After the 1980s pop band A-ha, veteran hard rock/metal vocalist, songwriter and frontman Jorn Lande is the most successful recording artist to come out of the frigid but artistically rich Scandinavian nation of Norway.
Throughout a career that began in 1993, he has released nearly two dozen albums under his own name, as well as being a band member with the likes of Vagabond, Masterplan, and Allen/Lande alongside Symphony X vocalist Russell Allen. He has also recorded and toured with Avantasia since 2007, a gig that continues to this day when he is not working on solo material.
As a way to keep up his name recognition and creative momentum, Lande releases the occasional cover album or live album. His second album of varied covers, Heavy Rock Radio II: Execution of the Classics, came out at the end of January, a year after the release of his Live on Death Road live album, and almost three years since his last studio album of original material, Life on Death Road.
“The thing is, you never know if you are going to use the same concept over and over and whether to keep calling it Heavy Rock Radio or not. But it seems to be a good idea and something that people are enjoying. It seems to be something that could be worth doing over and over,” said Lande, during a recent Skype chat.
As with Heavy Rock Radio I, which came out in 2016 and saw Lande and his band covering songs by the likes of Kate Bush, The Eagles and Iron Maiden, there were a lot of choices that Jorn could have made regarding the songs he wanted to cover for the second volume. Essentially, he was looking for material that he and his band could do justice to, an which would sound the best, in the context of the album as a whole.
“When I pick the songs, I consider a lot of things, including having a nice blend of songs, and not always picking the most obvious songs. I like to do that because the intention is not to pick songs that were big hits recently just to get some more recognition out of it. That’s not the idea; the idea is to create versions of songs that are maybe not so established and maybe don’t get played too often anymore, songs that maybe people have forgotten and then when they hear it again with a new arrangement, it rekindles their enjoyment of it,” Lande explained.
“For example, the song Winning, is a song that I think was popular at some point when it came out, with Santana especially in 1981, but then it kind of disappeared. It never became an evergreen classic that you would hear on the radio today. And that’s a shame because [songwriter/artist] Russ Ballard did a great thing with that song, and it’s a great song and I though it would be cool to choose a song like that because a lot of people will remember that song, including his original version in 1976, but they maybe haven’t heard it for 20 or 30 years or even more.
“Before the first album I just had a list of 50 to 100 songs, ones that I would like to do, which is probably why we will do another record and maybe another couple of Heavy Rock Radio records in this series. It was just a collection of favourite songs of mine and songs I have carried with me for many years, thinking they would sound great with a more Jorn-style arrangement. We tried to imagine how the song would sound if we wrote them originally, how would we arrange it, how would we play it, how would we mix it, all the aspects of that and then we would only pick and record songs that we felt would be strong if we did them. It’s not that you try to put your stamp on it, it’s that you actually pick the songs that fit naturally and songs that you love and fit with what you do and what you want to do.”
The lead-off track on the album is one that should warm the hearts of all Canadian rock fans, as it’s a slightly amped up version of the early Bryan Adams hit Lonely Nights, which was originally released on his second studio album, You Want It, You Got It, and came out in the summer of 1981. Lande said that it was thanks to a friend of his father’s, who had a record section in his department store, that he was exposed to so-called ‘import’ acts like Bryan Adams, back in his youth.
“I grew up in a small town in Norway [Rjukan], and my father was a musician as well. The drummer of his band used to have a store that was kind of like a department store, it would sell refrigerators, stereos, vacuum cleaners, that kind of thing. In the corner of the store was a little stand and there would be some shelves with vinyl records. He would have a little display and after school on a Friday, I would go there and I would go through the import section, which was maybe only 100 to 150 records, but they were bands and artists that were not commercially known in Norway at all, and not played on the radio,” he said.
“And this was a small town, only a few thousand people, so it was lucky that we even had a record store at all. So, I found the first two Bryan Adams albums there, which was actually a recommendation from my father’s drummer friend. I got his first record, which had a lot of songs, although it was not as rock and roll as the second record. Then he brought in the second album, because he was thinking of me, and that’s how I discovered Lonely Nights. He also had the single for it, because he had 45s in the import section as well, so I bought both the single and the album it was on. I discovered a lot of bands that way, through the import section, including The Little River Band from Australia and lots of others.”
Lande also has a lifelong fascination with The Eagles. On the first Heavy Rock Radio album, he and his band covered the quintessential American rock band’s classic Hotel California. With a deep respect not only for the songwriting prowess of Eagles drummer/vocalist Don Henley and his vocal performances, he decided to cover the Henley solo hit New York Minute on Heavy Rock Radio II.
“I know he is a great writer, but the writing is one thing, I think it’s his ability to write melodies and come up with melodies that is amazing. And it’s the soul and the heart of his performance and the sound of his voice that is so unique. I am sure that if he did something where he didn’t even try to bring any feeling to it, it would still sound great, because it’s the sound of his voice that just captures you. I am sure he could sing a bad song and it would still be strong in the sense that you would still be captured by his sincerity in his performance as a singer,” he said.
“I just love the Eagles stuff, right from the beginning when I was a kid. I think most of us do, people of our generation love all the melodic stuff that came in the 1970s. It didn’t matter what it was, I don’t think our generation cared if you listened to a Kate Bush album, or Genesis or if you listened to an American band like Kansas or Journey. We didn’t care whether it was complex or if it was artistic or not, or if the band was Christian or not, we didn’t care. It was about the quality of the whole thing, something that touched us from within, and Don Henley’s songs and his singing has always done that for me.”
Getting back to the theme of not necessarily picking the most obvious, most popular and most commercially viable songs to cover, Lande dipped a little deeper in the Deep Purple repertoire to cover that hard rocking song Bad Attitude, from the criminally underrated House of the Blue Light album, their second after reforming with the Perfect Strangers album that came out in 1984.
“It’s a song that is not appreciated as much as it should be in the Deep Purple portfolio. It’s ignored a little bit, that whole record, and that song is probably one of the best Deep Purple songs ever written, at least in a rock sense. It’s a cool rock song, and it really does have some great attitude to it, which I love. Ian Gillan sounds fantastic on that one, and [bassist/producer] Roger Glover said they didn’t play it live because it didn’t work very well live for them. They tried, but it just didn’t seem to work,” Lande said.
“I thought that was interesting because when we first tried to play it, it was really natural and didn’t seem to be so hard to play, we were able to bring some real energy to it within the band. And of course, it’s cool to pick a song that is a little out of the box when you’re talking about Deep Purple. Everyone talks about the Perfect Strangers album, but House of the Blue Light is a great album too. And with Ian Gillan himself, his solo records also have a lot of great songs on them that I could also imagine us doing. Some of these singers from some of the great bands have some excellent songs on their own, like Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden – some of the stuff on his solo efforts are really great, and I find some of it even more interesting than some of the Maiden stuff.”
Over his lengthy and prolific career, Lande has never shied away from trumpeting the importance that the late great former Black Sabbath, Rainbow and Dio vocalist Ronnie James Dio had on his career. In 2010 he released an entire album of Dio covers and on Heavy Rock Radio I he did a truly exceptional version of Dio’s first bio solo hit, Rainbow in the Dark, as well as a scintillating version of Dio-led Black Sabbath’s Die Young, from the legendary Heaven & Hell album.
On Heavy Rock Radio II, as with Deep Purple, he extracted the lesser-known album track Mystery, from the Last in Line album to cover.
“In terms of choosing this song, to me it’s more about putting songs on the record to have a good flow, and at the same time with Dio there is a link to my history and where I come from and it’s good to call it a tribute to Ronnie because ultimately that’s why it’s there. But at the same time, it’s not there for a commercial radio jolt. It’s a good song, but never a single,” he said.
“Mystery was a song I never really thought about doing in the past, so it was kind of an original choice, especially if you look at all the songs we could have dome of his, that everyone sings and records, like Holy Diver and Last in Line. I thought it was cool to put something not as well known, but still a great Dio song.”
Returning to the subject of his cover of Winning, Lande said he was pleasantly surprised as to how well the final track turned out, which justified his decision to add a little more of a Celtic kick to the arrangement.
“I realized while we were doing that one that it was actually harder to sing than I thought. It was not easy at all. The version that I heard before I heard the original Russ Ballard version from 1976 was the Santana version [released in 1981 on the Zebop! album] with Alex Ligertwood from Scotland on vocals. And I tried to sing like that, and it was pretty hard, but at the same time it came out great right away. I was kind of struggling with it a little bit when we first started, but we didn’t need to record many takes from it. We did a few and when I went in to check it out, I found that, wow, it worked. We just put a couple of pieces together and we had the song,” he said.
“And then we added something that is not on the original not on the Santana version either, which is the Scottish bagpipes. It was something I just heard in my mind, when I heard how we re-arranged the song and how we replaced the keyboards and stuff and the choruses with more heavy guitars I just had this feeling that this song was changing into something else. And the funny thing is that Alex Ligertwood is from Scotland, so adding the bagpipes to our version made it kind of come full circle.”
With the release of Heavy Rock Radio II – Executing the Classics, Lande said he is now ready to focus on a new studio album, his first since 2017’s Life on Death Road, as well as planning tours and doing press.
“I am concentrating on the new Jorn studio album over the next year and also playing some anniversary shows with Avantasia in Europe and a few Jorn shows [COVID 19 permitting of course]. I am trying also to have more balance in my life. I have a lot of responsibilities in the family. I have another house, an old stone villa in the south of Sweden that we go to some weekends and on holidays and it’s an old 1880s building that always needs maintenance and a lot of work. And I like to do that too. It’s good to get back to reality to get away from the bubble of music and the music business. It’s like getting back into the fresh air and I love that,” he said.
“And doing music is not everything. It’s a part of life, and a big part of my life obviously as an artist, but the reason for the inspiration and the creative side is because you do other things in life. If you are stuck within the music bubble all the time, you are not going to get any perspective on things. So, I like to do other stuff. Also, I’ve done so much in the music world in my past, so it’s a good time in my life to have more balance. The same with the songs for these Heavy Rock Radio albums – it’s a good timing for that. I thought about doing them for a long time, but I believe now was the right time.
“If I did this 20 years ago, it probably wouldn’t be the right time. Many of those songs would still have been kind of current. Now, a lot of those songs are a little forgotten so it’s great to bring them back to life and also enjoy the process of doing it. I see myself playing some of these songs in the future, and maybe I will even do a Heavy Rock Radio tour – that could be interesting. I guess we will need another couple of those records first, but the list of songs that I would like to do is pretty long. And if we all stay healthy and keep the flow going, I am sure we will have another record like this and maybe even two or three more.”
For more information on Jorn and his various activities and releases, including potential tour dates [again, Covid 19 permitting], visit www.jornlande.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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