At the café with Kee Marcello

From: ? - The late 90s Translated by: Louise

It's a dirty, old and half-full café somewhere in West Sweden. It's almost 5 o'clock in the afternoon, and the sun is writing golden poems on the walls, yellow from smoke. The person in front of me is wearing a black Nike cap. It doesn't hide the fact that if the hair had been a little shorter, he would have been bald. A black T-shirt, black pants and a black jacket complete the picture. Kee Marcello, the guitarist of the old rock band EUROPE.

Bang!! The bubble bursts. Kee never had short hair? They were guys with perms, the whole band, right. And he didn't have such a winning smile and personality like the man who is here with me. But it is Kee Marcello. If you look really close. The years have changed him, but not for the worse. Kee, or Kjell Lövbom which is his real name, is on tour. A lot has happened since the years with EUROPE, which ended in 1992:

An instruction video about guitars has been made on the same spot where Eric Clapton made his. Another one is on its way. He toured with a band called Red Fun, dropped out and made a solo album in 1996. Has a new one coming in March. Produced, among other things, the last album by Mikael Rickfors. And lots of other things.

"I do these guitar clinics from time to time." The Umeå dialect isn't gone, even though you can hear both a little dialect from Stockholm, and a little Gothenburg. Not so strange, actually, he lives more in Gothenburg nowadays. Guitar clinics? Yeah, Kee sits on a stage and shows different ways to play for the public. Different chords, different tabs. All possible ways for you to handle a guitar. In every lesson there is a dialogue between Kee and the audience.

"Which guitar gods do you have?" someone in the audience asks.

Kee mentions just about everyone from the 70's to now: "Hendrix, Eric Johnson, Alan Holdsworth, Jeff Beck, Clapton, Peter Green. The list can go on and on, I have most likely forgotten many. By the way, Jeff Beck doesn't know what a plectrum is. but it sounds good anyway. He himself was 14 years old before he picked up a guitar for the first time. Something like that brings hope to anyone who wants to start playing, but thinks it's too late. It is never too late. Get to it and practice, just practice!"