I think some kind of record company interference was mentioned at one point but I can't remember the details. I think he would have released it as a Roine Stolt solo album but he was about to embark on his Flower Kings Revisited tour so he was pressured for the TFK name to appear. Or something like that.
I don't believe it was planned but in retrospect it helped prepare his audience for the Bodin-free TFK that followed with mostly the same musicians.
Last edited by LeFrog; 10-22-2019 at 09:41 AM.
Wasn't it also 25 years from the release of his Flower King album? So maybe they thought it was a good marketing strategy. I mean, otherwise I don't see much of a connection to the original.
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https://www.sonicperspectives.com/fe...e-rider-stolt/
When we, when we spoke last year, you explained that the “Manifesto of an Alchemist” album was credited as Roine Stolt’s The Flower King, largely due to the record label’s request at the time and then you guys went out on the road as The Flower Kings Revisited and now you’re fully called The Flower Kings again. Are these slight variations just semantics as far as you’re concerned, or is it important to you?
No, it’s not the least important to me. To be honest, I simply don’t care. I, I just wanted to make it smooth. I just wanted to not upset people. I just wanted it to work out with the record label and everything. And, I think in reality, this is just another version of the Flower Kings, there’s no doubt about it. It’s not like it’s suddenly Roine Stolt‘s band, it’s The Flower Kings. Hasse is there, Jonas is there. Yes, there’s another drummer. We had many different drummers in the band before. And there’s another keyboard player, yes. But we also had another keyboard player filling in for Tomas. You know, we’ve been to South America, we’ve been to America, we’ve been touring in Europe with another keyboard player before. So I think in some strange way it seems like the music itself just lives on even if changing a few members. And I usually say, Oh, you can probably change every member, including myself! But then someone will protest, Oh no, no, you can’t do it with or without you. And maybe that’s true, but I dunno. In reality, I think every member can be changed. It will sound slightly different. But then again, certain things have to be there maybe to create the specific sound of the band. And I think in particular it’s the vocals. I think the vocals are me and Hasse. So I think even if there was another guitar player, if Hasse‘s and my voices are there, I think it would sound like The Flower Kings. And of course the songwriting part of it.
I think he's just being overly humble or something when he says every member could be replaced. I have my doubts it could still be the Flower Kings without Roine, at least not without a radical change in sound. As we've seen with other bands a band name does not mean a continuity of sound.
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all answered above but yes I think it was done mostly at the record company suggestion. And Roine probably thought this was an OK idea for two reasons. He was going to do a tour and play songs from The Flower King as a celebration of 25year anniversary. (However this morphed more into a tour of TFK classics with less emphasis on the first album.) Also Manifesto now serves as a bookend companion to that first album and closes out that period in TFK history. It started with a solo album and ended with one. Band then re-launched now with Zach and MirkKo.
I get what Roine is saying in that quote above that it is the music above all that matters not so much the personnel. But he must know fans develop attachments to certain lineups and it's not a good look for him to compare Bodin's contributions and history in the band to Robert Engstrand filling in for one tour.
Wow, what a pleasant surprise! Manifesto of an Alchemist is a wonderful album. I think it's better than "Banks of Eden" and "Desolation Rose" both. I've been playing Side 2 of the LP over and over today. I think the album is uniformly excellent, but if I were making a standard 50-minute album, I could easily toss tracks 3 and 10, which are the only two tracks I don't love. Thanks for the music Roine!
Last edited by yesstiles; 11-11-2019 at 08:18 AM.
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