SkivSnack podcast: Mic and Ian rank all of EUROPE's albums!

Here is the last part of the translation!

Stefan: "'Last Look at Eden' from the album Last Look at Eden at number 4 when Mic Michaeli and Ian Haugland rank all of EUROPE's albums, and this happens to be my personal favorite EUROPE song. I think it's fantastic. Now, on to Top 3."

Mic: "Exciting!"

Ian: "Up on the victory podium!"

Stefan: "Up on the victory podium, and at number 3 is the album that you might disagree the most about, I reckon. Ian ranked it at number 1, but Mic at number 7. It's Prisoners in Paradise from '91, the last album you did before the hiatus. There's a big difference between your opinions on it now, nearly 30 years on. Let's hear from Ian who thinks it's EUROPE's best album."

Ian: "It's from the era... The thing that has always annoyed me is the fact that Prisoners in Paradise is so criminally disregarded in so many ways. When we started to write songs for Prisoners in Paradise, we had a vision that we wanted to make a real fucking rock album. It was going to be rough-sounding. The guy who was our collaborator at the record company was very hyped up, like 'Damn, this is gonna be great, you guys,' and pushed us in the right direction. So it felt like we had a damn good thing going. But when the album was finished and we were going to play these songs to the record company, it turned out that somewhere down the line, this guy who was our collaborator at the record company had been fired, along with several other people because there was a restructuring (at the record company). So in came two yuppie guys looking like two question marks, totally clueless. They sat down on the sofa and the producer started the playback. Then afterwards, the classic line: 'Well... we don't hear any hits. Think you guys need to write some more songs.' And to me at least, it was like some bastard stuck a needle into a balloon. Poof! Joey was forced to go back into his 'songwriter bubble', and by the time he had coughed up a certain amount of new songs that worked for those guys at the record company, and we had recorded them, almost an entire year had passed by. So when Prisoners in Paradise was ready to be released, those three rascals from Seattle, damn dirty garage rockers who called themselves Nirvana, had just broken through big-time and more or less killed off the entire 80s rock genre, the genre of music that we represented. So when Prisoners in Paradise was going to be released, the record company had completely different priorities."

Stefan: "But despite this, it's still your favorite EUROPE album, Ian?"

Ian: "Yeah. I think that the album has so incredibly many damn good songs and it was never given a chance. The damn album could have gone through the roof if it had received the right push from the record company and the music business right from the start."

Stefan: "But Mic, you're a bit more skeptic to this one?"

Mic: "Yeah, due to many of the same reasons that Ian mentioned, really! (laughs) I agree with you about the idea, we had a thought about making a real good rock album. We had written many songs. Some of the best songs didn't make it and weren't even (properly) recorded, and I think that the songs that were added after Joey started to write with other artists, those songs are among the worst on the album. (laughs) There are many great songs on the album, absolutely. But I think the album unfortunately became a kind of a mishmash. I know that on one occasion a journalist asked me, 'How long do you think you'll be going?' I said, 'Hopefully we'll stop when we don't think it's fun aymore.' And that's exactly what happened. It wasn't so fun anymore, so we put a lid on it. We didn't say, 'Let's meet up in 12 years and see if we can do something again.' It just felt natural (to stop)."

Stefan: "It wasn't like you sat down and said, 'Now EUROPE is split up.'"

Mic and Ian: "No."

Stefan: "It just ran into the sand?"

Mic and Ian: "Yeah."

Mic: "We did the last gig on the tour in Wales or something, somewhere in the Great Britain, anyway. And then it just felt pretty good!" (laughs)

Ian: "We stepped out of the tour bus and were like, 'See ya! Sure thing! Bye!' Then I stepped into my apartment and the first thing I picked out from the pile of letters was a paying-in form from the tax agency, claiming that I owed 3.6 million (Kronor) in unpaid taxes!"

Stefan: "With 3.6 million spelled out in digits?"

Ian: "Yeah!"

Stefan: "Did you get one, Mic?"

Mic: "Uh-huh, we all did."

Stefan: "Have you put it up in a frame?"

Mic: "It's probably lying around somewhere. I seem to remember that I put it in a frame, but I haven't seen it (in a long time). It's probably in a box somewhere in the attic."

Song break: "Seventh Sign"

Stefan: "Then there was a break and you came back 13 years later. Still going strong and releasing albums regularly. We're going to the two albums at the top. It's actually your two latest albums. We'll start with the one that came out second-to-last... which year was it? 2015. In March 2015 you released War of Kings. Ian ranked it at number 3 and Mic at number 4. Maybe not right at the top, but in total it averages out to number 2 on the ranking."

Ian: "It was the first production we did with Dave Cobb."

Stefan: "Who produced Rival Sons, among others."

Ian: "Yeah, that's probably how we found out about him. All of us wanted to go back to a more organic sound."

Mic: "Yeah, exactly. He partially does rock albums, but he also produces several country artists and is huge in the USA. So we felt that there was no way he would say yes if we asked him. The bands who get the chance to work with him sell immensely much more than we do. Those country stars in the USA. So we didn't have very high hopes."

Ian: "I seem to remember that he was asked. And he was like, 'Fuck, how cool! EUROPE is one of my favorite bands from the 80s! I grew up with their music! Yeah, I want to work with them!' So to him it was a bit like working with his old heroes. I remember prior to the recording... He had a really tight schedule, naturally, so he had set two weeks or something aside to go to Stockholm where we were going to record the album in a studio that was called..."

Mic: "PanGaia."

Ian: "PanGaia, right. It was totally new. It hadn't even opened. We were the first band, we arrived right after the paint had dried."

Stefan: "So War of Kings is the first album to be recorded in that studio?"

Ian: "Yeah, exactly. So we had no clue about how the studio worked and Dave Cobb had no clue. So it was a lot of 'Let's see how this turns out!'"

Stefan: "What is it that you think is so good about War of Kings?"

Ian: "War of Kings was an album that felt like... If Last Look at Eden was the album where we found our 'thing', War of Kings had the 'turn it loose' spirit, with Dave Cobb as the captain who steered the ship. So it was even more of a refinement of the band's sound, I thought. Many damn good songs."

Song break: "War of Kings"

Stefan: "Now we're at number 1. Tada! Once again you worked with Dave Cobb. It's your latest album, Walk the Earth from 2017."

Mic and Ian: "Right."

Stefan: "Here you were very much in agreement. Mic at number 1, Ian at number 2."

Mic: "I think we're daring in a way that might not have... Even if we've become more and more daring after we started up again on this side of the millennium change, I think we dare to take out the turns a bit. Instead of taking it to the max when the chorus comes in a song, we'll bring it down. We dare to be a bit progressive with our music. There are damn good songs."

Ian: "It's a refinement of our self confidence. A more mature self confidence. EUROPE got some hair on the chest. A bit gray, but still. We believe in our ability to deliver and we notice the reactions we get for both War of Kings and Walk the Earth is, 'Damn! EUROPE has never been better!'"

Stefan: "But if I play devil's advocate, many bands say, 'Our latest album is our best album.'"

Ian: "Yeah."

Stefan: "Is that a sticking point? If we do this program again in ten years, you might say something completely different."

Mic: "Yeah, but I think... Absolutely, there's much to what you're saying, that one tends to say that his latest work is his best. But that's also because one hopefully is developing for the better all the time. At least according to what one thinks himself. And that makes it a natural choice, most often, anyway."

Ian: "One thing we should mention is that the album was recorded in the enriched Abbey Road Studios."

Stefan: "That's right!"

Mic: "I can imagine that it was a dream come true for everybody, because it is one of the world's most legendary studios. The fact that it's still around is fantastic, because it was about to be shut down. But like I said, it's still there and furthermore they've kept a lot of old goods and tape recorders and everything. And we asked to have it brought up, or rather Dave Cobb asked to have every old thing from the 60s brought into the studio! So we recorded the vocals via Beatles' old mixing board. We recorded the guitars through Pink Floyd's old mixing board. It never stopped. We found an old tin can with one knob on it and 'John Lennon' was written on it! Someone had built it for him because he wanted his voice to sound more nasal than what it really was, so it was an EQ thing of some sorts. So there was a lot of that stuff that was fantastic."

Song break: "Walk the Earth"

Stefan: "Number 1, Walk the Earth. The best EUROPE album so far."

Ian: "Yeah, exactly."

Stefan: "Ian Haugland."

Ian: "Yeah!"

Stefan: "Mic Michaeli."

Mic: "Uh-huh."

Stefan: "Thank you so much for coming here to rank your albums, even though I understand that it's a tough thing to do."

Mic: "It was really fun!"

Stefan: "Glad to hear it! Thank you!"

Mic and Ian: "Thanks!"

Stefan: "In the next episode of Skivsnack we're going to meet Fredrik Strage and talk about albums that one has reevaluated over the years, and albums one has tried to reevaluate, but in vain. Like I said, follow us on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. And do tell friends who like music about this podcast. Also thanks to Taket for help with graphic design. I'm Stefan Sundberg. See ya soon. Bye!"