Backyard Babies Reunion? Nicke Borg Opens Up About His Unexpected Encounter with Dregen
Knowing other languages besides English is a real advantage—especially if it’s the language of one of your favorite bands. That brings us to a gem we recently came across: an episode of the Minnesluckan podcast, hosted by Backyard Babies frontman Nicke Borg and Janne Innanfors.
In this episode, recorded right from this year’s Sweden Rock Festival, the two were gearing up for interviews with Danko Jones and Jesper Binzer from D-A-D. But before that, Nicke shared a story about a very unexpected run-in—one with none other than his own bandmate and guitar-slinging partner-in-crime, Dregen.
Now for all of you wondering if Backyard Babies are ever coming back, read what Nicke had to say.
The Unexpected Radio Reunion
Nicke was on-site at Sweden Rock Fest, broadcasting live and soaking in the festival atmosphere. What he didn’t expect is to be confronted by an old ghost in a very unexpected place—Dregen, showing up as part of the P4 radio team.
Yes, P4. The Swedish national radio channel better known for catering to an older audience than blasting sleaze rock riffs. What is also really important for this story is the fact that Nicke Borg has been doing radio for a long time, hosting a show at Rock Klassikker Radio.
“I cracked up when I saw it,” Nicke admitted. “P4—that’s not exactly rock’n’roll. It’s a damn pensioner channel!” But what really made it funny wasn’t the fact that Dregen is doing a broadcast for the station itself. It was actually the history behind it. The history of Nicke and Dregen.
Nicke recalled scrolling back through old text messages with Dregen, quickly arriving at 2019. “We haven’t exactly texted a lot through the years,” he joked. But the messages from Madrid that year still stood out. The band was on a day off, Dregen had been drinking on the plane, and something had pushed him over the edge. The guitarist sent an emotionally charged message, slamming Nicke with lines like:
“I’m losing my hair, I’ve got cold sores, I can’t talk—and it’s because you and I are on the same stage. From now on, that’s over. Don’t ever call me again from that damn commercial rock channel, or whatever the hell it’s called.”
Apparently, a proper meeting followed that outburst, during which Dregen doubled down.
“You can’t work in radio and be rock’n’roll at the same time,” he’d said. “That doesn’t line up with my values.”
“That meeting was about as strange as all the other ones we’ve had after various fallouts.”, Nicke added.
Fast forward to 2025, and there is Dregen —on the ground at Sweden Rock, doing radio with none other than P4.
“I thought about texting him,” Nicke said. “We haven’t seen each other in two years. But I waited. I went looking for our friend Martin, and while he was off eating, bam, I run straight into Dregen. It was like the universe just placed him right in front of me.”
What followed wasn’t exactly something Backyard Babies fans would be very happy about:
“I sat down and said hey, but I can’t say he was thrilled to see me. The whole conversation was awkward and all over the place. We just agreed we’d talk some other day.”
Nicke never got to ask the burning question: What’s it like doing P4 radio at Sweden Rock, man? Aren’t we colleagues now? But it didn’t feel like the right moment. Dregen was preparing to see Sex Pistols at that moment, so according to Nicke, he wasn’t really into doing a conversation.
“It was a dead end,” he said, shrugging. “Maybe we’ll try talking again some other time.”
So the question of all questions naturally comes at this moment, which was asked by Nicke’s colleague Janne: what about a potential Backyard Babies reunion?
“I used to say ‘Not in this lifetime,’ like Axl Rose. But look what happened to Guns N’ Roses—they’re still limping around nine years later. So yeah… I don’t say that anymore.”
Not In This Lifetime
So that was about it, guys. The relationship between the two musicians, which hasn’t changed over all these years, somehow doesn’t give much hope that Backyard Babies will ever reunite. However, we’ve seen bigger bands whose members were on opposing sides for years, and yet things somehow managed to return to normal in the end. Who knows, maybe the same will happen with Backyard Babies.
However, it should be noted that Nicke mentioned several times during the conversation with Danko Jones and Jasper Binzer that he has no intention of returning to rock ’n’ roll music. Listen to the full episode of the podcast.
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