This week sees the release of Bonafide’s 8th album ‘Are You Listening?’ And it’s a cracking Rock and Roll album. Bonafide has always done what they wanted. There’s no place for posturing. No semblance of selling out. No concessions and no corners cut. Just good, honest rock and roll. We caught up with main man Pontus Snibb to talk about the record and why you need to get some Bonafide Rock and Roll now!
Mark: Hey how are you Pontus?
Pontus: Hey I’m fine? How are you?
Mark: I’m very good thank you. Especially after listening to your new album for the last few weeks, it’s a wonderful album.
Pontus: Thank you very much.
Mark: I loved ‘Flames’ when it came out a few years back but this one has a more ‘live’ sound to it which I love.
Pontus: (laughs) Exactly, you picked that up, you’re spot on. We recorded this all live in the studio, not the vocals or guitar solos but the rhythm track all together. We didn’t do that on ‘Flames’ so it has more of a groove to it I would say.
Mark: Absolutely, it really does sound that way, and if people are worried that the effect of the pandemic might have changed the band I can assure them that it’s classic Bonafide. Your guitar throughout the album juts has this perfect tone.
Pontus: Thank you very much.
Mark: It sounds great, normally when you speak to a band on their eighth album things start to tail off a bit!
Pontus: (laughs)
Mark: But there’s loads on there to love and a few curve balls. I honesty think when the dust settles this will be one of my favourite album of yours.
Pontus: That makes me happy.
Mark: Obviously a lot of things have happened since 2017, including that little matter of the pandemic. When did the process of writing this one really start?
Pontus: Well actually I had a kind of writer’s block for the first time in my life. People wanted e to write another “Dirt Bound’ or ‘Fill You Head With Rock’ but those songs are written you know (laughs) I could write them again but the first one would be better than any of the new ones I try to write! (laughs) So Anders Rosell the other guitarist in the band actually came in with a lot of ideas. So that got us all started. He came up with some great riffs. Normally I write 100% of the songs but on this album he wrote 40% of the songs. And that was such a good motor for it, so that got me started again. He’d come up with a riff and I’d write the lyrics, so it was a joint venture this time.
Mark: It sounds great and opens up beautifully with ‘Are You Listening’. I must admit I’m a big fan of ‘Salvation’.
Pontus: Oh wow, cool.
Mark: How did that song come to be?
Pontus: Actually that was one of a songs where in my own mind there’s a song on the first album called ‘Can’t Get Through’ that we always play live – three part harmony, like the old Whitesnake stuff. So I wanted to write a new song that could get that old song out of the setlist that has the same timbre and same three part harmony kind of a chorus.
Mark: That might have been why I was drawn to it, I’ve been playing ‘Come and Get It’ alongside your new one.
Pontus: Oh wow! Yes! What a great album.
Mark: Always my favourite Whitesnake I must admit.
Pontus: That was the best band he had! (laughs) With Ian Paice on drums! My god! (Pontus hums the intro to ‘Hit and Run’ by Whitesnake)
Mark: There’s something absolutely magical about that isn’t there?
Pontus: Yes, absolutely.
Mark: You mentioned that you had a writers block, were any of these songs from pre-pandemic days, or are they all new?
Pontus: There’s one song, a kind of ‘Kiss-like’ song with a double solo ‘Tonight I’m Wild’ I wrote that in maybe 2013. We recorded it for ‘The Ultimate Rebel’ album and it wasn’t good enough so we skipped it, then we tried to record it for the ‘Bombo’ album and we skipped it because it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. And then we tried it again, I pulled it from the draw and introduced it to our producer as I thought he might be able to make it happen, and he did. (laughs) So this time around it worked and so it made the album and it became a cool duet with me and the drummer Niklas Matsson.
Mark: I talk to a lot of musicians and a lot of them are like I think I would be when if you have something and you know there is something special about it, but its not quite there they keep it knowing that at some point that missing piece will click in. It would bug me until I got that song finished. But the talking to someone like Nuno from Extreme he told me if it doesn’t click in a few minutes he just bins it. I’d like to be going through his bins I think!
Pontus: (laughs) Exactly! Me too. I’m not like that though I have ideas I think will work and I come back to them.
Mark: So with a great new album in the can, what are the touring plans?
Pontus: We start in Sweden, we have eight or ten shows booked up until Christmas and then we are looking at Spain and Germany in the Spring. The Festivals are already starting to get booked for next Summer in Europe.
Mark: It must be great to be getting out to play again?
Pontus: Yeah absolutely, I’m put on this earth to be on stage, I’ve been a musician all my life never had a steady job you know.
Mark: I think I read somewhere that you come from a musical family which might have had a bearing on your choice of career?
Pontus: Yeah, my Dad is a drummer. He played with everyone.
Mark: My Dad was a bad bassist and I turned into an even worse bassist!
Pontus: (laughs)
Mark: I wish he’d been better than maybe I would have been better!
Pontus: (laughs) Is it OK for me to say my Dad is a great drummer and I am a great drummer!
Mark: That works!
Pontus: That’s a actually my main instrument I’m a drummer first of all.
Mark: Can you take us back and picture that moment when you realised that not only was music going to be important to you but it would be your life? Was there a magical defining moment for you?
Pontus: No, I followed my Dad on tour before I can remember and I’ve been on the tour bus for ages and ages and grew up with the guys and girls he played with. So it’s been naturally and I’ve never thought of anything else but being a musician. And that’s been forever so to speak so there was no defining moment. But I remember going through his vinyl collection and borrowing all of the good ones, you know.
Mark: I think I did that too, finding all the good stuff from Zeppelin to Marc Bolan and Huble Pie.
Pontus: Exactly. And add John Hyatt, Delbert McClinton and Etta James and The Beatles.
Mark: I hear all of that in your music. I know a lot of people say that you sound like AC/DC and I get that, but very good AC/DC, but I also get a lot of those other Classic Rock bands in there especially Humble Pie.
Pontus: Steve Marriott I love him! One of the best of all time and Paul Rodgers!
Mark: We could be twins, I love both voices but Steve Marriott has to be the greatest musician of all time for me. I once met him when he played in a pub locally and he’s still one of only two people I’ve been starstruck by I couldn’t say I thing other than get home to sign a beer mat for me!
Pontus: (laughs) You know the blonde Tele he had with Small Faces?
Mark: I do.
Pontus: That’s owned by Dan Baird a friend of mine, from Georgia Satellites.
Mark: Well it’s in good hands then.
Pontus: And I have noodled that guitar! (laughs) The one Stevie had in Small Faces, ‘Tin Soldier’ – that’s the guitar!
Mark: Fantastic! One of the absolute best.
Mark: That leads us to a very interesting question then we always ask first time interviewees. If you could have been a ‘Fly on the Wall’ for the creation of any album in the history of Rock and Roll what would you like to have seen being made in the studio?
Pontus: I would be at Hedley Grange when Zep recorded Kashmir and I would follow John Bonham when he did the track for ‘When the Levee Breaks’ and he goes up to the control room and says to Glynn Johns “Play it to me“. And he hits play and (Pontus sings those legendary opening drums) says “Don’t fucking do anything with that or I will kill you!” I would love just to follow him up and hear that. I love that sound. So Hedley Grange in England in 1974!
Mark: A magical time, and I guess as a Rock and Roll drummer there’s no one like Bonham surely?
Pontus: Absolutely.
Mark: We saw his son a little while ago over here, it was a great night.
Pontus: What band?
Mark: He did a Led Zeppelin experience show, it was great.
Pontus: I was actually at the big O2 gig. I got tickets so I saw that show in London when Jason played with the old guys. It was amazing.
Mark: I would have loved to have been there! We always leave the easy question till the end…
Pontus: OK.
Mark: What is the meaning of life?
Pontus: Music. I didn’t even have to think. (laughs)
Mark: Surprisingly few people come up with that one but I think that’s all you really need to say. That’s why we’re all here after all.
Pontus: (laughs) It was an easy question.
Mark: The single ‘Snacket’ came out a little while ago and the album drops on 27th October so there isn’t much time to wait, I have to ask about that word ‘Snacket’?
Pontus: Well it’s Swedish, and in my dialect – I’m from Malmo, next to Copenhagen, so our dialect is like what Texas is in the States, it has a sort of Cowboy twang. So the guy I’m doing the duet with is a very famous Swedish artist for the last 40 years and we’re good friends. So I asked him “If I wrote a song n Swedish in Malmoish would you want to do a duet with me?” and he said “Yes” so he we are! It’s a song more for Sweden I guess (laughs) but the other nine songs are in English.
Mark: I like that sort of thing though it stands out a bit.
Pontus: Like the Muppet Show Swedish Chef? (laughs)
Mark: Now that you say it! (laughs) Always one of my favourite Muppets!
Pontus: Apparently it’s built on a real character, a New York cooking show in the 70’s there was this guy, probably not from Sweden but from abroad who had this really lousy English dialect! (laughs)
Mark: I think I heard that. Thank you so much for the chat, it’s been great to talk music with you.
Pontus: I’ve had so much fun Mark thank you. Thank you very much, it’s been a pleasure.