Dregen (the guy who looks kind of like Nikki Sixx) was an important part of the early Hellacopters, the best Hellacopters. Somewhere along the line, Dregen split for the Backyard Babies. I don’t know exactly why this happened and it’s a great mystery to me.
Whereas BB is nothing but a big dog and pony show (dig all the tattoos and weird hairstyles, man), disguising a mostly poppy, dare I say almost hair-metally pile of mush, The Hellas were always the real deal (even post-Dregen).
Why would ol’ Dregen wanna leave The Hellacopters for the vastly inferior Backyard Babies?
Honestly, one of the biggest problems I have with Pandora is it has always tried feeding me the Backyard Babies and, again, you can’t fool me. I know the difference.
Compare BB’s version of “Star War” (probably the best BB song I’ve ever heard):
to the pumped, locked and loaded version by Supershit 666 (half of the Hellas, with Nicke and Dregen, so this counts). S666 even had the courtesy to call this “Star War Jr.” which is ridiculous. Feel free to do the boogie-woogie:
Case closed! Though the story I’m gleaning is that Supershit666 said, “Fuck it all,” while Backyard Babies said, “Maybe we can hit while doing what we do.”
There is distance, but it isn’t that far away.
The question I have is why Dregen chose the Backyard Babies rather than the Hellacopters. I know the Babies were his hometown friends.
I think you’re generally right about everything here. The hometown friends thing makes a lot of sense. Besides, the Babies still exist and the Hellacopters don’t; that’s a good reason to be in the Babies right there.
And it seems these Swedish guys are all friends, head Hellacopter Nicke Andersson amongst the friendliest. Wish he’d be my friend.
Noticed there’s another Nicke in Backyard Babies. Cool baby boy name not used here in America. Tell your daughters.