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I was about to have a chat with Larzon and Mathias from the Swedish punk-rock export Millencolin in their hometown of Örebro, just west of Stockholm. I arrived in a Volvo. They arrived in a god damn 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1 and as one might expect, guitarist Mathias is very proud of his car since American Muscle is hard to come by in Sweden. After every stop he makes, he gives it a little extra gas and leaves big black rubber markings on the ground. The roar from the engine even makes me, the mighty Car Incompetence Man, crack a smile. Given my complete lack of car knowledge, I ask him what the top speed might be...?

Mathias: Before I ripped out the back seats and installed nitrous oxide, I had 550 horse powers in there. With the extra boost from the gas, it gives me 750. Top speed is nothing. Acceleration is everything.

Bummer. I didn’t know that.

M: I would guess it does 0 – 100 km/h in three point five seconds, maybe four on a bad day. After I installed the gas, it runs like a god damn rocket.

I believe him. It comes as no surprise to me that these guys like fast cars. Not only are they rock stars, a breed known to have a knack for dangerous things, but they’ve also had first hand experience with the dangers of the road.

Larzon: Yeah… We’ve had a few incidents. We were in Idaho once and the bus caught fire somewhere in the back. There was a weird noise and someone told us to get the hell out, so we did. It went ok though. We also managed to burn down another tour bus to the ground. Accidents happen…

I’ve heard enough. Gently we step away from the car (or, in the hands of these guys, a ticking bomb) and head up to their studio right next to Burning Heart Records, the label Millencolin has been on since they released their debut album Same Old Tunes (previously known as Tiny Tunes) in 1994. As we take a seat in the cozy studio, I wonder why they have decided to stay in Örebro even though they have reached stardom in USA, South America, Japan and Australia to name a few countries.


M: Sometimes I wish I lived somewhere else, because of the weather, but I mean we grew up here. This is our town! And we got our studio and record label right next door so we’ve never really had any reason to leave. When you’re on tour, it doesn’t matter where you live. You’re always far from home anyway.

L: Nikola (bass & singing) left Örebro though. He lives in Gothenburg now. According to him it’s the greatest city in the world. He’s really into that place.

M: Yeah, he doesn’t even remember what it’s like here. He can say things like ‘Oh, the choices I have over here! Do you even have Indian or Chinese food in Örebro?’ And he grew up here! But then again, Nikola always was a little weird… In a good way, of course.

No bashing the guy who’s not there to defend himself, huh? Alright, but it’s funny how bass players many times seems to be a little weird, misplaced or different from the other members of the band. Millencolin has no such problem?

L: Nikola never was the standard bass player. He’s a character, no doubt, but he’s never been one of those, you know, the-band-and-then-the-bass-player kind of guy.

M: Remember that Nikola not only plays bass guitar. He sings too. We’ve got a hell of an upgraded bass player!

And in Nikola, Millencolin has got a singer who doesn’t stand in front of the others. He’s far from being a Pete Doherty or a Gwen Stefani who take the entire spotlight away from the rest of the guys. That cements the feeling of Millencolin being a collective, a feeling I’ve had ever since their debut when they where a bunch of skateboarders playing happy tunes in my walkman. They made me want to be a skateboarder too, but I had a bad knee (lie) and now I’m too old. Scary fact from the book of life: Rock stars get older too.


L: No one in the band skates anymore. I never did. Mathias used to be really good though.

M: Yeah, it was fun, but you grow fond of other things. It’s a matter of age I guess. I considered buying one of those long-boards though. There’s a gas station downhill from where I live, and it would be easier to get there with a long-board.

Easier to get there… Well, even if they abandoned the skate culture, the skate culture didn’t abandon them. Millencolin are still represented in various underground skate movies and recently in a couple of snowmobile productions as well. It’s hard to imagine the film makers asking for permission or paying any kind of royalties, so I wonder what philosophy Millencolin has on the issue.

M: We’ve got those kinds of videos to thank for a lot. It’s basically free PR. They don’t exactly sell more videos because we have a song in there somewhere, and I don’t think many of those guys get very rich from selling them either. They get a nice soundtrack and we get some attention. It’s a win for both sides.

L: We get mail all the time from people who would like to use our songs in their videos. I don’t think we’ve ever said no. As long as it’s a serious production, it’s OK.

So using their songs for commercial purposes with a low financial profit is OK. Then how about using their songs for personal reasons with even smaller financial profits in mind, like for example, downloading their albums from the internet?

M: That’s not even comparable. Sharing songs on the internet sucks! I don’t understand why people have to download songs for free just because it’s possible. People say they do it because they don’t want to support the ‘big evil record labels’ but they don’t understand how many people this affects. It’s not just the big labels that get hurt. Small labels, distributors and artists have seen their sales plummet since file sharing started.

L: Take our label as an example. Burning Heart Records used to have thirteen employees and now they have one. The Millencolin fan base has grown bigger and bigger for each record but we sell less copies.

M: I almost get pissed off!

I hit a nerve here…

M: Some artists, like Fred Durst from Limp Bizkit, go out in media and say that file sharing is ok just to be cool. They think that if the kids like them, they will sell copies anyway. Of course Fred Durst wants to make money, probably more than most. On the other side, Lars Ulrich from Metallica had to endure the entire world throwing shit at him, just because he said early on what everyone in the business thought. He had some guts.

Well… Millencolin got themselves in some trouble in 1994 for using copyrighted material without asking. When I remind the guys of their own little ownership mishap, they dismiss it rather quickly.

M: We paid dearly for that. We got sued by Warner Brothers for naming our album Tiny Tunes (an obvious reference to Tiny Toons) and for using that rainbow circle thing on the cover. We had to re-release the album with a new name (Same Old Tunes) and a new cover. We also had some Chiquita bananas references in the booklet so Chiquita told us to stop, or else… So we stopped.

Good idea. That could’ve been a big setback in the coin purse for Millencolin. But they dodged the obstacle and kept on moving, with the mandatory worked-too-hard-speed-bump on the way.

L: We had a collective breakdown in 1998. There was too much of everything and it really got to us. All the pressure from outside made us think that this is how it is to play in a band, so we never said stop. When it gets too much, you eventually run out of ideas.

Now, they work the way they want to. In their own studio with their own ideas and at their own pace. Even the fact that every member except one has a musical side project doesn’t seem to disturb Millencolin.

L: Nikola has his own little project. He has released one album and is working on a second I believe. I have a band called Kvoteringen and Mathias is about to release an album with his band Franky Lee. Erik (guitar) is the only one who doesn’t do music except for Millencolin. He’s more into graphic design and that kind of stuff.
Every one of us knows that Millencolin is our first priority, and we’ve never had any problems with that. I think Nikola had like five to ten shows when he released his album, so it never really got in the way of what we as a band were doing. As long as it works for all of us it’s alright. Should the solo thing get the upper hand of Millencolin, well… We would have to have a discussion about that.

Speaking of discussions, ours is just about over. They have things to do, places to go and people to meet. I thank them for their time but just as we part ways I suddenly realize that I’ve been talking to one of my all time favorite bands and I didn’t take a picture of me and them together. I had a great opportunity and I blew it. Well, I guess that’s why they drive around in a 1969 Ford Mustang, and I drive a god damn Volvo.

TEXT ANDREAS GORDONSSON
PHOTO  DANIEL GARDELL, JENS ANDERSSON

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