The following interview was conducted with Daniel Gildenlöw  in early May and was supposed to be centered around Pain of Salvation’s new DVD release “On The Second Death Of” but I took the liberty to ask Daniel about more important issues regarding the band. Here’s an excerpt of the discussion we had on the phone.

Some might question the timing of this DVD two years after a gig that even had a different line-up of the band.

Daniel: Yeah, that’s a little bit weird. The thing is that during the 2007 tour we already knew that Johan was gonna leave the band. We decided beforehand, because Johan wanted it that way, that we wouldn’t tell anyone that this would be his last tour. We knew that this was gonna be the last trip we make together with Johan and we had Simon as a stand-in bass player so it was kind of weird to start with. Also my personal life was really weird at that point because I was still living with having to tell my own brother to leave the band. I had that with me and then of course knowing that it would be Johan’s last tour… I mean we’ve been playing together since I was 16 and he was 14. And then having a stand-in member of the band that you don’t really know of who is he and how does he work out with the rest of the members. On top of that of course it was my first tour away from my kid. I was a father for the first time on tour. And also just before we left I found out that my mother had serious cancer. I offered actually to stay and cancel the whole tour but she said that I had to go on tour. So all of those feelings were with me on that tour and the weird thing is that somehow I get the feeling that all those different emotions and those different energies came through in some sort of way on stage. After that tour it was really difficult for me to get back to that material because as soon as I was getting back to the material I got back to all those different feelings and emotions that I was kind of submerged in in that tour situation. And of course when it comes to the line-up it didn’t really make a difference because it changed directly after the last show. (Laughs) So there was no way we could have made a DVD with the same line-up as of the DVD actually. For me it took some time as it was like when you have that kind of a mental block with every time you start working on it, it feels heavy and you feel like you want to do something else. And it wasn’t really until Per (Per Hillblom) came to me and said, “I’m sorting out the material from the tour back in 2005 and I have an idea for a documentary that I think would be nice to do.” When he showed me the first copy I really liked what I saw. I mean it was painful of course. It’s not a documentary that pictures the biggest band on earth but all the spinal tap moments are there and that’s what I liked and that’s what I told him when he came on the tour that he had free hands, he could film whatever he wanted and he could make whatever documentary he wanted without us controlling anything because I think that’s usually better than when the band kind of shows how they want to be perceived. And when I saw that it all of a sudden made sense, you had sort of the last chapter in the 2005 tour with Kristoffer and then you had the last chapter with Johan in the second season as I chose to call it. And then I got the energy to get back and actually start working on the product containing the documentary and the live show from 2007. When it was released it ended up number two on the Swedish DVD charts and the funny thing is that number one was one of Sweden’s biggest artists that just released a DVD from his show back in 2003. (Laughs) So I thought that, “Okay, actually we’re kind of up to date.”

You lazy Swedish asses!

Daniel: (Laughs) Yeah! I hope that anyone, especially anyone getting the limited edition, will understand why it took some time to finish the product. I always want anything we do to be more than just a CD or a DVD. I think it’s another world for people to kind of dive into and live with for quite some time, hopefully. If you should have one the limited edition is the one I would recommend to everyone because to me it’s the real product. I don’t want to add stuff that wasn’t intentionally there from the start. I’d start with the director’s cut and then you can do the cinema version as sort of a stripped down version. (Laughs)

After checking the concert DVD I was kind of disappointed. I mean there’s nothing wrong with the performance but the lights at that gig were pretty bad.

Daniel: Well, I’m not in control of that. (Laughs) Well, first of all it’s always difficult to record a DVD. The thing is: if you want to have a lighting that looks good for the DVD it looks like crap for the audience and the other way around. If you make it look good for the audience it looks crap on DVD because then it’s way too dark. Basically you have to have lots of white light to make a DVD look good. What we were trying to do was to find some sort of compromise when the audience is not suffering too much and the DVD is still watchable. You’re referring to that it’s kind of dark or do you think the timing and the lighting design?

There’s too much white light and the whole band is in darkness during most of the show…

Daniel: Oh yeah, that’s a typical DVD problem. It’s always a little bit tricky. Also the recording of this whole show was really a last minute project. Originally I wanted to record the 2005 tour because I thought that it was a better tour for a DVD because it was more of a big production in many ways. For the Scarsick album I wanted to get back to much more back to basic sort of gigs, basically just playing music from start to finish and not having projectors and no fancy light shows, just a rock’n’roll band on stage playing music. And of course the two things that happened, first of all it’s not as cinematic as some sort of stage productions where lots of impressive things are happening and secondly I think that is the gig that fits better in this sort of club environment. Initially we were gonna record it in La Loco in Paris which I think would have been a good venue from that point of view, it’s more rock’n’roll, instead just a few days before the recording it turned out that we’re gonna record it at The Paradiso, which is a great venue but I had the feeling as we were getting into the venue that its setting is very cinematic and it almost demands a nice big production. So it was a little bit like putting Rolling Stones in a church. (Laughs) But in the end I was satisfied with what we got out of it anyway. I have to say that it was not one of the better shows of the tour and I was surprised when I heard the result that it was actually that good… but I’m really really picky. Basically I mean I’ve been satisfied with three gigs in my whole career and I still think that we kick basically everyone else’s ass but that’s just because they are even worse than we are. We’re not the best, it’s just that everyone else is worse. (Laughs)

Did you run into a lot of problems during the recording of that gig?

Daniel: I don’t think so. Not that I can recall. Basically it was a very standard setup. We didn’t have any problematic things to deal with. It feels kind of odd because everyone else is fixing their vocals and everything and I feel kind of naked with having the lead vocals unfixed but it would just feel very very strange for me to re-record stuff in the studio for an album that is supposed to sound live.

So how much afterwork, how much patching had to be done in the studio?

Daniel: The other guys had to redo the vocals mainly because especially on that sort of live situation you have so much leakage into the microphones. I refused to redo my lead vocals so that was basically as much leakage as we can take so that meant that we had to re-record the other microphones. If you want to do a perfect DVD recording and not think of the audience I would have chosen other microphones and other equipment, more fitting for recordings and for live performances. But then the live performance would really have sucked. It’s always that balance with pleasing the live audience and get the best for the actual product.

Maybe next time you should just record behind closed doors. (Laughs)

Daniel: Yeah, but that would just feel weird too. I don’t know, it’s just not the same thing. (Laughs) What we did for Be was kind of a nice thing to do. We recorded two shows entirely. One with audience and one without audience so for the tricky part you could always go for the non-audience version. And the same thing for the non-audience version that we could have more lights so at least then you have something to choose between. I think in the end basically it was the live performance that we used like 90% anyway. But for that live version we didn’t do any patching after all.

Speaking of the microphones Johan’s performance in the bonus clip is priceless.

Daniel: (Laughs) It’s so fantastic. And of course I asked him if it was okay for him to use it and he doesn’t have a problem at all with that. He was laughing his ass off when he heard it. He said, “Yeah, of course. It’s divine.” (Laughs) Anyone else, if they can’t hear what they do, they’d go silent but he just keeps going. (Laughs) I’m a very experienced singer and even if I don’t hear what I’m doing I can feel in my throat what note I’m singing… but apparently he can’t. (Laughs) I think it’s wonderful. I think that’s nice with that note as it really shows a whole full palette of different vocal styles. (Laughs) It’s just true art. I’ve never heard anything as funny as that, so of course we had to put it on there.

Do you still see yourself listening to this concert recording or you’re rather happy to put that behind?

Daniel: The thing is that I’ve never been a live recording person. The few live recordings I have I have mostly for professional reasons. For example I have the Led Zeppelin live DVD because Mike were really nagging me to do the vocals and I tried to tell him that I don’t know Led Zeppelin. (Laughs) Apart from that… I was a KISS fan for a lot of years and you were supposed to just love Alive! I and II. I hated them. I could not find any reason whatsoever to listen to them. I was like, “Okay, so it’s like the studio album with worse tempos and lots of audience that has nothing to do with music.” (Laughs) I never really got it. Not until so many people have contacted me, fans, who say that, “You’re never gonna get to my country and play, when are you gonna release a live CD or DVD so I have an idea of what it would be like to see you live.” From that point of view I can understand the whole purpose. I think I’ve listened to the live version of Be maybe once after it was released and I think it’s gonna be the same thing with this record. I’m just not a live person. I can listen to my own music… there were a few years when basically that was all I was listening to but now… nah, I don’t think so. Maybe if I watch the DVD but I think I’m more likely to watch the documentary more times in the future than the live show.

The Scarsick tour brought a nice surprise to the fans in form of the song Hallelujah and you are one that wasn’t influenced by the original but Jeff Buckley’s rendition…

Daniel: Yeah. Well, I think the original is nice too but the Buckley version was the first one I’ve heard. I think that’s a great song. Me and Fredrik were playing that song at a Baptism… one of my old school friends was baptising his kid and asked me if we could sing Hallelujah because he saw us doing a charity gig at the centre square of Eskilstuna and we played Hallelujah there in a softer version. The version we do on the DVD is kind of hardrockified. (Laughs) But when we made the Hallelujah version at the Baptism where we just had an acoustic guitar and a piano and I did the vocal style much softer, more like the Buckley version. To me that is the way that song comes across as the strongest.

It seems that’s one of the most covered song ever…

Daniel: Yeah and it really disturbs me that it’s, especially in the last years, been covered a lot. When I heard the Buckley version I’ve never heard any other cover of it apart from the Rufus Wainwright cover in Shrek. Maybe it was Shrek that kind of brought it to the public. The last 2-3 years it’s covered so many times that I really have to do all I can to block out the different covers because they are always bad. They always miss out on the fact that it’s supposed to be painful. I’ve seen Christian people covering it and they really think that the song is about the Hallelujah part. (Laughs) You have to listen to the lyrics goddamit, it’s about sex and broken heartedness.

Guess they never really paid attention to the lyrics.

Daniel: How can you sing something and not understand it? “Wait a minute! Hmm… That’s interesting. What does he mean with this: ‘Remember when I moved in you’. What does that mean? It has top do something with God, yeah.” (Laughs)

Let God come inside you.

Daniel: Yeah, that’s it. (Laughs)

It’s not the only cover song that you used to play on charity gigs. You also do Working Class Hero, Yellow Raven… How do you pick these songs?

Daniel: You have to have these songs that you’ve listened to that do something with you, that touch you in a way, that make you want to experience them in a different way than listening to them. Especially as a singer I think that singing the lines and the lyrics does something to you and does something to the song too of course. We’ve been playing around many different songs and with some of the songs you feel like that you want to share it with people, especially if you have your own interpretation of that song. It’s kind of funny, because when I started playing music I never covered other people’s songs. I started writing my own music from the scratch, I never started to learn other people’s songs only if there was a song that I really couldn’t leave behind. I know that when I was 15 we actually played Fade To Black by Metallica because I really liked that song. And when I was 16 we played The Mission by Queensryche but that was basically it. As I get older I really appreciate playing other people’s music. It’s just the matter of going into the music, kind of having the possibility of singing it and doing it with full instrumentation which is a different thing than singing along with the car stereo when you’re going from one city to another. (Laughs)

What could be the next song you would cover?

Daniel: I always wanted to do Winter by Tori Amos. It’s on my Top 3 list of nice songs. I would like to sing Gethsemane but the problem is that you would have to have an orchestra to make a nice song because the structure is so simple that it kind of fall to the ground a little bit without the orchestra. And then you have to really stay clear of doing the nice polished version. You really have to go dirty with that song to make it really work. And with Winter… it’s just perfect and that’s the problem. Any way you would like to try to make it it would be worse. It’s a little bit like something with The Beatles. It’s one of those songs that really found its perfect expression. Sometimes I think that every song has a soul and it is laid upon whoever composes and arranges everything to try to make that song get to its final destination and normally you don’t succeed because it’s impossible. But then every once in a while someone manages to make a song that becomes exactly the song it was meant to be. And that’s when covers can actually be helpful because I think for instance that the Jeff Buckley version of Hallelujah was the potential of the song. Cohen made a great version but the song aimed for something else and it hit home with the Jeff Buckley version, except for the little guitar solo part, which is good but it wasn’t part of the soul of the song I think. As for Winter I fail to see how that song could be any better in any other shape or form so that’s maybe one reason to stay clear of that song. (Laughs)

The Scarsick tour was basically the only one that you did together with Simon. I don’t think you expected his participation in the band to be that short lived…

Daniel: No, that was badly spent time. (Laughs) I mean for the tour he was not actually part of the band. He became member officially after the tour. It’s just obvious that we made a hasty decision. We should have waited. We’ve had those problems ever since the first album was recorded. It’s like having the band being an engine and you have five cylinders and they just have to pump in rhythm to make it work out. And we’ve always had problems that for one reason or another it was always kind of gone on four cylinders and the one was out of synch. It’s been through different times and different people who have been that kind of out of synch cylinder. (Laughs) Now when we are just four I really have the feeling that all cylinders are in synch and the engine is running very smoothly. And now we’re gonna be much more careful with bringing a fifth cylinder into the band and make sure that he really works out. I don’t have the energy of having to go down to base camp again and find another guy for the mountaineering team.

I think having someone that isn’t working out is more of a setback than not having anyone.

Daniel: Yeah, exactly. It was just not possible to make it work. I wish that we’d come to that point much sooner actually but it’s what it is now and hopefully we came out as a stronger band.

What was the best thing about having Simon in the band?

Daniel: His playing. He could pick up things very fast. He didn’t take a long time to learn stuff and he executed it very well. I think that was his best feature.

Last year you had Per Schelander from Royal Hunt helping out for two shows and now he’s been announced to do the live shows for 2009. Would you consider him as a permanent replacement if he works out in the long run?

Daniel: He’s definitely one of the guys that we see as an interesting candidate, absolutely. We haven’t really had the possibility of playing a lot together. We’ve been focusing on the new album and when we’ve done gigs they were kind of straight gigs and we haven’t really had a lot of time to see how well it functions from a musical point of view. Also he’s a guy with a family. I mean you need to know that the new guy is someone who can really give all the time and energy that is needed to the band. That’s what we had with Johan for a long period of time and we knew that so it was nothing that we could do anything about. Maybe he didn’t want to go out on tour that much and he’s always been a very family oriented person, which I respect completely. I think you can be a family person and still be able to go on tour but that’s very hard to combine and this combination is kind of crucial for a band. And we knew this and we talked about it a lot with Johan and it was how it was for a few years. But we don’t feel like going back to that situation where you can only go out for three weeks in a year because it’s very hard to come to the next step as a band. You need to go out and present yourself to the fans.

Well, Léo is not a new member by any means but still he’s the newest addition compared to the Scarcisk line-up. How do you see him got used to Sweden?

Daniel: He fits very well to the band. I was warning him a lot (laughs) about moving to Sweden because I think coming from south of France and moving to Sweden, especially in the winter when it’s dark and cold all the time, it’s kind of depressing. (Laughs) I think he’s had a few times of feeling a bit down but I have to say that he’s fit in remarkably well and he’s picking up the Swedish very well too. He’s skilled in languages. I don’t want to stay on the Simon issue at all but we were kind of locked by having Simon in the band that we couldn’t do that much and that felt a bit frustrating when you have imported someone from another country to come here and then basically you can’t go out and play gigs as much as you would want to as Léo undoubtedly wanted to as well. I think he’s gotten through the worst part now with all the turbulence that we had in the band when he came in. All of that time I could just imagine that it must have been a kind of turbulence for him too in other ways maybe than for the rest of us. But now things are starting to lighten up and that’s very good.

You’ve been offered to take part in the upcoming ProgNation line-up so you’re about to go back to America after a long absence. Do you think you still have some fans there?

Daniel: I know we do. The question that I’m asking myself is that do we have lots of enemies there? (Laughs) One guy throwing a tomato is gonna be much more obvious to us than ten guys cheering. I know that some of our strongest support from a political point of view was actually coming from the US. We’ve had some scary political support from European countries too like people who go out, “Yeah, that’s right. I hate America too.” What? That’s not what we’re saying, calm down. (Laughs) For the American fans the whole embargo that we’ve gone through, then the song America of course has been even more dividing for the fanbase in America than for other countries. It’s really a “love or hate” kind of vibe when it comes to America so I don’t know… I know we have fans and I just hope that they’re gonna be there first. (Laughs)

But you’re definitely not gonna play America.

Daniel: Well, I don’t have a problem with playing that. Mike doesn’t have a problem with that either. (Laughs)

Yeah, but you just said that you don’t like tomato.

Daniel: Nah, that’s true! But maybe I can just sing it very blurry and only sing America clearly. Then people would like it. (Laughs) As long as they don’t know the lyrics of course.

It’s like with Rammstein’s America that was a hit even in America since most people didn’t understand the lyrics.

Daniel: Ah okay… so we should sing it in Swedish then. (Laughs) I think it was kind of brave for InsideOut America, may them rest in peace, one day they were giving me a call saying, “It’s my duty as the head of the record company to tell you that it might and will effect the sales in a negative way but if you really want to have it on the album then we’re gonna back you up all the way. So it’s all up to you but it’s my duty to tell you about the consequences otherwise I wouldn’t have done my job.” We said, “Oh, of course it’s gonna be there.” (Laughs) And in the end that was the song they chose to promote the album with. They put it up for download and they said that they never had so many downloads on their homepage ever. There’s one guy who told us that he was gonna burn all of our CDs. I wrote him back and said, “Well, just because you don’t like the lyrics that doesn’t mean that the music has changed for the other albums.” (Laughs) I see it as a support song for America. For me it was just a way of saying that actually the American people are the ones suffering most from the kind of government they had. They’ve really made the America hate all over the world grow and it’s not good for anyone. Bush is not good for anyone. (Laughs)

Maybe for the wife though…

Daniel: I just have a hard time seeing that even, but okay. (Laughs)

Nah, I don’t want to visualize that!

Daniel: No! Oh my god, my eyes! I can’t see. It burns! (Laughs)

ProgNation will keep you occupied for a long time but how about good old Europe then?

Daniel: We have some ideas for doing some headline tours. I think basically at this point we could tour pretty much as much as we want to but we also have the fact that I’m gonna be a father for the second time in July which is nice but also makes going away for the PN09 tour kind of hard. We’ve talked lots and lots and lots about that to make that worked out. It’s gonna really take its toll I think so we’ll have to see how much we can tour. But both me and Johanna are kind of fed up with the situation and we want this to happen. I think no one else in any sane sort of mind would go on tour with one 3 old and one 2 week old baby at home and go away for six weeks to another continent. To me that’s kind of the price you have to pay. It comes to the territory you like it or not. That is what the music work is about in many ways or I’d have to say that this is kind of as bad as it gets when it comes to that. We wanted to get back to the States and I think it’s a very nice package with Zappa and Beardfish as well, apart from Dream Theater. If it hasn’t been for that offer I would never have gone away at that point. It’s gonna feel terrible in many ways but that’s life. Then I’ll get back home.

I’ve been able to hear 5-6 songs off the new album while I was over there in the studio and I can safely say that it’ll surprise quite a lot of Pain of Salvation fans.

Daniel: Oh yeah. It’s really earthy and organic in many ways I think. It’s back to a raw and direct sound… and I think the songs are very direct too. Still diverse as always but they’re held together by a power that I think we haven’t had since the first album. I tested the material on some old fans that I know and they were all being very very positive about the music because it’s going forward but also going back to lots of different things from the previous, early albums too. I don’t know… I hope that everyone will take it that way.

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All rights reserved (c) 2009 by Zoltán Koncsok
All photos were taken at Eskilstuna 350 år on the 5th of June 2009.

Filed under: interview, music, photo