Early May, Christopher Garplind from Dagens Nyheter met Per Gessle at Hotel Tylösand to do an interview with him and he also followed Per and the Roxette gang to Munich. Read the original and more detailed article in Swedish HERE!
Christopher describes Hotel Tylösand, Leif’s Lounge, the reception and his hotel room as well, where he finds a book on the bedside table that contains song lyrics and illustrations by Per. In that book there is an interview in which he talks about his mother Elisabeth. She used to write fairy tales for Per which she illustrated. One story was about Ferdinand the ant who was about to be stepped on by a heel, but who just barely escaped. This story comes back at the end of this Dagens Nyheter interview.
It is Per’s wife, Åsa who meets Christopher at the reception the next day and she takes him to a room that is wallpapered with pictures of Dolly Parton. Christopher informs that even though it is only Per and him who are going to meet, Åsa has set out coffee, sandwiches and cakes for about ten people.
Per enters the room and greets Christopher. He looks as he has always looked for the past 20 years, Christopher thinks: slim, tanned and with that hairstyle that brings to mind both Noel Gallagher and a middle-aged woman employed in the public sector in Linköping. He smells good, but doesn’t want to reveal what perfume he uses because “then everyone will just buy the same one”.
The guys leave the sandwiches and pastries alone and have a double espresso each. Christopher says to Per that he has to tell Åsa that he is on a diet and can’t eat any of this. It feels really rude to just leave it. Per understands Christopher. He says he was overweight when he was a kid and it was really tough. Christopher is not exactly “overweight”, but the answer makes him think of something he read, that Per had gained so much weight just before the turn of the millennium that he refused to tour or be in any of Roxette’s music videos in connection with the release of the album Have A Nice Day. He asks Per if it was so, because he felt so ugly.
I haven’t really thought about it that way, that I “felt so ugly”, but I didn’t feel comfortable in myself. You see yourself all the time. When you are in public and working with videos and making different appearances, you have to feel good, both mentally and physically. I didn’t feel good, so I didn’t want to be in it.
It was Anton Corbijn who directed the music video of Stars. He finally persuaded Per to appear for a few seconds as a homeless man, covered in garbage.
We did the next video with Anton in Portofino. By then I had managed to lose eight kilos and was able to participate again.
Christopher is curious how PG could manage to lose weight and asks him for the best dieting tip.
It was mostly just about getting in shape. I’m a bit like that: if there is candy at home, I’ll eat it. It takes a huge amount of mental strength not to do that, and you don’t always have it. I still gain and lose weight, but I try to keep track.
Christopher asks Per if he is grateful every day that he still has hair. Per laughs. He is rather happy that he still has hair. Nobody wants a bald Per Gessle, Christopher adds. Per agrees, but he says it can happen, you can get ill. Christopher asks if Per would wear a wig then.
Ugh, what should I answer? I have no idea. Horrible thought.
The past year has been – as usual – hectic for Per. 2024 saw the premiere of both Sommartider, the biopic about Gyllene Tider, and the musical Joyride, which is based on Roxette songs. He released a solo album Sällskapssjuk, and has toured with Roxette in Australia and South Africa.
After the other half of Roxette, Marie Fredriksson, died in 2019 from a brain tumor that was discovered in 2002, Per has been thinking about how to manage the Roxette legacy. In 2021, he launched the project PG Roxette, but since 2025, it has only been Roxette that applies again – with Lena Philipsson on vocals.
I’ve been thinking for many years about trying to bring Roxette forward in some way. I haven’t really been able to decide how. It was terrible when Marie passed away, and also when our drummer Pelle Alsing passed away a few years ago. The whole idea of taking Roxette forward is based on keeping the old band as much as possible. But the token actually fell when I worked with Lena and when she sang on the song “Sällskapssjuk”, because she was so damn good.
Christopher thinks it’s Per’s band and he does what he wants with it, but Roxette is very much Per and Marie, and now someone else is standing there. Christopher is curious if that could be perceived as a bit unsentimental.
Sure, I can understand that some people think so. But at the same time, it’s my song catalogue. You could also turn the coin around and say: “I’ve spent 30 years of my life writing these songs, will I never get to play them again with another voice?” But I understand, I’ve also thought along those lines. What’s right and what’s wrong? But this catalogue exists, and it’s really my life’s work. Let’s try it and see how it feels, shall we? What harm can it do?
Christopher is curious if Per asked Marie’s family for permission, or whatever you want to call it, to do this thing.
Yes, absolutely.
Per stood and sang these songs a million times together with Marie on stages all over the world, so Christopher thinks it must feel strange that she is not there. He wants to know if Per feels sad sometimes.
No, not really. It’s been so long since we did it at the level we were at when we were at our best. Marie got ill in 2002, and after her first operation there wasn’t that much difference, she sang just like before. But her second operation changed her a lot, and after that she was never the same. When we started again in 2009, it wasn’t quite the same Marie anymore. There were problems with keys and with not remembering lyrics. She still had days when she was amazing. But at the end she had to sit down on stage. The Marie I want to keep in my head is from the big tours, “Joyride” and “Crash! Boom! Bang!”. It was magical. But what we’re doing now is something different. It’s not that we’re out there launching new music, but we’re doing, just like many other successful artists who have been around for decades, a kind of emotional journey back in time. We’re managing the Roxette legacy in the best possible way. We make it as close to the original as possible.
Christopher asks Per if there will be a Roxette album with Lena on vocals.
I don’t think so, I can’t imagine that. It would be fun to release a song or two. But that’s not what Roxette is about today, it’s about nurturing our catalogue. It’s a fantastic treasure trove of songs we’re sitting on.
Christopher informs that it’s not just Marie Fredriksson and drummer Pelle Alsing who have passed away in recent years. In the 2010s, Per’s mother Elisabeth, his sister Gunilla and brother Bengt also died at short intervals. Since then, he has been the only one left in his original family.
You become a different person when many people around you pass away. You are reminded that time passes. When Marie passed away and Pelle passed away, all my siblings and mother, the parameters of existence changed in a way.
Christopher starts talking about Per’s immediate family today that consists of his wife Åsa and their 27-year-old son Gabriel. He says that when Per became a father in 1997, there was a bit of a mini-drama after he said in an interview that he didn’t plan on changing a single diaper.
I’ve never changed a diaper. Because my wife always did it first.
When Per turned 40, he said that he was very spoiled and that he had never washed clothes.
I don’t think I’ve ever washed clothes. I’ve always lived in my own little bubble.
Christopher is curious if Åsa got a little irritated by this.
Hm, but you’ve met her, she’s the best person in the world. There has never been any conflict. Then you shouldn’t forget that we toured and toured, travelled and travelled, so we used a lot of laundry service at hotels.
To the question if they have any staff at home, Per replies:
Yes, we have help with cleaning. But I don’t want a lot of assistants, because I want to be at peace. I don’t want to be disturbed by people who are in the way and who want to talk to me about dentist appointments and such.
When Per and Christopher walk around the hotel, people turn around and behave very strangely. Christopher notices that Per seems unfazed by the attention.
I’m used to it. I know that as soon as I leave home I’m on public ground. If I go to the pastry shop and buy rolls for the studio, there’s always someone who wants to take a selfie. I almost always say yes in such situations, but I don’t always do it at one in the morning in restaurants. I usually have a curfew after 10 pm. I can get annoyed when people come up and just interrupt in the middle of a discussion to take a photo – wait until you see that we’ve finished talking! Often they also want to talk about themselves: “I’m also a musician, my parents got married to this song, my dad had this song as his favourite”. I can feel guilty that I’m not more interested in it, because I actually should. It’s truly amazing that everything I’ve done means so much to so many people. You should never take that for granted.
Christopher says that Per comes across as very likeable, and there is very little crap about him compared to others of his caliber. The only thing he can find on the internet, and which is hinted at in some biographies, is that he was completely obsessed with money and very stingy, but that’s it. Christopher’s prejudice that PG was zero percent worried during the ‘metoo-autumn’ in 2017 is confirmed by the fact that Per doesn’t seem to understand the question.
I don’t even remember when it was. That’s both a good and a bad thing about me: I’m so completely ignorant about things. It’s like when people were talking about the financial crisis in the early ’90s, I was like, “Wow, was there a financial crisis? I’ve been on the ‘Joyride’ tour, I didn’t notice a thing”. I don’t even know what year you’re talking about?
When Christopher says it started in 2017, Per asks:
OK. Was it Harvey Weinstein and that? No, I haven’t actually thought about it.
Christopher says that the image of Per is that he is very rich and very stingy. He asks Per if he thinks he is stingy.
No, I don’t feel like that at all. I feel like I am very generous.
Christopher mentions that in the biography Att vara Per Gessle from 2007, Gyllene Tider bassist Anders Herrlin says the following about the stinginess accusations surrounding Per, which often come to the surface when it comes to how Gyllene Tider’s money is distributed between the band members: “He is absolutely not stingy, but rather incredibly generous, but he is greedy. As if he is afraid of losing something he already has.”
When the band’s drummer Micke Syd Andersson got married in 2005, a year after Gyllene Tider’s reunion success and 25th anniversary the year before, he invited all the band members except Per and told Aftonbladet that it was a “conscious decision”.
It was annoying. I thought then and still think Micke was very unfair, and he knows I think that.
To the question how they solved that, Per replies:
We took a break for eight or nine years, then we got back together and toured again. Well, I really love the guys in Gyllene. I have constant contact with all of them. They are wonderful people and fantastic musicians. Of all the drummers out there, Micke is probably my favourite.
Christopher is curious that if Per loves them so much and they are childhood friends and all that, why can’t they just split those Gyllene Tider tours equally.
I can’t sit and talk to you about our financial arrangements in Dagens Nyheter, you understand that, right?
When Christopher asks Per if he is a billionaire, PG thinks for five seconds and replies “no”.
Another image of Per, as Christopher says, is that he only writes stupid, happy pop songs.
Hahaha, I’ve heard that many times. Those who think that haven’t listened to much of what I write. “Gå & fiska!”, for example, is not really a positive text. But people just think “Go and fish, tjoho!” It actually is about someone who is seriously depressed, but people don’t read the lyrics.
At this point, Åsa enters the room and Christopher is struck by how much she and Per – or “Pelle” as she calls him – seem so damn close. They kiss each other several times. Christopher apologizes that they haven’t eaten anything from what she prepared in the room. She says it doesn’t matter and that the people in the staff canteen will be happy. Christopher asks if she was upset that Per never changed a diaper.
No.
And never washed clothes.
No. Or made a bed. There are many. But we help each other. Per does a lot of things and I do other things. That’s how it is in life. Although cooking is the only thing I wish he did…
Per can only cook rice and pasta. When he is in Stockholm and Åsa is not in town, he goes to a restaurant at Karlaplan where there are two dishes he likes – fish soup and salmon sashimi. But he likes homemade food best, adds Åsa.
—
The next time Christopher and Per see each other is at the end of June in Munich. During the night before, Christopher watched the documentary Roxette Diaries which consists of videos that Åsa and Per filmed from 1989 to 1995. In one of the scenes, Marie Fredriksson, alone with just a piano, performs Spending My Time for 60,000 people in Johannesburg. She sings incredibly, Christopher thinks. It’s starting to feel strange that Christopher will soon be seeing a Roxette concert without her.
However, the audience has received Lena Philipsson unexpectedly well. There are certainly some posts on the band’s social media where hardcore fans declare that “this is not Roxette”, but in general the atmosphere is surprisingly positive, and so is Munich.
Backstage, the band eats and prepares for the gig while Per takes a nap. Christopher meets him in his dressing room half an hour before the show, where he warms up with a cup of tea with grated ginger and honey, which is “good for the throat”.
To the question what the future looks like and if there is Gyllene Tider in it, because statistically, they should come back again in 2032, Per replies:
Now it’s Roxette. Then I don’t really know. But we are starting to get old. So far it’s not a problem, but sometimes when I see really old people trying to play their songs, it doesn’t sound so fun anymore. I’ve stopped going to The Rolling Stones, because the last time I saw them it wasn’t good. And I have a hard time listening to Paul McCartney now.
Christopher asks Per if he has enough self-awareness to quit on time.
I hope so.
Christopher is almost shocked by the crowd reaction and that they sing along to every single line of the lyrics in Munich. They cry, scream, dance. No one is like Marie Fredriksson, but Lena’s voice suits the songs unexpectedly well, he thinks. After almost two hours, the show is over.
As usual, Åsa has spent most of the concert filming and taking photos for Per’s and Roxette’s social media. Afterwards, she hands out plectrums to the hardcore fans at the front and collects gifts for the band. Everyone seems happy with the gig.
The tour manager has set out buckets of ice-cold beer and a tray of cheese and cold cuts. Lena drinks a steamy glass of white wine and Christopher is ashamed that he is sweating the most of all even though he is the only one who hasn’t played.
Christopher asks Per if life sometimes feels unreal, because he has succeeded in something that people usually don’t, especially not if you are a guy from Halmstad. It’s like one in a million.
I recently picked up something from Billboard. There are 18 songwriters in the world who have written three or more US number-ones on their own. Of the 18, four were from Europe, and they were Phil Collins, Paul McCartney, George Michael and me. Then I thought, “Shit, what the hell is this? This is really sick!” Then I can really pinch my arm.
To Christopher’s question, if Per has ever thought that his life is a kind of “The Truman Show” just because everything has been so crazy, Per replies:
Well, maybe not that far. I’ve been reflecting on the meaning of this. But it… has been a nice life.
As a last question, Christopher asks Per if he has any illustrations of Ferdinand the ant left.
No, I wish I had some. But I can see it in my mind. I can see how he just manages to escape the heel. The heel is huge.
Thanks for this great and extensive interview, Christopher Garplind, Dagens Nyheter and for the photos in the article, Veronika Ljung-Nielsen!
All interview text is written by Christopher Garplind for Dagens Nyheter in Swedish. Here it is a translation by RoxBlog.