GÖSTA:
Yes, Bob, when did you start playing music?
BOB:
I… It was a happy Christmas Eve when I was about 11 years old – I got a guitar for Christmas. If you consider that not many people in my family played so maybe it was a way of trying to keep me in in the evenings, I don’t know. But at least it was a happy moment.
And then it was like that at school, that’s where you could go to guitar lessons and start learning to play according to sheet music, and I did that at the age of 12 and went for a year.
I was also in a performance at the Concert Hall where there were six of us playing classical guitar. And then my grandmother was there, I remember, and she had a whistle with her that she blew. I remember that right now when I talk about this now.
But then the patience disappeared a little. It must have been a bit slow to learn to play the guitar that way.
And then I met Björn when we were about 14 years old.
We moved around town a bit so I had gone to a number of different schools. Then I ended up in a school where Björn also went. And we met and… Yes, there was probably a bit of a fight between the classes, a bit of a challenge fight, so Björn and I would somehow settle this and so we met in the toilet in the school yard.
But it turned out that he had an orchestral guitar at home that was much more awesome than the guitar I had at home, so we found a common interest.
And then it started seriously there somehow, and Björn was the one who taught me the first chord analyzes on the guitar, because you hadn’t been taught that at school.
So that’s where we started, so to speak…
GÖSTA:
What did you sing then? Sing and play?
BOB:
Björn he had… He had played with some guys before, so for me Björn was a terribly skilled guitarist and played solo guitar and played jazz twelves and all that sort of thing, we could say.
So that there was a lot of accompaniment and solo guitar in the beginning before we recorded some songs.
Swedish material wasn’t like that… There were no hit lists at the time, so there wasn’t enough Swedish material to go on.
You were a little influenced by the fact that you had heard a record from abroad then, especially from America. But we did some of our own songs, rock was starting to come around then.
Then we did a song called ”Shining Garden Reeling Blues”.
We didn’t know any English. It sounded, it tasted right in the mouth, that text. And then we did a song like that and we rocked to it and we stood opposite each other and swung back and forth.
We picked up a little of Gene Vincent like ”Step by step – Street by street”. It’s a ballad song like that, but emotional songs it was.
GÖSTA:
Then you were in the United States. What influences did you get from there?
BOB:
Yes, then my family emigrated.
Yes, my father first came to the USA then, then the rest of the family came over two months later and it was really a completely new life. It was brand new.
It was, what can one say.. It’s hard to say that there was little unemployment in the city we lived in, but there was a Swedish company that built fan systems, air conditioning for Greyhound buses, in that city. And the owner of that factory was Swedish so… Yes, one thing led to another so that I got a place at this factory and then you made some friends there.
There were those top ten lists back then, it was the Everly Brothers, Eddie Cochran. That was the kind of stuff that went on and we mustn’t forget Chuck Berry.
He was also very actual and then I bought a lot of singles.
I didn’t know then that we were going back home, it was meant to be here to live and live. But there I bought some singles and then sheet music was always relevant and if you could, you could also buy the sheet music with a picture of the artist and then you could play to the sheet music.
Then I knew some chord analysis because Björn and I had met and it’s clear, I missed Björn very much, because we had found each other in a natural way.
But later it happened that we went back home again and when we got home Björn had been at sea: He went to sea he had some records with him and I had some records from America with me and then we sat down and then we knew that: now it becomes real.
Then we played jazz, because then we had a goal in sight. And the repertoire we brought as it was very different here at home, so we played at youth clubs and such.
And then we took this name. We must have a name.
There were only two of us who went out, so we called ourselves The Rebels.
We thought our repertoire went well with that name. And then we played in places like Björngårdsvillan in Slottsskogen, youth places.
It was a fun time.
GÖSTA:
Then you eventually met Bosse Winberg.
BOB:
Yes, it evolved to…
I can’t really remember what it was like. But at least he appeared on Erdman’s music.
In any case, I found out that you could make your own lacquer disc. You could go down and sing straight to a 78-rpm record and take it home.
You were vain there and so it was clear that then you looked up Erdman’s music store and we discussed it a bit and then he said: ”Sure” and… I don’t know… I think it cost SEK 60 the time and get two tracks on each side.
But it turned out that he had a very different type of recordings then, like 0 Sole Mio.
There was a lot of stuff like this.
When we came down, he heard a very different music, so it ended up being the same as when we were there. Yes, two or three days a week, four or five hours each time and it cost nothing.
He got so interested in this and thought it was so good and right and we recorded some stuff.
Now most of this is gone, but we… I happened to find a tape that remains from that time where Björn and I play all the instruments ourselves. And it was professional equipment that was available, if you compare it to today’s situation, at that time it was definitely professional equipment in this small studio. Waidele (another Music Shop in Gothenburg) also had a similar phenomenon that you could go into a booth and you could sing but there was no tape player with it, but it went straight down to box engraved on a lacquer disc.
So that was sort of the difference.
And we were also at Waidele once when there were four of us.
But then the bassist couldn’t get a seat, so he was standing outside, so most of what you heard was just vocals then.
But Erdman had a real studio.
Yeah, Bosse then, yeah… I know I don’t really remember the exact story because it… Yeah, there was so much going on, but I think Bosse was down.
Bosse played with a Dixieland band. Played the piano there and I think he went down to buy sheet music for a couple of songs they were going to do – because Erdmans was the best stocked sheet music store in town.
And then he heard from the basement a music that apparently caught his ears.
Now today I know that he had attended M/S Gripsholm, so he had also been to America and was then very influenced by that music.
I think he found something that made sense when he was standing there. So then he asked to come down and look and I think that’s how we met.
So Bosse Winberg showed up in connection with what we were doing down there.
GÖSTA:
Then it changed from Fazers to Spotnicks and you weren’t too into that being called Spotnicks, were you?
BOB:
It was also like this that when Bosse came into the picture, we developed a bit musically.
There were three wishes and three desires. And Erdman, who was a good man.
You have to know that nobody had any money at the time, but then Bildjournalen had announced a rock band competition that would take place in the Consert Hall, and it was something that we definitely knew we had a chance to win and certainly did not want miss.
But as said where. There was no money. But Erdman, he knew the guy who owned Gulins (a clothing store) at the time, so he arranged for Gulins to put some clothes on us.
Now you can’t talk about advertising here, but then they also got to take some pictures of us here in some clothes and had a small ad in the newspaper that said…
They had corduroy caps they wanted to introduce that year, I remember. And then we used it.
And since it was a rock band competition, it was impossible for Björn and me to sing together, we had no chance of winning, we knew that. Now it was a question of rock and a one-man show and a comp. That’s why we picked Björn because he looked the coolest and then we simply named him Rock-Teddy and the rest of us called ourselves Blue Caps because we had these corduroy caps that were to be introduced.
So we took a picture of this in the GP. (talk about the ad).
GÖSTA:
How did that rock band competition go?
BOB:
Yes, I have to talk about that.
It was a long competition, two hours long, and the main attraction was Little Gerhard who, at that time, was Sweden’s rock king.
Then there was Rock-Boris… And yes, there were rock boys from both Norway, Finland and Denmark and from all cities and then there were us from Gothenburg.
But we won that competition. We clearly won that competition convincingly.
GÖSTA:
Tell us a little about the name change.
BOB:
Yes, in that you win such a competition, you get, you could say, a greater responsibility in terms of establishment. Then it got a little more serious. Everything would be more real and it would be stage clothes. The members were seen through, but we couldn’t change guys anyway. We would be a gang then.
And then we called ourselves The Frazers and why we did that I don’t know but we thought – Frazers – it sounded ”rough”. We thought it was a good name for us, because we thought we were rough.
And then if we’re going to change the name to Spotnicks.
We came to Stockholm then because we got in touch with a few people who became interested in Karusell’s record company. We made some tapes, not at Erdmans then, but now Bosse had taken care of this and we made them on Tandberg tape recorders which were later sent up to Karusell in Stockholm.
And they became very interested in how this had been done, because they knew that there was no such equipment in Gothenburg. It was basically only Europafilm that had a recording studio, so they called down and checked.
But they didn’t believe us, they thought we had been somewhere else and done this so ”do you mind if two of us come down here – for a weekend”?
That was the most we wanted, it was for them to come down.
And it was a fun meeting… To see gramophone people being surprised, that was fun. They were almost shocked, I would say.
And then we got an agreement with Karusell and then we later went to Europafilm and started the recordings there. And there was a guy there who was technician at the time – Yes, at the mixer table called Svenbel and he was the one who somehow came up with the name Spotnicks.
But we didn’t find out until afterwards.
I thought Spotnicks was a very strange name. Frazers it was so ingrained in us, and we played a lot in Gothenburg and the surrounding area under the name Frazers and there was a lot in the newspapers about it so we felt it was difficult to change.
It was somehow like changing identities. I mean, we played the same music anyway, huh…
But it became Spotnicks because it was perhaps a more future-oriented name in terms of promotion, more correct and so on… And at the same time the sputnik was the first around the world and it was probably in connection with this that Spotnicks came about.
But it was Svenbel at Europafilm who came up with it.
GÖSTA:
When you were at Olympia, you met a bunch. Which ones?
BOB:
Yes, there we have a picture (then a long answer)
GÖSTA:
What’s going on here?
BOB:
I see we have party pictures there.
GÖSTA:
Memories of Japan?
BOB:
We were in Mexico City playing at a fashionable night club.
Then Roland Ferneborg was also there…
Here Bob talks about finding out that Karelia was climbing the charts in Japan and it was decided to tour there right after Mexico but the story is not reflected in the notes.
BOB:
When we got to Japan, the song had reached number one in Japan.
Yes, that moment it’s so amazing, because you were used to working with music in some way all the time.
When we landed at Haneda Airport, Björn and I sat together, I remember, and then we looked out and there’s this kind of visitor pavilion on top, sort of. And we saw banners with Japanese characters and also in English saying ”Welcome The Spotnicks”.
It’s just that there were so many people, so incredibly many people and Roland got nervous – that the plane would be emptied. And we weren’t allowed to leave until the plane had been emptied and then yes, the carpet was basically rolled out and it was a reception that I can imagine the Beatles had.
I have never seen so many press people in my entire life and so many TV cameras at all.
It was a huge reception and it was like in one go. You had never experienced such a huge thing as this response in Japan.
Then there was VIP for the whole penny… black limousines, hotels, press reception. The whole tour was amazing.
GÖSTA:
Any memories from a concert?
BOB:
Every concert was fantastic.
I know that such a title that we had played for many years as Johnny Guitar.
As a musician, you can do a song so many times it can end up in a certain sloppiness in this.
But when you stand on stage and play that song for the 2000th time, or whatever it may have been, and see Japanese people start crying to this song, then it’s like new, that song Johnny Guitar.
Yes, it was absolutely huge.
Bob tells of a theater when they were lowered hanging on parachute cords but it is not reflected in the notes.
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