Jonas Åkerlund

Was the original drummer for legendary Swedish black metal band Bathory from 1983-1984. He can be heard on the "Scandinavian Metal Attack" compilation, released in 1984.
Directed music videos for Roxette, Moby, The Prodigy, Madonna, The Cardigans, Metallica, Jamiroqai, Iggy Pop, The Smashing Pumpkins, U2, Ozzy Osbourne, Robbie Williams, Blondie, Jane's Addiction, Blink 182, Rammstein, Primal Scream and more.
With over 5000 edits, his feature film "Spun" is part of the Guinness book of records for being the feature film with the most edits in a feature.
His video for Madonna's "Ray Of Light" was voted #72 in Slant Magazines Top 100 Videos. [19 January 2003].
In 2007 he received an MVPA Hall of Fame award for the Prodigy video "Smack My Bitch Up".

I took a strong antidrug decision many years ago, and I'm going to stick with it. I'm not going to dedicate my life to fighting drugs. For me the best part was to peek into these people's lives, and to do so with humanity. There are so many double standards here - a lot of stuff that people just don't talk about that is a big part of American culture and lifestyle. As an outsider, I can observe and portray this situation from my own point of view, with hopefully a fresh eye.
[about the editing process of Spun (2002)] I made 5,345 cuts editing this movie in Sweden. That's definitely for the Guinness Book of World Records.
I'm the worst drug addict in the world. I just can't do it. I was always against it, and I saw a lot of close friends changing, even a few friends dying, and that made me think a lot about it. I'm against drugs, I don't work with people who use drugs and it's not part of what I do. I never wanted to scare people, I just wanted to show the real side of it and make people think rather than telling them what to do.
When someone's paying you to do a job, which is most of the time, you always have to respect your clients. But if I could make a beautiful film and at the same time make people think, then that's perfect.
Sweden has a weird sense of knowing what's going on in the world and picking up on it early.