The Story of Kriminella Gitarrer
Possibly one of the first Swedish punk bands at all, definitely the first to release a record - the single Vårdad klädsel in February 1978 - Kriminella Gitarrer came from the small town of Klippan (the Rock) in Scania, the southernmost province of Sweden.
They had no connection with the punk scene in Stockholm, or elsewhere for that matter, and their illustrious career spanned the period September 1977 to December 1979.
They released three singles and had two tracks on the semi-legendary Klippan-compilation Svensk Pop (Swedish Pop) released in 1979. They played in front of an audience only about fifteen times altogether (only six times with Stry Terrarrie as singer) and sold a few thousand records in all, but have for some mysterious reason managed, without any effort on their part, to maintain and possibly even strengthen their position in the Swedish underground rock history.
Their mutual interest in rock music brought the seventeen-year-olds Anders Sjöholm, Anders Pålsson and Mats Pettersson together at high school in Klippan in 1974. The schoolmates got the possibility to fool around with a tape recorder at school every Friday afternoon thanks to the school’s benevolent and liberal-minded music teacher Bo-Ingvar Olsson. Most of what they recorded was just noise and shouts, but the excitement of being able to retain the results of their creativity on tape got the boys hooked.
Anders S started as a singer in Riot from nearby Perstorp in 1975, a rock band that included Anders P’s brother and his neighbourhood friends, while Anders P and Mats continued their creative experiments on the school’s tape recorder.
In the summer of 1976 Anders S went to London, saw the Sex Pistols and got more curious about this strange group and the environment around it. His interest in rock music was insatiable and he had been buying the British rock paper New Musical Express for some years to keep in touch with what was happening on the rock scenes in Great Britain and the USA. He now added Johnny Rotten to his favourite rock singers, who included Jim Morrison, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed.
Anders P, Anders S and Mats had been doing some recordings in the springtime of 1977 in the newly-built small studio at the high school. Most of the recordings were screams and guitars, noise from a Moog synthesizer, but some of them were rock songs, more or less, later to be played by Kriminella Gitarrer.
Anders S visited London again in February, 1977 together with Anders P and the excitement about the punk rock scene in London rose. They also got their aliases, Anders S became Stry Terrarie, Anders Pålsson got the title and name Demon Producer Pål Spektrum, with the motto ”Today’s sound tomorrow” (not to be confused with Phil Spector’s Tomorrow´s sound today) and Mats simply was named Mats P.
In the summer of 1977 Anders S left (or had to leave) Riot and immediately started Kriminella Gitarrer, which – as you might have guessed – is Swedish for Criminal Guitars. He got the name from the flip-side of a single by a New York group (ten Swedish Crowns to the one who can trace it and send it to us in Sweden!). (He had only read about the record, never listened to it.)
Anders S had met Alf ”Affe” Olofsson (later to be known as Alfie Atkins), fourteen years old, who for some reason had bought a bass guitar and an amplifier. Mats P, who had been trying to play guitar for some months got the job as a guitar man. Now they needed a drummer and they finally found one in September, hardhitting Per-Åke Holmberg, who immediately changed his name to Sticky Bomb. Sticky was well-fitted as dynamic dynamite, a driving force behind the simplistic bass- and guitar playing by Affe and Mats P.
In a couple of months Stry wrote most of their songs, some twenty songs in all, and the band was busy rehearsing these multi-chords small punk masterpieces. In December they played their first gig at primary school (where the youngsters Sticky and Affe spent their days) and became local rock band heroes. A few weeks later Pål Spektrum materialized as demon producer and recorded two songs with the band (using his famous ”Sound of a wall”), Vårdad klädsel and Förbjudna ljud, and released it as the first punk rock record in Sweden on February 21th in 1978.
The limited edition of 500 records were sold in the local area to friends and relatives (Affes mother, locally known as Ingrid Sweet, bought herself ten copies and she still hasn’t played one of them). The boys got their invested money back and actually had a little record company and some money left over for a new single.
In the summer of 1978 they recorded three more songs for a single/ep, but only two songs, Silvias unge and Hitlers barn, were released as a single in August 1978. They now had nationwide distribution, and 1200 copies were pressed and sold out in a few months. (The third song, ”Anarki”, that Stry had written during his time with Riot, stayed in the vaults.)
By this time Stry had left the group to move to Malmö, the capital of the province of Scania, trying to develop his musical ideas there. He started bands, Besökarna and Garbochock, in Malmö and continued his career as a recording artist. In 1981-1983 he spent some time in Stockholm as a member of Ebba Grön, one of the best known and best-selling rock bands in Sweden at the time (and even later, despite the fact that they quit in 1983).
With no intention to play anymore, Mats P, Affe and Sticky just decided to make a last recording of some songs and asked Olle Bop from stablemates Torsson for some help with the guitar works. So they rehearsed through the autumn of 1978 with Mats P as vocalist and at Christmas time recorded Knugens kuk and Stig Bomb. Both tracks were on the Svensk Pop-album together with other bands from the local area; Torsson, Noise and The Push.
Despite the decision just to do a few recordings they kept on playing through the year of 1979. In the spring they planned to make an album together with Noise and recorded about ten songs. Only three of the songs were completed and two of them released as their last single, 36 patroner/Svetsad, in September 1979.
Kriminella Gitarrer had now developed into a garage rock band with influences from British rhythm & blues and American 60´s garage rock.
Without the creativity and focal point of Stry Terrarie Kriminella Gitarrer was a band with no direction, no identity and lack of energy and at the end of 1979 they called it a day.
But, as the existence of the compilation Förbjudna Ljud with Kriminella Gitarrer proves, they are not forgotten, possibly more exciting today than they were 25 years ago. (Can anyone explain that?) Their fame, or notoriety, seems to have grown over the years and the members of the group, each one in their present position in life, have grown into some kind of celebrities.
Since they disbanded the boys have aged with dignity and it seems that the short space of time with Kriminella Gitarrer gave them some measure of confidence in their own abilities that has proved valuable to them later in life.
Stry is still working in his home-studio writing songs and making recordings, Sticky is still playing in the Swedish rock band Wilmer X, if not working as a DJ. Affe is working as road manager and A&R man for different Swedish indiebands, Mats P and Olle played for some fifteen years in a local rhythm & blues band and are now pursuing more mainstream careers.