The Solution : Stockholm/Detroit Rock'n'Soul!

By Jens

The Solution is sort of a love child conceived between Nicke Royale of The Hellacopters and Detroit rock legend Scott Morgan. They have worked before in garagerockers Hydromatic (with Dutch punk icon Tony Slug), but this time they wanted to do something completely different; a righteous sweaty rockin' soul band with over a dozen musicians incl. horns and female backup singers. To say that they have succeeded in re-creating vintage 60s soul music would be a gross understatement - THIS COMBO IS HOTTER THAN HELL! Thanks to Kick Music for setting up the interview and providing me with their sensational debut, "Communicate!". Look no further for the perfect r&b soundtrack (the good stuff, not the sterile plastic kind MTV has to offer nowadays) to a groovy dance party, horny boys'n'girls!!

LC: You've just started on the first tour with The Solution, this Roskilde gig is like the 3rd or 4th show?

Scott Morgan: This is our 4th, the 1st was in Stockholm, the 2nd at Hulsfred festival and the 3rd was two days ago in Helsinki. It's been goin' really well, people have treated us really well and seems to be enjoying the music. We're just getting our show together, we've just made the record. It's very different making the record and takin' it on the road. You can have two or sixteen takes in the studio but not on the road, you gotta get it right the first time. You gotta make some mistakes. I think we'll be at our tightest when we tour in November, haha. Now it's good, it's exciting, it's all new.

LC: You're like 10 people on the stage, hornplayers...

SM: More! We have like 4 horns, 4 singers, bas, guitar, piano, drums and me. 13, and if we can talk the Von Bondies drummer into playing some percussion with us, we'll be 14!

LC: The band crosses different generations, both on stage and among the audience, I kinda started with punk and metal, and then garagerock and r&b...

SM: Yeah, take Nicke, he started out similiar in punkrock'n'roll, his favorite bands were KISS and Sex Pistols. But I grew up in a different generation. We had AM radio and it was kinda like a jukebox, all kinds of different music from one source instead of like; here's your punkrock station, here's your soul station, jazz, and pop. It was all on one station, all mixed up, different shows like country, rock, pop, r&b etc. That was my background, that was a good lesson cuz I heard everything mixed together, and I could hear how related everything was.

LC: When you played in 60's Detroit were you like close to The Stooges and MC5?

SM: We were contemporaries and friends, but we didn't really play the same kinda music although everyone that came from Detroit like MC5, The Stooges, Bob Seeger, Mitch Ryder...

LC: Ted Nugent.

SM: Ted Nugent, and my band The Rationals. Everything we played had some black music in it because of the r&b and jazz that came out of Detroit. Motown was a strong influence on all the Detroit rock'n'roll bands.

LC: Well, I actually think that the "Communicate!" album sounds more like a vintage mid60s Stax record.

SM: I think Nicke's influence is more southern soul which is a little more bluesier like Stax and Muscle Shoals that kinda thing. And I have a more broader range of music that I heard on the radio when I was a teenager. I'd be influence by Motown but also Philadelphia or Chicago soul. What we had on 60s radio was a lot of regional soul, there would be also be a lot of New Orleans soul on the radio in Detroit back then. And I guess on New Orleans radio there would be soul from other areas. Atlantic soul of New York, Phil Spector of L.A. etc. What's interesting about Stax Records is that it was both black and white musicians, and what they ended up with was this raw soul sound, just like Muscle Shoals. Compared to Motown it's more raw, while Motown is more sophisticated and it's all black musicians. The southern sound is more blues based, country based. And what's ironic is you have to go to Sweden to make a soul record now.

LC: I know Nicke is a fan of Sonic Rendezvous Band, and he also played with you in Hydromatics. What do you think of young people who're into your musical history and background?

SM: I think it's really good. Y'know my parents, that generation grew up on swing music like Count Basie, Louis Jordan, Benny Goodman and stuff, so I had an early influence from them. Take like Elvis' "Hound Dog", you might wanna know where that song came from. Charlie Parker, Hank Williams, Robert Johnson and others, where did they come from? You keep goin' back. Take Santana who's playing now on stage, did he came from some Mexican folk music background? That's very interesting.

LC: To me who grew up on punkrock and other guys in their mid30s or 40s, the r&b of the 60s sounds extremely fresh to our ears.

SM: That's cool, that helps our band a lot, I mean, yes, it is fresh. People might see The Solution as a way to get back to those soul roots, and that's not a bad job to involved with.

LC: I've seen you wearing a Dirtbombs T-shirt on photos (a kickass Detroit soul punk combo, ed.)...

SM: Yeah, they are friends of mine.

LC: They are like, how can I put it, more into a deconstruction of soul and blues music, while The Solution is probably more traditional soul.

SM: That probably goes back to Mick Collins' roots in The Gories and what they did with the blues. That's actually a pretty good description, a deconstruction of the blues. Mick is somewhere else now in The Dirtbombs. We're doin' something different. We are not doin' the Detroit garagerock thing, when we came to Sweden we wanted to make a soul record. We can't make a 60s soul record cuz that was a different time with different people, we have to make whatever it is, but 60s soul was our jumping off point. We're not into deconstruction, we're not trying to make a Picasso. Maybe it's a Monet or something, haha. We're just trying make something that feels good.

LC: You and Nicke have like made 5 songs each on "Communicate!" and there's 2 covers...

SM: That's roughly correct, and we tried to make that way as much as possible, but Nicke ended up writing a bit more than I did cuz I had a hard time writing music cuz my father died at the same time as this record was goin' on, so I had to take care of my father. He's really prolific as a songwriter.

LC: You can't really hear that like this is a Nicke song and this is a Scott Morgan song, the songs really suit each other and connect really well...

SM: That's basically his ability to produce and my ability to sing that connects everything.

LC: Just before the interview I saw Von Bondies, and there's other bands like Detroit Cobras, White Stripes and Dirtbombs, there's really a focus on Detroit at the moment just like in the 60s.

SM: Yeah, that's my home boys! I know them all. As saying goes; you can't beat it with a stick. It's great. If people come to Detroit for musical inspiration that's good because there's a lot of it there. People now are really doing what they feel and what they want, and apparently that's what the music fans want. They want true music made by real musicians, hopefully I think that's was goin' on in Detroit now, and that's why it's so popular I guess.

LC: The musicians on the records is mostly Swedish, there's a guy from Diamond Dogs...

SM: The keyboard player. Nearly all are Swedish. Jim, the bassplayer, is from New York, but he lives in Stockholm now with his girlfriend.

LC: That's kinda funny that Americans come to Europe and Sweden to record now, in the 60s the British Invasion guys like Stones and Peter Green would come to the US and Chess Records of Chicago to record...

SM: Y'know we recorded those two Hydromatics records in Amsterdam, the first one with Nicke, and we had horns on our first album, excellent musicians. And on the 2nd we had female singers and they were also excellent. It's not a problem finding good musicians, but what really works in The Solution is that I've a very American accent, that's important when you're doin' something as American as soul music. The reason that The Stones and The Animals could play r&b so effectively is because some sailors brought back the original American blues and soul to England and the youngsters could hear the real thing, and so these British guys later brought r&b music back to the US and made it popular. So we are actually doin' it in reverse. It's crazy, we bringing soul music to Europe, and it's fresh now. The engineer at Atlantis Studio in Stockholm, Janne Hansson, was an older guy who really knew and understood what we were trying to do. So we're blessed with that and really good pl ayers who knows what they are doin'. We'll end this small tour and in November we'll tour Europe some more, first Scandinavia then Europe, where ever they wanna hear us and can afford to pay for 14 people on the road. It's not expensive but maybe a little more than the average band.

LC: The US?

SM: Maybe later, we need an American label for that, a distribution deal.

LC: Thanks for the interview, been nice talking to you.

SM: You're welcome.

http://www.scottmorganmusic.com