The Rockpit has been supporting great music since we began in 2009 and one of the very first bands we spoke to was H.E.A.T. on the eve of their second release ‘Freedom Rock’ in 2010. Sadly over the years we never had the chance to talk with the man with the voice behind H.E.A.T.’s first two records and also the latest – the masterful ‘Force Majeure’. So here we are, on the eve of the Australian Tour we checked in with Kenny Leckremo to find all about his return to the band, the great new album and also to make sure the bags are packed and he’s ready for an adventure Downunder!
Kenny: Hello Mark!
Mark: Kenny how are you?
Kenny: I’m very well thank you, how are you.
Mark: I’m good thank you. It’s great to speak to you for the first time, we’ve been talking to HEAT for a dozen years now, but we’ve never had the pleasure. I talked to Jona a few weeks ago so we jumped at the opportunity to talk to the main man.
Kenny: Thank you.
Mark: I’m a huge fan of ‘Freedom Rock’ and for a long time that was my favourite H.E.A.T. record but you’ve just bumped that out with ‘Force Majeure’, I’ve been listening for a few weeks now and it’s taken the crown, I think it’s the best record H.E.A.T. has ever done.
Kenny: That’s such a privilege and an honour to hear. That’s really cool.
Mark: Bands aren’t meant to get better! Thee must be a temptation to stick to what has been successful in the past?
Kenny: Well, you say that but its a difficult thing really, bands are constantly going through an internal revolution, they’re constantly challenging their sound and who they are so it’s difficult to say. Some bands change, and whether it’s better or worse I guess is up to the listener.
Mark: I guess for me it’s got all that I love about H.E.A.T. when I first heard them, and one of the first reviews we ever did was for ‘Freedom Rock’, but it’s almost like you’ve revisited that killer sound and taken the best bit of it. And because you’re all older and wiser now you’ve made it something even bigger than it was before. You must be fantastically proud of what you’ve created?
Kenny: Well of course, we are very happy and once it was all done we thought for better or worse this is it! And as musicians we are constantly really hyper self-critical, and you have to be. But think overall everyone in the band was quite happy and proud with what we accomplished.
Mark: That’s fantastic! Is it good to be back? How does it feel? You came back at an interesting time in the middle of a pandemic!
Kenny: Yeah, first of all it feels absolutely amazing to be back. And secondly I think it was a pretty good time. A lot of people have asked me that – joining whilst we were in the lockdown, but to tell you the truth it was kind of like a second chance at starting over together. It’s something new but also something old and familiar at the same time and that’s exactly how we started the band that many years ago. We got together, we recorded a lot of music together and whether some of it ended up on an album or not it didn’t matter – that was the way that we connected. And so in some ways we got a chance to do that all over again. You know? And that was because of the pandemic.
Mark: And what was that first show like? That must have been a special moment?
Kenny: Oh Mark, it was just craziness! Just imagine, we’re talking a decade or more away! And then when you get back on stage together for me personally, and I can’t talk for the rest of the band, it was just an explosion of emotions, of adrenaline and all at the same time. It was chaotic, but it was also a celebration! We partied but at the same time it was a kind of weird comeback show to tell you the truth because we played on the Monsters of Rock Cruise in Miami in America. That was the first show which was kind of new grounds, or pardon the pun, new waters! So it was kind of hard to wrap my head around that whole feeling – we’re overseas, we’re trying to promote the shit out of the band, but at the same time I am reborn!
Mark: (laughs) It is an experience I went on one of those few years ago and the concept does take a bit of getting used t – it’s like having bands play where you’re living!
Kenny: Yeah.
Mark: You of course have known Jona and Dave for many years, and the band is 15 years old this year as well so it’s great to hear how well it’s all clicked back into place. One of the latest big shows you played just the other day was in my old neck of the woods at the Stonedead Festival – how was that?
Kenny: Oh my God that was awesome! It was s good! We all really enjoyed it. We had a bit of a tough weekend – we went from Portugal.
Mark: Yeah, Jona was saying, I think you had about four hours to get from Heathrow to be on stage!
Kenny: Yeah, it was pretty crazy. We had a tight schedule! We finished playing the show and we had to go back to the hotel – we had 40 minutes to lay down before a lobby call at 2am to make the flight to England and then straight to the Festival Stonedead! Not to mention the four cancelled flights we had cancelled on us that we had to on the fly rebook and fix! All of us I think together we had about and hour and a half worth rest between two shows! (laughs)
Mark: (laughs) Hopefully you’ll have a bit more rest before you come down to see us!
Kenny: Yeah!
Mark: We just had the announcement this morning that Crazy Lixx wont be joining you so please et us know the bags are packed and ready to go!
Kenny: Oh Mark we are definitely ready to go! For us it’s a once in the lifetime opportunity for a band like us to come out of a small city in Sweden to come down all the way to Australia to promote our stuff and play for you is such a privilege. It really is a reason to be thankful when you get up in the morning. So we’re gonna come down, and I was gonna say ‘rip a new hole’!
Mark: (laughs)
Kenny: Just so that we can make a quicker path to come back next time!
Mark: (laughs) I like what you did there!
Kenny: (laughs)
Mark: The only thing that I would find impossible to do when you have so many great albums behind you is to pick a setlist. I’m so keen to hear the new material but there’s so much back catalogue I need to hear!
Kenny: You know it’s virtually impossible to pick a setlist. What you have to do is have a bit of patience and the fans need to have patience too, I’ve been a fan of music for so long just like anyone. You just have to come to a show and enjoy the songs and hope that next time they will shake things up a little bit next time. So with H.E.A.T. you might need to see us more than once live to hear everything you love.
Mark: We better turn up in really good number then so that we can get you back! Let’s hope this is the beginning of more than a few return trips!
Kenny: Let’s hope so!
Mark: Before we get into the album let’s find out a bit more about you Kenny. Where did it all begin for you?
Kenny: Well basically how it happened for me was, when I was a young kid I was never really exposed to hard rock or any kind of rock music in general, I heard a little bit you know through friends and through family you know, but nothing that really took me aback. Then one day I went round to a friends house, a guy who was in my class. I was around 12, 13 I think I must have been, so we went to his house and his Dad had the biggest vinyl collection and we just picked out the coolest album cover and threw it on, so that’s exactly what we did. we dropped the needle on the coolest album and it happened to be Iron Maiden’s first album and the track was ‘Phantom of the Opera’ – that was the first album and as soon as I heard those guitars and all of that stuff I was completely hooked. And I thought “I have to get in here” I didn’t know what to do or how to do it but I knew that I had to do something to do with this sound. It made me come alive!
Mark: Wow.
Kenny: I started to play drums immediately, just practicing drums all the time. So I started out as a drummer, and then eventually the guys that I played with , which included some of the guys I started H.E.A.T. with, they just basically convinced me to sing. They said it was cool that we were doing these covers and I was playing the drums and singing behind the drums, but they wanted me to get out front with a mic and get out from behind the drums and get someone else to do that. So that’s basically what happened.
Mark: That’s a great story.
Kenny: That’s exactly how it was.
Mark: There’s some great music on the new record and I hope we get to hear a lot of it when you’re over. Over the weeks my favourites have changed, at the moment I’m loving ‘Wings of an Aeroplane’.
Kenny: Yeah, that’s a great track.
Mark: A classic!
Kenny: I think it’s a standout because its the only song that features an external song writer, Dave and a friend of ours who has been a fan of H.E.A.T. for a long time and is a really good friend wrote it. And that song I think encapsulates everything that H.E.A.T, has been since it began. It’s strange thing to say but it really has that H.E.A.T. sound that you heard on the very first album and you hear now today. I think it was a song that was in contention for ‘H.E.A.T. II’ but it didn’t make it because, well teh band was different then, Erik had his own flavour and his own touch and listening to it the first time and singing it. That’s the story behind the song.
Mark: I think one of the songs that you sound great on is the ballad ‘One of Us’ – your voice is perfect for that.
Kenny: Cool, thank you. That was one of the more difficult tracks to record for me, You come back in the band and you want to ‘relearn’ what to do, you ask yourself “Who am I in the band today?”, “Who am I today as opposed to who I was all those years ago?” And ‘One of Us’ was one of those songs that reminded me that I shouldn’t think about that too much I should just open up and let the emotions just drive the voice. So that’s basically what I did and ‘One of Us’ kind of has that attitude.
Mark: It works. I think what I love most about the album is the energy, it just sounds so inspired! There’s variety too and then you just get tracks like ‘Hollywood’ that are just so much fun! The chorus to that is just crazily catchy!
Kenny: t’s quite infectious I think – we all felt the same way. That was Jimmy’s little song that he’d been working on and he presented it to us and when we heard the chorus we thought “Holy shit that is a hook! Let’s get together on this right away. Put it on the album right away!”
Mark: But everything is great, I love ‘Paramount’ simply because it is so different and so interesting.
Kenny: Thank you.
Mark: It’s that time now when we ask you our traditional two ‘first time interviewee’ questions. The first is… If you could have been a ‘fly on the wall’ for the creation of any great album in the history of Rock and Roll just to see how the magic happened what would you love to have seen being made?
Kenny: Wow, that’s so difficult. I think for me, I would have loved to have been there for any of those early Classic Rock albums that always get talked about when you talk about Rock and Roll history. You know all the way back to Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath or Deep Purple. I’d love to see how they got the sounds that they got with the limited technology. I think that would be very inspiring to see people working with restraints, with lesser technology to create those special albums. I think that would be something that would be the real magic for me. I’ d love to see that. But it’s not just the effects and the technology if you listen to those old albums you can almost hear the room, you can hear the instruments and all the different thigs they used to hit on to create certain effects, that would be so cool to see because nowadays we have access to all kinds of effects that make things so easy. I’d love to be a fly on the wall for that.
(We are momentarily interrupted by a helicopter flying over Kenny)
Mark: You’ve sidestepped that very well, I think you got away with not naming an album there. I know it’s so hard to pick just one.
Kenny: (laughs)
Mark: And now the easiest question you’ll get asked this year…
Kenny: OK.
Mark: What is the meaning of life?
Kenny: (laughs) The meaning of life is, I think, to seek out whatever makes you happy. (Laughs) That’s it!
Mark: Sometimes it is as simple as that. Thank you so much for talking to The Rockpit today Kenny, I cannot wait to see you guys live for my first time, I’ve come close in the past a couple of times over in Europe, but now you’re coming Downunder to see us. It’s something that if you love Hard Rock you cannot miss.
Kenny: For us it’s gonna be incredible to come down and play for you. We all are so excited it’s had to put into words.
Mark: Catch you soon, stay safe.
Kenny: See you in a few days Mark! Thank you.
