Ole Dreyer Wogensen has spent a lifetime in music. In the 80s, he started his own record label HUB Records before becoming an A&R for a bigger label. In the 90s, he founded the nightclub Rust and managed bands such as Dizzy Mizz Lizzy before taking on the job of Senior Creative Director at EMI. Through it all, he’s been driven by his love of music that started back when punk was a kid in the late 70s. Back then, Ole would always be carrying his camera around, documenting the community around Copenhagen’s punk and squat scene. He also photographed the bands that he loved: Danish musicians from his own circle of friends—but also International bands that would later be canonized in rock forever. We sat down for coffee with Ole and asked him to tell us some stories about the bands and what life was like back then.
“ADS weren’t afraid of putting on a show. They got the hair idea from the band GBH, I think, and really gave it their all as rock stars. ADS published a single and Stig Pedersen went on to play in DAD. Lars Top-Galia wanted to play in Sort Sol, but it took a couple of years before that happened.
This picture is taken from the Nosferatu Festival, one of the big punk festivals in Denmark. The first one, Concert of the Moment, was basically the Danish punk version of Woodstock. Nosferatu was the next generation. Birthday Party played the first year. It was really well organized and sold out Saltlageret. Saltlageret was located where the Planetarium is today. Planetariet was a gift from a baker whose only demand was that Saltlageret was demolished. When that happened, it also caused some trouble.“
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“Before was Martin Hall’s band. He had already made a name for himself with Ballet Mecanique and people were pretty psyched to see his new band. There’s probably more to the story than I remember, but Before was the opening act for another band in Rockmaskinen in Christiania. It all seemed very sponatanious. As far as I recall, this was their second show and then they opened for New Order in Saltlageret the following week. Before later got signed to Irmgardz and they put on the show. It was magic for that half an hour the show went on.”
“Fritz Fatal was the singer in Before. The whole scene was really progressive. Rockmaskinen would have these punk shows every Saturday. Two or three bands would be playing, you’d find yourself talking to some guy next to you and by the next week, you’d be playing bass with this guy in a new band. As far as I heard, that’s how Before started.
Fritz was from Jutland, which was rare—there weren’t too many punks from Jutland in Copenhagen. He had longer hair, which was also uncommon. I loved photographing him. People were shocked by Fritz. He was a bit like Iggy Pop, dragging the mic along his crotch and stuff like that.
Before was a great band. Fritz was a unique frontman and Martin, Tolle and Michael were great musicians. Not many bands played as well as they did back then.”
“Nick Cave played at Saltlageret after he formed The Bad Seeds. He’d just released the album ‘Kicking against the Pricks.’ Nick Cave was THE poet and THE storyteller at the time. He was a huge name and people really liked how he had developed: here was this Australian punk, playing in The Birthday Party, who moved to London and started a new band.”
“He was fucked up on some kind of drug, but he was great. In my opinion, this was Nick Cave at the top of his game. I still like him, but it’s only gone downhill from that night.”
“The scene had moved away from the punk days by then. This was a real show with security and all. When Nick Cave came, he was a fully-fledged star; it wasn’t like we where hanging out with him afterwards. A star had come to town and we all knew it.”
“City-X was a mix between the two bands City Roots and You-X. I used to take the S-trains with the guys from the band. They lived in Rødovre and I lived in Glostrup. It’s Hans in the picture; today, he runs an IT company.
City-X played hard; they were the Danish Hüsker Du. They were one of the few bands singing in Danish. We were all impressed by that. It’s a shame that they never made the album that they were supposed to make. They did a record album and the singles are great, but not the album.
They were a very well-loved band that a lot of people have fond memories of. They’ve gotten back together a couple of times since then. A couple of years back, they even played Roskilde Festival.”
“This is my old band Gate Crashers. We could draw quite a big crowd back then. We had our rehearsal space at an old farm in the countryside. This picture is taken at Solrød Gymnasium and we’d sold more than a thousand tickets for the show. The other guys came from Solrød and were big in that area. Kenan was the singer and he had this spider necklace—like John Entwistle from The Who. We always had Dannebro as a stage drop. We’d write ‘sick society’ on the flag.
It was a fun time. A high school party where a punk band was the big draw.”
“I went to school with Ib. His name wasn’t actually Ib, but everybody called him that and he ended up changing it legally. His band was called Kalashnikov. I co-produced and released both their single and their album. Originally the band was called Diarré, but they changed the name because it was a terrible name for a band when singer Charlotte Bagge joined. They made a name for themselves and got a big position around Ungdomshuset. Today, Ib’s the director of Muskelsvindfonden. He probably loves this picture.”
“Kliché were massive. Their record came in 1980 and I bought it on the first of May (the release date) that year and had it with me throughout the day. ‘Supertanker’, the album, was something that everybody was really excited about. We waited for months for that record.
The band had a certain expression—very square, but at the same time, there was a lot of aggression in the music. They had an image, with their blue pants and shirts—and then they’d put neon colored tape in different places on stage as well as these four fluorescent lights. In my opinion, ‘Supertanker’ is the best Danish record of all time.”
“Lost Kids made the first Danish punk record, but one could argue that they weren’t really punks to begin with. Every time they played in Copenhagen, they’d leave in tar and feathers. People didn’t like them here. Their songs were just Danish versions of British punk songs. The punks in Copenhagen would sing the English lyrics when they played. This photo is taken at some May 1st concert. As you can see, there isn’t too big of a crowd. This was after their second album, when they were completely dead and gone. Nobody took them seriously.”
“New Order played a show for the one-year anniversary of Ian Curtis’ suicide, as I remember it. They only had one single out, ‘Ceremony,’ which is originally a Joy Division song. So nobody knew what to expect. We didn’t really know how any bands looked back then (they weren’t on TV and we didn’t have the Internet).”
“Then, they just stood there on stage, not moving at all. People really liked the music, even though they were standing completely still. Well, Peter Hook went a bit wild, but I’ve always played the bass myself, so I tend to like the bass players. They played exactly 45 minutes as their contract stated.”
“The Ramones played at Odd Fellow Palæet in Central Copenhagen. It was 1980, so I had already been listening to them for four years, but it was really cool they came. They sold 3.000 tickets. It’s Johnny Ramone in the picture.
It was all just a big party. Back then, The Ramones weren’t mainstream. The played all the old stuff from the early Sire years, the cool stuff from the first three records. It’s weird to see Ramones T-shirts in H&M now. Band T-shirts weren’t even available back then.”
“Siouxsie and The Banshees were one of the few succesful bands with at female singer. They had some really good songs and a completely different sound to all the other bands at the time. On this tour, Robert Smith from The Cure was on guitar. The Cure had just released ‘Three Imaginary Boys’ and cancelled a concert a month before.”
“Siouxsie was a fashion icon. After she came on to the scene, all the girls dressed like her, wearing nylon stockings as T-shirts and putting on heavy black make up. We all loved her.”
“Sort Sol had just changed their name from Sods to Sort Sol. Sods’ second album was called ‘Under en Sort Sol’ and soon after, they had to play in Berlin. For that, they needed a Danish name or something like that. They weren’t big at the time outside of Punk / art crowds. They didn’t get airplay or anything like that.”
“Stiff Little Fingers were a very political band. They had songs like ‘Alternative Ulster’ about the conflict in Northern Ireland. At the time, Northern Ireland was in a civil war, and when I visited London I remember IRA bombs going off and street riots in Brixton. I saw them half a year ago, and they’ve aged well.”
“The Jam were bigger than The Beatles in the U.K., but they never really took off in Denmark. They broke many sales records set by The Beatles: at one point they had seven singles in the top ten in the U.K. Because they didn’t have a fanbase here, it took a while for them to come and play in Denmark. This photo is from the first time they came after releasing their fourth album.
The Jam was a punk band that got more mellow as time passed. Poul Weller, who’s in the photo, was very influenced by The Who and got wild on stage, but the other guys just looked like taxi drivers.”
“Hans was the lead singer of War of Destruction. They came from Aarhus but were respected here in Copenhagen. They were a pure-breed punk band that took their influence from The Sex Pistols, with heavier music.”
“I don’t go to punk shows anymore. The scene hasn’t moved on—it seems like the punk scene is stuck. I can never relieve the shows I’ve seen. I like that the youth has a culture, but it’s not for me anymore. If Í was to show up at Mayhem, they’d probably think I was an undercover cop.”
