THE RPM/AM STORY
Bo first met Claes-Hakan and Erik Larsson on a Bill Haley concert in Varberg 1968 and asked
them for pictures, but nothing came back to him. Next year Bill was back and we met again
and this time we made contact and has stayed together ever since, but another ten years
would pass before they finally decided that Sweden needed a Rock 'n' Roll Magazine. They
had been contributing to the Swedish country magazine "Kountry Korrall" (at the time
runned by Lillies Ohlsson) since the early 70s. Everyone knew each other pretty well and
had knowledge of what each could contribute with in such a project if they could put their
forces together. They had subscribed to several of the early magazines like "Boppin' News",
"Penniman News", "The Sun Sound Special", "The Rockville International", "The Record
Exchanger" and "Rock & Roll Collector". They picked up any magazine they could lay their
hands on, and talked for years about making a own. Finally they decided to give it a try
and see how far they could take it and in May 1979 at a meeting at Christer Malmstedt's
home in Vessigebro the "Swedish Rock 'n' Roll Club" was founded with the intention of
publishing a magazine called "Rock & Roll Performers Magazine".
The founding members at this historic meeting were:
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The subscribtion rate was set to SEK40 for 4 issues a year and single issues SEK12 a piece. The club's main work would be to publish a magazine in size A5, that was called "Rock 'n' Roll Performers Magazine". The board elected Bo as the Editor (of the magazine) and the others were to contribute with articles. It was also decided that the board should meet once a month to discuss articles and layout, this was later on trapped down to one meeting every three months and it would coincide with the packing of the magazine. During the first years we also met to proof read before the finished product was handed over to the printer. During these early years everything was written on a type writer and the printing was done in Halmstad. The main bulk of articles came from Bo, Claes, Bertil and Erik Larsson, Christer was at the time heavily involved with his mail order business and was the financer of the magazine until the membership fee payed the cost. Erik was focused on the Swedish Rock 'n' Roll scene of the Fifties. In the autumn of 1980 Bo-Gunnar Bramborn was elected into the editorial to bring in new ideas and by early 1981 Bertil Gustafsson of Hokhult and Eddie Eriksson of Stockholm joined the staff bringing new fresh blood into the pages. In September the same year Bengt Stenqvist from Herrljunga and Bengt "Boppen" Eklund from Åkersberga was also brought in and by December Bo-Gunnar Bramborn was elected cashier a job he was to hold 'till December 1985 trying his best to bring order into the the clubs economy. "Boppen" had a lot of connections in Finland which was brought out between the pages and this coincidence a lot with his own label actvities. Another talent was Morgan Sjoberg who was to work for the magazine for a long time before his family called upon his duties and he had to make a choice in favor of his kids and wife. By late 1983 Håkan Johansson joined our staff of writers and like Bo-Gunnar he and his wife had all the enthusiasm that kept them going for a couple of years. During the first issues of 1984 we tried to go English with a Swedish and an English version, a try out that nearly killed our economy and the project was abonded after only two issues, mainly because we didn't have the distribution that was called for. In March 1985 the staff had two more names that are familiar with todays readers; Jan Nordstrand, who was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident 1997 and Johan Hasselberg, a full blooded Chuck Berry fan.
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As it is in most clubs like this some people come and some go and we also had a few who left us. By late 1985 the burden had been too much for Bo-Gunnar and he left. Before him several others had left like Bengt Stenqvist, Bertil Gustafsson and Eddie Eriksson. During the 70s Rockhouse Records in Holland was one of the major labels, they also had a rock 'n' roll meeting twice a year and we travelled down to join in on the partys, sometimes with luck, other times things got worse. By 1986 a magazine called American Music Magazine, runned by Johnny Sandberg was bringing up dust. But because of heavy duties with his Sunjay mail order the two magazines joined forces by mid 1987. More people joined and produced top notch articles like Janne Rosenqvist, Erling Larsson, Sauli Nikunen, Birger Nilsson and others. There was a lot of talk of changing the size and name of the magazine and by early 1988 a split decision was made to change the name of the magazine to "AMERICAN MUSIC MAGAZINE", a name we still have today and that's good. In 1989 we began with colour cover and the premier issue was march 1989 which spotted a cool shot of Eddie Cochran. The A5 size with colour front and back was to go on for another two years until the format was changed by 1990 and we went A4 size which gave us a better layout and better opportunities for our advertises.
If you're interested in 50s type of rock and country music
Fax: Swedish code + 463 401 5280 | |||||
