CORNERSTONE

1. Tell me about the history of the group and your
influences

It was in November 1997, we just ended the Paradox tour with Royal
Hunt, at that point I felt it was a natural progress to me , to start working on something slightly different from Royal Hunt , so I took a closer look on some of the material I had been writing through the years, but it didn’t really suit the idea I had. I wanted to make a classic, melodic and  song oriented album, so I actually started from scratch and spend 2 to 3 months writing on the arrival album. At that point I asked Allan Sørensen and Jacob Kjaer ( Royal Hunt ) if they
wanted to join me in the studio, to record all the basic tracks, and
they were cool about it, and I must say I’m really pleased with the result of there work. Unfortunately I had to stop the recordings, due to the recordings of the Fear album so the whole process was delayed until autumn 1999, where I was ready to continue, meanwhile my manager has been in contact with Dougie White and send the raw materiel to him, and he was ready to join in on the project, which pleased me a lot, cuz he was exactly the guy I was looking for. I have to say ,that we really had a great time recording the album, Dougie flew in to Copenhagen very well prepared ,and he really made the songs come alive, giving them his own personal touch. The very first time I heard Dougie , was in 1995 on a japanese promotour
with Royal Hunt, we were driving in Tokyo and out of the speakers came a new Rainbow song” Ariel ” I think , and he blew me away, here was a really classic British hard rock singer. The songwriting on the Cornerstone album were mainly influenced by some of my old favourite bands like Deep Purple, Queensryche And Saga.

2. How did you sign with Massacre Records  ?

Well when all of the recordings were done, we shipped some promo
samples to record companies around the world, and Massacre were actually responding fast, which surprised me a lot, because they have a lot of the harder stuff on their label, but so far they have done an excellent job for Cornerstone.

3. You have a new CD , tell me about it

Its a melodic and songoriented hard rock album with roots in the
Seventees way of thinking and making music I guess, it was my intention from the beginning to make strong vocal lines and build the arrangements around the vocals.The album has a storyline or theme about the beginning of life, if you imagine the first reptile/man  that leaves the sea and walk on land, how difficult it is for him to adopt here, and then take him through life, with all the good and bad things that happens to us.

4. What is the feedback from the media until now?

I must say I have been overwhelmed by the press and radio feedback we
Have received here in Europe, everyone has been extremely possitive and surprised about the album, I think they expected something different from us, which was actually my intentions with this album.

5. MP3 – Music , who is the good and  the bad guy ?

Difficult question, on one hand you have a lot of opportunities to
Promote yourself on the net, but on the other hand I really don’t like the ” freedom”to get what ever music you like, and don’t pay for it, and I really think the problem is getting bigger each day.

6. What is your opinion about the reunions from hard
rock bands from the 80’s (Poison , Great White , ..)

I don’t have any problems with that, if they have anything to contribute with, and there’s a market for them, I’m cool once a musician always a musician.

7. Any plans for promoting your CD?

The last 2 months has been promotion with interviews and radio shows,
And Massacre is working on getting us a support tour in Europe right now.