TH: If you were to create a festival stage, which 3 bands would you ask to play and why?
MC: That is a tricky question, I think I would have to say Gotthard again because I really like them, and I’m also a big fan of the Norwegian band Jorn and I think maybe Queensryche.
TH: What sort of music did you listen to when you were growing up? Who are your influences?
MC: My first experience of hard rock was The Sweet with Fox on the Run, I saw them back in 1976 on the ‘Give us a wink’ tour, that was my first concert here in Gothenburg, I am so luck and happy to have seen them in the original line up, I grew up with Sweet, Slade, Nazareth, T-Rex, all of this is melodic kind of music too, later on in the 70’s Kiss of course, and then later on around ‘80 I discovered the first album of Iron Maiden, from which I’m a huge maiden fan, then I discovered Queensryche, I was a big fan of those for a while, and then I got blown away with all those Los Angeles hair metal bands, such as Dokken, Firehouse and all that stuff.
TH: So what are Lover Under Covers plans for 2014?
MC: At the moment I am collecting impressions from the new release, we are really happy with all the reviews from it, we have had a vast amount of positive reviews from all over the world, I think we have only had about 2 negative reviews out of all of them, but you can’t please everyone I suppose! We also have the Vasby festival to look forward to and perhaps a few small venues throughout the year too.
TH: Do you have any plans to come to Australia?
MC: I would love to come to Australia, the big problem though is it’s really, really expensive to go on a tour and I don’t think there are any promoters who would take on a small band from Sweden to do a full scale tour because the cost of it would probably be too expensive, the only way would possibly be to take part in a festival or as a support act for a bigger band, but for all that you would have to have the right connection with promoters Coldspell have the same trouble with that with the US tour so they are actually doing a lot of cover gigs to build up to keep that train rolling, I suppose that’s one way of doing it, but it is so difficult for us because the lead singer is so booked up with the ‘Secret Service’ gigs every second week or so he goes to Russia for a week and that leaves no spare time to do any cover gigs, so it is more difficult for us to pull that off, but if you know any promoters over there who can put us in the right connection, give me a call (laughs)
TH: If you could have been a fly on the wall for the creation of any great album, at any point in time, what would it have been for you, and why?
MC: Operation Mindcrime! From Queensryche, or of course Rage for Order because that album I think is one of the most under estimated and they were doing some pretty strange stuff on that album, but I think it’s awesome. Operation Mindcrime and Rage for Order are on my top 10 list for the greatest albums ever.
TH: A couple personal questions to ask, you’re a chef right? If you were to cook a meal for the Rockpit team, what would you cook?
MC: I think I would cook some BBQ surf and turf stuff, or a Gothenburg cuisine like some fish or sea food, it’s pretty cold here and the quality of the fish is awesome, there is some really good fish you can get out here, so we would start the day at the Gothenburg fish auction to pick up the catch of the day and hopefully it would be summertime so we would have the weather with us, and we would have some Swedish shellfish, and perhaps some Halibut to put on the BBQ,
TH: Mmmm sounds great! I think we better all come over then, we will hold you to that!
MC: Yes all come on over!
TH: Another question I need to ask you, I’ve heard people from Gothenburg have a twisted kind of sense of humour, heard something about Kal and Ada - can you explain?
MC: (laughs) now how the hell did you get to hear about that? Well they are two fictional characters that you can call the Gothenburg humour, and I think people outside this area consider this humour as really bad or they don’t understand it, they represent the native inborn from Gothenburg. They are working class, local patriots who like to party, (and drinking a little too much) full of humour and loves to mock people from outside Gothenburg, Preferably people from Stockholm and the southern parts of Sweden (Skåne).
TH: And finally, what is the meaning of life?
MC: That’s a deep question, a serious answer to that question I would say, take care of each other, help each other, there is such a lot of crap going on around the world with wars etc, yep, be kind to each other, help each other, if everybody did that, life would be so much easier and people would get along much better.
TH: I would like to wish you guys all the best for the future, any last words for us at the Rockpit?
MC: Thank you so much for all the support for Lover Under Cover, we really enjoy all the feedback and we read everything we can find about us and hopefully we would love to see you guys out on the road somewhere, someday. Thank you all so much
Listen to Lover Under Cover now:
www.loverundercovertheband.com/music
Mikael spoke to Tanya Hadlington March 2014 |