ANDREAS ÖBERG

Being a guitar aficionado as well as a guitar player I have had the pleasure of working together with a whole generation of wonderful guitar players, on stage as well as in the studio. Many exceptional talents have made their debut recording for Hot Club Records, and especially with the Rom, an astonishing level of musical maturity have some times been displayed at a very early age. Nevertheless, if you know the people and their traditions, you will not be too surprised. In the case of Andreas Öberg there were so many odd circumstances - and unusual factors that he was a BIG surprise altogether.

First of all, Andreas Öberg came from Sweden. And despite the fact that Sweden have a lot of good jazz players, also guitarists, there is no natural presence of a jazz manouche minority. However, Andreas Öberg found out about these things on his own, and in the autumn of 2002 I got a phone call from a Swedish taxi driver, Roine, who insisted that I should absolutely listen to this new, Swedish guitar player - "he can play everything, completely independent upon tonality and tempo. I'll drive him to Oslo next weekend". I could not really believe this, and I was busy elsewhere, so nothing happened, but Andreas had been here and jammed with my rhythm guitar player, Per Frydenlund, who was full of superlatives afterwords.

A couple of weeks later I was about to have a recording session with Jimmy Rosenberg, and the taxi driver, Mr Roine, once again recommended Andreas - "take him with you - he is really great". OK, I thought, he can do some rhythm guitar playing...

Shortly after, on our way into the studio, Andreas and I met for the first time, he was a shocking sight, did not at all look like any jazz musician I hed ever met before! Something between a photo model and a body builder! Blond, non smoker, not drinking. I know that Oscar Alemán was a passionate boxer, but this was worse: an athlet. He had biceps'es in the size of small children on each arm. In addition, he was gentle, mild person - very contrary to many-a-guitar player in the jazz manuche... I feared the worst. And I was totally wrong.

Then I went to pick up Jimmy at the airport, but he turned out to be high as a kite, once again. However, in the studio we started to get to know each other musically, and Andreas and Jimmy were obviously inspired by each other. Andreas' technique at that time was not completely matured according to his rich imagination and the velocity of his ideas, but he was fearless and threw himself out into the deep waters together with Jimmy, who even with an elephant's dose of liquer plus other chemistry still managed to play like nobody else, despite a lot of obvious glitches.

Within shortly the entire focus of the recording session was on the interplay between Andreas and Jimmy. It was a sight for gods, the two meter tall blond, Swedish giant, together with the unusually thin and dark Jimmy (he had already been a junkie for years), and asked my photographer to make a photo of them together (it was later used on the cover of Hot Club de Suede's live recording with Jimmy, as they lacked a good photo). But musically it was even better: the first meeting between two obviously very different persons, playing together like they had been doing it for years. The rock'n'roll rebel Jimmy, and the educated volcano Andreas - in deep musical conversations. It was jazz at it's best.

The session was supposed to continue the next day, but then Jimmy freaked out, OD'ed and had an epelleptic episode, so he had to be sent to the hospital again. During the post production I noticed something that had slipped my attention during the recording session (propably due to all the problems with Jimmy): Andreas never repeated himself. Despite how many takes we took, he always played differently, completely fresh ideas. Only then I realised that Andreas was something totally out of the ordinary. Not only had he not objected once to any of the musical suggestions that came up during the session, but he had excelled in every single one of them. The rest is history: the CD "Django's Tiger" came out, and was the starting point of our musical co-operation. Now, many concerts, and several CD's and DVD's later I am still totally impressed by Andreas Öberg's music, but I still remember the big surprise he was to begin with.

Today Andreas Öberg is about to conquer his place in the history of the jazz guitar that he so very well deserves, and I am absolutely sure he will continue to develope his musicality further and continue to surprise us. He is a real artist on his instrument.

Jon Larsen

Oh, thank you so much for this fabulous history!
For me, Andreas is one of the best guitarists to the world. And what a kindness!
I had the honor to play with him. It was happiness!
I also wanted to say to you that it is a big honor also to have you as member of the forum!
I already knew you! Bravo for all what you make!
Best regards.


A beautiful video of Andreas: