Gösta Sundqvist - a Finnish rock musician few got to know really well

Surviving members of Leevi and the Leavings remember their dear departed mythical leader

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By Jussi Ahlroth
     
      Gösta Sundqvist would not have liked this kind of fuss. The beloved songwriter of Leevi and the Leavings, who died a year ago, never liked to be a centre of attention.
      "Gösta probably would have laughed if he had known that the announcement of his death was read out on the country’s main news broadcast. He was always of the view that no statues should be dedicated to him, and that he was just an ordinary guy", says bassist Risto Paananen, who played with Leevi and the Leavings from its very beginning - a total of 25 years. After a moment’s reflection he adds: "Actually, he wasn’t all that ordinary."
     
Not ordinary indeed: Gösta was the soft-voiced man who sang touching songs about a rainbow that ends at a grill kiosk, the joys of home electronics, and a boy named Päivi. They reveal an embarrassingly familiar Finnishness in music that resonates with a full knowledge of the traditions of pop. And Finnishness was no longer embarrassing - it was enchanting.
      Gösta’s songs are already the common property of all Finns, and everyone recognises the picture of the bearded, round-faced man. Few know the man himself.
      That is exactly how Gösta wanted it.
     
The members of Leevi and the Leavings are certainly the right ones to answer those who ask what Gösta was really like. On the other hand, it is not an easy question to answer.
      "What’s the point of knowing what he was like?" asks Paananen. Guitarist Juha Karastie says a moment later that he was fair and steadfast. "A damned good guy", adds drummer Niklas Nylund.
      It is not easy to describe Gösta with any more precision. Should they talk about their friend - something which in itself would be difficult - or of the image of Gösta, which he built himself, and which we all know in our own way?
      Even Risto Paananen, who knew Gösta from the late 1970s, seems to fluctuate between the man and the myth.
     
Gösta was a very perplexing person. During the 25 Leavings years he toyed with his public image and laughed at the cliches of the entertainment world. He often said that he is perpetrating his own "rock’n’roll swindle".
      Gösta’s original idea was that the members of the Leavings would never have revealed their true identities.
      The band’s legendary refusal to play gigs, its avoidance of the media, its tendency to confound expectations, and its general habit of resistance were all part pf Gösta’s boyish game. And naturally there were the songs, which make the listeners unsure of whether they should laugh or cry.
     
Gösta would hoodwink journalists in a benevolent manner.
      "They were all as fictitious as the song lyrics and radio programmes", Nylund says, commenting on the many strange answers that Gösta gave in the few interviews that he ever granted.
      However, Gösta also carefully followed what people wrote about the group in the press, and was very happy about the positive feedback that he received. He put a high priority on how his music is seen and remembered.
     
Gösta was a man from Helsinki who liked the Finnish language, salami, and television. He was shy, but plain speaking.
      His life was filled by football, Leevi and the Leavings, and making radio programmes. He also had enough time to collect model cars, go on camping trips, and frequent the cinema. He also worked on a doctoral thesis in theology on Martin Luther - or at least that is what the man once said to a couple of journalists. He also worked briefly as a caretaker and a house painter.
      "Gösta’s dad had a construction company where he worked. Then he got so much work on the radio and elsewhere that he hardly had enough time to do anything there. I don’t know exactly when he gave up his regular day job. We never asked him", Karastie says.
      Gösta was very productive. Sometimes he would stay awake for days writing texts that would come "out of both ears", as Paananen puts it. "He had many irons in the fire all the time. It took lots of creativity to do all that, and to produce a two-hour radio programme once a week. Imagine - every week."
      Roo Ketvel, who interviewed Gösta for a book in 1989, described how he would begin his sentences with a main clause, move on to a subordinate clause, which might have no more than a tangential relationship with the main clause, and follow it with another sentence that would elaborate on the subject matter of the subordinate clause of the previous sentence. He would speak for minutes on end, and answer additional questions put to him by his own mind.
      The band members of the Leavings remember how one of their ears would be red and sweaty after talking to Gösta on the telephone - sometimes two hours at a time.
     
Gösta’s working methods were very demanding of both himself and those who worked with him. This was necessary if the melodies and words that would play in his head were to be condensed into songs and stories. He referred to his role as an eternal leader as his "personal tragedy".
      "He found it terribly difficult to share responsibility with others, because if he had done that, he would not have been able to put his signature on the final result", Paananen explains.
      "There was a joke that if you were playing, and felt the rhythm in a way that made your feet tap to the tune, you would need to put weights on your feet", Karastie laughs. "I think it must have been hard for Gösta to keep up that leadership thing to the very end", he says, taking a more serious tone.
     
The rock swindle was perhaps Gösta’s way of having fun when everything was just entertainment. However, he always wrote his stories from the depths of his heart. He felt that his most important mission was to record something that was a significant part of the age. The band says with one voice that Gösta never wanted his material to make anyone feel really bad, although he did enjoy it when "the grandmothers whined" about his lyrics.
      He often got the ideas for his lyrics from the city streets. Karastie describes how Gösta would spend weekends where he would simply walk in the city with his friends and look around. "That is where he would collect his material."
     
And those songs of Gösta - they were about us. He would see our amusing little foibles, and was able to turn even tragic victims into sympathetic bumblers. Such things are not easily forgotten.
      The surviving members of Leevi and the Leavings know that they were involved in creating a permanent chapter in the history of Finnish light music. Their voices reveal gratitude - even respect - toward Gösta.
      "His song Pohjois-Karjala ("North Karelia") could be a new national anthem", Karastie ponders. "Nobody but a Finn could understand that ‘I would pay off my child support with a lottery coupon’ feeling."
      Thank you Gösta. Someone will make that statue of you some day.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 28.8.2004
     
Two memorial concerts for Gösta Sundqvist were arranged as part of the Helsinki Festival. Both events, on August 30 and 31, were sold out.


Links:
  Leevi and the Leavings Lyrics Page (lyrics in Finnish)
  Leevi and the Leavings (in Finnish)

JUSSI AHLROTH / Helsingin Sanomat
jussi.ahlroth@hs.fi