Sweden Rock Magazine - Cocky Rocky

Brian Robertson interviewed by Jörgen Homstedt

February 2009

 

Cocky Rocky

 

Ex-Thin Lizzy and Motörhead guitarist Brian Robbo Robertson was heading in the direction of the same sad destiny as band mate Phil Lynott. Whose life was put out by that famous Rock N Roll life-style. Then the Swedish Lizzy supporter Sören Lindberg stepped in as a rescuing angel.

Together they are now recording Robbo’s first solo album – in Sweden.

 

Sometimes Brian Robertson, guitarist from Thin Lizzy’s most iconic line up, who made the classic albums Jailbreak and Live and Dangerous, walks the streets of Stockholm like an ordinary man. So often that many people think that the 52 year old Scot now lives in our capital city.

 

When we, on a ruffled Thursday afternoon, sit and drink a latte among parents and laptop immersed adolescents at Café Edenborg in Stockholm’s Old Town, no one notices the guitar hero behind some of the coolest wah-wah attacks in history.

 
"I fly back to London tomorrow. Should just listen to two new mixes first" explains Brian Robertson or Robbo as he is known.


He lives in England and is in Stockholm to record his first solo album, under the supervision of best friend and companion Sören Lindberg, who also has Robbo staying at his home.


"We are recording in Polar Studio" says Sören, who is governing everything that has to do with Robbo’s career, and also financing the album.

 
Slow start


During the interview, I cannot resist to show the guitarist an old yellowing cutting from the British music tabloid Sounds dated August 16 1975, where he talks about making "an album, play all the instruments himself only using some singers".


"Now, I have started, ha ha! I have recorded on my own for a long time, but now I have a rhythm section and a good singer" he speaks of the drummer Ian Haugland (Europe), bassist Nalle Påhlsson (Treat) and vocalist Leif Sundin (once in the Michael Schenker Group).


One might wonder why Robbo wanted to do a solo album as soon as 1975, just one year after he joined Thin Lizzy.


"Oh, that was just a result of being young and cocky, Robbo giggles, hence the reason for being "named" as Cocky Rocky on the Lizzy song Rocky".


Is this a solo album or a project with you and your band?


"A solo album. But maybe it will be released under some kind of band name. I don’t know yet, first we must record at least twelve songs. We will release the album sometime in 2009".


Sweden Rock Magazine has received samples of six songs that are almost ready, and can tell you that it is classic riffs and blues rock with lots of room for Robbo's emotional guitar playing. Very 70's sense, also due to the fact that Leif Sundin sounds like a young Paul Rodgers. The production is simple and dynamic. Robbo is not very keen on many overdubs when it comes to his greatest love, the blues.

 
"It was the blues that got me into music in the 60's, he says. First I heard Willie Nixon, Howlin' Wolf and the old guard. I thought that those men were unreal, ha ha!

I then got hooked on Peter Green instead".


As much hard rock Robbo has played, the blues has always been the inspiration.


"And it still is" he says nodding his head. "Playing the blues, it's really all I do".


The older he gets, the more it shines through.
It is becoming lesser of the aggressive rock he’s been praised for in Thin LIZZY - songs like Opium Trail and Are You Ready.

 
"My fingers can't move as quickly anymore, there are so many fast players out there anyway.
Fast sounds, but without dynamics and space, bores me".

 
For the album, Robbo has recorded Blues Boy, a blues song with a powerful riff that he wrote with Phil Lynott for Thin Lizzy’s breakthrough album Jailbreak in 1976, but it never made it

 

"We did play Blues Boy live. We also did a demo of it, with Huey Lewis on harmonica, I always loved that song".


Lizzy's Hendrix inspired song It's Only Money has also been dusted off.


"It has never been recorded like this before. Now it is very strange, in a cool way".


The song was one of the first Robbo recorded with Thin Lizzy in the late summer of 1974 – when he made his first album Nightlife with the band. He was an 18-year old fan that got his dream to play in one of his favourite bands fulfilled.

 
True Dreams


It all began on the evening February 9th, 1974 - when the young and then unknown Scot was hanging out in the bar at The Red Hurst Hotel, near his home just outside Glasgow.


"I had done a gig and had my guitar with me. Who else was at the bar, but Phil and Downey, who'd just played in Glasgow".

 
Brian Downey was Thin Lizzy’s drummer, a guy who has always been easy to get along with.

At that time the band was a trio with Gary Moore on guitar.

 
"We started talking and then I ended up in Downey's hotel room where I played their songs on the guitar, accompanied by Downey, who was banging on what ever was around".

 
Brian Downey told me that he was surprised that you could play their songs.


"Yes, but I was a fan. Vagabonds of the Western World is brilliant! The album is so different, and has few overdubs" says Robbo about Thin Lizzy's third Album, made in 1973 with Lynott, Downey and the original guitarist Eric Bell.


In true arrogant Cocky Rocky style, Robbo asked, after the hotel room jam, if he had "a chance to get the job."

 
"It was just a joke, laughs Robbo. I had no thoughts of joining".


But fate made it so that he actually got the job just a few months later. Eric Bell had left the band after a gig on New Year's Eve in 1973 and been replaced by Gary Moore, but he quit the band in May 1974. So a few months later, Robbo was the band's new guitarist. Later it was decided on the American Scott Gorham to join as a second guitarist, in the first four-piece line up of the band


"It was "Big" Charlie who told me that they were looking for a guitarist" remembers Robbo.

 

"Big" Charlie McLennan was a schoolmate of Robbo's from Glasgow who worked as roadie for the group.

 What did Downey say when you got to the club where Lizzy held their audition?


"He smiled and asked "don't I know you?" So I reminded him".


With two guitarists, the band started to develop into the hard rock band Thin Lizzy is best known as.

Were you disappointed that the band did not continue in the old style that you love?


"No, because when I joined, it was natural that everyone would add his thing. Scott and I just felt our way to what we wanted to play. It was unstructured at the beginning. We didn't have that many new songs.
For a while we played Eric Clapton's Bottle of Red Wine with Scott on vocals to fill out the set. Awful!"


"Additionally, you can't play the older Lizzy songs, without Eric Bell. He is unique. I am a completely different type of guitarist. And Scott understood nothing of the old style. He hadn't even heard Thin Lizzy before. It was inevitable that we would get a new sound".


Robbo had no idea that his dream band was in such a disastrous situation when he did his audition. They had no record deal, few gigs, no money, a large debt and no direction. They did not know whether it was good or bad to keep the group name, as for most people, it was synonymous with one thing - a cover of ancient drinking song Whiskey in the Jar.

 
"But I was happy anyway. I did get to play guitar full time with a good band" said Robbo.

 
Guitar Lies


They had two advantages. A manager, Chris O'Donnell, who fiercely told white lies when it came to business, and a superb recording of the blues ballad Still in Love With You which they had recorded with Gary Moore in magnificent form.

 
"Chris O’Donnell told them a white lie", grins Robbo.
"He played the version with Gary for the people at Phonogram and said that it was me playing. They were impressed and we got the contract".

 
How did it feel to have to live up to a lie?


"I knew nothing, Ha Ha!

When we did the Nightlife album they wanted me to replace Gary's guitars on the song, but I refused. At that time there was no chance that I could play it as good as he did.


Yet Still in Love With You has become your signature tune in the end.

"Yes, even Gary told me so. When I started playing it live, I copied virtually his solo. When I felt comfortable, I added my own ideas. Now I play what I feel like on every opportunity, which was confusing Gary when we played Still in Love With You together in Dublin".


It was in 2005, at the gig that followed the unveiling of the Phil Lynott statue. Every time it sounded as if Robbo would finish his solo and Gary Moore opened his mouth to sing, Robbo continued to play a little bit more.

 

"No, I always finish in the same way" says Robbo.

 
Sure, but doing the same finish several times.
Gary Moore was about to go crazy, was that what you were trying...

 
"Absolutely not, if Gary wasn't listening, he can only blame

himself".


Always the same friction between the two of you.


"There is no friction"! Protests Robbo.

 

It is said that you hate each other as much as you like each other's guitar playing.


"It is more like that healthy competition, ha ha!

Gary knows that I have great respect for him. He gave me a hug before we left. It is cool between us".

 
Let us return to the Nightlife. You are at the same time satisfied and not satisfied with it?

 
"Nightlife is an okay album for being the first thing we did together. Some songs are good but the sound is poor.

Ron Nevison produced it, he had up to then been a sound technician. He had worked with Led Zeppelin, so we thought he would be better than he turned out to be.

Nevison was difficult, but so were we".

 
Asked how Thin Lizzy's patented twin guitar sound arose, Robbo always responds in the same cavalier manner:

 
"Don't know".


Scott Gorham says that it occurred as a result of experiments on the 1975 album Fighting, but the fact is that there are twin guitar sounds already on Nightlife.


"Yes, but Scott is probably right, the twin guitars, that gave us the sound we are known for first appeared on Fighting. Then it became really good on Jailbreak".

 
Why do you think Thin Lizzy is regarded by many as the ultimate twin guitar band, when you were not the first to double the melodies on guitars?


"I think it's all because of the guitar melody.

Our's were stronger than those made by Wishbone Ash or Allman Brothers Band. Our's stood out more" reasons Robbo.

The band's commercial lift came with Jailbreak in 1976, where Phil Lynott wrote some of his best songs.

How come that Phil Lynott suddenly got even better on writing songs?

 
"It was the band that had matured!" says Robbo, slightly irritated.

"Where do you think the riffs came from? From the band!

The Drum beat? From Downey! Most of that came from the band, ideas we got when we sound checked.
When Phil came up with a new song, it was often only a vague outline he played on an acoustic guitar. Three or four chords as he sang a melody on top. Then you had to figure out the rest.
The band had improved in 1976. We were a mess on Nightlife, began to find our way on Fighting and when it was time to record Jailbreak, we had toured for ages and knew each other's strengths and weaknesses. It was also the first time we took time to pre-produce and do some demos, in a place in the countryside. And we got a better producer, John Alcock".


Scott Gorham said a few years ago that Jailbreak sounds as if it was recorded in a shoebox from the 1930's.


"Ah, the sound is OK, alright for it’s time. Now maybe it sounds like Scott says, but that’s the way a lot of albums from the 70's sounded. Our approach to listening has changed through the years. But certainly, it is quite compressed".

 
Compression was a conscious move, Jailbreak was produced to sound good on an American car radio. The result gave the band high list placement on Billboard for both albums and the single The Boys Are Back in Town, which is the song everyone wants Robbo to play. But calling out for it, might turn him into Cocky Rocky, as there's no room for spontaneous playing on the song, only those well-known guitar harmonies he become tired of.

 
"It is a colourful song, but there are other Lizzy songs I prefer to play. Ask an artist at any time, they often hate their biggest hit".


During the creation of Jailbreak, Robbo had a serious Cocky Rocky-attack when they would record the song Running Back.

 
"It sounds like shit with that lame piano playing from Tim Hinckley. I wanted to do the song in the style of Little Feat, blues with boogie piano and bottleneck.
I tried to play piano on the song, but only got three minutes in before they said "it does not work."

"Fuck you then! I will not play on it!"


And that's why it is only Scott Gorham playing guitar on that song.

 

 
The bottle in his hand


After recording one more album in 1976, Johnny the Fox, a sister disc to Jailbreak the band was getting ready for a U.S. tour in November the same year. Now was the time to follow up on the success of the previous album.


The night before departure would become one of the worst in Robbos life.

 
"I remember everything, because I was sober, for once, because I was flying to the U.S. the next day. When I had packed, I was hungry, so I went to the Speakeasy to eat and say goodbye to my friends. I drank two large whiskys, no more".


At the club was Frankie Miller, a fellow Scot and even more fiery than our interviewee. Miller is a well known singer, he is heard in duet with Lynott in the original version of Still in Love With You and is a close friend of Robbo's.

 
"When Frankie had a few drinks, he could become aggressive. He was pretty drunk that night and there was trouble. A guitarist I know wanted to mark Frankie with a broken bottle.

"Stop," I said. Then the guy took aim with the bottle against Frankie’s face, and I stopped it with my hand".


The left hand was in a mess, the sinew in the hand and nerves of the middle finger was thrashed. Robbo was driven to hospital to have his hand stitched. By Six o'clock in the morning, he had gathered the courage to call the manager Chris O'Donnell to tell the worst of news.

 
"Chris was calm. But later I was yelled at because I had gone out the night before an important tour. Chris Morrison, our second manager, went absolutely crazy but I think O'Donnell realized that I was telling the truth. I had not started the fight, I was sober and just wanted to grab something to eat.
And, I mean where do you think Phil was that night? I can guarantee that he did not go to bed early"!


The tour was cancelled and the future for Robbo was pitch black.

 
"I could not play for almost six months. I tried, but then the stitches broke. The sensitivity in my middle finger was gone, so I had to change my style of playing.
Since then, I am not as fast anymore".


Was this the reason you got fired from Thin Lizzy?

 
"Yes, probably. I couldn't play, so they had to find another guitarist. It can happen to anyone - and it usually happens to me, ha ha"!

 
Why?


"I do not know, ha ha"!

 
Is there a curse upon you?


"No idea. Look at my hands, burned because I picked out something from the oven at Sören's place.
That happens to me all the time, ha ha"!

 

Who told you that you got fired?


"O'Donnell! As far as I remember".

 
How did you take it?


"Ah, ... I just ... accepted it" Robbo responds and shrugs.


But you still loved Lizzy and the music?


"Sure. But they thought that I could not play again, with my broken nerve. I didn't believe so either.
But you cannot bury yourself with it. You must find something else to do. Which I did. But it was really difficult to come back as a guitarist. I struggled trying to play every single day to get that fucking hand to work again".

 
Did you hope to join in Lizzy again?

 
"I didn’t have another thought about it".  

 
Robbed of acknowledgment  

 

Before Robbo's final farewell, he was a hired gun in the band. When the hand began to function again, in the summer of 1977 he stood in for the guitarist Phil Lynott really wanted instead, Gary Moore, but he was busy with the jazz rock band Colosseum II.

 

Lynott hoped to soon be able to convince Moore to join but in the meantime Lizzy started on the next album Bad Reputation, which was released in autumn 1977. Robbo is only credited with lead guitar on three songs and some keyboards and voice box.

 
"I play on more than what it written on the cover, says Robbo for the first time ever. Among other things, second guitar on more or less all the songs, if I remember it correctly. I was not mentioned because I had been a naughty boy. They wanted to punish me. I had not been included on the album cover either".

 
How did you take it when you saw the Bad Reputation cover for the first time and there was a trio, without you?


"I laughed. Thought it was crazy.
But the cover doesn't mean shit to me. I played on the album only as a studio musician. I had made it clear to all involved, as I had already started planning a new band, Wild Horses".

 
Since he was playing on the new album and Gary Moore had still not joined, Robbo was asked to play on the Bad Reputation Tour. And it could have started better.

In steps Cocky Rocky again...


"After the first gig in Finland, a fight broke out in the bar. Some drunken Finns picked a fight with me and the crew. The police came and some of us were arrested.
Typical Thin Lizzy"! laughs Robbo who, nevertheless, was able to play the gigs in Sweden the following days".


"Sweden has always been special for Lizzy. We were always welcome here. The only Swede that I did not like was that Bo Norling nutter", says Robbo with a grimace, when he mentions the legendary EMA tour promoter.

 
"He was Hitler himself"! Robbo complains when he thinks of their quarrels about everything and nothing.

 
After a handful of concerts in 1978 Thin Lizzy were history for Robbo. The last album during his time with the band was the Monumental double-album Live and Dangerous which to this day wins all sorts of polls as the best live record ever.
In recent years, however, producer Tony Visconti has upset Robbo and Scott Gorham and also Thin Lizzy Fans, claiming that this historic concert document was mostly recorded in the studio!

 

Brian Downey has taken these allegations calmer, but on the other hand, Visconti says that the drums were so good that they needed not to be re-done.


"I have not seen Tony since he started with that nonsense talk.

I do not know why he says such things. Has he become senile? How can he say that Live and Dangerous consists of 75 percent overdubs! It is just not true! Is he trying to take all the credit or what"?


The Guitarist leans forward across the table looking angry.

 
"I know what you hear on the album! Listen, here is some common sense when it comes to live recordings.
How many microphones do you have around a drum kit?
At least fifteen microphones. Understand the leakage into them when you have Phil's bass stack next to them, and me on the other side.
You know how loud I play! Then you have Scott's equipment on top of that. How will you be able to overdub all that? You cannot separate it out of the drum channels!
You can do that now, with computers, but then, in 1978, not a chance"!


But did you do some work in the studio?


"It was perhaps a little on Scott's backing vocals but I do not recall that we did anything with me".


Live and Dangerous was released in June 1978 and became an instant success. Imagine the disappointment for the album buyers when, at the same time it was clear that this line up would never play together again.

 
"Perhaps it ended a bit early" considers Robbo.  

 
Black Rose - no masterpiece


In steps Gary Moore to Phil Lynott's delight. Now finally could the band's visionary leader make his epic - Black Rose - A Rock Legend - which he had been outlining for two or three years, full of jigs and other old Celtic sounds in a style that he felt only one person was familiar enough with to master - guitarist Gary Moore.

 
Maybe Frankie Miller had a guilty conscience, as Gary Moore has said that Frankie drew a knife on him, due to Robbo losing his job.


"I can imagine that", laughs Robbo.

"It is Frankie in a nutshell, ha ha! Very loyal to his friends".


We continue to discuss Thin Lizzy without him.


"It went downhill with the band. The sound changed. Phil didn't write the same type of songs anymore. And if he did, the band didn't interpret them as we did in my days. And then the drugs ... it must surely have influenced the band negatively".

 
Well, Black Rose is praised as a masterpiece.
 
"Not by me. I don't like it. To me it sounds nothing like Thin Lizzy, except for the voice".


Do you like anything of what they did after you left the band?

 
"I can't say I immediately listened to what they were doing. But I thought they started to sound weary. Phil didn't seem to work equally hard on the songs anymore. Downey's drum playing became flatter. Snowy White is a fantastic blues guitarist but he was not suited for Lizzy.

With John Sykes it started to sound a little more like the old band again".

 

A painful awakening for Robbo was the importance that his name was left out as composer. He was only credited for a few of Thin Lizzy’s songs


"Everyone in the band wrote more than they got credit for. Except Phil of course. The Management registered "Lynott" on every song, which I knew nothing about.

I was busy playing guitar. If I only knew that the publishing money would all go in the same pocket ... yes, then I would have been pissed off" says Robbo.


"A classic example is Don’t Believe a Word. Downey came up with the shuffle beat, I made the riff and we should both be credited as songwriters along with Phil. He only had three chords, a little text and no idea about making it, it was in slow tempo".


Here it should be noted that Phil Lynott’s original version did not sound like the slow and delicious Don't Believe A Word that appeared on Gary Moore's solo album Back on The Streets from 1978, which is a common misunderstanding.

 
"Phil's first and unfinished draft was just awful though" says Robbo.


After his four years in Thin Lizzy Robbo began seriously to work on Wild Horses, the band he had been writing songs for since 1977 with former Rainbow bassist Jimmy Bain, who also became Wild Horses' singer. They released two Thin Lizzy embossed albums, Wild Horses in 1980 and Stand Your Ground the year after, without success.

 
"The first album is pretty good for it's time, but the second one is a complete disaster" Robbo thinks.

 
Motörhead classics?


In 1982 Motörhead, of all bands, called.

Guitarist "Fast" Eddie Clark had left the band in the middle of a raging U.S. tour and Lemmy and Phil "Philthy Animal" Taylor; two huge Lizzy fans, thought of Robbo.

 
"First, I was just a temporary understudy, but then they wanted me as a permanent member" recalls Robbo.

 
In steps Cocky Rocky again. He refused to play Motörhead's classic songs - and got away with it.

 
"Yes, ha ha! Lemmy hadn't much of a choice, because it was my condition for joining.


Today, I would probably not be as uncompromising. But then ... it wasn't really that I refused to play their classics, it is just that I did not think they were classics" says Robbo and laughs.


I hadn't even listened to Motörhead earlier. I thought that all their songs sounded the same. I also made it clear that if I stayed in the band, we would take a different direction.

And they agreed, so I don't see any reason for complaints. Other than I should have played Ace of Spades".

 
The only album Robbo made with Motörhead, the 1983, heavy and ZZ Top influenced Another Perfect Day was regarded as too melodic by the band's fans when it was released.

But over time the album has been re-evaluated. In recent years, the fans have asked for songs from the album so often that Motörhead now play two songs - and a cover of Thin Lizzy's famous fast arrangement of the Bob Seger song Rosalie.

 
"I like the album, I worked really hard on it. The rest of the guys sat in the pub while me and Tony Platt (the producer) worked on it. Nice that people appreciate the album now".

 
On stage Lemmy introduces these songs, adding: "Thank God that Robbo is not here to play".

A sophisticated player like Robbo was never suited for Motörhead and after 18 months he was out of the band.


Were you fired or did you leave?


"Both. I had had enough and they realized that it didn't work".

 
Was that the last time you were in a serious band.

 
"You call Motörhead serious?!!
Listen, Frankie Miller actually had a super band with Simon Kirke (Bad Company) on drums and Chrissie Stewart on bass" Robbo explains about the album Dancing in the Rain and the following tour he did with his old friend.

 
"I have done what has been offered to me, if it was something I liked. I never missed the big scenes. Once you have finished it, it's a closed chapter".

 
Hard times


The late 80's and early 90's became a heavy period of mourning in Robbo's life.

Frankie Miller was affected by a stroke and it is still unclear whether he will be able to sing again.

Two of Robbo's best friends, Thin Lizzy's roadie "Big" Charlie McLennan ... and Philip Lynott died.


The latter in 1986, primarily due to heroin abuse.

 
"Heroin makes you a liar, mostly to yourself. Phil thought he was indestructible. Drugs made him Hitler-aggressive.
Too bad, because deep down he was a nice guy who cared about others" sighs Robbo,
who today, still finds it difficult to talk about Lynott's last days, without being reduced to tears.


Gary Moore said recently that if Phil Lynott had his drug problem now, he would not have to die, because it has become accepted to go into rehab, and even models do it.
But then, in 1986, you would be ashamed.
That was what Lynott was, and kept his abuse a secret.
But Robbo dismisses the theory.

 
"The drugs kill you regardless of when, how and where. The point of rehab is that you must want to go.

Phil didn't. There was a rehab close to his home, but he wasn't interested" says Robbo who on a regular basis was hanging out at Phil's house near the end of the Lizzy frontman's life.

 

1986 was the year a solo EP with Robbo was released ... and then again not?


"After Wild Horses, I began a solo album that was never finished. One song, my own version of Still in Love With You, was released without my knowledge four years later. Released under Bobby Tench's name".


The former Jeff Beck singer had been persuaded to add his vocal to the song by the record company.

 
"I was disappointed, as it wasn't finished and their mix was poor. I think it was Sören who rang me up and told me" says Robbo. Who loves his friend so much that he wants to rewrite history such that Sören has always been by his side.

 

But the two did not work together until 1994, when Robbo toured with Ain't Lizzy (a Thin Lizzy cover band) in Sweden and Sören was the organizer of one of the gigs at the pub Engelen in Stockholm.

 
What has Sören meant for you?


Three seconds of reflection, and then:
"Life"!

 
Followed by a big laugh. But there is a serious meaning behind the answer.

 

"It's not as in a life verdict" giggles Robbo...
"But, then, we are so close to each other and get along very well, especially in private. I see Sören's Mum and Dad as my own parents".


"And they see you as their son" says Sören and Robbo smiles happily.


"Sören is so dedicated in what he does" praises Robbo in a warm voice. "A true friend in every sense.

I can hardly find words for how loyal Sören is. He is my Manager, Co-producer, Business Partner ... but most of all, he is Sören, my friend".

 
There are many who, for almost 15 years, have witnessed how Sören Lindberg, with the patience of an angel, has sacrificed a lot of time and money to keep his old hero under his wing.

 
"I would have done this for Phil, if it had been possible. Now I want to give Robbo a chance not to end up in the same misery as Phil did." Sören explains his heart-warming effort.

 
Under Lindberg's supervision, it seems like Robbo's headstrong Cocky Rocky side is fading.


"I am very happy right now" Robbo smiles. "Looking forward to releasing an album, if it does not sell a lot, I will not be disappointed. I'll just do the next thing".

 

"When I was younger, wealth and fame was important to me. Then you realize that that's just so damn difficult.

 

Now I am used to not being famous. Now I am just myself. Like it should be.

 

If you become absorbed by the celebrity role, you can go crazy, which I have seen happen to colleagues. And that includes me.
People have died because of it, so that doesn't interest me".

 
Is there anything you regret?

 

"I am old enough to know, that there is no reason to look back, and be angry about things that went wrong. Don't waste your time, look forward, the new situation suits me just fine. I've got a rhythm section and a singer, who I can stick any song that I like to, they add their mark and we are recording it. I enjoy the studio and the staff there.

It is easier and more fun when you do not have a record company and two managers interfering".


Robbo finishishes his latte and is driven off to the studio by Sören.

 
"All thanks to The Big Man" says Robbo with a thankful gesture to his Swedish friend.

 

 
Cocky Rocky has never seemed more distant.