Lars Lundberg and Mats Lodén (both born in 1956) were buddies already from first grade in Luleå, located in northernmost Sweden. Although good friends, they did not share a musical interest during the first three school years. Lars was lucky enough to have a very special dad, who presented him a Hagström Standard 80 White Pearl electric guitar and a small amplifier on his 8th birthday in 1964.
At the age of ten, Lars and Mats became very influenced by all the fabulous music in that particular time, with great band like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Who and so on. Then one day, class mate Mats “Klarte” Hagberg invited them to skip school lunch in favour of listening to some great new music. Klarte lived nearby and had a very well-developed taste for music. He had just bought the album “Are You Experienced” by the Jimi Hendrix Experience…
This new music, psychedelic and loaded with distorsion and feedback, struck as lightning. It soon became a daily routine to visit Klarte at lunch hours to hear some of the latest music. It started with the Jimi Hendrix Experience, continued with the Gun, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, and so on.
SAVANNAH
In 1973, Lars and Mats formed a new “band” together with old classmate Benny Sjödin. All three played the guitar. This was of course not an ideal setup for a band. The situation was solved by recruiting the one year younger Peter Larsson on drums, and by Lars diverting to become a combined singer, multi-instrumentalist and studio engineer. Lars played the bass guitar, as well as harmonica, recorder and alto saxophone. Benny and Mats doubled on the bass guitar when Lars was busy singing or playing another instrument.
Some of the music performed by Savannah is recorded on a Tandberg 3000-X stereo tape recorder. However, the sound quality of these recordings is not very good. The band split in 1975, due to diverging musical interests. However, there are loads of recordings in the hidden vault…
REBECCA
After the split of Savannah in 1975, Lars and Mats became heavily oriented towards early British progressive music. Lars was fond of bands like Pink Floyd, Traffic and Curved Air, while Mats favoured music made by for example David Bowie, Tyrannosaurus Rex (later T. Rex) and Sparks.
Lars also became more and more fascinated by the audio recording process itself and soon bought a four-channel tape recorder (TEAC A-3340), which added the possibility to synchronize tracks. With shared musical interests and ambitions, Lars and Mats decided to continue as a duo, and also to record an album together.
Recording sessions with the four-channel tape recorder were initiated on different locations during April-June 1976, and with different setups of musician friends, including former band members Benny Sjödin and Peter Larsson. Also performing on the original album is Knut Hävermark (piano, organ) and Gustav Sundberg (percussion).
However, there are also two older recordings on the album. One of them is Quicksilver reactive baby from April 1974, with the original Savannah setup. This one-take recording was done on a regular stereo tape recorder, which explains why the sound quality is poor as compared to other tracks. The other old track is Summer Nights from April 1973, another one-take recording, this time capturing two acoustic guitars.
All songs on the album are written by Lars and Mats. With one exception, all titles and song texts are in English. There are no political ambitions whatsoever. The songs can rather be described as whimsical and psychedelic, which makes the album rather unique at the time, when Swedish music was either commercial with lyrics in English or anti-commercial with lyrics in Swedish and an outspoken political message.
The album was pressed in 200 copies only, as it was intended to be a demo album. However, at the time no major Swedish record company showed any interest in the music. Lars sold his four-channel tape recorder, in order to afford the pressing. Most of the records were sold to friends and schoolmates in Luleå.
At this time, Lars and Mats had to go to compulsory conscript military service. One year later, the world had changed substantially for both of them, and they went separate ways. Lars gave up music and moved to Uppsala for medical studies.
Mats, on the other hand, moved to Stockholm together with his girlfriend but never gave up music. He continued to play in different bands, for example Dårskap för två (1983-1989) and Dineros (1990-1997), and later with Mamaje. In 1989, Mats published a book on Swedish rock lyrics, Rockens text. More recently, a collection of short stories was released in 2015, Det ena eller det andra.
Lars Lundberg Music 