The
Nomads
This article originally appeared in NFH #17 in
the fall of 1989.
The Nomads are one of
the best bands in the world at the moment and have been for quite a few years, as anybody
who has sampled their records will attest. With an approach that merges Detroit metal with
elements of punk and rockabilly, the Nomads have created a sound that's long on hooks,
strong on guts, and just the cure for people who never seem to get enough guitars in their
record purchases. Nomads music doesn't get thrashy, yet it powers with the best of them.
The band have just
released a new lp called All Wrecked Up on Amigo in Sweden, and hopefully they'll
find a US deal for it, because it was a total crime that their last lp, Hardware
didn't get a US release. Seems that somebody out there ought to jump at the chance of
licensing both these records and righting these wrongs.
The lineup has gone
through some shakeups since Hardware; the band now consists of oldtimers Nick
Vahlberg (lead vocals and guitar), Hans Ostlund (vocals and lead guitar), Frank Minarik
(percussion and organ), Bjorne Froberg (bass) and J Ericson (drums).
The band took the
time to answer my batch of annoyingly prying questions in two different sessions. The
first try involved the entire band hurling whatever came to mind at a cassette while in a
state of severe intoxication. Upon attaining sobriety (Nick claims) they decided that I
would never be able to make anything out of what they said. I believe that the real story
is that there are incriminating statements made on that tape, and I suspect our readers
would like to get to the bottom of it. But they never will, since Nick redid the interview
by himself the next day. He did, however, give a few excerpts from the incriminating tape
from which much may be inferred about the character of these Swedes. Conspicuous in all
this is an 18 minute gap that is filled with excellent music by seminal Swedish band
Problem and excerpts of the Watergate tapes. It is my belief that these have been added to
divert attention from the real issue. But you will have to be content to read Nick's more
carefully prepared answers. The places where Hans is quoted were spliced in from the
mystery tape. Nick starts with the history of the band, which he didn't seem very excited
about doing at first, but he ended up giving a fairly detailed account.
"...the usual
boring bullshit about how the band started; I guess it all started in 1979 when me and
Hans who plays lead guitar met when we were seniors in high school, mostly because we had
similar taste in music, which was like New York Dolls and the Stooges. We were the only
ones in our school anyway who listened to that type of noise, and considering that we were
only 16 or 17 years old that must have been pretty rare. So we started hanging out and
went to a lot of gigs, mostly pretty much punk rock at that time, in 1979. Hans had a band
called the Sewer Rats; they were really bad, but they were sort of funny, really low down
punk rock. And I joined a band, too, called Element 19, and we played in those bands for a
while, but we got tired of the punk thing eventually and we figured we'd team up and start
a band that played the music that we were into, Stooges, MC5 and New York Dolls, and also
we were into playing 60s punk music, which was something I was just getting into, since
I'd acquired the Nuggets album, and I was really into collecting 60s punk stuff.
The Nomads had their first gig in April of 1980. We played three Stooges songs, a couple
of Dolls songs, the MC5 version of "Ramblin' Rose", "Jumping Jack
Flash" and a lot of shit like that. We went down really well; that gig was a big
success even though we had only rehearsed a couple of times before that. The band at that
time consisted of me and Hans and a guy called Joachim Tarnstrom who was in the band up
till when we did our first single, which we put out ourselves, called "Psycho".
We just had different drummers all the time, but by the time we did the "Psycho"
single we had Ed Johnson on drums.
Hans: When we
met Ed, he was a psychedelic hippie, 23 years old, with long hair and a big beard.
Nick: Yeah,
and he was 23 years old, for Christ sake! (tone of mock horror)
Hans: Too old
to be in a rock band! (laughs)
Nick: Yeah, we
were only 18 or 19, so we were really freaked out having this really old hippie in our
band.
"The single came
out in 1981, and then we did some demos a few months after that, which were "Night
Time", "Boss Hoss" and a song called "Rockin' All Through The
Night", and we presented that stuff to Amigo which is an independent distributor and
record label here in Stockholm, and they were really into the stuff so they signed us up.
By that time Joachim had left the band, so we took in a guy called Tony Carlsson on bass
guitar, so with this lineup along with Frank Minarik, who at the beginning was just like
sitting in a couple gigs here and there and he played some of the songs on our first
recordings...anyway, this band recorded the Where The Wolf Bane Blooms mini-lp
which came out in late 1983, and was sort of a breakthrough for the band because that
album was very well received, and we got a French record deal for it and got out to do a
lot of touring in Europe. Then we recorded another mini-lp called Temptation Pays
Double which came out at the end of 1984. Those two records were combined to make up
the Outburst album, which came out shortly after that in both the states and in
Europe. With Outburst, I guess, we got ourselves a pretty good reputation in the
states. After that we did a single called "She Pays The Rent". There's a French
live ep from one time we toured there, and the album Hardware which came out about
two years ago. By that time Tony the bass player had left the band so we took in Joachim
Tarnstrom on bass again, so he was like in the band in the beginning, and then he went
away and came back again.
"In between all
these things we did a couple things under a sort of alias, the Screaming Dizbusters' two
singles, and there's a couple of bootlegs around, and that's it up to now. We've just
released a new lp called All Wrecked Up here in Sweden, which was preceded by a
single, "Fire And Brimstone". With this new release it's another new Nomad's
lineup. We've got a new rhythm section consisting of J Ericson on drums and Bjorne Froberg
on bass.
"Bjorne Froberg
was in a pretty cool heavy metal punk band called the Warheads, which was one of those
bands that me and Hans used to go and see when we got to know each other when we hung out
at a lot of clubs in Stockholm."
So this brings us
up to the present and the new album, which was recorded through Amigo for Swedish release
and will hopefully be licensed worldwide to us eager consumers ready to pounce with huge
wads of disposable income...OK, maybe not so huge, but eager never the less. Nick gives us
some details on the recording and all that good stuff...
"All Wrecked
Up is going to be released by Sonatrak, which is in Europe and is a pretty good label;
it has good distribution all over Europe. We have our managers looking for an American
deal for us which would be really great, because we were so fucking disappointed that we
couldn't get a deal for the last record, Hardware, because it seems that there are
so many people in the states who are into our stuff, and it wouldn't be a problem for us
to get gigs if we just had a decent record deal, so we really keep our fingers crossed
that that will work out somehow. We're hoping for something like Enigma, but I don't know
how hard it is. I mean, what the hell, I think the Outburst album sold pretty well
in the states. It was in the independent charts and everything. We're going to do a
European tour anyway, this autumn.
"I'm really
quite pleased with it. I think it's a pretty solid album. It was recorded under pretty
much the same circumstances as our previous stuff; the same producer, this guy 4-Eyed
Thomas, who's really not much of a producer, anyway, he's just some guy who works for our
record company. We really hoped to get a real producer this time, but our record company
didn't think that they could afford it. Our dream is to work with someone like Jim
Dickinson, the guy who produces the Replacements and Panther Burns and has been in this
business thirty years now, I think. Him or Alex Chilton or someone like that would be
totally great. Or Vic Maile, the English guy who produced the Screaming Blue Messiahs, who
I like a lot. And the Godfathers, and stuff like that.
"But anyway we
worked with 4-Eyed Thomas, so it's pretty much we produced it ourselves. It's recorded at
a studio called Atlantis here in Stockholm, which is a really nice old studio. It's got a
huge room so you can get a really good drum sound, and we've got a lot of old equipment, a
lot of tube equipment, which I like a lot. And we've got a couple of guests on it; we've
got Johnny Thunders on lead guitar on a song called "Beyond The Valley Of The
Dolls". Johnny lived in a suburb of Stockholm for some time because he was married to
a Swedish girl. But apparently he got kicked out quite recently so he's moved back to New
York now. He's an old hero, especially of Hans, because Hans was a big fan of the Dolls
back in the 70s. So we thought it would be a cool thing to have Johnny play on one of our
songs. The song sounds a bit like the Heartbreakers or something. He did it pretty cool.
"And we got a
girl called Ebba Forsberg doing backup vocals on a few songs. Most people think that that
was a good idea because she sings really beautifully, but we've been getting some
criticism for that, too, because someone said that it makes us sound like American FM
music or something. I dunno, I just think she's got a really nice voice. And then we got a
guy from a band called In the Collonades, a really heavy Black Sabbath, Stooges, Birthday
Party type band. He just operates a drum machine, and we all synthesize one song...it's
the song called "My Deadly Game" which I mentioned earlier with this Velvets
type sound. We wanted to make it into something like Suicide used to sound like...a real
cheap drum machine sound, but the way it came out most people say that it sounds like
Jesus And Mary Chain instead (laughs). I think they're a pretty good band, but I wouldn't
want to sound like them.
"It was recorded
pretty quickly; done in about two weeks time or something. I don't know if there are any
surprises compared to the other records; it's a good Nomads album, and I really hope we
can get a deal for it in the states. One of our managers (we've got two of them) (laughs)
is going over to New York for the new music seminar, so maybe he can do something. He
works a lot with the Creeps, too, so he's looking for deals for both the Creeps and the
Nomads. So we'll just see what happens. We'll get over to the states as soon as anyone
asks us to. We've had a couple of offers over the years, but the problem has always been
that someone has to pay for the plane tickets. It's really not that expensive now; it's
pretty cheap to go from Stockholm to New York, anyway, but it would be great to go to the
West Coast, too."
I asked which
tracks were the best on it, a question that I've since decided to dump from my repertoire
since almost everybody always says something like "well, it's all great or we'd have
never done it". But Nick isn't afraid to pick favorites...
"I've got a
couple of favorite tracks, a song called "Down By The River" and a song called
"Nightmare Maker". Those songs were described by a really funny review in this
one Swedish paper the other day as being "slow thrash", because he was talking
about the Nomads in the context of the new thrash and speed metal bands, and I thought
that sounded pretty cool...slow thrash. I quite like that. I think we're really too old to
play speed metal, but slow thrash might be something for us.
"And "I
Don't Need No Doctor" is pretty good, too. It's a Ray Charles song, and it's got a
lot of Ebba's backing vocals on it."
The next line of
questioning is to find out what makes a Nomad tick...what does a Nomad want in his music,
and what bands are out there that influenced the young Nomad in his approach to music
(this line of questioning is getting a little strange, because everybody I interview likes
the Stooges, Dolls, and MC5 first and foremost. And I can never understand why I like all
the bands I interview, because I never listened to the Stooges, Dolls or MC5 much. I liked
the Pistols, Jam, Damned and Clash, and nobody talks about them now. So why do I like all
these Detroit metal bands now? Beats the shit out of me, and I bet the answer was on the
drunken part of the tape, too. Anyway, it's a Nomads feature and not a fucking
psychological profile of the editor, so let's get on with it...)
"Well, I've got
an answer to that question that I usually use because I get that question once in a while.
The key word to make good music is passion. Passion is the most important element
in good music; that you're totally committed to doing what you're doing. That pretty much
sums it up, but other things that I like in music is energy, preferably high energy,
spontaneity. Musical skills I don't care that much about. The Nomads ourselves are not
especially skilled, so that's something that's pretty unimportant, even though I can
really dig someone like Television for instance, who when they had Tom Verlaine and
Richard Lloyd in the band at the same time were just fantastic, amazing guitar music. And
also fun, of course, mindless fun. Rock and roll is supposed to be stupid, mindless fun.
But that on the other hand does not mean that I can't appreciate someone like, say, Nick
Cave, who's not very funny at all but does some pretty heavy music. He's not one of my
heroes or anything, but I think that guy's pretty talented and I dig a lot of his stuff.
All these elements combined are what I think rock and roll is supposed to be.
Hans: The
important ingredient in rock music, as a guitar player, should be guitars.
Nick: Yeah, a
lot of guitars. Guitars are just essential for good rock and roll music. Walls of guitars,
millions of guitars.
Hans: I could
buy dixie cups; the only rhythm instruments, no bass or anything. You can play music
without them.
Nick: When it
comes to people like us, we're not really talented singers or anything, we just have to
rely on guitars.
"Obviously from
the beginning we were most into the Detroit metal bands from the late 60s, Stooges, MC5
and all that, and that influenced us tremendously in the beginning. All the 60s punk bands
of course. We took that whole attitude of music that we played really simple stuff but
with a lot of energy and a lot of attack. And also over the years I've been pretty much
into rockabilly which probably has shown. There's usually one or two covers of obscure
rockabilly songs on our albums, like "Swamp Gal" on Hardware, which was
originally by Tommy Bell, pretty obscure Louisiana rockabilly. Nowadays I'm mostly into
new American bands. I dig Sonic Youth a lot, at least when they play songs, you know?
Sometimes they can be pretty tiresome when they go too experimental. But I like them a lot
and they're really great people too. They've been here a couple of times and we get along
really well. They're really great. Who else do I dig? I dig the Replacements. I think
their last album is amazing. Well hold on a second, I'll just check my record stack. Oh,
yeah, the last Lou Reed album New York is a complete masterpiece I think, and that
made me start listening to Velvet Underground again. I always liked them a lot, but I'd
sort of forgotten about them for some time. The Velvets really influenced some of the
stuff on our new album by the way; at least the songs "My Deadly Game" and
"First You Dream and Then You Die", there's a lot of Velvet's influence in that.
So they're one of the all time greatest for sure.
"Also Dinosaur
Jr is a pretty cool band. Roky Ericson is an all time hero. I really hope he can make some
sort of comeback but apparently he's really unwilling to leave Austin, Texas. But he's
great. And the Wipers are cool, even though they've changed the name now to Medicine Show
or something like that. And Mudhoney is a pretty cool band. From the outside, at least it
seem like Seattle is the happening place in the states right now; you have Mudhoney and
Girltrouble, a great garage band, and Kings of Rock, a really funny, boozed up band. But I
don't know a thing about Seattle. Maybe it's like when people think that Sweden is this
really cool place just because there are a couple of good bands coming from here, you know
the thing about the grass being greener on the other side. Because this "Swedish
scene" is a bit of a myth. There's nothing much happening around here. It's actually
pretty dull. I live in the center of Stockholm and there's really not that much happening,
but it's beautiful in summer at least."
This came as a bit
of a surprise to me since it seems like the number of good Swedish records is out of all
proportion to the size of the country, and in one of my questions I asked about whether
the bands helped each other a lot and there was a feeling that there was a good scene
there...
"Oh, no, it's
not a scene at all. The only band that we felt that we wanted to do gigs together with and
things were a band called the Bottleups a few years ago, but they've split up now. We
played a lot together and stuff. I mean, I know most of the people in most of the Swedish
bands that you've heard about, but we very seldom do gigs together or anything. Maybe with
the Pushtwangers, we've tried to play together sometimes, but there's really not that much
happening."
So it appears that
being in the frozen north is not the romantic thing that some of us fanzine writers (I
confess my guilt) have made it out to be, and it can be a pain at times to be a Nomad in
the North. Is it all worth it?
"That depends
from time to time. Sometimes being in this band is just a big hassle and the only thing
that keeps it going is that by being in a band you get a lot of free drinks and can get in
clubs for free, and you make some money, well not that much money, but some money at
least. Sometimes it's pretty painful, because the business side of this has always been
quite a mess for the Nomads, but we've got ourselves pretty good management now at least,
so maybe and hopefully things will improve, I don't know.
"That sounds
pretty pessimistic; there's a lot of really great things about being in a band, too, you
know. I think about all the people you get to know, people who are in other bands and
stuff. Especially American musicians are always really great people.
"Most of the
time being in the Nomads is great because we get along really well these days and we have
a lot of fun when we're playing. We always drink too much beer and go wild, so it's
OK."
Another thing I
always feel obligated to dig up in bands from non-English speaking countries is how they
decide whether to sing in English or not. It's an especially interesting question in this
case since a few issues back Nils Hellberg from Wilmer X said that their fans in Sweden
felt an extra loyalty to them because they do sing in Swedish, and the Nomads never do.
Why izzat?
"Well, that's
pretty obvious. Since the scene here is pretty limited we really need the chance to get
outside of Sweden and tour Europe, for instance, and also to be able to sell records
outside of Sweden, 'cos Sweden is a really small market. We always sell like 5,000 at a
maximum of our releases here in Sweden, but worldwide maybe we sell thirty or thirty five.
Which isn't that much, but at least it's much better than we would do if we just limited
ourselves to hanging around in Sweden. Wilmer X is pretty different because they've got a
large...huge following. You know, all the squares here in Sweden really dig Wilmer X. I
like them, too, I think they're a really solid live band and they're really very nice
people, really great to hang out with, but Wilmer X...I mean, everyone can like them,
especially since they sing in Swedish, so for them it's not a problem. They sell maybe
25,000 just here in Sweden, so they'll just translate their lyrics and release them
outside of Sweden. But we're just not into doing things like that; I think it sounds
pretty silly writing and singing in Swedish anyway so we never even really considered
doing it. It's just like completely out of the question, you know?
Hans: Wilmer X
get well paid; they're really well paid in Sweden, but on the other hand they only tour
Sweden, while the Nomads and a couple of other bands can tour Europe, and that's much more
fun. Sweden's boring!
Nick: We make
much less money, but we have much more fun! (laughs)
Hans: There's
much more free drinks in Europe than in Sweden.
Nick: Yeah,
the writers are much better!
Hans: We've
got restrictions here!
Nick: For
instance, I don't think there's any chance that I'd be sitting here doing an interview for
someone in San Diego if we'd been singing in Swedish. The only band that succeeded in
sounding really cool and singing in Swedish at the same time is a band called Problem. I
don't know if you've heard about them, but they were the seminal Swedish garage band and
did some totally outstanding records in 76-77, and one album in 79, I think. They did a
comeback record last year, actually, and with that they changed to English lyrics, too.
But they're great; they've always been a big influence on the Nomads. They were the only
band that played anything that remotely sounded something like us when we started the
band. So Check out Problem, I really recommend them, they're totally great."
In the only
article I've ever seen on the Nomads (in Pulsebeat), Nick is quoted as saying that the
Nomads do a lot of covers because they have a hard time doing good originals, and that
this is due to the lyrics. He says that you don't want to do silly lyrics. But then he
says he loves the Ramones, and if anybody has silly lyrics, it seems to me it's the
Ramones. So I asked Nick about this...
"That's always
been the thing with the Nomads, that we're not prolific writers because, well, A. Because
we're lazy and, B. Because we have problems with the lyrics. But the last couple years
we've had some help from some people around here who have been helping out with some
lyrics...a guy called Tommy Johnson, who has written some great stuff for us, and also
Hans our guitarist has come up with some really good stuff, so the lyric thing isn't that
much of a problem any more. But I still think that the Ramones are the best band in the
universe, and the Ramones lyrics, they're not silly, they're poetry. I mean, just take
something like "We're A Happy Family", I mean no one in the whole world could
write a better lyric than that. Well the Ramones are pretty special, I guess. They're
pretty special in every respect. No one comes near the Ramones.
"Examples of
others that write good lyrics I think are Paul Westerberg of the Replacements, and Jeffrey
Pierce's lyrics, they've always been great. But when you have English as a second
language, it's much more difficult to express yourself than if it's your first language,
and that way I think often non-English bands come out sounding extremely silly, and I
think we've managed to avoid that trap, but I'm always really worried about it, and I'm
always really worried that people will complain about our English pronunciation. I know
that Byron Coley of Forced Exposure has given me some shit for sounding like Elmer
Fudd. But I think that's mostly because of that line in "She Pays The Rent" that
goes something like "I still love her with no regrets", and I tried to make some
sort of rockabilly twang, you know, go up somehow, and I know both Byron Coley and some
other people, too, have thought that that sounded like wegwets, you know? Which is
pretty silly."
Hard to see the
merit in worrying about sounding funny singing in another accent...some of the best
singers in rock are really hard to follow...I think I know about three words to Died
Pretty songs because Ron Peno sings so weird, and I still think the line in the Happy Hate
Me Nots' "Don't Move Too Far" goes "I laughed a lot, but I can't stand
Chinese food", even though I've got a lyric sheet and know it's not true. And I think
that's a great song.
"One thing that
I really regret is actually doing that "She Pays The Rent" thing, because we had
a lot of trouble with the Lyres after that. Monoman was really furious that our version of
"She Pays The Rent" got much better reviews in American fanzines. So the Nomads
and the Lyres totally fell out after that. We used to be good friends and big fans of each
other's music, but after that every time I see Jeff Conolly, and he's around here
sometimes on tour...he's really pissed off about this and pissed off about
that..."Where's my mechanical royalties", you know? I keep telling him to talk
to Gerard Cosley at Homestead Records, because that's the guy who's supposed to pay him
his mechanical royalties, for Christ sakes."
This thing about
"She Pays The Rent" is sad stuff...if I'd written a song and heard somebody make
as good a cover out of it as the Nomads did with "She Pays The Rent" I'd feel
tickled pink that somebody proved my song was really good after all. Hard to believe. But
that's as may be, at any rate I've been properly chastised for failing to recognize the
depth of meaning in Ramones lyrics (now I'm gonna have to pull out all those records again
to check all that shit out...I mean, Nick has got a point, hasn't he?), so we'll shift
gears to another line of interrogation. Where do these Nomads play? What sort of sinful
hellholes do they descend into in the pursuit of the corruption of those fair-haired
Nordic youths? And how easily do these young people succumb to their lurid temptations
(which, it has been rumored, pay DOUBLE!) What are some of the highs and lows? Nick begins
by putting on a new lp in the background.
"This is the
Blue Oyster Cult by the way, another long time favorite band of mine. What kind of venues
do we play in? Well, we play ordinary clubs, mostly, capacities from four to eight
hundred. This summer we're doing a couple of festivals here in Sweden and a couple of them
in Belgium and the Netherlands, I think. We usually get really good audience reactions.
We've never really had any problems playing live. Live the Nomads are a lot of raw energy,
and we try to get like the heaviest sound possible, but try to avoid being a metal
band...try to just play a heavy, hard hitting rock and roll.
"What I think is
the best feeling that we've gotten from playing live is when we did our first gig outside
of Scandinavia in 1984 in a tiny little village in Holland. We just could never have
expected that anyone would have shown up for that gig because we couldn't believe that
anyone would know anything about the Nomads in a little village in Holland, but the place
was really packed, and people knew the lyrics to our songs. It was really a nice thing, a
nice feeling. And the day after we played an amazing festival called "Pandora's
Box" with the Dream Syndicate and the Lyres, and I think the Fleshtones played, too,
and the Scientists. That was also an unforgettable experience. We did some shows with the
Scientists at that time, and that was really great because they were a fantastic band when
they had the original lineup. I've never seen anything quite like the Scientists in those
days; it was like a bulldozer of sound that totally crushed you...they were great.
"We had a pretty
bad experience last week; we were supposed to have opened for the Pixies here in
Stockholm; as you probably know the Pixies are really huge in Europe now; it's the big
hype of the year, somehow. There were about 800 people there. It was a really good gig for
us; we're pretty big around the Stockholm area, but it's quite rare that we attract crowds
like 800 people. Anyway, that gig was canceled by some stupid fucking idiot English sound
guy who managed to drop us from the bill because we couldn't move his mixing desk or some
stupid bullshit like that. I just couldn't believe that; any halfway professional sound
engineer just marks up his desk in five minutes time and it's not a problem. The Pixies
were acting pretty bad, too; they supported us at first and tried to get the sound guy to
wise up, but after some time they were on his side too, so I don't give much for the
Pixies, and I thought they sucked live anyway. They're really awful. But the good thing
was that we got a lot of really good press about that because we know a lot of the rock
writers in this town, and they're all on our side, so the Pixies got a lot of shit for
that, which they really deserved."
In the Pulsebeat
article, it said that the Nomads were still working day jobs and weren't really interested
in becoming a band full time. But who ever head of a Nomad with a steady job? I mean, can
you see Attila the Hun at a desk job? And now they've had a couple more years of
successful raping, burning, pillaging, and raping...hmmm...oh, yes, there I was...so have
they changed their minds?
"That thing in Pulsebeat
was done a couple of years ago, and at that time the Nomads really were a hobby for all of
us. We just couldn't believe that people would be interested in something that sounded as
weird as we did. So the relative success of the Nomads really startled all of us; we were
really surprised by it, and we didn't think that the attention we got would last very
long, but it did anyway and now we're much more into being a full time band than we were a
couple of years ago. It's really a paradox, but now that we're much more into playing full
time it's much more difficult for us, so it's really a shitty situation.
"I dunno, the
things I said in the Pulsebeat thing, there's some truth in that too, if you just
keep it at a hobby level and just play sometimes it's more fun and maybe you give more
somehow. Anyway, these days we all have jobs that...stupid jobs that you can get off any
time, and we try to play as much as we can."
So there you have
it. The up to the minute dump on the Nomads situation. Check in the reviews for my
comments on the new lp...as I write this I still haven't latched onto a copy
yet...Midnight keeps advertising it, but they never have it, but hopefully I'll get it in
time to review.
