The Poodles

The Poodles from Sweden have just released a new album of some of their favorite songs, including Crazy Horses (The Osmonds), Go Your Own Way (Fleetwood Mac), and Call Me (Blondie). The’re about to make their first visit to Japan and KS spoke with frontman vocalist Jakob Samuelsson to find out more about the new release and a recent change of band personnel.

or the band’s first time in Japan, what is everyone looking forward to both from a musical and non-musical perspective?

Everything, really! We are super excited. You know, from our perspective, it’s classic ground. We’ve all grown up with Deep Purple Made in Japan, Michael Schenker Live at Budokan, and other classic live albums, so it’s been a childhood dream and on the bucket list to play in Japan. We’ve had plans to go several times but never made it. We also know many who’ve played there and always talk very positively about the experience.

The new album Prisma is out. Can you tell us a bit about it?

Well, we are six studio albums down the line and we’ve talked about doing an album with interpretations of favorite songs and also an acoustic album for a long time, so we decided this was the time to do one of them. We got together and listened to a lot of songs and came to the conclusion that it would be more interesting to pick songs from another genre of music than our own and make them ours, so to speak. Add our flavor to them and also work with a new producer. We were really happy with the work of Mats Valentin and love the guy but we’ve done four albums together and it’s good to change concept and working situation from time to time. I had Dino Medanhodzic recommended from our label and got together and it was love at first sight. He’s a super talented guy and really fun to work with and the album just came out fantastic, I’m very happy with the result.

Guitarist Rob Marcello is joining the band for the live shows. Is this a permanent fixture for The Poodles?

Yes. Henrik, who is one of my best friends and a very loved colleague, is like a rockstar in linguistics too and he had this mega chance to do a great and very interesting project in the jungles of Mexico, where I found him in the first place, by the way. And we’ve all got to do what we want and have a passion to do, so he took some time off to be an explorer this coming year. It really was a downer for me, but then I heard of Rob and that he was free and interested to step in during Henrik’s absence. I obviously knew about Rob and we’d met briefly before on a few festivals, and when we hooked up I was struck by what a fantastic player he is. It’s not easy to fill the place of someone who is as good as Henrik and Rob is doing a great job so far. He is also a star of his own as a guitar hero so this will add some new interest and something exciting to it all, I’m sure.

Swedish heavy rock / glam-metal band
• Club Quattro, Osaka
• Heavy Rock
• 7pm
• ¥7,000
• Tel: 06-6311-8111