DREGEN is one quarter of renowned Swedish rock and roll band

Q &A

BACKYARD BABY W O RD S PAUL WATS ON

DREGEN is one quarter of renowned Swedish rock and roll band, Backyard Babies, a melodic, guitar-based four-piece that formed in 1987, and have been going strong ever since. It might not be quite as rock and roll as it once was for this lead guitarist and vocalist – he has to drop the kids off before rehearsals these days, instead of turning up carefree on a cool moped – but even still, the band is still rocking out, and they’re currently working on a brand new album, which will be followed up with a European tour, and their first UK date in five years at Download Festival.

Headliner investigates...

Backyard Babies have been together for 27 years... Is that some kind of record for a Swedish rock band? [laughs] I think it’s just U2 and maybe a couple of other guitar

bands that have stood the test of time that long, so maybe it is! And to be honest, we certainly wouldn’t have lasted as long as we have if we hadn’t taken a break from each other a few years back [in 2010]. We took a holiday, then another holiday, and another, you get the idea... [smiles] But sometimes you need to take a step back, to keep things fresh, you know? We were like an old marriage: living together, but no sex anymore!

Thankfully, we’re very happy playing together and writing together today; we’re making new music again, and it’s the freshest we have sounded in some time, which is great.

Backyard Babies got signed back in ‘94 in Stockholm, but you had a few irons in the fire at that time, didn’t you?

Yeah, I’d started a side project band called The Hellacopters. I did two albums with those guys, and it exploded, but so did Backyard

Babies, so I had to make a choice. It was the right one for me, as we’ve been touring ever since. I am an only child, so I don’t see Backyard Babies as a band, they’re more like my brothers. And when they do stupid stuff – which they do - you stand up for them, as it’s family. Once you’re in, you can’t get out... It’s like a gang!

You’ve made a lot of records over the years. Do you still go about it the same way?

Pretty much, yeah. I think it’s a little sad that the album as a product is waining, though. Yes, sometimes I shuffle on Spotify, but I still play a lot of vinyl, and listen to albums the whole way through. I am a Gemini, so slightly schizophrenic! Half of me is a little conservative, as in, ‘a rock band needs to be drums, guitar, bass, vocals’; but the other half is very interested in the future. I am not a bitter person that thinks the industry was better before, it’s just

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very challenging and interesting nowadays; and people love music more than ever, although we don’t sell albums like we used to... None of us do.

Who first inspired you to pick up a guitar?

I grew up listening to Jimmy Page, Ace Frehley, Steve Jones, and Keith Richards. I remember working for three summers straight when I was a young kid, and I saved up to buy a Gibson Les Paul, then I bought a Marshall amp because it’s what my heroes had. I was struggling with my guitar playing from ‘89-94 because I couldn’t find a sound; I struggled with lead guitar in general, as I have never had very big hands, but then I got mesmerised on a trip to London to watch a garage rock band called The Cramps. Their female guitar player, Poison Ivy, totally blew me away with her style and playing, and as I was only fourteen, I guess I was a little bit in love as well! But she was playing this cool Gretsch Country Gentleman semi-acoustic guitar, which inspired me to go home and trade my Les Paul for one of those.

I actually remember coming down to rehearsals, counting in a song, then I just hit one chord and every fucking thing in that guitar just flew away, because nothing on those things is stuck on or drilled in! [laughs] The strings basically hold the bridge down, so it really didn’t fit my aggressive rock playing! Then I went back to the guitar shop and found a Gibson ES335 - basically a Chuck Berry guitar - and I started to play that, and found my sound really early.

They look great, too, don’t they?

They do, and because the neck is thin all the way down, it’s great for lead playing for me. As I had no money at the time, I sold my Marshall amp as well, then I found an old used Fender Bassman, which is actually a bass amp, but that combination with a 335 really suited me, and that’s what I still play today, twenty years later. Fender also has a cool Supersonic head, which they make 4 x 12 cabinets for, so I run one of those, and one ‘60s Bassman amp, and all I really use aside from that

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DREGEN

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is my Jim Dunlop Crybaby and a few delays. It’s old school, really.

You also toured quite extensively as a solo artist last year, right?

Yeah, it’s been in my head for years, making a solo album! I hooked up with an old friend of mine. He had some success in the early ‘90s with a band called The Wannadies, who did You And Me Song. The singer-songwriter of that band, Pär Wiksten, wrote and produced the album with me; he’s a great guy. I more or less formed a band, really, to do it. When you have played with the same musicians for many years, sometimes you need to work with other musicians on different projects, which is what I did. Twenty years on the road means you meet a lot of musical talent, and I remember when I wrote a song slightly heavier than a Backyard Babies song, I called in a drummer that I knew would work for that style. That’s cool, and the band supported the project, of course. I used lots of different musicians, and I did the guitars and vocals. It was a lot of fun.

The band is hands-on with production, and you guys have always used Genelecs for monitoring. Why is that?

That’s right, and my solo album was also done with Genelecs – 8030As, which I absolutely love! I have been visiting a lot of different studios that work in the genre of hip hop recently, and the monitoring setups always sound great in the room, but they’re so oversized! If you go back twenty years, rock studios all had the little [Yamaha] NS10s, which were very straight speakers, and when you listened to them, although they were dull, they didn’t lie, and you knew if it was good through NS10s, it would sound far better on anything else. With Genelec though, it just sounds fucking great, and you know that if it sounds fucking great through a set of Genelecs, it will sound fucking great anywhere!

That’s the difference! They’re not as... [pauses] boring as NS10s - can I say that? [laughs] What I really like about Genelec is, you can actually get inspired using them, and that’s during the recording process as

“I AM A GEMINI, SO SLIGHTLY SCHIZO! HALF OF ME IS CONSERVATIVE AND THE OTHER HALF IS VERY INTERESTED IN THE FUTURE.” well as in the mix. It actually helps my workflow, and makes me want to play better, in fact. And that’s quite something.

You’re old school in your approach to guitar... What about recording?

The last album we did on two-inch tape was Stockholm Syndrome which was back in 2003 – that was the first time I encountered Genelec, too, actually – Joe Baressi (Queens of the Stone Age, Soundgarden) had a huge pair set into his studio wall – and I fell in love with the Genelec sound there and then.

But recording today, we’re all digital; everything is done on Pro Tools. I do like to use a lot of old gear for my guitar sounds though, so it’s a happy medium; I have always preferred old tube compressors, as they’re so great for analogue drums and guitars. It’s funny... If you go and buy a heavily used guitar amp from the ‘70s, it’s likely it’ll sound great and go strong for another hundred years, but if you buy brand new stuff... Well, it’s far more likely to break down!

So will guitar music really live forever, Dregen? [laughs] You know, rock music will always include distorted guitar in some way... They invented the wheel there, so it’s hard to make any new stuff, but yes, I think it will live forever. People need guitars...

Of course there will be pianos one hundred years from now, but there will also be electric guitars - loads of them! www.genelec.com www.dregen.se