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Mando Diao Interview (english) |
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| (Anna-Lena Gugger) Before the Mando Diao gig at Zurich's Maag Event Hall on 11/14/06, Gustaf Norén and Samuel Giers answered a couple of questions and commented on the 13 songs Björn Dixgård chose for Die Klangschau.
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I would like to talk about the cover of Ode To Ochrasy. Can you tell me why you chose this particular drawing?
Gustaf: We want to encourage young artists. This guy, Roman Wåhlin, was 10 years old when he did it. We want to show that a child can draw as nice or maybe nicer pictures than an adult. It’s kind of the same with the music we do: You don’t have to be routined or experienced to do it, you just have to do it.
It reminds me very much of the aesthetics of art brut or outsider art, as it is also called in the English speaking world. It’s a style of art made by outlaws, which would fit perfectly to the songs on Ode To Ochrasy. There are people who said that this art is the pure and raw creative output.
Gustaf: Yeah, those people are not fucked up by this whole system around them.
On your Myspace site, you write that it’s all about building a clan „Corleone-style“. In those clans, there are always unwritten rules, rituals and coded language that exclude outsiders. Do you have something like that aswell, do you have a Mando Diao-code?
Samuel: We feel you have to be very tight as a group to be able to make music together and be as creative as possible. We spend a lot of time together, so we get to know each other on all the levels of our brains. It’s much easier to create if everybody is thinking in the same direction.
Gustaf: When I read the book „The Godfather“, it was very clear that it was a working system of caporegimes, the Godfather and the family. It was based on blood rather than skills. That’s kind of the same thing with Mando Diao. We’re not the best players, but the blood that runs through our veins is right and pure, we come from the same town and we have the same experience of life, which makes us much better musicians, not by skills, just by belonging together and knowing each other.
And also, this is becoming such a big organisation. It’s kind of a Wu-Tang clan feeling. We’re the five original members in a closed chamber (Gustaf refers to the Wu-Tang Clan’s 36 chambers) with all the caporegimes around us. There’s 50 people working for us on this tour. If we don’t keep it very tight in the clan, it would kind of ruin it. It’s a way of keeping everything under control.
What does a single gig mean to you after so many years on tour? Is it like going to the factory and getting your work done?
Samuel: Maybe a single concert doesn’t matter so much in the big picture. And it is work in a way, but every show is different from the other one. Something always happens and we’ve learnt most by playing live and being on tour. When we don’t learn anymore, I think we’re going to quit. Every concert is a learning experience for us. And of course, it’s so much fun to get the appreciation from the fans in real life and not just from the internet.
Gustaf: We change things every day. Every show is different. The soundcheck... We always change something, sometimes it makes it worse, sometimes better. You never know if tonight is going to be the best show of your life. To always know that you can reach that peak makes you very interested in what you do. The concert in Fribourg two days ago was one of those shows where everything just linked. When someone did something, everyone followed, we didn’t even have to look at each other! None of the things we do on stage are planned. Sometimes it’s just fucking shit, you miss every beat, each other, we go separate ways. In Fribourg, everyone was going in the right direction, without even knowing which direction this was. It was just going with the flow. That felt really good.
Samuel: We always aim to reach this, but it’s always a surprise when it happens.
Die deutsche Version des Interviews gibts hier.
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