THE NAKED TRUTH WITH

Dregen, guitarist Backyard Babies

March 14, 2019 by Liselotte `Lilo' Hegt - More about our team

The Swedish sleazy punk rock ‘n rollers Backyard Babies is celebrating its 30 years of rock ‘n roll together as a band, that is still in the original line-up since its formation in 1989. It is a remarkable fact and definitely something to be proud of. Guitarist Dregen, singer Nicke Borg, bass player Johan Blomqvist and drummer Peder Carlsson were already working on a new album for a while and by coincidence the recent release of the new studio album `Sliver & Gold’ is matching this unique anniversary year.

Backyard Babies is one of the bands that put sleaze and punk rock on the map in Sweden and while the music climate changed many times during their career, these guys couldn’t care less and always stick to their own rules of rock ‘n roll. The four piece build their own loyal worldwide fan base and still tours as much as possible. Instead of diving deep into the who’s and why’s of the new album, HeadBangers LifeStyle’s Lilo decided to give guitarist Dregen [who is also the guitarist of The Hellacopters] a bunch of dilemmas to get to the naked truth.

Why everybody should buy the new Backyard Babies CD `Sliver & Gold’…
,,Because it sounds great and it looks amazing.’’

Best Backyard Babies song ever written…
,,I would say ,,44 Undead’’ from our new album.’’

Life on the road with Backyard Babies is…
,,It’s a hell of a ride.’’

Shadiest thing I ever did on tour…
,,When I stole a taxi in Switzerland. It’s a long story but the bottom line is the police caught me and I had to pay 7.000 euros and I had to go to jail for two days. We had to cancel one show because I was locked up for 48 hours.’’

The last thing I do before going on stage…
,,Having a smoke.’’

Moments I can’t remember because of the amount of alcohol/drugs …
,,O boy, that happened a lot of times. Well, I have been waking up in the wrong tour bus one time. That bus was from the Swedish musician Lisa Miskovsky. There are not so many yellow tour busses you know, but for some reason she had a yellow tour bus as well and the weird thing was actually that my key worked to their tour bus because apparently it was from the same rental company. So I went to sleep in the wrong bus. It was just really lucky that they didn’t leave the venue because then I would have ended up in I don’t know France or something and Backyard Babies would be in Germany.’’

Dregen [R]

My guilty pleasure is…
,,I am a father of a six year old son and I love building Lego more than he does actually. I also love fishing.’’

My ultimate star struck moment…
,,Well, when you have been doing this for such a long time it doesn’t matter what kind of musician you meet because we are working in the same business and we met a lot. When I was a kid I actually choose between the guitar and becoming an ice hockey player. I have meet hockey players and when it was one of my childhood idols I always got star struck.’’

First thing I do in the morning when waking up….
,,Put on my coffee machine and have a cigarette.’’

What pisses me off or makes me super cranky…
,,I am not that kind of a person but maybe airports.’’

On speed dial I have…
,,Let me see …. My mom, my ex-wife, my manager, my other manager for The Hellacopters, Peder our drummer, Nicke our singer, Nicke Andersson from The Hellacopters, Robert the drummer for The Hellacopters and the number to Stockholm Taxi [laughing].’’

Who or what makes me laugh the most…
,,My son Sixten. He just turned six now and I have a whole book that I only actually write down stunned things he is saying. Some of them are actually genius you know. Kids are saying stuff that are genius sometimes.’’

What gives me sleepless nights…
,,Writing albums. Especially writing songs and the song is almost there but you just need a little something that you don’t really know what it is. It can be lyrics, chord changes or the arrangement. They just loop in my head so I am getting fucking crazy of it because when I go to bed I can’t stop thinking about it.’’

Dregen [second R]

Things I’m not proud of but I did in the name of the band to accomplish something or getting more success…
,,In general our conscious are pretty clean, you know. I think commercially we would have been a much bigger band if we would have said yes to all these commercial activities that our different record companies wanted us to do. We mainly said no to it. But we have done a couple of commercials that I am not super proud of but it is not that we have been doing hand grenade commercials or splinter bomb for the war industry commercials, you know. Sometimes you need to find cash, because you need economy for a tour or whatever you need, so yeah unfortunately sometimes you have to sell smiles to get them.’’

In my spare time, when I don’t work on music, I’d like to…
,,It is now 100% with my son you know, so playgrounds, parks, swimming, painting and as I told you Lego building. I mean what is there not to do with a six year old [laughing].’’

If not a musician I would have become…
,,Ice hockey player.’’

Whose Twitter account I follow very closely…
,,None. I hate Twitter. Twitter just gets me depressed. People are so fucking hard on Twitter, they just arguing about stuff. I am more of an Instagram guy, where everything is fluffy and there is cats all over.’’

Is there is a reason to unfollow someone on social media…
,,Yeah, there is. I have been unfollowing a lot of other musicians just because they have the wrong type of cats [laughing]. No, serious, there are two different types of social media people. The first category: Nobody has such a perfect life as they try to prove on social media and that is not so hard to see through. But there are also people using social media to get angry feelings out. I scroll on social media when I have time to kill, when I sit in a bus or a taxi but at one point I got fed up with people that are only negative and wining on social media. I realized that it affects me negative as well, because that happens when you only see negativity all the time. I don’t want that in my life.’’

My biggest challenge in life is…
,,To raise my kid to become a great human being.’’

My words to the fans are…
,,Check out the new album and come see us on tour.’’

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All photos provided by Century Media Records
Backyard Babies Website here
Backyard Babies on Facebook here