If you love your 80’s Hard Rock then 30 years after the close of that glorious decade its hard to find a band as good as Crazy Lixx at taking the essence of Arena Rock and revamping it into a sound that still excites like nothing else. Over the years we’ve championed Crazy Lixx in the pages of The Rockpit, talking to Danny over the tears about each of their wonderful albums. Last year we talked about ‘Forever Wild’ and now finally they are bringing the noise down-under for a series of dates which include Melodic Rock Fest 2020.

Mark: Thank you for taking the time to talk to The Rockpit today Danny. It’s great to see Crazy Lixx finally make it Downunder and off the back of a great album – ‘Forever Wild’ which was our number three album of last year.

Danny: That’s great to hear and great to be coming over, it’s a dream come true to play to our Australian fans.

Mark: And it’s not just the Festival dates for you either?

Danny: No the club tour will mean we will be staying there for quite a while and have a chance to see more than just one place so it’s gonna be real fun and as I said a whole new experience for us. We’ve never been in that part of the world ever so we’re very much looking toward to it, yeah. And of course getting away from the Swedish winter is always a plus!

Mark: (laughs) I can imagine it’s a bit warmer down here at the minute.

Danny: Australia is normally quite an anonymous place for us. In Sweden we don’t normally hear very much of what’s happening there but obviously with the fires and the events it’s been all over the news so we’re following that from here and I just hope it all resolves as soon as possible. It’s a tragedy.

Mark: It is and we’re all pulling together like we do. Thoughts and prayers go out to those affected though, but we are a resilient bunch down here.

As far as Crazy Lixx first visit to Australia goes it’s great to see you playing a few dates alongside the Festival, I think you get an hour at the main event?

Danny: Yeah I believe we have an hour on all the shows, so it’s a club tour but kind of like a Festival format too with three other bands on the bill.

Mark: Are you going to be mixing it up a little for fans who get to see more than one set? I’m of course getting to see you at the Fest but also getting there a bit early to see you the night before in St Kilda.

Danny: Well I’m not sure exactly when we are arriving, I think that flight will be set in the next few days but if we have the possibility to check out the Festival before we play I’d love to do that, but we’re just basically going with the flow and letting the organisers look after the detail. I’ll get on the plane and enjoy the ride basically.

Mark: It’s a long trip but it will be worth it for a lot of people. I’ve been talking to hundreds of people in the lead in and the name Crazy Lixx just keeps coming up.

Danny: That’s cool to hear, hopefully we can repay that enthusiasm!

Mark: As far as the line-up goes is there anyone you are particularly wanting to see as a fan?

Danny: Well I’m actually quite surprised about the booking of Firehouse because that’s a band I’ve never had the opportunity to see. When I’ve talked to people about it and at Sweden Rock which is by far the largest festival we have here, one of the bands they’ve never booked in that genre is Firehouse. From what I’ve heard it’s quite difficult to get them to come so that’s amazing and it’s gonna be a fun thing to see and I’ve been a fan for a long time. And also of course ‘Eclipse’ who are very good friends of ours – I always enjoy meeting them out at the Festivals. But if we get the time and the opportunity to see any of the other acts I’ll definitely check them out.

Mark: I was talking to Bill from Firehouse the other day, like you it’s their first time down here but they’ve been close in the past – they’re huge in South East Asia and Indonesia which really is only a few hours from us. It’s great to have so many Australian debuts on the same bill.

Danny: It’s cool to be one of them.

Mark: Where did it all start for you? What are your first memories of music?

Danny: Well I guess, I have a couple of songs that I remember very early on that I started thinking of as my favourite songs and they just happened to be Rock songs. I mean I enjoyed other kinds of music as well but from when I can remember being very small there were always these kind of ‘Rock Anthems’ that were closest to my heart. A song like ‘The Final Countdown’ by Europe for example and ‘Crazy Crazy Nights’ by Kiss and ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ (by Twisted Sister) was a huge hit in Sweden for some reason (laughs) and I also got into that. And I’m born in ’82 so this was pre-school age even for me. But those were the first songs I remember, oh and ‘Here I Go Again’ by Whitesnake that was another big favourite. So at a very early age I guess due to the fact that we had MTV back then and you were exposed to this music naturally it made a big impression on me – the videos, the music, the look, the whole flair of it. And I remember growing up in the ‘90’s say the mid-90’s and I was quite disappointed by the fact that all of that theatrical aspect just disappeared. And I think that’s what was driving for me to start a band that would kind of, you know, pick up that thing I thought was lost in Rock music through the entrance of Alternative Rock.

Mark: I know what you mean. And that all led to Crazy Lixx.

Danny: It did. The start of the band itself is quite difficult to pin down – we used to say 2002 but we weren’t very active at the start and our first album was released in 2007 and that was on a small Indie label and very limited. So I normally actually count the first album that we did on Frontiers Records which was ‘New Religion’ because that was when we became an international act and started to get some recognition. So depending on how you want to see it we are either ten years old or almost twenty years old as a band.

Mark: So between ten and eighteen, not a bad age to be. Music is changing and the old gives way to the new – how do you see music heading over the next decade?

Danny: We are in a time now when lots of the old bands are physically going to disappear in the 2020’s I believe. People like Ozzy Osbourne for example with his announcement recently and I heard on the radio that Alice Coper was 72 the other day so it seems that a lot of those bands might be disappearing and some maybe quite soon. But to have a renewal we have to have younger fans and younger bands as well so I do hope that kids will find something to love about the new music as well as the old.

Mark: We heard about those songs that influenced you earlier, taking us a little further forward now – can you remember the first song you ever wrote?

Danny: I mean I did some co-writes on songs even in my very first bands when I was like 14 or 15 but the first song that I wrote all by myself I think ended up on the debut album, and I would say that maybe was probably ‘Dr. Hollywood’ from the debut album.

Mark: A good place to start!

Danny: Yeah I really like that song very much. I think that it could have come out better production-wise and maybe I wasn’t the most competent singer back then but I think it has a charm as well. And we have earlier demo stuff that of course ended up on the album but those were co-writes with other people in the band. Whereas now I usually write whole songs myself, at least that’s been the case on the two last albums which were almost exclusively my own songs.

Mark: And that last album especially for us is right up there with your best. As far as the setlist goes are you going to be mixing it up a bit for Australia?

Danny: Well we’re confined to about an hour so there are certain songs, especially as this is the first time we’ve been over that I feel they are as I used to say “our smoke on the water” – songs we have to play or we’ll be lynched!

Mark: (laughs)

Danny: So I imagine we will want to play those obvious hits and we’ve been talking about adding a song from the new album we’ve just done only in Japan before and it hasn’t been a regular part of the show otherwise so there is something a little special. It seems like when we’re far enough to the East we add that song to the set! And we are rehearsing another song from the new album but we’ll see how that feels but we haven’t decided on a full set for Australia yet though. We have a small run now to Switzerland and Germany next week so we’ve been focussing on that but after that we’ll sit down and resolve the exact setlist and the songs we’ll be taking with us to Australia. But there will be both new and old, and I never like to have too much from the latest album –I know as a fan myself I don’t usually appreciate it when a band wants to play the whole new album on their next tour. So we’re usually quite conservative, we pick the singles and the songs that we notice are most popular on Spotify or YouTube and stuff like that.

Mark: Six albums in now it must be getting more and more difficult to choose that setlist?

Danny: Yeah especially when we just have an hour and you want to mix up different styles and have one slow song maybe in between. You don’t have all that much time to fit in all that you want to, so some albums we don’t have so much stuff from. Our typical set that we’ve played on tour since the album release is mostly from ’Forever Wild’, ‘Ruff Justice’ and ‘New Religion’ – they seem to be the three albums that are most popular and so most of the songs are from those, and because they’re the most popular people typically don’t complain too much!

Mark: It’s pretty hard to complain with albums like that. One of the things a lot of people have been asking me is will you be bringing merchandise over for the shows?

Danny: We won’t be bringing merchandise but we will be printing merchandise in Australia and it will be unique merchandise only sold on this tour with the Australian dates and a special print. So it’s a limited edition shirt. We’ll bring some small items of course like CD’s and pins and stuff but as for the t-shirts they’ll be custom-printed just for this tour. We did a similar thing in Japan and it was very popular.

Mark: That’s always a good memory to have, I’ve lost count of all the shirts I’ve bought over the years but it was always those with the dates on that I went for!

Danny: It’s a special thing, there is of course the standard album cover t-shirt but those are quite generic and we sell a lot of that stuff online to people who maybe haven’t had the opportunity to see us. But I think when you go to a show a band should have some more unique items for the fans that become a memory you can look back at.

Mark: If you could have been credited with any song from the history of music what would it be?

Danny: I guess with a question like that you can think of the economical aspect of course, you know, just for the royalties! (laughs) There are songs that you could make millions of dollars from, but looking at what makes up the most popular music now there are plenty of songs I wouldn’t like to be credited with!

Mark: (laughs)

Danny: I think for me it would have to be one of those childhood favourites, because they still resonate with me. So I mentioned ‘Crazy Crazy Nights’ by Kiss – I think that’s just an amazing song. So a co-write with Desmond Child and Paul Stanley would be an awesome thing, those are my favourite song-writers so to be on the same song as them would be the biggest honour.

Mark: I’ve always been a Kiss of the 80’s man myself – is it the 70’s or 80’s for you?

Danny: Oh definitely the 80’s, I mean I enjoy the 70’s as well but I think that the 80’s are superior. It’s a constant discussion when I meet people who are maybe ten years older than me – they usually prefer the 70’s and they think that Kiss sold out in the 80’s! But my favourite albums are ‘Crazy Nights’ and ‘Hot in the Shade’ when it comes to Kiss and those albums are quite underrated in my book.

Mark: Two greats. As you said before we might not see some of these bands by the end of the 20’s and Kiss I think will certainly be one of those, going out gracefully.

Danny: Yeah, well obviously there have been a few farewell tours but now I think it’s obvious that Paul struggles to sing. They’ve talked about stuff like exchanging all the members and then the band will continue like a theatrical act or something, but I’m not sure how much attention that would attract? When the diehard Kiss fans see them retire I can’t see them wanting to watch what will essentially be a Kiss tribute band.

Mark: If we booked you a table for four when you got to Melbourne and allowed you to choose four musicians from the past to sit down with, who would you choose?

Danny: Well Desmond Child has always been a big influence, and he’s a song-writer still and he’s the kind of guy that when Hard Rock and Heavy Metal was the kind of mainstream music then that’s what he wrote. And when it wasn’t anymore he went on and did other stuff. But I think that the stuff he did with all those artists in the 80’s when rock and Roll was on the radio- there’s so much good stuff there, so I’d like to sit down with him and just talk to him about how he thinks around song-writing. And of course Paul Stanley also, and Bon Jovi too, there’s a very good song-writer there! I think then I’d have a song-writing session! (laughs) I’d love to talk about how they wrote those massive hits and what they thought. And I imagine there would be some reminiscing between them as Desmond Child was also involved with Bon Jovi, so they all have a connection with each other. And even Alice Cooper for that matter who I think worked with all of them in his songs. ‘Hey Stoopid’ and ‘Trash’ were great albums and Bon Jovi and Desmond Child were on there as well. It was kind of a cool little club.

Mark: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us again Danny. I think this is the tenth time over the years we’ve bothered you now! I’d love to finally get to shake your hand in a few weeks’ time.

Danny: (laughs) I think you were one of the first to talk to me! Thanks to The Rockpit, we’ll see you soon! Looking forward to it!