Per Gessle and Sven Lindström started a new special in the March episode of Nordic Rox. The guys met in Halmstad to record this session on a wonderful grey day. Per says it’s been a very long winter here. Sven describes that it looks like the Berlin Wall outside there, but it’s the sky in 50 shades of grey.
The new special contains their favourite Swedish and Scandinavian songs from the ’60s. In this show, they play the first five of those 20. It’s going to be mainly English speaking songs, but also some Swedish versions. They try to concentrate on those few Scandinavian artists who wrote their own material in the ’60s. There wasn’t that many. Most Swedish pop music in those days were covers from English and American artists, but there were a few exceptions. Per looks forward to this chart.
Before they start the countdown, they go to the mid-Swedish town, Örebro and check out a very, very talented guy called Ludwig Hart. Per says he is very interesting. He has been around for a couple of years now and he is getting better and better. The song they want to play is Less I Try and it’s very inspired by classic American rock music, radio friendly. Per loves this track. Sven says Ludwig is a new Nordic Rox favourite and Per confirms again that it’s a great song. [There was probably a little hiccup at the editing room at Sirius XM, because the song played instead is Walk by Naâman, who is a French reggae singer. /PP]
The next song is Freak Show by Grass Show from 1997. It’s the opening track on their debut album with an interesting title, Something Smells Good In Stinkville. Per finds the album title very good. It gets five out of five from him. The guys play the brand new single of Say Lou Lou. Sven asks Per if he can pronounce its title. Hecan: Wong Kar-wai and he says it probably means something. Sven informs it’s named after the Hong Kong film director and script writer of the same name. Per says Sven is so talented. Sven laughs and says he can read, he didn’t really know that. Per thinks it’s a good song.
Another Nordic Rox favourite is coming. The next band they play is called Roxette. Sven asks Per if he knows anything about them. Per has heard about them. Haha. She’s Got Nothing On (But The Radio) is the song Sven picked. That was a single from the Charm School album back in 2011. Per says it’s a wonderful song to perform live. Sven thinks it’s a great pop track. Per says it becomes like a six minute guitar bonanza in the end. Sven says you really don’t hear that when you hear this sort of pop version, but there is something happening with Christoffer, the guitarist when he hears this song. Per says they played this song a lot with Roxette, but he also played it a lot on his own solo tours and it’s always a great one to play. People love it. The band is getting the chance to stretch out a bit. It’s cool. Per is glad that Sven picked this one. Sven says that’s a promising song title and let’s see if it delivers. Here they play it. Pure and shameless pop music written by Per Gessle, Sven says.
Now the guys get down to their Top20 songs from Swedish and Scandinavian artists from the ’60s. Per says they concentrated on original material. In those days, so many artists were doing covers of English and American hits in a Swedish style. But there were a few exceptions who wrote their own material. Sven and PG kick off with a song that could meander on forever. In the original version it’s 7 minutes and 15 seconds long, so Sven says they are probably not going to play that whole track. It’s by the duo Hansson & Karlsson and the song is called Tax Free. It’s got an interesting story to it. Per says Hansson & Karlsson were a jazz fusion, pop-rock, progressive thing, doing instrumental music based on Bo Hansson’s Hammond organ and John Karlsson’s drums. This particular song wasn’t a hit record at all, but it became a major track in Swedish music history, because Jimi Hendrix recorded it. He played it so many times live. So there are endless versions of Tax Free by Jimi Hendrix on Spotify, for instance. Per thinks it’s just a beautiful, haunting melody in there and it sums up this era in pop music so well. Sven says it was also quite a big thing among the pop aficionados back then, because in the ’60s, Sweden was like an isolated little island and nobody really thought they could break through in England or in the US. But when Jimi Hendrix came and grabbed this song and played it, that was quite an achievement. PG adds that the duo broke up, but Bo Hansson, the organ player became pretty successful on his own. He wrote music for Lord Of The Rings, which was a big album in the UK in the ’70s.
Next on the chart, number 19, is from the Swedish version of the Eurovision Song Contest in the ’60s. In those days, of course, there was a full orchestra and a band playing live in the TV studio and there were some really interesting songs. Per thinks this one makes you smile a bit, a song from the year of Sgt. Pepper, 1967. It’s Gå och göm dej, Åke Tråk by Mona Wessman. The title translates into „you can go away and hide you, boring old sod”. Sven explains Åke is a surname in Swedish and tråk is a boring old sod. Per adds it’s written by Peter Himmelstrand who was a journalist. He also wrote a lot of songs and especially his lyrics were always funny. Per thinks it’s a wonderful little song that has stood the test of time, if you are into this kind of thing, which Per is. Sven says it’s one leg into the easy listening genre and the rest is a bit pop. He thinks it’s an amazing track. Hard act to follow.
The next song is by Hootenanny Singers. They were a folk-inspired band in the 60’s and included Björn Ulvaeus, who eventually became part of ABBA. Björn was singing and writing on his own a lot before he started meeting Benny Andersson. The guys picked a song called No Time from 1966. Per says it was a great year in pop music. Sven says it was almost as good as 1965. The guys are laughing. Sven says the Hootenanny Singers was like a Swedish version of the Seekers or The Kingston Trio. Benny was in Hepstars, which was a pure pop band. They met during this time and realized that they had a lot of things in common. Per says they were really talented, both of them, as songwriters. And what PG guesses both Björn and Benny realized early on was that they weren’t that great lead singers. Sven agrees. Mr. G says they needed some brilliant singers and they found Frida and Agneta, of course. The guys play No Time. Björn Ulvaeus wrote the song and sang the lead vocals here. You couldn’t really guess that this would lead into Mamma Mia or Dancing Queen, Sven says. Per agrees, but he thinks it’s a good song anyway. They were a very successful band. They had lots of hits, like Greensleeves and stuff like that. Folk-inspired music was very popular in those days, deeply loved by the Swedish audience for 10 plus years.
The guys move on to another instrumental, a surf band from Gothenburg, Sweden, The Spotnicks. Per says it was before his time, so he doesn’t remember them that much. Sven either. They are from 1962, 1963 and they were really big in Gothenburg and in Japan. Big in Japan. Per adds they had space uniforms on. There was a trend in international music those days. The Ventures and all those bands that played instrumental songs, had instrumental hits. Per thinks The Spotnicks fit in quite well. One of their early hits was Amapola, which turns out to be a Spanish song from the ’20s. Per says one of the rules they had was that it should only be original material in this chart, but they made an exception here because it’s really old. Sven says they also made an exception because they had such a cool stage outfit with the space dresses.
The next band is also from Gothenburg, a beautiful city on the Swedish west coast, the second biggest city in Sweden. Sven says they are Tages, one of the bands that came up 25 minutes after The Beatles had performed live in Sweden. The guys are laughing. Per thinks Tages is his favourite Swedish band from the ’60s. Sven thinks they were very original and consistent. PG adds there were great writers in the band, great musicians and they had also the possibility to work with a really outstanding producer, Anders Henriksson. Per thinks Tages eventually went to London as well to record there. And buy their clothes at Carnaby Street, Sven adds, they were extremely well-dressed. The song played is I Should Be Glad from 1964. Sven says to him it sounds a bit like the early Mercy era with The Beatles playing minor songs with acoustic guitars. You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away, Per says. It’s a great little track, according to Sven, and wonderful timing as well, Ramones style, 2 minutes 17 seconds. And it’s on the number 16 spot on the countdown.
That brings an end to this 1960s special of Swedish classics for today, but the guys got 15 more to go. Until then, they play some wonderful ’90s sound. Hey Princess by Popsicle is next. Then comes Winter Saga by Gaeya & Anders Rane, a brand new version of an ’80s Swedish classic. The title translates into Winter Story. An interesting track according to Sven. He thinks this version is more subdued.
A Danish artist, MØ is next with her work on Spaceman, a song from 1996 by Babylon Zoo. Sven has almost had forgotten this track. According to PG, it was a great one. It was No. 1 in England and a big hit in Scandinavia as well. Per doesn’t know if it reached the American airwaves, but it was a great song. MØ used that chorus and wrote some other stuff around it. It came out in 2022.
With this, the show ends and the guys say goodbye. Cigarettes by Anita Lindblom closes the show, as usual.
Pic by Patrícia Peres, Book Fair 2014, Gothenburg
Thanks for your support, Sven!