Freak When Spoken To

By Anastasia Jonsen

What is Freak Kitchen, and where do they come from? Anyone hearing the band's trademark eclectic heavy metal is bound to ask the same questions. The lyrics do not even remotely resemble anything you ever heard before: satire, humor and attitude blend together in something quite out of the ordinary. Let's put it this way: how many other major rock acts have you heard discussing topics such as infidelity, organ transplant trading, anal bleaching and neo nazism among soccer mums to some of the grooviest metal anthems ever heard? The music is straightforward to the ear, yet infinitely intricate to the mind, borrowing influences from all over the world in a way we haven't heard since the late Frank Zappa roamed the earth. Mattias Eklund is certainly a driving force, the guitarman and singer who gave a whole new meaning to the expression go your own way. But nothing happens without the entire trinity of Bjorn, Christer and Mattias on the wagon, and in this massively well researched biography by seasoned Metal Journalist Anastasia Jonson you get to follow the Freak in detail from day one.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bullet Point Publishing
• Release date: Sep 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9789188153159

Book preview

978-91-88153-15-9

Preface

WHY A BOOK ABOUT FREAK KITCHEN? They’re not Sweden’s best-selling band, not even Gothenburg’s best-selling band – far outsold by Hammerfall and In Flames. They’re not doing drugs or trash-talking other bands and therefore making headlines. They’re not an easy product to sell in a click-bait world looking for shock value. One part of me wants to say: Why Freak Kitchen? Well, if you know, you know. But the point of this book is not to keep it elite. It’s about showing why their fans are so devoted, above and beyond. To put it simply: it’s because of the music. There’s no shortage of blogs and websites delving into the hows of Freak Kitchen’s music: reviews, analyses, and Mattias IA Eklundh’s guitar clinics where music lesson meets stand-up comedy. This book is more concerned with the whys; why do they sound the way they do? Why does song writer, guitarist and singer Mattias IA Eklundh write the kind of lyrics he does? Why do the band keep saying no to opportunities other musicians would give their right hand for?

I’ve followed Freak Kitchen for nearly twenty years now, and have interviewed them several times long before this project took off. I was a music journalist for many years and continuously reviewed Freak Kitchen’s albums and gigs in the local morning paper. When bassist Christian Grönlund and drummer Joakim Sjöberg left the band in 2000, remaining member Mattias IA Eklundh turned to me to break the news to the world. At the time I was surprised – why not contact a major evening paper? – but I have come to understand how IA works. He doesn’t care if you’re well-known, if you’re rich, if you know the right people, if you’re attractive or have a really cool car; he cares about loyalty, enthusiasm and talent. When I’ve mapped the people Freak Kitchen work with, this is something that has become clear, over and over again.

In May 2013, the Freak Kitchen boys gave me a lift home from one of their gigs, and IA brought up the question of an official biography. I had suggested it a few years earlier, but university studies, work and parenthood left no time to realise the plans. Now I had more time on my hands, and accepted the mission with great enthusiasm. I started by asking them for names of people to interview for the book. Unanimously they replied, Linus Abrahamson, he knows everything about our music! So I contacted Linus, IA’s personal notation expert, met up for an interview about music theory – and we fell in love. And there you have it, the cheesy part of the book out of the way!

Almost everything you’ll read in this book comes from interviews. Translating conversations with IA has not been an easy task; his Swedish vocabulary is much like his guitar playing: unique, inventive and sometimes slightly insane. I have interviewed all five members individually, multiple times over a couple of years, and did one interview with IA, Christian and Joakim together. It was the first time the trio had spent a day in the same room since the break-up. If you listen to the conversation, an honesty comes through that’s almost heart-breaking. For several hours they talked about memories – and feelings. They laughed a lot, but there were also long, painful silences. In the end, it really felt as if they had cleared the air.

My heartfelt gratitude goes out to all the amazing people involved in this book. A pretty obvious thank you goes to Freak Kitchen for keeping music interesting and passionate, and for tirelessly putting up with my interviews and nerdy, detailed questions. I want to thank my parents for raising me on love and music; you mean the world to me. Finally, and most of all, my love goes out to my son John and to Linus, my freaky puzzle piece.

At First Glance

IT’S QUITE LIKELY that you heard about Freak Kitchen because somebody told you they have a really cool guitar player, Mattias IA Eklundh. As a solo artist, he’s signed to Steve Vai’s label Favored Nations, and he is a collaborator much in demand by respected musicians all over the world. His aptly named Wanking page on freakguitar.com is like a who’s who of renowned rock musicians, such as Dweezil Zappa, Ron Bumblefoot Thal, Fredrik Thordendal, Guthrie Govan and Jonas Hellborg. He released his ground-breaking instruction video Freak Guitar Vol. 1 in 1995 and has continued to unleash unorthodox guitar exercises upon the world since then.

But this book is not a biography solely about IA. Freak Kitchen has existed in two shapes: from 1992 to 2000, Christian Grönlund played the bass and Joakim Sjöberg played the drums, and after a short but traumatic break-up, Christer Örtefors took over the bass and Björn Fryklund the drums. Although the trio has been solid for 15 years, it is undoubtedly IA who is Freak Kitchen.

Mik Gaffney, rock journalist and also Freak Kitchen’s right-hand man in Great Britain, explains their place in the world of music:

A lot of Freak Kitchen’s fans are drawn to IA’s guitar playing. He’s known the world over as an extraordinary guitarist, and as such a lot of the press they have received has been from the guitar playing world. But they have also found a home with a wide range of metal fans. They’ve always been difficult to pigeonhole – their first UK review had them pegged as Mr. Big meets Metallica – and as such their appeal is wide-reaching. They know how important a good hook is.

Their level of success is very hard to describe; they’re not popular with the mainstream in any particular country, yet they sell albums to a faithful audience and they play all over the world. Mik Gaffney adds that they’re one of those bands that people like to think only they know about: an underground secret.

One day they might play to 30,000 people in Kathmandu and the following weekend play to a hundred people in a small town in Sweden. In a world where artists have a tough time because of illegal downloads, people still buy Freak Kitchen and Mattias IA Eklundh albums. As an example, Steve Vai’s label nowadays only releases albums digitally – apart from the maestro’s own albums and IA’s Freak Guitar albums.

Freak Kitchen have been labelled a great many things. Punk jazz, Carnatic shredding and gypsy metal to name a few, and in many places you’ll find them filed under progressive metal. Linus Abrahamson, IA’s notation expert, hesitates to call them prog metal.

Prog metal is associated with keyboards, epic songs and complexity for complexity’s own sake. But if you refer to the original meaning of the word progressive, I would definitely call them that. They incorporate elements which have not been used in that combination or environment before. Their songs often depend on the traditional structure, but they might then add semi-weird instrumental parts to make things more interesting. Freak Kitchen’s music is characterized by heavy riffs and catchy choruses, but with cleverly used complexity which makes it easy for the audience to follow the beat. IA’s entertaining style also helps keep the crowd interested, and his personality sums up the band in a way: a bit of seriousness, a bit of humour, and more complex than you might think.

This is the story about five freaky musicians and those close to them, as well as the story of yoghurt ghosts, fist fights, love, complete bastards, philosophy, misery and ecstasy, and of course cows.

On the Origin of Freaks

MATTIAS BERNT JOHANNES IA EKLUNDH was born in Gothenburg on the 6th of October, 1969, to parents Inga and Bernt. Only a few weeks before he was born, Gothenburg had been ravaged by one of the most fatal storms in modern Swedish history. It had claimed a dozen lives and in places reduced the area to virtual bombsites. Only slightly easier to tame, IA came as a surprise whirlwind when his mother Inga had turned 38. This little afterthought proved to be a pleasant addition to the household, not least to father Bernt, who up until then had been the only man in the house. IA was surrounded by women and was thoroughly love-bombed by his four older sisters.

I always tried to assert my masculinity as best I could, and my father was thrilled at my arrival. My sisters kept a strict matriarchy, I can’t deny that. From the outside, it always looks like it’s the man of the house who’s in charge, but it’s never really like that, is it? And thank goodness for that.

IA grew up in Olofstorp, and you can tell by the name (Olof’s Cottage) that it isn’t a very big village. Situated about a twenty minute drive north-east from Gothenburg, it’s truly rural even though it’s technically a part of Gothenburg. Around 1970, Olofstorp had about 700 inhabitants, and the school had very few pupils. The old, traditional houses were mostly built in the 1920’s, and IA lived in a house on Lyckåsvägen. The village had a football field, a fire station and a grocery shop called Zackrissons, where the young IA would nick sweets. Before his school years, which in the 1970’s began at age seven, IA’s world consisted of a few friends who lived in the neighbourhood, his sisters and their boyfriends.

My early interests were music and to draw monsters, but I was heavily into cars and registration plates as well. At home I was exposed from a very early age to The Sweet, Alice Cooper, Oscar Peterson, Ray Charles, Béla Bartók and everything that was played on our old Telefunken record player. My sister Mulle kindly brought me along to all sorts of strange gigs, like for instance the semi-political band Motvind, who used to play in the run-down suburbs.

IA’s sisters are a lot older with two years between them, and his closest sister Mulle (real name Karin) is eight years older than IA. You would suspect that such a situation would be the perfect breeding ground for an obnoxiously spoiled child, especially one with such a strong personality and will to begin with.

I was spoiled like you wouldn’t believe! Don’t get me wrong, I was pampered with love and attention, but my parents always wondered where my good manners came from. For instance, I always made my bed without being told to and I don’t think I was an egotistical child. In fact, I think I was pretty calm and level-headed as a child. My friend Lars Crook had to take all the punches, literally, and I threw my toy cars at him and made him eat sand. We’re still good friends, so it can’t have been all that bad.

Calm and level-headed is perhaps a matter of definition, as IA also willingly admits to getting into fights in school and exposing a dominant side at an early age.

Sure, I’ve not always been very nice or reasonable; for instance, I could punch a classmate because he didn’t know what ‘Hotter than Hell’ meant and ask him to come back when he’d looked it up. But I think I was a fairly decent and kind child, and for instance, if anybody would bully Lars, who was one year younger than me, I’d gallop to his rescue and thrash his tormentors. I wouldn’t tolerate it if someone treated him badly, yet I used him as my private punch bag. But I wasn’t a tyrant or bully.

In order to understand the adult IA and his firm belief in family and loyalty to close friends, you need to understand how much his family meant to him growing up. Even in the 1960’s, a family of five children was pretty unusual, especially among the educated classes. The birth control pill was not yet on the market during the period when IA’s sisters were born, but the average number of children in a family was still only around two.

My parents have always been extremely supportive, and agreed in every way on how to raise their kids. They never insisted that I become a solicitor or accountant, and I have always felt love and support from my whole family. They never forced anything on me; nobody tried to whip any expectations into me. My sisters, however, had their fair share of intellectual expectations to live up to. We come from a highly intellectual family, and my dad wrote about cultural matters in one of Sweden’s biggest morning papers and he was a published author. We always had all sorts of odd personalities and well-known intellectuals staying at our house.

The house in Olofstorp was a culturally stimulating environment to grow up in, to say the least. The Eklundh family was also musical and played and sang together. IA’s uncle was a jazz drummer, but none of the closest family played professionally.

My dad wasn’t über-gifted musically. When he sang in church, everybody would hush him. He sang in tune and all, it’s just that his singing was so hearty, it made people nervous. My mum always liked jazz and Indian music, but my dad was more into old traditional Swedish troubadours like Evert Taube and a bit of classical music.

From oldest to youngest, sisters Anette (Nettan), Gunilla (Nilla), Birgitta (Gittan) and the aforementioned Karin (Mulle) listened in particular to Alice Cooper and The Sweet, and IA was introduced to popular music around the tender age of four. Soon, however, he discovered a band which would have a much greater influence on him – as well as on his future bandmates.

"I thought Kiss were so much cooler. When my interest in cars had been taken over by a passion for music, I dismantled my cars and used the wheels as volume knobs on my wooden plank guitars. I gave myself the stage name Ace Cooper. Around six years of age, I was already clever enough to make deals with my mum: I would let her cut my hair if I’d get a Kiss album in return. They looked so cool, but I thought The Runaways sounded way more raw. I remember sighing and thinking that if only Kiss would sound as cool as Live in Japan."

His sisters all had to take piano lessons, and even if IA escaped that particular middle-class tradition, he had to endure the odd Swedish practice of learning to play a kind of flute, the recorder, in school. Just as Kiss was one of the things which united Freak Kitchen, so was a slight dislike of school.

I think it was fifty-fifty music and attitude: when I felt misunderstood in school, I dreamed that Gene Simmons would kick in the classroom door and breathe fire to scare my teacher. I felt so cool strutting about in studded belts and the way too big platform shoes one of my sisters had bought in London. It all made sense to me: the monsters of my early childhood could now play music.

On the 24th of July, 1968, a year before IA’s entry into the world, Freak Kitchen’s future drummer Joakim Sjöberg was born. It was a politically eventful and turbulent year in Sweden. In many countries around the world, the socialist and anti-war movements were on the rise, and Sweden was no exception. The Social Democratic Party gained absolute majority in the 1968 election, and the Gothenburg area was overwhelmingly socialist with a strong working class and active unions. These circumstances are sometimes cited as the reason why the hard rock and heavy metal scene has been continuously popular in the Gothenburg area.

Joakim grew up in Kålltorp, about ten minutes from the centre of Gothenburg, with father Jörgen and mother Inger, older brother Jonny and older sister Linda. Kålltorp was one of Gothenburg’s many working class suburbs: people were decent, proper and doing their share. There were youth clubs, different kinds of sports clubs as well as culture-related activities for children, but Joakim can’t remember taking part in many organized activities.

Honestly, I can’t say I had any real interests during my early childhood and pre-teens. I played with Smurfs and rode my unicycle. I was childish for a long time and I was a late starter in every sense. When my friends started taking an interest in girls and parties, I was still running around the neighbourhood, ringing people’s doorbells and running away.

But when Joakim’s passion was finally kindled, it was to be by music. His mother had played the piano before putting all her time into raising a family, and his father played the piano, guitar and harmonica at home. Just like with so many other kids who discovered hard rock, it was an older sibling who introduced Joakim to Kiss.

I wasn’t that interested in music to begin with, but my brother played it constantly. I think I was 13, so it must have been in the early 1980’s. Before that, I just owned one cassette album, by the Swedish rock artist Jerry Williams. But once I started listening to Kiss, I got some albums of my own and one time I listened to ‘Hard Luck Woman’ and got the idea that I was going to play the drums. My brother came into my room and hit a pretend hi-hat in the air, and that awoke something in me, I guess. So I began playing air drums and about one year later I had bought my first drum kit. I suppose you can say it’s thanks to my brother in a way. Or perhaps I always had it in me.

If Joakim was raised in the suburbs and IA in the countryside, bass player Christian Grönlund was a city boy. Born on the 14th of September, 1972, as the only child of father Staffan and mother Marianne, he lived his first few years on Ankargatan in the Majorna district of Gothenburg.

I’ve been told that the first thing I did was to pee in my own mouth. We lived under very simple circumstances: our flat didn’t even have a toilet, there was just a shared outhouse. The flat didn’t have a shower either. But after a few years, we moved to Särö, an idyllic place on the coast, half an hour’s drive south of Gothenburg. Today it’s a really nice area, but back then the houses were simple summer cottages.

The move from the shabby, and in places dangerous, Majorna to Särö was probably a wise decision when you had a child. Here the young Christian discovered football and played enthusiastically, despite having been laughed at and bullied during his first practice, because he had a leather hat with ear muffs. A few years later his parents split up, and his mother moved back to Majorna. The name means little huts and was decidedly a working class area with street names connected to the sea and shipping, but which also harboured creative people and Bohemians alike.

Mum moved to Ostindiegatan and my dad couldn’t find a flat, so he lived in various student flats, in rooms with no kitchen or toilet, and that’s how we lived for a while. My parents had shared custody, alternate weeks. Finally dad found a flat close to where mum lived, and that’s where I spent the rest of my childhood. They still hung out together and had lots of mutual friends, we went sailing together and had barbecues. My parents are still best friends, and I’m very happy about that.

While the financial side of things was pretty meagre, the attitude towards creativity was generous and the climate was big-hearted. Christian’s parents were both university educated and highly creative people.

"We didn’t have a lot of money. My dad never had a particularly well paid job. Things weren’t dire, but my mother’s various jobs weren’t well-paid either, that’s for sure. She actually chose to work part-time in order to paint and to get an education in art. Later on, she made the brave decision to become a full-time artist, and we