Added by Electronic Brain | 22 April 2013

JESPER BINZER of D-A-D

Interview by CARL BUXTON

I must admit I was really looking forward to having the chance to interview D-A-D as I’ve long since been an admirer of their brand of schizophrenic Rock ‘n’ Roll. Like most people I ‘discovered’ them via their huge European hit ‘Sleeping My Day Away’ and followed their career path from there, but as fans will know, they started off as a Cowpunk band before metamorphosing into a variety of styles including Melodic Rock, Hard Rock and even Glam Metal. I’ll stick with saying that they’re a bloody good Rock band and quite mesmerizing live…

Well, it’s very nice to meet you Jesper. You’re still touring the ‘DIC-NII-LAN-DAFT-ERD-ARK’ album and you’re booked until the end of August for gigs – how much longer do you intend to tour after August and what are your future plans regarding the next album?

Very, very good question. I’m the mother of the band, so I thought this whole American thing where we’re going on a plane – eight gigs, more or less underpaid…will shake us together, common vision, stuff like that, so maybe we can use that as a team building experience, maybe even more than just promoting an album. So maybe it’s a good thing for the four of us, so that we, in April, can have some time off and at the end of August could start writing new songs. So that’s what we’d like to do. Germany has called us and wants us to come down in November, and Italy and Spain as well, and it’s pretty hard to say ‘No’ to Italy and Spain when you’re in Denmark in November, so, maybe we’ll take a break in making new songs. So that’s at least my plan. I haven’t double and quadruple checked it with the other guys because things will happen, but it’s definitely time not to tour that much. I mean we need to be a way out in peace and quiet to make new music.

Okay. Going back to the Warner Brothers deal, which was a million dollar contract, I seem to remember it was two albums (‘No Fuel Left For The Pilgrims’ and ‘Riskin’ It All’ ) and an option for a third. With ‘Riskin’ It All’ you had a lot of airplay with ‘Grow Or Pay’ didn’t you?

Yes. The ‘Riskin’ It All’ album was…I mean a funny thing happened that day. They thought that the video for ‘Bad Craziness’ was too much and they thought they could only show it on Nikelodeon because they thought it was too childish, and then we had a video for ‘Grow Or Pay’ which turned out pretty Rock and pretty, you know, a sign of the times kinda video. We love the song and we look good in a funny way in that video…but…I don’t know, ‘Bad Craziness’ was too much us and ‘Grow Or Pay’ was too much Warner Brothers, and that was like the whole deal all the way through, because we never really found the same place.

Do you think Grunge had an impact on sales figures and that’s why maybe Warner Brothers didn’t take up the option for a third album?

Hmmm. Yes. But on the other hand, Grunge didn’t appear whilst we were trying to get ‘Sleeping My Day Away’ on the air, so…I mean we got a big chance and a lot of help promoting ‘Sleeping My Day Away’ which is a great song that we are still so proud of, so in a way we had our chance and it went down to number 100 on the billboard and it went on so many radio stations, so Grunge didn’t really have anything to do with the initial impact of D-A-D, but of course late on Warner Brothers wanted to pigeonhole us more or less like a new Guns ‘n’ Roses and we wanted to be who we are. A strange in-between thing (laughs) So, I mean, of course time was not working in our favour in that sense, but our sales did not prove anything else, either way.

So do you look back on that with a little regret that you didn’t crack America? Because I know you decided to concentrate on Europe afterwards.

It’s a funny feeling because I have NO REGRETS what-so-ever. Alright, we go this way, we go that way. I mean we’re zig-zagging our way through a career that has always been pretty long and had already been pretty long at that point. Maybe we’ve been together seven years before Warner Brothers called us, so, the last offers happened on a lot of lies and a lot of, you know, nothings that’s been pumped up to a lot of stuff…but looking back of course, what could we have done, blah, blah, blah, blah…I think that we wouldn’t exist today if we’d had a minor success in America because…maybe we’re lazy, maybe we are too rooted…somewhere in-between there lies one of the reasons. I mean, we’re not into that fame and fortune Carl. In Denmark it’s pretty medium all the way through. It’s not like we NEED to do this, we’ve GOT to do this, yeah, so we’re pretty much rooted in Denmark.

I’ll ask you about ‘Sleeping My Day Away’. It was a song that put you on the Rock map. What is the story behind that song and do you ever get tired of performing it?

We don’t get tired of performing it. We put in anywhere between five and fifteen minutes in the middle of it so it excites us every night and is really the place where we can find out if this is a good night or a bad night for us, for the chemistry within the band. So we just jam in the middle of it so the audience is happy, we are happy, so everybody is happy, so we can continue doing this for ever. The lyrics are very one to one, it’s very much just how we were living at that time. The riff came about when we were in some kind of rehearsing camp at Stig’s (Pedersen, bassist) parents summer house, far away out in the country in Denmark. We were literally sleeping all day, getting up, around the evening news on TV, and starting to roll the joints and cook the chicken, so, it was pretty much that. The underlying current of it is melancholy of course, and there’s a kind of, between the lines, a kind of depression line.

Final question then. If and when you finally call it a day Jesper – how would you like to be remembered?

The guy that didn’t want to cut his hair (laughs).