Jorn Lande

A Serenade To The Stars

Interview with maestro vocalist Jorn Lande By Vera on the 14th of february 2006

Pictures Jany (Bospop 2005) & promopics

Jorn Lande found himself at the first row when voices were distributed. Since he was a kid, the myriad-minded Norwegian grew up in a musical family and got more and more respect and recognition for his musical talent. Maybe some of you think that he is a fast rising star, but a lot of hard work and numerous projects were done, before the world started to speak about “the most wanted vocalist of Scandinavia”. Now that Jorn is about to release his fourth solo album ‘The Duke’ under the moniker Jorn, I had the honour to talk with this eloquent man.

I recently read that the best interviews are those when you do not need your list of questions. Well, Jorn is a man who can talk for hours in a moving way about most different subjects. I even felt a little panic when we are still talking about the weather after ten minutes while this interview was scheduled to be 25 minutes. Fortunately this schedule is elastic and we took our time and ended up with 1 hour 20 minutes stuff to make a decent article. Let’s give it a go!

The winter started late in Norway this year. At the moment of our call, Jorn is heating the place with fire blocks because it is very cold outside (-10°C). Normally it is about –20/-30°C. He lives close to the coast of Norway. Temperatures are a little roughed by the sea, because of the wind it feels colder than it is. Days are short and cold this time of the year. When he grew up snow started falling from October, but this year they even had green grass between Christmas and New Years Eve and snow started in January.

Somehow I got to get things started and so I suggest: Let’s talk about the solo album ‘The Duke’. Listening to it feels like coming home, the music of my youth…

Jorn Lande

Aha, that’s great, classic rock indeed. That’s where I grew up with too and I have a very great attachment with the seventies and the eighties, but most of it the seventies. With this record I try not to experiment with new directions or try to be new or more modern, but return to why I started in the music business in the first place. Why did I become a singer and why did I choose to do this. And I just discovered that the true art and devotion and that kind of SOUL in music has nothing to do with fashion. It gave me something when I was growing up. I guess that’s the feeling I was looking for and for many years I have always had that in me. In the nineties I think the whole world was a little hybrid or frustrated because everybody desperately wanted to try something new or created some kind of revolution in the music business, developing something different, trying to create new traverse to get something, a new brand, I don’t know. I think it was the same thing in the music business, same in the movies, also in all kinds of business in the world. I think about people with normal jobs; suddenly they had three jobs. More hectic at any level. And it seemed to me that people are talking bad and slightly negative about the seventies and eighties. They said: “We shouldn’t do the same thing again, it is done”. Been there, done that. That kind of mentality. And I think what happened was that people got so frustrated that they took it too far. They forgot some of the essential quality, which is human, and now we are left with the B quality. People moved away from the soul, exploring all these B quality kind of hype and also technology developed, so people start using more technology and mix all these elements in all kinds of music, not just in hardrock or metal. All things that were classic became taboo for a while. Guns ‘n’ Roses came and they had a touch of this classic stuff, but also new rock elements, to me they are a good example to mention as crossover. After them Nirvana came, then you had that kind of Seattle and grunge wave and then slowly the extreme and black metal scene started to grow and rise during the nineties. But I think in general many people were unemployed. Great guitarists, great drummers and great singers. And where did they go? They all disappeared, all these bands that really did great performances in the seventies and the eighties. They were like dominating the scene for years and now they were gone. I think they milked the maximum out of the artists and let them copies came up which certainly did not have the same qualities. But record companies always want to speculate and make fast money. That’s why all these, let me call them again ‘B level artists’ came on the market. They used more expensive producers, they introduced a glossy look with their hair and make up, a kind of hype, their way of living got more extreme and had a lack of quality. It ended up in being more crazy and acting like a rebel. With this they got a lot of attention, even pornographic stuff (I think of Motley Crue, but that’s an 80’s band – note of Vera) everything was always open for the papers and the magazines. The general media had something to write about. And then after a while I think their record sales dropped, because after a while people discovered what happened to the real quality. Record companies did not gain enough money anymore and I think that’s why they started looking after these garage bands, three chords band, not very technical. And they don’t have the biggest musical control over their instruments. But they have some kind of connection with the crowd. People can really identify themselves with these bands because they do not sound that well or talented. And when you produce this to a high class level and spend some money on it, of course you will hit the nerve in society towards a lot of people that really don’t have that much skills. But they can identify because it is something they can do themselves. Everybody could set up a band, because it was not too difficult to reach the level of the artist (that’s the punk attitude IMHO – Vera) Before the artist was something to look up to, because they delivered a strong, magical power. It has to do with both technical skills and also something inside you just totally different from this way of thinking. The heroes disappeared from the market. It seemed that the world did not want heroes anymore. (think of the Stranglers song ‘No More Heroes’ btw the title track of their second album 1977 – note of Vera). Because a hero is someone you have to look up to because he really worked hard, to achieve and become as good as he is. People preferred to be on stage in a wink of an eye and labels could earn their fast money, without years of preparations. But heroes are important in the music scene. That’s the reason why I started in the music. This is an ambition and something I can really strive and work to achieve myself a higher level and I knew already when I was a child, when I listened to these great singers, I knew I could not just go out there and sing after one year or two years or five. I could never match those guys at that age, cause they had that quality and experience and also they had something that they developed to become really great. I believe they had something that we have been moving away from in society. Kids that grow up now, they don’t have the same heroes to look up to anymore. And I think these heroes are important to create a certain standard amongst the young generations. Because they need to work to become a hero. Young kids don’t have to work.

Jorn

Did you come out of a musical family?

Yes, my father is a musician as well. He sings and he plays bass. He’s been doing some records in the sixties, early seventies. You could say I have it from childhood. But still, I think he never took the time to show me the ropes. Sometimes he brought me to the rehearsal room and I fooled around with the instruments as a kid when they had breaks and I guess I learned naturally. The access was important of course, to instruments and the environment. Also the records that he had, the records that he bought, that was important because they were high quality. Most kids of my age back then, they would never listen to these songs or these kind of orchestras. I think I was lucky in that sense, but he never really took the time to show me how everything works or explain what is important or not. Of course sometimes he told me what was wrong if he noticed something. You shouldn’t focus on this or that. But I had to learn basically all myself. Most of the stuff I learned from buying records. We had one small local record store where I grew up in a small town in Norway. It is in between two big mountains and situated in the valley, only 5000 people live there. I don’t live there anymore, but I used to live there.

It sounds nice to grow up there…

Yes, it was. Nature and everything. It was more like a wilderness and farmers background in a way. It was not easy to come from there and being ambitious and go out into the world and work for a career. But in general I was lucky, cause actually the drummer that worked with my father in a band called The Zodiacs in the late sixties. In the seventies he started a record store. He was one of the few guys in this country that actually took the time as an owner of a record store to import artists in our country. You could go around in big cities in this country and you would not find anything but what was traditionally on the charts. It was really difficult. There was only one little shell that had some alternatives that you would discover. In general it was not easy to discover progressive artists or more hard rock oriented artists or experimental. He took all these artists that nobody had heard of and I just got all these albums. Through that guy in a way I got into hard rock bands and bands like Kansas and Styx, even Whitesnake at that time. It wasn’t really something that was that popular, they didn’t really sell that much cause they were literally fresh. These bands were something that people talked of in music magazines and stuff. Maybe some of them did well in their own countries, but they weren’t the biggest global act. Bands like Rainbow and Black Sabbath. But even in the pop charts, Foreigner was a great band. Also in pop music you had great albums, like 10cc, Manfred Mann, these things had a certain quality level that I think in general we don’t have today. We are overloaded with music now and when technology came, people can actually make records at home. And the result will be good, but it might be soulless. Heartless. I think that is one of the biggest problems of today. At the same time it is good for artists like me, cause even though there are many artists, it is good to stick out of the masses. It is easier for me to make a living of it and also easier to get noticed. It would have been more difficult for me in the seventies, because you had so many artists at that time with that kind of skill. I am not criticizing them, I’ll only put down some good work the next few years and do my share in this world and in this life. Legendary bands are coming back and maybe I am one of the few people that contributes to bring some fresh music into the market with those classical qualities.

Jorn Lande

The former record ‘Out To Every Nation’ was a fluent recording process of only a few weeks. Was it this time also?

This new record did not take that long either. The song ideas for this new record were already worked out long time ago, just after finishing the Masterplan record ‘Aeronautics’. Just after that record I already had new ideas for a new Jorn album. When you get some ideas and you just keep them in the back of your head for a while, then it is easier to make the record in a short amount of time. We were well prepared, the songs were more simple, more direct and to the point, we did not really experiment that much to develop the songs. It was more a solid construction.

And did you work with the same musicians as on the previous one?

Jorn Viggo Lofstad is the guy I am working with mostly. I try to get the ideas together and sometimes I use my Les Paul guitar at home. Then we get together and I show him what I have and he takes it from there, then it develops to a new level, more high quality level. The basic ideas come from me, that’s how I see the whole picture. That is different from the other projects I do. You can hear they are in a more progressive or extreme musical landscape. When they work with me, they can be free but I have to hold back a bit of extreme elements. The less you add the better it is for the sound. The more elements you have going on in the music, the more difficult it is to separate everything. It has to be straight and simple, not over-arranged. Even if you mix the record in the studio or if you play live. This means you sometimes have to remove a lot of bottom frequencies and mid range frequencies in the mix, because that is the only way to really separate all the instruments. The more air you have in the music and the more simplified you can do it, still making it brilliant, then you have that kind of opportunity for full-bottomed sound. You can have all the aspects of making sound. A more massive and dramatic sound picture. I think that is where all the great bands have their sound from. That recipe is immortal. That is something I have learned in the past. It has to do with experience and the knowledge of what is important. We can learn a lot from the old classic bands.

But the world itself was more simple and less extreme when that music was created…

Yes, you are right. With ‘The Duke’ I think I am back to where I started, but still we keep some up to date elements in the music, because we are more powerful today. We have developed but keeping the essential stuff, that is important. Let’s see it that way: if the neighbour paints his house blue, why shouldn’t you paint your house blue, if blue is a great colour for your house. This is the same thing within music, that people sometimes don’t really understand. They always try to be new and modern, but there is actually a limit to how many colours you can combine and how many colours you can use in this life. There are always a few colours that will fit to a certain purpose, even if somebody used it before you. You have to use it again or otherwise you lose that quality which I mentioned before. The same with movies. The best movies are not experimental or new wave. The best movies have the classical elements like the typical battlefield scenes, or you see the metaphor or symbolism for that. The woman in the white dress riding a horse through the English moors with the black oak tree or whatever somewhere there. That picture will always be a strong enigmatic picture. It will be there forever.

Jorn Lande

Did you do the artwork yourself?

No, it was done by Thomas Everhardt, who also did the artwork for Masterplan. Of course I am using the crow. It is an element I use a lot more than I used to do in the past. It is part of my concept. The crow is also something very Scandinavian or Norwegian. It has a lot of symbolism. When you see a crow, at a certain time of day, or in a certain situation or environment, then it means something. To link myself with from where I am and my past. It resembles the duke, but also it resembles greed and lust and hunger. At the same time, you can say that the crow is kind of the duke of his own environment. Thomas is a great guy. All I had to do is just explain the idea of the album. I can just give him a little limerick and he will come up with something graceful.

What about the opera ‘Faust’ you were working on?

I was working on that, but then suddenly the Masterplan tour came up, so I could not fulfil it. So I had to give that job to another singer. It was actually the guy from Pagan’s Mind. We worked together and I told him: you have to help me out of this, because I have to do a European tour with Masterplan. The Faust thing was delayed. It was supposed to happen before Christmas at that time and then it was all moved till the spring. And in Spring we were supposed to go on tour, so I had to just cancel. I did all the rehearsals and preparations though and hopefully there will be more stuff like that to participate in the future.

Yes, like you are always busy. Are there things we need to know?

(laughs) No, right now I am just planning the new Masterplan. So we are just thinking about the new material or concept. Slowly, we are not really stressing with it, we are just collecting ideas, all of us and then we will schedule a meeting some time before the summer, but we will also do some festivals around. So we are going to Spain to play at Vega festival and also in Malaga. We will go there in March. We like to do some spread out festivals, so we’ll meet and see each other and then we’ll also have the chance to exchange some ideas. That’s what concerns the thoughts about the future of Masterplan. I don’t think you will see a new album for sale before 2007. The plan is to finish it by Christmas. This means we’ll go to the studio in August, September. So no big tours are planned at the moment, we have offers to go to South America, there is talk about going to Spain and to Japan again. So there is always gigs to play, but a real massive tour, that won’t happen until at least next year. In general I have no big real other plans, just I am working on some ideas with my Jorn concept. Maybe I will get to release some of my older material in some kind of new concept on which I am working on, which is basically some re-existence. I am re-recording some songs I did in the past and I have no really concrete idea for exactly when things are going to happen there. It is not taking all of my time and it is no big pressure and it is fun to do because I have so much stuff from my past already. It is just an idea about starting to look back and some things I wanted to change in the past, but it never happened because we didn’t have the budget or maybe we weren’t actually ready to get these ideas. Later you discover some ideas or things about some of the songs from the past you want to re-record or re-mix. Some songs you think are great, but maybe they are really not that famous because the album was out when you were really not that established in the market. Thoughts about a compilation maybe or re-arrangements, it is not concrete at the moment, but very soon I will know what will happen with that. Maybe we’ll see another Jorn release in the near future.

Jorn Lande

Do you always work in an own studio or do you change?

I always change it. I prefer to mix in Denmark at the Jailhouse studios with Tommy Hansen. It was recorded here in Norway, but it was finished and mixed in Denmark. I used two different studios. Last time I worked, with the previous album, I also worked in Gothenburg. Before that I worked at the Maq with Tommy Hansen. But sometimes you discover that you cannot beat a winning team and you should go back to some of the combinations you had. Sometimes the recipe is perfect, so… I felt that it is important for me to work with Tommy and the result we got is just special. And I also listened to his other works. It is always great, but I noticed if we do something together something extra happens to the result. I don’t know how to explain but it is like ‘just a little bit more’ hehe.

One thing I would like to ask too: can you tell a bit more about the lyrics?

I usually write very existential. Thinking about the world and my life and trying to reflect it as good as possible. I am cautious about what’s not good in the world, but in general I feel the lyrics are global, thinking about a bigger perspective when I write lyrics. Maybe one song once in a while is more direct. I was never that kind of artist who could just sit down and write a song about the sofa. It is hard for me to write a song about just one item. I always think about life and death and why I am here, looking at the trouble in the world. Also about hope for the future and the changes that I think should be made. I try to visualize that as much as possible in a more existential way of thinking, using symbolism to explain what I am thinking and it is also important that the people understand when they listen. I don’t like music or lyrics that go so deep that you have to have a master’s degree to understand what they really meant. That’s also why I sometimes use the same way of writing, again and again. Because I always try to be true to what I feel and what I think. I never going to be opening a dictionary or something like that just to find new stuff. It is not me, I use what I have learnt and what I know. I don’t need to look for new stuff, because I know more than enough to make people understand. And also I know more than enough words and combinations that really are strong and powerful. And there are words that are immortal, words that will always be strong and powerful. I don’t care if I used them before to express myself. It is important to do it that way, because it is part of a trademark. Jorn

They also fit with the music, because that is coming from the heart too…

That’s also something important that you mentioned. The lyrics have a lot of depth if you go into the meaning of the lyrics, but I don’t look for a new word cause I want to change something. If it describes what I need to say I don’t have to look for something unnatural. We are not making novelties for conquer space, we are trying to connect with the more human beings and nature, organic elements. I take a look at past, present and future and take a little view on life and all these elements and write down whatever my head it filled with. In general it is the same thing every year, the mood is changing a little bit from day to day, but in general I have the same thoughts about my life and the world as I had ten or twenty years ago. I just try to make these elements more complete, more great, by using them again in a different context. I am never totally happy with everything I have done. With this new record now I feel, a song like ‘Blacksong’ is something special. It has all these love elements that people can recognize, which is a typical Jorn identity thing, if they want to put a brand on me (laughs). Then we have ‘We Brought The Angels Down’ which is more influenced by classic whatever, you could say Sabbath, Dio… ‘Duke Of Love’ got some Whitesnake elements, because of the lyrics and because of the whole mood of the song. And a little arrogant excentric way of performing. You can always find different elements in the music which reflects my past and where I come from. If you want to pick out something that is typical Jorn, maybe you could take ‘Blacksong’ and ‘End Of Time’, which have less influences from the typical hard rock world I grew up with, and more Jorn. If you want to put a brand on me as an artist, maybe these two songs are the best representatives.

MASTERPLAN

More Jornish…

“That’s a fine word”, he agrees. “It sounds good. Not every name fits with that. Now we have Jiddish and Jornish, haha. We have a lot of categories, almost religious. Also a quick mention regarding the lyrics and the writing: a lot of people ask me about religion, and they ask me about Jesus and God because sometimes I mention a lot of these elements in my lyrics. People think that I am a devoted Christian, because I write those things. I am not following the bible as a Christian, I just think everyone knows the story of the Bible. Everyone can identity with what the bible is referring to and I think it is a very good and very strong tool to use to explain what is good and bad. It is good to use elements like heaven and hell. When you cry for help, even if you don’t believe in God itself, you cry out for something. For a Master. Or for a God or something to help you. Jesus, God, all these elements are just because I grew up with these Christian values when I was a kid and are natural for me to use. I feel attached to it, even though I am not really worshipping. Christianity may be one of the cruellest things that ever existed. But it is what men did with the word of God. Men came and took away some of the essential belief some time ago. Back then, even before the Celtic beliefs and the old Viking times, even then they believed that the woman was important. If you look at all the important women in history and also in mythology. Everything is focused around the women. And I think somewhere on the road, men came to try to put this kind of thinking away and put the women in the second place. Why is it Eve that ate the apple? Why is it the rib of Eve that created man? Most of the time women lead to temptation, also in history. If you hear a story or a saying, it is always: the woman is the witch. Witches got burnt. Men also, like wizards, but in general men came and changed a lot in the belief or in the image of old religions. Many Celtic crosses have been found here along the coast in Norway.” Jorn

Did you visit that area?

Oh yeah, many times I have been there. It is great. The Celtic cross was a navigation instrument. Back then, they used it to navigate after the stars. When you see the cross, which has a circle around it, which is a kind of a circle in the cross and a pentagram in there again, that is actually not something evil. It was Christianity that changed it to be evil. They said it was a heathen belief and a sin. But the truth is: that cross stands for knowledge. It was a navigation instrument that was used to navigate after the stars. And they found these instruments around in the Northern parts of the world here. They found proof and evidence. They even discovered that some of the old churches are built in a sense that if you take this pentagram and lay it over a map, thousand years ago and more, but today if you take the map and put this on top you will certainly find out that there are cities and churches that are built as strategic places around the country which will mark the tip of each star in the ending of the pentagram. Our forefathers knew more than we are aware of. You might think we are full of knowledge, but we are not. Okay, we have this technology journey, a technological development which of course creates a lot of devices that will help us in our development to give up a lot of benefits, but our inner discovery and our prospective on stars and how the whole constellation works, nobody knows that today. How many people can actually tell what kind of star is up there? Who can tell something important about the galaxy just by looking up? Most people can’t. They’ll say; oh that’s the moon, I think that’s the North star, is it the Bethlehem star that’s glowing strong and maybe the Waggoner because it is so obvious and easy to discover when it is dark at night; but beyond that…? The actual Astrological aspect? The navigation and geometric aspect of heaven is something that people don’t really know and it is something that I think Christianity contributed to kill. I think that Christianity made many mistakes and destroyed a lot of good things that were actually a better balance for mankind. It gave mankind a better understanding and a better knowledge on how to develop as a creative and constructive species. Something happened along the way to destroy that and that is why we are where we are today. Of course it is not all negative, but I am sure it would be possible to have a much better specie today if we had these elements in normal progress. All this valuable knowledge is getting lost and I think if we had that knowledge, parallel with development, I am sure we would have less conflicts in this world, that is my belief. Cause people would have more stuff to feed their minds, be creative and feel that there is a purpose, exciting things to turn to in life that really goes beyond all these material goods they have today. It is a lot of philosophical stuff hehe.

Yes, but it is excited and in my youth I was always reading and studying about celestial things and stars and even astronomy… I recognize myself in your words…

(laughs) Well, you know, I never really studied these things, I don’t know all details about how everything works, I just take the interest in it, to notice it, because I would like to spend more time when I get older, to look into some of that, to try and learn more about it because I would like to know more about that geometrical stuff, to learn how to really read the Star map in a different level without having technical help, without the computer. It is just, you never have time for things like that. You have to live and survive and make career or music. People go to their jobs and have a family life, internet, e-mails,… it is society pouring down on us. But I hope when I get older that I can sit back a little bit and go deeper into all those elements. I really like to know more about these things and learn to respect these older generations, our forefathers. It makes you see things in balance and another perspective. Values and appreciation. Whatever…

Indeed, suddenly we realized that time went by so quickly and we should think about ending our agreeable conversation. Let us finish with some practical things you all were waiting for: Jorn’s own website www.jornlande.com will open up soon. Now it is still under construction, but one of these days it would be open, so check it out regularly. Maybe Jorn is playing live at some festivals, but he will be out with Masterplan most of the time. But he wants to sketch out a Jorn tour after the next record. When he does that he has to do it proper. First of all we enjoy the excellent ‘The Duke’ album!


Beekstraat 1 - B-2640 Mortsel - Belgium