MLTR: ‘We love the fans in Singapore’

SINGAPORE — To mark the 25 years it spent in showbiz, Danish band MLTR released an album last year called 25: The Complete Singles, featuring 25 songs from the band’s oeuvre, including the smash hits The Actor, 25 Minutes Too Late and Paint My Love; as well as a couple of new tracks.

Now, the trio will bring their show, 25 Live, to Singapore on July 24 at the Star Theatre. Of course, MLTR, aka Michael Learns To Rock, aren’t strangers to these shores — they pop by ever so often, and, no, it’s not always for the Retrolicious gigs.

Their last show here was a little more than 15 months ago and drew a crowd of 5,000, said MTLR drummer Kare Wanscher.

“We like our fans there. They keep asking us to come back,” Wanscher said.

While the coming concert is supposed to be a “live” version of the album — hence the concert title 25 Live — it isn’t going to be a note-for-note replica. There may not even be 25 songs. “Well, maybe! It’s just around 25 songs actually. But ... we’re not going to do it exactly as the album. We’ll do most of the songs from the album.”

Q: How different is this concert going to be from the last one here?

A: It’s going to be very different. We’re playing the songs differently and there will be new visual effects and multimedia in the concert. We’ve got a lot of new concepts for this show and it’s something that people in Asia haven’t seen before. So we’re happy to launch this new show in Singapore.

Q: Is there any song that you don’t like to play?

A: Honestly? I’m a drummer and if you listen to the drum track on The Actor, for example, it’s very simple and not really challenging. It’s the same beat throughout the song! After you play that 500 times, it’s not that exciting. But there’s something that happens when we play that song — people become really happy, they really love to hear that. They smile and have a good time. That’s enough for me. I don’t have to be challenged all the time on stage. You have to listen to the music as a whole and see what it does to people. That’s the important part — not what part you play. We try to entertain people as much as possible.

Q: Because you’ve had such massive hits in the past, are you okay with the fact that people don’t want to hear your newer material and just want the old hits?

A: Sometimes, we release an album and we think there are 12 good songs in there. But people only want to talk about two of them. At the same time, we’re happy that people want to talk about two of them. So many times, albums come out and people don’t talk about any of them. We feel very privileged and we don’t mind that people don’t talk about all our songs, we just have to accept that if we go out and play — and people want to sing along — we have to play the songs that they want to hear. If I go to a concert by The Rolling Stones, I would love to hear my favourite Stones songs too, you know? As a fan, I feel the same way. We always try to play some songs that are not popular because we like them but we don’t play a whole set of unknown songs.

Q: Have you guys ever been 25 minutes too late for anything?

A: No! I’m the kind of guy that is always there on time. I think all of us are quite good at that. We’ve never missed a flight! We’ve been lucky enough not to be too late for the important things.

Q: What’s the big life lesson you’ve learnt all these years?

A: Do what you want to do and not listen too much to other people. It’s good to be inspired by others, but if you want to feel good about what you do and feel good about 10 years from now, it has to come from within.

Q: So you don’t read your own reviews?

A: Sometimes we do, but we don’t take them too personally. We don’t let them change us. We have to be honest. If we go and make an album that we aren’t 100 per cent comfortable with, then people will know.

Q: What’s your biggest Spinal Tap moment?

A: We played an acoustic show recently and we were sitting down to do the show when in the middle of a song, Janscher’s piano chair completely crashed down and he fell on the floor.

It looked funny, I guess, but it wasn’t so funny for him! The show has to go on.

Q: MLTR celebrated its 25th anniversary. How long more can the band go on for?

A: The music business is one business that you don’t get too old for when you’re 60. Look at the Stones or Bob Dylan. They still tour the world. It gives us a good feeling that we can continue to do this for a long time. Right now, we’re feeling good about things and people are asking us to come and play and all that, so we’re enjoying it very much at the moment and we hope to continue for many years.

MLTR performs on July 24, 8pm at the Star Theatre. Tickets from S$68 from SISTIC.