In the world of heavy metal bands tend to often change lineups quite often, and as a metal musician you can end up being in many bands, projects, even solo ventures. So here I'm going to chart the career (so far) of one of my favourite metal musicians, and hopefully next year we can do this again.
Jens Johansson
Brother of Hammerfall drummer Anders, and son of jazz pianist Jan, Jens is probably best known for being the keyboard player in Finnish power metal giants Stratovarius, but he has been in a plethora of bands before ending up there. His love affair with metal began in 1982, when he left the jazz fusion band he was playing in to join Silver Mountain, in which at the time his brother was also playing. Here's a track from their debut album
Shakin' Brains.
They're still around, and have in fact released their fifth album this year, but both the Johansson brothers had left by the time the second album,
Universe was released in 1985. He had then moved to California where he hooked up with Yngwie Malmsteen, who was just beginning to strike out on his own. He stayed with Yngwie for four albums, these being the debut
Rising Force followed in 1985 by
Marching out then the only one I own, 1986's
Trilogy and finishing up with
Odyssey in 1988. He also played on the live 1989 offering,
Trial by Fire. Somehow, in between these albums he also fit a slot on jazzman Erik Borelius's 1988 album
Fantasy.
His next partner in crime was Ronnie James Dio, where he joined the band for Dio's fifth album
Lock up the wolves in 1990
The following year he dipped back into his jazz roots with Jonas Hellborg, with whom in 1989 he had struck up a friendship and partnership. The result was a project called Deadline, and an album called
Dissident. I won't post samples as it's nowhere near metal. That year was not devoid of metal though, as he played on Stephen Ross's
Midnight Drive but the following year was quite diverse, with collaborations with Hellborg on a project called RAF (featuring Frownland's hero, Peter Brotzmann) and an album called mysteriously
Ode to a Tractor (!) which appears to have been some sort of jazz/rock effort, then an experimental thing with his brother, called
Shu-tka before he and Hellborg teamed up again to record an album with rock legend Ginger Baker,
Unseen Rain, as the year came to a close. Oh, and he also managed to fit in an appearance of Shining Path's
No Other World and even an EP on his own, of instrumental music, which he called
Fjäderlösa tvåfotingar.
1993, by comparison, was quiet for Jens, as he only (!) contibuted to two albums, these being another teamup with Anders to record the weird album
E and a slot on Snake Charmer's
Smoke and Mirrors. 1994 was busier for him, with
The Return of Mister Nasty by Dave Nerge's Bulldog, Robert Blennerhed's
Seven. He also played a couple of tracks on Tony McAlpine's
Premonition and even found time to contribute to the tribute album
Smoke on the Water. Oh, and he and Anders released the first of the Johansson Brothers albums, self-titled. He released his second solo instrumental album,
Ten Seasons in 1995 (a very quiet year, by his standards!) but was hard at in again the following year, as we will see in part two, later in the month.