Wig Wam
Do Ya Wanna Taste It
Born out of an identity crisis, and resurrected by a US TV channel’s new superhero show, the glammy Norwegians’ 2010 anthem was a cautionary tale of flying too close to the sun.
Words: Henry Yates
Wig Wam: (l-r) Flash, Teeny, Glam, Sporty.
Somewhere along the way, Åge Sten Nilsen had lost himself. It was the tail end of the noughties, and the singer’s glam-rock band, Wig Wam, could look back on a stellar first decade, having represented Norway credibly at the 2005 Eurovision Song Contest and scaled the domestic circuit with their frivolous hairspray anthems and Sunset Strip-sounding alter egos. Nilsen took the stage as Glam, along with bassist Flash (Bernt Jansen), guitarist Teeny (Trond Holter) and drummer Sporty (Øystein Andersen).
But now, when Nilsen peeled off his stage clothes, the character remained. And while Glam was many things – agreat showman and rafter-shaking vocalist among them – he wasn’t much of a husband. “Living my life as this alter-ego Glam twenty-four hours a day, never being able to wind down, that can fuck up your life,” Nilsen reflects today. “It took me to a very dark situation in my private life, with my divorce. So the lyric to Do Ya Wanna Taste It is about that drug called fame and the egomania that comes with it. Are you really sure you want to taste that? Because it can eat you up.”