shows in Guanajuato (over 7000 people attending). It’s a two hour show called “Queen Magic”, where we played around 30 Queen classics, plus there were dancers, magicians and screens with interactive animations. If all goes as planned there will be more shows in other countries.

The Sweden Rock Kick-Off gig at Tyrol in Stockholm, on Nov 24 - coincidently my birthday, was also like a dream come true. The line-up was just a one-off thing consisting of Uli Jon Roth and myself on guitar, Ule Ritgen on bass, Mark Boals, Mats Leven and Liz Vandall on vocals, Thomas Broman on drums and we were also accompanied by Ken Hensley in “Child In Time”. We also played some old Scorpions and some of Uli’s stuff.
We had actually rehearsed 14 songs the day before, but due to the show being delayed and Gotthard refusing to cut their set short, we only got to play six songs. The rehearsals and jamming the day before was however even more fun than the show, haha.

We did the same type of All Star thing at the previous kick-off in 2006. At that time it was me, Udo Dirkschneider, Ryan Roxie, Oscar Dronjac, Nalle Påhlsson, Ian Haugland and Mia Coldheart. The ultimate fun!

Coming up in March is a trip to New York for a collaboration with John Garner. I know it's been a long-time ambition of yours for a rebirth of Sir Lord Baltimore - and now it seems to be finally happening! What has been the journey? This is another dream come true! Sir Lord Baltimore was one of my early favourite bands in the seventies. It all started when I recorded the Mountain of Power album (which consists of covers of stuff I grew up with, mostly obscure stuff).

I did a cover of Sir Lord Baltimore’s “Woman Tamer”, which I was supposed to save for Vol 2. I got in touch with John Garner, told him about the cover. He asked me to send it, and then he asked me if I’d like him to record drums and vocals! He also said he likes my guitar playing and invited me to come to New York last year to jam some. I did and we clicked! He’s an awesome drummer/singer and standing in his rehearsal room playing all the old songs I grew up with, hearing his vocals and drums, I had to pinch myself every second song. We also jammed and recorded some new ideas. It all evolved into him asking me if I was into resurrecting Sir Lord Baltimore. Trick question, huh? The original guitarist didn’t have the time to commit anymore and the bass player has quit playing years ago, but John was 2/4 of the band’s sound. Now I’m off to New York in two weeks for rehearsals!

Your name is often linked with Sweden Rock Festival. What's been your involvement there? Yes, I've been involved with the festival ever since the start in 1992. Actually the first year I was there as a journalist for a local newspaper, but between 1993 and 2002 I was the press manager. After that I started doing text and layout for the festival magazine. I've also been a guitar tech for Kamelot, Blackfoot, Danger Danger, bass tech for Twisted Sister, plus I've played there with Overdrive, Locomotive Breath and Mountain of Power. The last two years I've been in the Swedish Radio house band, playing heavy metal jingles in their live broadcast. I also write some of the band presentations for the website and I do my yearly chronicle after the festival.

What's going on with your other bands - Overdrive and Mountain Of Power? Overdrive has just released the first new album in 24 years - “Let The Metal Do The Talking” (yepp, it’s a play with Joe Perry’s album title). We split in 1985, but in 2003 we were asked to reunite for a local festival. We did, with the original

line-up featuring myself and Kjell Jacobsson on guitar, Kenth Ericsson on bass, Kenta Svensson on drums and Pelle Thuresson on vocals, and things started happening. We were invited to play the Headbangers’s Open Air in Germany. Unfortunately Pelle quit three weeks before. Luckily enough we found Per “PerilOz” Karlsson (who was born in 1982, the same year our first EP was released!), who learned all the songs in two weeks and did an awesome job in Germany. More gigs followed and he was in. We were invited to play Sweden Rock in 2006 and decided to released a self-financed 5 track CD at the gig, "Resurrected". It was just re-recordings of four old tracks with Per on vocals, plus one new track. After this we were approached by Lion Music and we got a deal for a new album and a DVD. The album was released just a few weeks ago in Europe, and will be released in Japan on March 26 (Soundholic Records).

As for Mountain of Power I've just started selecting what songs to cover this time. The first one contains covers of bands like Budgie, Moxy, Marcus, Derringer, Goddo, Wireless, Stray Dog etc. Stuff I grew up with, hidden treasures. There's quite a few to choose from for the second one, but I've narrowed it down a bit and among the ones I'll be giving a shot this time around are Mahogany Rush, UFO, Dirty Tricks, Max Webster, Trapeze, Resurrection Band, Pat Travers, Rory Gallagher, Thin Lizzy, Neil Merryweather and a few more. This time I will also have international guests, as opposed to Vol 1 being a "Sweden only" thing.

Another band you're involved with at the moment is Constancia. Who's in the band, and what's happening there? Constancia was a project I kinda stumbled into, but got happily caught in. Former Scudiero/Token keyboard player Mikael Rosengren asked if I would be interested in adding some guitar to a bunch of songs he'd written. I listened and I loved the stuff. Being a fan of good old pomp like Boston, Airborn, Balance, City Boy etc Í just loved it. Mikael knew bass player Michael Mueller from Jaded Heart and got him involved, I knew singer David Fremberg (Andromeda, Truth, Bloom etc) and drummer Peter Svensson (Faith, Mercy), who did most of the drums on the Mountain of Power album. We've now got 15 songs written and ready, of which four are being mixed by different people to give us an idea of what sound we want. They are Beau Hill (Ratt, Warrant, Winger etc), Pontus Lindmark (Cloudscape, Planet Alliance), Pontus Norgren (Poodles, Talisman, House of Shakira) and Pelle Saether (Locomotive Breath, ACT, Zello etc). We're just waiting for the last two mixes and then we'll start shopping for a deal!

So with all this going on, what is happening with Locomotive Breath? Currently the train is parked at the station. After "Change of Track", which I think was a damn good album, it came to a bit of a halt. We did some shows, but nothing really happened. I just talked to Mattias Osbäck (our singer) about a week ago, and we're recording one song for a Sweden Rock Festival compilation, but we won't start working on a new album until the beginning of next year.

You also make time amongst all these other ventures to write for various music magazines, and even have a few books to your credit! How did that side of your career develop, and what is your working schedule for fitting so many projects into your day? My writing career started in 1990 when a friend, the editor of Backstage Magazine, wanted me to write an inside story on the Swedish Guitar Battle competition I was entering. I did, and it was fun! I'd written some reviews for a local daily and a fanzine, but I kinda got hooked. I love to write, stories, lyrics, letters, whatever. I'm currently writing for FUZZ (Scandinavia's biggest guitar magazine), Sweden Rock Magazine and metalcentral.net. I'm also collecting material for a volume 3 of my encyclopedia. I don't need much sleep fortunately! And if I work in the lunch hour I get 25 hours a day... right. I can't say no, and I love what I do, so what can I say? I have a full time job as well, working as a project

manager/technical writer at a consultant company. I love both sides!

The latest book you're involved with is an encyclopaedia of Swedish punk. How much were you a part of the punk scene, and how much of an overlap is there in rock/punk/metal in Swedish bands these days? Yes, the encyclopaedia of Swedish Punk is written by Peter Jandreus, and I was asked to do the layout and text editing. It's been a hell of a job, but it's being proof-read now, so it's almost finished. Sweden had a huge punk scene in the late 70s - 80s. There's still some punk bands around (or reunited) like Mob 47 and Asta Kask. There's definitely an overlap between punk and metal, it definitely shows when some of the records featured in the punk encyclopedia also made it into my books! I was never really into the punk scene as such, even though I had a huge Sex Pistols collection and I did like some stuff with bands like Sham 69, Buzzcocks, The Vibrators, Dead Boys and The Damned. Sex Pistols have stood the test of time, but I bought some of the other bands stuff on CD and there's very little of it I can actually listen to today. We had a band called TNT around that time (77-78) and we did covers of Sex Pistols, The Saints, Budgie, UFO and Black Sabbath.

Have you made any 'guest appearances' on albums lately? Yepp, there's been a few. I'm no Tommy Denander, haha, but I've added some lead guitar-flavour to "Beneath A Dying Sun" by Thalamus, "The Greatest Enemy" by M.O.B, "Discovery" by Chris Catena and a forthcoming album by Tower of Stone.

What would be your five Desert Island Discs, and why? That's a tough one... At the moment it would probably be: King's X - "King's X", Jack In The Box - "Stigma", Sevendust - "Seasons", Styx - "Pieces Of Eight" and my own compilation of classic 70s heavy rockers!

Outside of music, who are your heroes, and why? Philomena Lynott - I just love her! She's such a great person, nice, warm and funny! And people that unselfishly put themselves at risk for saving others and I guess anyone who pursuit their goals and what they believe in.

What would you like to be doing in five years time? I'd like to be able to say I've fulfilled all the things I said I would do in the past five years!

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© Get Ready To Roll - 26th February 2008