I Sverige, lige på den anden side af Sundet i The Tivoli, Helsingborg, tager RockZeit d. 18 oktober over for, at få en helt speciel oplevelse. Fire store musikere der har besluttet sig for, at lave noget fed rockmusik sammen, og har derfor dannet et nyt og spændende band. Der er pt. booket to shows i Sverige. D. 17 oktober i Trollhättan, og d. 18 oktober i Helsingborg.
Det tager kun 15 min. at sejle over sundet. Knapt kan man nå at tage en kaffe, så vi kan kun opfordre til, at man begiver sig ud på denne lille tur, og blive vidne til en af de allerførste koncerter. Johnny Griparic på bas, (kendt fra bl.a. Slash), Frank Ferrer på trommer, (kendt fra bl.a. Guns N’ Roses), Bob Fridzema på keys, (kendt fra bl.a. Glenn Hughes), og Conny Bloom sang og guitar, (kendt fra bl.a. Electric Boys), har tilsammen fundet den helt store kemi, og det er den vi skal opleve d. 18 oktober. Det er virkelig rutinerede og garvede musikere der her er tale om, så det kan ikke undgå at blive sindsyg godt. Vi er fuld af store forventninger til dette specielle projekt.
Læs her i interviewet om de tanker de har gjort sig. Om deres entusiasme i forhold til dette band, der uden tvivl emmer af god rock kemi og musikalsk dygtighed.
RockZeit: First, Hi guys. Thanks for taking your time to talk to us. How long have you been playing together?
Johnny: We have never played together.
Frank: Well, Johnny has been playing with Slash for something like 30 years, I was in Guns from 2006 till 2025, and then Slash and Duff came back in 2016, so I have been playing with Slash for 8 years.
Johnny: We have a lot of mutual friends. It’s a little surprising, that we haven’t played together before.
Frank: It was Conny Bloom that pretty much brought us together. Johnny and Conny has known each other for a long time.
Johnny: Yeah, we have also just jammed occasionally. And I said, that now that I’m in Sweden, we should put something together .
And then Frank, you have played with Conny last year…….
Frank: Yeah, earlier this year, in January. when I did a drum clinic.
Electric Boys are really popular in The States. We jammed, and I felt an immediate connection with Conny. We come from “the same place”. We should definitely do something, and I wanna be in Europe more. Conny knew Johnny, and Johnny knew Bob. so that is how this has come together.
Basically four guys that wanna play together.
RockZeit: And Johnny, you know Bob Fridzema from playing with Walter Trout?
Johnny: Yeah, I’m the one who said, I’ve got a guy, I know the keyboard player that we need.
It’s weird you know, ’cause each one of us has played with somebody in the group, but we have never played together. When we have Zoom meetings, it seems like we have been a band forever. It feels natural, no egos. The song selection is everybody’s cup of tea
Frank: It is like we would have done it 30 years ago. The first thing we should do was book a gig (laughing). We have never played together, let’s book a gig.
Johnny: Martin from “Concerts Alive”, booked us some gigs, So we better pick some songs now, ’cause we got some gigs. (laughing).
RockZeit: What kind of music will you present to the audience?
Frank: Let’s put it this way, what the audience is gonna see, and what we are gonna do, it’s gonna be spontaneous, it’s gonna be something that’s never been done. Let’s just put it that way. We are gonna try to find a space, hopeing the audience is gonna come with us, so that everybody in the room is experiencing the same thing. I can’t wait to see what we come up with. Really, I can’t wait.
RockZeit: But I’m sure it will be rock you’ll be playing?
Frank: It’s gonna be.”shake your ass music” for sure . Is it all right to say that?!
We are gonna be pushing, pushing, pushing.
We are gonna be pushing, pushing, pushing.
Johnny: It’s not what you would think, that we are gonna do some Guns songs and some Slash songs. That’s what people might think, but that would be boring. If you wanna hear Slash, go and hear Slash, if you wanna hear Guns, go and hear Guns.
RockZeit: Will you be playing originals?
Johnny: Not yet, no not yet, but hopefully…..
RockZeit. Conny is a pretty good songwriter….
Johnny: Oh yeah, Conny is great. I think we definitely could be writing some stuff together.
RockZeit: How have you had time to rehears, have you been rehearsing online?
Johnny: No, we will actually rehears. We have a full day of rehearsal before the show.
Frank: It’s not like we don’t give a shit and just show up. When I played with Conny, we didn’t rehears, we just clicked and I had full confidence. We will be ready for sure. We have the pattern, the foundation, but then it’s like…let’s go you know.
RockZeit: You are doing two concerts.
Frank: This, the first one is gonna be a special occasion , this is a jumping point, we are hoping this is gonna be like, oh yeah, these guys are great, I went to their first gig. We want it to be that!
Johnny: Doing this journey together, it will only be that night, it will never happen again. The first won’t be the same as the second one. That’s my vision. We have the framework of what we wanna play, but within that, we don’t know.
Frank: I’m approaching this particular situation as a journey. I want it to keep going and growing, getting bigger and getting tours. We really wanna do this, and we wanna do it well.
Johnny: And what is really exciting is, that it’s not gonna be like an “All Star” whatever you wanna call it, only one time and nobody is really gonna give a fuck. Like Frank said, we really, really wanna do this.
RockZeit: So you are gonna continue with this band?
Johnny: Absoluty.
RockZeit: So you might end up giving the band a name?
Frank: Maybe we’ll find a name that night. We’ll ask the audience (laughing).
RockZeit: This is so exciting. This is something brand new we will be experiencing.
Frank: Terry Reid was my neighbor. He was the person that Jimmy Page first called to start Led Zeppelin. If you have ever seen the documentary.
In my mind, the way it plays, we are creating that, the way that we got together.
Like them, they didn’t know what they were doing, but they were kind of knowing what they were doing. I feel like this is where we are at too.
By no means, I’m not trying to compare us to Led Zeppelin, but the way the scenario plays in my mind, it’s kind of the same way Led Zeppelin formed. Four guys that wanted to get together to see what could happen.
Johnny: Right, and a very simular vision. It is very rare that it just falls into place. Even for me, I have been doing this for a long time. It’s rare, that I get this super excited, and I’m super excited to play with these guys
RockZeit: Could you imagine a concert in Denmark?
Frank: I would be disappointed if we don’t do one. Seriously!
RockZeit er vild af begejstring over dette spændende projekt, skabt af sindsygt dygtige musikere, og glæder os vildt til, at opleve denne debut på noget der kan gå hen og blive stort.
Desværre er vi ikke tilstede til den aller første koncert i Trollhätten, hvilket ville have været det ultimative kick. Men vi er på pletten i Helsingborg.
Desværre er vi ikke tilstede til den aller første koncert i Trollhätten, hvilket ville have været det ultimative kick. Men vi er på pletten i Helsingborg.
Billetter til koncerten købes her:
https://www.thetivoli.se/program.
Læs også disse to tidligere interviews;
https://rockzeit.dk/interview-med-slashs-bassist-johnny-griparic/