When Jonas Fjeld visited Ole Paus at Drammen hospital on Monday evening, Paus was not in particularly good shape. He died just a few hours later. – It was actually expected. He had lost his speech and become partially paralyzed. Ole Paus without speech and in a wheelchair – that’s wrong, says Jonas Fjeld. He says that he did not have much contact with his friend before he pulled out the guitar. – Then I played a song called “Nedover elva”. Then came his tears. And mine. On Thursday, he performed the same song in the afternoon broadcast for news Buskerud on P1, together with Hans Cato Kristiansen and Finn Tore Tokle. A clearly affected Jonas Fjeld tells about the passing of his friend Ole Paus, and how he touched Paus with a song the night before he passed away. Photo: Anders Haualand / news From Finnskogen to the charts The story of their collaboration is not only one of the most successful in Norwegian music history, it is also a story of a friendship that extended far beyond the studio and stage. “To rustne herrer” became both a record title and what they called themselves with their traveling show. There was still little rust in the machinery, the dynamic between them was great, both under and beyond the stage lights. They met for the first time in 1974. Fjeld played for “plattingdans” at Finnskogen and in between his five sessions Paus was supposed to entertain. – And around midnight it was quite consonant on the plating there, Fjeld said when the two visited “Lindmo” a few years ago. – I went on stage and sang a song about alcoholism and one about homosexuality, said Paus. And that was that. They became friends. Ole Paus and Jonas Fjeld at the Studentersamfundet in Trondheim in 1983. Photo: Fotogjängen.Samfundet.no Fjeld’s career saved by Paus But it wasn’t like they immediately became a duo, even if they became comrades. They continued their careers on different sides, until Fjeld struggled to make it happen. – There was a period in my life where it was a bit shabby and I was pretty far down career-wise. Ole offered to pay for a record with me and the only requirement was that I should sing in Norwegian, because until then I had only sung in English, said Fjeld during a recording in the news program “Platedate” in 2016. Paus said he could finance the entire recording and all the musicians. There was just one problem: Fjeld did not have a record deal. – I was at EMI then and said that if you don’t take Fjeld, you won’t get me either. They finally agreed to that, Paus said. The result was classics such as “Angels in the snow” and “Nerven i min sang”. In 1995 they teamed up as “To rustne herrer”. They played together for a number of years, before again working separately. Seven years ago they started working together again. – Life without each other was, after all, worse than life with each other, Paus said when the “reunion” became known. With humor as a weapon Ole Paus was a word artist, but in recent days has also been highlighted as a guitarist of the highest class. In addition to poetic descriptions of Norway, such as in “Mitt lille land”, he is also known as a satirist who hits the mark. – The only thing that bites into power is laughter. The only thing they can’t stand is being laughed at. It can make them feel insecure in their own infallibility, that somewhere in the country there is someone who sees them as a joke. Not in total, because they are certainly sleazy people, you can say a lot of nice things about many of them, even if I can’t think of anything right now, but humor is the weapon of the weakest against the strongest, said Paus on “Lindmo”. – And I don’t have the power to do anything other than to sometimes, in a lucky moment, maybe make someone laugh at the authoritarian people and movements in the country. The pair of horses Jonas Fjeld and Ole Paus were guests in Lindmo on 1 October 2016.
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Jonas Fjeld sang this song for Ole Paus the night before he died – news Oslo og Viken – Local news, TV and radio
