Red Hot Max in person

A black Pontiac crossing the sidewalk and the guitar pick that always lingers  in my jeans pocket hit a home run in the groin. It’s him! Red Hot Max! The guitar Guru and rock legend that you only see on stage in his red jacket and red Telecaster. by Lars Krantz

I start the old man two step against the car.
– But hello b-b-b-b waiiit!
(It’s ok to act neardy when you’re a journalist.)

The Pontiac neals  softly and stops fifty meters away along the cruising street in Rättvik. We are in the midst of the world’s best week with the world’s best weather, week 31 and Classic Car Week. I arrive without breathing and trying to snort something urbane while the camera swings around the neck.

– You may want to jump in and rest, says Max and suddenly I ride in the car with one of Sweden’s best rock-and-roll artists.

Star Red Hot Max I saw on Gotland’s biggest stage 2003  in thirty thousand watts.

I took a picture from 50 meters away where he and his band backed  Wanda Jackson and where each step was followed by dual super trouper spots.

Today he was  Mats Alvar Olsson around lunch with half a tank of gas in the  Bonneville. Vacation. Shorts and dusty mosquito destroyers as we call the shoes.  Stubble and dirty car. He and daughter Emi Olsson 15 in gliding flight with the Bonneville from 1962 and I begin to shoot. Mats objects.

But shouldn’t we  take this another time. It has been raining in the night and the car is …
– Dirty cars are the finest, I lie with the eye in the viewfinder.
I have the big shark in the boat and do not intend to release it back into the see, and believe that I will get the same push another day.

Emi is a very pleasant acquaintance.

The girl is bright. She likes  old Volvos and Corvette C6, knows about the old music, and is sharp looking.

That’s how you lower a vinyl convertible. Fifteen years and knowing the drill.

We open the hood and precisely there, in the heat and the perfume of 20W-50 from the 389-gun  Mats begins to tell.

I am a mechanical engineer and has been a car tech in my entire life. I run a shop. Olsson’s Auto Repair in Östhammar and has always driven American cars.

Periodically, Mats has played full time but cars have always been there. The guy is a greaser! Many musicians take pictures on album covers with cool American cars but  Mats has been swerving and riding in them in for a lifetime. Honest American iron that just goes and goes. Red Hot Max is for  real.

When we toured in  83-89 we had a  Suburban -68 V8. I bought it from the county detention center in Örebro, a prisoner transport with bars and wire lock.

Red Hot Max pulled  his double-stop licks in the evenings and tuned the Chevy for milage in  the days. New dual-port Carter Carburetor was purchased, he turned up the ignition advantage  and injected water into  the air cleaner.

Tip from star musician and mechanic who runs his own workshop.

Forget those fancy battery shoes with the green knob. They ask only to fuss.

This I have always done. A round rod on an M8: a long nut on the nergative.

Old, proven, easy, safe.

The four barrel on the Bonneville from 1962, he has recently been handed over to  The Carguys for complete renovation.
– Same price as  for a new Edelbrock only better, he confirms and continues
Edelbrock is a general compromise that should work on most engines. Original Carter is custom built from factory for the car model and model year, there is nothing like that.

Under the hood it’s cleaned out from polishing rags and bling-bling. Instead, it smells old real deal CAR,  or as Mats puts it.
-No damn zip ties

The Yanks can say what they want about their praised  GTO’s.  Bonneville was the car  of the Pontiac division that pushed up the brand to third place in the sixties sales. In Sweden we love the real men size and the characteristic fronts.

This is a real Yankee car for many Swedes. No floor shifter, lying speedo, six feet seven dashboard and a bench.  Let’s go cruizi’n.

The Bonneville from  1962 he bought in 2007 from ES Cars in Stallarholmen. Under the floor is a four speed automatic, yep the Hydramatic provides the car with that worthy accelerating rhythm.

Bonneville  was put into series production in 1957. This is the third generation in 1961 – 1964. The Bonneville was the most luxurious and often had power steering, air conditioning and power windows. Bonneville also had more powerful engines with anything from 303 to 340 horses.

 

-These are built of steel, the world’s most perfect materials. Heated up to 1.800 F , it becomes a dough that can be shaped infinity. When it cools, it is hard and can be drilled, welded, sawed, bent and hardened. If you put it out there it returns to nature as rust. Perfect, said Mats Olsson.

Mats thinks we are finished and closes the hood.

– You kept your line with the music, I throw out and the guitar pic spins three turns in my  pocket.

-WHAT!

-Y-you played the same. During the eighties digital dunk you caused riots in the Netherlands with your straight fifties music

He comes closer and becomes serious.

– Hey, the music took me into a different world, you know. I was a  teenager, listening to Wanda Jackson. “Let’s have a party” became a big hit and it was locked on the target.

Yes, it was very Chall-la-la-la-la and disco hairstyles for a while but it was not for me.

He continues:

The Rock-And-role did go hot in the sixties to slow down but then came Sha-na-na in the 70s and Shakin Steven’s and there and then it blossomed again.

He smiles, playing air guitar and I suck in the grip from the master. That grip! That sits in his sleep. That’s how you hold a Fender Telecaster in the solo to Jitterbugginbaby.

Texas nineties: You are playing without the pianist tonight, just so you know.

-In 1981 we released the first album, the LP “The thrilling sound of hot Rock-a-billy” with Red Hot Max and the Cats. Then we toured full time. In the nineties we were abroad and in Texas it was sold outIn Sweden we had Per-Erik Jonsson at the piano. In the US, we had Alex Downing or Big Al as he was known. A giant afro american at two meters (six feet seven)  and 350 pounds. Alexander, Big Al, Downings family could not afford shoes to school in Oklahoma when he was a child.

He found a piano on a garbage tip and began to mimic Fats Domino. His self-taught piano has been called a gift from God. He was directly linked to the gown origin. Big Al died at  65.

Back to  Texas and Red Hot Max story:
Out came an organizer ina  cowboy hat and pointed at Alex when we rehearsed in the day.
-You Are playing without a pianist tonight, he told me ice cold. There was nothing to discuss. Remember. We  talk the  nineties.

Alex became a good friend. He was on several tours in the nineties and was over here in the late nineties. He was the real deal with a drive directly linked to the fifties.

Alex was the generator that helped start the new music wave “back then”. It was a privilege to play with him.

Picture taken at the home of the Red Hot Max shortly before Al passed away in 2005. In his arms, Emi Olsson.

– The millennium  brought a new wave and when Wanda Jackson toured in Sweden, we became her backing band and I got to back up my former teen idol.

He starts the car and thinks we’re done. Then I throw myself into the backseat. They look at me. Mats releases the brake..

Why are you here at Classic Car Week?
He signals right and the Hydramatic does it’s  giant jump between the second and third. The answer is loaded with must and saturation.

I want to show my gratitude to America

– Our generations western world is changing. Its peak is about to level off. I would like, together with like-minded, to show my gratitude to the previous generations.

I am grateful for the mechanical revolution beginning in 1850.

A revolution that wouldn’t have been possible without America as a locomotive.

 

“I am grateful for the American youth revolution in the fifties and sixties when everything we live today was formed.”

– I want to go here, share this with like minded people and add something by my old Pontiac, says the man who gave us his living music for half a century!

Mats, Red Hot Max, Alvar Olsson, it is we who should be thanking you for your amazing bridging legacy as the music style can continue to prosper into the future.