I had the opportunity to get a talk with Boba and Kenny from The Hellacopters at the Roskilde Festival. As you know the band is gonna split up after this final tour and they recently put out their last record called “Head Off”. At the beginning of the interview Dregen was fooling around with a camera, which made me a bit perplex …

Kenny: This is our former guitar player Dregen holding the camera … he’s doing a documentary.

LC: And he will join you tonight. It’s a bit special.

Kenny: Yes, it’s a little bit special.

LC: Will he join you at other gigs on the tour?

Boba: He will be on the last 3-4 gigs on this tour.

LC: Well, I come from a magazine called LowCut it used to be called Moshable and was started by Lars Krogh from bad Afro.

Kenny: Oh yeah, yeah, what’s the new name again – LowCut?!

LC: Yeah, What I would like to ask you about first is that your very first appearance in Denmark was at Loppen at Christiania and now you are here at Roskilde. You know you cannot get any higher in Denmark?

Kenny: You can’t get any higher than at Loppen (ha, ha, ha). A couple a years ago we did the Orange Stage and then it was sort of trippy because you had been standing in front of that stage when you were younger. And then at a sudden, wow, here I am. But then again it’s the same with Loppen. You’ve seen so many shows at Loppen when you were younger and then suddenly you’re right in the middle.

LC: So you been to Christiania a lot?

Boba: Ha, ha, a lot? Well I’ve been there a couple of times …

LC: How was it in the beginning, starting up all this new Garage-rock movement just after the Grunge was on the down?

Kenny: Yes, we had the Grunge for a while and then, at least in Sweden, it turned into this sort of really mellow indie-pop kind of thing like students gazing at their shoes and nothing! At least at the time it didn’t do anything for us. And then when we got together in the Stockholm area there were lots of bands we didn’t know of and friends of friends playing. Things crystallized at the time we hit the scene. But people had been around like The Robots and bands like them. But they had already done shows and had a fan-scene. So we just came along. And then we released a couple of 7”’s.

Boba: All at a sudden that was it – there was a scene. We had a party going for a while. And Moshable was a part of that too, ‘cause once in Finland they had The Flaming Sideburns and here we had the Moshable people and Spain had Kike Turmix. So, it was a global movement for a while, ha, ha, ha …

LC: Then you went on to put out records that made gold in Sweden and you were interviewed in 2003 by Helle Hellcat and she asked if you had bought any pink Cadillac’s. Now it’s been five more years so have you bought any?

Hella: Well, Dregen bought a Thunderbird at least. Robert got three cars or something and Nick bought a house! But, no pink Cadillac’s. It was the Hives, they bought some pink Cadillac’s … ha, ha, ha, they did – and a mansion!

LC: So now you’ve come back to your own label and quit Universal. How is the new record selling?

Hella: I don’t really know. I don’t ether. I’ve been giving mine away. But I heard something about being number one. I don’t know, we might have hit the singles list chart. But I don’t know how the album is selling. But Universal never knew how to sell us. They had no idea about a rock band like this. We had kind people doing promotion and stuff, but they didn’t know about us. And they were scared about us because we know; we know how to do it. We sort of had to correct them all the time and that scared them back and then nothing happened. Sad though …

LC: Anyway, the new album is all cover songs and it was kind of secret, you didn’t tell anybody and I read at you MySpace that it was to be presented as your album.

Kenny: It was the reason. During the process, and it was a long process of choosing songs and this. And most of the people are our friends and we can’t call them up and say can I get the lyrics for that song. ‘Couse we can’t because it obvious that it was to be a surprise. We wanted to keep it a secret for our friends too and wait for the album to come and say: “Hey, check this out”.

Boba: We didn’t want people to have an opinion before the album came out. We wanted them to listen to the songs and then say what they like. We chose the songs really carefully and to us they are special. If people knew they would have an opinion about it. It’s the Hellacopters!

Kenny: Once the word spread between fans it was kind of a disappointment. They hadn’t even heard it or anything. “Well, I’m so disappointed”- Well, come on man, you wouldn’t have heard these songs, you don’t own the records, it’s a favor we’re doing you now. Especially with the story about us breaking up now so we won’t put out any new albums, and here you have 11 new bands that you can check out!

LC: Yeah, and you have made a lot of cover songs throughout the years.

Kenny: We’ve always made a point out of showing what is important to us - our sound or whatever.

LC: What are you gonna do tonight- anything special.

Kenny: We wanted to do something special, well it’s gonna be a surprise. Well, we got Dregen with us. You will see tonight.

LC: Are you gonna play anything from Supershitty tonight?

Boba: Well, two songs from Supershitty.

LC: You said earlier that Nick lives in a house out in the middle of nowhere.

Hella: It’s like an hour away from Stockholm and the nearest neigbours are like that far away as over the hill. And he’s got an owl living in a three so he’s taking pictures of a little owl trying to learn how to fly. And he’s got wild cats running about - and a fox. He’s living the wild life. And he’s bought books about how to stuff birds. Well, he was always into birds when we were on tour, like when we got to the Zoo in Australia: “Hey, can I shoot this one up”. Yeah, he’s really into birds.

LC: Well, and one of you are into fishing, right?

Boba: Yeah, that’s me. You know when we toured as much as we did it was good to get away from everything and then fishing became, well it’s got a lot of therapeutic effect. When we don’t tour I can focus on it and go up north being away for weeks in the northern part of Sweden.

Kenny: But, you also do wildlife care.

Boba: Because of the problems with the waters today being so polluted and stuff. Things getting leaked out in the streams – there’s a lot of problems with that. It’s obvious it’s gonna be a problem to anybody else.

Kenny: You’re doing this album with “Don’t fuck with our waters” or something, it’s a compilation

Boba: There’s gonna be an album with the Babie’s and The Hives and all kind of Swedish bands. These problems really exist! And on a daily basis if somebody writes an article it like forgotten. If we do something, then people are gonna see.

LC: Do you have a webpage about it?

Boba: Yeah, we do and we’re doing it together with the Swedish Sports fishing Federation. http://www.sportfiskarna.se/gefan/

LC: How about high and lows in your career.

Kenny: Well, that’s always a really hard question because the lows are generally different and the highs are really obvious. You eat when you are hungry and what you feel like eating. For us some says: You have three hour before the show and you need to eat now. We, cant really eat when we feel like eating and you cannot take a dumb when you wanna take a dumb because you need to come to a gas station. The most perfect tour memory is not nesacarraly on stage, it might be a backyard in Paris, sitting like this, friends somewhere or an early morning on the tour bus driving through the Alps. Situations you don’t nesesary get to participate in as a nomal human being.

Boba: No, well, the daily peoblems are generelly the lows and then you forget about it. Some shitty bus five years ago or something.

LC: You have opened for The Rolling Stones, is that better than driving through the Apls?

Hella: The biggist thing like that was probably openeing for KISS because that was back in ´97 and they were really huge and it was our first really big gig in Stockholm Stadium.  And it was usualy difficult for a support act to get the audience really going. And they were really happy so we were allowed to play longer sets than usual. Also all the pople at school that told us we were never gonna be anything, they were suddenly standing in line to get a ticket.

LC: Have you seen KISS on their latest tour?

Boba: I did – terrible … but KISS were so huge when I was kid and started to play, so they mean a lot.

LC: Any famous last words …?

Kenny: Heh, heh, I have a book about that. I think it’s called “Book of Famous Last Words”. I’m trying to think of someone … Aleister Crowley! Always on about people should be doing what the want to. He said: “I am perplexed” – I am perplexed, well there you are …

LC: Okay, thanks let’s leave it there.

After that Allan from Kick Music came with a round of beers and we talked about the Danish rock scene right now and a bit about how much impact Supershitty actually had back in the day. Then the band were told they had to go and eat …

Helle Hellcats interview from Roskilde 2003: http://www.lowcut.dk/007_lc/interview/04.htm