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Hasse Fröberg has been a singer and guitar player with the Progressive Rock band the Flower Kings since 1997.  Over the past twenty years he has toured all over the world including the US and Canada, in South America with dates in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela and Mexico, in Europe, Russia and Japan. Fröberg has recorded 13 albums with the Flower Kings and appeared on the precursor album to the Flower Kings’ first official album, Roine Stolt’s solo album The Flower King in 1994.

In 2008 he founded the band Hasse Fröberg & Musical Companion (HFMC), to develop his musical ideas during an interval between Flower Kings tours and recordings. Fröberg continues to perform with both bands and still enjoys live concert tours as well as recording. He has now composed three albums of music with HFMC.

Fröberg’s long recording and performing career with the Flower Kings coincides with a new wave of Progressive Rock musicians building upon the music of bands like King Crimson, Yes and Genesis. The founder of the Flower Kings, Roine Stolt, aptly describes their music this way:

“… a band that probably has as much in common with Mozart, Debussy, Andrew Lloyd Webber or Miles Davis as with Pink Floyd, the Beatles, Bowie or Yes. There is always an element of soulfulness and drama and the richness of moods and inventiveness has to be heard to be believed.”

Having listened to all of the Flower Kings albums, I agree 100%. Their sound builds upon early Progressive Rock while adding many elements of classical and modern music. The result is dramatic and soulful, melodic and spiritual. People who enjoy meaningful thoughts expressed with a symphonic rocking feel will enjoy the way the Flower Kings lift up common human sentiments with subtlety and good humor.

If you thought that Progressive Rock was only a relic from the 1970’s, read on. Bands like the Flower Kings have taken the musical ideas of the past and added their own sophisticated composition. Hasse Fröberg has had a unique opportunity to be a part of the modern Progressive Rock scene since he was invited to be a guest vocalist on Roine Stolt’s solo album The Flower King  in 1994. He joined the band full-time in 1997 as a singer and guitar player.

If you have been a fan of the Flower Kings for the past twenty years or so, read on for insight into what moved Fröberg to dedicate his life to learning and playing music, while still finding time to coach his children’s soccer teams for 10 years as they were growing up.

Fröberg’s current project is a live 100-minute HFMC concert called No Place Like Home. On it he plays his own compositions with HFMC as well as some Flower Kings material. The concert DVD and two-CD set was recorded on April 24, 2016 in Uppsala, Sweden. It will be released this fall on September 1, 2017. Having seen this DVD and listened to the accompanying two-DVD set, I can verify that this is perhaps the best live recording and filming of a Progressive Rock concert that I have ever seen. With over 300 hours invested in sound mixing, this concert DVD delivers the immediacy of live music with the clarity and detail of the best studio albums.  If you watch it from beginning to end, including the band’s post-performance remarks, you will see a heartwarming piece of film as well as a great concert.

CJMT:  When you think back to your first days as a music listener, what sorts of things moved you most to want to become a musician?

Hasse Fröberg:  As I grew up I had a neighbor who was seven years older than me who at the age of 14 and onward had lots of the latest and coolest records. Deep Purple was his favorite but he really had everything when it comes to the hard rock of that era, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Uriah Heep, Nazareth, Status Quo etc. But also ‘glam rock’ artists like T Rex, David Bowie, The Sweet, Slade, Mud, Bay City Rollers. He was nice enough to let me record my favorite songs from this wide array of albums onto cassettes on his equipment to bring home and play on my cassette recorder (he must have been fed up with me!)

Back then music was this mysterious and magic thing that could take you out on a journey. I obviously didn’t have a clue what they were singing about, but I would create my own visions as I was listening. It was like I was stepping into my own kind of wonderland.

At the age of 10 I was introduced to the music of Yes (my first contact with Progressive Rock), Fleetwood Mac, The Band, Mountain and other bands that were not that big in Sweden at that time. The guy responsible for exposing me to Progressive Rock was my friend Patric’s American dad, Lowell. He also took us to our first concert, Rod Stewart at Stockholm’s Konserthus in 1976. It was right there and then I understood that there was no turning back: Music was not just a fun hobby to me anymore, it was way more important than that, it was my goal to be a musician for the rest of my life.

CJMT:  After you saw your first live concert with Rod Stewart in Stockholm and you felt yourself stepping into a wonderland, how long was it before you got your first instrument? My first guitar was a 25-dollar super-cheap acoustic and the strings were about an inch off the fret board and so hard to play that my fingers bled. Was your first experience better?

Fröberg:  In fact I was already playing.

Back then learning music was for free (today it’s not free but very cheap). There was a catch however, everyone had to play wooden flute for a year before you could choose which other instrument you wanted to play. In fact I believe this is the biggest reason Sweden is the third country in the whole world when it comes to exporting music, after USA and England (even though there’s just 10 million of us). So everyone has the possibility to learn to play an instrument at no or a very low cost; that  is definitely a reason why there is so much music coming from Sweden.

Another reason is, according to my amateur analysis, the fact that we very early took Anglo-Saxon music to our hearts. It’s no coincidence Sweden was the first country that bands like the Beatles and Led Zeppelin visited outside the UK (if you forget about the Beatles’ Hamburg years). To tell you the truth, English Rock and Pop music feels much more like my “mother’s milk” than Swedish folk music, or Swedish Schlager that was constantly played on the radio in the sixties and the first half of the seventies.

Anyway, after one year of flute I could finally start to play guitar and drums. I was definitely more talented as a drummer but when the day came when I started to understand how “everything was related” musically (after about a year), I chose to concentrate on the guitar.

Since then I’ve been more interested in composing than becoming a top guitar player.

Learning guitar was no picnic at first. Thank God, I started out with a nylon string acoustic guitar which was a lot nicer to my sore fingertips than a steel string guitar.

After a year of  working a job as a kid distributing ad sheets I could finally buy my first electric guitar: It was a Duke (Sunburst), and it was a horrible instrument. When I struck a chord I could hear it go out of tune while it was still ringing. Of course this didn’t stop me from practicing and writing songs. I had the guitar plugged into the family stereo that I cranked up as much as possible to get a bit of distortion. I mean can you believe the terror I exposed my mom, dad and little sister to!

By now I’m about 10 years old and just about to start a band with two friends of mine, Patric and Patrik. We called the band HPP3 and we played original songs written by me and Patric. I have a fantastic cassette somewhere with recordings of HPP3 including our biggest hit “Do You Know the Monster”. This was more or less how it all started for me as a kid.

So I already had a guitar and a band by the time that night that I saw Rod Stewart. I also think I’d worked so hard at my job of distributing ad sheets that I was able to finally get a new guitar, a red Hagström, and a very small and cheap amplifier, a 30-watt Pearl.

Anyway, it was a fantastic event. Just as we entered the venue (Stockholm’s Konserthus 1,600 seats) they started to play the best music I’d ever heard over the PA system, just before the concert. I found out later that it was the Jailbreak album by Thin Lizzy. That band really became my favorite band in my teen years.  I saw them six times and even saw Phil Lynott’s solo gig once as a teenager.

Anyway, Rod Stewart was fantastic that night, backed by a killer band with Carmine Appice on drums among other great musicians. The thing is that he had just released Atlantic Crossing (with the song “Sailing” on it), but it hadn’t yet become the smash hit it became later on. I mean I was a 12-year-old Faces fan and back then he did lots of Faces songs so I was really in heaven that evening hearing him do Rod Stewart and the Faces songs!  

CJMT:  After you studied the wooden flute, and drums, and then found your way to the guitar, was it hard to find a left-handed guitar in those days, like the Les Paul with P-90 pick-ups you often use in your video performances?

Fröberg:  The first guitars I had, I played them upside down until 1980. In 1980 I ordered a special-built left-handed Hagström Viking directly from their factory in Älvdalen. That guitar is worth a lot today since Elvis Presley played a Hagström Viking and I’ve been told that’s the first Viking leftie they built. As for the gold-top Les Paul, I was just lucky to find it. All of a sudden it was hanging in a guitar shop in Uppsala. I played it for five minutes and fell in love immediately. It’s still the best instrument I’ve played (not that I have so many options). And yes those P-90 pick-ups are rare. As I play mostly rhythm guitar, they’re perfect as they’re good for clean and crunchy sounds. And I still remember a great left-handed Telecaster I found in a shop in Denver. Unfortunately I couldn’t buy it because I couldn’t bring it home. It still hurts to this day that it’s not mine. I do have a left-handed Telecaster that I don’t like at all. It must have been built on a Monday as we say in Sweden.

CJMT:  Just two years years ago I would have been surprised to learn that Sweden exported so much music and produced so many hits, particularly since it has a smaller population than the UK and the US. Since I discovered the Flower Kings and found that there was so much wonderful music coming out of Sweden, I am not surprised anymore! But I bet many music fans in the US still do not know this and do not know about Swedish Progressive Rock in particular.

Fröberg:  You know what, a lot of the American pop stars of today that get massive airplay like Pink, Katie Perry, Maroon 5 etc… have Swedish songwriters and producers behind them. The Swedish composer Max Martin is the man who’s had more Billboard number one songs than anyone. That includes the Beatles, Michael Jackson, etc. This is of course part of Sweden’s export of music but you have to keep in mind all the big bands that come out of Sweden as well. It’s really extraordinary if you think of the small population. The fact is that it’s so big that the government sees it as an industry itself and has started lots of really good schools for music (to keep the tax money coming in). In all this, Progressive Rock just plays a tiny part but yes, Swedish Prog is of high quality.

CJMT:  As you progressed through your early stages of being in bands, do you recall that feeling of the sense of camaraderie that could go along with learning the music?

Fröberg:  Bands and music are a lot about chemistry, and how you interact. I don’t know how many so-called ‘supergroups’ have let me down over the years, because they had no chemistry. I remember times when you read the line-up and it was almost shocking to see one name after the other, all of them fantastic players and successful musicians in their own right. Six months later the result sounds lame and boring. I mean how is it even possible? Mediocre songwriting combined with a sloppy production and an overall feeling that their hearts weren’t there (which probably was the case in the first place). And that will make a plain and dull album in the end.

Let’s not forget that there’s also some great albums made by such groups!

As I told you I started out very young and the bands I played in at the beginning were probably the opposite to ‘supergroups’, hahaha… The first bands I formed were with schoolmates and neighbors. Some could play and some maybe not, but the guys that were talented and driven, some of them are still active.

In fact I played in a band with the HFMC bass player Thomsson when I was 15. We had lots of gigs with our band at school dances, youth clubs and Folkparker (an outside venue with family events during summertime, which unfortunately is no more) around the middle of Sweden. My dad drove us to the gigs, and to do these shows at such an early age gave us lots of experience. Since then Thomsson and I  have played together on and off  up until now; and that’s something I appreciate a lot.

At the age of 19, me and Thomsson started a Hard Rock band, Spellbound, that gained some international recognition with both albums and tours. That was the first time Thomsson and I met and played with the HFMC drummer Ola Strandberg (1983). Since then I’ve played in many and various rock bands and it’s like you say, a very special situation. It’s like it’s the band “against the world” sometimes. You never have as much fun as you have together with your band mates. On the other hand, it can also be the other way around. Anyway to make a long story short, all this leads up to me joining TFK (the Flower Kings) back in 1997.

I can honestly say that we have a great time in the Flower Kings most of the time. But no matter the line-up, the band members have always been very different in everything from age to where we come from (both musically and geographically). Talking about all you mentioned above, I’ve come to see this as one of the band’s biggest assets, even if it sometimes doesn’t feel that way. This fact of course means there are lots of discussions and sometimes frictions, but it always takes us forward, keeping us on the edge, making us relevant.

If you ask me, I’d say it’s a wonder we’ve played for so long when you think of how different we are as people. We have a good time playing together in the Flower Kings and it’s like the older we get, the more we respect each other. Once again, I firmly believe our differences make us stronger as a unit and the tough discussions we sometimes end up having are creative and mostly tend to generate positive things. I’m happy with my years with the Flower Kings and I hope for some more time with them in the future; but we’re not exactly getting younger are we?

The HFMC band is another story totally as I chose to play with Thomsson and Ola, who are friends of mine from younger days (even if we hadn’t played together for a while). The keyboard player Kjell Haraldsson is about our age, I had played with him a couple of times in a Led Zeppelin tribute band I used to sing in and I was very fond of his musicianship. Our lead guitarist Anton is 20 years younger than us which to me is a fantastic thing. When we started the band he hadn’t even heard of bands like Yes, Genesis, Camel, Jethro Tull, Made in Sweden etc. In other words his reality, his influences are totally different from ours (I mean I don’t recognize the names of artists and bands he’s talking about). However he’s a versatile guitarist and I guess there is nothing he can’t do. To tell you the truth I’ve never played with a musician that has the control that he has and that includes technique, sounds, ears for arrangements and harmonies etc.

So far the years with HFMC have been a very pleasant ride. We’re all very easy-going guys and we have a lot of fun in each others’ company and by the way I finally got Anton to dig Yes!!! Yeah that’s true!!! We were drunk ( Swedish drunk that is) and I played him the first record of the Live album Yes Songs, and he asked me why I hadn’t played it to him before.

Talking about Yes. They almost ruined me economically for a while because Steve Howe was featured in every single issue of Guitar Player for years and years. Those magazines cost a fortune to buy as an import for a young kid, with the result that I had to work harder and longer at my job of distributing ad sheets. It was hard work but it was good and made me strong and fit.

Anyway, after I heard the Yes version of the Simon and Garfunkel song “America”, I knew I wanted to play music that rocked and was moving like that. I loved the song and especially the guitar solo. I bought all their albums as soon as I had the money. I was already familiar with Yes’ Fragile album that I liked a lot, but as a young kid the The Yes Album was my favorite. It didn’t take long though until I learned to love Close to the Edge, Tales of Topographic Oceans and Going for the One. Relayer was a tough nut to crack but when I understood it… oh boy!

When I look back at it, some of the bands I listened to, like Yes, Genesis and Camel, were labeled as Progressive Rock, but that didn’t mean a thing to me. To me they were good bands, with great songs, just as Queen, Thin Lizzy or ABBA were good bands for that matter. I don’t know if there’s something wrong with me but I’m the same way even today. With the result that I’m giving my audience a hard time sometimes. Is HFMC Progressive Rock, Metal, could it even be Pop? The truth is I hardly know myself, but to me that’s not a big deal since my music comes from my heart.

CJMT:   I do understand what you mean about ‘giving your audience members a hard time’ when your musical tastes have such a wide variety. I had a friend who was very successful in music. He sang with a band called Boston that had several hits in the 70’s. But when he went to do a solo album he made music that sounded nothing like Boston’s sound. So no record company would pick up the album. But Brad had enough financial success that he could go back to what was really his first and biggest love in music; doing note-perfect Beatles covers. So perhaps the most important thing with music is to be able to play music you really enjoy doing no matter what.  

Fröberg:  I remember Boston, Brad Delp gave me his pick when they played at Johanneshovs  after the Don’t Look Back album. It was a great show and I believe it was their first and only visit to Sweden. I mean “More than a Feeling’ was a massive hit all over the world including Sweden and I think their first two albums sold very well. Anyway, me and some friends got to meet the band after the sound check and Brad was by far the one who showed most interest in the fans. Hmmm… I almost forgot about that. It was a cool thing!

CJMT:  If we go back to 1969 there was no term ‘Progressive Rock’, but bands like King Crimson, Yes and Emerson Lake and Palmer became successful in spite of not having a previously established niche. Do you think that was because the music industry did not have so many ways of labeling music into hundreds of classifications and people didn’t care about labels, they just accepted the music as something new that they liked?

Fröberg:  I think it had already started about six or seven years earlier. If you think of the progress between, for instance, the Beatles “She Loves You” and Sgt Pepper, or “California Girls” to Pet Sounds with The Beach Boys, the speed of development was nothing short of spectacular. This of course made the pop listeners open-minded and hungry for more. When Yes and Genesis and other bands brought in classical influences and maybe even a touch of jazz here and there, the audience was ready for it.  

The first song I heard with Yes was “Roundabout” and I was about 10 years old. To me it was just a great song with some great playing (I immediately fell in love with the organ in the chorus). The thing that really stood out though was the vocals. Not only Jon’s lead but the sound of all the voices.

CJMT:  All those voices in close harmonies were really surprising, and it was also more than just good-sounding, it had me feeling uplifted. I get the same feeling when listening to many of the Flower Kings songs. The vocal parts that swirl like the Beach Boys on “Different People” from The Road Back Home album and those Yes-like vocals near the end of  “Life in Motion” from The Sum of No Evil album those are both stunning and uplifting.

Fröberg:  We didn’t plan the vocal arrangements to sound like the Beach Boys or Yes.

The fact is we don’t want to “over-do” the vocal parts because there’s just Roine and me who’s singing on the albums. When we play live we add Jonas’ voice to help out, but in the studio we still want to stay pretty close to what we can achieve in a live situation.

In HFMC all five of us are singing and they all have rather neutral voices which makes it “easy” both in the studio and on the gigs.

I can’t think of a voice that is more different to mine than Roines, still it works somehow. They actually blend together well but to tell you the truth, it can be a disadvantage when you have two lead singers in a band. It can be confusing for the audience and it might affect the band’s profile when you don’t have that focus of one lead singer that everyone recognizes immediately. When you learn to like a band with two or more lead singers it’s another story since it brings more variety to the sound.

CJMT:  It’s good to get your viewpoint on constructing vocal harmonies in the studio that can work well in a live situation, because that is a very practical consideration for an actively touring band. There is a great contrast between your voice and Roine Stolt’s voice, but my ears really like the variety that it brings to different sections of Flower King’s songs. It reminds me of how the Beatles albums had different voices to bring out a cool contrast from song to song. In HFMC though you do have a different advantage of five people singing whose voices can blend smoothly; that can be great live, when you want to have the strength of a choir. Do you use that approach in your upcoming live DVD release?

Fröberg:  Yes, all five of us are singing on the DVD. The greatest benefit of that is that you can use the guys that suit the part the most, or maybe isn’t that active on their instrument during that section of the vocal performance. Of course all five of us are capable of singing at any one time, but during a show of around 100 minutes, it’s just a few moments when all of us are singing together at once (if that makes sense to you).

If there’s something I really envy American musicians, it’s their way of arranging vocals and singing together. Throughout the history of Rock there’s been lots of American bands that have good harmony vocals. I’ve even toured together with some of them like for instance Spock’s Beard and the Neal Morse Band. It’s like it comes more natural for you guys.

To be honest, when I write music I don’t even think of the harmony vocals; that comes way later. Maybe that’s one of the reasons? There’s one thing I can promise you. On the DVD, No Place Like Home, all the voices including the back-up vocals are from the recording of the show. I wanted to showcase what the band sounds like for real, which means there’s no overdubs or stuff like that. On the other hand, it might not sound that flattering at times but as I told, this is the way we sound and to me there’s no point in releasing a live DVD that sounds like a studio album.

CJMT:  It’s pretty courageous of you to not do any vocal overdubs for your live HFMC DVD, so my guess is that the basic vocal harmonies are quite good.

Since you mention writing music and not even considering the harmony parts until much later; what do you work on first? I know many people develop the chord progression first and then try to find the most interesting melody line to go over it second.  They later develop the rhythm that will push it along before developing the lyrics.

Fröberg:  We worked very hard on the vocals before the recording of  HFMC, and we had another round with the vocals before we headed out on our latest tour. To put it short, I think it paid off well.

My composing most often starts with me getting a melody in my head or just a phrase. If it takes off it doesn’t take long until I find the “missing parts”. For instance, there’s a song called ‘Everything Can Change’ on our latest HFMC album. If you listen to the key changes from the intro to the verse and from the bridge to the chorus, those are not “normal”. If you then add that the verse is in 4/4, the bridge in 3/4 and the chorus is in 5/4, it’s rather strange that you perceive the song as “easy listening” when it’s actually a quite advanced piece of music. Anyway, it didn’t take long for me at all to write that tune and I didn’t have to try lots of different ideas for the different parts. It was almost like the song wrote itself.

We have a song called “In the Warmth of the Evening”, which is also on our latest album. That song has a more epic approach to it (10+ minutes). It took a while to write except for the verse, bridge, chorus, which is the core, the main part of the song. The section that was time-consuming to write was the intro, with all the different parts and how to put them together in the best possible way. The arranging of the background music to the keyboard solo also took a while to figure out, to make the dynamics right.

I mean it’s like you never know, on the first HFMC album called FuturePast we have the longest song I’ve written to this day, called “Piece of the Sky”. The song is around 15 minutes and has four different parts. To make a long story short, even though the parts are very different from each other in everything from style, keys, tempos and time signatures, it was a really smooth ride to piece them together. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it doesn’t necessarily have to take longer to write a long song than a short and maybe simple one.

Lyrics is another thing completely. Sometimes I’m in a flow and they come more or less naturally. Every now and then I have this “hook” that I can’t get out of my head. Those times I try to write the lyrics around that but most of the time I try to find words that suit the music. Sometimes it ends up a substantial story, another time it might be me trying to express how I feel or maybe how I look upon the world without getting too political. An example of that is the song “Fallen Empire” from the FuturePast album.

CJMT:  I did an interview with Greg Spawton of the band Big Big Train, and when we talked about lyrics that was one of the hardest parts for him as well; he has to have his family give him plenty of ‘do not disturb’ time.

Progressive Rock music gives it’s writers a lot more freedom to write than pop-music lyrics, because pop song lyrics absolutely have to rhyme; even at the expense of meaning. You probably heard about Paul McCartney writing “Yesterday” when he had that beautiful melody all written but all he could think of for lyrics at first was ‘Scrambled eggs, Oh my baby how I love your legs’. Luckily he founds his way past the eggs to a beautiful song.

Fröberg:  Good for him and good for us I’d say, talking about “Yesterday”! I totally understand what Greg is saying. I mean except for an occasional song here and there like “Magic Pie” or “Life Will Kill You”, I didn’t write anything when the kids were growing up. Apart from being a dad I was, among other things, very dedicated to helping out as a soccer coach for almost 10 years. Those years totally sucked the inspiration for writing songs out of me. Don’t get me wrong, I loved those years and I believe it was a good investment since I have a good relationship with both our kids, which is not always the case when it comes to musicians. Nowadays there’s no kids in the house and that definitely helps when it’s time to write lyrics.

When I’ve written the longer songs I sometimes try to come up with a theme that I can use in the different parts. As a matter of fact we’ve got a new song on our upcoming live DVD No Place Like Home called “Chasing a Dream”. I wouldn’t call it an epic or a long song, since in Prog that’s at least some 10+ minutes or why not one hour like “Garden of Dreams” by TFK hahaha… I mean that’s crazy! “Chasing a Dream” is around eight minutes and it has this musical theme that comes back in the different sections of the song. Sometimes it’s in major, sometimes in minor, sometimes played by a Moog synthesizer and sometimes played by my slide guitar. As you say, music fans may realize what is happening while listening to it and kind of like it and respect the craftsmanship. But I think that most of the people don’t realize those things at all.

I have to say that the recording of the song was a new experience. We played it the night we recorded the show and we did a decent version of it. Then all of a sudden this opportunity came up. We got an offer to record at a brand new first-class studio for free and of course we couldn’t turn it down. What we actually did when we recorded it, was to keep it as live as possible so that the song would go together with the concept of a live DVD/live album (the package includes two CDs). It’s the five of us singing and playing, no overdubs, no counter melodies, no layers of sound, just HFMC rocking out in the studio instead of the stage. If you ask me I think it blends in very well with the rest of the material both visually and sound-wise. In fact I think the change of environment in the middle of the concert just increases the quality of the experience since the variety makes it more interesting.

CJMT:  Your description of writing “Chasing A Dream”, where you have a theme that you introduce and change from major to minor, and then have it come into play in several parts of the song, is a very advanced move; the sort of thing you might find in Debussy. It takes a lot of mental energy to write music like that, even before you start to work on the lyrics. During the 10 years you were being a dad and a soccer coach you only wrote two songs, but you were still singing, playing and touring with the Flower Kings. You must have been absorbing that musical knowledge even though you did not often have energy left over to compose new material.

Fröberg:  In fact I played live a lot more back in those days. If you excuse me I’d like to quote Roine from an old interview I read with him from that era (2000 – 2010), he said: “Hasse plays more live than the rest of us in the band put together”.

When I look back at it, of course it affected my songwriting. Apart from TFK I did a lot of cover gigs with different bands but I stopped that a couple of years ago because it simply wasn’t fun anymore. I think that’s one of the reasons it feels so good to be back on the road again. I especially remember the TFK “comeback tour” after the Banks of Eden album in 2012. We did around 60 shows on that one tour. We had a shaky start, but as the tour progressed more and more people started to show up at the gigs and by the end of the tour, it felt like it was perhaps our best. Even taking into consideration the tour we did after the Paradox Hotel album. That tour ended up as the live DVD Instant Delivery. I think our playing on Instant Delivery was almost as high as the best of the 2012 Banks of Eden tour. I also think the whole HFMC experience, the album and tour we did together with Enchant, as well as the festivals we did, helped to reach another level and that’s a good thing in my book.

The thing you mention about the themes comes from the “TFK school”. You’re most certainly right about the Debussy influence on that subject, but in my case it’s a thing I’ve learned over my years playing with TFK and it’s like you say very effective. I think it’s even more striking in Progressive Rock where there are long songs with lots of information in them. It’s like when the theme comes back, especially if it’s a majestic and powerful one, and you come to the end of the song, you get that big reward and that beautiful feeling of relief. Nothing beats that if you’re a Prog fan.

CJMT:  Yes, the best Progressive Rock pieces have those returning melodic themes that really move fans powerfully. I read your own words about your first gig with the Flower Kings that you posted on your HFMC official site: “During the set when we did the old Kaipa tune ‘Nothing New Under the Sun’, I had my little break. I stood beside the stage and watched the audience for a while. There were several grown men who were crying. It was at that point that I knew we were on to something.”

You learned so much about composing and playing in the Flower Kings that it was a surprise to me that you also wrote that you almost turned  Roine Stolt down about joining TFK in 1997, because you weren’t sure whether you had the skills at that time. But Roine convinced you to join full time. What a good choice on his part and on your part.

Fröberg:  Thank you Steve, what I was referring to was my guitar playing. Back then I was this singer who played a little guitar, whilst in TFK I would be this guitar player who sang a little. To tell you the truth, I had a hard time picture myself playing the guitar parts that I was supposed to do.

I guess it’s the same story again, as in Roine’s and my voices. I’ve always been this Rock and Blues type of guitar player and now all of a sudden I was supposed to play… well, just about every type of music.

Anyway, I practiced hard and by the time we met for the first time I could play my parts and sing what I was supposed to sing. In fact the whole experience turned out better than I expected.

By the way I had already released four albums of music mostly written by me when I joined TFK. In my ears my songwriting has a very clear identity, but yes, I’ve added some of the things I’ve learned through my playing with the Flower Kings. To me the music we play with HFMC is a mix of everything, probably because I’ve played a lot of different music over the years.

Anyway, back to the question. The first tours I did I had a hard time trying to keep cool and not move around so much on stage (which is something I’ve always done) because I thought that would be out of place for Progressive Rock. Somehow I could feel 

it affected my playing as I started to think too much and not  to”just do it” as I’d always done.

It must have been around the time of the  Space Revolver or Rainmaker album when I said to myself: it can make or break the situation but it’s time for me to get back to doing what I normally do on stage, to give 100% of Fröberg both musically and visually. By the time we hit the road the next time it was business as usual for me and it was like I finally found my spot in the band (live that is) at that very moment.

Strange, when I started in the band I was worried how my stage presence would come across because I was sure that the Progressive Rock audience would consider it to be too much Rock`n´Roll and when I finally did let myself go, it was like the audience appreciated it. In fact I think they welcomed it since the band back then was very “private” on stage. To make the music “fly” while you’re performing, you have to project to the audience and make them feel what you feel and make them be part of the experience just as much as the guys on stage.

CJMT:  1997 was quite a leap for you to go from singing on some of the first two or three Flower Kings albums to joining them full-time on stage as both guitarist and singer. The fact that Roine Stolt had faith in you must have meant a lot to you.

Since you have learned so much about composing from the Flower Kings and you now have three albums with HFMC, do you think those new skills and experiences may change your role in the studio if another Flower Kings album should come about?

Fröberg:  Not really I’m afraid. By now we’re all “old and wise” and I think we all know what we’re good at and maybe not so good at. Therefore I think my contribution to the band as well as for the other members will be just about the same.

The problem in music today is that many musicians play in different bands at the same time; and that is mostly because of economic necessity. TFK is not an exception, however it’s not entirely a bad thing since you develop more as a musician. The negative side is that you might not be on the same wavelength when it’s time to work again.

With the Flower Kings it takes a while for us all to find the same focus and eventually reach for the same goal. Back in the days when you were rehearsing with your band on a weekly basis, almost on a daily basis it was more easy to have a common goal. Nowadays you meet the band (TFK that is) when it’s time for a new recording or a new tour and to me it’s almost a mystery how we can pull it together in such a short period of time. Every now and then I have felt that some of our albums were a little bit all over the place; but most of the time I felt our records were unified while having a lot of variety.

CJMT:  The economics of the current situation in Progressive Rock and in music in general are so different from what they once were. The members of a band like Yes did not need to play in multiple bands or side projects in order to survive. Many fans still think the music business works like it used to and they do not realize that most musicians must play in many bands or have other jobs, because there is not enough income playing with only one band.

When you speak of HFMC you mention a great vibe, just on the verge of laughter, and I hope that feeling will come across on your upcoming live DVD No Place Like Home. Perhaps that easy feeling comes from meeting and rehearsing more frequently and you do not have a 20-year history of making  music with HFMC as you do with the Flower Kings.

But many of your fans still wish for you to have more time to write and create with the Flower Kings. Sometimes fans wish for things and they do not know what it can cost musicians in terms of time, energy and money.

Fröberg:  The money in music today is a topic in itself that’s too big to discuss here.

The HFMC vibe you’re mentioning, in fact when I watch the DVD I do think it comes across. I mean we just do what we do; but I have to confess that I might be a little more stiff on the night of the recording than on a regular HFMC gig. After all, you don’t want to mess things up and since we recorded the show from start to finish we’re talking over 100 minutes of music.

It doesn’t matter how much you manage to focus throughout the show, small errors will occur. It might be a technical issue, a sour note, you might miss the pedal while changing a sound, I mean everything can happen and it surely will when you play for so long. The key is to not let it get to your head and that’s one thing HFMC is great at. You will not get “the evil eye” from anyone in the band, quite the contrary actually, as we are good at supporting each other.

This isn’t something I’m saying because it’s something I’m looking for in a band. After all it’s up to our fans to decide what they think of our performance that night. We could have done better but honestly the result could have been a lot worse. In my book we managed to document a gig that showcases what HFMC is about.

I’ve definitely noticed that the hunger for TFK seems to be back again among parts of the Prog audience. I’d love to do it one day, a new record and a tour with the Flower Kings, but today that day feels far away.

CJMT:  I’m sure your fans will love seeing you perform again on the DVD with HFMC on No Place Like Home, and I am glad that you have noticed a hunger to hear the Flower Kings again from the Progressive Rock audience.

As an example of a person who grew up with Yes, King Crimson, Genesis etc., I followed those bands for years and yet I never heard about the Flower Kings until just two years ago.

I was educated by my interview with Greg Spawton of Big Big Train that the Progressive Rock bands that I started  following in 1969 were considered the First Wave of Progressive Rock, and since that time there has been a second wave and a third wave. There were millions of fans around the world who followed Yes’ music,and the Flower Kings are as good as Yes in every respect. So there should be a large audience of people who would like the Flower Kings music if only they knew about it and listened.

Fröberg:  Believe me, we’ve talked about this so many times. How do we reach out to all those people that loved the first wave of Progressive Rock? I mean… I guess 80% of them still don’t know that a band like TFK exists. I don’t blame them since the society is what it is today with all the information that’s constantly around us. Those people have moved on and their grandchildren and the garden have more priority than to check out what’s happening in the world of music.

One thing that is some kind of a mystery to me, and don’t get me wrong since I love the band and I respect their work immensely, but how do they motivate themselves to see Yes for the 150th time? It seems they’re just a shadow of what they used to be. I mean to me there’s so many new bands I’d prefer to see and actually go and see if I have the chance. The fact is that I think a whole lot of the people I mentioned earlier would probably like us and other bands from the later generations of Prog, if they only knew about us and gave us a chance.

CJMT:  I think you are right Hasse. There are many people who have moved on from being big fans of the first wave of Progressive to other cares and concerns. But any former fan of that First Wave of Progressive Rock should love what they hear from the Flower Kings and HFMC, because the music has that same beauty, spirit and strength.

We started off our interview by asking you what sorts of things moved you to want to become a musician. One of the coolest things you revealed was how much hearing that music at your neighbor’s house meant to you emotionally and to your young imagination; “It was like stepping into my own kind of wonderland.”

You have learned so much about music, about composing, recording, and playing with other musicians; does some of that magic feeling of  ‘stepping into your own wonderland’ still happen to you from time to time?

Fröberg:  Well I’m afraid my answer isn’t that glamorous. The magic is more or less gone but it’s honestly just as much fun to play today if not more. The fact that I’ve reached a level while recording and touring where I feel I’m in control of the majority of the parts, makes me more relaxed. That itself makes it easier for me to enjoy what we’re doing.

On the other hand that control takes away some of the magic, but of course magic moments still happen, especially on the stage. It doesn’t matter how much you prepare or gear up, you always have the x-factor. The x-factor doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing, it can be the opposite. The strange thing is that you never know. The preconditions might be great, the sound on stage is out of this world and the stage looks spectacular, still you might not reach your normal standard. The next night you play on a small stage where the listening is far from top-notch and you end up doing a superb set. I guess music is still a mystery after all.

CJMT:  Thank you Hasse, for your time and for sharing your thoughts and experiences with us. This has been a great interview.