But it’s worth it everyday

Sind sind jung, sie sind heiß und vor allem sehr tal­en­tiert: Go Go Berlin aus Däne­mark. 2010 grün­dete sich die Band aus einem spon­ta­nen Auftritt und erspielte sich sei­ther eine stetig wach­sende Zuhör­erschaft. Nach­dem sie ihr wun­der­volles Debü­tal­bum „New Gold“ veröf­fentlicht­en, bewiesen sie nun auf ein­er Europa­tour erneut ihre her­vor­ra­gen­den Live­qual­itäten. Vor ihrem fan­tastis­chen Konz­ert im Berlin­er Comet Club erzählten uns drei Mit­glieder der Band was es mit ihrem Band­na­men auf sich hat, wie wichtig es ist, das eigene Gold im Leben zu find­en und das zu tun, was einen glück­lich macht.

The first thing I would like you to do: Would you intro­duce your­self for those who haven’t heard about you yet?
I’m Emil, I play bass.
And I’m Christof­fer and I play drums.
I’m Mikkel and I play guitar.
Christof­fer: And we are Go Go Berlin.

Go Go Berlin from Aarhus.
All: Yes!

Would you say that Aarhus is a great city for Rock ’n’ Roll?
Mikkel: No it is not!

Christof­fer: Actu­al­ly all the musi­cians move to Copenhagen.

Mikkel: We are just so lucky to have our man­age­ment and our crew in Aarhus. So right now for us it’s… Ok in that sense it is a good place for Rock ’n’ Roll, cause we are there with our whole crew. But I would say it still needs some improve­ment to be called a Rock ’n’ Roll city.

Emil: But it’s get­ting there. There is a lot of under­ground move­ments of Rock musi­cians, crawl­ing out of their small cages and stuff like that… so it’s get­ting there.

And now you are a part of that scene and a part of mak­ing it to a Rock ’n’ Roll city. What was the first record you ever bought or which inspired you to make music?
Emil: I think mine was “Kill ‘em all”, Metal­li­ca.

Mikkel: Is it ok to skip the first one you bought and go to the 2nd, because it was cool­er? Because my first was “Now music” (laughs). But after­wards I bought “Lon­don call­ing” and felt in love. No wait, because the first one was a gift. The first one I bought myself: “Lon­don call­ing”! Delete the oth­er thing!

Christof­fer: I think mine was a Aero­smith record. I can’t remem­ber which one. Because that was actu­al­ly the first rock show I ever saw. I had­n’t heard about them and I went and I bought the CD and at that moment I knew that I was going to be a musi­cian. I was real­ly jeal­ous of all the guys on stage and I was like “Hey fuck! I want to be there”.

Talk­ing about con­certs. Is it true that you played some pop-up con­certs in front of the cen­tral sta­tion in Aarhus?
Christof­fer: Yeah, yeah, it is true. It was one of the first shows we did.

And you tried to escape the police?
Mikkel: No, we could­n’t! Because my mom’s car explod­ed (laugh­ter). And then some­one called the police.

Christof­fer: Every­thing went fine and we could have got­ten off. But then there was that guy, he was emp­ty­ing the trash cans around the area and he called the police. “I can’t work with all this noise”.

Emil: But great thing – when the police final­ly arrived we all had packed our equip­ment down and were fix­ing the engine. And he just said: “You just gonna ask, if you do it anoth­er time. Have a nice weekend!”

Mikkel: Yeah, with a smile. So, we pan­icked for nothing.
We did that a cou­ple of times. We did it also here in Gör­l­itzer Park. We did that here in Ger­many because we could not play else­where. We actu­al­ly wrote to this Club [Comet] when we got to Berlin the first time, but we were unknown and we did­n’t have enough songs. When we called them they were like: “Ehm, you have to have a book­er to come here”. So we had to play in the park to play somewhere.

Some things have obvi­ous­ly changed in the mean­time. Can you now make a liv­ing by mak­ing music?
All: Yes!

Mikkel: We can survive.

So you are full time musi­cians now.
Mikkel: We are full time musicians!

More about you and your debut album “New Gold”. How did it feel when you lis­tened to the com­plete album for the first time?
Mikkel: The dif­fi­cul­ty about that ques­tion is that we had to hear it a lot of times before it was fin­ished because we had to mix it. The first time I’ve heard the fin­ished one, was on vinyl and that was a fuck­ing great feel­ing because we always dreamed about being on vinyl! So that was a real­ly good feeling.

Christof­fer: Yeah, that was a great feel­ing. But there was a lot of mix­ing and so on. So we heard that record so many times.

Ok, then how did it feel when you hold it in your hands for the first time?
Christof­fer: That was the best feel­ing ever! Because it was real­ly, real­ly tough mak­ing it, because we were still on tour while mak­ing the record. So we were in the stu­dio from Mon­day to Wednes­day. Then packed every­thing, went out play­ing Thurs­day, Fri­day, Sat­ur­day. Went back to Copen­hagen Sun­day, put all the equip­ment up again. So it was a real­ly tough peri­od! But also a real­ly fun period.

Mikkel: It was like a release, real­ly good!

And what did you want to express with the album title “New Gold”?
Mikkel: It came along through mak­ing the album. We were think­ing about what to call it and tried a lot dif­fer­ent stuff. It’s about find­ing the gold in your life, to dig for it and find some­thing that you love. Because that’s what we did. And we want­ed to say to peo­ple, that’s a great feel­ing. Instead of every­day going to a job that you hate.

So it’s about some­thing every­one should try to achieve indi­vid­u­al­ly to be hap­py and not about being the best in something…
Mikkel: It’s not because we are say­ing we are the new gold. We will leave that up to oth­er people.

Christof­fer: Peo­ple shall fol­low their hearts. Because it’s so easy just to go out and get a real­ly shit­ty job and make a lot of money.

Or to get a shit­ty job and make poor money…
Mikkel: That’s because we are from Den­mark, it is dif­fer­ent there! (laugh­ter)

Christof­fer: But it’s just so easy to go the easy way and you for­get about your­self and your dreams. So we are actu­al­ly just say­ing “Go out and grab life and do what makes you hap­py!” Because it’s not about the mon­ey and not about your status.

Mikkel: As we said – we can sur­vive from mak­ing music. It’s not some­thing we are cash­ing a big check from. Because we are spend­ing more mon­ey than we make. But it’s worth it everyday.

Ok. Tell me more about the song-writ­ing process.
Christof­fer: There is almost three years of song-writ­ing on this record. There was a lot of jam­ming in the begin­ning. But over the years it became more like an indi­vid­ual process. You know, some­one has an idea and plays it to the oth­er guys. Then every­one con­tributes and maybe likes a cer­tain part or the whole thing. And then we try to jam it all togeth­er, because it’s nev­er going to be a Go Go Berlin-song before every­one is on the song.
And when we all agree on a song it’s so easy to start tak­ing in.

About your band name. I know your found­ing was quite spon­ta­neous. Is it the same with the band’s name or does it mean anything?
Christof­fer: It was also spon­ta­neous for the first show. The venue’s man­ag­er just called me two days before the show ask­ing which name he should put on the poster. And it just came out. I remem­ber that I was read­ing about Irv­ing Berlin, a jazz musi­cian. And I liked the idea tak­ing a cap­i­tal city as a last name.
And me and Mikkel actu­al­ly talked about that we want­ed to move to Berlin after the school long before Go Go Berlin.

Mikkel: It is also some­thing about it, it sounds real­ly good and you for­get the mean­ing of it. And I don’t know, it’s some­thing dra­mat­i­cal and good in it.

Christof­fer: Yeah, and Go Go Berlin was­n’t sup­posed to be a band in the begin­ning. The first show was just for fun, it was like free alco­hol, a nice night out and just fun to play some music togeth­er. But the name just stuck. We tried to change it one time but that just did­n’t feel right.

Just out of per­son­al curios­i­ty: How was it to be on the final of “Germany’s Next Top­mod­el”? Was it what you expected?
Emil: It was like a cir­cus. Because the crew was run­ning around and styl­ists every­where and mod­els were run­ning around.

Mikkel: With­out clothes on. It was amazing!
But no, it was fun! Because it was­n’t that much about music. That was about mod­el­ling and they just want­ed to use some music in it. I love that. That made sense to me to use our music with the mod­els doing their stuff. And also we all are adren­a­line junkies – that’s a musi­cian thing. And if you hear 15.000 peo­ple roar… it’s like… boah!!

Christof­fer: But we did­n’t expect any­thing because the inquiry came in the same day the show was start­ing. But it was so much fun actually.

Mikkel: Hats off to Hei­di (laughs)!

Since we are run­ning out of time: Are these your last words?
Mikkel: Yeah, hats off to Heidi!