Reykjavík Grapevine - 06.12.2013, Síða 17

17
be in control of my own destiny.”
That need to control his destiny
would lead to a steady stream of top
selling solo records and various other
projects. Björgvin’s solo career cou-
pled with his production duties on re-
cords for fellow pop stars, opera sing-
ers and symphony orchestras, makes
him verifiably one of Iceland’s most
productive musicians to date.
The Modern Archivist
As he’s showing me around the stu-
dio, we stop by a wall in the far corner
that is plastered with photos from var-
ious points in his career. Talking me
through pictures of him performing
with everyone from Tommy Dorsey
Orchestra to Rod Stewart makes him
infectiously nostalgic.
“I was singing some Rod Stew-
art songs at Broadway [a nightclub
Björgvin used to manage events for]
and what do you know, the man him-
self just showed up and started sing-
ing along. After one song, he turned
to me and said the tunes were too high
pitched for him. He needed them in
a lower key. But I just told him they
were all in their original keys. If I can
sing it, you can too.”
With so many equally compelling
stories to tell, he was hard-pressed to
name a favourite gig or proudest mo-
ment.
“You’re only ever as good as your
last gig,” he says. “I have all this stuff
because I see myself as a bit of an
archivist. Throughout the years I’ve
amassed newspaper clippings and
pictures of my peers and me. I’ve got
folders of stuff relating to various
years, you know, the folder called ‘Pop
in Iceland 1970’ will have pictures
and articles relating to everything
between Ævintýri and Led Zeppelin.
Somebody needs to collect all this.
Considering that Björgvin’s career
has spanned four decades, we’re un-
doubtedly talking about enough ma-
terial to fill an entire museum and
Björgvin is far from done. On his
new album, ‘Duet 3’—the third in a
series of record of duets—he’s joined
by representatives of the younger gen-
eration of Icelandic musicians, such
as Lay Low and Arnór Dan Arnarson
from Agent Fresco, and even though
he’s 33 years my senior his bright or-
ange trousers and his thick-rim hip-
ster glasses make him look consider-
ably more “current” than I do.
“I feel like I am obliged to stay
in touch with what’s going on at any
given point. To this end I listen to
almost everything that is released in
this country.”
To stress his point he picks up
a few CDs from the piles scattered
around his desk and shows me Jón
Jónsson, Kaffibrúsakallarnir, Mam-
mút and more.
“If I didn´t listen to this stuff I´d
be lost in the woods,” he says. “But
sometimes I feel like I’ve travelled
back in time. Everybody is letting
their hair grow out, has a guitar
around their neck and is rocking out
again. It’s ‘back to the future stuff,’
which just goes to show that music is
cyclical. Musical styles come back in a
slightly different guise, but the foun-
dations are always the same.”
His interest in staying in touch
with the musical landscape is un-
doubtedly to some extent fuelled by
his children’s successes. His daughter
Svala fronts electro outfit Steed Lord
and his son Krummi is the singer in
legendary noisecore band Mínus as
well industrial electro band Legend.
Still, his need to be current actually
predates his children’s emergence on
the local scene. This is most notable
on his Duet records and a series of
Christmas records he’s called ‘Jólage-
stir’ (“Christmas guests”), featuring a
who’s who in Icelandic music at the
time of their recording.
“I love getting an idea and orches-
trating it much like a film director
casts the right people for the right
role” he says. “That’s just what I did
on my recent record ‘Duet 3.’”
“I’m lucky enough to have all this
amazing and varied talent wanting to
join me. Having such a wide variety of
musicians to collaborate with leaves
me with the fun job of finding the
suitable jackets and so on. I’m stand-
ing on the shoulders of giants.”
He’s perhaps never been as in tune
with the times as when he recorded a
duet with Mugison in 2005. It was
Bob Dylan’s song “Make You Feel My
Love,” which with Icelandic lyrics was
called “Minning.”
“And then Adele sang it a couple
of years later and became an interna-
tional superstar. It just goes to show
that we seem to have a pretty good
nose for these things,” he says, ges-
turing to a massive print of early ‘70s
era Bob Dylan. “And we’ve obviously
got a picture of the master here.”
The Master Of Imitation
There is a very rich tradition of for-
eign songs being reinterpreted into
Icelandic, a tradition that dates back
to the birth of Icelandic pop music.
And despite having written a pletho-
ra of songs, Björgvin’s most famous
ones tend to be these types of pop mu-
sic imports, such as aforementioned
“Walk Away Renee” and “Make You
Feel My Love.”
“I think this tradition of ‘Icelan-
difying’ international pop songs has
left a big mark on the Icelandic mu-
sic landscape,” he says in a contem-
plative tone. “No artist ever appears
fully formed. Their inspiration always
comes from what precedes them and
seeing as we’ve had all these songs so
deeply rooted in our culture, they’re
inevitably going to affect the music
that follows.”
Björgvin is most well-known as a
singer and interpreter of both inter-
national and Icelandic ballads and
classic pop songs, but throughout his
career, he’s dabbled in every conceiv-
able genre from country, heavy rock
and gospel to ‘50s rockabilly, opera,
and Christmas songs.
“I’m always trying to reinvent my-
self,” he explains. “You see, Iceland
is a small market, and you can’t keep
selling the same cookies. Besides,
I am a complete omnivore when it
comes to music and I like trying out
different things.”
This chameleon-like quality of
his reached its full potential when
Björgvin took the job of music super-
visor for Friðrik Þór’s film ‘Djöf laey-
jan’ (“Devil’s Island”), a period film
set after the Second World War when
rock ‘n’ roll swept through the coun-
try like a storm.
“Friðrik asked me to be the music
supervisor because this was the sort
of music I had grown up on,” he says.
“Growing up in Hafnarfjörður in the
‘50s and ‘60s meant that we could
receive the radio broadcast from the
nearby army base, so it was all Ameri-
can rock ‘n’ roll in my youth: Little
Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis and
the lot. I’d told Friðrik that we needed
all the original rock ‘n’ roll hits to
make this work, but I quickly realised
that was never going to work as the li-
censes were extortionate.”
He therefore set out to painstak-
ingly re-recording “Hound Dog,”
“Great Balls of Fire” and more ‘50s
rock ‘n’ roll classics with such pre-
cision that it took people a while to
realise these weren’t the original re-
cordings.
“Know how we did this?” Björgvin
interjects when he grows tired of my
gushing about the quality of those
recordings. “I got guitarist Villi
Guðjóns, who’s an absolute parrot
and a genius, and other musicians of
same calibre and we dug out all the
old amps, the guitars, the mics and so
on, and just meticulously copied ev-
ery sound on those records to as much
detail as we could.”
The King Of Christmas Pop
It’s around this time of year when
Björgvin’s skill for mimicry and his
way with production is easiest to ob-
serve. If he wasn’t singing the Christ-
mas songs you’ve heard, he probably
produced them.
“It started when I sang on a Christ-
mas record with Hljómar in 1975. We
all felt like Iceland needed some pop
Christmas songs because all we had
at the time were the classic children’s
rhymes and folk songs,” he says.
Twelve years later, he released
his first ‘Jólagestir’ record and since
then the series, which counts four al-
bums, has become the staple of Ice-
landic Christmas music. But what
many don’t know is that some of our
favourite songs on those records actu-
ally started their lives as Italian love
songs.
“I love travelling and when I do I
try to leave the sheep’s head and the
mashed turnips at home. I eat where
the locals eat, I do what the locals do.
‘When in Rome,’ as it were. So, when
I went to Italy for the first time in the
‘80s, I fell completely in love with the
place and savoured the opportunity to
take in all their culture. This love of
mine for everything Italian eventu-
ally came to include Italian music,”
he says.
“It was when I was listening to
those Italian pop songs on our holi-
days and watching Sanremo [an Ital-
ian song competition] that I started to
notice a certain dramatic character in
them that reminded me of Christmas
music. My daughter Svala and I talked
about this and felt that all these songs
needed were some Christmas bells
and new lyrics and they’d suit perfect-
ly as Christmas songs.”
“It wasn’t until sometime later that
I started thinking, ‘Why Italian?’ And
then it dawned on me: My predeces-
sors, such as Svavar Gests, Óli Gau-
kur and Ellý Vilhjálms, all sang Ital-
ian songs. “Bjössi á Mjólkurbílnum”?
“Poppa Piccolino”! It’s a sound we’ve
grown up with. Besides, the Italian
language lends itself so neatly to be-
ing copied in Icelandic. They’ve got
the long rhythmic syllables that Ice-
landic has.”
It certainly worked, as most of the
Italian songs have outlived the Icelan-
dic songs that featured on the same
albums.
“Their inf luence on the culture is
most obvious when various ad agen-
cies start calling me and asking me
for the rights to use some of them and
I obviously have no idea. No point ask-
ing me, you’ll need to chase down the
original rights holders to find out. All
these songs are now deeply engrained
into Icelandic Christmas culture but
ad agencies wouldn’t be interested in
them if it wasn’t for their lyrics and
the completely new meaning we’ve
given them,” Björgvin says.
What’s even more striking about
these songs is the way they’re pro-
duced. When I started comparing the
originals to their Icelandic siblings,
I found most of them to be pretty
much identical to the originals. The
arrangements and instrumentation
are almost exactly the same across the
board.
“If it ain’t broken don’t fix it,” he
says. “We set out to stick to what had
caught our attention about the songs
in the first place. We’d try to put a lit-
tle bit of ourselves into them by using
updated synth sounds and so on, but
didn’t want to mess too much with
their form. You wouldn’t just decide
to play “Brown Sugar” in minor would
you?”
The Legendary Pop Star
Before leaving the studio after an in-
spiring hour-and-a-half with Iceland’s
legendary first pop star, Björgvin
decides to show me a portion of his
massive guitar collection. Countless
Telecasters, Gibsons and lap-steels
remind me that when he showed me
around earlier I had inquired about
career highlights, but had forgotten to
ask about any low points. So I squeeze
the question in after a long conversa-
tion about hollow body guitars and
sustain.
“Well, I’m not sure it could be
called a personal problem really,”
he says in a slightly sombre tone,
“but I’ve sometimes felt that there
is a complete lack of respect towards
those of us who have been doing this
for such a long time. I’m old school,
and I have so much respect for all my
elders. They’ve been around for lon-
ger and they know things better than
I do. When I was starting out in mu-
sic, I had so much respect for the guys
who were there before us.”
The fact that bands such as Utan-
garðsmenn (fronted by another mu-
sical legend Bubbi) laid into him in
their single “Ha Ha Ha” (Rækjureg-
gae) in 1980, just solidifies his status
as a musical legend. After all, they
considered him a relevant pop culture
reference 33 years ago. Either way,
I pointed out that I’m not sure this
applies anymore as is evident by the
stellar cast of youthful talent he’s had
working with him on recent records.
“Well, yeah, this might be changing,”
he says. “I’m certainly f lattered that
a magazine like The Reykjavík Grape-
vine wants to talk to me.”
Well, it’s about time we did.
“It was when I was listen-
ing to those Italian pop
songs on our holidays
and watching Sanremo
[an Italian song competi-
tion] that I started to
notice a certain dramatic
character in them that
reminded me of Christ-
mas music.”
“If I didn't listen to
this stuff I’d be lost in
the woods.”
1987 19951993 2008 2013
Releases first 'Jólagestir' ("Christmas
guests") album. There are now four.
Releases gospel album called 'Kom
Heim,' featuring the song "Gull-
vagninn," which is one of his most popu-
lar songs to date.
Represents Iceland at the Eurovision
Song Contest and places 15th.
His Jólagestir ("Christmas guests") concept
becomes an annual live gig.
Releases his third album in the
Duet series.