A fandom
nerd interview with Bård and Vegard Ylvisåker
[disclaimer:
This interview is specifically intended for people who have “above average
interest” in Ylvis, and because of that the interview has not been edited very
much. It’s more like a transcript of a conversation. I’ve removed a few
redundancies and cleared up a couple of bits, but otherwise I tried to keep the
text as close to the original speech as possible. This makes it a bit of a long
read, which I believe won’t be a problem for the intended audience. The interview was made August 5th 2015. Niin ja sori suomalaiset, että tää on englanniksi!]
I’m sitting on a slightly damp bench outside
the café called Hønse-Lovisas Hus, an idyllic little wooden red house by the
Akerselva river in Grünerløkka, Oslo. It’s quarter to ten in the morning, but
the café only opens at eleven. Luckily the owner has come in early and she
makes me a cup of tea. I sit and wait and sip the tea. I don’t even drink tea.
A few minutes past ten, Vegard Ylvisåker walks
in through the garden gate and greets me. I get up and give my hand to shake,
but he makes it a hug. “Bård is late”, he says. “He’s not answering his phone.”
We sit down on the bench and he makes another
call. “Yeah, is Bård there? We have an interview.” It’s a short phone call. “I
called his wife. He’s awake.” He looks at a map on his phone. “I can see where
he is. Yeah, he’s home.”
He goes inside to get a sandwich. “Do you have
this kind of ham in Finland? It’s called spekeskinke. It’s salted and dried.” I
thought it was parma ham.
After a little while we decide to start the
interview without Bård.
When I began planning this interview, I started
a conversation online about what question you would like to ask Ylvis. I got a
few very good questions, but then the conversation turned into what were
everyone's favourite bacteria.
Okay. [laughs]
It's funny with bacteria... When we made Work It, we were so exhausted. That
was the first music video we made. We didn't respect the amount of work at all
in advance. We had the shoot, that was our hard deadline. We lived in Bergen at
the time, so we came over the day before the shoot, in the morning, with our
laptops. We had a mic stand and a microphone with us on the plane. So we took
the airport train into town, off to the offices. We fine-tuned the lyrics.
The
director would normally have the song ready, so he could visualise every little
bit of the song. At this point nothing was ready. He just had the broad lines
the day before the shoot. I was like ok, let's have two locations, the bathtub
and the club, and let's just see what this is going to be.
We had this
ventilation system in the offices that contaminated the whole area with sound,
so we had to wait until nine o'clock until we could start recording. So it was
just me and Bård in a storage room. It had the most stuff on the shelves so it
didn't have the echo. We were in there until 5 o'clock I think. Then we went
down to the hotel and we slept for 1,5 hours. Then up again. It was like
checking in at 6 o'clock in the morning and checking out at half past seven.
Then we
went down to make the video, super tired. If you look closely, you can see that
Bård's eyes are really red when he's in the pool because it was so awful. We
were so tired when we did the lyrics that we didn't really check them. Of
course it says "bacterias", with an s. It's funny. We didn't realize
that until the whole thing was finished. Shit happens.
 |
| Rubbing it in |
|
Who did the background track? Was that done in
a studio?
Actually
we had help from a friend there, Erlend Sellevold. He's done a lot of things
with Ralph Meyerz and the Jack Herren Band, where Tarjei plays. Bård met him
coincidentally at an airport, and they started talking about the song. He said “send
it over, that's fun”. But it wasn't like just send it over and have a finished
result, we had a lot of back and forth, a lot of comments. It was the first
video and the first season.
Did you decide to do things differently after
that experience?
Tried
to, but very often we end up with... Not the same but almost. Doing things at
the last minute, kind of.
Do you like to go over the details over and
over again?
We tend
to do that, but it's very hard to say when that pays off. Sometimes you do
things really quickly and it comes out good, and sometimes you spend a lot of
time on stuff and it doesn't really help. It all comes down to the original
idea, if it was good or not.
You’ve made a lot of the songs at Phat Cat
Studios with Lars Devik.
Basically
it's just him and Stargate. Except for this guy for the Work It song.
Are you going to continue with the same people?
I think
so. But Lars moved to Bergen a month ago. That's going to be challenging, but I
think we can still work things out. They're all interested.
Is there a difference in the way that you work
with Lars or with Stargate?
Oh yeah.
Lars is a childhood friend. I met him when I was nine years old. From that
point in time we've been making music together. We kind of just flow together
when we do stuff. We know each other's weaknesses and strengths. We know what
we don't like and what we do and don't have in common. Which is both a strength
and a weakness in a way. It gets very comfortable both on the good side and the
bad side.
But we
have the same kind of humour in a way, the musical humour. It's a very narrow
kind of humour I think, but it's nice for us to have it in there. For example
in The Cabin. We're so lucky to have the bass player of one of our favourite
bands to record The Cabin, Jonny Sjo. He's also in our band now. That's kind of
awesome, because me and Lars, we used to sit and listen to his band D’Sound
when we were kids. We've done that for 20 years, and now we're playing with
him. And The Cabin has both the drummer and the bass player from that band.
At one
point there Jonny Sjo does this run that is so typical of that genre and so
typical of him. We had so much fun when we did it, me and Lars and Bård and of
course the two of them. They always make serious music, that's the fun thing
about this. We're kind of used to fucking around with music, but they're not.
This is their chance to do something stupid with their music, and they're so
happy about it. Everyone was laughing and everyone was having a good time.
That's really cool.
With
Stargate of course it's a little bit more difficult, but at the same time not a
big problem, because it's the same with them: they always make serious music,
and when they have the chance to do stupid things, I think they're having a
good time.
I
remember when we were making Mr. Toot and Yoghurt. That was fun. Norwegians are
traditionally very much like "ok, we'll work tomorrow from ten to four and
I have this appointment where I have to go". But with these guys, we were
working on Trucker's Hitch or something, and then we just started jamming on
another song. Suddenly we'd made another song. We'd planned to go home, but they
said “this is cool, let's make this song. Write some lyrics, we'll do this,
we'll order in some pizza and some beers.” They just put their life on the
shelf and we made another song.
 |
| Lars Devik behind the keyboard. Ignore the Turkish pop star. [photo source] |
Where did Mr. Toot come from?
I just
wanted to make a song about a mystical figure. I don't remember whose idea it
was. I think Bård and Christian [Løchstøer] were sitting at the office, talking
about this legend, and I came into the office and said "oh, that's Mr. Toot".
And they laughed and it became Mr. Toot.
Why is he called Mr. Toot?
That was
just something I thought about at that time. I just said it. People liked the
sound of it. Then we started thinking: what does he do? Well he plays the toot
of course. And I don't know. It came.
Who made the instrument?
I
actually designed it in 3D. We had some different suggestions, but we ended up
with a combination of an oud and a trombone I think. But we had it made down at
the music store. There was some heavy engineering to do there.
I'm a bit of a musical instrument nerd so I
really love that. Is it at all playable?
Yeah you
can play it as an oud, but it wouldn't sound good. And it doesn't have the same
sound as on the soundtrack. It wouldn't make much sense to play it really. But we
were thinking of playing the fancy midi toot. Because we bought one.
I remember one of you tweeting about trying to
find one.
We
bought it and we scheduled the shoot in Morocco. And then suddenly I realised it’s
not coming in time.
So you were able to borrow one?
I spent
a lot of time on that one. It's work that I enjoy doing, but it was nerve
wrecking at the same time. But I finally managed to find one. I searched for
the instrument name and only Norway, and found a guy, just a username on a BMW
forum. For some reason the guy had listed up his studio equipment. But he
didn't have any contact information, no e-mail, nothing, and I had to get a
hold of him like today, because it would be too late tomorrow.
So on
this forum I managed to filter all his posts, and I found one with some images.
He had shared pictures of his new car. One of the pictures was from inside of
the car and it showed a reflection on the window of the GPS. On the GPS it said
Høgehaug, 600 meters. So I went to Google Earth, I put in Høgehaug and made a 600
meter circle around it. It had to be within that area. Then I found this road
and thought this must be it. I went on street view and compared it to the
original car picture. After scrolling a bit back and forth I found it. This
must be the house.
I called
a number which I found for that address. I called his home, he didn't answer.
Called his work, no-one answered there, but suddenly I found another number on
the address. It was his daughter, and I said I have to get a hold of him. He
has to call back today. She was like ok, ok… That was cool. It was very
satisfying when I got a hold of him.
So you kind of work as producers on your videos
as well.
Well
yeah, we are producers in a way. Like co-producers. Of course a lot of things
we don't do, like organise stuff. This was stuff that I just think is fun and I
though this I could do pretty efficiently, so I did it. Normally we don't have
time to do stuff like that.
The company that made Intolerant posted a video
from behind the scenes. I was thinking the whole time that you really must have
an efficient producer to be able to do all that in one day.
When you
do a thing like that, you start the day with a sheet with the plan for the day.
Of course we could have made that ourselves, but for these things we have good
people who know what to do, so we had a lot of help for that. And in that
particular case we outsourced the video to a company called Motion Blur, which
then also used a company in Latvia. So you're kind of the producer on the top,
but in that particular case we were just writers and performers. Of course we
have a lot of things to say when it comes to the whole thing and we discuss them
with the director all the time, but when it comes to logistics, we're not
involved.
Where did the idea for the video come from?
I don't
remember. I think it was Bård's idea. We just wanted to make a ballad about
something mundane. And he's lactose intolerant, so I think it came from there.
What's your favourite song to play live?
I hate those
favourite questions. I don't think I can answer.
Well what do you like about playing live?
It's the
main reason why I do this for a living. It's just very rewarding to see that
people like something that you perform. You get happy because people get happy
from what you're doing. It's not that you go "oh, look at those people,
they think I'm awesome". It's more like “these people are having a good
time”. You get the response and there's a good thing going on.
I really think you're at your best when you're
doing things live.
I think
so too. We asked to do I kveld med Ylvis live for the first seasons, but people
were afraid of it. Then at season four we just said ok, now we just have to cut
the crap, let's do this thing live for real.
Two
things with season four were groundbreaking for us. Doing it live was a good
thing, and also having the huge audience was really cool. It's kind of hard to
get 1400 people every night, though.
Yeah, I know you’re awesome and very popular,
but even I was surprised that you could fill a huge theatre that many times.
We too.
When we chose to do this, we had to go through it many times and think: “at
which point have we fucked up for choosing this?” If you have less than 400
people in that room, then things start to look bad. You can cut out the whole
gallery visually, and underneath the gallery as well. Then you have about 500
seats left on the floor, and some of it goes away to technics and so on. So
it’s still possible to do the show without selling out the whole room, but of
course it gives something special when it’s full. All that life and the
response. It’s going to be exciting to see this year how we’re going to do it.
We haven’t really landed on having it there, but I think we’re trying to.
But it’s quite occupied, isn’t it?
Yeah it
is, but we have this advantage of doing this on Tuesdays, which is normally a
day on which people don’t do anything there. That’s a good thing.
Do you know when it’s going to be yet, or is it
still up in the air?
It’s not
official yet, so we don’t know. It’s probably in the winter. Approaching
Christmas.
This year still?
Yeah.
Hopefully. It’s kind of unusual for us, because for four years we’ve always started
in September.
 |
| You're welcome |
Did you really decide it at the last moment?
Yeah,
very much so. Or we had said no, because we wanted to do something else, and
then we kind of changed our minds. And now we’re really into it again. You don’t
get fed up, but it’s just our whole career, we’ve never like rested. We did
that in the first years, and it killed us in a way. The first show we did we
played for 3,5 years I think, and you get so tired of it that it really kills
all your engagement. We’ve decided that’s not the way to go, so after a while
we just move on. Let’s do radio, let’s do television, let’s do stage shows,
let’s do different things, just to keep things organic. And now we did I kveld
med Ylvis for four seasons and kind of decided to try something else. But then
we found out that it would be cool to do it once more, as long as you just
rattle the cage a little bit and try to find new ways to do stuff.
How was the 24 hour livestream?
It
wasn’t as bad as we dreaded it to be. It was ok actually.
Whose idea was it?
I think
it was TVNorge’s. I don’t really remember.
It was such a silly thing to do, but we got a
lot of fun out of it.
I hope
so. It was kind of fun in a way. It’s a stupid thing to do when you have the
last day of preparation for a show. It’s not what you need. But in a way it
sort of got us fired up, and we also just decided that our premiere is not the
day of the premiere, it’s the day before. Everything has to be ready one day in
advance. That’s how we have to look at it.
But
still we did a lot of real stuff there, like rehearse for the dance on camera.
The dangerous part of it is of course that after a little while you just don’t
care about the cameras anymore, so you start doing things that you normally
wouldn’t do on camera.
But it
was ok. I was just skeptical, because first of all, the whole 24-hour thing had
been done like half a year before by another Norwegian channel. They had this
interview for 24 hours. We felt this was lagging a little bit behind. And I was
worried that we would just ruin our focus and make the product worse, but
actually I think it sort of sharpened us a little bit. And also we were afraid
that it looked very… narcissistic. If you choose to broadcast yourself for 24
hours, you have to think that you’re very interesting in a way.
Well you are interesting.
Yeah but
I mean for 24 hours, it’s just…
Nah, it was such a silly thing. I actually
think that people would love to see more about what goes on behind the scenes.
Like the video from behind the scenes of Intolerant, people were really into
that.
We’re
kind of secretive. We like to keep the magic. That’s because we know it’s no
magic. It’s like the magician who doesn’t show what’s inside the black hat, he
just pulls the rabbit up. It’s like the movie about magicians, I don’t remember
the name [it’s Prestige (2006)]. It’s a movie about… is it two brothers that are
magicians? [they’re actually two rival magicians] They do this amazing trick. They
have this cage with a small bird in it. He puts a blanket over it and smashes
it flat. And then a bird comes out. Of course it’s two birds, but the one
inside the cage is like… flat. So if you tell that to a kid, he wouldn’t be
very happy about it. And that’s the same with us.
So you’ve got multiple Bårds and Vegards and
you just kill off one, and a new one comes along.
Yeah. We
have harnessed the art of cloning. But you know, you see proof that these
differences exist in how we perceive ourselves and our work, and how other
people do that. Because from time to time you get these analyses of our stuff.
Did you get that book about that just now, by
the way?
Yeah I
got the book, like what is it called… The Chronicles… Not The Chronicles, it
was…
The Nerd’s Guide To Ylvis.
Who made
it?
It was this Canadian girl Robin, and Eve who is
from Philadelphia. They started this thing in one of the groups in Facebook.
They started conversations and a lot of people took part in those.
[laughs]
It’s so funny… That is one of the coolest things about this job. You make
something and it’s very often a coincidence who comes up with something and who
says something. I mean Mr. Toot, whatever, you know. And then all of the
thoughts that go into thinking what they really mean… Yeah, it’s really fun.
I think especially the character of Finn has
been a source of lots of discussion.
[excited]
Yeah, and it’s really just… It’s just nothing. [laughs] I was with Christian
and I think I said “have you heard this song”, and I played the original song. He
just started singing on the chorus with new lyrics, and I said “Jeg heter Finn!
Jeg heter Finn!” and we started laughing about this guy whose name no-one knows.
And that’s it.
And then there are pages full of discussion
about his life and what he’s like.
Yeah.
Have you known Christian for a long time as
well?
Well it
has started to become a long time. The first time we worked together was… You
know Hvem kan slå Ylvis? He was at least on that project. I think he was also involved
in the last show of Norges herligste, which was kind of a big gala event, an
award show. I think he was involved in writing the script for that. But we
really started working together on Hvem kan slå Ylvis, which was in 2009 I
think. And after that we’ve been working together. He also co-wrote the last
stage show we had, Ylvis 4.
Are you thinking of doing more of those kinds
of stage shows?
Yeah, I
mean we don’t have any plans for it now, but… We’ve been away from it for a
long time, but what we do now with the concerts is kind of similar. It’s not
the same, but it’s still performing live. It almost has the same length as
well.
One of the questions most people wonder about
is are you going to release Ylvis 4 on DVD?
[pensive]
Yeah… I don’t know why we haven’t.
You could do it as a digital download.
Yeah.
Well we should. We have too many things to think about. And you don’t make very
much money on these things so… We have it on tape. Has it been aired? No.
I don’t think anybody’s seen it except if they
were there.
Maybe it
should be just, you know, a cult thing. Because people would be disappointed if
they saw it.
You think so?
I don’t
know. If it has already become like this mysterious project that no-one knows
about.
Maybe you should just release it bit by bit,
one minute from the middle of the show appears in some secret place and
somebody finds it. People are pretty good detectives, because you’re so
secretive. They start looking for stuff.
It’s
kind of freaky sometimes, yeah. No, we should do that. I’m not sure what we’ve
done with it. I think we just recorded it and we haven’t done any
post-production at all. So it’s going to take some effort. These times are
hard, you know, not for television, television is fine, but for selling DVDs
and CDs and stuff like that. I don’t understand that business. There are so
many strange things.
The record
industry is just fucked up. I was just shocked to learn how the industry works.
I wasn’t hoping to earn a lot of money on record sales, so that was ok. But especially
in America the way it goes is you make a song and it sells copies around the
world, digitally and physically, mostly digitally. And you would think that now
of all times the means of measuring how many sold items you have is better than
ever, because everything is digital, you just monitor it just like that. This
is how many one dollar downloads you’ve had.
We have
our own record label, which we have all the back catalogue on. Which I manage
myself. It’s the easiest thing in the world. You just get a chart and get a
number: the publisher has sold this many copies, this percentage goes to the
publisher, this is for you. But in the big labels, they go: “ohh yeah, now it’s
been like 1,5 years, you’ve sold this much.” And we say: “nooo, it can’t be
that. It must be much more.” “Ok, let’s say this much then.” Then our agents
and their agents negotiate and they just achieve a settlement, where they agree
on like “ok, let’s say you earn this much. Is everyone ok with that? “ “Well
yeah, you’re not going to give us the real numbers, so we’re going to be happy
with that.” It’s just strange.
That whole
business, we don’t really think much about it. It’s so much easier to do a concert.
Either someone pays you for it, or you go like how many tickets have we sold?
This many. And how much goes to us? This much. Then we know how much it is.
Have you thought about taking the concert
abroad, further than Sweden? For example Finland.
Yeah,
sure. We have. It’s just hard to know how it’ll play, like how many people will
come. But our main problem is time. We’re now producers on the Magnus show, and
we have our own show, and we have family that makes stains like this on the
clothes [scratches off some unknown white substance on his thigh]. It’s a lot
of things. It’s ok for us to go to Sandefjord and wherever to just play, but if
you have to go on a tour, that’s another thing. And doing just one concert in
Poland or whatever... You can do it for fun. We wouldn’t do it for money. But
you would have to have a tour. At the moment we don’t have time for fun
anymore. Or we have fun, but for extra fun. So it’s a luxury problem for us.
Is there anything you can tell me about what
you’re doing in LA?
Not very
much. We’re just experimenting with stuff. Some people said it was a pilot.
It’s not a pilot. We’re trying out stuff. A lot of things won’t work, so people
will never see these things. The only thing that is to tell there is that we
are in collaboration with Lionsgate and trying to find out if we can do
something. We’re kind of comfortable in Norway, so we don’t want to rush over
to America just to do something in America. It would be cool to do stuff in
America, but we don’t do things because it’s cool to be in America. We just
want to do things that are fun and if we can do that over there, that’s cool.
I think even the Americans are worried that
you’ll do something really American there, not like what you normally do.
I think
so too. The American way of working is very different from here. One should not
underestimate the cultural differences between the strange country of America
and the rest of the world.
But it’s probably getting more difficult to do
pranks and stuff here in Norway, when everybody knows you.
Yeah,
sure. We just have to find out first of all what they want over there. What can
we make that is funny over there and what can we do there that we can’t do here?
But we’re really relaxed about it and we have our stuff back here. That’s our
main hub.
Seems you can do pretty much what you want at
the moment.
It’s a
truth with modifications, I would say. It is coincidentally true, because we
can do what we want, and what we want is what they want. So that works out.
Yeah, we have our liberty here. TVNorge knows we’ve made things work before, so
they gave us kind of a carte blanche.
[looks
at his phone] I’m just going to see about this late guy. It’s been an hour now.
[looks
at the map app on his phone] Oh he’s very close. He’s like really really really
close. He should be at the parking lot, I think. [He calls Bård. “Where are
you? Are you coming? Hønse-Lovisa was your suggestion. We’re sitting and
waiting. I thought you’d just come down here. Yeah, ok.”]
He’s
coming.
So are Magnus and Calle going to be with you
next season?
Yeah, I
think so. They’re interested. There’s a lot of things to be worked out, because
this was kind of a last minute call, and everyone’s been to vacation. But
probably they are. I can’t confirm it for real. Calle is going to have a
premiere on a new show [the Raske menn show in Oslo]. And it all depends on
when we’re going to start. But we hope so.
 |
| Heroes and sidekicks in Oslo Spektrum [source] |
You hate the favourite question, but are there
some favourite segments that you’ve made for IKMY, something that you like to
do?
I think
the core idea or ideology of both me and Bård is that when it has reality in
it, then it’s funny. The more we go away from reality, the less funny it gets.
Among the things that we’ve done trough these seasons, you see very little of us
being characters, or sketches and such. We don’t do that. The only thing where we
do that is the music videos and such.
[Bård
walks through the gate and gives a hug.]
You’re awake!
B:
Hello. Sorry. I misunderstood and I overslept. What have you been talking
about?
The weather.
V: All
kinds of stuff.
B: Yes.
Good.
We were talking about what segments you’ve
liked doing for IKMY. And he was saying that you like the ones that have an
element of reality in it.
B: Yeah.
Like the attack on Farmen, that reality project.
I liked the thing where you went to
Kirgisistan. That was one of my favourites.
V: Yeah
that’s real. That’s just us going over there. Of course we had some plans. We
had staked out things and had our local people that fix things and stuff, but
at the end of the day it’s just us two going over there and we didn’t know what
to expect. And that’s fun.
B: Yeah
I agree. Also to plan things overly much is fun, like the Farmen thing. We
liked that. And some things we like when they’re done, but we don’t like doing
them. Like when we’re walking around in fish costumes or fly costumes last season. It’s not so much fun to do that, but when we see it after it’s
done, we think it’s funny.
I was saying before that I started this
discussion about what would you ask Ylvis. So I got a few questions that I can
ask. Yeah and then it all turned into a discussion about everyone’s favourite
bacteria.
B: Nice.
V: I
don’t really have favourite bacteria, but I just made my third batch of
yoghurt.
What bacteria did you use for that? [totally not thinking about THIS]
V: I
guess it’s some kind of a lactose… It’s not a lactose bacteria, but it eats the
lactose.
B: Could
it be LLG?
V: Not
necessary-lee.
B: Milk
acid bacteria.
V:
Maybe. But it’s fascinating.
B:
Lactobacillus.
So ok, here’s some random questions.
Are you
more like your father or your mother?
V: I
think we’re more like our father in a way.
B: Yeah,
probably our father. He played in a band when he was a kid and he’s a funny
guy. So probably father, yeah.
V:
They’re not very different though.
I actually met them in Stockholm. They were so
proud of you. And they made sure
everybody knew you have your third brother as well.
[both
laugh] V: Yeah, he couldn’t be there.
What’s your best feature?
B: My best
feature…
V. It’s
my ability to find direction from sun.
If the sun is out, I can come out of a subway station in New York and
always know what’s south and north.
B: I
don’t have very many good features.
V: You
have that navigation thing, the internal…
B: The
magnetic field? No.
You’re good at sleeping?
B: I’m
good at sleeping! Thank you.
V: Yeah.
He’s very good at falling asleep. I don’t have that.
B: I’m
very good at sleeping.
V: I’m
good at sleeping too, but not good at falling asleep. He can do that wherever
he wants.
B: I saw
a clip yesterday of a kid, probably four years old, who he has an electric car
toy car. He’s driving around in his yard in circles, and he’s falling asleep
while he’s driving. And then the car stops and he wakes up, and the gas goes on
again. And the parents are just filming this whole ride of him falling asleep
and driving and turning. He ends up smashing into a tree. Very funny.
V: I
have some videos of my kids who are eating and falling asleep when they are
eating. It’s funny.
Who packs a bigger suitcase when you travel?
 |
B: I bet
everything is like five frames per second in
Moominworld.
The animators on Moomin are really
lazy.
It’s like the Japanese cartoons.
Me: Well it was actually animated in Japan.
B: Lazy
fucking Japanese animators.
|
B:
[points at Vegard] But that’s mostly cables and…
V: I’m
very redundant.
B: He
packs to survive wherever he goes. And also it’s a lot of clothes, because he
doesn’t know what to wear, so he brings everything.
V:
[laughs] Yeah. If we’re working on something not on camera, I don’t care. Then
I pack…
B: Four
t-shirts.
V: One
for each day. But when I have to think about it, then I pack everything I have.
Which is not very much.
What’s your favourite word? In any language.
B: Any
language? In Swedish it’s utskottsledamot [committee representative]. In
English it’s hence. In Norwegian… It’s no. It’s a good word to know. We
wouldn’t have been anywhere in our career if we wouldn’t have had the ability
to say no.
V: True
dat.
Yeah, it’s difficult. How about you, Vegard?
V:
English: alas. That’s fine. Norwegian… You know I hate those questions. I think
my favourite word in Norwegian is shut up. Hold kjeft. My kids wouldn’t be what
they are today if I didn’t use that word.
Have you ever done something embarrassing to
impress someone?
B: I’ve
done something embarrassing once that seemed like I did it to impress someone,
but it wasn’t actually to impress someone. There were a lot of people standing
on a dock, and I for some reason got up on my hands and flipped over to dive. There
were a lot of people there, and just as I hit the surface of the water I though
oh my god that just looked like a bragging thing to do.
V: I
don’t think… I can’t think of anything.
Do you ever get embarrassed about things you do
for work?
V: Yeah.
B: Oh
yeah, all the time. That’s what we do for a living. It’s not hard to run up to
people and make songs about how stupid they look with their hair. It’s just
embarrassing.
Like the bit when you sang to the drunk people.
I bet they didn’t care.
V: Oh
they didn’t care. That wasn’t embarrassing.
B: It’s
still embarrassing, just walking around with a guitar.
V: Kind
of.
B: Just
the feeling.
Are you naughty or nice?
B: Nice.
V: We’re
nice.
Would you ever have plastic surgery?
V: It
depends. I would have it for like…
B: For
fun or for medical reason? Not out of vanity I wouldn’t do it, but…
V: Or it
would be vanity in a way, like if I had an electric cigarette and it blew up in
my face, and half of my face was gone, I would have done plastic surgery for
sure.
B: I
would have fixed my penis if it got injured.
V: Yeah
you already did, right?
B: Yeah,
I shortened it.
V:
[comedy laugh]
What’s you biggest fear?
B: I
have claustrophobia. And the fear of being burned alive, I think.
V: You could
just name a lot of fears.
B:
Rollercoasters.
V: I
have a fear of clothes.
What.
V: Yeah,
I hate clothing.
B: Makes
you sound like a nudist. You’re afraid of the choice.
I was just about to say that you don’t have to
wear any clothes if you don’t want to.
V: No,
it’s not that. I’m very comfortable with wearing clothes, but I like the North
Korean and Chinese way of just saying “Everyone wears blue. With a hat.” I
loved the military. You were told what to wear. Everyone had the same. Loved
it. My wife always puts this pile of clothes for each of the kids the night
before, because I always get up with them. And if she hasn’t done that for some
reason, I get all sweaty.
Would you want her to do that for you as well?
V: Well
yeah…
B: I
think she already does.
V: No
she doesn’t, but I occasionally put on things and she says “you can’t wear
those things together” and I say ok.
Do you have nicknames for each other?
V: Not
for each other, no. Well I call him Bårdle-san, which would be like his
Japanese name. For some reason.
Oh, this is an important one. What products do
you use for your hair?
V: I use
KMS.
B:
Molding paste.
V:
Molding paste.
B: I use
partly that and the American Crew… What’s it called? I don’t know. It’s a brown
bottle. I have a very fluffy hair and I have to put stuff in it. It’s a fine
line between hair that looks too greasy although it’s clean and hair that is
too fluffy, frizzy.
Did you enjoy being bald?
B: Yeah.
Loved it.
Are you going to do it again?
B:
Probably when time comes, when I can’t have a lot of hair. I think it’s too
early to go bald now because I’ll probably spend the last 40 years of my life
bald, so I might as well have some hair now while I can. But it was very
practical.
V: I was
almost bald in the army as well. I had 3 mm shave. Loved it.
Have you thought about doing that again?
V: Well
yeah, I would love it, but at the same time I won’t. It’s kind of like with
clothes. I don’t really care about what kind of clothes I have, but still I
care in a way. I know that I would care if I saw a picture of myself.
Why is flying the family business?
V: I
just think it’s the natural… He was actually first [points at Bård].
Really? Do you fly as well?
B: I don’t
fly. I was supposed to. When I was in high school, I was trying to decide
between going to pilot school and being an architect. I never really got that
far because we started doing this all of a sudden. But I did like the flight
simulator stuff.
V: He
flew model airplanes long before I did.
Do you regret that you don’t have any kind of education
after high school?
B: No. I
think this is the best education you can get. In our business you don’t really
need papers. Because if you suck, it doesn’t matter if you have nice paperwork.
Doesn’t matter if you suck on paper.
B: True.
That’s true.
So where would you be, if not in entertainment?
B: You’d
be a pilot.
V: Yeah.
Or no, not necessarily. I was actually admitted to a school just before we
started doing this. I was going to Lillehammer to start working on media
technics. It’s like being a camera operator and stuff like that.
B: It’s
a bit funny I think, because we’ve never thought that we could do what we have
wanted to do for a living. Like we never even considered doing entertainment
stuff for a living, even though we probably would have wanted to.
V: And
our father, he had this saying that it’s better to be a surgeon and a hobby
musician than a musician and a hobby surgeon.
B: But I
think that you have always wanted to fly. For some reason you didn’t think that
you could do that for a living because it would be too much fun. That being
said, I think I could have had any job…
V: [interrupts]
Do you want waffles? For this smell.
B: The
smell of waffle?
V: Yeah,
you want one?
B: I’m
ok. Have you eaten waffles?
V: No, but
I want to very much now.
B: You
can buy a waffle. I didn’t eat breakfast.
V: You
want one?
No I’m ok.
[V gets
up]
B: Well
if you buy one, you can buy for me as well.
V: There
you go.
[Vegard
goes off to buy waffles]
So, you were at Fana skoleteater. How did you
end up there?
B: I
ended up there because my brother ended up there.
How did he end up there?
 |
| Bård at Fana skoleteater in 2000 [source] |
B: He
went to an audition because my mother forced him to. She said that he should
try and he did and didn’t like it, because he wanted to be in the band. But at
Fana school theatre they were always short on men. A lot of girls applied but
no guys, so they kind of encouraged him to do it. And he did one audition and
then he came home and he said “naw, I don’t want to do it”. My mom forced him
and drove him back for a second audition. And then he did it.
We had
always been messing around and having fun as kids, but we didn’t think that we
could do it on a stage. We just did it for fun. So he ended up on stage, he did
a show and I remember I went to the premiere and I saw him doing what we had
always done, but with other actors and some lights and makeup, and all of a
sudden it looked kind of professional. And I was really surprised. I think
that’s the first time I thought that wow, maybe we can do this. So then I
applied. I applied to that school just to get in the theatre.
[Vegard
comes back and asks if Bård wants the waffle with jam and (sour?) cream or without.]
B: Yeah,
so that’s how we ended up there.
[Bård
takes the one without the condiments and heads inside.]
We were talking about Fana skoleteater. You
went there because your mom told you to.
V: Yep.
I did. I applied for that school because of the theatre, because I wanted to
play in the band with Lars.
 |
| Vegard in "Hotel Nufsefjord" (1997) [source] |
And then they forced you to be on stage?
V: Yeah.
Yes they did.
Are there any plays in specific that you
remember from there, that you liked maybe or that you didn’t like?
V: I
remember from before I was in it. They were kind of my idols. I remember Rosenbuskemordet.
A murder mystery?
V: Yeah.
It was always that. They followed the same prescription for years, because the
instructors were really just actors that had played there like two years before,
and suddenly they master the art of writing an entire play. They were always
pretty similar to the preceding ones.
Was it one production per year or…?
V: Yeah.
It’s always a musical criminal comedy. They always say that on the poster. I
don’t know how it is now.
Have you gone there after?
V: Yeah,
a couple of times.
B: Still
the same.
Is that where you met Calle or did you meet him
before?
V: I met
him there, at the theatre. He’s a little bit older than me.
So Lars was also there, and was there anybody
else that you work with now?
V: There
are some of our friends.
B: Your
brother was there.
V: Yeah,
he was there. He played the drums.
B: You
know Raske menn? One of the guys from Raske menn was there.
V:
Øyvind, yeah.
B:
Anyone else?
V: There
are some friends of ours, like one of the backing vocalists, he was also there
[Frode Vassel]. We were actually backing vocalists together. But he was our
friend from before, that counts for more than being in Fana skoleteater.
Seems a lot of people in the band are basically
your friends.
V: Not
that many. It’s actually just Lars and Frode.
B: And
Tarjei.
V: Yeah.
But they’ve become our friends of course now.
 |
| Band boys in Bergen: Lars Devik, Jonny Sjo, Kato Ådland and Johannes Groth [source] |
Where do you know Tarjei from?
B: From
Bergen. We played in a band, me and him and Sondre [Lerche].
V: We
had some common friends.
Did you hang out with the same friends when you
were at school or did you have your own friends?
V: No,
we had our own friends back then I think. After we finished school, then we
started to hang out with the same people. All sort of just merged together. He’s
the youngest one in our group of friends and there are some in the middle. He’s
kind of the youngest one and I’m almost the oldest one.
So you had a band together with Tarjei.
B: Yeah,
me and Tarjei, it was just for fun. We worked, tried to keep things
professional otherwise, so we had this stupid mock band called The Batmans. And
it was just me and Sondre and Tarjei, a couple of others. Kato, who plays the
guitar with us.
Did you play gigs?
 |
| Knutsen & Ludvigsen and "The Train Conductors" (2006) [source] |
V: Oh
yeah.
B: Yeah
we did play some gigs.
V: They
played a festival with 10 000 in the audience.
B: It
was the biggest thing we did. As a backing band for a legendary Norwegian
children’s band [Knutsen & Ludvigsen]. Apart from that, it was like this
anti-band. We had a Christmas concert, where we did things purposely bad, just
because we thought it was funny, like playing the same song twice and wearing
stupid costumes.
What kind of music did you play?
V: You
played Divo stuff.
B: Yeah,
Divo stuff, and Presidents of the United States of America. One of the guys, he
had a side project band called The Giraffes. We played a lot of their stuff.
Nothing to remember.
So were you in any bands, Vegard?
V: Yeah.
I kind of started out the band tradition. In the world. [laughs]
B: In
Norway.
V: No,
but of us two, because I played in a band for a long time when I was a kid. A
band whose Norwegian name was “Smelly Socks”. Sure Sokker. That was me and Lars.
We were, I don’t know, maybe 12, 13 when we started. We had that for a couple
of years and after that I started a dancing band with Lars.
Did you play weddings and stuff?
V:
[laughs] Well…
B: One
wedding.
V: One
wedding. That was after we’d already worked for a couple of years. Lars had a
friend who asked if he could play at a wedding, and Lars just said “let’s do
this for fun”. He asked if I want to play bass. I said I haven’t played bass in
a long time, but if you get a stable drummer, then I guess everything is fine.
And then after a couple of weeks I went
like “ok, so are we going to do this?” And he said “yeah, sure”. “You have a
drummer?” “Yeah. It’s Bård.” I was like “oh, ok…” We played three sets, and the
progress was remarkable during the sets. I mean we got so much better as a band
during the whole gig. [laughs]
B: I’d
never played drums. The first set was my first set ever. The second set I played,
my experience was doubled. By the third set I was awesome.
Too bad the people were probably progressively
drunk as you were playing.
B:
Absolutely.
V: And I
remember I put a drumstick in my shoelaces like this, and the drumstick was out
like that. And I taped a cowbell to the floor, to the mike stand, and I was
doing like this while playing [tapping foot to hit the cowbell]. It was fun.
Are there any movie lines that you always
quote?
B: No,
don’t think so…
V:
“Romans go home” from Life of Brian.
B: Now
you’re just thinking of lines.
V: Yeah
I know. “We found this spoon, sir.” But I don’t quote it, I just like to say it.
Who’s your favourite Python? From Monty Python?
B: I was watching Fawlty Towers yesterday.
V:
[laughs] Yeah he has the…
B:
What’s the name of Fawlty Towers in Finnish?
Pitkän Jussin majatalo.
B: Which
means literally…?
It means “the guesthouse of tall Jussi”. Jussi,
that’s a man’s name.
B: You
know what it’s called in Swedish? What was it…? I saw it on the Swedish network
the other night.
V: In
Norway it’s called “a hotel in its own league”.
B: It
was so funny, the Swedish name for it… No but Mr. Cleese. He has some powers.
I love the nazi episode, when there are some
German guests at the hotel and everyone’s like “don’t mention the war” and in
the end he’s just going like that [doing nazi salutes and marching].
V: Yeah
[laughs]
B: This
one was “you know nothing about the horse”.
V:
[manuel accent] “I know nooothing!” That’s classic.
So yours is John Cleese. Do you have a
favourite Python, Vegard?
V: As
always, I don’t like those questions, because I think John Cleese is funny, but
I also love Michael Palin, I love Eric Idle, I love… [starts laughing]
I love how Michael Palin always looks like he’s
about to crack up.
 |
| Don't crack up |
B: Yeah.
V: I
love his travel shows. Around the World in 80 Days. Loved it. [looking at
Wikipedia on his phone] Now I’m going to read this in Swedish… “Pang i bygget”!
[“Bang in the building”]
B: Pang i
bygget! [both start laughing] Pang i bygget!
V:
[reading from Wikipedia] “Pitkän Jussin majatalo”.
Do you have a Pepsi Max problem?
V: Yup.
I do.
B: Less
and less, I think. We don’t drink coffee. It’s something to wake up without
getting too much sugar, but now we’re getting too much aspartame, so…
V: We’re
going to die of something. Might as well be aspartame. No, I don’t know.
Probably it’s not very good for you.
What do you splurge on? What kind of things do
you buy when you have too much money?
B: I
rarely buy stuff. I’m so boring. I eat out. That’s how I spend my money.
V: You
wash in champagne. You know washing champagne?
B: Yeah.
V: The
most stupid thing I know.
B: I
hate all the time spent when you prepare a meal. It takes so much time.
V: Unless
you sort of go in for it. Like if you want to master it.
B: Yeah
but then it’s a different matter. I think in Norway you can’t have people
working for you, which sounds strange. But I know a guy who works with computer
engineers from India. They come to Norwegian companies to learn, just a
standard IT job. And they’re like: “you cook yourself??” [laughs] They have a
cook, they have a maid, they have nannies, they have everything, because labour
is so cheap. In Norway labour is so expensive. So you do everything, even
though you work a lot. You still go home and buy groceries.
V: But
isn’t that the same all over the Western world? And that’s how it should be?
B: It
should be like that.
V:
[valley girl accent] Indians are fuucked.
B: [same accent] I knoow.
So you don’t like buy golden shoes or diamond
jackets?
B: No.
He buys parts for flight simulators. They’re really expensive.
V: Not
really expensive. Expensivish. I bought one expensive part. No, it’s not
expensive in context. I paid like one thousand dollars for this part. That’s
the most expensive part I have. But it’s the MCP you know. [I don’t know. I
googled it. I still don’t know. Also first googled MTP by mistake.]
B: Yeah,
you know me.
 |
B: I
love that smell [the inflatable plastic hand].
It
reminds me of Portugal. Estoril.
V:
Reminds me of sex.
|
What children’s shows do you like?
B: I
don’t like children’s shows.
V: I
love the Narnia books.
B: Have
you filmed them?
V: And
films.
B: I
love violence and bad things.
V: All
kinds of adventure things I like.
B: I
like Pocoyo.
V: There
was this Norwegian production a couple of years ago, the Christmas calendar.
What the fuck was it called…
B:
Julekongen?
V: Yeah.
“The Christmas King”. I liked it.
I think I’m just about to run out of questions.
[I wasn’t, but we’d
already been talking for almost two hours and I felt I needed to let them go.] Do you have any questions you want to ask?
B: We’re
not very curious guys. My wife often asks the same question. “Do you have any
questions?” “Nope.”
V: “Do
your thing, wifey.”
B: “Do
your thang.”
- interview by Anna-Maija Ihander for Ylvis Suomi
I found the
others sitting around a table filled with Justin Bieber posters. Except on
second look I realised they were pictures of Vegard posing as Bieber! I totally
cracked up. At the same time I admired Ylvis’ attention to detail. The pictures
were perfectly silly.
