HALMSTAD - Anders Herrlin

Age: 43

Family: Jennie and Victor, 14.

Lives: In an apartment in Stockholm.

Car: No.

Hobbies: Yoga.





What is the most important album in history?

Gyllene Tider’s first album of course!



First album you bought?

“Razamanaz” by Nazareth.



What record purchase are you most ashamed about?

I don’t know, but there was an embarrassing incident once at a Statoil gas station. I had produced two songs on a Carola album and suddenly saw the cassette at the gas station. I didn’t have one myself – why I don’t know – but I got this preposterous idea to shoplift the cassette. Of course they caught me so I was thrown out and banned from the gas station. I’d call that an embarrassing record purchase.



What is your biggest concert experience?

Pink Floyd at Earl’s Court.



Which is the best party album before going out?

Bob Marley, “Chant Down Babylon”.



What’s the best day-after album?

To have my iPod set on shuffle so that it mixes all the songs, all the albums, all the artists.



Your best memory from Återtåget?

Stockholm Stadium… the gig was magical. And the closing concert in Halmstad of course.



What do you remember from the Gyllene Tider hysteria during the 80s?

Delight mixed with horror. Everything went so incredibly fast; we became super famous overnight. Personally, I didn’t like that time very much.



Which Gyllene Tider song do you refuse to play today?

Everything from “The Heartland Café” – probably the worst album on the planet.



What web sites would you want to promote?

I usually only visit real music technology nerd websites like www.sonicstate.com, so I don’t really have any recommendations.

What household chore do you hate?

Doing the dishes.



What’s your worst vacation memory?

I took Jennie to what would’ve been a romantic vacation in Copenhagen. When we arrived there it started getting alarmingly windy, and within the hour it got icy cold and then it started hailing. The storm lasted three days, and finally we gave up and went home. Sigh!



What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten?

Snake in Taiwan.



Do you believe in God?

That depends on what God means. God can be so much and, much like many others, I believe there’s something more than what we can feel with our senses.



What pet do you have, or would like to have, and why?

A dog, if I lived in the countryside.



What sport would you have become great at?

Soccer, maybe.



How do you feel about plastic surgery and would you consider it yourself?

I’ve been thinking about changing my head!



You have programmed songs for megastars like Janet Jackson and Britney Spears. How much freedom do you have to change things and do you think differently, or are they just any old songs?

Of course you do your utmost when you get the chance to work with a superstar like Janet. Usually I listen to the song together with the producer. I say what I spontaneously feel is missing, and the producer says what he’s looking for. I start with that and go in that direction.



What’s more fun… being a producer or a programmer? And explain the difference.

It’s more fun to program I think. Then I can fully use my detail nerdness to the max. I can spend hours, for example, on a little sound you can’t really hear in the finished production – but if you remove it, you’d miss it. To program is to get a finished cake. My job is to decorate it, and I have complete freedom to do what I feel for. To produce is fun too of course, but a totally different job and responsibility. You have to get the views from the record company people on everything from snare drum sounds to musicians’ salaries, and the freedom isn’t the same. That’s why I only produce things I really like.



What’s happening with life after the summer tour? Any new projects or albums planned?

We just finished Jennie’s second album, which we produced together with Christoffer Lundqvist. It will hopefully be released this fall.



Have you written any songs of your own, and what has happened to them in that case?

Jennie and I actually wrote Germany’s European Championship-song “Never Stop” for the group Bro’Sis last year, believe it or not! None of us know anything about sports, but we thought it was a blast writing a real fight song. It took us one morning and we never thought they’d pick our song. I actually think they had over 800 songs sent in to the German publisher. But they chose our song! So sometimes you get lucky…



What happened to the ornithologist Anders? Bird watching used to be a major interest for you?

Yes, but that’s been discontinued. You can’t do it when you live in a major city, and don’t even have a car so you can go out into the nature.



When did you cook for your family lately?

I do it every night. I enjoy cooking. I’m not going to become some sort of rock chef, but it’s exciting. Especially Italian cuisine.



What’s the worst turkey you’ve ever seen?

“Runaway Bride,” a sort of sequel to “Pretty Woman” with Julia Roberts. It sucked so bad that I left.



Tell us something that people in general don’t know about you.

I like nice cozy evenings at home… long walks… and I’m a friend of soap and water.



Translation by Thomas Evensson for TDR