5 hours ago
7
Slouched on a sofa in a former cement factory in Stockholm, Viagra Boys’ Swedish-American frontman and lyricist Sebastian Murphy is recalling a low point in his life, several years ago. He points to a tattoo on his heavily inked torso that sums it up. “It says ‘You need me’,” he explains in a tobacco-stained California burr. “When I did this tattoo, I was such a piece-of-shit drug addict who only cared about himself. I thought it was funny. I don’t need you guys – you need me.” It inspired You N33d Me, one of the best tracks on the sax-blasting post-punk band’s electrifying, sort-of-self-titled fourth album Viagr Aboys. Hooked on amphetamines, pills and Valium at various points in his past, Murphy has been, by his own admission, the last person anybody needed around.
But the strongest thing Murphy is consuming when we meet on a recent Thursday afternoon is black coffee. We’re in the lair of Shrimptech Enterprises, the independent label and umbrella company for the Swedish band’s increasingly hectic operations: they’ve gradually climbed out of the toilet circuit over the last decade, and business is booming. This is where Viagra Boys write and record, design merch and poster art, all six members punching in for regular hours most weekdays. Our chat is soundtracked by the insistent chime of a piano being tuned. Here, Murphy is a cog in an increasingly smooth-running machine.
Born in the small city of San Rafael, California, to an American father and a Swedish mother, Murphy’s upbringing was strict. “They were very obsessed with healthy foods,” he says. “I never drank soda, didn’t watch TV, all that stuff was kind of banned.” Would it be fair to say the rest of his life has been a reaction against that? “It really has.”
A bored, unruly skater kid in his teens, Murphy began drinking and stealing from his parents to buy whatever drugs he could get his hands on. He was arrested for the first time aged 15 and was in rehab for drug addiction by 17. In an initially successful bid to get sober, Murphy then moved to Stockholm to live with his aunt and ended up staying. He dropped out of high school and became a tattooist, but sobriety didn’t last, especially after rock’n’roll, he says, “swept me off my feet”.
The other Viagra Boys, Stockholm punk scene veterans, recruited Murphy after seeing him sing a Mariah Carey song drunk at karaoke. He had never been in a proper band and felt out of his depth, but he pressed on with the attitude of: “OK, rock’n’roll, let’s go. Let’s do this until we’re dead. I maybe thought that would come sooner than later.”
Viagra Boys’ 2018 debut single Sports was an addictively funny satire of hypermasculinity (their name drew from similar inspiration); their debut album Street Worms, released that year, railed against Sweden’s growing rightwing populism with wit and muscle. But the band’s steady rise has been built chiefly on relentless, riotous touring. Murphy, shirtless and tracksuit-trousered, stokes the crowd into rising levels of derangement – at their 2023 Glastonbury set, someone in the crowd was tossing their toddler into the air – as saxophone player Oskar Carls writhes around the stage in outrageously short shorts.
In an uptight world, a group dedicated to getting loose like this – so loose Murphy has the word tattooed on his forehead in Swedish – has major appeal: last year Viagra Boys played US arenas supporting Queens of the Stone Age. Their biggest world tour yet began this month at Coachella and will end 60 dates later at London’s Alexandra Palace. Murphy surmises that a lot of the fans “are just freaks, you know. Freaks recognise freaks. It’s freeing for a lot of people to see some dude that has clearly no muscles and is just letting his gut hang out have a good time.”
There was a time when Murphy wouldn’t get on stage without taking amphetamines first. But as his bandmates started having kids and settling down, the pace had to slow to remain sustainable. Murphy credits bassist and de facto bandleader Henrik “Benke” Höckert with gradually tightening things up. “I would always be so pissed off at him if he decided to stay sober for a tour,” Murphy says. “I was busy with doing drugs and thinking about myself; he was busy planning shit. Making it work as a viable source of income. Which would not be possible if we were fucked up every day.”
At the same time, the crippling hangovers and attendant anxiety started to become too much. “I still know how to party for sure,” says Murphy. “But I definitely know my limits now.” Drugs will never be entirely off the menu – “I can’t really help it when I’m on tour,” he admits – but these days he mostly sticks to beer (just the 30 or so a week). He goes to the gym and plays squash to try to stay in shape. He’s even stopped getting tattoos because he says he can’t take the pain any more. “These days if I stub my toe I’ll be crying for a week.”
In 2021, the band’s founding guitarist Benjamin Vallé died aged 47, shaking them all hard. They supported each other through the loss: where some men struggle to discuss difficult emotions, Viagra Boys have no such problem. “We talk to each other about everything,” says Murphy. I ask him if a newfound respect for death prompting him to change his lifestyle. He prefers to think of it as not wasting a good thing. “I’ve got a great fiancee, I’ve got an apartment,” he says. “I can afford things. Life is really easy and really good. I don’t want to fuck it up.”
His visual artist fiancee Moa Romanova, who did the artwork for their third album, 2022’s Cave World, has a studio next door to Shrimptech. At one point she drops in with their dog Uno – both are subjects of songs on Viagr Aboys. Uno II is a strange tale of conspiratorial anxiety seen through the eyes of an Italian greyhound with chronic dental problems. River King is a piano ballad in which Murphy croons with charming imperfection about Chinese takeaways and calming domesticity. It’s a disarmingly gentle end to the album: have Viagra Boys finally gone soft? Murphy smiles a gold-toothed grin. “We’ve always been soft. That’s been the problem all along.”
