From:
Dalarnas Tidningar
- June 12, 2004
Translation by:
Stein-Vidar
"It was our deep friendship and the love for hard rock that got us back together," Joey Tempest said. "We've been looking forward to this gig for several months."
Ian Haugland, Joey Tempest, John Norum and the other guys in EUROPE came straight from Hamar in Norway where they'd had a sneak premiere for the summer's series of concerts, a first warm up before the album release in the fall and the attempt to do a big comeback with hair metal from the late 80's. The EUROPE guys strolled into the press tent on Saturday afternoon, wearing rock 'n' roll appropriate sunglasses and a little bit of diva attitude.
Minutes before their arrival, the band had announced that the press conference would be held in English for the sake of the international press. A little strange that a Swedish band speaks English to Swedish journalists on Swedish ground, perhaps, but the fact is that EUROPE's comeback had lured a relatively big international press gathering. Media representatives from Spain, Greece, Italy, Russia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, England and Germany were there to ask questions to EUROPE.
The band members answered consequently "no comments" to all questions related to tax debts, economy and fees, and Joey Tempest claimed that it was solely deep friendship and love.
"I'm going wholeheartedly for this band now, and I hope that we will record many albums together from now on," John Norum reckoned, who at first left EUROPE to be replaced by Kee Marcello.
Kee Marcello, who is not in EUROPE's reunion lineup. When asked why, Ian Haugland asked a bitter question back: "Do you think Deep Purple would bring Steve Morse along if they could get Ritchie Blackmore in the band?"
