Interview

Another interviews with Per Gessle for Swedish papers

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Per Gessle has recently done two interviews for Swedish papers – one for Expressen in early November and the second one for his hometown magazine Hallandposten by well-known Jan-Owe Wikstrom. As we cannot really translate the whole piece due to copyright issue, so we picked up only those parts that we found extremly (or less extremly) interesting.

We have 70 concert scheduled for the next year so far, so as we finish this tour we will have done over 150 concerts and be seen of more than 1.5 million people. But you cannot be sure as the tour is constantly growing.

Well, I’m going to celebrate Christmas in Halmstad. But before and after we will working in the studio to complete the new album.

The tour will continue in the same great pace until October 2012! Guess it is 50-60 more gigs after Perth. Though these are not official yet. Logistics should be resolved, hairdos should be done etcetera.

Last years have made me a little calmer and I do not take my work so seriously anymore. For example I have hardly any great ambition to top the lists anymore, which was obvious to me 20 years ago. I just want to follow my gut feeling and have fun. Furthermore, the music industry is not as magical and exciting as it was when we started.

Should I mention a specific country, so it is probably Germany. We’ve been playing 15-16 gigs there this year and there seems to be an almost inexhaustible love between Roxette and Germany. Amazing response everywhere. But of course, nothing beats playing in South America! It is always noisy – 500-600 crazy Rox fans who meets us at the airport, TV crews everywhere and police who are trying to control everything. Feels like we were in a The Monkees episode. Lovely.

Without our fans all this would not be possible. They stand outside hotels everywhere and they are absolutely wonderful. Flowers, gifts, photographs and poems are given with love. And exchanged for autographs and quick snapshots with their mobile phones. There is never a problem.

After the tour’s end in October 2012 we certainly take a break. I think Marie would like to make her own album and I’m always busy with a thousand things at once. It would be fun, however, to keep the band. This is the best band I’ve ever played in, I long to every show!

Per Gessle for Livestage TV: this tour should last till October 2012

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Livestage TV has had a chance to talk with the Man from Roxette just before yesterday’s Stockholm concert in Globen. Here is what Per said during the interview:

– hopefully 1.5 mil tickets will be sold once the tour ends
– this tour should last till September-October 2012
– there will be Gyllene Tider reunion in future
– the new album is called “Tourism II” and it will be released in March; this album will be finally mixed in January

 

Star Observer: Roxette still blooming like a flower

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So it came as a surprise to many — even tour organisers themselves — when early ’90s hitmakers Roxette’s lone, toe-in-the-water Australian concert date sold out in half an hour earlier this year.

It’s surprising, but it’s been happening all over the world, so we’re on this neverending tour, Gessle told the Star Observer from his Stockholm home.

I’m so proud of the Roxette catalogue. We play to people of different ethnicities, different languages, different religions, in cities whose names I can’t even pronounce. And all of them are there because they love Listen To My Heart or Spending My Time or It Must Have Been Love. It’s just incredible, the power of music.

It’s the nature of the business that you have to die, commercially speaking, to let the next generation of artists come up. And of course the bigger you get, the harder the fall. We had almost four years where we always had a song in the hot 100 in the US.

More at starobserver.com.au

South Africa, North and South America on Roxette’s radars

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In the very recent English interview for World Radio Switzerland’s Alex Helmick – promoting 2 forthcoming Swiss shows – Per Gessle has admitted that Roxette is planning to come back to South America (it has been circulating for few months now here and there), South Africa and North America (Canada).

Have a listen!

Thanks to Arnaldo Mariano Suarez for sending this through.