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Interview with
JESPER BINZER
from
D-A-D

(1st May 2025)

Interview with Zac Main

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Zac: Welcome back to another interview. I’m Zac from Amnplify and I’m here with Jesper from D-A-D, straight out of Copenhagen. Can you give us a little bit of a description of yourself?
Jesper: Okay. I am a man in my best age. So that means I’m 59, turning 60 in way too short a time. I’m the lead singer of D-A-D and I… Many people call me immature. I would call myself a searcher. So yeah, that’s me.

Zac: That’s a good description. My first question for tonight is—or tonight for me, midday for you—you’ve been fronting D-A-D since the very beginning. What keeps the fire alive in you after all these years?
Jesper: I mean, it’s a good question. First of all, all four of us feel that we ended up on some kind of lucky shelf in life. So we’re just, first of all, thankful, you know, to play music, to be creative. But there have been certain places in D-A-D’s career that have shaped us. One being that changing styles or changing approach—or insisting that our music evolve with us. Like, our first two albums were country punk, and we were wearing cowboy hats, and we had hay on the stage—haystacks on the stage.
We had a lot of fun, but we didn’t really have the blues. But then when we turned 21 or 22, we felt the blues. And we changed the music, changed the whole story of D-A-D into a more hard-rocking band. And that paid off in droves. I mean, we didn’t know what we were doing—we definitely lost some old fans, there were a lot of old fans that got a little mad—but we needed to do this shift. And it paid off so well. So that experience made us keep evolving with ourselves, even though we became older, less up to date or whatever.
Nevertheless, we just insisted on being artists and using our lives. I think the chance to use this—to play music as a diary, use this as a way of being in the world, as a way of re-describing or answering questions about life now, even when you’re older—I think that’s the main reason for us to keep on going. It feels like we’re opening up new books every day when we’re composing or looking at our life as the artistic part of our life.

Zac: The band has evolved a lot over time. How do you balance staying true to your roots while still keeping things fresh and exciting?
Jesper: I think that’s what we’re trying to do, of course—but I’d rather cut off roots than not be fresh and exciting. There’ve been a couple of times we’ve done some left turns—you could even feel it in sales, in reviews and stuff like that. You could feel, “okay, alright.” But we’d rather use our freedom a little too much than a little too little, actually.And I think we’ve been so f***ing lucky that we have this home turf audience. Whenever it wasn’t going so great abroad, internationally, we always had the Danish/Scandinavian fans. So we’ve kept the dialogue going.

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Zac: I’ve heard from a lot of people that D-A-D’s live shows are kind of legendary. What can Australian fans expect from your upcoming tour when you come down here?
Jesper: Okay, well first of all, it’s really, really down-to-earth rock and roll. And rock and roll in the sense that they do not feel… Like for instance, another famous band—there’s nothing that swings as good as AC/DC. But sometimes you get a little irritated by those childish lyrics, especially after Angus wrote the whole thing. So sometimes you feel like, “these lyrics are for kids, please.” D-A-D— we’ve got the swing, but the lyrics are for grownups. No, that’s a really good way to put it. I’ll give you that. I like that a lot.

Zac: For a band that’s been going strong for decades, how do you approach building a setlist that keeps both new and old fans excited?
Jesper: First of all, we need a little bit to keep ourselves excited, yeah. So we have to have new songs on the setlist. Everybody—including us, including me—goes to concerts wanting to hear the old stuff, relive where we first heard it, blah blah blah. But as artists and a band, we need to have a couple of new songs to keep the blood at a certain level. It’s important. It’s like a setlist: two for the fans, one for us, two for the fans, one for us. But of course we are—we were brought up and born out of punk rock. So we’re not here to please.
We’re always trying to find out what is not the slickest way of doing it. It doesn’t have to be slick. Doesn’t have to be pleasing. It has to have a little thorn. So that’s part of making a setlist as well. But we’re suckers—the community of being with the live audience. We’re just as much suckers for a good time as anybody else. So we try to balance that out. And sometimes you succeed, and definitely sometimes you fail. And then again, I mean, with this whole—we’re an old band. This whole digital thing, people are really longing and hungry for something real, something here and now. The good thing, and the forgiving thing, about the here and now is that you’re quickly—you’re down the line quick. So if there’s a bad choice in a live show, it turns out to be a good choice, because then the dynamic is there and then you top it off with a couple of hits. And so, when people say, “ugh, it’s a new song,” then the hits feel so much sweeter. I mean, if you could do a setlist purely off what you want to play, what would you play?
We came out of punk—it’s more or less what we’re playing. There’s a couple of songs we maybe need to play where I’d say, maybe it would be healthier for my artistic soul to leave them out, but it’s healthy for my human soul to have this community going and to have a good time. So it’s more or less what we’re playing is definitely our favorite. I mean, some of the songs aren’t even singles. Some of them are just because we feel the good… Maybe that’s part of the longevity as well—the thing that you play a set and you try to maybe educate the audience a little bit. So next time they accept you for who you are. And then you’re not like hollowing out yourself.
So there’s some kind of self-respect. We’re definitely playing more or less the setlist—our own dream setlist, of course.

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Zac: How do you personally stay inspired outside of music? Like are there any books, films, or art that are inspiring you.
Jesper: I think funnily enough, I feel inspired by still being in doubt about what is life, and what is love, and what are we doing here. Instead of becoming too sure of everything—I think that’s what I started off calling myself immature, because I’m still looking around like a little kid for emotions and reasons and why. What’s going on, kind of thing. That’s what’s keeping… human life is definitely keeping me inspired. Also, rock and roll is not like heavy philosophy in that sense. So that part of me that’s asking “why” all the time really needs to have a good time also. So it keeps me inspired to be forced to have a good time. I have to force myself to—okay, we’re here to entertain also. Not all your deep, banal thoughts, Jesper—have a good time as well.

Zac: That’s always good—to have a good time. I mean, how can you enjoy something if you’re not having a good time? Have you got any advice for younger artists trying to build long-term careers in music?
Jesper: Oh yeah. I mean, don’t get me started.

Zac: I’m trying to get you started!
Jesper: I can mansplain from here to Australia. The thing is, you need to have a little thing that sets you apart. You really have to be—and what I’m saying is you have to be original.And sometimes people don’t know what original is. Because some bands say, “as long as I feel content, as long as I get goosebumps from my own music, then we settle.” No. On top of that, you need to have something that sets you apart visually, or sound-wise, or whatever. You need to have some kind of pointy image that gets people interested. It’s very important that you don’t get—what’s the word?—that you put your head up your own ass. You need to be aware that you are in a dialogue and you’re trying to communicate. That’s the big part of it: to communicate. And you do that by putting it out there, so to speak.

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Zac: That’s really good advice. One of the last questions—what can fans expect from D-A-D in the future? Any new projects in the works? Is the analysis side going to happen?
Jesper: Yeah. I mean, this summer is going to be great because first of all, we’re starting off in Australia. So that’s like… And then we’ve got some—for us—big things like the Bakken Festival, Sweden Rock Festival, a big festival in Finland, Hellfest in France, and Alcatraz in Belgium. Big, old, respectful festivals are calling and we’re definitely coming. So it’s going to be a step up for us. And then, of course—I mean, last Friday the 12th, on Record Store Day—we released a live album from a hometown gig. And it went straight to number one, and we’re pretty proud of it. It sounds great. It’s two and a half hours of music on four vinyls. It’s crazy. It’s stupid. But it’s a very local release. Anyway, we’re proud of that as well. So we’re trying to bring some of that magic out there too.

Zac: That sounds awesome. Four vinyls just from one gig?
Jesper: Exactly. It’s stupid and overmatched, but still—on the other hand, nobody’s really done it. So we said, “Wow, let’s do it. While the record company still believes in us.”

Zac: One of the last questions—though you’ve toured all around the world, what’s been one of the realest crowds you’ve seen?
Jesper: First of all, I mean… People are the same. Let’s start with that.And then you’ve got some rock towns and rock countries where you feel a little more at home. Also, you feel more at home with maybe a rock club crowd—like we actually do in Australia—where there’s a tight dialogue. Maybe that’s why I feel like things could really happen. But of course, playing those big, big, big festivals—we played for like 410,000 people in Czechoslovakia, and we’ve played the Wacken Festival, which is like 80,000 people—it’s a big, big experience. More on the adrenaline, maybe, than on the art. I think that, you know, to have a dialogue with a rock club audience is maybe where we were born—and here it comes—it’s where we want to die as well.

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Follow D-A-D
Website – Facebook – Instagram

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Press Release 3rd December 2024 (below) HERE

D-A-D
announce May 2025
Greatest Hits Australian Tour

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AMNPLIFY – DB