The Night Flight Orchestra – interview met Björn ‘Speed’ Strid (vocals)
Björn ‘Speed’ Strid: “That is why I love being in this band. We can do whatever we want, we can move between genres and somehow make it ours. That is a great feeling”
Zelfs de meest optimistische zielen worden niet door het lot gespaard. De leden van het opgewekte stel The Night Flight Orchestra staan erom bekend om ons met hun luchtige jaren tachtig mix van rock en pop op te monteren, maar in 2022 verloren ze hun makker David Andersson (gitarist, medecomponist). Het lijdt geen twijfel dat het tijd vergde om over dat verlies heen te geraken. Vier jaar na ‘Aeromantic II’ is de band erin geslaagd om een echt nieuw TNFO album te maken dat hun imago alle eer aandoet, maar gemakkelijk was het niet. We spraken erover met spraakwaterval Björn ‘Speed’ Strid (zang).
Vera Matthijssens Ι 4 februari 2025
Hi Björn, how are you doing?
I have been juggling so many things at the same time. I was producing the vocals for The Haunted and then also doing Christmas shows in the weekend and so it was kind of hard to plan exactly all the interviews that showed up. So we just had to push a few interviews back. I am sorry about that.
No worries, there is still time before the release…
Good to talk to you again!
It is an honour you recognize me…
I definitely do. We had some good talks through the years.
This time we focus on a new album from The Night Flight Orchestra. We are going up in the sky a bit again… After two themed albums with ‘Aeromantics’, a bit longer pause was following. One thing we have to mention is that I was shocked to hear that David Andersson suddenly passed away. How did it happen? I’m sorry to start with it, but I have to…
Sure, no problem. It has been quite a journey and like you mention, it is a lot to go through. A very close friend passing away like that, even though I could see it coming because he was on a very dark path and it is very hard to be a very close friend, watching him go down and you do everything you can. It is really hard witnessing something like that. The last two or three years, Rasmus Ehrnborn who now has become the permanent guitar player, stepped in. But I think we definitely needed time to grief and regroup and revisit the music and really try to turn it into something good in the end, you know, which is not an easy task. David was, of course, a big part of the band and me and him started the band way back and on his death bed he definitely wanted us to continue, because he felt that there is so much more to say with this band and that is exactly what we aim to do. We just had to regroup and dig really, really deep and sort of recreate your writing and tap into this world and take it with us as well. A kind of widen our pallet and dig extremely deep and that became one of the toughest challenges of my musical life, I would say.
I can imagine…
I had a mindset of blowing all the doubts away and that we can do this and that is exactly what David wanted as well. We needed to make ourselves proud, we needed to make him proud and show everyone out there that we just could go on and I believe that is exactly what we did. We had to dig extra deep, we had to take some extra time, but I am very proud of this album. I don’t think there is anything else we could have done. We did everything we could to make the best possible album. It is such a liberating feeling to release this record.
It is very uplifting music and that is totally the opposite of what you are feeling when mourning…
Indeed. We found the joy of making music again and now we are bringing with us all the good memories of David and we aim to carry this legacy on. We needed to go through this as song-writers as well to know that we could pull it off. I knew we had it in us, I felt quite confident, but of course, it is not an easy task.
When did you start to write new songs?
(thinks) I would say, about two years ago. It started with releasing the single ‘This Sensation’ as well, when we got some distance to what happened with David’s passing and we kind of wanted to express that through that song, so that was quite therapeutic in that sense and after that we sort of kept on writing and – as you know – changed record label as well. So there were a few things to go through, but around two years ago we started having sessions in the same studio that we always go to, Nordic Sound Lab Studios. We kind of revisited that place and turned it into a great space again after everything that happened. We had quite a few sessions over there and definitely took our time to mix the album and get the details in there as well.
Is there a special theme on the album, except for the well-known approach of the band?
No, I would not say it is a concept album, but I think we brought back a lot of the romanticised travelling with all these city names and streets and also names of people. It is something that we maybe left a little bit with the ‘Aeromantic’ albums, but we wanted to bring it back and take it to a whole new level. There is really a mix of escapism, but a lot of real life stories on this album as well. There is ‘Paloma’ which is basically a song that I wrote after me and my wife got so frustrated with one of our close friends. She is a stewardess and she started dating this pilot who turned out to be not a very good person. He treated her really bad, but she kept coming back and we were so frustrated that I decided to write a song about it, which became ‘Paloma’. I came to the name Paloma on a flight from Alicante last year with The Night Flight Orchestra and there was this stewardess on this flight named Paloma. I thought: ‘that’s the name’. That turned into the title of the song, because I didn’t want to out my wife’s friend’s name of course, but I wrote the actual song, the lyric, in the air. It is quite a special song and has a special meaning to it. It is a real life story and that is an example of it. There is also ‘Melbourne, May I?’, another song, which is very much a tribute to someone and also Australia in general, because last year – when we went on our first Australian tour with The Night Flight Orchestra – the same day that I was flying out, I got to know that my mom had breast cancer. It was a really tough journey to make to the other side of the world and starting to tour. Things sort of culminated in Melbourne where we had a fantastic show and I had to stay strong for that weekend. In Melbourne I kind of broke down a little bit after the show, because it felt like I was surrounded by family. It was such a great audience and the band being on fire. It was an eclectic moment, so I had to write a kind of tribute there. Even though I was on the other side of the world, I felt quite home in Australia. I have been there about twelve times I think, but this was the first time with The Night Flight Orchestra, so it was very special and my mom is doing fine now. She did a chemo therapy and everything, so let’s knock on wood…
Let us shine a light on the song ‘Runaways’. There should be a story or a movie involved for inspiration?
There is also a real life story there. I used to live in Toronto for four years and I moved back in 2015 and I haven’t really been back. I love the city of Toronto. It kind of ended on a bad note, I was in a relationship and we broke up. This is like my ‘make up song with Toronto’, like I am doing, revisiting Toronto and through the song I can live with it and accept the memory. Yes, this is definitely connected to a real life story too.
It starts with a narration of a guy. Is that from a movie?
No, that is actually a friend of mine who is doing the speaking. He lives in Toronto and I was hanging out a lot with him back then. I did not want to do the speech myself. I took a friend from Toronto, because I wanted to have a little bit of the dialect.
What is ‘a Paris kind of view’?
That is a song written by Sebastian (Forslund – guitars, producer). I helped a little bit with the lyrics, but as far as I can see it is this desperate couple who goes to Paris to save their relationship. They are going to Paris, the city of love. It fails miserably and it becomes quite dark when you are in a city of love and things don’t really work out. So it is quite dark humoured I guess. That is how I saw it when I read it, but it is mostly Sebastian behind the lyric.
Another song that leaps to the eye is the long and epic closer ‘Stewardess, Empress, Hot Mess (and the Captain of Pain)’. Can you go deeper into that song?
That is actually the twin song of the ‘Paloma’, because it tells the story of the actual pilot that I was mentioning before. I am sort of tapping into his brain a little bit, how I wanted to picture him and his life and what kind of relationship he is in and how he has this twisted view of love (or distorted view of love) and it became this epic song. I came to a point where David always wrote a really long, epic song and I needed to do the same, you know. So I had to dig really, really deep for that one.
Is it dedicated to him, more or less?
Yeah. No, I mean, it is exactly seven minutes and 47 seconds long, like this 747 flight or plane. I have never done anything like that and I don’t know how it happened, but somehow it magically came out and I felt like David was very present when I wrote that song. It was really special. It made me going through these passages, you know, it was quite a challenge.
I really love it…
It used to be really diverse and that is why I love being in this band. We can do whatever we want, we can move between genres and somehow make it ours. That is a great feeling.
On the live front, 2024 was a good year I think. I see Wacken Open Air and opening for Kiss. What are your memories of these events and what did it mean for you?
We played there actually twice I think, wasn’t it in 2023? I think it was in 2023, but it was a very memorable show for sure. Absolutely amazing. And then we got to open for Kiss on their two very last shows in Sweden ever at this legendary venue up north in Sweden. Well, where do you go from there? (chuckles). That was insane. They treated us really well, we had a sound-check for one hour. Gene Simmons came into our dressing room and started dancing with the ladies and the band. We met Paul Stanley as well. He was super nice and the Kiss crew was fantastic. We got to watch their VIP sort of rehearsal in the afternoon where they played songs that they haven’t played since the seventies. It was an absolutely amazing experience and I will be eternally grateful. It was really special, considering I was six years old when I discovered Kiss and then you get to open for their two very last shows in Sweden… It is like… full circle. It is insane, I am very grateful.
An experience you will never forget, indeed. You also played at Alcatraz festival in Belgium…
Yes, we played there twice and that was really great. We somehow managed to get a spot where we got the sun right in our faces, both years and it has been hot, but the crowd was great anyways.
Did you see a kind of difference in mentality when you were touring in Latin America?
Yeah it was our first time in Latin America and I could not believe it that we were going there with TNFO. Every day was the same. The crowds are singing, every word they are singing. Some people barely understand English, but somehow they know the lyrics and they even sing the bass lines! We had really great times over there. We definitely planted some seeds in Latin America. Hopefully they are planning some dates again in Latin America, so that we can come back and do great shows. The one in Argentina was probably the most insane.
Did you manage to see something from the countries?
A bit. We did a little bit of sight seeing, but it was a pretty tight schedule. We got some time off in Bogota in Colombia, so we went around there, it is pretty cool. It is a vibrant city. We also got some time off before the Mexico City show, so we went to the pyramids as well. That was very cool to see.
Who did the artwork this time?
It was actually me and my wife. We are doing very well with the cover and we are working very closely as well. It was actually her idea from the beginning with the big moon. I don’t know what came first, the cover concept or the actual title, but I think I had the title before, so it is based on that. We found this sort of picture of us, so we made it a silhouette and we made it like a heartbeat, like the pulse as you can see that the band continues and lives on. If you look closely, David is also represented on the cover as an astronaut. So he is really present there, even on the cover. The theme is great, great colours and it goes with the album and the music. So she did a really great job.
How many video clips are planned for this album?
We released two so far and there is going to be another one on the day that we release the album. Three. Back in the day you released singles after the album was released, but now everything happens before (chuckles). Strange, but who knows? There might be a fourth video at some point, but for now it is three.
What are the plans for the near future with TNFO?
Well, we are embarking on a European tour. We start on the 30th of January in the Netherlands, in Tilburg. Grand première at 013. The tour is called ‘Moon over Europe’ and the album’s going to be released the day after this first show. So it feels pretty special.
What do you think of that milestone in the history of mankind when they walked on the moon in 1969?
I have heard it from my parents, what they remember, but it must have been so surreal when that happened, you know. That would have been interesting to see, for sure, to watch that on live television.
To occlude, what are the plans with Soilwork? What can we expect over there?
Right now we are slowly approaching song-writing for a new album. So I think it is not going to come out before 2026, maybe in Spring. Next year is going to be mostly with TNFO touring wise and then we are going to write with Soilwork in between, so I am looking forward to that as well. There should be something really cool coming up, we have had a break now, it has been a while since we released an album, so I am as curious as you are (laughs). But it should be cool.
Is there another project or band you want to mention in this interview, something you are working on maybe?
Well, I have another band with my wife, called Donna Cannone, it is the cannonball lady in Italian basically. My wife is from Verona in Italy. In this band I play guitar, for a change I am not singing to do that a little bit as well. I like playing guitar. That is another thing that we are trying to do. We don’t have a drummer at the moment, but we might have found a drummer, so can start rehearsals again. We already put out one album that people can check out if they want. We don’t need to do world domination, but some shows here and there would be fun. Make great music and have fun around music. That is the essence.
What is the style?
It is like The Cult meets Wildhearts, sometimes a bit like a punk rock band with some new wave elements. I am a big fan of 80’s New Model Army as well. There are some influences from that.
Okay thanks. I wish you a great time on the road during the upcoming EU tour…
Thank you Vera, nice to speak you again.
