BACKYARD BABIES TRIVIA
Trivia
The third Backyard Babies album was finished in a Los Angeles studio owned by a Japanese musician. Sony Music Japan's profile of the band says they began recording in 1999 and mixed the record in Los Angeles in 2000 — at Extasy Studio, which the profile names as belonging to Yoshiki. A few more songs were cut in 2001, and the result was Making Enemies Is Good.
The four members of Backyard Babies were born in the same year, in the same town. The band's own press material gives Nässjö in southern Sweden as the birthplace of Peder Carlsson, Johan Blomquist, Dregen and Nicke Borg alike, and 1989 as the year the band formed. The same document states plainly that the line-up has never changed. For a rock band of this vintage, four people who started together in 1989 and are still the whole band is genuinely unusual.
The song Friends carries Joey Ramone's voice. Posting an old photograph on his official Facebook page, Dregen wrote that Backyard Babies recorded Joey Ramone for the song in New York City, and that it was one of Joey's last recordings. Sony Music Japan's page for the Japanese edition of Stockholm Syndrome names the same track as the one featuring Michael Monroe of Hanoi Rocks and the late Joey Ramone, and describes it as the recording that turned out to be Ramone's last.
One entry in the discography on the band's own site is neither a CD nor a record. Under the heading Video Games sits Guitar Hero 3: Legends Of Rock (2007), listed as including Minus Celsius, with PS2, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, Windows and OS X named as the platforms. A 2003 single had, four years later, become something people played with their fingers on a plastic guitar.
The list of acts Backyard Babies have opened for reads like a family tree of rock and roll. The band's press material says that after Making Enemies Is Good they toured Europe as main support to AC/DC. Sony Music Japan's profile fills in what came before and after: opening for the reunited KISS in 1997, opening AC/DC's UK tour in December 2000, and later supporting Velvet Revolver on their European shows. Another page from the same company counts the run in one breath — Hanoi Rocks, AC/DC, KISS and, most recently at the time, Velvet Revolver.
Gold certification in Sweden starts at 30,000 copies. Blabbermouth reported in 2003 that Backyard Babies had passed that line with both of their then-latest albums — Total 13 from 1998 and Making Enemies Is Good from 2001. The band's own press material adds that Total 13 went gold at home and took a Swedish Grammy, and that Stockholm Syndrome earned a gold award as well. In an announcement the band posted in 2016, the tally of Swedish Grammys stands at two.
Sliver & Gold was not recorded as an album. It was recorded as four EPs. Dregen explained in 2018 that the band had always written a whole album first, chosen the songs, then gone into the studio; this time they went in as soon as they had three or four songs, took those three or four all the way through mixing and mastering, and then went back to writing. Four rounds of that were assembled into one record. Walking into a studio with fourteen songs, he said, turns the work industrial and drains the heart out of the songs, while three or four leaves you in full control of what you are doing. After thirty years together, it was the first time they had worked that way.
In November 2009, at the end of a European tour, Backyard Babies announced an indefinite hiatus. According to Blabbermouth they officially reunited five years later, in 2014. Four by Four, the album that followed, came in 2015, and their first show back was on 5 June that year at the Sweden Rock Festival in Sölvesborg. Around the twentieth anniversary Dregen had described the break as a matter of months after twenty years of touring, recording and writing — the last ten of them at a very intense level — with a year as the absolute maximum. In the event it ran to five.
Making Enemies Is Good was given a Japanese title of its own. Sony Music Japan's product page heads it Tenka Muteki — roughly, unbeatable, or without an equal under heaven — which translates nothing of the English phrase about making enemies. That Japanese edition appeared on 23 July 2008 under the number BVCM-35355 and holds fifteen tracks. Sony reissued Stockholm Syndrome and People Like People Like People Like Us on the same day, putting three of the band's albums back in the shops at once.
The Japanese first-press edition of the live album Live Live In Paris came with a film that had only been released in Sweden. Sony Music Japan's page for that edition (BVCP-27087 to 27088, 23 March 2005) describes the bonus DVD as Jet-lag - The Movie, an hour-long documentary covering fifteen years of the band, issued in Sweden as a DVD at the end of January 2005. The live album itself was chosen unusually too: the same page says seventeen shows from that autumn's tour were recorded and the members listened to every song from every one of them before settling on the Paris night.
Japanese editions tended to follow the home release by a couple of months. Sony Music Japan's discography dates the Japanese Stockholm Syndrome to 28 January 2004 (BVCP-21364), where Scandinavia had it the previous November, and the Japanese People Like People Like People Like Us to 26 April 2006 (BVCP-21477). Live Live In Paris appeared on 23 March 2005 in two forms, a standard edition (BVCP-21419) and a first press. The same company's profile notes that Stockholm Syndrome reached number two on the national chart at home.
Sony Music Japan's profile lays out the band's progress in this country step by step. Around the second album, Total 13, their standing in Europe was secured partly by Michael Monroe — a senior figure from their own scene — putting them on as his opening act, and in Japan a tour was a major success that made them popular very quickly. After the third album, Making Enemies Is Good, they came back for a second headline tour of Japan that settled their standing here. Then, after the Japanese edition of Stockholm Syndrome appeared in January 2004, they played Sonic Mania, followed by a run of headline shows.
For a few years Dregen was also a member of Michael Monroe's band. Victor Entertainment's profile of Monroe says he joined as the replacement for Ginger of The Wildhearts, and that the new line-up played Japan in October 2011 at the V-Rock Festival. Horns And Halos, the first studio album made after he joined, arrived in August 2013. He did not stay with the touring party beyond the Japanese dates that November, with Rich Jones standing in, and the same profile records that he then left Michael Monroe for good — a decision it links in part to his restarting Backyard Babies.
They came back to Japan after the reunion, too. Gekirock's live listings carry a Backyard Babies date under its overseas-artist section: 5 September 2016 at Liquidroom in Ebisu, Tokyo. Counting from the hiatus announced in November 2009, that was seven years between Tokyo shows.
A Japanese edition of Dregen's autobiography was planned from the outset. Blabbermouth reported in November 2012 that he had signed with Norstedts, Sweden's oldest publishing house, for a book to be written with the help of the writer Tore S. Börjesson. Three languages were named for it — Swedish, English and Japanese — with Dregen adding that this was the list to start with. His real name, for the record, is Andreas Tyrone Svensson.
The first record was one they put out themselves. The band's press material says the self-released debut EP Something To Swallow, from 1991, stirred up interest at home and abroad, which led to a first record deal and then to the debut album Diesel and Power in 1994. The same document treats 1994 as the year the career actually got moving, and gives the reason: that was when the four of them moved to Stockholm. The year they left the town they grew up in is the year their first album appeared.
Which company signed them depends on which source you read. Sony Music Japan's profile says the 1991 single Something To Swallow drew praise on MTV Europe and that the band signed with Megarock in Sweden. For the second album, Total 13, that same profile names the British label Coalition, while the band's own press material describes the record as coming out after a deal with MVG Records / East West, part of Warner. Different territories would account for both, but naming only one of them would lose half of what the sources say.
Michael Monroe of Hanoi Rocks appears on one track of Total 13. Sony Music Japan's profile traces it back to Monroe — a hero from their own scene — putting Backyard Babies on as his opening act; the guest appearance followed, and with it a firm foothold in Europe. The headliner who had given them the support slot turned up to sing on their record. Dregen joining Monroe's own band as a full member was still more than a decade away.
The cover photograph for Total 13 was taken in Frihamnen, Stockholm. The band's press material gives the location in its caption for the sleeve. Frihamnen is a working harbour district on the north-eastern edge of the city the band had moved to in 1994.
Two records in the discography are split singles. The band's own site lists a 7-inch of Degenerated (2008) shared with Super$hit 666, and a 7-inch called Supershow shared with The 69 Eyes. Super$hit 666 is one of the projects Blabbermouth names among Dregen's side ventures, put together with members of The Wildhearts and The Hellacopters. Releasing work by sharing the two sides of a 7-inch says something about the company this band keeps.
On the fifth album Dregen found himself back in a studio with an old partner. The band's press material says that for People Like People Like People Like Us he was reunited with Nicke Andersson of The Hellacopters and Entombed, who produced the record — the man he had started The Hellacopters with and left behind in 1998. Blabbermouth dates the album to April 2006 on Century Media Records.
The video list on the band's own site runs to seventeen clips, the oldest being God's Favourite from 1992 — two years before the debut album Diesel and Power. The directors are a varied set: Brand New Hate in 2001 by Jonas Åkerlund and Jocke Åhlund, Dysfunctional Professional in 2006 by Johan Renck, Minus Celsius in 2003 by Dean Karr. And Bloody Tears, from 2015, was directed by the band's own drummer, Peder Carlsson.
The deluxe box for Four by Four was not the sort of package that stops at one disc. In an announcement the band posted in July 2015, the album is spread over five 7-inch picture discs and also included on CD, alongside a t-shirt available nowhere else and a print signed by the band, all in a purpose-designed box. The same post offered VIP upgrades for that November's European tour, with early entry to watch the soundcheck and reach the merchandise stand among the benefits.
The 7-inch of the comeback single Th1rt3en or Nothing had the lyrics cut into it. An announcement the band posted in May 2015 describes a 7-inch vinyl with engraved lyrics, limited to 500 copies. The month before, another post had given the release date as 27 May, through Sony / Gain. The first song after five years of silence went out, in that form, on five hundred records.
For their thirtieth anniversary the band stopped telling their own story and asked the fans to tell it instead. An announcement from November 2018 says that while recording Sliver & Gold they invited people to post their best memories of thirty years of Backyard Babies under a hashtag, with a chance of being published in a special edition of the album. Rather than telling the story themselves, they wrote, they wanted it told from the fans' point of view. Posts could be geotagged to appear on a map.
For years Dregen ran two bands at once. Blabbermouth describes him as central to Backyard Babies and a founding member of The Hellacopters alike, in the latter from its inception in 1994 until 1998, when he decided to concentrate on Backyard Babies and left. Sony Music Japan's profile explains how it started: he put the band together with Nicke Andersson, the Entombed drummer he had shared a festival stage with. During the overlap, the second albums of both bands were being made side by side.
The label they signed with on their return was not a stranger. Blabbermouth reported in January 2015 that the reunited Backyard Babies had done a deal with Gain Music Entertainment, a company distributed and part-owned by Sony Music. Nicke Borg said the partnership rested partly on their shared history through RCA but above all on a common love of real rock, and added that this should be good for at least another twenty-five years.
The twentieth-anniversary release was not a CD or a DVD but a book. Blabbermouth describes Them XX as a deluxe 120-page volume of private photographs, packaged with three CDs and a DVD documentary telling the twenty-year story. The band toured under the same name in January and February 2010, and their own press material calls that anniversary tour the most successful they ever did.
Stockholm Syndrome was recorded on one continent and finished on another. Blabbermouth reported in 2003 that the sessions took place at Polar Studios in Stockholm and the mixing in Los Angeles, handled by Joe Barresi — a name attached to Limp Bizkit, Buckcherry, Queens Of The Stone Age, Monster Magnet and Kyuss. Scandinavia got the album on 5 November 2003 through RCA / BMG; the rest of the world was set for 1 March 2004.
The video for Minus Celsius was shot in Los Angeles on a single day. Blabbermouth gives the date as 16 September 2003 and the director as Dean Karr, whose work includes Deftones and Mudvayne; the band's own press material likewise credits the clip to Karr in Los Angeles. A Song For The Outcast was chosen as the album's second single.
For the sixth album the band decided to keep the whole thing in Sweden. In an update Dregen issued in February 2008 he said they would go Swedish on producer, studio and mix alike, and named Jacob Hellner — the man mainly known for the Rammstein albums — as the producer, adding, for the avoidance of doubt, that it would not be an industrial album. Blabbermouth reports that the self-titled record was made across ninety sweaty days and nights at the Polar and Big Island Sound studios in Stockholm.
The self-titled album Backyard Babies went to number one in Sweden in its first week of release. Blabbermouth adds that it entered the Finnish album chart at number 31. It came out in Europe on 18 August 2008 through Billion Dollar Babies / Spinefarm. The band went on hiatus not long afterwards, which left this as the last studio album before the break.
Peder Carlsson picked up a camera more than once. Blabbermouth credits him with directing the video for Shovin' Rocks, the 2018 single that led off the Sliver & Gold campaign. Together with Bloody Tears from 2015, listed on the band's own video page, that makes two clips for his own band shot by the drummer.
The title Sliver & Gold is not a spelling mistake. Dregen explained in 2018 that it is a play on words: a sliver is the splinter you cut yourself on, sitting where silver would be. Their career, he said, has been like that — golden moments, and rough stretches too. He offered the explanation a year before the anniversary the album was built around.
Sliver & Gold came out on 1 March 2019 through Century Media Records. Blabbermouth puts it at ten songs, opening with Good Morning Midnight and closing with the ballad-like Laugh Now, Cry Later. Three tracks went out ahead of it: Shovin' Rocks in June 2018, Good Morning Midnight on 25 January 2019 and 44 Undead on 22 February. The band's own site announced the same three in the same order.
The debut, Diesel and Power, was put out again twelve years later with more on it. Blabbermouth reports that the 1994 album was reissued in 2006 with a bonus track, Lies, and the video for Electric Suzy. Electric Suzy had been a single in 1994, and the band's own video list still carries the clip, directed by Mårten Levin.