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Why
did you pick the title Spirit Of Man for your forthcoming solo album?
(Release date Jan 27th 2006)
It sounded like a good
title to me. There’s quite a few titles I could have picked like In The
Name Of The Cause, Blinded By A Lie. I thought Spirit Of Man was the
best one. It sounds a bit Magnum-ish maybe that’s what sold it to me.
The whole idea’ was to make a commercial album. It’s kind of catchy not
so heavy metal or epic. I can’t be doing the epic stuff all time but one
song is and it’s called End Of The Story. But the album has it’s epic
moments of course that’s typical me. I think it’s going to do well, I
hope so. It’s on Frontiers that are doing a good job for me. I have a
lot of good people around and I’m very pleased with the outcome.
Will
there be any singles released from it?
You better ask
Frontiers.
I haven’t heard anything about a single.
Are
there any songs left that didn’t make the album?
There’s a couple of tracks
left. But I think they are going to be for Japan as bonus tracks. One
song is called Temptation, which is a song I would have like on the
album but everyone agreed that it should be left for Japan. It’s very
good, very rocky. It would have fitted great but you can’t have them all
on there. You gotta have some bonus tracks. The Japanese labels always
ask what else you got.
Both
Spirit Of Man & When Empires Burn have some more hardrock/metal tracks
on them. Is that something you would like go
deeper into on a future album maybe more in the style of Judas Priest &
Iron Maiden?
I don’t mind. Whatever
that feels good for me to sing. I like the old heavy metal stuff as well
as the melodic and the ballads. Maybe I’m at the wrong age of doing
that. There were a few songs on When Empires Burn that were metal indeed. Written by Paul
Hodson.
Are
there any plans for solo shows in Sweden 2006?
Well it’s a little early
to say. Next year Tony Clarkin will be recording the next Magnum album
and I will be with him on occasion sometimes. But I’m mainly promoting
Spirit Of Man as such as I can throughout the year including festivals
and whatever my agent/tour manager Annie can get me. And Tony’s fine
with that, it’s all very good. Tony knows I have to promote stuff
outside of Magnum as well. I would love to do Sweden Rock. Magnum did it
this year, which was very good. We’ll see the world is my oyster next
year and we’ll see what happens. I will be doing a British tour in April
and hopefully some European slots depending on whom I can get on with as
the opening act. I will be headlining in the UK but supporting in
Europe. Which is fine by me. Put me on any stage and I’ll kick up a
storm. I got a very good band at the moment. So I look forward to that,
Sweden hopefully. Sweden Rock of course if I can get it
Who
would you like to work with on future solo albums?
It would probably be down
to Frontiers and say we would like you to record with this person.There
are a lot of people I would like to work with like my friend Tobias
Sammet from Edguy. I got and idea that might going to write me some
songs next year but I don’t know if it’s going to be a whole album. Next
time, two years time.
You
have surrounded yourself with great writers over the years. How come we
haven’t seen any credits to Bob Catley?
All my life I’ve been
working with Tony Clarkin who writes brilliant songs. Who can compete
with that? I just sing them. I can do that. I’m all right. But I let
someone else do the song writing. Arranging and maybe change a lyric
here and there if it needs to be changed. But that’s it and that’s not
writing a song now is it. It’s all been done for me.
Next
year is the 20th anniversary of Vigilante.
Will there be a similar tour
and album as with On A Storytellers Night?
Oh! Here we go! Well we’ll
take a view on that one. I mean when this was first mentioned we said no
the 20th anniversary of On A Storytellers Night is anybody
interested? But then people went yeah, come on. It was a good thing to
be doing. We didn’t think of it, somebody else did. And the more we
thought about it we thought it wasn’t such a stupid idea. I don’t know
if we will carry on with this on Vigilante and then there’s 20 years of
Wings of Heaven. There’s no end to it. So I feel this is a one off
thing. It’s been great and has brought us back into the limelight
again.
We’re still promoting our latest album Brand new Morning and our Dvd
Livin’ The Dream, which Storytellers is a big part of. I don’t know if
we’ll be doing this again but then stranger things have happened.
What is
your favourite Magnum album?
Beside On A Storytellers
Night. Sleepwalking. It’s different and I think it’s great. People don’t
mention Sleepwalking in the same breath as Storytellers or Wings Of
Heaven, which was our biggest sell to date. We also did an acoustic
album called Keeping The Nite Light Burning it’s another one of my
favourites
Is
Keeping The Nite Light Burning something you would like to do again?
Yes. I don’t see why not.
It’s something very different. It’s a softer approach to everything and
there are so many songs to choose from. There’s so many that you can do
acoustically.
I think it’s a great album. Lots
of people have missed this album.
What is
your favourite Magnum song?
I don’t know. Hard to pick
one I love them all. But I’ll say Don’t Wake The Lion. But it could have
been How Far Jerusalem or Broken Wheel. It could have been many songs.
It must
be hard to pick the setlist with all these great songs?
We listen to people’s
ideas but we can’t please everybody. So we have to go with what we think
would go down the best. But certain songs pick themselves like How Far
Jerusalem, Les Morts Dansant, Kingdom Of Madness & Vigilante they all
have to be in there somewhere. You just have to try to fill in the gaps.
With some songs we haven’t done in ages but we can’t do it to different
then people would go: Where is that song or that song. We try to please
your fans with whatever we play. We got such a big back
catalog now so there are so
many songs to choose from. We want to please everybody as well as
ourselves.
Thank you very much.
Kåren, Göteborg 25 november, 2005
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