Interview: Gluecifer
I’m having some really good times with this. We only get to do the fun parts now, all the boring parts we can skip. We only play the good shows, not the bad shows.
Norways’s kings of rock Gluecifer have triumphantly returned after two decades away with their new album Same Drug, New High, and their high octane rock & roll sounds as good as ever, even after all these years. To celebrate the return of Gluecifer, Gavin Brown caught up with the band’s vocalist Biff Malibu to hear all about their return and the new album as well as hearing about touring with Motörhead, discussing how the musical landscape has changed and talking about good food.
E&D: Your new album, Same Drug, New High has recently been released. How does it feel for Gluecifer to be back with this album?
Biff: We were done recording about a year ago, so it’s been quite a while to wait to get it out there but yeah, we’re in good spirits.
E&D: How has the album been received so far?
Biff: We’ve gotten some very positive feedback on it. It’s been pretty nice. There’s so much stuff going on, so much music going on. but quite a few people have listened to it and watched the videos. We’ve had some good reviews, and it seems that people are pretty happy with what they’re hearing. A lot of people that used to like us back in the days are maybe breathing a sigh of relief that we are not completely changing direction or being very experimental, the record does still sounds like the rock band that we’ve always been.
E&D: Is this new music, a new high for the band?
Biff: I would say so, yeah. We started playing together again some years ago, did some reunion shows, and we had a good time with that. After a while, we’re like, I think the band sounds really good and we play good together. We have a good time together. We like hanging out like this should be a good starting point to try to make some new music. We’ve got a good songing band. Everybody’s getting along well. There’s no external pressure. So we said, Okay, let’s try and write some songs, record them and see if they’re any good. So we did five songs or something, and a couple of them ended up on the record, and we’re like, this sounds pretty good. We wrote some more, recorded again, wrote some more, recorded again, and it was all done in a very relaxed manner. We worked on it, and suddenly we’re like, we have a record here. That was a good feeling!
E&D: This is your first new album since 2004 How was the vibe in the studio when you were making it? Was it a good feeling to be back?
Biff: Yeah, I think on the records back in the days, we spent quite a while in the studio. We worked with a producer, and we wrote a lot of the stuff in the studio, like you do, you just keep on building and building, and it gets bigger and bigger, and after a while you kind of lose track. You just do it. This time we were like, let’s write the songs, go to the rehearsal room, play them. Know how to play them. Then we go in and record. And we tried to do it pretty fast, you know, and we tried to avoid endless overdubs and that sort of monumental stuff, and try to keep it simple, a bit more transparent, a bit more air in the songs. It was quite fast, and the guy that we worked with, who’s a longtime friend and been our sound engineer for all the live shows for a long time. He knows us. He knows how we’re gonna sound, and he’s a fast working guy. So the whole process was really fast, that was the thing and I think you can also hear that it sounds fresh and not stressed or forced.
E&D: Did you still want to have that same sense of humour with your music that you’ve always had?
Biff: Yeah, I think so. We’re from this Scandinavian rock thing, and when we started, we played for like, a hundred people and called ourselves the kings of rock. We did all these big arena rock antics on those pub stages, which was fun and we try to avoid pretentious stuff. I always liked bands that had some kind of twist or humorous edge in their lyrics like Killdozer or The Didjits or Butthole Surfers and a lot of these American bands from the late 80s, early 90s. It’s always fascinated me and you put something like that on top of the pretty straightforward rock and roll music,
E&D: What have been some of the biggest influences on the sound of the new album?
Biff: I can speak for myself. I guess there will be other influences too, but I have listened to quite a lot of those more rock oriented records from Primal Scream actually. The Memphis Recordings album, and Riot City Blues. I think those are great records. I have listened to the Bronx. I have listened to an American band that I think now is defunct called Bad Mother, which I think was a crazy, great rock and roll band from Chicago. A bit of The Cult, I used to listen to when I was a teenager, and suddenly you can hear that some places. In 2024, listened to a lot of Australian music, that was the time we were thinking what kind of record are we gonna make? I said, I want to make a concept album about Australian rock, and it’s gonna be called Down Thunder! I did t get to see that through though! Those are some of the things I was listening to a lot l. Jesus Lizard, some old Didjits records too. Misfits, Ramones, all those classic band that we always listen to.
E&D: Twenty years ago, Gluecifer announced you were splitting up. What led to the band breaking up and what led you to come back?
Biff: Well, I was one of the guys that said, in 2005, we’re gonna have a gap year with the band. I was getting a bit tired of it. I felt, in a way, that we had been touring a lot. I was gonna go back, make a record, go on tour, and suddenly I was like, Oh, I know exactly how my life’s gonna be for the next two years because we’ve done this so many times already. So I was like, No, I want to go in a different direction. I want to live a life where I can decide for myself and not to be responsible to the other guys or something like that, because it was a lot of fun. But after a while, I was like, I have to do something else. I was also a bit afraid of ending up like some of the bands we saw that we toured with and stuff, that they were kind of jaded with the whole thing, they were just like they were going to work, playing the same show every night. It was a bit like we’re gonna end up like this, washed up guys in our 40s doing the same thing over and over again. It didn’t feel that challenging anymore. Some of the guys wanted to go on so the breakup happened. We lost touch, we were pissed at each other, and some words were said that were kind of harsh. So it was tough. We didn’t really stay in touch for many years, until we got together and said we got this offer. We kept on getting offers for doing shows but turning it down, and we had a great offer, okay, let’s give it a shot. From there on, this, it’s been a blessing, I must say, I’m having some really good times with this. We only get to do the fun parts now, all the boring parts we can skip. We only play the good shows, not the bad shows. We’re not dependent on this. We’re not stressed that we have to make money all the time. We’ve got jobs and stuff so we can just do the good parts of being in a rock band. Which is nice, so it’s a lot more fun these days. We have always been very good, close friends. We grew up together in this band, so getting back together again, on a personal level, it’s been rewarding because I love those guys, so it’s good that we can also get our friendship back in and hang out and have a good time.
E&D: We’re you still playing music between the band splitting up and getting back together?
Biff: I was not doing that, no. I was a journalist when the band was just starting and taking off, So I went back to journalism, and I’ve been working as a journalist since then. Now I work in a newspaper. That’s my side gig!
E&D: How has the musical landscape changed for Gluecifer since you have returned?
Biff: One thing that’s happened is this new way of listening to music, streaming and Spotify and stuff, there’s so much music going on. It’s very easy to record and release music now you don’t need a big record label, distro, all that, all these thresholds that you used to have. If you’ve got good music, it will find its way all through the world. Which is nice. It’s kind of shitty financially for artists and stuff. but if you want to listen to music, it’s fantastic because you can listen to all the music in the world. I find myself spending hours in there, checking out new bands and stuff like that. So I love that. It’s also easy to release, it’s easy to record. It’s cheaper to record the equipment. You don’t have to go to a big recording studio, you could do it with easy equipment, and make it sound good. So I think that is good. I can see there’s a lot of bands still, and there’s a lot of live shows. In my city, it’s live shows every night you can go and see and there’s a lot of good bands playing too. In Norway, people still go to shows a lot, which is cool. So, you don’t need major label money to sort of get your music out there, you can release, you can go out and play, I think that’s what’s changed in twenty years. When we started it was very underground, with not many people there. Now you’ve got three, four generations that grew up with rock & roll that can go to the shows together too, that’s a little different from back in the days, where we really didn’t see any people my age now at the shows. Now we see a lot of them all.
E&D: What are the band’s live plans for this year, now that the album is out?
Biff: We’ve got some shows in Germany, in Spain and Sweden and in Oslo, now planned until Easter. There’s a few festivals in Norway and Germany. We’re working on something this fall. I think we have to get the record out there and see where the interest is. If people approach us and say, you should come and play and show here, and we think it would be pretty good, and we think, ah, that sounds great. That will be a cool show. We try to get it done. Maybe we can go some places that we haven’t been in a while, or maybe some new places on the record. We’ll just wait and see. But we’re open for offers, I would say.
E&D: Hopefully you’ll make it back over to the to the UK!
Biff: That would be great. We’ve had some good times there. I remember London and Glasgow were great.
E&D: How was the experience of touring with Motörhead in 1999 and what were some of the high points of that run?
Biff: Oh, that was like the stuff of legends. It was America in 1999 and there were so many great shows in Chicago, New York, stuff like that. There was a show in a road house outside Baltimore, Kind of an old school audience, motorcycles, girls that put on the clothes that they wore twenty years ago and went to the Motörhead show again. That was sweet. Motörhead and their crew was like a band of pirates,just travelling around in buses, very old school, nice people. Motörhead’s drummer, Mikkey is from Sweden of course, we bonded quite a lot with him, because we talked the same language and stuff. Lemmy was Lemmy! There is no one like him! We would be in a club, and you would hear some steps, coming down a hall, kind of slow. And then this guy would come, with the white cowboy boots and the military hat and the uniform jacket with the SS stuff on it, and with a bottle of Jim Beam in one hand and a big coke in another. And he would sit and play poker on the poker machine and smoke a pack of cigarettes and drink a bottle of whiskey before soundcheck, It’s pretty cool. Then after a while, he gave us some compliments, and come and sit down at my table and he talks to us and told stories. It was good to meet him, because he’s very,cool and tough, but also a sweet and curious person. He was not jaded, or a prima donna or something like that. It was a hard working, old school rock & roll band. They were great every night. It was professional, but, but still quite a lifestyle!
E&D: You also toured extensively with The Hellacopters. Was that like touring with your family?
Biff: Yeah, I would say there are brothers. When this thing took off in ‘98 we went on a a six week tour together in Europe, shared a bus, went all over Europe, and went from playing for maybe two hundred people, and suddenly we were in Germany, playing for a thousand people, sold out venues, there’s a lot of press and interest, a lot of people everywhere and we were like, wow, this really happens! We hadn’t even seen the inside of a tour bus before. So that was quite big. And then they became our friends, and they still are. We’re going to Stockholm. They’re going to come to the show. They’re really nice people and they play great shows. It’s fun to see how the band is very much alive, and there’s something with it. Nicke is such a great singer, great songwriter, great guitar player. I think he just makes great music and that has been inspiring for us, too, I think.
E&D: What have been some of the other tours and live shows that you’ve played that still stick in your memory today?
Biff: On the Motörhead tour. We had a day off, and we played that CBGBs with Nashville Pussy and it was packed and sold out, which was cool. Slash was there. And, yeah, you felt, whoa! You know, it’s New York, and we’re playing to a sold out venue, like, CBGBs. That felt historic. Of course, the reunion shows in 2018 when we did four sold out shows here in Oslo, a quite big place, like an 1800 seater, that was a magical experience. People were so ecstatic about us coming back and stuff. So that was also fantastic, so those two, definitely!
E&D: Gluecifer have got a song called ‘Put Me On A Plate’. What are your the band’s favourite ever meals?
Biff: We kind of a foodie band, you know. When we were on tour, we often had a day off in Paris, so we would spend that day eating ourselves silly. We always got great service. Here comes a band, dirty with black coated sweaters and shitty shoes, and they come into a restaurant, and we’re getting the best table and the best service ever. And suddenly I understood that those people say, Oh, 12 guys, and they’re having a night off, they’re gonna spend a lot of money here and drink a lot of wine. So that was probably the secret that we had some great meals there. Captain Poon hosts a barbecue on his birthday every year here in June, and he throws a very good barbecue! I think that would be something that we all really would love. Captain Poon’s barbecue, that’s probably our favourite meal each year.
