Spotify didn’t let us wait too long and made The Per Gessle Archives – Demos & Other Fun Stuff!, Vol. 2 available at midnight again. What can I say? Yet another sleepless night. But I could really spend all my Thursday nights like this until the box-set is out in September.
Besides 1-2 well-known demos and demos of well-known songs you can find more real gems on this album, too. There is even a demo from almost 30 years ago and oh yeah, that’s a hilarious one! Mannen med gitarr, which is my all time fave PG demo (as some of you also commented on an earlier post, I can see it’s your fave, too) well deserved its place in this set of Mr. G’s pearls. This way it will surely get more plays than it gets on the Tycker om när du tar på mej single. Now we get to know who to blame for it has never been recorded for an album.
Interesting to hear the first version of the Being with You demo. Decide yourself if you like this one or the other version you can find on Vol. 1 more. I definitely vote for the 2004 version, but it’s really great to hear different demos of the same song.
I have to mention that the variety of how Per can sing / say / pronounce the word ”beautiful” is too cool. Here we can find a totally new & hot version in Beautiful Girl.
This you can’t hear in the conversations, but Per shared it on Roxette Official earlier and you can find it in the PG about songs section, so I think it’s worth adding this background info to Stay (At Home, At Work, At Play):
Hahaha! Stay! At home, at work, at play! That last phrase came from a Sparks-song. I always loved that! This demo was recorded at Tits&Ass in the summer of 1995 with Micke Syd on drums, MP on bass guitar and me fooling around with loads of guitars. I love that solo!!! It took off with the lyrics and then I wrote the music together with MP, I think most of the chorus came from him actually. There are some chords in there I wouldn’t have used myself…. This was just after the CBB-tour had ended and I geared up for the first Gyllene Tider-comeback in 1996. Neither Rox nor myself recorded it “properly”, this is the only version that exists that I’m involved in. However, a Danish girl, Ann-Louise did a version of it. You’ll probably find it on YouTube.
The conversations are again fab. I love that Sven knows so much about Per’s music that he can always ask the right questions and this way we get to know loads of information not only related to the demos that are on this album, but also about other songs or albums. Great job, Sven and hats off, Mr. G! September seems to be too far away now…