Interview with Bent
taken from the
German e-zine
LOOFTPAGE, May 2000.
English. Found at the Looftpage-site.

LOOFTPAGE: First of all, it was a really amazing gig tonight. I’d like to know if you’ve lost your fear to play in Hamburg.

Bent: Oh yeah, it was the most difficult city for us for a while. The three or four first times we played we only had about 20 to 50 people, it was really going slow while we were getting big in around Bielefeld, Bremen and in the Ruhrgebiet. Hamburg was always behind, so we stopped playing here for a couple of years and went up north to a little Dorf called Bad Segeberg and played there for a while and then we came back and filled the Hamburg Logo-Club. That was pretty cool a couple of years ago, and then we did the Hurricane-Festival after that, and that was really packed. So it seems like we have sort of broken the spell, you know, the bad „juju“ that Hamburg had.

L: I saw you last year at the Hurricane where about 3000 people went mad in the tent when you played.

B: That was really amazing, that was a real fun experience.

L: At the side of the stage were standing members of Pavement and Blumfeld and didn’t quite understand what was going on there with you and this crowd.

B: It’s fun to be the underdog. You know, we’re on a little independent label that we started with some friends. And we’ve just been doing our own little thing for about ten years and it feels like it’s sort of paying off. The masses are starting to enjoy what we are doing.

L: They more than just recognize you.

B: Oh yeah, accepting us, and it’s fun to be able to do that without having to be a part of the big major machine, you know, the major labels and all that bullshit, because there are such a lot of hassles that go into that. It’s real fun to do it on your own terms, it feels so ... you know, this is our thing - we did it! And nobody can say that we’ve paid our way or anything like that.

L: A few weeks ago you hit the German charts on #83, I think. What do you think, will there be a "commercial breakthrough" for Motorpsycho?

B: I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. You know, you can never count on stuff like this. I mean, we’re just playing music, and if people like it that’s fine. We never really think about how to sell it or anything like that, it’s ... we’re really egoistical, we really have to please ourselves and if it happens that we like the same the same stuff as a lot of all the people do, then we’ll sell some more records. But what we did this time around was that we got a little bigger advance out of Indigo, which is the distributor, and we hired some promotion company and did a lot of promotion for this record, and it seems to have paid off.

L: You did this one months interview tour through Germany and filled a lot of magazines and were on some covers.

B: In the music industry as well as in any other money making industry you have to put a lot of money in to get it some money out, and if you can actually afford it to spend a lot of money to promote the stuff, then you’ll get it back somehow. So it seems like we’ve sort of risen a little level commercially at least. The music has also changed from the last record by the way. We’ve done this for ten years and we still find little types of music or styles of music or stuff that we really don’t know yet. So we’re still working out secrets of the magic. It’s a scientific little approach we have. What do these people do? What is it about this music that I like? Why do I relate to it? And then we start to dig into it, try to figure out what it is and sort of adapt it and learn a lot and have a lot of fun while doing it.

L: There was a lot of magic, an amazing feeling in me tonight, especially when I heard songs like "The Wheel" or "Plan #1", those you haven’t played (like this) for so long. Yesterday in Bremen it was a little bit different, it seemed like a little fun gig for me for a while, you made a lot of jokes and stuff on stage.

B: Yes, it was really, really, really different. I mean, that was the mood of yesterday and today it was something else and we decided, probably a lot of the same people are going to come, so we’re going to change the set around as much as we can. And it worked. It’s really hard to tell in which way it’s going to go, because you know the songs, you’ve played them a shitload of times, but it’s the "Dramaturgy" of the set - really - it sets the mood. And when we got through "The Wheel" and "Plan #1" today, it was so fuckin´ magic up there. It was like so intense, and that was like "woo..."

L: I think the crowd felt that.

B: So it was, really, you know, this total outpouring of something different that we didn’t have yesterday. But yesterday was a good show, too - but in a different way, and tomorrow we’ll probably be different again. So it’s up to the four people on stage and the communication that we get with the crowd and whatever the logic of the set is that day.

L: Do you know today what you will play tomorrow?

B: No. We sit down approx. 1 hour before the show and decide what songs we feel like playing, and that’s basically because we have a guitar technician that needs to know the tunings of the songs, because they’re written in so many different tunings. So we don’t really know. There are a couple of songs that we really know quite well that we haven’t played in Germany so far. So we probably do them tomorrow..., but except for that we don’t know.

L: Listening to "Now It’S Time To Skate" was just great for me. I never have heard it live before.

B: We’ve never been able to do it before, because we need the piano part to make it sort of dancy.

-- Baard is entering the room for a moment --

L: This is the new man? "Heinrich" you’ve called him yesterday? So what’s his real name? Baard?

B: Yes, Baard Slagsvold. Heinrich is his, how do you call it, in-between name? It’s Baard Henrik Slagsvold, and Henrik in Norwegian will be Heinrich in German.

L: He fits quite well into the band.

B: He’s a fan. He has been watching us and liking us since forever, and so, when we needed somebody to do the arrangements for the last record, he came in and he also did some piano stuff on the record. And then we found out that, okay, if we need another guy to be able to do the other stuff, that he was the perfect choice. And he has such a huge empathy for our music, it’s really natural and we don’t really have to work too much. He feels his way through it and he is really - it’s fun. The power-trio format that we had for a long time, it really worked, but it sort of got stale. We needed some extra input and some new intentions to bring in some new colours in the sounds.

L: The sound is now fuller, you can say: FAT!

B: Yeah, I mean, what has happened is that I have to play less and Snah has to play less and the drummer has to play a little less.

L: Yes, and you have to do less footwork.

B: That too, you have to leave a little more room to him, and the stuff that he does, it sort of fits in frequency wise between the bass and the guitar... and the drums, it fills out a little hole that might has been there before. It really feels good and it’s a lot of fun to play with him because he knows a lot of stuff that we don’t know. He’s a total jazz-head.

L: Did he study music?

B: Yes, he did. And today you could hear it, in some of the jams he was pretending that he was Thelonius Monk and he just did his „ouiek - now play against that, you fuckers!“ And this is real fun because there is something else happening.

L: Do you know for how long you’ll be working together with him or is he a full new member of the band?

B: You cannot really add anybody, three of us still write the songs, but he’ll probably come to the studio the next time, sure. If he has the time he will also join the next tour. His real band is called „Three Little Chinese“, it’s a pop band, an acoustic pop band, and he plays bass! So I think he really likes to go on the road and play a lot of piano, because that’s what he really does. He’ll probably be up for it as long as he’s got the time.

L: Can you tell me something about plans for festival-gigs this summer?

B: We had requests from a lot of different festivals, but we’ve said "No" to most of them already, because Snah, he’s together with a woman from Iceland and they have a son and they always go to Iceland in the summer and he wants to have as much time out there as possible and - the only thing that we’ve said that we will do is Lowlands in Holland and Pukkelpop, because they’re at the same weekend and that’s the end of August. So if we can fix something else in there as well, then probably, but nothing before that. But Gebhardt is going on a little tour with one of his hobby-bands, it’s a trio, two of them guitar players and they play country and western stuff. It’s basically him just having fun, playing the banjo and getting drunk every day. They’ll play some festivals but I don’t know if they’re doing anything in Germany, but they’re doing something in Holland.

L: On the Stickman-Records webpage you get the possibility of downloading two songs from Gebhardt that are not included in his solo 10"-album "Gebhardt Plays With Himself". It’s all really weird stuff. Where did he do most of the recordings? Backstage? In hotel rooms?

B: Yes. He’s always been like that. He always makes all these little - you know - children songs - almost. It’s sort of fucked up Residents style or whatever you want to call it. And so I think he has a huge back load of stuff that he just wants to put out. Most of the songs that he writes aren’t really compatible with the rock format. He thinks a bit differently of these songs, but the two songs that he wrote on the last album were really good, so hopefully he’ll start to include the others in the band as well when he writes songs, because there is a lot of good stuff in his head.

L: What do you think of the new ways of the Internet and the possibility of distribution via the net?

B: I don’t know too much about it, so it’s really hard to say anything, but what I like about it is that the world has shrunk even more, and the unofficial fan page that we have is fucking amazing. There are people from all over the world posting messages and talking together and - you know - just doing it. So that stuff I like. They haven’t quite figured out how to do the sales ways yet. I’m a little scared, because what I live off are my royalties from record sales. And if everything just gets posted on the net and gets downloaded for free, which would be an ideal thing - I think it’s a really good idea - then I would have to get a job on the side. I cannot do that and still be as full into the music as I need to be. So that’s a bit scary, if you know what I mean. But I really like the possibilities as long as they figure out somehow and someway to do it.

L: You now somehow started to do right this - putting songs on the net that can be downloaded for free. Do you think this method will increase in the next years?

B: Probably, probably. I don’t know. I’m so old fashioned. I like to go into a record store and see what I’m buying and looking at the covers. So I really like having the thing, the thing that an album is. I’m not too keen on just downloading the music and having it sort of virtually. I like the physicality - you know - the vinyl thing! That’s what I grew up with. I like the big chunky - boom - vinyl stuff that smells, that thing. It’s almost erotic, that’s what I like.

L: A lot of fans of Motorpsycho not just buy the CD or vinyl edition of an MP-Album; they want to have both of it. The CD to listen to and the LP to just have it!?

B: It’s not something that we do on purpose or just to milk the fans or anything like that. It’s just - I have to say that: until I don’t get the vinyl I’m not sort of finished with the album. The CD is - that’s just, hm, whatever. But once I get the vinyl, it’s like „aahh, a new album!“ this is the real thing. Maybe I’m old fashioned but it feels different.

L: So you can’t imagine putting out an album without the vinyl edition of it?

B: No, no, no!

L: Do you often have a look at the "g-35" MP-mailing list?

B: No, I’ve never been there before.

L: They’re posting every little bit of information there: setlists, reports, news, stories, photos...

B: I heard something weird today. This one Norwegian guy was in Bremen yesterday and then he drove back, it’s about 700km! And by 8:00 o’clock this morning he posted something on the „g-35“. I give up! That’s - it’s incredible because if it means that much to people then - I mean - what can I say?

L: It really does!

B: Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! It’s strange, because it’s the most - single most - important thing in my life, and it seems like it feels that way for a lot of other people, too. So it’s a very intense relationship that’s on people bound up with our music, which is good.

L: Did you listen to Norwegian radio on the 31st of December 1999?

B: Yeah, I was in there a couple of times just to check if they were actually doing it.

L: That was just another "g-35" thing...

B: That was amazing, you’re so humble, what a bunch of fans.

L: And quite a lot of them are following you on your tours.

B: The Grateful Dead used to have fans like that. And so it seems like a lot of people have picked up on that sort of waving our stuff as well. It’s a very romantic thing. It’s like „oh, let’s go on the road with this band and just watch all these shows.“ The last fairytale ...

L: I think this is a sort of feedback that lets you know why you’re doing it.

B: It really makes it worthwhile and really keeps us on our toes, because you know there are at least 25 or maybe 50 of the same people tonight as last night, and so you have to make it worthwhile for them to go through all these hassles of getting a hitch hike over there, finding somewhere to sleep, dragging their backpacks around. So it’s really - we have to put everything we can into the music every night, because if we were too bullshit it wouldn’t be fair. It keeps us thinking about who we are and what we should be and what we should do. It really does!

L: But there are also days that don’t work.

B: Yeah, sure, sometimes, some evening we fall flat on our faces, a lot of the times we did, but it’s a chance we’re taking, I think, because when it really works it’s magic! But then again sometimes, when we really feel that we’ve played shitty gigs, all people come and say that this was the most amazing thing we ever did - and the other way around. So there’s no logic to it. The way we feel on stage doesn’t really relate to the way it seems when you look at it.

L: How can?

B: You can never tell, you just have to try and try and try and then if you’re lucky everybody’s happy. Sometimes, sometimes everybody is happy.

L: Your roots are bands of the 60´s and early 70´s like The Who or MC5, aren’t they?

B: Yeah, I mean, after a while it became that at least, we grew up with the fuckin´ Scorpions, the late 70´s, early 80´s Heavy Metal thing with stuff like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Saxon, Kiss, Van Halen, Motörhead, all these bands. That’s what the three of us really grew up with. Then we grew a little more and discovered bands like Hüsker Dü, discovered Punk Rock, discovered the New Wave thing, The Swans, Sonic Youth and stuff like that. We’ve just been listening to music and caring about it for so long. But there’s a lot of that late 60´s wipe – really – I don’t know, I can really feel what they’ve been trying to do, because the ambition of it is really inspiring. Like "Good Vibrations”, you know, just making a single like THAT in 1966, that’s fucking madness! How could you do that and think that is was going to be a #1? And the fact that it actually worked, on top of that, you know, making a song that is like a mini opera. Four minutes of all this weird stuff and actually making it work like a song. That sort of ambition I relate to. There’s so much empathy in me, when I write songs – that stuff I want to do. And there are a lot of good sounds there, there’s a lot of good musician membership. Rock got really stale in the mid 70´s before the Punk thing, and the Punk thing was so fuckin´ basic that… sort of, it’s all right, but there’s not a lot of vision to it, it’s just Rock, and then the 80´s came and that was just bullshit, and the 90´s we’ve been a part of. So to find inspiration in Rock-Music you have to go back there anyway.

L: What do you think of electronic music?

B: I haven’t really gotten too much out of that. I like organic music, music that has some sort of hypnotic pulse; it has to do with heartbeat. A John Coltrane record has got a different kind of heartbeat, it’s so organic, and it’s alive in a different sense than all this techno stuff is. It really just makes me freak out, because it’s too static, it doesn’t relate to my pulse. So there’s not a lot of that stuff that I really enjoy, so far. But the theory of it and using all these machines to do music, that’s fine, I mean: Go ahead! As long as you can express something through it. What I really find lightly about a lot of the techno stuff is, that it seems like they’re making all these weird noises because they can, they’ve got the equipment, and it’s just jerking off with a little computer instead of making something that relates to people.

L: You’ve worked together with Deathprod. a lot.

B: Yeah, but he’s one of the guys that actually can do it, he’s really aware of this human factor and stuff. He’s fucking amazing.

L: Can you imagine what the future might bring? Are you going to write Symphonies, Rock Operas (like Tommy) or something like that?

B: (laughing) I don’t know yet. We’ve written something like 10 or 15 songs already since the last record and they’re all different. There’s really no big red thread through the whole thing. It’s just a bunch of songs, and we haven’t really got the time to work on them too much either, so we just have to wait and see.

L: Are there persons or bands you would like to work with?

B: Not really…

L: Britney Spears?

B: No! I don’t know, I sort of feel that what we do relates a little bit to bands like Mercury Rev or The Flaming Lips or Spiritualised, this neo-psychedelic thing. In one way it sort of does, but we have this other thing, too. And there’s not really this ONE band that I can say, that this is my ultimate favourite thing and this is what I want to do work with. So there is still one or two good records every year that come that make me say, “YES!” But I don’t really listen too much to music, it’s – I don’t know – somehow it feels like competition, that’s not good. You don’t – ahh – they are – ahh – no, they’re not good, no. You just sit there and sort of analyse it, I know it’s stupid, but it’s just this mechanism. So it’s better to relate to “dead” people like Charles Manson, John Coltrane, the MC5 or whatever, because that’s not happening anymore, it’s very definite what it is.

L: Just tonight, I think about two or three songs were about Jesus and God. Are you a religious band?

B: I don’t know, "My Best Friend" – I wrote that one, and it’s about this character that I know, it’s a friend of mine, but I didn’t want to use his name, and I thought, “What name should I use?” It’s such a stupid thing, a Norwegian name in English, or an English name, because we are Norwegian. So I just thought, “Okay, what kind of name can I use?” And – aha – why not? It’s a name. And it gives the whole lyrics another aspect; it can, if people want to interpret it religiously, they’re fixed dudes. So, that’s the one song and “Walkin´With J.” is Gebhardt´s lyrics, and that was, I think he had an encounter with a Jehova´s witness one day, when he was really hangover, and it really pissed him off. So he needed to write something about that, so that’s the song. I don’t really know what it’s all about even, so it’s…

L: Can you tell me how songs normally are fixed together? Does one of you come along with a complete song or with just fragments, or do you create new songs while jamming?

B: It can be that, it can be everything from a totally finished song like "The One Who Went Away", I wrote on an acoustic guitar and taught it to the guys and said, “This is way it should be, no more, no less, just – boom.” But then again a lot of the other songs are just, somebody has some sort of idea for a little verse or a little chorus or a little riff, and then we just try to play on it and see what it’s all about. So there’s everything from pure, rude improvisation like "The Wheel", that song was written on a soundcheck in Cologne. Snah was soundchecking his guitar, and he just started playing “duh de duh duh de duh de duh duh de de”, and I said, “Ey! Remember this! We have to play that tonight!” And then we didn’t really know what to do, so I started to bark on top of that and it became "The Wheel", seventeen minutes of this huge fuckin´ thing. That’s like one extreme, and the other one is like this totally compact finished thing and just, “This is the way it should be. I know exactly how it should be.” So everything in-between is possible. And the same with the lyrics as well, some things are really concrete and they really are about this one thing, and other lyrics can be just painting with words, just to sort of add to whatever atmosphere the music gives. So it’s everything from – to, we don’t really have any rules.

L: Are there members of your family or friends that don’t like your music or what you’re doing?

B: No, but my Grandma, every time we make a new record she says, “Oh, I’m so glad that you got rid of that – you know – the first record, I didn’t understand that, I’m so glad about what you’re making right now.” I think she tried to listen to that and really tried to get something out of that, but she couldn’t. So now she actually can. But my Mum was there in Norway, my Dad will come and see us, my sister is always there, and I mean, we even had Snah´s mother sing on one song once. It’s a tribute to a Norwegian child group from the 70´s called “Knutsen Og Ludvigsen”. Two guys that made five really amazing records, and some people made a tribute to them, and we did a song called “syk”, and we got his Ma to sing on it. So that was a lot of fun.

L: How is this sampler called?

B: It’s called “Ellediller & Krokofanter”. But, I mean, Gebhardt´s mother is always there, his Dad is, he’s a physics professor, and he always comes along, and he wants to be in the mosh pit, just to get all this bear all over and have this noise come over. He’s not too much into the music, but just being in the pit and just feeling it, that’s great. So we don’t really have any problems. My Dad didn’t understand anything until the biggest national conservative paper interviewed us. When he saw that they thought, what we were doing was good, he was sort of good with it.

L: And before that he wanted you to do a “normal” job?

B: Yes, stuff like that. “Be a bank executive like me, get a real job!” Then he mellowed out, and he understood that this is actually good stuff and that we can live of it.

L: A little change. On the Stickman’s Ruin release we will find quite different stuff from the last record?

B: Yeah! The two first songs that we played yesterday ("Heartbreaker" & "High Time"), very Rock and Roll are on it. There are 7 songs all together, and it’s basically the Hard Rock stuff, that we took off “Let Them Eat Cake”. What we normally would do, would be to mix it all up, to make this a whole mess. But we figured out, okay, let’s try to do the shorter thing, and it was really good that we, we were brave enough to actually do that. We were so scared when the record came out, because we thought, “Oh, is it too mellow? Will people get anything out of this?”

L: You have to listen to it more than once!

B: Sure, it is this little – I mean – the further that we get away from it, I can really appreciate what the record is all about, because it’s this little universe that we have never made before. And I don’t think anybody has made that sort of thing before, so it has its own little place in there somewhere. We’re really happy that we were brave enough to take out all the Rock stuff. But then again the Man’s Ruin thing will be the ultimate “Vodka-Album” probably. It’s just like boom, boom, boom, seven rockers! But that’s good, too. We know our Rock anyway as well.

L: Will we find "Dr. Hoffman's Bicycle" on the E.P.?

B: Yes, that’s on it, and also a song called "Glow" that we did quite a bit on the last tour. There’s a demo song on “The Other Fool”…

L: Is it "Star, Star, Star"?

B: That’s also there in a totally different arrangement. The two songs that we did yesterday, a song called "Rattlesnake" and another one called "The Vanishing Point", which has got a car on it. It sounds like a Kiss song, so it should have a car on it! It’s basically stupid rock, but it’s good, I mean, there are no ballads on it. It’s just boom, boom, boom.

L: Is this E.P. maybe longer than “LTEC”?

B: I think it’s 33 minutes, a mini album.

L: So there are no longer space trips?

B: Well, "Hoffman" is 7 min long and "Glow" almost 8 min. Those are the spacier ones, but they’re pretty together. We didn’t really feel the need to mellow out, to space out too much this time, next time maybe, we will see. Probably a little jazzier with horns on it, doing that kind of stuff.

L: Like the last song on “LTEC”?

B: This is just one of these songs, that was originally written on a guitar, and that didn’t really work. It became just one of these "lalilala-songs", these lighters on power ballads. So we took off everything and made it this – I don't know – psychodrama. I really like what the guys did arrangement wise with the horns and all that. It was really good to have that song as a sort of ending, because everything else is very mellow, and this is just paranoid.

L: Could you imagine doing anything else than music? Or does anybody of the band sometimes think, that he does not want to do that anymore?

B: As long as we can keep it fresh and improvise as much as we do, and just feel like every night is as important as any other, then I think we’ll keep on. But as soon as it starts to feel like a job, then I think it will sort of end up. We’re very paranoid about that as well and try to keep it as fresh as we can. So, I don’t know. Gebhardt is going deaf. How long will he be able to do it? I don’t know. But it’s been very nice for ten years. If you asked me ten years ago if I thought, that we would still be playing in the year 2000, I’d have said, “Fuck! No!” So if you ask me today – I don’t know. We might stop just after this tour for all and ever, but I don’t think so, whatever. As long as it’s as important as it used to be, then I think we’ll keep on.

L: Do you think it would change you in person, when you would get a Top 10 hit?

B: No, I don’t think so, because we’ve been at this for so long. We know all the bullshit of the record industry, so we’re not going to be fooled by anything. What I really like about the way we’ve handled our career in a commercial sense is, that every record has been a little bit bigger. We’ve always been able to control it, and always been able to handle the extra amount of people and the bigger venues. So it has been growing quite naturally. It’s not really a problem for us to play in front of 1,000 people, I mean, five years ago, ah, ah, no!

L: At some venues hundreds of people have to stay outside and go home, because your concerts are sold out.

B: Really? The thing is, houses like these (the Hamburg Markthalle with an capacity of approx. 1,200 people) are the biggest that you get before you have to move into the 5,000 people thing. I don’t think we would be very happy there, or anybody would be. Our music is sort of – you have to see the people that you’re playing for, and you have to have this intimacy. We can handle 1,000 people, but 5,000? That would be too much! But if it happens, we’ll have to deal with it.

L: So you would do it then?

B: I hope that we don’t have to do that. I really prefer to play two nights here instead of playing in an arena. We just have to wait and see if it becomes a problem. You can never know. We might have reached the peak of our career. We might become a smaller band again, who knows? I’m not going to think about it, until I really have to.

L: Okay, Thank you very much for your time! My deepest respect for your work and: Have fun!

B: Sure.