Wilmer
X
This article originally was the cover feature for
NFH #15 in the winter of 1989.
It's probably safe to
assume that if you're reading this magazine you are aware that Scandinavian rock and roll
doesn't start with Abba and end with A-ha. Bands like the Shoutless bubble in obscurity
putting out some strong records with a tough guitar sound, the Pushtwangers create classy
pop, and of course all the independent magazines proclaim the Nomads as the kings of
Swedish rock.
But if the Nomads are
the kings overseas, Wilmer X are aces at home. Wilmer X have been around longer, put out
more records, played to more people and have more good songs than any of their countrymen.
Their records contain an intoxicating brew of music that runs from a tough Dr. Feelgood's
style r&b on the earliest records to a rabble-rousing brand of hard guitar pop on the
present day stuff. Yet other than a couple of scattered reviews and a short writeup in the
Aussie fanzine Shakin' Street, I've never seen anything written on them. I reckoned
I should do something about that, so I dashed off a home interview kit to the band, and
here we are! The only problem I have is that I haven't been able to track down all their
records yet, so there are still some big gaps in what I know about their material. But
what I have found has made me a believer.
"Wilmer X was
started in the spring of 1978 by me and a school friend, Clas Rosenberg, deciding to join
a rock show in the auditorium of our school. All the other bands were dealing with jazz
and fusion rock, so the whole thing was planned as a coup attempt. We listened to blues,
rock'n'roll, pop music and punk and were really fed up with the musical climate. In our
city, Malmo, the punk music hadn't rooted and everything was more or less dead. We called
in Clas' friend Jalle Lorensson on harmonica and drummer Jorgen Stridit. The whole thing
turned out to be a success (although not everybody in the audience thought so!), so we
decided to continue. A year and a half later the rumor of the band had spread and a
Swedish rock magazine, LARM! (Noise!) financed a single. A year later we made our
debut on an lp (1981's Wilmer X) after a few re-shuffles in the band. In 1982 the
lp Fula Fula Ord (Dirty Dirty Words) was released by the Stockholm independent
record company, MNW, and that was a co-operation that lasted until 1987."
Thus Nils Hellberg
(all the quotes here are attributable to Hellberg), singer and guitar player since the
start, summarizes the origins of Wilmer X. Not too different from the stories of a lot of
bands starting around that time. And though I'll probably never lay hands on that first lp
and single, I have got a copy of Fula Fula Ord (which you can get from places like
Midnight and Metro Music). This lp features a curious sound for a 1982 release; at a time
when punk bands were either accelerating into hardcore or turning to funk or synthesized
new wave, Wilmer X was cutting loose with a sound that seems to mix glitter rock with a
strong r&b leaning and prominently featuring harmonica, which certainly was not a
ticket to critical acclaim at the time. But despite the fact that individual songs appear
to be more of a logical outgrowth of T. Rex and Dr. Feelgood than the Sex Pistols, viewed
as an lp, the record can be seen to have taken one key element from punk ideology; it
kicks from start to finish with no fillers and no wasted space. It becomes more logical as
Hellberg explains his interests.
"One could say I
like artists who clearly show that they have their roots in the original rock music. My
favorites are people like Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Elvis, Eddie Cochran, Buddy Holly,
Beatles, Stones, Credence, T. Rex, Ramones and Nick Lowe. For me the music of today is
very disrupted. A lot of good music is created but it's difficult to see any clear lines.
I do like the bands from Texas (Fabulous Thunderbirds and Omar and the Howlers) but I also
like to listen to the Hoodoo Gurus, Jesse Johnson, AC/DC or the African musician Mory
Kante."
Two other things make
Fula Fula Ord jump out as an introduction to the band. First is Hellberg's great
vocals, which are smooth when they need to be, rough when they ought to be, and basically
just what this music needs. Second is the fact that the vocals are all in Swedish...Wilmer
X definitely disprove the philosophy prevalent among European bands that rock'n'roll is an
English medium and requires English words. Wilmer X music can connect in any tongue:
"We have made two tours abroad in countries where our records have been released
(West Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Belgium). Last week we played Madrid and Pamplona,
Spain. It's exciting to see that our music seems to work abroad as well. A couple of
critics in Sweden have the opinion that our strength lies in the Swedish lyrics."
In the beginning of
1983, the band picked up a new drummer, Sticky Bomb, who was something of a fixture in the
Swedish punk scene playing in bands such as Kriminella Gitarrer (Criminal Guitars) in the
small town of Klippan, north of Wilmer X's home base of Malmo in the extreme south of
Sweden. Later in the same year they replaced their bass player with Stefan Bjork and Clas
was replaced by Thomas Holst on guitar. Holst was also from Klippan, while Bjork comes
from the middle of Sweden. This resulted in a substantial change in the sound; the new
members brought in a punk influence and Hellberg himself was starting to listen to more
new bands (he cites Bad Brains as one example). The result is that although there are
still a number of songs with the r&b and blues feel of Fula Fula Ord, the
emphasis shows a definite shift to songs with hard guitar hooks; Ramones meets Bo Diddley,
perhaps. Says Hellberg: "From this it's easy to understand part of the Wilmer X
sound. A mixture of genuine blues and rock'n'roll interest (Jalle and myself) and punk/new
wave. In principal everybody joined the band by having been close friends for quite a
while. No one can play with Wilmer X just because they are a musician. We play the music
we love irrespective of what is trendy and "in". I've always loved rock'n'roll
going towards rhythm'n'blues and I don't and won't do anything else. Most of things that
you find in the hitlists these days are rubbish but it's more important to develop the
band than complain about others as many do. What gives me a real high is to play in a
tight band when hundreds or thousands of people are dancing. For me, music must contain
happiness, aggression and lots of energy."
At home in Sweden the
band seem to be able to get that high that Hellberg is looking for with pretty fair
regularity. Hellberg concedes that the Nomads and Pushtwangers have had better success
than Wilmer X at getting acclaim abroad, but in Sweden they are not name bands. Wilmer X
are; by their own accounts they've been part of the Swedish rock establishment for five
years (a tip of the hat to the Swedes for their good tastes!), and while the Nomads or
Pushtwangers might sell 4,000 copies of any one of their releases, Wilmer X typically sell
around 10,000 of each release and their newest, Teknikens Under (The Marvels Of
Science) has sold 30,000 (gold record status in Sweden is 50,000 copies), undoubtedly
aided by the push their new deal with EMI Sweden has given them. They play about 80
concerts a year and do well enough that they haven't had to do anything other than play in
the band since 1983.
One can see why they
would achieve such popularity at home by listening to their live lp, the 1986 release V-I-L-D.
The band are able to sound as tight and controlled as on their studio records, but they've
also got an extra touch of energy that no doubt derives from that "high" Nils
was talking about. The crowd response to each song is long and loud. They seem to regard
Wilmer X as their own; a Swedish band that cares enough about the home crowd to
concentrate on playing for them rather than trying to escape the country for the big money
overseas.
At the time I wrote
to Wilmer X I had just picked up 1987's Not Glamorous, in which all the songs are
sung in English. I asked Nils how the home folks reacted to this switch, to which he
emphatically replies: "We have NEVER switched from Swedish to English. What has
happened is that we have released two lps abroad with English lyrics. The recordings are
otherwise identical with the Swedish ones. We stick to Swedish and it's a large part of
our image."
In which case Not
Glamorous (the English version of Tungt Vatten as I subsequently found out) is
extra impressive, since there are few things more difficult to imagine than rewriting all
the words to an lp in a second language and getting a result that sounds as powerful as
this. Side one in particular is a total roar; it starts with four straight
potential A-sides: "Go On Your Own", "Skunk", "Kiss TNT" and
"Radiac Brain", all of which are pedal-to-the-metal power guitar blasters. The
pace breaks for the blues ballad "Your Most Raggedy Friend" and then rips off
again with "She's On The Top". Massive stuff.
The other English
language disc Hellberg referred to, entitled Downward Bound, is a collection of
singles tracks with new English lyrics. This one came out in 1986 and is nearly as good as
Not Glamorous. My special favorite is "Down On My Knees Again", which was
the flip to the "I Din Klinik" single. Despite its brain eating guitar riff,
Hellberg says "When we recorded it I didn't think too much of it, partly because the
riff was too similar to the Ramones' "Highest Trails Above". It slowly grew on
me and therefore was included when we made our English lp." Personally, I don't hear
the Ramones cop, and even so, the Ramones should withdraw their song to make way for this
one, if there's a case to be made. The interesting thing about this song, though, is that
to my ears the Swedish version "Nere Pa Kna Igen" sounds a lot better because
the words work better even though I can't understand them.
Hellberg seems to
feel that the Swedish rock scene has crested and that things are getting slow right now.
"Seven, eight years ago things were really bubbling with activity in Sweden. A lot of
garage rock bands were formed, as is documented on the lp A Real Cool Time - Distorted
Sounds From The North. None of these groups made it commercially and today there is a
lack of rock bands again. Apart from the Pushtwangers and the Nomads, I recommend the
Dolkows, Dr. Yogami and Leather Nun. The greatest singer at present is a clever soul/pop
singer called Orup whom I warmly recommend." But Wilmer X appear to be making it over
the hump; Hellberg feels that things are going better for the band than ever before. Teknikens
Under, while not as rootsey as Fula Fula Ord or as raging as Not Glamorous
is another solid addition to the Wilmer X catalog, and with EMI backing it's almost
certain to make more of an impact than any other Wilmer X record. Plans are for an English
language version to be released by EMI in the near future. In the meantime there is also a
"Best Of" compilation called Blud Eller Guld (1982-87) (which will also
be out on CD with 8 bonus tracks; sounds like justification for skipping vinyl). The band
dreams of playing in the US, but the costs are so high that they feel they have to have a
very serious offer first. Hellberg plans to travel here on his own this spring, but it'll
be a while before we see a tour from the looks of things. In the meantime, if you'll slide
up from the "A" bins in the record shops to the "W" section, you'll
find where some of the real power in Scandinavian rock bands is.
Wilmer X
Discography
Singles:
Sov Min Alskling/Sag
Din Mamma & Din Papa (1980)
En Dansande Polis/Wilmer I Paris (1981)
Vagen Till Klippan/Kul I Kvall (fanzine flexi) (1982)
Blud Eller Guld/Vild (1983)
Vem Ar Den Flickan/Branner Ett Brev (1983)
Kor Dej Dod/Nattens Stora Suck/Tiden Laker Sar (1984)
Hong Kong Pop/Natten Har Ingen Lag (1985)
I Din Klinik/Nere Pa Kna Igen (1985)
Hong Kong Boy/Siesta Round The Clock (1986)
Sanningens Pilot/Din Blekaste Van (1986)
Teknikens Under/Allt Och Annu Mer (1988)
Bla Vagen Hem/Tuff Scum Lader (1988)
Tio Langa Ar/Go Go Wilmer '88 (10 years celebration giveaway) (1988)
Albums:
Wilmer X (mini lp)
(1980)
Wilmer X (1981)
Fula Fula Ord (1982)
Djungelliv (1983)
Under Hot (1985)
V-I-L-D (1986)
Tungt Jatten (1986)
Downward Bound (1986)
Not Glamorous (1987)
Teknikens Under (also on CD with 3 bonus tracks) (1988)
Blod Eller Guld (1982-87) (also on CD with 8 bonus tracks) (1988)
12" singles:
Ga I Topp/Suart Guld
(1986)
Teknikens Under/Falsk Matematik/Om En Hund Madde Sa Har/Allt Och Annu Mer (1988)
Compilations:
Motorbike Drivin' on A
Real Cool Time - Distorted Sounds From The North (1985)
Min Polare Per/Hopplos Blues on Various Artists Sing Swedish Troubadour Cornelis
Vreeswijk "Den Flygande Hollandaren" (1988)
