After recording two albums with Swedish Glamsters Easy Action, guitarist Kee Marcello went the quick way to success by replacing the departed John Norum in Europe and touring in support of their breakthrough album and single ‘The Final Countdown’. Sticking with the band for a further six years, through their ‘Out Of This World’ and ‘Prisoner In Paradise’ albums, Kee made his mark as a writer and guitarist of considerable talent, but as the band ground to a halt in 1993 it seemed the world had changed, and the support for his unique talent was no longer there. After some session work and a solo album in 1995 he all but disappeared off the face of the earth, but as rumours of a Europe reunion began to gain momentum early in the new Millennium, at the last minute he opted-out and is doing his own thing again with power trio K2. With an excellent album and a few live shows under their belts (including one in the UK), I rang his studio in Gothenberg to be treated to an unholy racket at the other end of the line. What the hell was that? "It’s Rock and roll!" chuckles the guitarist, before going on to explain "It’s The Supergroupies from Sweden – a new glam-rock act that I’m producing."

Kee’s first album, ‘Shine On’, was nine years ago – he fills me in on what he’s been up to in the meantime. "Since ‘Shine On’ I didn’t really know what to do for a while, so I went back to what I’ve always done – even before Europe and Easy Action – and that’s producing. I built my own studio here in Gothenburg – I’m sitting in the lounge as we speak – it’s four different studio rooms and offices, so that took a little time and effort. I also started a management company and a publishing company. So I’ve been keeping busy."

‘Melon Demon Divine’ wasn’t his first attempt at getting back into the loop. Kee explains, "In 1998 I felt the urge to do something musically for myself again and I tried to make an album with Mats Olausson (Malmsteen, Ark) – I knew pretty much what I wanted – it was the same thing I wanted ‘Melon Demon Divine’ to be, which was to find a platform where I could incorporate my vocal style, and melodic solo playing – which is a signature for me - with some really heavy riffs and a modern production. There were all kinds of other elements I wanted to put in there – and strong songs of course. The first time I failed – I didn’t get it together because my vocal style has more to do with American singer-songwriter performers I guess than metal – that’s just the kind of voice I happen to have. It was a matter of finding the right mood for the album – which I didn’t manage in ’98. I kept a couple of the songs - and then I was introduced to drummer Snowy Shaw by a producer friend here in Gothenberg – he was raving about Snowy – so I took him to the studio, he played on some tracks and I was thrilled. After that we pretty much talked on the phone every day and it was Snowy who pretty much made me finish off the album – he was the missing link of all this – he created the free, 70’s kind of drumming that was necessary for the songs I had in mind."

With the K2 line-up completed by bassist Klaatu, the new CD is puzzlingly titled ‘Melon Demon Divine’, does that actually mean anything? Kee’s response is unconvincing. "I suppose it started out as a word game with ‘Melon’ and ‘Demon’ symbolizing good and evil, then someone came up with ‘Melon Demon Divine’. This is what the album’s all about, it’s everything from really heavy stuff to very melodic stuff like ‘Coming Home’ and ‘Epic’ – so I suppose it symbolizes the shades of this album as well as my inner battle over which way to go musically, and generally in life."

The direction of the CD is modern but with one foot still in Kee’s melodic past. "Exactly!" he agrees. "I tried to mix the new with the old – but what I’ve been missing a lot from the new stuff these days is the guitar solos – they disappeared from the face of the earth for a while and I think it’s time to bring them back. The melodic guitar solos were a big part of me growing up, musically – and I think a lot of the melody has disappeared from modern metal and hard rock, so I wanted to incorporate all that." Also, the wide variety of music is indicative of Kee’s tastes. "I really like a lot of different music," Marcello states, "it comes only naturally for me to write songs as different as ‘Coming Home’ and ‘E.M.D’ – for me it doesn’t feel like I’m doing two different albums, but I’ve had a little criticism for this – for making an album that’s too…er…shattered, so to speak! Personally I don’t like it when you buy an album and the first track’s great, but the rest is bullshit…basically! I think it’s terrible as a customer to experience this, but it’s very common – the tendency is to write one good song and then make the other eleven sound like that one. I tried to avoid that – I made an album with shades, and ups and downs, so I kinda like the variety of it."

The sound is very layered and complex, with the use of many effects, samples, and loops to create a mood, something that Marcello got into later after the songs had been written. "On things like ‘Raptor’ I wanted a menacing feeling to it," he says. "The song is basically about a human predator and I wanted to create that fear, so all the backwards reverb and stuff were things that came later. I didn’t have these ideas when I wrote it - it was just two riffs – the Led Zeppelin sounding riff and the other single string one. Then I just tried to put in some chords so I could have a melodic solo in the middle, but the rest is just production sounds that I like to put in for spice."

Not something that would be easy to reproduce on the live stage I wouldn’t think? "So far I haven’t been worrying about it," he laughs, "we’ve just been playing it straight-ahead like a power trio. I have a Mackintosh laptop that I put sample programs into and link it to a midi foot keyboard – so I can trigger most of the sounds with my foot. I’ll have to see how that works out – the worst-case scenario is we’ll have to use a fourth guy on stage. There are other things like the riff on ‘E.M.D’, which is the guitar on a string band setting with a wah-wah opening at the same time – it still wasn’t freaky enough so I cut it up into sixteen staccato parts to make it sound like something alien. Stuff like that is necessary to the atmosphere of the song, so I’ll have to figure out a way to make it work live."

Kee vocals are obviously something he’s worked very hard on, and his increased confidence since ‘Shine On’ comes through. He’s grateful for the compliment…"Thank you. I’m definitely better now as a singer. ‘Shine On’ was an experiment – when I did that album I was tired with the hard rock business. Hard rock was at a period where melodic metal had died – or dozed off at least – grunge came along and I was tired of that too. I wanted to do something where I could explore my vocal skills, and that’s what I tried to do. It was a learning curve doing ‘Shine On’ but I’ve found that now I’m doing heavier stuff my voice fits even better and I’m more confident." I pick up on his phrase about metal dying, does he think it’s coming back?

"Let me rephrase that," he corrects. "It didn’t really die – but I remember I was living in L.A. at the time, and more or less overnight all the dudes in black leather and long hair, got their hair cut and started wearing weird t-shirts. It was really scary – it was like a scene from that 50’s science-fiction film with the pod people." ‘Invasion Of The Body Snatchers’ I suggest? "Yeah, that one," he laughs, "it was a scary experience, it really felt like it died. There are a lot of people who still listen to hard rock or melodic metal, but it’s been an underground thing ever since. I like some of the new stuff as well – I like Creed, I really like In Flames – I just appeared on one of their albums – but there are good and bad bands in any new trend. I also see melodic metal coming back – I can see small signs here and there. We played a festival here a couple of weeks ago called Metaltown. There were a lot of melodic metal bands appearing there, so I can only hope…"

"It was great!" he says of the festival. "We didn’t have the best spot – we played at 3.30pm, and the rain was pouring down – but it was the same for everyone playing there. It’s really hazardous to put on festivals at this time of year in Sweden, I think all three major Swedish festivals suffered heavily from rain." Talking of getting soaked at Swedish festivals, I tell him I’ve just got back from Sweden Rock and was surprised that he wasn’t with Europe. It seems that a heavy workload wasn’t the only reason for his non-appearance, it was rumoured that he would join them as a special guest – but it was not to be. "Well, yes I am very busy," he explains. "I have K2 and I have a management company with Sandy Einstein, who used to manage Europe back in the 80’s, and I have my publishing company – but I did the New Years Eve millennium gig. I don’t know if you heard about this, but we actually put the band back together, with both me and John Norum, to do two songs on a TV show on New Year’s Eve 1999. We’ve talked about doing a proper reunion tour ever since - then when we did the Europe Collection CD and DVD in the spring, they talked about doing a studio album. I told them I didn’t want to participate in a studio album because, musically, I want to go in a different kind of direction than the music Europe stands for. They were cool with that – then we talked for a while about doing a six-piece tour – it didn’t turn out that way because of different reasons but now I’m really happy about that. I think it’s really great that the guys are travelling around playing all those songs to a lot of happy fans – I think that’s the important thing for them to do at this point. I’ve been following the internet and there seem to be a lot of real fans who are getting their dreams fulfilled – so I think it’s great."

It’s been well publicised that after returning to Sweden after the ‘Prisoners In Paradise’ tour, some of the Europe guys were hit with ridiculous tax bills – the authorities refused to believe they’d been living in the US and hit them with several years worth of incredible income tax. In this case, wouldn’t the Europe reunion have been financially beneficial to help Kee pay off his debts? He considers the question.

"Well…..yes and no. We did end up with fantastic debts to the taxman – they were claiming we were not living in America or the West Indies as we said that we were – we were in fact! So we had a long battle in court about this for years – and finally in 1997 we lost in the supreme court – that was terrible, we had to re-think our entire lives." The memory is obviously very painful. He continues, "You’re supposed to live on what they call ‘existence minimum’ – you’re allowed to have a stereo and a TV, and a video, but you can’t really go beyond that. I have to say though that the authorities have been pretty good to talk to – they could have been much worse to us – they could have sent someone to come to our places and pick up anything worth any money, which they didn’t. They thought it was enough just to have this terrible, stressful debt on your shoulders – for at least five years we knew we really couldn’t do anything about the situation. Luckily I got rid of that debt five years later, so it’s gone now."

Always considered to be under-rated as a guitarist, Kee made a couple of well-received instructional videos, and was approached about making guitar instrumental albums at the time the genre broke big. Again things didn’t work out as he’d hoped.

"I was actually on my way to doing that and got a fantastic offer from Epic, " he recalls. "It was back in ‘87 or ‘88 when Don Grierson – the head of A & R for Sony – called me to a meeting to discuss recording an instrumental album – he had always wanted me to record ‘Flight Of The Bumblebee’ ever since he saw Europe live. It never happened because I didn’t really have the time – we were still on tour all the time and by the time our tour finished he’d got the sack. I was also asked by Mike Varney, who I know – he has a lot of guitar players like that – but I didn’t think I could do anything to complete the Shrapnel picture – he has a lot of guitar players who already do what he wants them to do. I guess I never found an angle to do something a little differently from what everyone else was doing – I always try to not find an easy way out. At one point Sony wanted me to make an album with Stevie Ray Vaughn, but then Stevie Ray died and no-one ever asked me again."

After the hardships he’s endured in the last few years, no-one can begrudge the fact that even though he may never be the household name he deserves to be, he’s at least busy and very happy to have a full schedule. "Right now – when I finish this project in the studio – K2 are going on tour on the 15th August around Europe and looking at a double bill for Japan – and then we’ll be going in the studio around December and January to record album number two. We’ve already played one gig in the UK but we’ll be over there again soon," he promises.