Constanze Leibinger met Adam Grahn from Royal Republic right before the concert. It was a very funny talk with lots of background information around this astonishing cool band from Sweden. As great as the last concerts, the fans can really look forward to their next gigs in Germany, especially at Übel&Gefährlich in Hamburg on 18 November 2011!
Autona: It is good to have you here. You said that it doesn’t make a difference, whether you play for a crowd or just a few people. Tonight, this concert is sold out, the only one. How does that feel?
Adam: Yeah, it is sold out and that is always very cool. It is really surprising on this tour, that we have as many people coming to the concerts. And it is gonna be warm and rough tonight and we are looking forward to it.
Autona: Me too. I’ve also read that Rock am Ring and Rock am Park confirmed you for the summer, as well. And your label names you as rock stars like Kiss or Corn, in the same line. So, do you think that you are now on the road to international success?
Adam: Well, the Festival scene is a huge opportunity for us. We are focusing on Germany and mainly a few countries around Germany, doing a few gigs here and there. But our primary markets are basically in Sweden and Germany. And Germany is starting to pass like Sweden. It is getting a lot bigger which is really cool. We are really looking forward to this Festival summer. At Rock am Ring, I watched my heroes, who played on MTV for many years. So, when my manager confirmed Rock am Ring, I said “Ooohh”. So, you know, that’s a cool thing for my wall.
Autona: Do you think that the German fan community is something special?
Adam: I definitely think so. It is like I’ve always said: If you are a Swedish guy in a Swedish band, you have your friends or rock bands that have been touring in Germany. And they all tell you stories about that. Swedish bands, in particular, get popular in Germany, because the people are so passionate - the people, the crowd, the fans are so passionate about music. The people go to watch concerts during the week. Not only on the weekends what is kind of the case in Sweden. But I had no idea that it is going to be like this. What great response. We are always looking forward to come here nowadays. It is something special, maybe special in the whole world.
Autona: Good to hear. So, when you remember your very first concerts, I’ve read a few really nice descriptions of that. Do you still remember your first gigs at all?
Adam: Yeah, when we started the band, we made up a plan, really quickly. We have to go, we have to do this. We needed a gig and we needed to put pressure on ourselves. Okay, therefore we have to have five songs, because then, we’ll get a concert - we need to write five songs. So we signed up for a local competition with forty bands. Our first concert was on February 7th 2008 in Malmö, where we come from. And we played five songs and I remember the set list correctly: We played Walking down the line, President’s Daughter, I must be on my mind and two other really old songs. And there were about twenty people there. No one had heard us before, because, obviously, we did not exist. And I remember, just going off the stage and thinking: “Wow, did you hear this applause? (clapping hands) Twenty people, you were really good.” We were so happy. From there on, it was all in for us: We quit our jobs, we quit school, we quit everything. We just focussed on doing this.
Autona: Let’s talk about your special relationships to yellow post-its. I’ve got a few for you.
Adam: Awesome.
Autona: Maybe, you’ve got a new idea right now...who knows. I’m wondering how your flat does look like?
Adam: It’s not really that full. Nowadays, I have a new cell phone. That saves a lot of paper, which is good for the environment. Can I keep this? I can use it for the tour bus, although there is not a lot of song writing in the tour bus. We gonna have to get into that. Because there is no time for us to sit down and write songs or hang out in the studio. It is just for ideas. Ideas come whether you have time or not.
Autona: My next question refers to your funny lyrics, like Underwear or Tommy Gun Baby, or whatever. I’ve read that President’s Daughter is kind of autobiographical. How about the others?
Autona: A lot of songs are about fictional people that we made up in our songs. Some of them are semi-biographical. The President’s Daughter, for instance, is a kind of semi-true-story. Oye Oye, the slow song, is about a really ambitious nightmare I had. In general, we didn’t focus that much on the lyrics, more on the whole thing. We always had melodies and always needed words to fit with the melodies. You can’t stand there to sing: “nanana, nananana”, you know? Not to say, that we never write serious lyrics, as we probably will. But this record is just a party record! To make people feel happy makes us feel happy.
Autona: Rocking the stage?
Adam: Pretty much.
Autona: Another question is about your Cover Competition. It is pretty cool that you asked your fans to do this. Who of you guys had the idea for that?
Adam: Actually, it wasn’t our idea. (Whispering) It was the record company’s idea. We just thought it is a cool idea. We are busy all the time. We are touring, pretty much, all the time. So when people send us ideas, we sit and wait for three months. And so we thought, “what the hell, let the people being creative and do what they feel like”. We had a lot of responses, and some of them were really cool. Most of them were doable.
Autona: Let’s talk about the new song Full Steam Space Machine!
Adam: Yeah, I’m really happy about the video for this song, because the moment, when I wrote this song, I had some images and ideas folding up in my head. And I just started to write it down by phone, one day, and it ended up with me writing the entire script like second by second by second. I did a small story board. And thought: “Fuck, this is awesome!” So I gave it to the guys and the record company and they said again: “This is awesome, but this is a million dollar budget video. We can’t do this. It is too expensive. It’s like a Hollywood budget. But then, people just started thinking: “We have to do this! It is too awesome not to do!” We have a really cool friend who shot Underwear as well the Tommy Gun video and a lot of Press Pictures. He also shot this one. It really happened! I’m pretty glad that that it is very different from both, Tommy Gun and Underwear.
Autona: I’ve seen the concert at the Reeperbahn Festival last year as well. What I really find astonishing is, where do you get your energy from? It is like a fitness training, isn’t it?
Adam: I don’t know. It is like a free fitness workout every night. I tried to describe it to people how it feels like on stage: Running as fast as you can for one hour and screaming as loud as you can for one hour. Try to do this and you will know how it feels like. We are killing ourselves every night. Hannes, actually, almost died once. His breathing stopped. I think he was standing too close to the smoke machine. At the end of the gig, we found him on the floor. So we had to bring him a nurse. He was not drinking, not doing anything. I also sometimes almost passed out…. So, it is really rough. But, I think it’s cool. I’m looking forward to have one or two slower songs on the next album.
Autona: I thought you don’t like slower songs like ballades. Maybe it doesn’t fit to your image?
Adam: I don’t know. Not a ballad like “Nothing else matters” for instance. (yawning) We started writing new songs for our next record. I think, this is gonna be more dynamic. The last one is pretty much “kkkrrr”. The next album is going to be a bit more up and down, slower, faster and harder. We are doing what feels right. Full Steam Space Machine, for example was a totally different song from what we’ve done before. But now it feels like us, totally like us. I’m not saying that we abandon our sound, because we love our sound. I think the next album is going to be better than this one. And this is a very good record!
Autona: Thanks Adam. It was a pleasure! Let’s Rock’n’Roll the stage!
an interview by constanze leibinger.
