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slavghoul · 11 months

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Interview from Sweden Rock Magazine 6/2023

In which Tobias talks about Phantomime, his inner little evil dictator, and why he'll never be like Bruce Springsteen, among other things.

You've just released another cover EP. I always thought that Ghost would be like Metallica and become known for picking up lesser-known songs, making them their own, and playing one or two covers at every show. You were on your way to that with first The Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun" and then with Roky Erickson's "If You Have Ghosts." After that, you released a bunch of covers, but in recent years, you've almost only played "Enter Sandman" live.

In the beginning, and especially up until 2015, the choice to play covers was not in exchange for original songs, but it was because we simply needed songs to play live. We played 'Here Comes the Sun' to fill out our set. We only had one album, and it was only 30 minutes long or something.

But "Here Comes the Sun" must have given you a taste for it since it worked so fantastically well live.

Yes, absolutely. We actually plan to play it again at some point because I think we can do a really great version of it now that our lineup better matches the sound of the song. The last time we played it was so long ago that we still used a lot of backing tracks and stuff. I think we can play it better now. But did you imagine that we would do covers of Saint Vitus, Trouble, and Coven?

No. Unlike Metallica, you didn't start with hard rock covers...

No, no.

...but with "Here Comes the Sun" and then "If You Have Ghosts," which became a big song in its own way, but "Enter Sandman" is a completely different type of cover.

Exactly, it has a completely different purpose. I think it's a good song, and it became a fun thing. There was clarity in why we played it and what was important about it. We don't do it anymore, not because we don't believe in the purpose, but it had its time. Now, "Jesus He Knows Me" is the most fun to incorporate because now we've embraced it as our own song. I feel like I have so much else, and I don't want to be... I mean, some people think it's a lot of fun, and Bruce Springsteen does a lot of covers at the end of a concert. A lot of cool rock 'n' roll classics. People enjoy it, and it's great. Disturbed also does that and plays "Highway to Hell" and "Run to the Hills" or whatever they do. It's a fun way to end a concert, but I don't know, I have a fondness for dramaturgy. That's why I could never do a Bruce Springsteen. I can't go on stage and just say, "Hey, what do you want to hear?" and then improvise. It's a show, and everything fits together tightly. I've been sitting here with our lighting technician for five days. We sit all day and just program lights based on the smallest damn beat so that it fits and so that we know that the guitarist will come out and switch to that guitar for the next song. It's this song, and he will come out there, and then we have to change these lights in the dark so that it's red on him there. Then it's not possible to have a "cover hour" at the end where we just turn on the lights and play Judas Priest. But if we do a Judas Priest cover at some point that feels really relevant and we can do it really well, then I have no problem arranging the lights and incorporating it into the context. Metallica is much more rock 'n' roll, they are much more "loose" than what we are... than I am. They have the ability to just go out and more or less turn on the lights in the room and play "Am I evil?", "Whiskey in a jar," "Blitzkrieg," and "Breadfan," and the happiest of all is me. I love when that happens, but I don't want to do it with Ghost. But sure, if in 30 years we have recorded a bunch of fun covers, maybe it could be a fun thing to do a tour with just a bunch of that.

How funny that you say "if we have recorded a bunch of fun covers." Ghost has already recorded a bunch of covers, so aren't they fun?

Haha! Yeah, yeah, but we're still building, of course. We're talking a lot about this, me and my agents and management. When is the time to do things? When should we take advantage? What is a "downplay" for us today? A "downplay" is very clear if you're Metallica. Everyone knows that when they come and perform, it's at least at the Globe Arena, sold out for at least two nights without any problem, and at their biggest, it's now two nights at Ullevi. For them, a clear "downplay" would be if they come and play at Göta Lejon again. There's a clarity there, and it's something they can indulge in.

Explain it so that people understand. What is a "downplay"?

A "downplay" is when a big band plays at a small venue. Like the Rolling Stones when they played at Circus. It's a clear "downplay," and there's a clarity there where you know that "now when I go and see the Rolling Stones at Circus, they won't have their big stage, they won't do this, and they'll just come up and play a bunch of really obscure stuff." Then there's a clarity. It's not something for everyone who just wants to hear the big hits.

And are there plans to do this?

If everything goes as planned and if there's still an interest in it in the future, I would think it would be really fun to intentionally and clearly reshape the show. To do something different on the side that isn't meant for these bigger things that we're currently trying to find our "pacing" in.

The first time I interviewed you was in 2011 at a sushi place in Stockholm.

Was it that long ago?

Yes, we met at the central station in Stockholm, and you had just had your first meeting with Nicholas Johansson at Universal, so this was before he signed you.

Okay, so it was the same day then? Oh, damn.

It became a full page in Expressen, and you said that you want to take Ghost to where Rammstein is. Now you've said the same thing again, but Rammstein no longer plays at the Globe Arena and instead does three nights at Ullevi. It feels like you're constantly shaping Ghost based on Rammstein. What will you do when you've reached three nights at Ullevi?

I hope one never becomes completely satisfied. The perfectionist in me is frustrated every day on tour when things don't turn out as good as I had envisioned. But I also have a cutoff point... There's a point every day when I try to see the glass as half full when it comes to perfection before the concert, and I know something is wrong. If I know that a spotlight operator doesn't seem to understand the show, it's an irritation that might continue during the concert because someone keeps missing their cues, that is, what they're supposed to do. You can tell they don't know the show. It's super annoying. It's the kind of thing that both I and everyone on stage feel, and we're all aware of it. Everyone has been made aware of what we're trying to achieve. We've arranged the whole show based on the idea that "when you come up those stairs, you will be visible, and then you will see what you're doing because a light will shine on you." If that doesn't happen, there's a risk that the person simply won't see what they're doing and will fall off. It happens. There's a lot of that kind of thing that's highly orchestrated with very narrow margins, and it has to be right. But I usually reach a point where it's like, "Now the concert is over. Everyone did their best, even that idiot up there who missed all their cues. Everyone did their best, and the audience doesn't seem to have left and demanded their money back, so you have to see it as a damn good result." That's how I try to approach it every day because, in the end, "no matter what, this is so much cooler than working a regular job," haha! I'm where I want to be, doing what I want to do. Then I have this little circus director Nazi inside me as well, screaming and wanting things to be a certain way. But I also laugh easily, so it's about constantly trying to balance everything and see it as always moving forward. But it also means that I know that even the day when or if we stand there at Ullevi and do a concert ourselves, it won't be exactly as I imagined. Something new will happen, and if we have the show I want, it will rain like hell or something. That's always how it is. Metallica's Lars also told me that when we were on tour together: "It's incredible. Even at our level, there are still things that happen that make us go, 'Damn, we're not quite there yet!'" But that's the thing. I don't think pirates become pirates just to come home and sit with the treasure. It was the piracy itself that was quite fun.

Now I'm going to say something provocative. This is Ghost's worst cover so far. I don't even like the original.

Which one?

"Phantom of the Opera."

Okay, haha!

Yeah, I got the laugh I wanted to be able to print, haha!

Well, haha! Don't you like the album or the song?

I'm not a big Iron Maiden fan, and I don't consider the Paul Di'Anno era sacred.

I love Iron Maiden and think the first two albums are really cool, but they got their act together when Bruce Dickinson joined. It was with "The Number of the Beast" that they became an arena band and started sounding really damn good. I know it's like swearing in church. It made me feel a bit inspired and made me think that if I were to do something with Iron Maiden, it damn well had to be something from those first albums. They have two albums with really proggy stuff and quirky arrangements, and you can really tell they had a bit of time and that they were low-budget recordings. That gets me going. Paul Di'Anno sings, and I love Paul Di'Anno. He's really cool, has a great voice, and sings with a lot of sloppiness. He soars and flies melodically - just the fact that "I know I'll do that in a different way." I've always liked "Phantom of the Opera," but for a long time in my life, before I really figured out how to count, I didn't quite understand how to play the intro. Not tonally, but I didn't get how to count in the intro. That was such a thing that one day when I suddenly figured it out, I thought, "Damn, I want to play this song someday." You miss it because on the album, you don't hear how great the intro is.

Is it you playing?

Yes, although Fredrik "Kulle" Åkesson (Opeth) is also playing. But I recorded all the demos, I play bass on the record, and I recorded all the guitars first.

Did Kulle do all the guitar solos on the EP?

Well, mostly, with one exception.

It's a very shreddy EP with a lot of flashy guitar solos.

Yes, exactly, there are quite a lot of guitar solos. Generally, this is how it works when we work: I compose the solos. When I write solos, it's not just a bunch of bends, but it's a melody. I'm very influenced by Kirk Hammett, especially how he played on "Ride the Lightning," "Master of Puppets," "...And Justice for All," and even on the black album. Every time he plays solos, they are melodies. He comes into the song and more or less plays another song within the song, and it's very hummable. It's not incredibly difficult stuff, and that's roughly my school of soloism. I like to compose the solos so that they turn out the way I want, but I myself am not a great shredder. There are a lot of tricks in the studio where I sit and play something over and over again, and then you can cut it in. And then you can slow down the speed, and then I can record it and make it perfect. But the result is that when I say, "It should go like this," Kulle listens to it and says, "Yeah, I can do that part a bit differently. Then I can do it this way to make it even faster." He plays solos from start to finish with his highly trained fingers. He has that whole thing in his DNA, while I'm more of a songwriter and composer.

But you play a solo on the EP, right?

I don't know if we kept it. I don't fucking know because we changed a lot of things.

Because you said that Kulle plays all the solos except one.

It could be a thing, but I don't remember if we changed it or not. But if we take "Phantom of the Opera," there are quite a few different guitar parts in it, purely guitar-wise. It's that fairly standardized Iron Maiden thing where there are two lead guitars playing melodies together. That's one thing, and then there was a slightly bluesy solo at a place where I added some storming Rachmaninoff piano that's absolutely not in the original. I thought it should be a bit of a stormy sea, and then there's a part with two guitars playing the same thing simultaneously, and then a solo duel starts. On the original album, it's Dave Murray and Dennis Stratton playing, and their solo duel is just okay. I don't think it's that great. Sorry, Iron Maiden fans, but in terms of solos, Iron Maiden really got good the day Adrian Smith joined. Adrian Smith is the one playing all the cool solos. I'm really sorry, Dave Murray, but that's just how it is! I know what Kulle has to go through because as a soloist, it's quite tough to constantly be told what to play, and then he has to do tricks and improve things. So, I said, "In this solo duel, you can pretty much play whatever you want from here to there, but I don't want you to challenge me because it will be a bad match. It'll be Carl Hamilton against Woody Allen, and that's not fun. We'll bring in Lasse Johansson from Candlemass." I love Candlemass, I love Lasse's guitar playing, and I know that Kulle loves Lasse. I just sat there, and they got to do their things, and you can hear that it's a bit more improvised. It's more Kulle when he gets to play his stuff, and it's nice.

I want to highlight a cover that turned out great on the EP: Tina Turner's "We Don't Need Another Hero." It feels quite suitable to cover because At The Movies also did a fantastic version of it with Ronnie Atkins on vocals.

Actually, I haven't heard it at all. I must have missed it.

Ghosts' version turned out really well, but isn't it too obvious to cover a big song, so to speak?

I would be a bit opportunistic and say this: it probably depends on how it lands. We stuck our necks out the day we were going to play "Enter Sandman" at our concert. It was one thing on TV because that's what it was (at the TV4-broadcasted "Polar Music Prize" in 2018), but you know that this is like playing "Smoke on the Water," "I Wanna Rock," or "Ace of Spades." It's one of those songs that is too well-known in a way. It can feel pancake-like, but it went well, and I feel that "We Don't Need Another Hero" could also become such a song, provided that the audience likes it. But it's not a song that you want to take up five minutes of the concert if it's not super fun.

And how do you know if the audience likes it?

The easiest way is to test it live. But you'll notice when the album comes out. If everyone mentions all the other songs and not that one, then maybe not many people are interested. Also, we usually do this sometimes during rehearsals: "We rehearse it and see how it sounds. How does it feel? How does it feel to play? Does it stick? Do we play it nicely? Does it work live?" I believe that if we fast forward to a huge presumed Ullevi [stadium] in the future, it's a fantastically cool song to play.

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