Jonas Åkerlund

He’s stamped his provocative rock’n’roll credentials on everything from Lady Gaga’s nineminute opus for Telephone to some infamous outings for Prodigy, Primal Scream and Madonna.David Knight catches his breath with one of the busiest directors in the business

"It's supposed to be about breaking the rules," says Jonas Akerlund, a comment that explains a lot about his fifteen or so year career making music videos. In fact when it comes to the history of controversial, banned or X-rated music videos, he justifies a chapter all by himself.

The sensational and infamous POV drugs and sex-fest that is Prodigy's Smack Your Bitch Up; The Cardigan's My Favourite Game, where singer Nina Persson plays chicken with oncoming traffic in a Cadillac Eldorado (ending in her eventual decapitation); a blonde babe snorting drugs in Primal Scream's Country Girl; the recent X-rated effort for German rockers Rammstein's Pussy, featuring acts of hard-core pornography… and the list goes on.

He may attract criticism as a result, but Jonas Akerlund is also loved by some of the biggest music artists on the planet, and audiences. It is easy to see why. When it comes to music videos, arguably no other director conjures the unmistakeable aura of rock n roll quite like him. Akerlund creates provocative, in-your-face, sexy, muscular, down-and-dirty videos that are also as slick, polished and beautifully produced. U2, The Rolling Stones, Metallica, Primal Scream, Ozzy Osbourne, Paul McCartney, Christina Aguilera, Pink and Robbie Williams have all benefited from that Akerlund alchemy that offers an incendiary mix of hedonism, nihilism, and highly commercial beautiful imagery.

Most notable of all, of course, is his longstanding relationship with Madonna that has produced several videos, starting with the MTV and Grammy award-winning Ray Of Light, and including Music (co-starring Ali G), American Life, and Jump. Their collaboration has extended to two long-form Madonna projects in recent years, the documentary I'm Going To Tell You A Secret and the Confessions Tour concert film.

And then there is Lady GaGa. They worked together for the first time last year, on Paparazzi, for which Akerlund directed a stylishly operatic revenge-fantasy, with GaGa as the crippled attempted murder victim, triumphing against her faithless lover. And then, in March this year they really did put music videos back in the headlines, with a genuine pop culture event - a nine-minute mini-movie for the track Telephone, co-starring Beyonce.

The elements are both pure GaGa, and pure Akerlund, in a story which develops a theme established in their first collaboration, and continues where it left off: GaGa as the damaged diva - part victim, part homicidal-maniac. It starts with her dragged into a women's prison and stripped almost naked (one bull-dyke warder saying 'I told you she didn't have a dick', in reference to the rumours of Gaga's ambiguous sexuality). And over the next nine dizzying minutes, Akerlund delivers a lurid live action cartoon in his familiar hyperreal style - punctuated by incongruous product placement shots.

Telephone is a testament to GaGa's otherworldiness and of course, her extraordinary and eccentric style: the glasses made of lit cigarettes, Diet Coke hair rollers, and so on. And its impact was instantaneous. Telephone gained over 15 million hits in just three days on VEVO, the new website co-ventured by YouTube and music corporations Universal and Sony where it premiered. It helped GaGa to become the first artist in history to notch more than a billion views on YouTube.

"She was knocking on my door before [Paparazzi, but we couldn't make it happen," Akerlund reveals about the first video, when Gaga's true pop persona first found expression. "GaGa is bursting with ideas, and it's a lot of fun working with her. She starts the conversation, and that can start with anything - a location, or a costume. I go away and make it work. But even on the shoot we'll be prepared to be spontaneous. Everything is done at an extremely high tempo."

Indeed, although the Telephone video includes dialogue, various locations, and a big dance production number, it was shot in just two days. And Akerlund reveals that some of the story came during the edit. What was clearly not done in post was the controversial women's prison sequences, where GaGa accepts a mouth on mouth kiss from an androgenous older female in the exercise yard (while wearing those fetching cigarette-sunglasses). Its just about the most memorable, but also strangely poignant moment in the video.

"It's all a made-up world. It has nothing to do with reality. She's a character," he says, downplaying the significance of the lesbian smooch. But he recognizes the true significance of the video's success: the online arena offers the artist and label the freedom to make whatever they want, simply according to the needs of the artist. In GaGa's case its big budget outlandish outrageous cartoon fantasy partly financed by product placement. And a video like Telephone, with millions of hits, may itself generate income. It also circumvents the behemoth that is MTV.

"I realized a long time ago that the music video needs reinvention, and I've been trying to do that for a while. I was successful with Maroon 5, creating trailers for the video I made for them. I prefer to call them campaigns now. It sounds boring, but I need motivation that I know they're going to work. I've been waiting for another artist to come and prove this, and this was a case of: 'fuck TV, we believe in this way of getting to her fans'."

He adds that overt product placement did not stand in the way of the thinking and did not dilute the message either. "The only reason to do that is to increase the budget, but if you're lucky you can put them in there and it doesn't screw with the story. That was the case here. We even put some products that didn't pay for it!" Not surprisingly, he's not saying which ones.

"It's a bit of a wake-up call and inspiration to other people perhaps," he continues. "I'm not saying every video has to be like this. But the joy of making videos had been taken away, to the point that I really didn't do them for a few years."

He has certainly picked up his music video output in the past year, directing a sumptuous video for French actress Marion Cottillard, for another actress-turned-singer Jennifer Lopez, English pop star Mika, David Guetta, and two for the German rock band Rammstein that illustrate other (darker) sides of Jonas Akerlund; one for Ich tu dir Weh, is a brilliantly mounted performance video; the other, for Pussy, climaxes (literally) with body doubles of the band members having sex with different porn actresses.

But he is doing many other things too - in fact, the Akerlund resume looks more varied than ever. Quite apart from also directing lots of commercials, for the likes of Dior, Coca Cola, VW and Citroen, there has also been a new movie: Horsemen, starring Dennis Quaid, his first film since his controversial 2002 meth-addict thriller Spun. Then there are the documentaries, photographic assignments, exhibitions, and even other more personal projects. The rock 'n roller clearly has a strict Protestant work ethic.

When Shots speaks to him, Akerlund is in post-production on no less than five commercials, and in pre-production on two more. There is rarely a let-up. He actually divides his time fairly equally between Stockholm - where his own company R.A.F., co-owned with fellow director Johan Renck, is based - Los Angeles, where he has a young family, and "wherever we happen to be shooting - there is always a production."

His huge resumé also includes a few surprises, like Place, Akerlund's absorbing 40-minute TV film of a performance by two ageing maestros of dance; Mihkail Baryshnikov and Ana Laguna. He masterfully captures the sense of a gripping live performance while, almost imperceptibly, transforming it into a completely cinematic experience.

"We started a conversation about how to translate it into a little film," Akerlund explains. "But Barashnikov has a problem about dancing in front of a camera. He said that TV never does it justice. I said 'I agree'. It's like filming fireworks, and that's not very interesting. You have to be there." But he did make it work, by persuading Barashnikov to give another live performance, and filming it with the sort of coverage that he has dedicated to his longform work for Madonna.

For his stupendous The Confessions Tour film, Akerlund used a huge number of cameras to give a concert film the kind of treatment over two hours that would usually devoted to a video for five minutes. "You can imagine the footage we had to deal with," he says. "I worked so hard on that." But as he admits, its all part of his background."I've been edit-driven throughout my career. Edit and sound and movement - that's been my strength. Firstly I was an editor on set, then I didn't actually realize I was directing to start with, I was just thinking what I needed for my edit. And I still approach it the same way - I'm just preparing for the edit."

Having emerged in the first era of Swedish commercial filmmaking that produced Traktor, Akerlund got his break as a director making a series of videos for hugely successful Swedish pop act Roxette (he's still made more videos for them than anyone else) before breaking out of Scandinavia with Smack My Bitch Up. "One of the tricks is to pick what to do and what not to do, and I've always operated with my gut feeling," he says. "But its not a good idea to translate that into longer form work," he says. "When you make a movie it stays with you for life. For ten years I've been the drug guy because of Spun."

Horsemen, Akerlund's second movie, made little impact last year due, he says, to the lack of a proper release in the States. "I'm very proud of it," he says. "It was a very different way of working than I'm used to - within the studio system. I learned a lot, and it was great working with Dennis [Quaid] and Zyi [Zhang]."

After a career putting "people in front of a camera who don't want to be there," - (musicians) - he has realised the beauty of working with actors. "Of course Madonna is different. She realized the importance of music videos." But there is also a sense that drawing out a performance on camera from a music artist is always going to be something extra special for Akerlund. He clearly speaks their language.

Ironically that is demonstrated by a couple of his commercials. Among the beauty and automotive work he is particularly pleased with the campaign that has proved to be controversial in a non-Akerlund way - but still has big rock n roll connections: his Swiftcover ads featuring Iggy Pop. The ads may have appalled Iggy's old fanbase, but they have hit a very enjoyable groove, especially since Iggy has been joined by his 'rebellious' little friend, a rubber puppet version of himself in the latest spots, Drive and Alter Ego.

"I love those commercials," says Akerlund. "I have to give a lot of credit to [MWO's writer and CD] Mark Hurst. We do a lot of spontaneous stuff - but I know Iggy from way back. He wouldn't do it if he doesn't feel like it. He operates from his heart whatever he does."

Akerlund, one of the few people able to make a comparison between the pop-disco queens of two generations, offers a clue to their success - and the likes of Iggy. And also why he is the man to work with them. "What they have in common? They have integrity - more so than other artists. In advertising and film no-one has one hundred percent integrity. In movies there's always someone to report to. One thing I admire with Gaga and of course Madonna is their integrity. I wish we could have a bit more of that."