‘The father and son relationship in the John Lewis Christmas advert really resonated with me,’ Lars 'Lati' Kronlund tells M. ‘My father never liked the idea of me doing music, but when I played him Where Love Lives he realised I could write a song. Then, when the first royalty cheque came in, he was even happier!'
Sung by singer-songwriter Alison Limerick, Lati’s 1990 house classic is now attracting unlikely festive attention. The song has been selected by John Lewis for their annual Christmas TV advert — a much-coveted placement for any songwriter — and features extensively as we see a quiet teenage boy gifting his dad a vinyl copy of Where Love Lives, sparking much sentimentality as the father is transported back to both his youth and his early days of parenthood.
The advert features both the original version of the track and a rework by Labrinth. The end result 'floored me', says Lati: ‘They’ve done a nice job. I love Labrinth’s ballad version — it’s so nice the way it edits together with the original and that emotional moment between the father and son.’
Speaking to M, Alison says: ‘This new version is beautiful. I’ve performed it acoustically and in every possible arrangement, but what Labrinth has done is lay the emotion bare. It’s so stunning. Then you see it in the context of the advert and the waterworks start, it’s very clever.
‘Lati deserves all the props for the track. All the elements that people love came from the original and the work he put into it.’
As a songwriter, producer and Brooklyn Funk Essentials bandmember, Lati has enjoyed an eventful music career. Brought up in Sweden, Lati’s father was a successful jazz musician while his mother wrote the lyrics for her husband’s orchestra.
‘There was a lot of music in the house. Successful Swedish jazz musicians would often be hanging around, so the idea that you could write songs started early for me,’ he tells M. ‘By the time I was a teenager, it was all about trying to write my own music rather than playing covers.’
Inspired by such genres as funk and glam rock (which led to the formation of his first band, Zzzang Tumb), Lati was often pressed by his father about his creative aspirations.
‘We’d have lunch and he’d ask what I wanted to do with my life as he didn’t think playing with punk bands would go anywhere,’ Lati recalls about those conversations. ‘He worked himself up from nothing, had a fair amount of success and wanted me to have a decent life. At one point I said, “I’ll go to London and go to film school”. From there I began making music for everyone’s films, which meant working from a different angle to the guitar music I’d liked before.’
Lati’s studies led to him securing a role with Commercial Music, a company based on Wardour Street in Soho where he made music for ads. He also utilised their facilities for his own work: ‘When the studio was closed in the evenings, I would stay and work through the night on my own material. That’s where I recorded the demo version of Where Love Lives.’
'The idea that you could write songs started early for me.'
Partly inspired by watching the R&B and house music band Ten City perform in the US, Lati was playing around with different ideas when he came across the track’s memorable riff.
‘I kept playing it until my fingers went blue because I didn’t have anything to record it on at that moment — I had to record it into my head,’ he recalls. ‘The following day I went to the studio and recorded it, but I still hadn’t married it to the verse. That only happened when I had the melody, and then the chorus and the lyrics came to me.’
Having previously met a few years earlier at an avant-garde fashion show at London’s ICA, Lati was drawn to Alison after he saw her singing one of his favourite songs, God Bless the Child.
‘I was blown away by her performance — I had to go and talk to her after the show,’ Lati remembers. ‘I asked if she wanted to record some demos and she agreed, though nothing came of those initial sessions in 1985.
‘When I wrote Where Love Lives, I called her up and she remembered me. We recorded the demo one night on Wardour Street, and I sent it out on cassette to everyone. It was funny as I received so many standard rejection letters — but, after it was a hit, I had the same people asking why I hadn’t sent them the demo!’
Alison fondly recalls the collaborative process of working with Lati: ‘The song was complete, but he was happy to go up an octave or work on any extra harmonies if I had the skills. I’d been a session singer so I was willing to do whatever he asked, and the process was easy. The clever thing about the song is how he puts a hook in, then a second hook, then the chorus. You have the piano riff at the front, then everything is hook after hook. But I had no idea it was going to be a hit.’
‘I was blown away by Alison Limerick — I had to go and talk to her.'
Lati’s ambition for the track was to marry traditional soul songwriting with contemporary club beats. Thanks to his label Arista Records, Where Love Lives ended up in the hands of Frankie Knuckles and David Morales, two DJs who sprinkled dancefloor magic all over their mix.
‘The first time I heard it in a club, they played my original version and it worked — people were dancing. But when I heard their mix, it was on another level,’ Lati says now. ‘I don’t think you can just be a producer who makes house music. You have to be a DJ too; you have to road-test it in the club.’
Where Love Lives has been re-released several times over the years, even denting the UK top 10 in 1996. Lati has enjoyed its various lives and often been surprised by the reaction it continues to spark on dancefloors.
‘After Frankie’s second mixes were released, I was at [legendary London club night] Shoom and was about to leave when the piano riff came in. The place went nuts,’ he says. ‘I remember the waitresses dancing on top of the bar and I started to cry. It was like being hit in the face with a baseball bat. I couldn’t believe it was getting this kind of reaction.
‘I really like the fact that no one [in the club] knew I had anything to do with it — no one liked it for me. That’s what I love about dance music: the crowd is facing the DJ and just punching their fists in the air. I want to get back to small clubs where people just want to dance with their friends.’
As Where Love Lives enjoys a significant renaissance thanks to its John Lewis placement, Lati is keen to advise new and emerging music creators about the importance of defining your own sound and putting the hours into your craft.
‘You should also listen to the music playing in your dreams,’ Lati continues. ‘Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and wonder what the soundtrack was I’d just heard, so I run downstairs to the studio to record it. My wife has got used to the fact that I might be up at 3am and in the studio!
‘You can’t let the music escape: it’s the universe talking to you, and you have to capture it when you can.’
Where Love Lives is out now on digital platforms and at John Lewis. All profits from the £14.99 vinyl edition are being donated to John Lewis Partnership’s Building Happier Futures programme.
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