Transcript of an interview I recorded with TOMMY JOHANSSON of MAJESTICA - 20201207. Full article here. MAL-
Talking to Tommy from MAJESTICA. Tommy. Thanks for taking the time. TOMMY- My pleasure. MAL- Good to be talking to you. Now, in this situation I would normally ask someone how they found the time juggling bands. But one thing most of us have had lots of this year is time. Is that the case? TOMMY- Yes, that is the case. I think that if we didn't have the time I don't think this album would have been possible to write or to produce. I mean this album has been in the back of the head for a couple of years, but since this year has been nothing but you know staying home, it's been a good year for writing music, but otherwise a bad year. MAL- If you'd asked me just a few months ago if I thought I'd hear a Metal band doing a Christmas album. I would have said no. But where did this idea come from? And how did you put it together? TOMMY- The idea of doing a Christmas album has been around for many years, at least from my side. And then last year MAJESTICA we did a small short cover of Mariah Carey's 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' ,just one minute, so it would fit on social medias and people seemed to like it very very much and some people said, 'yeah, you should do a Christmas album' so I though 'yeah, maybe it's time to do that'. So we thought okay, maybe we can do a Christmas album sometime, and then the corona happened and we all stayed home, and it was a good opportunity to start with the album. MAL- Right tell us about the story behind it. It's based on the story we all know 'A Christmas Carol' of course, how much did you throw into that? And who did you get in to help you? TOMMY- I did actually all the research myself, because when I was 17 years old, I played Ebenezer Scrooge in the school play. We did the musical on our own to perform in front of the school and parents and everything around Christmas. And when I started to write songs for this album, I didn't really know what to sing about until I figured out, 'Okay, well 'A Christmas Carol'. That's a cool subject because it fits very well as a musical, it's a well-known story and it would fit to a Power Metal album as well. So actually, the first song I wrote 'The Ghost of Christmas Past'. I wrote the lyrics like Scrooge is going back to the past to like it does in the story. But I sang it from a narrator's perspective, like he's telling the story of Scrooge, and then I did another song when I was singing from Scrooge's perspective and I thought it sounded much better, like I was singing like I was Scrooge. But of course that story I mean, it's a long story, so I needed to get some more information, you know to make sure I bring the most necessary things. So I watched the movie, the Jim Carrey version which is one of the most accurate ones that sticks to the story. I watched that one I don't know how many times I've seen it this year. And of course the Muppets version. I even saw a version with Matthew McConaughey called 'The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past' and 'Scrooged' with Bill Murray and another version of 'Scrooge' as well, an older one. I also started to see the HBO series 'A Christmas Carol' with Guy Pearce. You know taking notes while watching the movie, making sure I got everything, and I also read some manuscripts because I mean the movies differ from the novel a little bit. So yeah, so I did all the research myself. MAL- Excellent, now I haven't seen the lyrics to this obviously but I find myself actually singing the Christmas carols and hymns along with it. I can't be the only one doing that. TOMMY- What do you mean, like the Christmas Melodies we have put in? MAL- Yeah. TOMMY- Well yeah we discussed that like yeah, we don't want to do a cover album because everyone has done that, I mean when it comes to a Metal band doing something with Christmas they do a cover album, and even though they do Christmas songs, they don't sound like Christmas. I mean Christmas has a certain instrument that makes it sound like Christmas, a certain way of building up the songs and none of these Heavy Metal bands use that. They do 'Jingle Bells' with electric guitar and fast drums and it's a Christmas album but it doesn't sound Christmas, so that's what we wanted to do, we wanted this album to really sound like Christmas so you could hear it right away that this is a Christmas album, and so I did a lot of research analyzing movie soundtracks to 'Home Alone' and 'The Polar Express' you know these famous Christmas movies to find out what is it that makes it sound like Christmas? What instrument are they using? How do they build up the melodies, the songs, and you know all of that. So it was a lot of research for that as well, but it was fun. MAL- Did you have any guests on the album that we need to know about? TOMMY- Yes, we did have Anders (Anders Sköld) the singer from the Power Metal band, VEONITY, he sings on two songs, and then we have my former colleague and bandmate Henrik Lindfors from HOT BEEF INJECTION, who sings on a couple of songs and then we have a colleague of Chris the bass player, called Hanne Hermansson, she sings a female part on two songs as well, and then of course, we have all the guys in MAJESTICA singing lead vocals on through the album every here and there. MAL- How's the reaction been so far, I must say I was impressed. How has the feedback been going? TOMMY- It's great actually, fantastic feedback. I wasn't expecting that. I was hoping that of course, but I wasn't expecting that. So I'm very surprised. I'm very very happy that people seem to really like this album. Some people say 'the Christmas Album of the Year'. Some people say, you know for the ballad that we released as a single video on the 4th, the day of the release of the album. Some people say that 'this is a new classic Christmas song, it should be played everywhere', and you know, comments like that and it makes me very very happy and it makes me also feel like I've done something right like, what I tried to achieve with this album, I actually did and it makes me very happy, very very very proud. MAL- Excellent, what happens now? We've got the album out. Can you tour this? Would you tour this? Would you play any of these songs live and how would you go playing a track of this live in say July? TOMMY- Well, of course, we can play one or two songs from the album in the summer. I mean, we have a couple of music videos out with the songs that are pure Power Metal, even though it's Christmas, it's pure Power Metal. We have some other songs in the album that would work as well. But I mean if we tour with this or play at festivals during the summer. I don't think we would go full all-in Christmas on our set, I think people would leave if we did that, even though people love Christmas it's like, 'okay. It's a little bit too early for Christmas'. But if we would tour with this around, let's say November/December for two months we could go all-in. I mean we talked about doing a show with actors on stage and yeah, you know full production doing the musical because this album is a musical. So we've been talking about that and hopefully we can make it happen. Hopefully. MAL- Tommy, thanks so much for joining us. We've been talking about the MAJESTICA Christmas album 'A Christmas Carol'. Congratulations on that, and I hope it does very well for you. TOMMY- Thank you very much. I do hope so too. I am very glad I could be part of, you know be sharing this Christmas spirit, and I'm very very thankful for being here. Thanks for having me. Comments are closed.
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AuthorMetalhead who hates bad parking. |