Mikael Rickfors is known worldwide for his time as The Hollies singer in the early 1970s, but there’s so much more to his story. A legendary name in Swedish rock music, his songs have been recorded by Carlos Santana, Cyndi Lauper and Percy Sledge. In a rare English interview in advance of a forthcoming podcast, Jason Barnard speaks to Mikael about his time fronting The Hollies and highlights from his career.
‘Reason Why’ is one of your latest tracks. Can you tell me about the writing of that song?
It’s about decisions that we make on our journey, and sometimes the decisions might have been not the great ones. But sometimes we make great decisions. In the end, time is passing so fast and it’s about that, the wrong and right decisions made through life.
You wrote that with one of your longtime songwriting partners?
Yes, Hasse Huss. We’re still working, not as much as we used to do. But now and then, a song here and the song there.
You’ve been writing with him for a long time.
Many years ago, we started in the mid 70s. The first song we wrote was called ‘Daughter Of The Night’. That’s been recorded by a number of fantastic artists over the years.
To your background and childhood, am I right that you’re from a musical family?
Yeah. My father was a violinist and also played upright bass in the swing/jazz era. My mother was a piano player, and my grandfather sang in a very famous choir. So there was a lot of music in the family, which is probably the reason I’m doing it now.
You started playing music very young, then.
Yes, I started my first band when I was 12 years old. At that time we played, you remember the skiffle?
Yes. They had skiffle in Sweden as well?
That’s what we started with. I played with the washboard.
When you were in your teens, you played bass in a covers band, was it Catnicks?
Catnicks was for a short period. We were on a tour in the north of Sweden at a ski resort, and I played the bass. That night, the guy who was the singer, got a terrible cold. “So who’s gonna sing now? I don’t know. You know? So Mikael – you must sing!” I was saying, “No, no, I can’t sing.” But I sang and I’ve obviously been singing ever since. I was 18 years old or something like that.
So after that, you were in the group Bamboo.
That was a band I formed in Stockholm, we actually played for a couple of years and did some minor tours in Europe. And we ended up as the support act for The Hollies here in Sweden. And that’s how that started. Tony Hicks was keen on finding new talents and new bands because he wanted to start producing. So we went over and recorded in a studio in London with Tony as the producer. But unfortunately, The Bamboo as the recording band, wasn’t really wasn’t up to it. So nothing really happened with that. But a year later, Mr. Robin Britton, who was the manager of The Hollies at that time, called me and asked if I wanted to come to London and sing a song to audition at Air Studios. I said, “Yes.” [laughs] I was really surprised that I got the job, because I thought I didn’t do a good job. They said, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you in”. Which they did a week later.
Even in Bamboo, you were writing songs because one of the songs that was also recorded by The Hollies was ‘Touch’. So you were writing songs in Bamboo.
Yes, I did. But I was writing poems, and that song was actually a poem in Swedish. So I translated it over to English. That was on the first album we did in The Hollies, ‘Romany’.
So when you were asked to come to audition for The Hollies, that was the period where Allan Clarke had left and they were looking for a new singer.
That’s true. I flew over and I remember there was a line of English singers waiting their turn to audition at Air Studios in London. And we all learned the same song.
Was it ‘The Baby’?
Yes, it was The Baby. I really tried hard to learn it and thought “Now I’m gonna show them” [laughs] and I started to sing. The first verse was ok, the second verse was not as good as I wanted it, and when the refrain came, I was totally out of tune. So I screamed, in Swedish “Faen!” which means “Fuck!”. I saw them jump in the room. In the end, I said, “Oh, Oh, that’s it”. Anyhow, they called some weeks later and said “You got a job if you want it”. That was fantastic.
Did you like The Hollies in the 1960s?
Absolutely, my band used to do a couple of Hollies tunes. So I really liked them. My favourites were The Hollies, The Kinks, The Who, The Beatles, those kinds of bands.
Your vocal sound, especially on “The Baby” is very soulful. Is that something that was natural? Or did you also like soul artists?
To be honest, that was the thing that I wanted to do, because ever since I started to play the guitar and sing, I’ve been playing one of my favourite singers, Snooks Eaglin. He inspired me and he was a great guitar player and a fantastic singer. I really loved his stuff. So I was more into that. But then the stuff we did with The Bamboo was a lot of soul, like The Four Tops and James Brown, and stuff like that. So The Hollies was a bit different. I have a slightly deeper voice than Alan. And I really had to struggle to reach the high notes in the beginning. But after a while, it became natural. Sort of [laughs].
‘The Baby’ was a hit single. So you were on Top of the Pops in Britain.
A couple of times.
What was it like coming over from Sweden? How did the music scene compare?
Well, everything that was recorded and played in England, or America was, what we thought, like, 100 times better than we ever could do. So I was a bit nervous in the beginning. Also the language. You think you can speak English, but when you’re there, can you understand? Well, I can’t really, I can’t have a conversation. I was very nervous. And Top of the Pops was the biggest show in Europe at that time. But I made it!
And recording the album Romany, how was that experience?
I thought that was great. Tony and the rest of the boys wanted to change their sound because at that time, it was Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, and America and all those bands. And I think we succeeded. I thought there were a lot of great songs on Romany like Papa Rain and the song Romany.
Lots of acoustic guitars and harmonies.
A lot of acoustic guitars and a lot of harmonies. I was surprised and it took me a while to learn them, because they were complicated songs, complicated melodies and chords and things like that. So it took me a while to learn that. But listening to it now, I think it sounds pretty good.
Alan Parsons was the engineer, he became a famous producer.
He was a great guy. There was somebody there who started Argent.
Rod Argent was the pianist who started Argent.
I remember that time. Fantastic. Very nice guy.
‘Magic Woman Touch’, that was one of the other big singles.
I think so. I still get letters from New Zealand where it was very popular. I don’t think it made any charts in England or America.
The current Hollies band still plays that song to this day.
I know because I met them. They were having a fantastic concert in Sweden two years ago. I went to the concert and I went backstage and met them. It was great fun. They played it and also The Baby.
Romany as an album, it sold well in the United States and listening now it’s one of the best Hollies albums from the 1970s. So that’s definitely something to be proud of.
I’m kind of proud of that. Actually, when I’m on tour now, I play ‘Magic Woman Touch’ and ‘Romany’. People love it.
And singing live with The Hollies, how was it singing a mix of new and older material? Was that ok, given your difference in vocal style with Alan?
As I said, their harmonies, their higher pitched voices, I had to really struggle for a while to reach the high notes. But on the songs that were very high was Terry Sylvester, he took lead vocals. So I did the harmony to it. I was amazed. On the first tour the first gig was in a college in Maine, and we didn’t rehearse after that moment. Once we were on stage, the intensity and the energy was nice. So different from the rehearsals [laughs]. That was very impressive.
This footage of the Midnight Special TV show in America shows that Terry Sylvester, sang ‘Long Cool Woman’ and then you did ‘He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother’. And both sound really good.
Thank you. That was the Santa Monica Pacific Auditorium, if I remember right. And we had the honour to have a fantastic local band. The stage was totally full of Hammond organs and Marshall amplifiers and dancers and choirs, and it was so incredibly good. So then they moved all the amplifiers and organs. And I remember we have one small Vox AC30. They looked so small and innocent on this big stage. But it turned out good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puJqwU5XGig
You wrote more songs after you were in The Hollies for longer. And that included the single ‘Don’t Leave The Child Alone’ . So did you have greater confidence in contributing songs to the group?
We had a break for the summer. We decided before the break that we should write some songs for the record, which I did. But I didn’t think much about it. When we met at Abbey Road to play our songs, I only wrote three songs. But they accepted all three of them. I was really surprised and happy.
There were some songs that you wrote with Terry Sylvester.
I think we wrote one in New York, ‘They Don’t Realise I’m Down’.
And around that time it must have been strange that The Hollies had a hit single of an older track ‘Long Cool Woman’, but at the same time you’re releasing new material. That must have been really weird.
Not really. I tried to blend in with the band and I didn’t think much about that. And of course, Terry sang ‘Long Cool Woman’ so much better than I ever could have done.
You also toured Australia with the Hollies.
It was a fantastic place to visit. I haven’t been there since but it was different. Very friendly people, a lot of parties and the audience was very happy. I think The Hollies were pretty popular in Australia at that time. So it was a great experience.
What do you think of the Out On The Road album because it didn’t get a full release because you left the group by the time it came out. Was that an album that you are fond of?
Not really, I think Romany is so much better to be honest. I don’t think it’s one of The Hollies best records.
In July 1973, you left the group and it seemed that things weren’t working out for you. And things weren’t working out for some of the group. So did it feel like the right thing to leave? Was it too much touring?
Yeah. There was a lot of touring. And when you’re on tour, you have to accept the fact that your home is a new hotel every day and relax. That was a bit too much for me at the time. So we had this summer break. And I decided, actually to call and I said that I wanted to leave. I felt sad in a way but that’s what happened. And the thing is that, when I talked to Robin Britton, to tell him this, he said, “Well, Mikael, that’s good, because I was just about to call you and fire you.” [laughs] So I was ahead of it.
A very different situation after recording solo material. You must have been so much more confident to really start your solo career by the mid 1970s, given the experience you had with The Hollies.
Yes, of course, touring with The Hollies in America and Australia and the rest of the world. I wasn’t that scared. I was more confident. And then when I started to write songs with my friend, Hasse Husss, it was incredible. He speaks English fluently and with him and I was very confident when we released the first record, ‘Daughter of the Night’.
Listening to your original I can see why Carlos Santana would love the track because it’s got a bit of a Santana feel even in your version? What was the sound you were aiming for when you first wrote and recorded that song?
It was a folk blues kind of song. I just bought a new Martin guitar in New York. I loved it and played it all the time. And this just turned out “One way in, one way out”. A funny thing, I read an interview with Carlos about when he recorded ‘Daughter of the Night’, and they asked him “Why Carlos, did you record that song?” And he answered, “It reminds me of my childhood, the feeling, the sounds in the alleys when I was a kid”, and I remember writing the song, it was in Stockholm. It was a very snowy winter, February night. It was a bit like, “How could that remind him of a small village in Mexico?”.
You liked his version?
Absolutely. Richie Havens recorded it as well.
Jim Capaldi too.
Yeah but I prefer Carlos’ version.
Do you know how Carlos heard of the song?
You never know that. The music publisher said that they sent him this and that, but I’m not sure. I think he heard my version on a radio station.
One of the other solo tracks that I want to ask you about is ‘Dancing On The Edge Of Danger’. And you also wrote that with Hass. That seems to have a bit of a JJ Cale influence. Is he an artist that you were influenced by?
Absolutely. The first time I heard him was on a tour in Seattle, America. I heard him on the car radio, and almost went off the road. And that was a song called ‘Lies’. And after that, everything he did, I loved. And we’re still playing JJ Cale now and then on tours. So yeah, ‘Dancing On The Edge Of Danger’, has that sort of little monotone feel and rhythm and also a little disco. [laughs]
You and Hass struck up such a good songwriting partnership. Was it obvious when you first started writing with him that you would continue to work with him for a long time?
As I said, the first song we wrote was ‘Daughter Of The Night’ in 1975. And that’s 48 years ago. [laughs] We still write songs and on this new live album that we are releasing in April. We have at least I think eight songs that we wrote together, if not more.
One of the other things about your career that is good is that you continued to develop your sound. ‘Tender Turns Tough’ is a really good example because it’s more new wave.
Yeah, a bit. I started listening to The Clash for instance. I thought “Yeah, I like that”. And I also had this new band with fantastic musicians. So we did that together, we actually improvised a lot of songs like, “Yeah Yeah” and “Tender Turns Tuff”. They were more or less improvisation.
Did you focus on playing in Sweden? Or did you go to other Scandinavian countries or onto the European continent.
Mostly in Sweden, some in Norway, Finland, and also down in Germany, and Holland, Spain. But mostly in Sweden during the summer time, because we had something called the Swedish folkparks. They were fantastic venues. Unfortunately, they are starting to fall apart now, for some reason. After the folkparks, every city has their own city festival, which took over from the folkparks and became even more popular. So that’s where we are. And it’s still the summertime when we work the most.
Another fantastic artist who’s recorded your songs is Cyndi Lauper. And she recorded ‘Yeah Yeah’. So you first released that a few years earlier?
I think it was just a half a year earlier or something like that. Or maybe a year? I was in California recording at the Record Plant. And behind there there was a bar. And a friend of mine came in and said, “There’s a girl called Cyndi Lauper who wants to record ‘Yeah Yeah’.” I said, “Yeah, fantastic.” At that time, I didn’t know who she was. But she recorded it and it was on the same album as ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’. It was a huge success.
That must have been amazing.
It was. She had a party somewhere close to the Record Plant. And somebody played my record at this party for her. And that’s how she first heard it.
Her album, She’s So Unusual is now preserved in the Library of Congress as one of the most important albums in United States history. So to have your song on it is incredible.
It is. Actually both Hass and I are in the Congress library as the only Swedes, except for Birgit Nilsson, a famous opera singer. I was really surprised.
Another huge song for you is ‘Vingar’ so we’re getting to the late 1980s. That’s a song where the message that you were wanting to get across is quite important. Was it about not being materialistic?
It is. This was during the yuppie era. Everybody was driving around and shiny Porsches. I met with a friend and I hadn’t seen him for 10 years. We met outside a pub and we went in and started talking about what was happening. He asked me “Well, if you had any money, what would you do?” I said “I don’t know. I don’t need anything really? Well, a pair of wings to fly out and do something like that.”
It got to number one in Sweden, didn’t it?
For a long time. They still scream if I don’t play that song at my concerts. They’d be very upset!
That song was written with a different songwriting partner.
With Peter Lindforss. He’s not with us anymore, unfortunately. But we wrote many songs together. Almost all the songs on that album. And also when I started this band Grymlings, we wrote a lot of songs for that band too.
You mentioned Grymlings, you’ll have to pronounce the Swedish, but it’s ‘My Best For You’.
‘Mitt Bästa För Dig’, ‘My Best For You’. It was also number one for a long time here.
That’s a supergroup of different famous Swedish singers and musicians.
It is. I had this dream that maybe when I can afford it. I’m going to buy a big farm. And when I could afford it, I bought one. The dream was to invite friends and colleagues for a couple of weeks or a month during the summer. And I had a studio, we wrote and recorded songs. And all of a sudden it was a super band. That was great. Everybody came down with the kids, dogs and cats, grandma and grandpa. It was like a hippie community. It was an absolutely great time. We did three albums, but the first one was the most popular.
What was your connection with Percy Sledge, ‘Blue Night’ is a song that you wrote with Hass again, isn’t it?
Yes. Well, when I was in America, we came across a fantastic guy called Saul Davis. He was the head of public relations during our first tour. He’s been my friend ever since. He was one of the producers for the Percy Sledge comeback. He called me and asked if I had any songs. I sent him some songs, ‘Blue Night’ was one of them, and we’re still in touch. After the Blue Night album I wrote on the Shining Through The Rain album too.
You also sang with Percy Sledge, did you actually get to meet him?
We toured together.
Was that in Europe or in the United States?
In Europe. And he was, he was fantastic, a great person to work with. Very humble.
What was the connection with Paul Jones of Manfred Mann? Was that Saul Davis again, or someone else?
Yes, Saul Davis. His wife is Carla Olson who produced Paul. Paul and I wrote and recorded ‘When She Comes’ in the studio. Eric Clapton was there to play guitar too. I think it was at the Olympic.
The famous Olympic Studios in London.
Yeah, I don’t think it’s there anymore. We made one of the last recordings there. But that was fun. The thing is that I haven’t heard the song since then. I tried to find it on Spotify but didn’t find it. So we wrote that song in the studio, and recorded it. But I haven’t heard it since then.
To close we have one of your more recent songs, ‘Look For Me Angel’, a lovely song.
That song is on the same production as this first song ‘Reason Why’. Those have the sound that I have right now.
So what’s the plan for your forthcoming album? Did you say it’s coming in a few months?
In April. We’re planning tours, of course, and some TV shows here in Sweden. The music business is a bit slow at the moment. It’s hard to plan too long ahead. Hopefully, I’ll get this great band together and get some concerts during spring and summer.
So the plan is to keep writing songs, recording and playing live.
That’s the plan. And the thing is that, when the Corona started, I thought, “Wow, now I got time. I can write a lot of songs” and, but in two and a half years, I didn’t even touch the guitar. So many of my colleagues are the same. But it’s slowly coming back.
That’s great to hear. Mikael, thank you so much for your time. It’s such a pleasure and privilege to speak with you today.
Thank you, Jason.
Further information
Podcast version of this interview coming shortly.
Also available on The Strange Brew – interviews with Bobby Elliott, Allan Clarke and Paul Jones
