Lustans Lakejer (Lackeys of Lust) is a Swedish
new wave group formed in 1978, subsequently led by singer-songwriter Johan Kinde who has been the only permanent member throughout their career. They were successful in the early 1980s, but by the mid-1980s, their popularity began to decline, and the members split up.
[Lustans Lakejer interview](_blank)
Electricity Club
They were initially influenced by 1970's
art rock
Art rock is a subgenre of rock music that generally reflects a challenging or avant-garde approach to rock, or which makes use of modernist, experimental, or unconventional elements. Art rock aspires to elevate rock from entertainment to an ar ...
and
post-punk
Post-punk (originally called new musick) is a broad genre of music that emerged in late 1977 in the wake of punk rock. Post-punk musicians departed from punk's fundamental elements and raw simplicity, instead adopting a broader, more experiment ...
acts like
Roxy Music
Roxy Music are an English rock music, rock band formed in 1970 by Bryan Ferry (lead vocals/keyboards/principal songwriter) and Graham Simpson (musician), Graham Simpson (bass). By the time the band recorded their Roxy Music (album), first albu ...
,
David Bowie
David Robert Jones (8 January 194710 January 2016), known as David Bowie ( ), was an English singer, songwriter and actor. Regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Bowie was acclaimed by critics and musicians, pa ...
,
Joy Division
Joy Division were an English Rock music, rock band formed in Salford in 1976. The group consisted of vocalist, guitarist and lyricist Ian Curtis, guitarist and keyboardist Bernard Sumner, bassist Peter Hook and drummer Stephen Morris (musici ...
,
Magazine
A magazine is a periodical literature, periodical publication, print or digital, produced on a regular schedule, that contains any of a variety of subject-oriented textual and visual content (media), content forms. Magazines are generally fin ...
and
Ultravox
Ultravox (earlier styled as Ultravox!) were a British new wave band, formed in London in April 1974 as Tiger Lily. Between 1980 and 1986, they scored seven Top Ten albums and seventeen Top 40 singles in the UK, the most successful of which wa ...
but adopted a more sophisticated
synthpop
Synth-pop (short for synthesizer pop; also called techno-pop; ) is a music genre that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s ...
and
new romantic
New Romantic was an underground subculture movement that originated in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s. The movement emerged from the nightclub scene in London and Birmingham at venues such as Billy's and The Blitz. The New Romantic mo ...
style on their most successful albums ''Uppdrag i Genève'' and ''En plats i solen''. The latter album was produced by
Richard Barbieri
Richard Barbieri (born 30 November 1957) is an English musician, composer and sound designer. Originally a member of new wave band Japan (and their brief 1989–1991 reincarnation as Rain Tree Crow), he became the keyboard player in the prog ...
from the British group
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...
and featured saxophone playing on three tracks by
Mick Karn
Andonis Michaelides (Greek: Αντώνης Μιχαηλίδης; 24 July 1958 – 4 January 2011), better known as Mick Karn, was a British musician who rose to fame as the bassist for the art rock/ new wave band Japan. His distinctive fretles ...
. The following year an English-language version of that album, ''A Place in the Sun'', was released under the group name ''Vanity Fair'', but with no commercial success.
By 1984 Johan Kinde had parted ways with the other original members and released two further albums as Lustans Lakejer and then embarked on a solo career.
Lustans Lakejer reformed in the 1990s and released the critically acclaimed album ''Åkersberga'' in 1999. In 2007 they reunited again to perform the song "Allt vi en gång trodde på" in
Melodifestivalen
Melodifestivalen (; ) is an annual song competition organised by Swedish public broadcasters Sveriges Television (SVT) and Sveriges Radio (SR). It determines the country's representative for the Eurovision Song Contest, and has been staged almo ...
's second semifinal for the opportunity to represent Sweden in the
Eurovision Song Contest 2007
The Eurovision Song Contest 2007 was the 52nd edition of the Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in Helsinki, Finland, following the country's victory at the with the song "Hard Rock Hallelujah" by Lordi. Organised by the European Broadcasti ...
in
Helsinki
Helsinki () is the Capital city, capital and most populous List of cities and towns in Finland, city in Finland. It is on the shore of the Gulf of Finland and is the seat of southern Finland's Uusimaa region. About people live in the municipali ...
,
Finland
Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...
. The band failed to make the top five and was voted off the contest on 10 February before final voting.
In 2011 an album, ''Elixir'', was released. In 2017 Lustans Lakejer performed the album ''En plats i solen'' in its entirety on a Swedish tour and were joined on stage by the album's producer Richard Barbieri on keyboards.
One of the members was Tom Wolgers, son of
Beppe Wolgers
John Bertil "Beppe" Wolgers (10 November 1928 – 6 August 1986) was a Swedish author, poet, translator, lyricist, actor, entertainer and artist.
Career
Wolgers was born in Stockholm, Sweden and was the son of forest ranger John Wolgers and ...
.
References
External links
page about Lustans lakejer
Swedish musical groups
1978 establishments in Sweden
Musical groups established in 1978
{{Sweden-band-stub