Today it's 20 years since I went to my first hard rock concert.

The concert was with Europe on the 2nd leg of the Final Countdown tour 1986 and they didn't have any support act. It was just them doing their gig. It lasted an hour before they left stage to come back for the encore. 75 mins in all. Today I would have been very disapointed but there and then I was in heaven. John Norum made this brilliant solo and I went home informing my mom that I urgently needed to learn how to play guitar. Of course I did the initial 10 lessons but as it was boring as hell (me at 13 and the rest old ladies in their 50s) and we were only learning campfire songs (Bridge Over Troubled Water and that kinda stuff) I decided it was not for me. I had the music sheets for Rock The Night with me and I said I wanted to know how to play it and the teacher (a young man) played it, note by note, making it sound yet like another campfire song. Depressing - no less. Anyway, I went to the concert at the Icehall in Malmö with my friend Ann-Louise and we had seats on the right wing. I never really had seats after that. You need to be standing in front of the fence to really feel the music beating thru your bones... I didn't know that then. I've seen some 100s shows after that. Not with Europe though. That concert was the only one I saw with them until Sweden Rock Festival 2004. (not completly true as my friend Daniela would tell me, I did see Europe with Kee Marcello on guitars in 1992 I believe. John has just finished recording Face The Truth and my excuse for being there was to ask Joey to sing "We'll Be Strong" for me. Something I almost got kicked out for... I was wearing my John Norum Total Control sweatshirt and my Total Control t-shirt and simply being a John Norum fan among the enemies, or at least that's how I felt). Anyway - big day today! Needs to be celebrated! I also need to say THANK YOU to my mom for letting me go to all those shows in Malmö, Lund and Copenhagen. I know now it wasn't easy to have your teenager on the loose in the capital of sins (that would be Copenhagen) but she trusted me and I never disapointed her. I didn't drink and I never talked to strangers (now, musicians are friends, hardly strangers), I didn't smoke nor tried drugs. All I wanted was to go to the concert and get high on the guitarsolos. I remember crying on a pay phone cause I wasn't let in backstage or crying on the very same pay phone cause I had been backstage. I always made calls. And those were the days before cell phones. One of the best calls I ever made to my mom was from UK when I just had met Kiss for the very first time (I was 19 at the time) and she asked me where I was and I said "London, England" and she asked me where exactly and I said "don't know" and I really had no clue but I was happy and I told her not to worry and now I'd met Paul Stanley so I could die happy... Not somthing you wanna hear from your teenage daughter somewhere in London!! Love you mom!