Reykjavík Grapevine - 03.12.2010, Page 13

Music | Valur Gunnarsson
Bringing It All Back Home:
Three Icelandic Dylans
IN THE 1960S, pOp MUSIC IN ICELANd
WAS OFTEN REFERREd TO AS BÍTLATóN-
LIST (“BEATLE MUSIC”) ANd TOdAy MANy
EVEN SpEAK OF BÍTLAáRIN (“THE BEATLE
yEARS”). dESpITE THE pROXIMITy OF THE
AMERICAN NAVAL BASE ANd US ARMEd
FORCES RAdIO, MUSICAL INFLUENCES HERE
MOSTLy CAME FROM THE UK.
Some say that this was because the rough sailor
types of Keflavík (known as Bítlabærinn or “Beatle-
town”) found a kinship with the scene in Liverpool,
others that it was because most Icelandic musicians
went to London to buy records unavailable here. In
any case, Bob Dylan and folk rock made relatively
little impact here in the ‘60s. Perhaps the real
reason was that Iceland had almost no proper con-
cert venues where people could just go and listen.
Rather, rock music was enjoyed at drunken country
balls and was decidedly more for the feet than the
mind.
FOUNdING FATHERS ANd OTHER MISFITS
They say that in Iceland everything happens five
years too late. So it was only in the early ‘70s, ironi-
cally when Dylan’s influence in the English-speak-
ing world was at a low, that echoes of him could be
heard here.
Hörður Torfason was the first major singer-
songwriter to emerge in Iceland. On his first album
in 1970, he wrote music to other people’s poems. By
his second, in 1971, he was finding his own voice as
a lyricist.
The next year, a young man who had been work-
ing as a night watchman in Norway recorded his
début album. The album, named after its creator,
Megas, was iconoclastic in more ways than one,
dealing with some of Iceland’s most esteemed he-
roes. We meet national poet Jónas Hallgrímsson
lying around syphilis-infected and drunk, and hear
that the settlement of Iceland itself was an unfortu-
nate mistake by the nation’s founder. That album,
as well as subsequent ones, established Megas as
something of a national poet in his own right.
Meanwhile, Hörður came out of the closet and told
Icelanders he was gay, one of the first prominent
Icelanders to do so. The response was somewhat
less than celebratory, and forced him to relocate
temporarily to Denmark. He soon returned, and
became a strong gay rights advocate.
LAXNESS ANd ELVIS
Megas eventually established himself as a master
of the Icelandic language, though initially many
disputed his use of slang and English or Danish
‘loan words’ mixed with highly literary Icelandic.
In 1979, after a slew of brilliant albums, he retired
to go to art school.
In the early 1980s a new troubadour emerged,
one influenced by both Megas and Hörður Torfa as
well as Dylan. His name was Bubbi Morthens, and
he almost instantly eclipsed both of his Icelandic
forerunners in terms of sales. Urged on by Bubbi,
Megas re-emerged in the mid-’80s to near-respect-
ability and ever greater critical and commercial
success. In 1988, master and apprentice Megas and
Bubbi teamed up to record the album ‘Bláir drau-
mar’, which was intended to rescue the faltering re-
cord label Grammið from bankruptcy. This might
have been successful, had the album not included a
track called ‘Litlir sætir strákar’ (“Cute little boys”),
sung from a paedophile’s viewpoint. Both album
and label tanked, and Megas spent roughly a decade
and a half in the commercial wilderness, at least
partly due to this one song. The album was later
re-released on two different CDs—one for each art-
ist—and is currently unavailable in its entirety.
Even though usually broke and despite lucrative of-
fers, Megas was the very model of artistic integrity,
refusing all offers of using his songs for advertise-
ments. He often had problems getting his music
released by record labels, and his house was paid
for by a former backing singer of his called Björk
[some of you might be familiar...]. Megas, who once
said that he grew up with readings of Halldór Lax-
ness’ works in one ear and Elvis singing into the
other, was nevertheless in the year 2000 celebrat-
ed along with Laxness as one of Iceland’s greatest
writers of all time. In early 2008, his career went
through a commercial resurgence with a new band
and two new albums that outsold previous output.
Megas, the rock ’n’ roll Laxness, was belatedly going
through his Elvis phase.
(NOT JUST) TALKING ‘BOUT A REVOLUTION
Even though his financial troubles should have
been behind him, it was at this point that Megas
sold one of his classic songs to Toyota (perhaps in-
spired by Dylan, who was by now doing Cadillac
commercials). A few months later, the economy col-
lapsed. Coincidence? Probably not.
Re-enter Hörður Torfason. Largely ignored in
Iceland by the general public, apart from his an-
nual and usually sold-out autumn concert, it was
Hörður who now stepped forth. Trained as a theatre
director and hardened by his civil rights struggle on
behalf of the gay community, he began organising
the weekly protests that later escalated into the pots
and pans revolution. Many troubadours have sung
about revolution throughout the years, but Hörður
may be the first one to actually make it happen. He
has stepped out of the shadow of his contempo-
raries and surpassed them all, at least in terms of
direct political influence. Dylan, surely, never did
this.
THE TRIALS ANd TRIBULATIONS OF 1988
1988 did not only see the Megas-Bubbi team up. The
Big Three, Bubbi, Megas and Hörður Torfa jointly
held a Concert Against Aids (as it was known) in
Háskólabíó. Bubbi was then at his peak, Iceland’s
biggest selling artist by far, and the other two were
also enjoying commercial resurgence. The concert,
however, was not a success. Megas later quipped in
a Fréttablaðið interview that few had attended as
they were afraid of catching the disease, as many
had misconceptions about it at the time. The con-
cert was released on VHS, and again Megas joked
that a third of the printing had an American thriller
with the music to the concert, another third had the
visuals with soundtrack to said crime film, while
only a third had both correct sound and vision.
That same year, a band calling themselves Dýrið
gengur laust (“The animal walks freely”) released
a spoof called ‘Bláir draumar’ (“Blue Dreams”), af-
ter the Bubbi/Megas album. The song graphically
detailed a homosexual orgy of the country’s three
leading troubadours. It was in poor taste, but leg-
end has it that Bubbi, the most physical of the three,
actually paid the songwriter a visit and clocked him
for his labours. Perhaps that is why people in gen-
eral have been reluctant to criticise him (perhaps
this writer may be expecting a similar visit?).
THE GOOd...
Again, in 1988, the Big Three of the acoustic scene
converged in Háskólabíó. They had been coming
from very different places, and were to go on to
more different places still.
Ironically, it was Hörður Torfa who started out
as the most commercial. In the early ‘70s, he was
something of a golden boy with his blonde hair and
blue eyes, working as a model as well as a singer
before his coming out put a temporary halt to his
career. Despite not being overtly political as a song-
writer, it was he who was to have the most direct
impact on Icelandic society. First he took part in
founding Samtökin’78 (called The National Queer
Organisation in English) which certainly must be
one of the most successful in history. In the three
decades since its founding, gays in Iceland have
gone from a closeted existence to more or less
complete acceptance. One of the last hurdles was
crossed this year, as the National Church has now
accepted same-sex marriages. Thirty years later,
Hörður started his one-man show outside the Par-
liament building, which escalated into the biggest
protests in Icelandic history and brought down the
government.
...THE BAd...
Bubbi first appeared a decade later than Hörður,
as an angry young man and part of the then-rising
punk movement. He never fit in easily, being some
years older (at 24) and a lot more rock and roll than
his teenage contemporaries. His politics, clearly left
wing and honed by almost a decade working as a
labourer in fish factories around the countryside,
were in direct opposition to the punks’ urban an-
archism. The fact that he became the one to break
into the mainstream probably says something
about the mood at the time, as well as the power of
his performances.
The first side of his seminal début ‘Ísbjarnar-
blús’ was electric and the second was acoustic
(much like Dylan’s ‘Bringing It All Back Home’),
and ever since he has gone between the two for-
mats. Although still popular in the ’90s, he started
dabbling in commercials. In early 2005, he took the
final step and sold his entire catalogue to Sjóvá in-
surance company and Glitnir Bank.
Bubbi again embodied the spirit of the times
and when the economy collapsed he went down
with it, in financial terms at least, being heavily in
debt. He has lately become something of an apolo-
gist for disgraced bankers, one of very few Iceland-
ers to do so. No longer the spokesman of the work-
ing classes, but perhaps we can still find some of
his old punk spirit in going so brazenly against
popular opinion?
...ANd THE dOWNRIGHT BIzARRE
Megas has always been a wild card. Although he
obviously abhors the Conservatives, he seems
equally happy to take shots at the left or any group
that seems to him to be too self-righteous. He even
presented his selling out to Toyota as a practical
joke against those who were too dogmatic against
Who's your favourite Icelandic Dylan? At one point or the other, they've all been
pretty great.
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 18 — 2010
13
CONTINUES ON pAGE 16
Megas / Photo by Aldis Pálsdóttir Hörður Torfa / Photo by Gúndi Bubbi / Photo by Spessi