Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Location: Popi's Pub, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Interview date: 23.05.2013
When you think about the Slovenian rock scene, it’s hard to picture it without Big Foot Mama, a band that has been setting the course of the local music scene for almost twenty-three years now, with a stubbornness all its own and a sound that still plays nice with the radio. The media have written plenty about them over the years – from hyping them to stardom to clutching their pearls over the provocativeness and explicitness, and treating the basic idea of rock’n’roll as nothing more than a playground for sex and drugs, while plenty of people smoothly forgot about the music. After their triumph in Ljubljana’s Križanke, I decided to sit down with Alen Steržaj and clear away at least some of that fog of misconception. Believe it or not, even a few years ago I could hardly have imagined this Ljubljana quintet touching me in any way, but over time I soaked up their soulful substrate, their words and their catchy hooks and, without realizing it, fell under the spell of the big-footed mama, who finally landed fatally in my heart, and with their fifth show at the auditorium next to old Ljubljana, Pet ta hudih, crowned it all by claiming my scalp too. Almost exactly on schedule, the band’s long-haired bassist walks into Popi’s Pub, the former Vinomer, right across from Olimpija’s old home. He’s been in Big Foot Mama pretty much from the very beginning, since 1991, and he’s left his exceptional mark on all seven of their studio full-lengths. Last year’s album Izhod proves that after the ups and downs the guys are back on the right track. Rawer guitars and a slightly bluesier, dirtier, primal sound have replaced the electro-pop experiments once again, and it’s exactly this evolutionary path of survival that I wanted to learn more about. The setting couldn’t be more fitting, because in the basement of this pub, in a nicely appointed recording studio, with talented sound engineer Drago Popovič and production wizard Dejan Radičević, the guys recorded a good chunk of the guitar and vocal parts of their outstanding fifth record 5ing, which proved this survival instinct to be damn strong and potent, I think, and after a friendly handshake we sit down at the table. No inaccessible topics, no limits. All borders and barriers are down. The deep dive can begin, after we exorcised the evil spells and a technical gremlin on the third try …
Rockline: First off, I’d like to say it’s a real pleasure that you took the time for me despite all your work. I’d honestly like to congratulate you on conquering Križanke on your own for the third time – the place was bursting at the seams less than a week ago.
Alen Steržaj: Thanks.
Rockline: What’s it like, after the fifth go at the Križanke stage and a third headline show at this magical Ljubljana venue, to once again take the scalp of a completely sold-out amphitheater?
Alen: Playing Križanke is always magnificent, because it’s a kind of cult venue that doesn’t allow half-measures or repeating yourself, so we always have respect for Križanke. But it’s true that when you step on stage for the fifth time you’re a bit more relaxed; the crowd already knows what it came for – a rock’n’roll party, which is what it expects from us, and we try to give them exactly that as best we can. That’s how we feel too, and I think it’s what we do best.
Rockline: This time the show was different from what we’ve seen from you in the past, because at the gig you pulled off your own version of Slovenia’s Got Talent. You introduced five different musicians from all corners, mostly unseasoned players who got to appear in front of a sold-out Križanke and step on stage with you. Tell us how the preselection went, or how the whole Pet ta hudih thing came about in the first place?
Alen: We saw lots of videos online of our fans playing guitar, drums, bass or singing our songs. We found that really fun, and when you see how much your music means to young people and that they actually grew up on it, you’re flattered. The custom is to invite well-known, established Slovenian singers to Križanke and other big shows to help you fill the venue, but this time we decided to do things a bit differently. We thought it would be a challenge to give a chance to young talents who haven’t yet experienced such a big stage. We announced a contest, and 125 people applied with recordings of our songs – from the first to the last. A huge number of them were songs from the last three records. Then we made a cherry-picked selection and went through the recordings over beer and chips, having fun and realizing that there were really a ton of good ones in the bunch, so it was hard to decide who to put in the final and who should win, but we had to pick somebody, and it came down to minimal differences. Maybe if we’d chosen on some other day, we’d probably have picked a different lineup, because in rock’n’roll everything depends on the feeling and inspiration of the moment and there’s no room for calculation. But I have to stress, when you said it was our version of Slovenia’s Got Talent, it wasn’t a reality show, since those promise milk and honey, fame and success, which then never happen, while we were real and gave them exactly what we promised – a gig in front of a packed Križanke, and that was that.
Rockline: Since you mentioned the preselection – it’s one thing to watch the recordings people send you, but what was it like when people made the semifinal and came to rehearsals with you? Did you spend two weeks trying people out at rehearsals, or was there actually more time?
Alen: No. We collected recordings for two weeks, then picked fifteen finalists in two days – three in each category (both guitars, bass, drums and vocals) – met up with them at rehearsal and played with each of them the song they’d applied with, getting a feel for the interaction, because the live feeling is something special and unique. We hung out a bit to see how they’d fit into a band and into the crowd. All these factors matter, not just technical skill and playing. It’s not only about nailing a song note for note, but the personal touch you bring, the value you add to the whole – that’s the essence of rock’n’roll. It was fun, because these are really kids aged 16 to 23 who approach you with such awe, since it means something to them, and they’re so nervous, and you watch them gradually overcome it. All the little things were a factor in the choice, then we put our heads together, had another conclave, as we call it, and finally picked the ones we thought were best suited to step on stage with us.
Rockline: The awe of »ordinary mortals« is completely understandable after 23 years of your grind, since in that time you’ve built an extremely strong base and people are forging you into legends of Slovenian rock’n’roll. Let’s go through those 23 years a bit retrograde, from the latest moments to the first – the cherry on top of your studio output is the record Izhod. With it you not only returned to the production of Žare Pak, you also put out a record that’s one of the most pivotal in your history. How do you see these 23 years and this crowning act with Izhod?
Alen: We see Big Foot Mama’s development as a continuum into which we’ve woven a lot of work, a lot of pleasure and a lot of sacrifice. I see these 23 years as a kind of road movie, a trip through a beautiful landscape, with both ups and downs, little hills and valleys, which is completely normal on a road movie trip.
Rockline: So with Izhod you’ve finally come out of the darkness that was dragging you back into its negative gravitational field, and back into the light? Did the album really bring your final rebirth, your renaissance, and have you finally stepped over the threshold of a better, more secure future?
Alen: We see Izhod as the state of Big Foot Mama in 2013, or rather 2012, when the record came out. Every record is a document, a witness to a certain mentality we showed at a given moment. We see the current record as our most mature and most polished, and maybe it’s the first time we’re completely satisfied with a product. Of course, we claimed something similar about every record …
Rockline: But you’ve reached a plateau of complete symbiosis, since Zoki (guitarist Zoran Čalić – ed. note) has fully melded with the lineup. Did he contribute to the songwriting too, or are those all your work?
Alen: Mostly they’re just my creations, which doesn’t mean we wouldn’t let him contribute material. Every member is welcome to contribute their own songwriting if they have ideas and if they work at rehearsal, but I brought the most songs, which everybody liked, so we picked them for studio treatment, and producer Žare Pak liked the material too. For us the main challenge was how to build on all our previous output, and Žare helped us a lot there.
Rockline: How come you decided to approach Žare again on this album? After all, your very beginnings, your first demo, were recorded with him at Studio Kif-Kif, you made your first four records with him, then came the split and Daisy (producer Dejan Radičević – ed. note) took over. Why was the logical next step a return under the baton of the man with whom your studio path began?
Alen: We recorded our first four records with Žare and developed together; the difference between the first and the fourth record is huge, and Big Foot Mama went through a development until we reached a point where the state of the band was such that we’d maybe gotten a bit sick of riff-based rock’n’roll and decided to discover some new directions, turning to somewhat more pop moments, disco, opera, electronics, loops … That was more Žare’s and Gušti’s idea back then. The rest of us were very skeptical about it, and then it didn’t work out and we reached a point where we had to part ways a bit. A break followed, Gušti left the band … We parted with Žare because we couldn’t find common ground anymore; maybe we’d simply had too much of each other. In moments like that it’s good to make a cut, then you change the story a bit, add something new, find another producer with a different mentality and approach, come back and look inward, and that’s healthy for a band – to jump around a bit and not stall at a dead point. We actually didn’t see Žare for 10 years, and in between we did great work with Radičević, but then another turn came. With Radičević we recorded two records, then it was time for another change and turnaround. I personally felt it was time to work with Žare again, since he’d cleaned up his act in the meantime, and so had we, and I realized he has very good arrangement and production ideas that would suit us perfectly. The guys were a bit skeptical, since after the fiasco of the fourth record, Doba norih, they had a prejudice that Žare would demand pop, electronics and loops from us. I’d worked with him in the meantime on some stuff for Alya and a couple of other names, stayed in touch and saw that the change had happened in him too. With his new mentality and attitude to music, the time for a new collaboration had come, so I pushed for working with him, and when the guys saw the new ideas he presented alongside our work, they saw he was now able to understand what we want and also lift everything qualitatively, so our path was a shared one again.
Rockline: Some critics labeled Izhod a farewell record …
Alen: Because of the title.
Rockline: Exactly! So what’s the common thread that made you name the album that?
Alen: When we were looking for the album’s title, we were looking for a red thread. And what is that thread? We live in times when people are very stressed and there’s a huge amount of uncertainty and negativity in the air. We’re constantly afraid of tomorrow, lost in a labyrinth, looking for the way out. The word labyrinth kept coming up. All the songs have it, either in the verse or the chorus. Usually you can feel some frustration, anger, anticipation and uncertainty in the verses, while the choruses are pretty positive, and each chorus hints at a path, a way out of this mess, this maze. Since Bowie already sang about it (in 1986 with the soundtrack for the film Labyrinth – ed. note), along with plenty of others, we dropped the name Labirint and asked ourselves what the essence of a labyrinth is. The answer is clear: in a labyrinth you look for the exit into something positive, into light, a deliverance from darkness into light, so the album Izhod shouldn’t be read as a farewell record – quite the opposite!
Rockline: So it really is a new beginning and a rebirth …
Alen: Of course! We can’t stay in darkness, morbidity, negativity and horror forever. Let’s find a smidgen of good in everything. Even in the song Slab spomin we list the things in life that fuck us up and get on our nerves, but we still look for something good in it. Having a bad memory and forgetting the bad stuff and grudges can be the key to having it better! Our concerts are like that too – people come to have fun and a good time. Our show releases this anger and negativity and people go home more positive, so our concert can be a way out from some negative into positive. That’s how we see things, at least, and we’re not thinking about farewells for now! Izhod is a way out – from a position of strength.
Rockline: A huge amount of time has passed since the band’s first gig on September 14, 1990, when the whole Big Foot Mama story began. What caught my attention was the happy, or maybe unhappy, coincidence of how you came by the name. Where does the name come from, and what’s the connection with the internal Agropop joke, which remains an enigma to me to this day? Where did Jože get the inspiration for that first, fateful naming?
Alen: We only found out the whole story last year at Schengenfest, where Urban Centa, the bassist of Agropop, came to see us and finally explained the background of the name, and he’s the author – Centa himself came up with the name Big Foot Mama back in the Agropop days. They had a singer, or rather animator, Šerbi, a woman of fuller build, and there was an internal joke going around among them, in which Centa, looking at Šerbi, said that if they had to pick a new name, he’d go with Big Foot Mama & Her Yuhuhu Brothers, and someone from our lineup at the time heard that, so they took the joke name Big Foot Mama for one gig as a prank, then I jumped in, and for the second gig we were thinking about what to call ourselves. The gig was organized by Gimnazija Šentvid this time too. We were looking for a serious name, since BFM is a prank and you can’t call yourself that and play rock, right? (laughs) While we were racking our brains over what to call ourselves, we see posters all over town, since Gimnazija Šentvid didn’t know we were still picking the name. Posters with the name Big Foot Mama, people come to a Big Foot Mama gig, and then you’re stuck with that name forever.
Rockline: So you were well and truly stuck with that name …
Alen: Yep! And Centa also said Agropop once played somewhere in Italy, where they ended up in a hotel where Eros Ramazzotti was staying at the time, and when Šerbi saw Eros she immediately hugged him, grabbed him and carried him off to the hotel room, while he was yelling: »No, big mama! No, big mama! No, big mama!« and that’s where the joke comes from.
Rockline: The name is great after all, a name after a heavyweight is cool! And you also gave Slovenian rock, which was and still is in deep crisis, a good pair of balls that made rock more provocative than it had been. Sure, in 1990 there were Sokoli, Don Mentony Band, but the provocation was missing, since everyone was very careful about what they professed. You swore by provocation and explicitness – if nothing else, through music videos, lyrics, stage props like the huge joint …
Alen: And Ančka …
Rockline: Ančka too. Do you consider that a deliberately calculated act by Big Foot Mama?
Alen: When you’re 20 you still like to test limits, and we absolutely loved testing them! How far can you go in directing the attention of TV viewers, concertgoers and (non-)listeners of Big Foot Mama? Where are the limits of the acceptable and unacceptable? That’s an eternal debate in the history of philosophy, ethics and aesthetics going back thousands of years. When you’re 20 you don’t care that much what others think, but whether you’re having a good time or not. Testing limits amused us, and so did seeing that some people were entertained and thrilled by it, others were outraged, and some were indifferent. It amused us like crazy. At 40 I wouldn’t put Ančka on stage (or maybe I would …), but we did have very clear and graphic verses. »If you get me really worked up / I’ll just jerk off with my hand / If it lands on my palm / I promise I’ll look away« (excerpt from the song Sam’ prjatla – ed. note). It doesn’t get more explicit and direct than that! Today we prefer more twisted metaphors and like playing with words a bit more, and anyone who wants to get to the essence has to puzzle a bit. That’s happening in our evolution.
Rockline: So it’s a move away from directness?
Alen: From that standpoint, yes!
Rockline: Of course certain things are more appealing if you have to puzzle a bit …
Alen: Absolutely, but that’s tied to place and time. If you put that out at 20-something, you know, the youth thinks only about »sex & drugs & rock’n’roll«, and in later years, say after 40, you can start playing around with poetry, metaphors, indirectness, reading between the lines, but everything has its time. Every album is a record of a certain time, of how we were thinking in a given period.
Rockline: Do you feel this is a deliberate step away from those new rules you wrote with your debut Nova pravila, and that BFM will now become a more contemplative band?
Alen: Yes, except I’d call it a state of greater maturity. That’s just the state of mind when you reach 40 – growing up is a state not only of the body but also of the mind, though I wouldn’t say it’s deliberate. We’re simply in a period where we actually enjoy this style more, but of course we like playing the old stuff too. The concerts are absolutely a retrospective of the band.
Rockline: When going through and selecting songs for the Križanke show, you decided to skip most of the record Doba norih, of which you played only one song. Why?
Alen: Doba norih is the tricky record in Big Foot Mama’s career, when the shifts actually happened. It’s a record that not all of us would put our hand in the fire for, as I said before.
Rockline: Because Gušti was working with Žare on his own initiative …
Alen: Yes! Exactly! On his own, because his thesis was that we had to make the kind of songs that would get us more radio play. With that sentence Big Foot Mama split at the time.
Rockline: Were you really on the brink of an existential abyss back then?
Alen: Not collapse, since we never thought of ending the career! No, never! We took a break instead, after three records – Nova pravila, Kaj se dogaja and Tretja dimenzija – which were very rock: riffs, directness, and they were also very well received. We’d actually become such a big band that we were looking out of every box. Gradually we reached overdose and got sick of it all, and we’d become too much of a constant for people. We weren’t something fresh anymore, but the vibe was: »Big Foot Mama – big band: we’ve seen them already!« and after Bajaga and the like we’d become something expected. After three burning records, Gušti as the main songwriter suddenly got tired of rock riffs and started being obsessed and bothered about why we weren’t getting played on the radio. We weren’t getting played because we were a bit too hard for pop radio stations and Val 202, and too soft for Radio Študent. We became a big band through concerts and not airplay, which started to bug Gušti unbearably, so he was convinced that after conquering the rock audience it was time to expand and conquer pop territory too. So that besides the Metelkova crowd, »ordinary folks« would come to our gigs. There’s already too much calculation there, because instead of sincerity you start figuring out what to do to achieve the desired effect. »Let’s soften our music, let’s put electronics and loops in instead of riffs …« The organic was replaced by artifice, and that’s where it all went wrong, so Grega and I reached the point where we no longer felt it.
Rockline: Did you cool off and distance yourself from what BFM was supposed to become?
Alen: Of course! We fell into an identity crisis, since we were known as a band that burns – Črn tulipan, Mala nimfomanka and full throttle – and then nice melodies and lukewarmness … That didn’t suit Grega especially, and Gušti … When you write songs you have to keep the singer in mind, his abilities and strengths, and he didn’t do that. Grega couldn’t sing certain things because of the range, he simply didn’t feel them, nor identify with them. I had doubts too … Part of the band just didn’t identify with it, and if you look at the record as a whole, only a small share of the songs survived the test of time. Fenomen, Konc sveta and that’s it … Unfortunately the approach was wrong too – something half-finished at rehearsal, and we consoled ourselves that we were stars now and we’d conjure up the magic in the studio with Žare. A nonchalant attitude prevailed and …
Rockline: That’s something like what ran over Metallica a while back.
Alen: And not just Metallica, U2 too, if you look at what they were doing in the nineties. There are lots of stories like that …
Rockline: If a band doesn’t breathe at rehearsal, it can’t on the record either …
Alen: Exactly! Then Grega boiled over and went nuts and had had it up to here. The media had been constantly besieging and bombarding him too, coming to his home and demanding he show them the bathroom, photographing him, so at one point he’d had enough and demanded a break, a cut and an airing-out of the band’s climate, so we could actually see what we are and what we want, and so we took a year off. Gušti then started his solo path and recorded his private debut, his softening was already proven by Doba norih, and that’s where our paths finally started to split. After that year we said we wanted more guitars, more sound, more organic feel and drive. Let’s go all the way and rip it up! More riffs, more Big Foot Mama, more punch!
Rockline: In a way, was Gušti’s departure – though I deeply respect him, since without you and Miha, Big Foot Mama wouldn’t have such a set of hits and such an extensive discography – a solution for BFM? Thank God people grow and develop, and every now and then our once shared paths part. Was his departure an act after which you sort of breathed a sigh of relief, settled down and started more serious work?
Alen: Definitely – I’m speaking exclusively about the artistic side, since we’re still friends. We still thought we’d collaborate and keep working together, but pop had permeated him too much and he’d found himself in it, and guitar in that old concept no longer interested him, while that’s exactly what interested us. Tensions eased as soon as Gušti left, since then there were no more rifts and misunderstandings, and then Zoki came, who’s a master of riffs anyway, and that was a synergy that opened a new chapter of BFM in a new way, and that’s where we really found ourselves, and, as you see, we keep refining and lifting that with every record. Now we’ve really found ourselves and we’re enjoying it.
Rockline: I’m curious, judging by the documentary Tist dan v tednu, whether the idea of inviting Zoki really flashed into Jože’s and Grega’s minds at the same time during a chat at the urinals? Two guys pissing and one says to the other: »Zoki.« »Are you reading my mind?« How much truth is there in that? Zoki then swapped Majke for the new Mama.
Alen:(laughs) I don’t know how they managed to read each other’s minds, you’d have to ask them, but Zoki was a logical choice for us, because we were thinking about what kind of guitarist to call. The guitarist was the key, since in terms of songwriting we already knew I’d be able to cover a large part of that. And fat, full sound and proper guitars isn’t something just anyone can provide for us. If you look at the young generation of guitarists … That’s in my view also the main difference between us and Siddharta, which touches on the media insinuations about who’s bigger, who’s better and who’s going to run over whom, but nobody’s made a constructive analysis and gone down to the roots we come from: the essential difference is that we grew up on vinyl, while they grew up on CDs, MTV, grunge. We reached for the heritage of the past and the older, more primal sound. Grega was a Majke fan and Zoki was then playing in Holderji, a band from Brežice that we’d run into occasionally at gigs, and Zoki also recorded a solo with us and Grega really liked him as a guitarist, so we decided to work together. He contributed a lot to raising BFM to a higher level when it comes to playing. I find it hard to imagine Gušti playing such blues-rock riffs with us.
Rockline: Different people – different approach to music. 5ing, as the first record with Zoki, proved there’s no good sex without foreplay, and with the fifth record you announced a new concept for your rebirth. Let’s leave the past alone for now – the present and the future are what matter. Izhod paves the new road to the future. What are your plans going forward? I believe there’s a lot of live work, but maybe there’s already a new studio prospect?
Alen: Ten songs are practically done. I mean songwriting-wise, since we haven’t arranged and worked them out at rehearsal yet. There are ideas, at least when it comes to verses, choruses and lyrics, grooves. The foundations are laid. Things are cooking and building, but what and how it’ll be, we’re not thinking about for now. We’re not thinking about what to do to be likable. What we can say is that we’ll keep refining the style we’ve now found and take it to a higher level. Maybe … I don’t know what will happen. Chemistry. Žare will work with us, that’s clear now. We’ll still explore. On Doba norih we went exploring beyond BFM’s borders, outside our frameworks, which isn’t what we are, outside our field of feeling. Pop, opera, disco … – that’s not part of our DNA. Now we have the need to experiment again, which Izhod also shows, but we don’t intend to go outside our frameworks, rather we intend to try out, within rock’n’roll, elements like new rhythms and grooves. After these ups and downs we know where we belong, where we’re at home and what we feel. Now we can’t lie anymore.
Rockline: Part of your DNA is also metal, as you proved with your side project Iron Median. You played Iron Median in front of 30,000 people at Beer Fest in Belgrade, you sold out Križanke five times with Big Foot Mama, three of those on your own. Tivoli was sold out. What remains as a challenge you strive for?
Alen: As far as the Slovenian terrain goes, we’re realistic and we know what the critical mass is and how to fill ever bigger venues – we don’t burden ourselves with that. If you’re asking about a stadium, we’re not thinking about that.
Rockline: Because Siddharta got burned and you wouldn’t want to repeat the same story?
Alen: Not only because of that, but we ourselves know what the reach of a Slovenian band is. If I touch on Siddharta – they did get burned, but they drew 10,000 people to Stožice. The stadium was indeed half empty, but 10 thousand people is still a success worth applauding! We’re still realistic and know what’s possible in Slovenia, or rather we know how to look at the situation realistically. I wouldn’t mind at all going back to Križanke with the next record, and if the atmosphere was like that and there were that many people, we’d win again!
Rockline: Three years ago you turned 20. I sincerely hope Slovenia actually has the potential for some band to reach the lifespan of the Rolling Stones. Can you picture it – close your eyes and let’s imagine – Big Foot Mama in action on stage in 20 years?
Alen: A smidgen of reality in that could exist. You can always be wise about the future and speculate a bit, but you never know what will happen. We’re not used to making such long-term plans. We always go step by step, with smaller steps. We always think about what the next thing is that would excite us. When we started, our goal was just to play at Gimnazija Poljane, because the prettiest girls were there. That was the first step. If we got that, we’d won! Of course we got it, so it was time for the next step. Maybe a gig outside Ljubljana, then the infamous tour with Perot Lovšin happened and with Sokoli we toured all over Slovenia. Then the goal was: »Damn, if only we could put out a CD at least once in our lives, then we’ll really have experienced everything …« Of course! You put out a CD and then you look for a challenge in some bigger hall, and we always go slowly but surely forward. The Rolling Stones didn’t think 30 years ago either that they’d still be on stage and playing at 70. It’s only a blessing if we live to see that.
Rockline: Let’s just borrow the Star Trek motto: »Live long and prosper!«
Alen: That’s it! That’s it!
Rockline: Thank you so much for your time and attention. Maybe just a closing word you can pass on to our readers?
Alen: I’m glad there are still media that respect rock music and that nurture Slovenian rock. In other media that’s sadly dying out. Keep it up! Stay true to who you are. That’s the motto of rock’n’roll and also the motto of Big Foot Mama.
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