Mando Diao is a band, or almost not a band, it’s like a wild and cheers world of rock music.
Mando Diao is a band, or almost not a band, it’s like a wild and cheers world of rock music.
Here’s a recipe for fun. Take Supergrass, add a young Noel Gallagher on vocals and throw in some Howling Wolf and Velvet Underground influences for flavour. What do you get? The best band to come out of Sweden since Abba – Mando Diao. Hailing from an area of Sweden they described as ‘boring as well as dangerous’ this bunch of young rockers formed a band simply as a means to escape the boredom of their youth. Deciding that factory work and beating the hell out of each other wasn’t exactly the career choice they were hoping for they put their faith in the hands of rock and roll and sought to make themselves the ‘biggest band since Oasis’.
Well, they’ve made it out of their hometown, so part one of the masterplan has been accomplished. They’ve been touring with bands like The Thrills and Jet and the word on the street is good. We went to the Melkweg to check them out for ourselves and after a storming set we managed to pull aside bass player Carl Johan (CJ) Fogelklou and the unofficial keyboard player Matz Björke to see how they were getting on with the rest of the plan.
Incendiary:The show was certainly enjoyable from this side of the stage, how did it feel up there?
CJ: This is only the third night of our European tour, we played in Paris and in Rotterdam and then tonight we played (here) in Amsterdam but I think it went really well. I enjoyed every minute, the audience was good.
M: Wow, it was great. Good feeling, good audience. I got a feeling for it, yeah.
Incendiary: How are you finding the Dutch crowds? Did they warm to you down in Rotterdam as much as they did here tonight?
CJ: Yeah, they’re good, it’s fun. I think the audience in the Netherlands knows the music in a better way. Of the European countries right now, it’s where we are biggest. It’s actually good being here. The record’s been out for a while and people know the songs, that’s a great feeling. It’s great when they sing along. It feels great. And there were many people tonight, we didn’t know how many would show up. I think it was sold out today.
Incendiary: Any other countries out there taking a shine to you?
CJ: Yeah. As far as I know I think we are the biggest international rock group in Japan! Japan’s pretty weird. The audience is crazy, wild! We do big venues over there, and it’s the country where we are biggest. In some places in the US the audience is pretty good. I think the audience in Holland is a combination of calm people and crazy dancers. Sweden is most of the time like playing in front of younger people, and that’s always good, because they like to dance on music.
Incendiary: It’s always rewarding to see the audience enjoying themselves isn’t it? Especially when you can set them off dancing, I mean, James Taylor never gets that!
CJ: Yes, because then we’ve got something fun to watch on stage. You can tell from their eyes if they’re interested and it’s always fun to play for that. The coolest thing is when you go up on stage and the audience is really calm and when in the end they start dancing to your music. That’s great.
Incendiary: How seriously do you take your live performances? Are you ultra-professional or do you let yourselves enjoy the more hedonistic side of a rock and roll tour?
CJ: Sometimes we play shit because we’re hung-over or something like that, but that doesn’t happen often. I mean, there’s always somebody in the band who’s not as satisfied as the others. I think this time it was Samuel, but he’s ill today, so I can understand that.
Incendiary: Here’s the question we’ve been dying to ask: What the hell does Mando Diao mean?
M: Mando Diao is a band, or almost not a band, it’s like a wild and cheers world of rock music.
Incendiary: Err, right, but does the name itself have any significance?
M: There are several explanations, but one explanation is that Bjorn, the lead singer, had a dream in some kind of sleep and he just got this name Mando Diao and that’s the way it goes. It’s from a dream, from his unconscious, from his mind or something, I don’t know. Someone said it’s something in Spanish, about a ‘king’ or something, but actually it doesn’t mean anything.
Incendiary: That’s what we like to hear. We like a bit of nonsense here. So does a lot of your music take inspiration from dreams?
CJ: Yes, of course!
M: a lot of stuff that I come up with for music I suppose are created in sleep, I don’t know, it could be that.
Incendiary: Your music’s been compared with, well almost every rock band from the sixties, seventies and onwards, how do you feel about those comparisons, and are the influences people are picking out those that you really take inspiration from?
CJ: Yeah, most of the inspiration comes from bands like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and bands like that. And of course bands like The Clash and The Smiths. But sound wise it’s more like sixties maybe, or combined with the sixties maybe, I don’t really know. But we get a lot of inspiration from new stuff as well. The red line across the group is that everybody likes The Beatles.
Incendiary: How do you combat the criticism that because of the amount of familiarity people have found in your music with other well established bands that you’ve not much originality?
CJ: My opinion is that we don’t play very new music. The only thing we’re here to do is to write good songs for people to like. You don’t necessarily need to create some new rock and roll style. You can always walk on the old roads, leading to big cities, to the capital. The only thing we’re here for is to write good songs.
Incendiary: That’s good enough for us. When you’re recording, is there a democratic air to the proceedings? Does everybody get a say in how things should sound or is there a ringleader in the band?
M: Mando Diao is quite democratic (laughing). Of course there are some people that are more leaders than others.
Incendiary: Who are they then?
CJ: It doesn’t matter, I don’t know. Maybe it’s me, you know, but the other guys don’t know that, so… But making a song, someone has a tune and most of the time its Bjorn and Gustaf, and the other puts our personality into it.
Incendiary: A very diplomatic answer Carl. What’s your best and what’s your worst moment as a musician so far?
CJ: My best moment as a musician was in the summer at Tolkil, a summer festival playing in front of 20,000 people. I don’t remember anything special about the gig, but playing in front of such an amount of people was like a dream. My worst moment I don’t really remember. I don’t really bother to remember bad situations.
M: Worst… all this… all this…on roads…and best moment is… to be… on the radio or something (laughing).
Incendiary: Is there any question you always wanted to answer to but you’ve never been asked?
CJ: No, not really. I think I’ve met so many journalists now, and everybody always has a good question, so we don’t really miss any questions.
M: (silence). Yeah…I’ve never been asked… It’s a tricky question. I’ve never been asked actually, why I came into the group?
Incendiary. Well here you go then, why and how did you come to be a part of the group?
M: Because there were difficulties with the guy who played (before me). Things happened, and I asked… got into contact with the guys, and it was ‘you need someone like me’ and then it was good.
Incendiary: It sounds like you just bumped into each other in the streets?
M: Kind of. I used the phone though… I called them.
Incendiary: Was it always your dream to be in a band like Mando Diao?
M: I’ve always been in different bands when I was playing music. And I always kind of had the feeling that one day I will go on tour and make my living out of it.
Incendiary: So what’s next for Mando Diao? More touring or are you planning the follow up to Bring ‘Em In?
CJ: Yeah, there are plans. Hopefully the next few months or something. Nothing is written in stone, but there are a lot of songs, fourteen or fifteen demo songs or something. There are songs which are really good, so we’re working on it.
Incendiary: And what’s the masterplan for Mando Diao – what are you aiming for?
CJ: We have to be the biggest band in the world! To be compared with the Beatles in being the biggest band from our age, from the nineties to the twenties, like that.
M: I think personally, not as a Mando Diao member, I want to see a dream, the classical things. Personally it feels important nowadays, love and all that stuff. Music is a powerful way to tell people about things. You can tell them lots of things from the mind. But my opinions about things, stuff, maybe I want to do that one day. Be awake.
We’re still not exactly sure what Matz meant by that, but we’re pretty convinced that he’s gonna keep looking for it, whatever it is. As for the rest of Mando Diao, they’ve got the balls and cockiness that made Oasis so entertaining when they first arrived on the scene and Bring ‘Em In is the best pure blast of energy you’ll find outside of a Supergrass album. Let’s hope they can avoid the rock and roll excess and stay true to their sound. After all, nobody wants another album like Be Here Now! We look forward to the next stage of the Mando Diao masterplan at any road, and so should you.