Bättre Lyss

The Bättre Lyss album was born after a couple of recordings done 1973-74 with a group of musicians friends. It all began with songs in English, written by Rolf Hammarlund who sang and played bass and Christer Palmquist who sang and played acoustic guitar and piano. Gradually the songs developed and the lyrics were changed to Swedish, which became more and more common in the early seventies. Our drummer Rolf Johansson contributed with a few songs and lyrics and the plans to make an album took form.

We also wanted to write about things that happened around us in our country and in the world. Tragic things like the Vietnam War and the military coup d’état in Chile and the growing Swedish weapon industry. Social subjects like people living at the bottom of the society. A lonely mother struggling to make ends meet, a homeless man addicted to alcohol and an old woman torn after a hard life. Pretentious maybe, but those were things we wanted to write about at the time.

The most important thing for us was, still is, the music. We had grown up with the Beatles music, which we still love, and were also influenced by bands like Deep Purple, King Crimson and YES. We were lucky to have some friends who were very good guitar players, and also an excellent flute and soprano saxophone player. We also had great help with arranging some of the songs by the guitarist Anders Nordh. We recorded the songs on just a two track tape recorder with the engineer Henrik Gårdstedt.