Interview: Graveyard’s Jonatan Ramm
The guitarist from bluesy Swedish hard-rockers Graveyard on six-strings, influences and unreliable vehicles…
1. I couldn’t live without…
“My 1958 reissue Les Paul. It has a little fatter neck on it, so it fits my hand very good. And I have an old Gibson SG Special with P-90s. The electronics are 60s, but the guitar was made in the early 1970s.”
2. In another life I would be…
“This is what I’ve been dreaming of and now we’re doing it, so I’m very happy. But I used to be a painter, painting houses.”
3. The moment that started it all…
“We have shit radio in Sweden, they hardly play any good music on it, but one night I was on my way home in the car and they played The Wizard by Black Sabbath. That made me try to get better, and I knew that was what I wanted to do.”
4. The one that got away…
“I’ve been selling a bunch of stuff and there are some old guitars I kind of wish I had, nice old Guild guitars and stuff. But sometimes you have no choice and you’ve gotta sell ’em!”
5. My Spinal Tap moment…
“The confusion is always there, when you don’t find the stage. That happens all the time. One of the bigger mistakes was to buy a really shitty van. We went to the Netherlands to do a show and, of course, the engine broke down. We were stuck in a town and everything was closed because it was a Sunday. We found this guy who had this little Volvo that we got to buy really cheap. It said ‘I Love Jesus’ on the back. Then, in the middle of a highway in Germany, that car broke down. We had to climb these bridges, and you’re not allowed to, you know? Then the cops came…”
6. The best advice I’ve ever been given…
“I like Bill Hicks, and the way he would talk about Jimi Hendrix… Play with your heart.”
7. The first thing I play when I pick up a guitar…
“I usually just play around the blues scale and have fun.”
8. The most important thing on my rider…
“Water is the most important, but you want a couple of beers as well.”
9. My guiltiest musical pleasure…
“I listen to a lot of different music. Everything from old jazz and blues to modern death metal.”
10. If I could learn to play one thing…
“I’m a big Peter Green and Fleetwood Mac fan, there are songs of his I would like to play, but there’s never time…”
Graveyard’s new album Innocence & Decadence is out on 25 September via Nuclear Blast.
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