Anders trying to hang with rockstars

This is me hanging with some friends/rock stars. Everyone else looks really cool. I look like a freak of course. I really never had a clue about clothing or style. Check Joey Tempest out. Or Yngwie. They knew what to put on. A fun note is that Joey has a pink land line phone. Cells were not comon back then (1988). This was from John Levéns apartment in Upplands Väsby where we all grew up. The skirt I'm wereing was from my mother. "Here, Anders...some clothes before you go on the next 14 months world tour!" Well, I now understand why I never had any girls or groupies. But in general our band (Rising force) played the wrong kind of music. We had a 100% male audience since we played musician's music. When we did videos we hired girls to be in the audience pretending to be our fans.

Drumming in Studio Bohus

We are almost done recording. Today was pretty hard work. Next HammerFall album will have some fast songs for sure. But also a bunch of the normal stuff.

Drumming in Kungälv.

Me and my drums and cymbals.

The drum producer, Tobbe

At work in studio Bohus. Abba was here as well as Status quo. One of the recorders has an Abba reel (Arrival) still on.

Jens

In the middle of the night you might hear strange thumping sounds, maybe a loud bang, some low monotounus hum-swish and last night a power tool outside the house late at night. I took this pic with a strong flash. He was "caught in the act". :-)

Power sanding away all night long.

US-weekend

Atlanta, Georgia. John Finnberg and Joacim Cans, tour-booker extraordinaire and HammerFall-singer extraordinaire, having a few drinks. The drinks were actually flouresent. I'm not kidding.

Finnish people

In Finland people buy cheaper and therefore weaker beers in the bars and then mix in 96% pure alcohol (ethyl alcohol), which they brought with them into the bar secretly, to make it stronger.
In the pic: Jens Johansson, who is only half Finnish, that's why he brings only half a bottle of alcohol.
Another odd thing. People bring spices like curry and Tabasco with them to restaurants since the food is often un-spicy and somewhat tasteless.

Jenny and I sold some fish.

Here they swim at the zoo shop, Akvarietjänst in Malmö. Jacobfreibergis (not seen here) and some Red Zebras. The Red Zebras are a mix from our own and Åke Unger's price winning zebras caught in the wild.

We went to an Indian restaurant afterwards.
Jenny had some picled gouramies.

X-mas i coming.

I try to beat everyone to be the first one to put up some x-mas decorations. This year Paul and Anette won.

Ukraine/Russian trip with Hammerfall.

Kiev's Mc Donalds. A Porn-Burger maybe? Everyone was a bit worried if they would develop three eyes (four eyes) or/and start glowing after eating. Chernobyl is just outside Kiev.
Porn means: Royal.

A typial "eastern looking car" This is a Lada. They are always in really bright and strong colors.

Our (cross)dressing room. "Primadonja" it says. Yes, I know the Cyrillic letters a bit.
Maybe Primadonja means artist in Russian?

Kiev Railway station. Everything in Ukraine and Russia is big except the cars. The cars btw you will see breaking down (or broken down) at all times. If you go ten miles on any road you will see at least 50 broken down cars at the side of the road.

On our way to Moscow.

Oscar and my train compartment. It was a twin room with no heater control. It was probably 30 degrees in there. Oscars bed to the right (with all the beers and wine). Joacim was directly on the other side of the thin wall bunking with Fredrik. They try to get the calm ones together and the wild ones separately. The band and crew had a whole train car to ourselves almost. A few other poor bastards where there as well. I guess they didn't get any sleep either since Oscar and some of the crew were in party mode. Between the Ukraine border and the Russian border it was a three hour train ride. A bit odd.

In the 80-ties we toured the Soviet Union with Rising Force for six weeks once. The trains where similar then but I think they hade open fire heaters in our car. We sold 15 millon records in Russia with one album (Trilogy) and got a bunch of coal and oil stocks as royalty. I personally didn't get any coal just a bunch of Borscht soup...

STOP-KRAN. Emergency break handle.