>> 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!