This is how the song came about: “Mania”

If Halvor Holter and Tarjei van Ravens had followed the most conservative traditions of songwriting, Mania might never have become a big hit for Babel Fish. Fortunately, they dared to trust their own creative convictions; with old and new instruments, a double-digit number of chords and a few completely original words that you won't find in any dictionary.

Text: Kai Lofthus

When I think back to my years as a music journalist in the 90s, Babel Fish will always stand out as a band that was fun to meet and watch progress. I interviewed them in 1998 for Billboard (and they easily understood that it was cool for me that they wrote a greeting in my edition of Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, where the so-called Babel Fish appears) and two years later I met them by chance in the SAS lounge at Newark to take the same flight back to Oslo. They really excited most people, and played around Europe with the Corrs and Barenaked Ladies, as well as gigantic festivals like Rock Am Ring and Rock Im Park. Mania is still so unique and good that to this day I can walk into a room and suddenly forget what I was supposed to be doing there, but at the same time have no problem remembering how that song goes.

Inventive text writing
It was Halvor Holter, the band's keyboardist, who composed the melody, including using a double-digit number of chords.

“It thus breaks the rule that a hit can only contain four chords,” says the keyboardist. He adds that they received a lot of praise for the lyrics abroad. Just as Adams was an inventive writer, Holter and bandmate/guitarist Tarjei van Ravens, who helped complete the lyrics, came up with charming phrases like “insania” and “invainia.” “

– Maybe it's an example of how sometimes it can be an advantage not to write in your own mother tongue, Holter continues with a twinkle in his eye. The master tape was created in close collaboration with publisher and producer Kai Robøle at Waterfall Music, with whom the band signed a contract in 1995 when they were called Daily Planet. Grovskissen was first made in Waterfall's old studio in Toftesgate, and then recording continued in Waterfall's then studio in the so-called Sjokoladefabrikken near Grünerløkka/Rodeløkka.

After signing with Atlantic Records, the song was re-recorded at Bearsville Studios in Woodstock and mixed at Chung King in Manhattan. But how did the spark for the song come about?

Feeling for a hit
We had just had our first radio hit (with Light of Day in 1996) and got blood on the teeth, says Holter about the composition. He continues, – At the time, Oasis had a huge hit with Wonderwall, and I was inspired by the drive of that song and wrote the main outline for the verse and chorus in one evening. I presented this to the rest of the guys in the band and we then spent a few days finding the final song structure, creating the instrumental hook and so on. I had a very special experience with this song, and thought that it could be a hit, but that it needed a short and catchy title. The night I was thinking about the song title, a Beatles documentary was humming on the TV in the background. There was constant reference to Beatlemania. Mania! That was what the song was going to be called. Then Tarjei and I finished writing the lyrics together.

Holter adds that the demo version had two verses, while the finished version has three, but that the basic elements are otherwise the same.

During the recording, the band and Robøle decided to sharpen the musical expression by combining old and new, says Holter:

– We mixed live drums and loops, classic keyboards like Rhodes, piano and Hammond with newer synths like Nordlead, plus Tremolo guitars, vox-amp and Mellotron. We cultivated choruses as part of the sound, as all four band members sing.

Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/track/1kNYtVbgjO4EgDUWNBdT7c
Wimp: https://play.wimpmusic.com/search/babel%20fish%20mania
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/no/album/babel-fish/id272487773