MUSIC INTERVIEW: TEDDYBEARS

Swedish Electronic House Rockers See the World Their Own Way: Through the Mouths of Bears

By: Team Buzzine

September 23, 2011

When the Teddybears were teenagers in Stockholm, Sweden, they were (in their own words) morons. In their twenties, they first became the grindcore rockers Skull, then Teddybears, and over the two decades since then, they have evolved into creators of electronic music loved the world around, and writers/producers of hits for the biggest names in pop music and beyond. Oh, and sometime around 2006, they decided to wear teddy bear heads. All the time.

How could we resist an opportunity to sit down with Swedish Tiger (AKA Patrik Arve) and the brothers Ahlund, Joakim and Klas, on their recent visit to Los Angeles, California? Buzzine’s Stefan Goldby was dispatched to our Hollywood Hills house to lay out a vocoder vocal blanket and prepare for a verbal picnic consisting of talk about new albums, star vocalists, and a whole lot of laughter between old friends…

Stefan Goldby: Your recently released Devil’s Music is the sixth Teddybears album since 1993. But just for us, can we go back before we go forward? How does a Swedish grindcore group called Skull (or even the hardcore group you guys kind of were for the first couple of albums of Teddybears) become the discoball electronic monster bears that are sitting here today in Hollywood?

Joakim Ahlund: It’s been a long, gradual development, and we’ve done this for a long time, and we kind of evolved into this during a long period of time. We used to always like electronic music and rap music, and all sorts of music, even in the days when we were still playing hardcore or grindcore or whatever... But we didn’t know how to really get those sounds. We didn’t know how to achieve those sounds. We didn’t know about sequencers or computers or drum machines, or anything like that.

We tried to sound like Public Enemy using guitar, bass, and drums, and it was not so easy. After a while, we understood gradually like, “Ah ha…so that’s not a guitar: That’s actually a synthesizer they’re using through a sequencer,” so we took more control over the process and learned how to incorporate the electronic elements that we loved. We were listening to Bad Brains and Kraftwerk on the tour bus.

SG: That learning curve wasn’t just for the music of Teddybears; you’ve written for (Kylie Minogue, Britney Spears, Ke$ha) with, produced music for (Robyn, Sugababes), and even led other bands (The Caesars, Smile). When you come up with a new idea for a song, what makes it become a Teddybears song rather than something for one of your other projects?

JA: We have a lot of common denominators, but we’re also very different. But when it’s something that we all can agree on, we all have different side projects and we’ve done different things, and within those contexts, we can do a lot of other things. Whenever there’s anything that we do with Teddybears, it’s something that we all agree on, and that’s what makes it sound like the Teddybears.

SG: The Teddybears albums of recent years feature a virtual who’s who of interesting musicians of all genres. Last time (on 2006’s Soft Machine), Iggy Pop and Neneh Cherry stood out; this time it’s an even longer list ranging from Cee Lo Green to Robyn to Eve, B.o.B. and The Flaming Lips… Do you tend to start with a song that you think is right for a specific voice, or do you start with a musical collaboration that you then look to create the right song for?

JA: It can happen either way, really: Sometimes we will write a song and then we think of an artist that would be good singing that song, or sometimes -- like with The Flaming Lips, for example – we started just sending snippets or ideas or demos back and forth, and the song grew from that. So it can all happen, and in other cases, it’s more of a collaboration. Like we have a beat, and somebody puts a vocal on that, and then we remove the beat, and then we put a new beat on it… The process can be different from time to time.

SG: Let’s talk about a specific song – the lead single on Devil’s Music brings together Cee Lo and Fred Schneider of The B-52s. That is not exactly a top-of-head idea for a vocal pairing: How did that one come together?

Patrik Arve: That was actually Cee Lo’s idea. It was a great idea, though. I don’t know how, he contacted The B-52s somehow, but it was his idea, and we loved that.

JA: We didn’t even know about it really. We started working on the track with Cee Lo, and then the next time we came down to Atlanta to finish it with him, he had the idea to do it with The B-52s, and he went and recorded them and everything, and he presented the finished thing for us, and we were thrilled with the result, of course. It’s really cool. We think alike there. This time, he was the guy who thought of it, but we love The B-52s, and we thought it was a great idea. We like when you can get those weird combinations that seem strange on paper, but when you hear it, it sounds really cool.

SG: The album came out first in Europe last year, and then, for this American version, some of the tracks are re-recorded with new vocalists. Why did you decide to do that?

Klas Ahlund: I think we tried to be more commercial. We tried to have guys that the Americans would know about. That’s the reason for that.

SG: The music industry has changed massively over the years. You guys have seen the before and the after, and you have always been very proactive in terms of getting your music embedded into other things, whether it was commercials, video games, movie soundtracks or TV shows… At this point, do you do that more to promote your music, or is it actually a revenue source in its own right?

JA: It’s just a good way of getting the music out to people, to let people discover the music.

KA: I think sometime radio is very formatted, and we don’t really fit into that format, but apparently we fit into that other format, so that’s a good way for us to reach an audience. Since we’re not really country or pop or R&B, we reach people through that other channel.

SG: Having had two goes at making the same album, what about the finished version that’s out here in America are you happiest with?

PA: That’s a hard one.

JA: Yeah. I’m really happy about the Robyn track. We’re really happy about the whole album, of course, but for us it was cool… It’s not necessarily that one version was better than the other, but it was fun to try different ways with different people.

KA: I think it was great working with Eve, because for us, even the version that’s on the European album isn’t the definitive version. We had earlier versions than that. So it’s always fun when you write a song and you put a voice on it, because then it comes to life, and then you change the voice and it takes a totally different form. As a music scientist, it’s very inspiring for us.

SG: And every time you play live, you get a chance to reinterpret the songs again. You’re not touring with eight or nine guest vocalists and able to just wheel them out for their one song…

JA: No, we reworked a lot of tracks quite a bit, like for this tour, for example. It’s more like a DJ tour as well. Sometimes when I’m playing at home in Scandinavia or Europe, we tour with a whole big band with two drummers and a guitar, bass, and a lot of live guest vocalists and stuff, but this time, when we do this tour in the U.S., it’s more like a DJ set that we do. But it includes a lot of re-workings of the songs and mash-ups and remixes and stuff, and a lot of live elements as well. Patrik sings a lot on some of the tracks, and Klas and I play over the tracks… So we re-work the tracks a lot of times during the process. That’s what we do. So a lot of the tracks have very many different versions of it.

SG: I’m interested by the idea that you guys go away from Teddybears and come back to the band, whether it’s on musical projects with other people, or even when you you go off and direct commercials and do non-Teddybear-based things. What do you think has changed, for the three of you as a band, because of those extra things that get brought in from the outside world?

KA: I think being able to do stuff outside Teddybears has given Teddybears a longer lifespan than it would have had otherwise, because that means that we don’t have to restrict ourselves. If we want to do something that doesn’t fit the Teddybears, we go off and do it somewhere else with somebody who appreciates it, and that sort of relieves tension and the frustration from the band, whereas I could see how it would be hard for a band like early Genesis to stick together when Peter Gabriel wants to go off and be a fox and record African drums for five years. [laughs] So he had to leave the band, but we go off and do stuff like that and then come back to Teddybears.

JA: I think it’s very healthy too, because all the experiences we get from outside the band we bring into the band, and we’ve got a lot of stuff that we learned in other contexts that we can benefit from as a band as well.

SG: You guys were a band for over a decade before these lovely Teddybear heads came into the picture… What happened in 2006 to make them necessary?

KA: I think the overall boredom with the facial side of being a band – what to wear and how to wear your hair, and actually the humiliation of sitting in makeup before things like this. We had to do something, and then this came along and it looked, at the time, as a good idea.

PA: You are one of the few who knows how I look too, without my mask, so you probably know the answer too. [Laughs] 

SG: Making your performances memorable is obviously something you guys have stopped and thought about a lot: What would you say are the elements that would come together to make a perfect night on stage for Teddybears?

JA: There’s a lot of thought that goes into the show, and we try to put on a show, but always like when there’s a little bit of an element of chaos in there as well. If there’s anything we brought along from being a hardcore band from back in the day, there used to be always at least as many members of the audience on stage as members of the group, and there was always an element of chaos, and for us, the audience is a part of the show. They’re not just spectators – they should feel that they’re a part of the show, so we try to achieve that as much as possible. It’s just to make it more fun for us as well.

SG: It must be slightly strange that you’re one step removed from what’s going on around you – on stage, backstage, whatever: What’s the strangest thing that you’ve seen through the mouth of a Teddybear head?

KA: The whole actual sensory experience of putting the head on is kind of reminiscent of a K-hole, if you’ve ever been in one [laughs]. So in that way, it’s all strange wearing the head, as if this situation – cameras, lights, and strangers asking you personal questions – wasn’t strange enough, you’re in a K-hole looking out.

JA: We like to push the boundaries for what we as humans can bear. No pun intended.

KA: We’re kind of like…what do you call those freestyle deepsea divers, who dive without scuba gear? Free divers. We’re kind of free divers into the mental human psyche. We’re going deep.

SG: But you’re also trying to create a night out for other people, you’re trying to give them a great time; does it make you more of a detached observer of that?

KA: Yes.

JA: [Laughs] I suppose, but we’re being part of a cool show – that’s the whole thing. You wouldn’t maybe put on Gene Simmons’s platform shoes because they’re comfortable, but it does make him taller and make the show cooler.

KA: I think the bear heads, in a sense…we sacrifice something of our experience to give more to the audience.

JA: It’s like the guy in Talking Heads – David Byrne with the giant suit – it’s slightly unreal or larger-than-life or weird. That’s a long tradition in the entertainment industry. We’re not a jeans & T-shirt type of band, apparently…

SG: In the middle of the madness is there ever a moment where you just look around and think, “This is what 15-year-old me thought that being a musician  might be like”?

KA: I think that’s a very good question, and the hard thing about it is my inner 15-year-old is a f***ing moron, so I don’t let him dictate what rock ‘n’ roll should be to me anymore, because that made me miserable for like ten years. So I let my moron old guy decide… [Laughs]

PA: But it was definitely a big moment for me when we recorded that track with Iggy Pop, for example, or when we did the Cee Lo track. It’s not getting blown in a limousine while popping champagne, but for me it’s a way cooler experience than that.

JA: That’s true. It’s a big thing.

KA: One thing that actually came true last year was I started doing a guitar solo on stage, and that’s something I envisioned in my mind as a 15-year-old practicing on the guitar in our old basement, and that’s actually pretty cool. You practice and you learn your skills and you play really fast, and people cheer at you…

JA: But if I were to be able to see myself as a 15-year-old looking to the future and see this right now, I would probably be kind of surprised, actually. [Laughs] Like, “What am I going to be like when I’m 48?” “Well, this is it.” [Laughs]

PA: Sitting on a sofa with a bear head on.

JA: I would be slightly surprised.

The latest Teddybears album, ‘Devil’s Music,’ features guest vocals from Eve, B.o.B, Robyn, Cee Lo Green, Fred Schneider, The Flaming Lips, Laza Morgan, ADL, and Rigo. The new US version is out now on Big Beat/Atlantic Records.