Three interviews with Lars Cleveman – the first issues of Fanfar! the fanzine

Description

Please note: This product is in Swedish!

The first issue of Fanfar! was a double issue containing three interviews with Lars Cleveman. We printed the interviews exactly as they were recorded, pauses and all. We thought this approach was fantastic, but success was slow in coming. The first three issues of Fanfar! were met with total incomprehension from the culture editors we approached.
“Oh, what are you going to write about in the next issue? His underpants?’ was probably the most classic comment we received.

In hindsight, I’m most pleased that we saw it through and completed the project. You have to be generous to yourself and congratulate the guys who were still in high school when the first interview was conducted.

Many years later, Dom Dummaste‘s other frontman, Martin Rössel, conducted a series of radio interviews with and about Lars Cleveman.
It may sound tricky, but Martin got exactly what Fanfar! should have been about from Lars, which we didn’t even have the imagination to come up with. Look up the radio series if you can; it’s well worth a listen (the series is in Swedish). Not least because it provides an excellent introduction to Lars Cleveman’s world of opera.

Copies of issues 1–3 are still available.

The interviews with Lars Cleveman were conducted by Magnus Nilsson and Conny Nimmersjö. All photos in Fanfar! 1–3 were taken from Håkan Lindell‘s archive.

Stefan Malmqvist wrote the following about the debut issues in Svenska Dagbladet on 2 September 1991:

Lars Cleveman is one of Stockholm’s most interesting musical personalities, even if he is far from the best known. One of the things that makes him special is that he has developed two parallel careers over many years: one in the world of opera, primarily as part of the opera choir; and the other, a little more public, involving work with groups such as Blomsterunge and Dom Dummaste, as well as performing as a solo artist.
Fanfar!, the newly released fanzine, found Cleveman so interesting that it dedicated its entire first double issue to him. Fanfar! publishes three interviews with Cleveman, conducted in 1984, 1985, and May 1991. The time perspective of these interviews provides a unique insight into how an artist whose work is largely outside the commercial mainstream changes over time. This unusual approach, which may have come about by chance, establishes Fanfar! as one of the more readable fanzines.