Glam rock is a genre with which I am not especially taken. Kiss was okay - in the eighties. In the late nineties, Marilyn Manson did a lot for the marketing of drug dealers. It was the Ark's In Lust We Trust that turned me on to them. The drama of that album, and the charisma of the lead singer Ola Salo, was hard to ignore in 2003.
One of the very touching Ola Salo stories I read was from a young lesbian groupie from Gothenburg who toured with the band. She wound up in Nyköping (or some other Swedish provincial town) and didn't have a hotel booked. On hearing that she didn't have a bed to sleep in, Ola gave up his hotel room for her and slept in a room with one of the other band members.
He is flamboyant, colorful and a 'showman' par excellence. I write the gender-specific showman in inverted commas because it can't go unremarked; Ola cuts a rather androgynous figure as he struts his stuff. He is probably best described as a closet heterosexual. He has a wife and two kids, but to descend to mere pigeonholing is to denigrate the central tenet of the Ark: that we are all special and beautiful no matter what others think about us.
It sounds like the usual ecstasy-riddled rock cook and bull, but if one kid out there found solace in their message and could turn their self-hate around, then it was all worthwhile - and in the last 15 years there's been a lot more than one - there's a generation of Swedes to whom this music means so much. In terms of impact on a national level one could think of Rammstein in Germany, or perhaps Oasis in the UK.
Perhaps I'm comparing apples with oranges, but the Ark is monumental, and their testament is not hindered by bowing out now with their heads held high. There's nothing more ludicrous and devaluing to a message born in rock than old rock stars, but Ola we will miss you.
The last word is from Ola and Ola is never short on words. This the last half of his prelude to a song played during the Ark's final performance at the Malmö festival last Friday night. [clumsy translation mine - original video here]
-Exactly thirteen years ago, to the day, I sat in a cramped little apartment on Sturegatan in Rörsjöstaden, not far from here. I thought about the times [we live in]. I sat and thought about how scared we are of each other, and how that fear suffocates us, and how that fear is expressed in so many different ways, like ironic and cynical jokes. One should understand, that this was the ironic and cynical era at the end of the nineties. It [the fear] is expressed in status and prestige and the fear of that which is different. And I felt that I was so incredibly tired of that fear. I was so tired of that fear that could be found everywhere. I was so tired of that fear which existed in me. And I felt that everybody was going around being scared about losing face in front of one another. And so I thought, if only one could get people to be a little bit less scared of losing face in front of each other, think what a wonderful world we would have. Because when we go around being scared about losing face in front of each other, then so many of the beautiful things about us disappear. So I thought, I'm going to fucking well write a song that declares war on that fear. A song that inspires myself and other people, to dare to be a little bit more ridiculous; to dare to lose face a little bit in front of each other; and that song wasn't just going to be a song, it was going to be a manifest. It would be a weapon that destroys the fear and the shame that makes our life boring from time-to-time. I am so proud that it was that song that was our breakthrough. Because that song that I wrote thirteen years ago on Sturegatan in Rörsjöstaden, it doesn't just sum up everything that we stood for then. It sums up everything we have stood for through all these years as a band. And it sums up everything that we will always stand for, regardless of whether we are here or not.
So if you feel like beautiful idiots tonight. If you are ready to escape the fear and shame, and let the beauty inside of you bloom, sing now with me. . . It takes a fool to remain sane.
