Description
Odd Fredrik "Fezza" Ellingsen (born April 27, 1955 in Borge, Lofoten. Raised in Bodø) is a multi-instrumentalist, record producer, composer, historian, etc. He is primarily known as a natural talent on the guitar, and on everything from acoustic classical guitar to electric. The range from classical music to heavy is one of his hallmarks.
For a short period at the end of 1972, he was in Bodø's first heavy band, April Morning. Early in 1973, Fezza started as a roadie for the Hammerfest band St. Helena. Here he was eventually allowed to play flute, piccolo, rhythm instruments and vocals. They wrote the songs themselves and were described as heavy in the media, but called their style "chamber rock". After they disbanded, Ellingsen settled in his hometown of Bodø and brought Willy Bendiksen and Bjørn Haldorsen from the now disbanded St. Helena, and they started the band Foppen, with Fezza on guitar. They did a few local concerts before changing their name to St. Helena in April and moving to Oslo in May, to pursue a career. Haldorsen decided to return to Bodø shortly afterwards. In Oslo, the new St. Helena played at the Kalvøya Festival and they made a demo recording before the band disbanded again. A recording that was released on LP in 1991 (and reissued on CD several times, most recently in the Norwegian Album Classics series).
After St. Helena had become history, Fezza joined the space rock band Akasha in the winter of 1975. He was active here until the spring of 1975. It only lasted a short while before an opportunity opened up to join the well-established band Høst in June 1975. A short time later, several members of that band left, which led to Willy Bendiksen and Halvdan Nedrejord, with whom Ellingsen had played in St. Helena, also becoming members of Høst.
As it is, they tour extensively and they record Hardt mot hardt . An album that is considered by many to be Norway's first and best heavy album (and has been reissued many times, most recently in the Norwegian Albumklassikere series). Of the eight songs, seven are signed by Fezza. With it came his definitive breakthrough as a composer and lyricist. Despite the album's strong performances and reviews that declared the band to be geniuses, commercial success failed to materialize. This led to a dispute with the record company, which refused to release their third album. A compromise was reached and two songs from Hardt mot hardt , and songs from their first album as well as some unreleased songs were created. Extra! Extra! .
But in March 1977, Fezza took his guitar and moved on.
Ellingsen and Nedrejord collaborated from 1977 to 1980 as a duo, where they used Sami music as a starting point for their music. They created music for use in films, theater, record releases and the like. for, among others, the newly established Sami radio, Tanabreddens Ungdom and Piera Balto. A career Nedrejord continued in combination with being an organist.
Balder was an Oslo band sometime in the late 1970s and included several fellow musicians from Akasha, among others. It was probably a precursor to the FF (fortissimo/fezza files) Orchestra (1982-83) and later the Balder Quartet (1988). Balder's opera is a rock opera that Ellingsen wrote about Balder's death, from 1977 to 2022. It was to be performed with a symphony orchestra, choir and soloists. Unfortunately, this project collapsed and was never realized. Already here Fezza shows that he had big plans and was not afraid to think "big". Getting such an opera financed and organized had not been done in Norway at that time and would have been groundbreaking.
In the early 1980s he returned home to Bodø. Shortly afterwards his new project, Nemo, debuted. They had a concert in September 1981 entitled Autumn space night . Then a demo the following year. Here we find Arve Heløy in collaboration with a number of locally and nationally known musicians. Song material from this time can be found on several of Løvetann's albums. With the solo project Kaptein Nemo, he received in 1981 an offer to be included on a compilation album from the English company Ebony with "Dies Illa". (A song Fezza Ellingsen Løvetann has later made two versions of.) Due to financial reasons, this offer was never realized. Instead, he made a demo called Snow Star in 1982, which has not yet been published.
After this, a new FF Orchestra was established in December 1982. They performed several concerts before being reduced to a trio in the summer of 1983 and disbanding during the fall of 1983. Since the summer of 1983, Ellingsen had also played in Cobra, which was one of the most established dance bands in Norway. This collaboration ended in the fall of 1984 after about 50 concerts. In the winter/spring of 1984, Ellingsen was involved in the group The Bohemians (aka Bohemene). They did a school tour based on Orwell's dystopian novel 1984. From late autumn 1984 to Easter 1985 he also played in La Bohéme.
In late autumn 1987, he and Heløy gave a musical lecture on the history of the guitar, which they toured with. It was called From Kitharas to Les Paul , is the same title as Fezza's doctoral thesis from 1997. In the summer of 1988, Ellingsen helped start a new band; the Balder Quartet. Once again, Heløy was part of the crew. According to a local newspaper report on the occasion of playing around Salten, they described their music as "...mixed entertainment music that is easy to listen to." In another report, they described the group as a summer band. By that, they meant that they would play in the summers in the future. During this period and well into the 1990s, Ellingsen was not very active on the concert front. On the other hand, he used the time to further develop the Balder opera, music based on Jules Verne's Captain Nemo , a guitar history school program and a requiem.
After a period of music studies, he joined the dance band Matchbox from Gildeskål, 1991-92. At the same time, Fezza composes music for upcoming releases and performances. In addition, he is active in MIRA, an academy for the restoration and construction of musical instruments. He is also involved in Marmorkompaniet(sus), a company that constructed speaker cabinets in marble from Fauske, with Seas speakers. In 1994, RaBalder appears, which turns out to be a musical precursor to what will become Fezza Ellingsen Løvetann, with its mixture of classical music, rock and opera. Here Heløy is involved, in addition to a rhythm section that was taken from the local funk rock band Fresh Fruit.
In the fall of 1998, Løvetann started up, and made their debut album in 1999. From the very beginning, you can hear the echo of Fezza's long career and many sources of inspiration. The band consists of the four who would make all the albums. We have already encountered Heløy as a fellow musician/vocalist in a number of band projects. Heløy also has a long career behind him from classical guitar and as a folk singer, solo and in several groups. Harald Olaussen has a background in several progressive and more straight rock bands, and a period in Blues Basement. Bård Toftebakk has a background in the reggae band Irie Darlings, prog rock, more straight rock and the trash metal band Garlikde`th. Like Fezza, all three others had a considerable musical capital from both countless concerts and recordings to show for it. Productive as they are, two albums will be released with them during 1999. First One day as a lion , then In the Lion's Den . Like all their upcoming releases, they came as CD-Rs and were released on Løwe Records, which was Fezza's record label, in 100 copies. All were produced by Are Simonsen in Hønsehuset studio in collaboration with the entire band, except for The Times, which was created in Store studio. All compositions on the albums were composed by Fezza Ellingsen. He used the music to set texts and poems by a number of authors, with DH Lawrence appearing as a writer on several of the albums. On In the lion's den You can also notice the song "Cattle Show", which is a song from Fezza's time in Akasha. Both of these albums were pressed as a double LP in Sweden on Research Records in 2002 as Fezza Ellingsen Dandelion: One Day As A Lion/ In The Lion's Den . The print run was 300.
copies and the release was mostly for an international market, hence the band name and titles in English.
In 2000, the third and fourth albums came in the form of Face to face and Sphinx . While the local press was a bit divided about their third album, they all agreed that the fourth was the band's best album to date. The plan now was for Research Records to release the third and fourth as another double vinyl LP. Unfortunately, that did not happen. Test pressings of the third and fourth albums on vinyl exist. Unfortunately, the prime mover for this project, Torbjörn 'Tobbe' Hedström (1968-2011), passed away before the project had even begun.
After their fifth album An eye for an eye came in 2001, Fezza told a newspaper interview that they would release another album during 2001. After that, they would do a kind of Best of album, based on the fans' favorite songs. Then they would consider the course to follow. Ellingsen explains this process as follows; "I have about thirty songs that are connected. Therefore, it feels natural to see the releases in context and set a time frame for them." In late autumn 2001, their sixth album came Lionheart out. Here we find "Shivas Dans" one of several songs with the band, where the text is signed Tor-Jonny Hansen (1953-97). A text that Hansen won a poetry competition with. In February 2002 they are in the studio and recording two new songs. They join A scent of roses, which came in the spring of 2002.
The rest of the album featured some songs from the first six albums.
On November 14, 2003, the band finally had their debut concert. It took place on the legendary club stage at Sinus in Bodø. At that, they opened with the songs that were intended to fill their upcoming album. Bird phoenix and then they played the songs that, based on experience, are what the audience wanted to hear, including the song "Sjøfareren", as well as two songs, "Natt på havet" and "Storebror Suite", which were performed at that concert. A third song, "Skipper Graaes ballade", was completed in Hønsehuset studio. These three songs are included in this box as the ninth album. The two remaining songs, "Gyldenløve" and "Alene", will be recorded in 2025 in Store Studio, under the band name Blåtann. On the occasion of the 2003 concert, Fezza told the local press that "There is no commercial thought behind what we do. We are happy when we have enough sales and orders to cover the expenses."
The fall of 2002 came Bird phoenix out. In December 2002, Fezza Ellingsen Løvetann finally gets some credit for their music and career in the form of a cultural grant from Bodø Municipality. After this, things are quiet until their second concert at Sinus takes place on Christmas Day 2004. Fezza tells the media that the song "Storebror ser deg" from their next album will open the concert, based on Orwell's novel 1984. At this concert Jøran Johnsen is also in the band. The album was titled Gyldenløve , but was never completed and thus not released. On January 7, 2005, they played at a benefit concert for tsunami victims at Rock Cafe in Bodø, which for a long time seemed to be their last concert. Surprisingly, on November 29, 2013, they performed at Sinus' anniversary celebrations. This was their last concert.
Ellingsen has a cand.mag. in art and cultural history, a master's degree in musicology and studied musicology at the University of Agder. He completed the latter with a doctoral thesis in 1997 on the history, development and technology of the guitar. This thesis was published in 2014 as From Kithara to Les Paul . The latter was the band's last album The Times recorded and attached. On that occasion they were called Fezza Ellingsen Dandelion and the quartet was expanded with Bjørn Haldorsen from the Foppen and St. Helena era. The contents of The Times is, according to the thesis, "...the practical part of the program. It aims to reflect the theoretical part." Thus, this album is different from the previous ones, as it contains songs that include everything from folk, country, classical, rock, jazz, metal and avant-garde. This was released as a separate CD-R without the thesis in April 2013, before it was included the following year in the aforementioned thesis. After this, there were no new releases.
The box contains the following albums:
In the Lion's Den (1999)
A Day as a Lion (1999)
Face to Face (2000)
Sphinx (2000)
Lionheart (2001)
A Scent of Roses (2002)
An Eye for an Eye (2001)
Phoenix Bird (2003)
Golden Lion (2004/2024) - unreleased
The Times (2013)
Live Sinus Bodø 2003 – unreleased