There are fantastic possibilities in our modern world of today. For instance, to be able to write a totally authentic autobiography on Internet..... I have always been a little bit disappointed when I have read other biographies, either so polished by professional proof readers and censorship, or written by a professional writer based on interviews, and adjusted so that the publisher can sell as many books as possible. My English language is of course not as good as my native Swedish, and therefore this biography will probably include grammatical mistakes, but honestly, I don´t care whatsoever!  This is MY autobiography, and therefore MY mistakes should be part of it. I hope you don´t mind, and I also hope that you will enjoy reading it. The work will grow slowly, but it will be truthful and honest!

My first memory from childhood was when I was three years old. I remember having a horrible nightmare about a spider at least one meter in diameter, and I just jumped out of bed and ran to my mother. Not a very nice first memory of life...but at least a very clear one! I also remember my neighbor Stella, a little girl my age, and I remember us running around in my garden at Svitiodsvägen 4 in Djursholm, a beautiful garden full of apples, pears, cherries, raspberries and gooseberries. In the garden there was also a hut that my two elder brothers had built together with their friends, but Stella and I were too young and not allowed to go in to the hut. I can not really tell if my childhood was happy or not, but I suppose it was a mixture. I had energy like no one else I was told, and my parents had problems with me, as I never wanted to go to sleep. I was completely manic about pencil drawings, and I used to sit up in bed making drawing after drawing,  mainly pictures of ice hockey players.
But I was also a very sensitive child having very very close to tears, and my first day at the nursery school was a complete disaster. I felt very shy indeed, and even with the teacher trying to help me out giving me paper and pen, I just could not get myself to make a decent drawing, only a line going over the paper without a plan whatsoever. A little guy by the name Christer glanced at the drawing and started to laugh. He screamed out so that everyone heard: - What a terribly ugly drawing you have made! I immediately started to cry, and the rest of the day I was just sitting in a corner waiting for my parents to pick me up. The next day I refused to go, and I never ever went to nursery school again. That was the first time I realized that there were people without empathy, and in a way I am glad that I found out so early...I have met many people like Christer since, and even if I always feel icecold when meeting someone like that, I know vaguely how to act to avoid getting hurt by them....
A couple of weeks later my parents bought a black Newfoundland dog, which was the sweetest thing I had ever seen. Stella did not go to nursery school either, so together she and I had our own little world in our garden, together with our dog Sasja.

There was really no music in our house, other than Elvis Presley, who my older sister constantly listened to. However, we were neighbors with my mothers uncle,  doctor Clarence Crafoord, world famous for performing the first successful aortic coarctation repair ever, back in 1944. Clarence was an amateur violinist and had some friends that he used to play string quartet together with. One day when I was 5 years old I sneaked in to the room where they played and listened silently to a whole Beethoven quartet. When they had finished I told them loud and enthusiastic: -Now it is my turn to play!
I don´t remember this story myself, but my relatives always use it to describe how my musical career started. The truth however, was that it was not until I turned seven that my interest in music started, and this was certainly not through classical music:
We used to spend the summers at the beautiful island Bohus-Malmön on the west coast of Sweden, and there they had a tent cinema where they showed the Beatles film Help. I was far too young to even get in to see the film, but my two elder brothers managed to smuggle me in from behind, and the enthusiasm that I felt from this extraordinary film saw no limits. I was completely mad about the Beatles and particularly Ringo Star, and all autumn 1965 I was making drawings of Ringo, John, Paul and George. I begged my parents for a drum, and after initially buying me drumsticks that I played on everything that came in my way I finally got a little snare drum as a Christmas present. I was in heaven!!!

As I said before I was always overly filled with energy, and if I could not find anything good to use it on I got rather frustrated and naughty. Summer 1966 my father was ill, and had to stay in hospital in Stockholm with my mother, while aunt Siggan took care of us kids at the summer island Bohus Malmön. Siggan and I never really got on well...she did not like my long hair, and insisted on washing it with cold water every evening. Without having the permission I always left the house on my own to go and play with much older kids, and I even had some very strange love affairs with 12-13 year old girls. This is also when I got in contact with cigarettes, something that I thought was incredibly cool and exciting. I had a very naughty friend called Per, who stole cigarettes from his mother every day, and we smoked like chimneys. Coming home from the summer vacations I was of course eager to show my friends Palle and Jocke and Paasi my new discovery, and in the forest almost every day we smoked cigarettes building up a stupid and dangerous addiction, an addiction that will stay with me for the rest of my life. Not long after we started this hooligan habits my mother started to find out, and even if I was incredibly good at hiding bad behaviour and bad consciousness with my big innocent blue eyes, she started to get worried about me. My parents decided I should start in music school to study the drums properly. I started to take lessons, and my teacher put me in a military band playing Sousa marches. I found it almost unbearable, and asked mother if I could quit. We went to the teacher who suggested that I tried a melodic instrument, since he thought I seemed to have some musical talent. He gave me a trumpet, and again placed me in the military band. This was possibly even worse actually, as the band was not particularly good, and to play the same part as two other trumpeters who  had not tuned beforehand was something of the worst I had ever experienced in my life so far. Eventually I asked my mother kindly if I could please quit. The teacher begged, saying that he  had never met such a talented student, but my mother approved and let me give the trumpet up. I was now around 10 years old, and my great hobbies were cigarettes, girls, soccer and being a hooligan. Why on earth these destructive hobbies??? Well, I believe there was an explanation:

I sometimes wonder how important various specific incidents are for if a person becomes a hooligan or not. I have a tendency, like Dalai Lama, to believe that human beings are born good, but by hurting each other we bring in evilness to the world, and that evilness in turn will be passed on from one person to another leading to all the misery in our confused world.  Aunt Siggan´s behaviour obviously triggered bad things inside of me, as did Berit Olsson something good and beautiful. If she had not been so warmhearted on my first day in school, if I then had experienced the same ice cold lack of empathy as in nursery school, what would then have happened the first years in school?? I was lucky at that point of my life, but later on, in my fourth school year it was time again to meet the ice cold and true evilness, like the guy in nursery school: It was my new schoolteacher! The first thing he said to me when I met his cold eyes and shook hands was: "I take for granted that you will cut that ugly hair you have. This kind of hair is not accepted in my classroom". I remember the ice cold feeling I got inside my body, but managed to keep calm and cool. I had already made up my mind not to give in, and loose to a looser like him, like I did in nursery school to Christer! I let my hair grow even longer, but the price was extremely high. He started on a daily bases to penalize me, and we had a clear ongoing war between the two of us, all ending up in a discussions with the head of the school. A poor little boy student has of course no chance whatsoever against a teacher employed by the head of school, and the end result was that they took the decision to move me to another class, as that might teach me to "become a proper human being" as they said. My quick and direct response was loud and clear so they really understood who stood in front of them: "I am already a proper human being thank you!!" Now, being a grownup, I can easily see the link between this idiotic grownup behaviour and my wish as a child to revolt against it and become a hooligan!

I thought, by not being confronted anymore with my great enemy wanting me to cut my hair, that life would get easier. No way! The new teacher turned out to be even worse! A retired military general who decided to become a school teacher was to become my next challenge in life, a man who obviously hated this little Beatles figure with blond hair and blue eyes even more than the previous teacher. It was not easy to meet completely new classmates and to find a way to get accepted, but as I new I was good at drawing I took the chance in the drawing class to work energetic and with enthusiasm. I was making drawing after drawing, and the teacher  came to my desk to look. He choose one of the drawings  and showed to the class. I felt YES! Now everyone will be impressed, BUT! This is what he said:

- Look here, what our messy little newcomer has done! Christian! Never ever make a complete drawing without showing it to me and get it approved, Here you have made one silly drawing after the other, and that way you are making no progress whatsoever. Shame on you!

Instead of helping me get accepted in the class he made me feel completely stripped naked, and my chances of being approved by testing classmates were much smaller after this.  But even worse, I completely lost my biggest interest: since that day I have not made one single drawing or painting, except for the ones I was forced to do in school.

 Summer at Mollösund