220 VOLT THE EARLY YEARS - by Kjell Björk

It all started in early 1979 with Mats Karlsson and Thomas Drevin, playing guitars and dreaming of a band. I came in later, when the band was formed. I had nothing to do so why not open a Record Store, and what place can be better than up north in Sweden in small town Ostersund? The name of the store was Guntans Skivor (Records); meaning Guntan was the nickname for my first wife.
The store and the wife are all gone for me, but some stuff will never go and that's my early memories of the good guys in 220 Volt.
The record store soon became a meeting point for the head bangers. Mainly because they didn't have to look through all the Carola's, Sven-Ingvars, Jazz, Classic or whatever, to find all the Heavy Metal vinyl they wanted. And even though the Stones was (are) my main band, I did (do) like heavy stuff. The guys in 220 Volt started to hang out, bought a few records now and then, helped me in the store a lot and talked about their garage band. That's how I met the boys in the band.
What I remembered, their favourite bands at that time were:
Mats was into Rainbow, Herman (Peter) was a Rush dude, Frille (Christer) was a MadMotorheadHeadbanger, Mikael liked bass players and some Stones (good on you mate) and Thomas liked all the girls and Guntans arse. Jocke, who replaced Frille in 83, was a Judas Priest freak.
Well anyway. I liked the sound of Volt and the total energy on stage. I felt sorry for them playing gigs for a few beers and free testing of scooter boots. We soon became close friends and I helped them with getting some money for the gigs and sponsored the first single.

On the back cover of the single it says "Producer: Kjell Björk", well to be honest the first demo tape and the single was produced by the band. I just thought it was bloody cool to be a producer for once and a good thing for getting laid by groupies. The only thing I did was telling them what sounded good or bad when recording. And together with Herman I insisted on the track "Sauron" for the B-side.

The single was everything but an expensive production. We printed the cover on cardboard sheets and bought toy stamps to print the label. That was fuck'n funny, we were in the record store after hours and folded and stamped labels until we went nuts. On top of that I got this idea of limited edition, so we had to write the figures from 000 to 500 as well. I got the single with number 000. I'm not sure if the band got 000 as well or if they got 001-005.
We sold all copies in a couple of weeks, even record stores outside Ostersund made orders. I got no clue how they found out about the release.

Frille was something else on stage and the gigs with him were great, like the ones in Svenstavik and Krokom. For me, a big city dude from Stockholm, it was awesome to see head bangers turning up on snow scooters to see the band. Far out.
We posted the first demo to all the main record companies in Sweden and CBS offered a contract pretty soon.
In the studio in Stockholm, Frilles voice was sadly not good (strong) enough and CBS insisted of sending him home, telling the band to get a new singer. The rest of the band felt really bad about this and would probably gone home if not Frille had said something like "No sweat, mates. I'll keep on rock'n anyway, don't miss this". They called Jocke Lundholm, who quit his band (called Mugabe or something) in Ostersund and went down to Stockholm straight away.
The number one gig in those days with Jocke was the sold out gig at "Gamla Teatern" in Ostersund the 21st of may 1983. The place was packed and Volt was great. I think it was the first gig with Jocke.
We sold 439 tickets in the presale in no time at the record store, the limit from the council was 400 audiences, and otherwise I believe we could easy have sold another 400. I bought the last ticket and I still got that green unused ticket. Unused because being the manager you don't go through the bloody front door. The following gigs where "Battle of the bands" 29th of May at Liseberg - Gothenburg and "Storsjöyran" in Ostersund summer of 1983.
Later, George Reispass at CBS told the band that I wasn't good enough to be there manager. Again the band felt bad. But I had no problem with that whatsoever. I never was a producer or manager anyway. I'm just a Good guy-Born hard and the main thing was the best for my friends in the band.
When the first LP was due to be released (Monday 30th of May 1983), we came up with a dirty trick to get the head bangers in town to buy the album at my store and not in one of the two others.
The bands old friend Micke Eriksson wrote a review from the gig at "Gamla Teatern" and together with photos taken by Michael Johansson it ended up with a special cardboard insert that was only in the albums (first 150 or so) sold at Guntans Skivor.
So, if you got 220 Volts first album with the insert in your collection, that's the proof you bought the album at Guntans Skivor and was probably sold to you by one of the guys in the band.

My copy of the first album is signed by the band with comments:
"Tack Kjelle !!! anser Mats Karlsson" (Thank you Kjelle thinks...)
"Fjortisknullare - Thomas Drevin" (censored and not true she was eighteen)
"Svälj Huvve - Jocke Lundholm" (Swallow your head)
"Keep on Head banging! Yours - Mike Larsson
"To Mr Cheese head - Peter Hermansson" (I hate cheese)

Well, there you go nothing but nice guys.

One special cool memory is when Mats, Peter and yours truly went to Stockholm to try to meet Ozzy Osborne in 1983, pretending to be reporters.
We packed my old Volvo Amazon -68 (bought from Mats father) with cameras, notebooks and other stuff reporters suppose to have.

I got this leak from Ozzy's record company that he was staying at hotel Diplomat on Strandvagen. So we drove down into the garage under the hotel, parked nicely, jackets in the boot and cameras and reporter stuff on. The elevator went "pling" and we found Ozzy sitting in the otherwise empty café having a cupper.
We tried really hard to look like reporters from "NorthenStarHeavyMetalMagazine" or whatever the name was that we made up.
"Hhmm, Hi Mr. Ozzy, we are from blabla magazine! Can we please have an interview with you?"
"Yes, sure give me five and then we can go up to my room"

Jesus we made it and up we went.
We asked Ozzy whatever we could think of including his tattoo's, took photos and had a great time. But we made a mistake; none was taking any notes at all. So after half an hour or so Mr. Friendly Ozzy said something like: "Hey guys, you are not really reporters are you?"
Three long faces said:"No Ozzy, but we do love you"
Ozzy laughter thought the trick was cool, talked to us for one more hour and signed all the records we brought.
I don't watch "The Osbornes" I feel terrible about "Look at me, I'm fucked, Hoohoo Hoo", I rather have the memory from 1983.

Later we tried the same trick on Whitesnake at a hotel in Stureplan/Stockholm, but it did not work. You can't always get what you want.

By the way Thomas Witt the producer of the first albums is an old friend too and he has a record store in Sundbyberg these days. Myself I went to New Zealand and I'm still waiting for 220 Volt World Tour Down Under.

Cheers
Kjelle Björk
New Zealand 22nd of April 2003