skandinavian_Artists > Lars H.U.G.

Born on September 11 1953 in Sorgenfri as Lars Haagensen. The nickname Hug goes all the way back to his childhood, and it stuck for many years, until he was banned from using that name publicly in the middle of the eighties – then he changed his name to Lars Hugh Uno Grammy alias Lars H.U.G.

Discography: Supertanker (with Kliche 1980), Okay Okay Boys (with Kliche 1982), City Slang (1984), Kysser Himlen Farvel (1987), Kopy (1989), Blidt Over Dig (1992), G.R.E.A.T.E.S.T. (1993), Kiss & Hug From A Happy Boy (1996), Save Me From This Rock`n´Roll (2003). Furthermore, H.U.G. is found on several other publications, both as a musician, a singer and a producer.

Throughout the years where H.U.G. has been a known musician, he has always been one of the most tone setting, respected, experimental and original Danish artists – with a style that goes from new wave and art rock to pop and jazz, and lately he has also demonstrated that he is a classic singer and songwriter. H.U.G. is not only a musician, singer, songwriter and producer – he is also a very fine painter, to whom the visual has always played a big part in music, both in the use of scenography and stage lighting at his concerts, and on his original covers which have always characterized his releases. (The webpage www.larswho.com is devoted to H.U.G.’s work as a painter).

In 1975 Lars H.U.G. started at the Academy of Art in Aarhus where he met the like-minded Johnny Voss. Together with the keyboard player Jens Valo and the drummer Brill, the four guys created the groundbreaking band Kliche, which from the beginning attracted attention with their dogma style and catching music, which was inspired by foreign artists such as Roxy Music, Brian Eno, David Bowie and Kraftwerk rather than the ‘popular’ Danish sound at that time. Part-singing was not allowed and Kliche put a great deal of pride in looking more like working men from a futurist and nuclearpowered factory, rather than looking like the typical rock stars of that time. Kliche had their first live performance in 1978, and that year they were also among the participating bands at a punk festival in Aarhus. This led the band the year after to contribute with two tracks for the first Danish punk and new wave compilation “Pære Punk”, where Kliche definitely stood out as the most striking band in order to make an entire album, not least because of their tone setting version of Chairman Mao’s tribute poem to the revolutionary Chinese militia women called “Militskvinder”.

In 1980 the debut album “Supertanker” was released – produced by the band together with Poul Bruun; still one of Danish rock’s most remarkable pieces, and already by its release it was referred to as a masterpiece and a milestone. “Militskvinder” was the band’s first hit with its strong and catching “bad bab babba di åh” wanted to listen to a good pop song. The debut album was mostly filled with strong and brief lyrics, and more or less cleansed from emotions, as you can hear in the closing track “Masselinien” (again an interpretation of a poem by Mao) where you over and over hear the lines:

Folket og kun folket (People and only the People)
Er drivkraften (Are the driving force)
I skabelsen af verdens historie (In creating the world’s history)

Seeing Kliche perform live was a strong and different experience from that time’s rock scene, because you would have musicians dressed alike in work- or protective suits, and with lighting that would sometimes only be red neon light tubes placed in shopping trolleys. “There are no quite days in Kliche”, a reporter once said in a review of the band.

In 1982 their second album “Okay Okay Boys” was released - Valo had left the band and to take his place
was Nils Torp, and on the producer side the band and Poul Bruun was assisted by Hilly Michaels. On the cover the band was represented by pictograms of men, the kind you would meet at public rest rooms, and characteristically Kliche succeeded in making an entire song without any meaning, just by using the phonetic alphabet:

Bravo Charlie Radio
Omega November Romeo

Those were the first lines in a song, which despite everything was so catchy that all the qualities to make a hit were kept intact. This was the exact same balance that Kliche managed to sustain on tracks such as “Bag De Røde Bjerge”