Q: Terry, I’d first like to ask about your motivations: what is the motive power behind your work, and why music?
A: Well, to answer the last question first. The music chose me; l didn’t choose the music. The motivation and the motive power is that this is something I just have to do. The motive power is the need to create and bring forward what l feel inside. To put music and words to the emotions and passion l have inside me, but also as a result of what’s happening around me. Anyway, as an experienced composer and songwriter l also write music because it is my profession, and just have to do it, regardless of if l have the inspiration or not. Several of my songs which I’m very satisfied with has been written because of self-discipline, often at a time when going to my studio was an ordeal. However, every now and then l get the urge to do music and simply have to run into my studio. l can have three and even four session in my studio in one day.

Q: To what extent has modern studio technology affected the way you work? I mean computers, digital solutions, samplers etc.
A: I have my own studio with most of the modern facilities you mention. It’s a great help: I can do my first demo recordings on my own; I can easily record and try out things - - put on drums and bass and see if it works in the way I hear it in my head. I can easily record and send a demo to my producer, for example. However, I write most of my music sitting at the piano or with the guitar, whether I’m in the studio or not. My whole education and training as a composer and a songwriter was done without any recording facilities whatsoever. It was the “old” way: just my self an instrument, and a notebook. Anyway, since the technology is there l certainly use it, and there have been some cases where a certain sound or drum beat gave the inspiration for a new song. That’s just fine.

Q: When will your new record be released?
A: I am planning to release an album within the next two years. In the mean time, especially during the coming year, I shall use most of my time to sell songs, and write new ones, of course. After years of productions, some of my songs are ready and mature enough to leave dad. I might miss some of them, but I know I will meet most of them again, performed by other artists, and that’s a privilege.

Q: What about the Internet? Do you think it will change the music industry a lot?
A. It already has change the industry a little bit. I just released a song on the MP3.Com my self. I will also present some of my music on my own site. The Internet represents an entire world of new possibilities for artist and their audience. However, as a songwriter and an artist I think that in order to have all your Interest covered, you still have to release your work in the traditional way. The future will, however, bring several of new and interesting solutions to distribute one’s work over the Internet.

Q: You also do instrumental music. You do pop songs, and you are a lyricist. I also know that you are writing a novel and a children’s book. Tell me a little bit of what’s going on in the head of a man like you? What’s a typical day for you?
A. My days are not very steady, not very predictable. There’s too much going on all the time. However, from time to time I have my very creative periods. That’s usually when I’m just hanging around, walking in the woods: I let the calm in, and let it out again, as music and words in my studio or in front of the computer. Such periods can be an ordeal when they last very long. The creativity can be so intense that it wears me out. Anyway, that’s the way it is for any artist working seriously, I guess. “In pain the woman gives birth to her baby”. In other periods when I am working less intensively, or I’m doing some business for example, I also compose music and do writing, but my “soul” is more disturbed, so the process is incomplete. Many of the ideas created at that time I must catch up with later on.

Q: Tell me a little bit about your lyrics. What do you write about?
A. It could be anything. In most songs most, however, I’m more interested in getting a good sound, projecting a good feeling from the song, than telling a curtain message. English is a wonderful language for a lyricist, and I am looking for good words and rhymes that fit in well with the melody, the melody that is in the words themselves.

Q: What about the world situation today? Does it affect you and your work?
A. It affects me a lot. I am very interested in world affairs, in art, in most things. It is hard for me to see so much going wrong in today’s modern societies, and to see that the politicians and even many of the critics and intellectuals do not discover the real reason for the trouble, so the solutions provided, if any, mostly have no affect at all, and in many way are ridiculous. In my point of view , modern civilisation faces the threat of self-destruction. Remember, we are the only civilisation that has not gone under yet. We think that our modern facilities and knowledge make us different and better than the other civilisations. That is a big lie, and a very dangerous attitude. The fundamental rules of life are the same as always. That’s why so much goes to hell this days, because we have broken too many of those rules.

Q: You are not too optimistic of the future?
A. No, I’m afraid. This does not mean that I see no hope; I am a positive person who never gives up. But I also knows that the threat today is a world-wide web of intrigue, hidden in the shade, that is very difficult to discover, both for the layman and the leaders of the nations and the intellectuals. I don’t mean of course that anything that we are now talking about is easy to solve. Not at all. If you ask me how to solve today’s problems, I’m in trouble! However, I am sure that we need a new political agenda in all political camps to place ourselves back on a healthy road. What we need today is nations with happy and healthy people, without stress, living sensible lives, in love, with time for their children and themselves. Did you know that the English word “happy” actually is a derivation of the Norse word “happ” which means luck or chance. However; my claim is that nobody’s happiness, nor that of any nation, is the result of luck. To be truly happy, to succeed and have progress in your life in a healthy way, which provides prosperity, a good marriage, children raised in a healthy environment, having your dreams realised in the right way, as a part of the whole, not at the expense of it and others, is a result of choices, the right ones.

Q: Are you a religious person?
A. It’s depend what you mean about religious person.

Q: Do you read the Bible?
A. I would like to answer as Bob Dylan did in an interview with him that I read this autumn: “Doesn’t everybody do that”? I am not religious in the sense that I run around as a spiritual guy. I am a rather down to earth kind of guy. However, I do believe in God. An intelligent spirit or power, if you wish, behind it all, a good power. Dr. Thor Heyerdahl explains this very beautifully in his book “Adam”: ”When you watch the trunk of a banana tree and that of the orange tree, they look rather similar, but the fruits they carry are so different. I don’t think it is a coincidence when you throw a few million molecules up in the air and they land again as a butterfly”. What’s makes the Bible very special to me, is the Gospel about Jesus Christ. Humanity then entered the age of mercy. He is a guy who represent a solution to everything, who is the way to God and to the eternal Kingdom. This does not mean, however, that one can walk through life without problems or ordeals. I think life is complicated no matter how much you believe in God and try to live by the commandment’s and the words spoken by Christ. Being without faith however, not being in touch with the spiritual, eternal sphere, would not be natural to me, and would leave me with a very empty and lost feeling. I must stress that I don’t feel worthy many times. There are so many people living much more straight than I. On the other hand, I can not judge my own life according to what others do. I am who I am, and I do my best, although I wish it could be better sometimes. U2`s Bono once said that he found a lot of comfort in the Psalms. I recognised myself a lot in that statement. I have also wondered many times why people from the western Christian world search, with or without drugs, to foreign religions in the East, before they know their own religion. It’s a bit like leaving your wife before you even meet her.

Q: I understand. Anyway, who are your heroes?
A. Winston Spencer Churchill and the explorer and scientist Dr. Thor Heyerdahl. I could mention several others - - artist, authors, filmmakers and others, but those two mean something special to me. They also represents to me features of man kind which I admire a lot.

Q: You seem to be a patient man. Is that so?
A. Yes and no! When I was younger I was certainly not patient at all, and still I like action, things happening, something going on all the time. However, I am more calm know, and definitively more patient when it comes to my work. Thing takes time, and one must work with one thing at a time. I am looking forward very much to my album, but I don’t rush. What makes it most difficult to be patient now is having to wait to go on tour again. That will be wonderful.

Q: When will that be?
A. As soon as possible after my album release.

Q: Terry; thank you for your time, and good luck in your future endeavours.
A. Thanks.