Therion
I Can't Write On Command

23.10.2012

It’s no secret that an interview needs a “newsbreak” to be addressed, and it’s a very rare occasion when journalists have the chance just to chat with a musician over a cup of tea or a glass of something stronger. This mostly happens when the relations between the two go beyond just pure business. In all other cases an interview has its specific goals. But no matter what a newsbreak is, there is usually time for some “off-topic” questions. After all, just a few musicians are ready to describe their upcoming tour for more than five minutes or talk about their new album only for 30 minutes in a row, so you usually also have time to talk to them about the weather, extraterrestrial civilizations, meaning of life or any other topic that may be of interest to you. However, sometimes it happens that instead of one newsbreak, a musician gives you ten of them, and then you have to forget about all side-questions – discussing the fate of mankind does not seem right when the fate of your very interlocutor is at stake… That’s the situation that I and all my colleagues found ourselves at when it came to interviewing Christofer Johnsson, the mastermind behind Swedish sympho metal wizards Therion. The statement about the band’s future plans that Christofer recently made on Therion’s official website caused so many questions, that when getting ready for this interview, I hardly managed to decide what should be addressed first. Because of that I can’t say that our conversation fully satisfied my personal curiosity, but I hope that Christofer and me managed to shed for you some light on some of the most critical points of interest about the band.

I think most of your fans are rather shocked by the recent news, so let’s discuss them step by step. First of all, could you explain please why this new album (or art project) “Les Fleurs du Mal” is so important for you that you decided to take such a risk to make it happen?

Well, you can follow your heart with things. We’ve done 14 studio albums before this, we’ve been around for 25 years, it’s a long-long time. And I’m very keen on keeping the fire burning, I want to have the same spirit like back then when we recorded the first album, forever. I don’t want to have it like, “Oh, let’s make another record”, you know. Therion have never made just another album. It could be that people don’t like the album, but I can personally guarantee that this is the best thing I could have done at the moment and I really enjoyed what I did when I made the record. Every time we make a record I can guarantee that. And in the end it’s different style, so people have different favorites. They might be disappointed when they hear a new record and they might like the older one more… Every time we make a record there are people who are disappointed with it. People have different tastes. But I need to be able to say, “Hey, this is what I really want to do now, I really like this and this is the best we could have done now”. Not just like, “Huh, it would be nice to make another tour, so let’s make a record so we can make a tour and play over the classics”.

There are a lot of bands that think this way, like Saxon or whatever… I mean, who’s interested in hearing new songs on a Saxon album? You know, I’m a Saxon fan, but it’s a classic example of a band who have 25-year-old songs on their setlists. Their classic records were made in the first half of their career and in the second half they didn’t have anything like that, and their setlists look pretty the same for the last 20 years. I respect them for what they do, I can go and watch them play and enjoy it, but personally that would be a nightmare if nobody is interested in what we’re doing at the moment. Then I might start doing something else. And as it’s said, people may like or dislike your new record, but at least you get a reaction. People know you’ve made a new record, people care, people are curious what you’ve made this time. When it comes to a band like Saxon, they are like, “Oh, they have a new record, all right…” (laughs) But people come to listen to “Motorcycle Man” and that sort of songs on their shows. It’s not many people who would say, “Yeah, they played a new song, great!” People wanna hear the classics. But with Therion people are at least interested in a new record, they wanna hear new songs, and that’s been very important for me from album to album through years.

Now for the first time I came to a point that is like, “I really don’t know what to do next”. I didn’t have inspiration for making another album, it just didn’t work for me. I would need to take a 5-year-break to get the inspiration again, so I thought, “Hey, it’s our 25-year anniversary, I would anyway need a few years’ break, so let’s do something crazy”. I had some thoughts about that before, but I thought like, “Maybe I can do it some day”. And now it’s our 25-year anniversary and you’re expected to do something different. If you’re having your 25-year anniversary what can you do then? I can tell you that the worst thing to do is to release a best-of album. We’ve made 14 albums, we’ve been around for 25 years and we’ve never released a best-of album. I don’t understand why they still do those best-of albums. If you want to check out a band’s older stuff you can find it on the Internet or you can pre-listen on iTunes. There’s no need for a best-of album. It’s just so boring, the idea of making a “best of” or “greatest hits”. That was one of the suggestions from the record company and I was like, “No, we’re not making a best-of album”.

Another thing some bands do is re-record some older records, but seriously who the fuck wants that? Running Wild made some re-recordings of old songs and everybody hates this, Twisted Sister re-recorded the entire “Stay Hungry” album and everybody hates this… So what’s the point of doing that? If the album sounded good then it sounds good now! Of course, if you made an album that sounded like shit, because you had good songs but you played bad or the sound was bad, okay, fine, then you can make a re-recording of it. But in most cases it’s just some stupid idea from officials and people won’t be interested in hearing new versions and I don’t really get it.

So let’s do something Therion-style. Therion style is an unpredictable thing, so let’s just do something crazy that we really want to do, but that normally wouldn’t fit into what we’re doing. So it’s an art project and the record is a part of it. For our fans the record will be 90% of the project because they care mostly about the music, for me it’s maybe 75%. But it’s important to get some reactions, not just like another album-another tour-another album-another tour, wheels are turning, years are passing. Do something challenging.

The record company thought it was a little bit too spectacular. I would like to stress the fact that we’re still Nuclear Blast artists and we will release albums with Nuclear Blast in future, but we didn’t speak the same language when it came to this project. They were speaking about the best-of album and I was like, “Aaaaah” (laughs) I was into this thing and I wanted to make this project and when they suggested putting out a best-of album it was like having sex with a beautiful girl and in the middle of it she says, “Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you, I’m a man”. So, no, we were not speaking the same language at all. They’re a fantastic record company and they give me such artistic freedom to do what I want normally, but they were speaking about best-of album and I was speaking about a groundbreaking art, breaking boundaries. It’s just about how it works. They are a big label, they’re doing business how it’s usually done, they want to do a master tape and promo photos and to send your music to journalists and to get their reviews and send you on tour. It’s always done the same way. But as you can see. what I’m doing now is different. I’m not going to send promos to any journalists, not even music journalists I’ve known for 20 years, nobody has a copy and you can’t find it on the Internet. There’s no way to have it. We will release the album to the fans first at our concerts.

Tons of people told me, “You can’t do it that way” – but of course you can, we’re doing it now. And if music journalists get pissed off because they didn’t get a copy, okay then, no problem, if you’re pissed off don’t make a review, someone else will. I’d rather invite music journalists to come to the show, I can give them a copy in person, I think it’s okay if they get it the same way as the fans. Get back to the roots. You know, most of the journalists started with writing for small magazines and they did it because of their love for the music. And then it becomes routine to work as a music journalist. I don’t know how many promos you get per month, but there should be many CDs and they need to be reviewed. It’s like a factory. You get a lot of stuff and most of them are crap, but you have to listen to them and write something anyway. And also those promo CDs with all this “you’re listening to the new Therion album and this song is called blah-blah-blah, peep” in the middle of the song, and you also get only an ugly paper folder with it and not the whole booklet with the lyrics and pictures or sometimes you can only download the music… It’s not the right way of discovering new music. I want to give a full real CD to every music journalist.

Oh, I see… But why weren’t the management of your label happy with this project? I mean, why couldn’t they believe in it and trust you and let you do your thing?

Well, it’s different from what we did as Therion. But on the other hand they didn’t believe in “Theli” either. When I sent them the master tape of “Theli” they were like, “What the fuck is this?” They said, “Oh, it’s a strange record, do you think your fans will like this?” And this was the breakthrough album for Therion. And when after its success we made “Vovin”, they were like, “Oh, but you’ve changed your style here, you don’t sing anymore, it’s much softer, do you think this is cool? Why didn’t you try to copy “Theli”?” They didn’t say that they didn’t believe in the “Vovin” album, but they were not really enthusiastic. And that “Vovin” album was selling great.

What the record label says doesn’t really mean anything. They understand the business and they can make some good decisions and they have taste, but they don’t always understand new things. They usually see what happens, when some small labels sign new bands and they say, “Oh, this is a new trend, so let’s have this new kind of music” and then they will sign some good bands or buy them from a smaller label. But they don’t really notice these new things by themselves. I know better than they know what the next great thing probably will be. And young bands that are around, they know much better than me, because they see what’s happening now.

So that’s one thing why they weren’t very enthusiastic, but as I told you that didn’t mean anything to me, because they weren’t enthusiastic about “Theli” which is our best album for many fans. But the main thing was how I wanted to work on this. The main thing was not the music. The main thing we disagreed about was HOW to work on this. They wanted to do it in a regular, business as usual way and put out a best-of album. I don’t want that fucking best-of CD and I don’t want to work in a regular way, I want to break boundaries and do it differently. And they didn’t like that way of working, so I told them, “If you’re not comfortable with this and instead of we both compromise so that we can live with this, but nobody’s happy about it, I can buy back the master tape and then do it myself”. Of course I could go to another label and get money there, but they wouldn’t like me to go to any competitor and I wouldn’t do that because that could’ve made our relations bad and we have fantastic relations. I’d rather release it myself.

Could you reveal at least something about the concept of this record and explain the title that seems to be inspired by Charles Baudelaire’s poetry?

Yes, the title comes from Charles Baudelaire and in some ways it is a tribute to Charles Baudelaire, but that doesn’t mean that we made music for his poems or anything like that. I can’t tell you what the concept is because it will reveal too much. And it’s not really a concept album. It’s very difficult to explain. You’ll understand when you hear it. It’s quite decadent.

One of your singers, Snowy Show, is leaving your band now…

Yes, but I think that not everyone probably understands the difference between a session singer and a band member. Snowy’s never been a member of the band, so we’re just not collaborating anymore, that would be the proper way to say. He was never a permanent singer. For a long while Therion didn’t have any permanent singer at all, we only had different freelancers. But now we have Lori Lewis and Thomas Vikström, they’re permanent members.

And with Snowy… That’s the thing with a session singer. If you have a session singer, then you decide from project to project if you want to continue. There are never any promises and if I make a project and there’s nothing he can sing, he can’t say anything about it because he’s a session singer. Or if I make a project and he says, “Sorry, it’s not my cup of tea”, we find someone else for this record, it’s not a big deal. This is how it is if you have that sort of relations with each other. And in this case this is kind of necessary because Snowy is a strong character, he’s like chili spice. Some people love chili spice, other people can’t stand it, and if you want to make it work you’ve gotta put it in balance, not too much of it, you know, so that most people like it. And there are some sort of things that simply don’t fit, you know, you can’t put chili on pancakes. This is that sort of thing. He didn’t feel compatible with it, he didn’t feel very enthusiastic about it and it was better that he didn’t do it. If it’s not his cup of tea, then he shouldn’t do it, we all agree about that. He did some small contributions and I think those contributions sound great, but he wouldn’t be that good if he had been pushing himself to do a lot of things he didn’t feel like just for money and it wouldn’t be good from our point of view if we were just using his voice. Everyone has their place. And his place was to be a very short visitor in this project.

And when we were discussing this rock opera he said he didn’t want to do it, and that’s okay, someone else would. As long as it’s an opera, we’re going to have only opera singers there, but there was a special character and I thought that maybe Snowy could get that small role because it would be different if we had one singer who’s not an opera singer. But I can understand that he won’t be comfortable when everything is opera and he’s the only guy who’s not opera. He said it’s not his thing at all. I completely understand that. And it also depends… We have different ideas about which synopsis we’re gonna make the opera based on. If we do one type I’m thinking and speaking about, there would be this role for him, but if we take another one there wouldn’t be a role for him. There would be only opera singers. So it could have been the other way round, we could have told him, “Sorry, we don’t need your services”. But I want to state that we don’t shut the doors. He’s our session singer and if we record a regular album one day and he doesn’t have too many things to do and has inspiration to work with us, we can work together as nothing’s happened. We’re still good friends.

Yeah, talking about your rock opera, can you say a bit more about it? You’re planning to have in staged as a real theatrical performance, right?

Yeah, that’s what the whole idea, I mean, to stage it. I’m pretty convinced we’re gonna record it in the studio as well so people can buy the music. But the whole idea is to stage it, so we need a lot of choreography, we need to make scenery, we need some manufactured things… That’s why it’s gonna take so many years. There’re so many new things to do. We haven’t decided yet when we’re gonna start working on it. Maybe next year. But I can imagine that we will finish this opera, stage it, maybe record one show first and then tour with the opera, so that people can buy a DVD at the show and see the concert and then go home and watch the DVD whenever they like. Something like that. Maybe CD, whatever. But we haven’t discussed it yet and we’ll continue with this art project, I guess, till the end of the year. And then we’ll take a break and start discussing what to do with this rock opera.

Okay, but then it feels like you’re planning to tour with it and to have a kind of show, and not like regular theatrical performances. I mean, you’re not going to choose a venue and play there every weekend or something like that, am I right?

No, our aim is to do it like one week in one place. As a metal band we can do like one show per town, but that’s too expensive to do it this way with that sort of production. And we’re also gonna have to aim at the mainstream audience for musicals. You know those people who would go and see “Jesus Christ Superstar”. So that will be a challenge, because the Therion fans will care 90% about the music. And that sort of mainstream audience comes to be entertained and for them the story is the most important thing. Music is a part of it too, but they see it from another perspective. And that will be a great challenge, which is very refreshing. As Therion we’re playing for our old fans. Everybody who comes to our shows really likes what we do and even if we do a shitty show they’re okay with it because they respect the band and like our songs. I’m the same myself, when I go to see Iron Maiden or Judas Priest or some of my long loved bands I’m like, “Yes, Judas Priest!” But if you play for someone who’s unfamiliar with your works and is gonna see you for the first time, it’s harder to do that. I guess it would be fantastic to do the first show for the Therion fans so that they can give us some self-confidence. And then to do more shows for the mainstream crowd. And I hope that we can take it from town to town, as much as possible. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t know how many years it’s gonna take. I’m uncertain about how many years it’s gonna take to be created and then I’m uncertain about for how long we’re going to perform it. It could be that nobody’s fucking interested and they say, “You guys suck, we don’t wanna see that”, and then we will just do a few shows for the Therion fans. But it would be interesting just to try doing something different and meanwhile we’ll get so incredibly hungry for making a new Therion album so whenever we’ll be able to make a regular Therion album we’ll have so much inspiration. We’re gonna burst with fire. And this is what I want. It should be like, “Yes, we’re gonna make a record again, finally!”

Can’t you give at least some hints about the synopsizes you’re considering. What can your opera be about?

Nothing is decided yet. I started writing a regular opera ten years ago. I was writing it for 7 years and for the last 3 years I didn’t write anything. I can write only hit parts, you know. It’s like some people can’t listen to a 6-hour Wagner opera, that’s too much for them, so they buy the highlight CD for 1 hour with the best parts. This is the thing I can write. I can write the parts you remember from opera. But then you have this “transport” music that takes you from A to B and I’m very bad at writing that. I simply can’t do that. I guess I’m damaged by rock music or something, I need something to happen all the time in my music and if you write classical music you can’t have too much action all the time. The listener will be tired from it. So I didn’t manage to finish it. And since I didn’t write anything for 3 years, one day I just told myself, “Do it, do what you’re good at, it’s not your thing to write operas, so make it Therion music”. I made a decision that I’d take the classical music I’d written for my real opera and make it into Therion music, and then the idea was born and I decided to make a Therion rock opera instead, which is probably a good decision. It’s very ambitious and interesting to write a regular opera, but probably if I had written it that way, 99% of people hearing it would have said, “Well, not bad for a metal guy”. I mean, it wouldn’t have been a big thing. So I guess I’d better make something that means more to people and to myself by doing it Therion-style. So now I have 40 minutes written as a classical opera and we haven’t yet started to transform it. And we haven’t chosen the synopsis yet, we just have some ideas and we have to write at least one and a half more hours of music. We’re gonna have to decide what theme to have. You know, we’re starting from almost zero. We only have 40 minutes of classical music I’ve written, this is the only thing we have for sure at this point. So it’s not like I’m being secretive about it, it’s just that we haven’t gotten any further yet.

That sounds a bit weird to me, because it seems like when you start writing a musical or an opera you need to know what the story is about…

Yeah, I had an idea of a story when I was writing that opera, but we’re not gonna use it. We need a different one, though we have that music. Of course it is linked to that old theme, but we’re gonna see if we still can use it. I thought of it in a different way… That was one of the reasons I got stuck writing the opera. I’m a guy who writes music and then we decide what lyrics it needs. And with opera, as you said, you need to write music to fit into a story, but I’m not so good at doing that. I just write music, it doesn’t come natural any other way, so I can’t choose how to do it. But I hope that the other guys can help me complete the thing. They are better at… you know, if somebody tells them, “Write this”. If somebody said, “Write a ballad next week and we’ll give you a million euro”, sure I could write some sort of ballad, but it would be the shittiest ballad you’ve ever heard. I can’t shit on command. If somebody tells me, “Go to toilet and shit now and we’ll give you 10000 euro”, I’ll be like, “Eeeh, well, I can try”, but I don’t think it’ll work. Or if I tell you, “Sleep in 5 minutes and I’m gonna give you 10000 euro”, you’ll be like that. You just can’t do things like that on command, and that’s how it is with music for me. But Thomas Vikström is very good at writing on command, he can write any sort of thing, so I think we’ll use my 40 minutes of music as a skeleton and they can help me to make more music and I can rearrange some stuff to make it fit into the whole thing. So we’ll pick a story and we’ll make it work. Maybe when we have at least a dialog written we can then extend the music and add more and so on. It’s gonna take a lot of time indeed.

I think it’s time to discuss your upcoming shows. You promised to communicate with your fans during your tour. Why do you want to do that now? Do you have anything you want to tell or hear from your fans in person?

Well, we’re celebrating 25 years. Without the fans the band is nothing, so it would just be fun to meet the people. I didn’t say that I’ll have a proper single meeting with every single one, I won’t be able to have a 10-minute talk with everyone who comes to our show. But I’ll be available at the merch stand for several hours, just hanging around there and talking to people and after to show I’ll go there again and have some beer. Normally you have these signing sessions that are very strict, you know, people line up and you sign their stuff and immediately turn to the next one… It’s like a factory. Well, it is necessary, because you stay there for one and a half hours and you have 400 people who want to get a signature and a photo, so you need to do that. But I’d like to be there for a few hours and see our fans, see who they are. 25 years - of course it’s special. Some promoters told us that there are people who have already bought tickets for the show and they don’t really know what they bought a ticket for, they’re just going to see Therion. Obviously they are very dedicated fans. And it would be nice to see all these people not just from the stage.

As long as you’re planning to surprise your fans with your new record and only sell it during your shows, it really feels like it’s a kind of experiment. And there’s no point in having an experiment if you don’t see the results. Will you give your fans any possibility to express their feelings about the album, are you interested in their feedback?

Normally I don’t read that much on the Internet, but this time I will. You know, I’m not the kind of guy who’s hanging on the Internet all the time, but of course when you release an album you go there and read some reviews. This time I’ll check more of them, because this time that “social network” kind of thing is a part of the project. And that whole thing about buying a record you haven’t heard is how I grew up. In the 80s there was no Internet, there was no pre-listening thing. Well, there were some big stores where you could pre-listen, but in most cases you could just look at the record cover and it was like, “I’m a Maiden fan, it looks good, so I’ll buy it”. This is how I grew up. You bought a new record and you had to sit in a bus on your way home thinking what it is like and being full of expectation and then come home and put on the LP and read the lyrics at the same time when you’re listening and look at the pictures… That was really interesting, and it is tragically lost nowadays. Of course in the times when I grew up you sometimes bought shitty LPs, sometimes you bought a record and you were disappointed with it, but it was a part of a ritual. You don’t really know if the album is going to be good or not and you go home to discover and I really enjoyed that. Actually a lot of albums that I didn’t like back then I started to like later. And some records that seemed shit and really were shit are still fun to own because they became rare. Have you heard of a French band called Demon Eyes?

Never!

They were really-really bad, but it’s really cool to own the record because nobody else has it. To me, things like that made my record collection complete, there are some really strange things as well. I didn’t see it like that back then, but now I’m really happy I bought those strange records. In Russia I guess it was different in the 80s because in the Soviet Union you couldn’t get most of the records we had, so it might be hard for you to relate to what we think about the 80s… There were very few bands that could get through… Anyway, I hope that people will like our new record and won’t regard it as anything strange and bad. Also I hope that if you get a CD from an artist personally and get it signed it will take some special place in you record collection. I was a huge fan of some bands and when I could get their signature on my records that meant a lot to me.

Okay, and could you say a couple of words about your concerts in Russia? Are you looking forward to come to our country?

It will be very special because we end the tour… Well, the very final show is in Ukraine, but the ending of the tour is in Russia, so it will be one of the last few opportunities in a very long time to see a regular Therion show. And Russia was one of the first countries where we got really big, so it’s very emotional and special for us to play there.

Well, thank you very much for this interview and I wish you all the best with all your projects and hope that your band will have at least another 25 years to go.

Thank you. Well, I don’t regard this 25th anniversary as the end of something, I see it as the begging of the next 25 years. I’m 40 this year, so in 25 years I will be 65… Yeah, that’s realistic. Older than that would be ridiculous, but yeah, sure, another 25 is okay.

Therion on the Internet: http://www.megatherion.com

Special thanks to Alexei Kuzovlev (The Motley Concerts) for arranging this interview

Ksenia Artamonova
September 19, 2012
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