>> ROAD / WILLY BENDIKSEN <<


Interview with " Wild " Willy Bendiksen-Drums.

( Flax,Road,Blonde On Blonde,Perfect Crime,The Snakes,Bad Habitz,Wild Willy Bendiksen )

Conducted and Translated by 


Per Erik Jansen
aorguru@go.enitel.no

Layout Terje Høiland

Willy Bendiksen has been involved in the music business for a while now, so I thought that he could tell us about his own projects as well as the music business and his experiences. I let him start talking about the beginning of his carreer.

 

I got inspired by music generally at early age. I was listening to bands such as Cream, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep and Jimi Hendrix to name a few. And this led me to start playing myself. I startet my own band in 1971 called St. Helena, and vi played some gigs in Norway. Then I played with Flax from 1974-75. Then I was in a band called Host later in 1975, released the first album in 1976 “Hardt Mot Hardt”, and kept going until 1978. After that I was back in Flax again later in 1978.

 

I played in the backing-band for a norwegian pop-singer Jannicke for a while, and this backing-band began doing own stuff under the moniker Road in the middle of the 80’s. We released 2 albums (“This Is Just Rock ‘N’ Roll” and “Break Out”) and 1 EP (“Running Away”). I have thought about re-releasing these on CD since it’s only released on vinyl and cassette. While in Road, I had the responsibility on everything; car, light, P.A., label and so on.

 

And then it was Blonde On Blonde after Road broke up. We released the album “Labyrinth Of Love” in 1989. We changed our name to Perfect Crime and released the album “Blonde On Blonde” (!) in 1990 on the EMI label. EMI used about $140,000 on the recording, mixing, mastering etc., and we went to  England to do a couple of things there. This album was mixed by a well-known guy; Tony Platt, and was produced by Whitesnake guitarist Bernie Marsden. As guest musician on the album was Don Airey who did keyboards and arranging. When time came to the point of release we got no promotion. Our label-mate took himself a vacation and at the places we did our gigs, posters of other bands was covering the walls.

 

I was also playing in Whitesnake guitarist Bernie Marsden’s band more or less for 10 years in this period. When time was passing through I get involved to start a Thin Lizzy tribute band called Bad Habitz along with Ronni Le Tekro and Morty Black from TNT. We have got this band going on spare-time runtil now, and we will keep it going. Today it’s Bjorn Boge doing vocals and bass. He is known for his work with Da Vinci and is now playing in Street Legal.

 

I startet a project with ex-Whitesnake guitarists Bernie Marsden and Mickey Moody called ”An Evening With Whitesnake Music” where we toured playing old Whitesnake tunes. In this band we had Sid Ringsby (bass, ex-Road/Tindrum) and Jorn Lande (vocals, ex-Vagabond, now in Millenium and solo). This project developed to be the band The Snakes, now with Don Airey on keyboards. And we started to make our own material. We released 2 albums, “Once Bitten…” (with our own stuff) and “Live In Europe” (with Whitesnake tunes) which is only released in Japan at the moment. But times went and Bernie fired his Norwegian friends, Jorn, Sid and me.

 

I and my wife, Beate, have now been running a pub called Rock In, a rockbar in Oslo, for 10 months, until now in small rooms where the 2 of us was working from 03:00 in the afternoon until closely at 05:00 in the night. We were waiting to find a bigger and better place where we could have a real stage and bar. So we came by a basement that was what we were looking for. We used about 3 months to finishing the redecoration. At the end we worked from 11:00 in the morning until 07:00 the morning after to finish everything.

The plan was to make a real place for rock and hard rock in Oslo, now with more collaborators. It looks promising right now. We’ll also have concerts here every now and then. By the new-opening (friday august 18) we invited to a party with Bad Habitz featuring John Norum (ex-Europe) as guest, which resulted in full houses. The day after we invited for a concert with John Norum’s own band which ended successfully. What’s was left undone was to decorate the wall with rock-stuff to make it more familiar for us rockers.

 

Further on the musikal front, I will be doing some stuff on the upcoming second solo-release from TNT guitarist Ronni Le Tekro. I wall also try to re-release the old stuff from Road, Blonde On Blonde and Perfect Crime on CD, as well as release The Snakes’ album in Europe. A collaboration with John Norum is also in the plans.

 

That was what I got from Willy this time. Let’s hope of something good and exciting rock and roll from one of Norway’s best drummers in distant and close time. Rock on Willy!