OPETH's MIKAEL ÅKERFELDT: How I Got Into Vinyl Record Collecting

In a recent interview with The Vinyl Hunters, Mikael Åkerfeldt of Swedish progressive metallers OPETH talked about his love of vinyl and record collecting. He said in part (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): " I think I started collecting music more than a format. I'm born in 1974. And I didn't really have money growing up, so we would borrow — my circle of friends were borrowing records. Somebody bought the new [JUDAS] PRIEST record and the rest of us would tape it; we would record it on to tape. And I bought some record and my friends would tape it. So that was like a collecting thing, just to have lots of music. That's still the most important thing to me, to surround myself with music. Then, of course, I've grown fond of the format, the vinyl format. And when I was young, of course, that's all it was, and cassettes. I started, I think, more seriously starting collecting once the CDs came out in the late '80s, because people were throwing vinyl out — literally. You could find it in the garbage bin, like entire record collections. I went down to a garbage bin, [and I found the] whole DEEP PURPLE discography, and it's, like, 'Oh my god.' So I bought CDs, but I always preferred LPs, and to this day, that's basically the only format I use. So that's how I kinda started collecting. In the late '80s, I could go into a secondhand record shop and pick up a VAN DER GRAAF [GENERATOR] record for a pound. And I didn't have any money, but I did have like the equivalent of a pound. So you could take a chance on stuff. And, of course, I bought a lot of shit records, but also a lot of really good records."

Mikael previously talked about his record collection in an interview with Prog magazine. He said: "I've always been a collector at heart — I collected 'Star Wars' figures when I was a kid, I collected anything, and so it was just in my blood. I discovered some of the original wave of prog bands through my record collecting in the early '90s. I was working at a guitar store at the time. In the early '90s, everyone was taking their vinyl into stores to exchange for CDs. I was compensating for not being able to buy records. When I was a kid I was piss poor. You got one record for Christmas, one for your birthday and maybe one for Easter. But now I had a job and some money.

He continued: "I'd never liked CDs. In fact, the first CD I bought was 'Dirt' by ALICE IN CHAINS, and that was pretty late, wasn't it? So I was into vinyl and there were a lot of great record stores in Stockholm and you could pick up a lot of records there for about three pounds each. So I was looking at these records and looking at the pictures on the sleeves, looking for bands that looked like BLACK SABBATH, basically. If they had the flares and beards and the record was from 1971 or 1972, that was what I wanted. I found a record by YES and thought it looked cool, and then GENESIS and KING CRIMSON and so on, records that looked odd and I could afford. That was where it all started."

OPETH will release its 14th studio album, "The Last Will And Testament", on November 22 via Reigning Phoenix Music/Moderbolaget.