PG Roxette

RoxBlog interview with Per Gessle – PART 1 – “Just because she’s gone, it doesn’t mean that she’s forgotten.”

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For this interview with Per, as always, I had prepared quite some questions that I sent to him before the debut album release of PG Roxette. As you all know, there are several parallel projects going on now, so it’s probably even more of a busy period for him than it usually is. He promised to try to get back to me before the release date, but than he came up with the idea, what if we do a Zoom meeting. Ojoj. I always preferred writing to talking when it comes to me, but you don’t say no, when such an opportunity arises.

We set the date, 26th October and planned a 30-40-minute-long meeting. We went on talking for almost 1.5 hours. It was a long chat, full of insights, so I decided to share it in two parts. Just like our meeting happened in two parts. Read this article until the end to see why.

I enjoyed listening to him so much that at 1 or 2 points I was even a bit distracted, then I suddenly realized that hey, I have to ask the next question. I’m so not used to this. Haha.

After the usual online meeting phrases – “Can you see me? Can you hear me?” – and Per explaining he is “so thrilled every time this works”, we discuss he has been doing radio all afternoon. Swedish radio, so I’ll have some “work” to do, to translate it. Haha. [Already done.] I get to know that it was on Mix Megapol with Lotta Bromé. Tomorrow [Thursday] is a day for German media, so Per says there is a lot of blah blah blah going on now.

Patrícia Peres: – Congratulations on 2 sold out shows for Gyllene Tider!

Per Gessle: – Yeah! Thank you! It’s fun. It’s pretty scary to release these tickets, because we never release tickets this early before. But it’s a new ball game now. Everyone is releasing tickets and there is so much competition going on, so you have to be ahead of everything. October isn’t the typical Gyllene Tider month. You know, we always feel like when we should start present something, it should be in the spring, when people are anticipating the summer. Now we’re going into the darkness here.

PP: – But there is always light coming after that and there are already 2 sold out shows!

PG: – Yeah, I think we made good decisions. We didn’t charge too much money for the tickets and we have children’s tickets.

PP: – Fans are very happy with the ticket prices.

PG: – And I think that’s good too, because we’re going into recession and I know lots of artists who charge so much money and they don’t sell any tickets because people don’t have the money anymore.

PP: – In Hungary you can’t buy tickets that cheap. Any concerts I bought tickets for were much more expensive than GT tickets. And we are far from Sweden.

            

Here I thank Per for offering this online meeting option. He could have just said that he doesn’t have the time or is not interested. He says it’s fine, he just thought that it would take a lot of time for him now to answer all my questions in written form and he thought maybe if I get all the info from the “Per Gessle Talks P-UD!” recordings, then I don’t have to ask some of those questions. Haha. I tell him the more info he gives me, the more questions I have. He laughs.

PP: – By the way, it’s a very good idea to release these talks, because it’s really fun and cool for all the fans to hear YOU talking about this project and the songs.

PG: – Yeah, I started doing that when I released the “Gammal kärlek rostar aldrig” album. Then I noticed there is so many streams. I don’t know why people want to hear…

PP: – Haha. It’s a rhetorical question, right?

PG: – There are also videos in which I talk. They are not the same as what’s on Spotify. So maybe I tell the opposite in the videos and there is contradiction.

PP: – Haha. OK. Well… I just wanted to ask you about the name PG Roxette, of course. You talked a lot about it, why you chose it, but I would like to know if this project has ever been planned under your own name. You probably decided it earlier, but the first time we could hear about PG Roxette was when the Metallica cover happened.

PG: – There have been many options. One option was to use the Roxette name, but then I felt like I should sort of make a point that it’s not really the old Roxette. It’s an extension or a new chapter of Roxette. So I had to make a quick decision when the Metallica thing happened, because they were going to release that song. So I decided to go with PG Roxette and then the rest of it followed naturally, so to speak. I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but the Roxette name is such a strong brand anyway, so it’s good to have that in there.

PP: – Absolutely. I agree.

PG: – It’s the same thing as what I was just talking to this journalist on the radio about the Mono Mind thing. Mono Mind was great when nobody knew it was me, but then as soon as people know it’s me, it becomes just another project. And with a fake voice, sort of. So… I think it’s a good thing and I don’t know what’s gonna happen in the future. We’ll see. The original plan for PG Roxette was to do a tour, because I wanted to play the Roxette songs. But then Pelle died, so we couldn’t tour. And then the corona thing happened, so everything got delayed and delayed. So I said let’s do this album instead and use these players, Jonas, Helena and Dea. I didn’t really get that power of Helena and Dea combined until I did the Metallica song and then I realized that they sounded so amazing together. So Dea came down to Christoffer’s studio and overdubbed what Helena already had done. That’s how we basically created these voices.

PP: – Ah, OK. I thought that you originally wrote the songs for three voices.

PG: – No. It was just a sound that I wanted, so Helena and Dea only worked together in the studio at the same time on the Metallica song. Otherwise they worked separately. Most of Helena’s vocals were recorded in Halmstad at the T&A studio and then Dea came down to Skåne to Christoffer’s studio.

PP: – It’s very interesting, because you mentioned how their voices are working together, but it’s really hard to make a distinction whether it’s only Helena or it’s Dea and Helena together.

PG: – Hard to do. On certain tracks, like “Watch Me Come Undone” or “You Hurt The One You Love The Most” I tried to put them on separate sides, so you can hear Dea on one side and Helena on the other side. So you can sort of follow what they are doing. I just let them sing whatever they wanted and direct them a little bit. Then when we mixed the album, we just got through all the channels, cut the phrases and put them here and there.

PP: – You dedicated “Pop-Up Dynamo!” to Marie. I think most of us fans expected it, but reading these two words “For Marie” was really heart-warming and heart-breaking at the same time. What does this dedication mean to you?

PG: – Well, if Marie would have been around and in good shape, we would have continued to work together. She couldn’t really sing anymore when we did the “Good Karma” album. It was a really tough album to make. Of course, when I continue the Roxette legacy, even though she’s not here, she’s there anyway. Maybe you can’t hear her, but she is part of it anyway. So it felt natural to do that. Just because she’s gone, it doesn’t mean that she’s forgotten. That’s the way it is.

PP: – Regarding this link between “Look Sharp!” and “Joyride”, we, fans were very surprised, because when you said that it’s a link, we thought OK, but Marie is not there anymore, so can it be a real link? And then you said it’s a sister album to them and then the other day you said in an interview that it’s a cousin. I think cousin is the closest relation to those two albums, because it has this ’80s and ’90s vibe to it, but it’s different. It’s not how Roxette really sounded back in the ’80s and ’90s.

PG: – I think that maybe it’s me who hasn’t really been clear about it. I haven’t explained it properly. I mean it’s not like a sibling to “Look Sharp!” and “Joyride” in that sense that it sounds the same, it’s just that it’s that kind of sounds and that kind of way. You can hear so much classic Clarence keyboards in there, which is very much the old Roxette style, but I didn’t want to do an album that sounded like 1989. It has to sound 2022. It has to sound modern. This is probably the closest you can get without being too retro. I didn’t want to make it like a retro album, but at the same time, I didn’t want it to sound like a Mono Mind record with real voices. Maybe some people think that it sounds more like “Good Karma” than “Joyride”. I don’t know.

PP: – It sounds a bit like “Good Karma”, it sounds a bit like “Crash! Boom! Bang!”, it sounds a bit like “Look Sharp!”, a bit like “Joyride”, so it’s a mix of everything.

PG: – Yeah and that’s obviously because it’s my songs and it’s my style of writing and that shines through in everything. It’s always very difficult to describe music in words, you know. It sounds like this or it sounds like that. The attitude we had when we started producing was that we should do something like a sibling to “Joyride” and “Look Sharp!” and don’t do too many overdubs. If you listen to “Dressed For Success” or “Sleeping Single” or even “The Look”… I heard “The Look” today in my headphones when I was at the radio station. There are hardly any instruments there, there are only like a bass synth, an overdub bass, some guitars and a pad here and there and then voices and drum machine and that’s it. It’s very ’80s. “Watch Me Come Undone” is sort of the same thing. It’s very ’80s, even though it sounds modern in a way. It’s the closest I could get.

PP: – Your demos in the “Look Sharp!” and “Joyride” era were quite produced. Now how should we imagine the demos for “Pop-Up Dynamo!”?

PG: – I made pretty produced demos. Hahaha.

PP: – Do they sound almost the same as the final songs?

PG: – Not really, because Clarence and Magnus, especially Magnus is really into the analog synthesizers and I have lots of them myself. You know, Jupiter 8, Jupiter 6 and Prophet 5 and all those synthesizers. So we used those, but when I made the demos, I didn’t use them at all. So it was Clarence and Magnus who created this ’80s sound. But eventually, I’m sure I would release the demos on a birthday. Hahaha.

PP: – Surprise, surprise! Haha.

PG: – These type of songs that are like pop songs, it’s really hard to present them on an acoustic guitar. I have to show Clarence and Magnus what I want with this song, which direction I wanted to go. So I have to make a demo, which sort of makes sense. The only song I didn’t have a demo for is the one I wrote with Giorgio Tuinfort.

PP: – You released “Look Sharp!” at the age of 30, now you are in your 60s. How was the uptempo PG back then and how he is now? How challenging was it to write such songs?

PG: – It’s always harder to write fast songs than slow songs. It’s the same with the new Gyllene Tider album. I think that album is the best album we’ve ever done, because there is so much energy in it and …

PP: – Sorry to interrupt, but when did you record it? We just heard the news that it’s already done. When did you record it? You were touring all the time! Haha.

PG: – Hahaha. We started recording it in November last year. You know we had to cancel touring then and so I didn’t tour before Christmas. When we got back on tour in April, the album was done.

PP: – Gosh! Wow!

PG: – We were also like “how the hell did we do this?”. Hahaha. We were very motivated and I was really motivated. Same with this album, “Pop-Up Dynamo!”. I just felt like I wanted to do Roxette. When you write a song for Roxette, it has to have a certain amount of sophistication in there. It’s pretty smart and advanced with all the modulations. As soon as Clarence is involved and you put the responsibility on his shoulders, it becomes like a fulfilled production thing, which is not the case with Gyllene Tider. Gyllene Tider is much more… [he is snapping his fingers] It’s five people trying to make sense. Half of the time we don’t make sense at all, but when we make sense, it sort of explodes. It’s so different writing an uptempo song for Roxette compared to Gyllene Tider. And I can’t really explain it. It’s just so different.

PP: – Very cool! I just hope that at the age of 90 you will still write uptempo songs. Haha. Earlier you said that you couldn’t really go back to that writing style, how you wrote songs in the ’80s and ’90s. Now how was it possible for you to go back to that way of thinking?

PG: – You know, so many things that I say can be interpreted in so many ways. For me it’s a big difference how I write today compared to when I was younger, but at the same time it’s exactly the same. It’s because it’s the same style, my roots are still the same and my musical ideals and what I like about music is the same. And I haven’t really changed them. I’m pretty conservative when it comes to my songwriting. So in that sense, nothing has changed. But, what has really happened is that time has gone by. I mean, I’m older now and the more you know, the more professional you get. Even though you might not necessarily notice it yourself, you tend to change because you become professional. And also you have written so many songs. It happens that I’m writing and bump into something that I feel sounds really interesting and then I think shit, I used this on “(Do You Get) Excited?” or I used this on “Fading Like A Flower” or I used it on “Honung och guld”. So of course it becomes more and more difficult, because you’ve done so many songs, you’ve written so many songs. I think it’s so rewarding when you write a really simple uptempo Gyllene Tider song and it works and it sounds great. It’s really hard to do now and it wasn’t hard to do when I was 20. Hahaha. It’s hard to do, but then it’s so rewarding to be able to do that. It’s the same with the PG Roxette album. In a way, it’s very fragile because it’s a debut album in a sense. It’s the first time I do a Roxette album without Marie, so there are things that I might change. If I’m going to do another album, it’s going to be different from this one, because I had to do this album first before I go into the next chapter. So in a way, it’s like an experiment to see how it sounds and how we could do things.

PP: – It might be a stupid question, because even your 30-40-year-old albums sound amazing today, but as an artist, did you think it might get “outdated” during those 2 years while you kept “Pop-Up Dynamo!” in the can? With an album lying around for such a long time, is there any temptation or “risk” of wanting to remake it or change anything after it’s ready, but not yet released? Did you change anything on this album since it was ready?

PG: – Yeah, I did. First of all, I think you have to make a decision early on that when the album is done, it’s done. Otherwise you’re going to change it all the time. But what I did was that I took away one uptempo song. It was 12 songs to begin with. And I did that because I thought the album didn’t need that. I’m going to release that song next year instead. Because it’s a really cool song. I think one of the side effects of my style of writing is that if you hear one song at a time and you listen to other artists in between, all these songs sort of make sense. If you listen to them altogether, they sort of disturb each other, because they are all very powerful in their own right. It was the same problem with “Joyride” and “Look Sharp!”. That’s why I put “Jezebel” on this album.

PP: – Yeah, I was going to ask you about the balance.

PG: – Yes. That song doesn’t fit the album at all, but that’s why it has to be there. And also that’s one of the reasons why I took away this uptempo track, because it got too many songs. You overdose on your stuff. But that’s something you learn.

PP: – Regarding the production, who had what role in it?

PG: – Well, like I said, I did the demos and the demos showed the direction. Then we talked about the direction and Clarence and Magnus did backing tracks and then they sent the tracks to me and I changed everything I didn’t like. Hahaha. Then I did the vocals basically on my own in the studio and Helena’s vocals as well with Mats in Halmstad. Then it went back to Magnus and Clarence to sort of organize everything. After you’ve done the vocals, you have to sort of adjust certain things. You feel like maybe you need something here or there. It’s a production thing. The last thing we did was to go to Christoffer’s studio and do some overdubs. Also, we did all the Jonas Isacsson stuff at the Sweetspot Studio in Harplinge early on. So he was involved really early on. Christoffer wasn’t that involved this time. We did of course Dea’s vocals with him and he did some overdubs, some guitar parts as well and he did this strange synthesizer, Ondes Martenot. Have you heard about that one?

PP: – Yeah, from you and I had to look it up to see what’s that.

PG: – They are really hard to get, those machines. And here you have to be sort of selected by this family to be able to buy it. And Christoffer was selected. He was the list for years! So he got it and it sounds like a little bird. It’s a synthesizer from the 1930s or so and it’s really complicated to play. You have a little ring and a string and you move your finger like this and it’s [here Per makes some Ondes Martenot noise while demonstrating how it works, haha]. Anyway, it’s a sound that sounds really special, and we put it as soon as we needed something instead of doing a string melody or something. We used this machine instead, because it’s special, it’s unique. Then of course I did three songs alone with Christoffer, including “Jezebel”. And the only one we used was “Jezebel”. I did another version of “Sunflower” with Chris, but that sounded terrible so I used my demo instead, which is what was released. And then we did another song, which was terrible, but I kept that song for the Gyllene Tider album, because it sounded much more GT than Roxette.

PP: – Hmm! Interesting! So you translated this song into Swedish?

PG: – Yeah, I translated it, so now there is this English and the Swedish Gyllene Tider version of it.

PP: – I hope we will get to hear both of them one day!

PG: – That will be coming up, I’m sure.

PP: – A couple of minutes ago you mentioned Jonas. I have to say we all thought that – because of him – there would be more guitars involved. How was your collaboration after so many years?

PG: – It was good and it was fun. Jonas is a great player. Actually, I felt like a little bit of what you’re saying. I felt like there was a little bit too little guitar. So that’s one of the reasons why I wrote and put “Headphones On” in there, because I wanted to get a proper guitar solo. It’s so unfashionable with a guitar solo these days. Working with him also on the Metallica song was great, because he is such a great player. I think it was mainly in Clarence’s and Magnus’s backing tracks that they didn’t really use that many guitars. Actually, “The Loneliest Girl In The World” had much more guitars at one stage, but we took away the guitars, because we kept the synthesizers instead.

PP: – Does it make any difference when you write a song on guitar or piano and then you make it as a synth production?

PG: – No, not really. I mean, you decide that when you make the demo. You feel what the song’s temperature is or whatever you want to call it. I think if you’re going to have a guitar riff that’s like in “Sleeping In My Car” or something like that, you have to write that when you write the song. Because it’s really hard to do it later. Let’s say you have a song like “The Loneliest Girl In The World” and you try to make a guitar riff in the intro. It doesn’t really make sense, because there is so many things going on anyway. And that’s exactly what happened with that particular song. But that’s a very good question. Generally speaking, I think we should have a little bit more guitars on this album. But next time! Hahaha.

PP: – It sounds much fun anway, but on the next album, maybe more guitars, yes.

PG: – There is so much guitar on the Gyllene Tider album, so you will be happy.

PP: – Yeah, sounds promising. I’ll be happy with that for sure. Haha. Was your Ensoniq ESQ-1 involved at any stage?

PG: – [He smiles.] No, but I found the Jupiter 6 and the Jupiter 8. I took down all my synthesizers to Christoffer’s studio a long time ago and he put them away in the attic or somewhere. I told him that I wanted them back for this recording, so I got all these synthesizers back and some of them were in terrible shape. The keys were stuck, stuff like that. They were fixed by some guy in Malmö. Eventually, they became like mint condition, so Magnus and Clarence used them a lot. Magnus, you know, he’s really into that kind of stuff, so it was Christmas Eve every day for him. Hahaha.

PP: – Three guys play the synth on the album: Magnus, Chris and Clarence. What is the difference between their style?

PG: – Well, Clarence of course is a keyboard player, so he can play properly. Magnus is more of a programmer and Magnus isn’t a very good piano player. Christoffer is in between. He can play anything, but he can’t really play piano like Clarence. So they have different roles. When it comes to Christoffer, he didn’t really program that much. He was more like the end station for this production. I think he got fed up programming when we did the Mono Mind album and the “Good Karma” album. It was too much for him. He doesn’t really like that anymore. Hahaha. We did the Mono Mind album before we did “Good Karma” and that was an amazing recording to do, because we really did something we hadn’t touched before productionwise. Then doing all these experiments with the computers and the voices. We learned so much from that and we took a lot of that knowledge into the production of “Good Karma”. But then “Good Karma” had other problems. That is Marie’s voice. So we had to work so hard to make her sound OK. In the original version of “Let Your Heart Dance With Me” she didn’t sound very good. That’s one of the reasons why we didn’t put that on the album. Then many years later Ronny Lahti mixed that song and he could actually make Marie sound great on that. So she sounds amazing on the single I think. But she didn’t sound that good when we worked with her.

PP: – Was there any song originally written for Marie to sing? I mean one of these songs that are on “Pop-Up Dynamo!” now.

PG: – Hmmm. Let me think. No, I think all of these songs are new. Hmmm. No. They are new songs, all of them. The oldest song is “Jezebel”. I wrote that in 2017.

PP: – What project did you write it for?

PG: – I think it was after Nashville. I wrote a couple of acoustic songs that I recorded with Helena. And “Jezebel” is one of them. I recorded it with Christoffer on my own and I just felt that I needed something to break the radio-friendly pop songs on the album. Hahaha. When you make an album, it’s always like putting a puzzle together. As soon as you get a new song, it changes all the other songs.

PP: – Getting down to the songs, “Walking On Air” was the trigger track. You wrote it for “Top Gun: Maverick”. How should we imagine the request you got to write a song for the movie? Did you get the complete script of that one scene you wrote the song for?

PG: – I got an email saying that they were interested in a song for a particular scene and the scene was a couple of people dancing on the beach. So they wanted this like a summer vibe thing. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I think that there isn’t a scene like that in it.

PP: – I asked a friend of mine who watched it and he said that there is a beach scene but no one is dancing there.

PG: – Once in a while I get requests like that and normally I don’t really deal with it, but since this was such a big movie, I thought it could be worthwhile to do it. I just loved this song when I wrote it. This is a great song and that sort of triggered the whole idea that maybe I should do a Roxette album in that style. Then the idea of doing this “sibling” to “Joyride” and “Look Sharp!” came about. It was definitely the trigger track. As you know it, when I wrote it for the movie, it was only Helena singing it. Because I thought it made more sense. But then of course I changed it to myself.

Originally, the meeting would come to an end here, Zoom says it’s just 4 minutes left, but I still have some questions left and so I ask Per if he still has time. He says absolutely, we can go on, no worries. But I explain that the Zoom meeting will end anyway, so I will have to send another invitation, I assume. I usually do Zoom meetings with agency people who send me the invitations, so this time I only registered on Zoom for being able to schedule this meeting. Non-premium users can only have 40-minute meetings.

While I’m already at creating the new invitation, Per says he thinks all these apps are so complicated. Then he mentions “we have something called Teams here in Sweden”. Hallelujah! I laughed because that’s exactly the app we use at my company and I’m more familiar with that. Also, there is no time limit. It’s just that whenever there was an online media interview with Per, I saw he always used Zoom and also when he said we could meet online, he suggested Zoom. So I didn’t think about asking if Teams could also be fine for him. Haha. Whatever. He now suggests we can make a Teams thing instead if I prefer that. So I start creating a Teams invitation. While I’m at it, he starts scanning my shelves behind me and notices I have the “Akustiska kvällar” book there (among many other things). He says he is waiting for Anders Roos to send him footage from the studio, because he was there when they were recording the new album with Gyllene Tider. I find it promising. [If you check Gyllene Tider’s Facebook site, you can see that in the meantime he received the footage from Anders.]

The Teams invitation is sent and Per says he lets me go, he goes back to his mail and we start all over again. Ciao! Ciao!

END OF PART 1

Stills are from the Zoom meeting.

Click here for PART 2!

PG Roxette – ”Pop-Up Dynamo!” – Eleven new songs with a classic twist

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PRESS RELEASE – When Swedish pop duo Roxette made their debut with the summer single ”Neverending Love” 1986, not many believed that they would reach very far outside the Swedish border. Basically, only ABBA had managed to pull that off before.

But reality would soon surpass Marie Fredriksson’s and Per Gessle’s wildest dreams about international success.

With four US #1 singles, more than 80 million albums sold, and several world tours, Roxette in fact had two careers: the first when the band between 1986 and 2002 stormed the international charts, and the second with the unexpected and eagerly awaited comeback from 2009 to 2016.

Break and comeback

The first career was cut short when Marie Fredriksson in 2002 was diagnosed with a severe brain tumour that she miraculously managed to survive. The second career took off when the ever-fighting Marie had become so well that she not only could perform on stage, but even tour again.

But the band lived on borrowed time, and right before the release of the new album ”Good Karma” 2016, the Roxette saga finally came to an end. Doctors advised Marie to save her strength and quit touring. She did so, and got three more years before passing away in 2019, leaving millions of grieving fans with loving memories of her dynamic stage performances, and a treasure of recordings that forever had turned her and Per Gessle into pop history icons.

Wanted to perform again

Pressphoto Per Gessle 2021. Photo by Fredrik Etoall.

After the initial void following Marie’s passing, Per started to feel an urge to get back on the road, meet the fans, and perform the songs with the classic Roxette family again.

But then the pandemic hit the world and postponed all thoughts on playing live. However, by then I already had recorded a song that got me wondering how it would sound if I made a new Roxette album that mixed a contemporary feel with the classic Rox attitude from ”Look Sharp!” and ”Joyride”.

The song was ”Walking on Air”.

In the autumn of 2019 I got an offer to write a song for a scene in the ”Top Gun: Maverick” movie. The result was ”Walking On Air”, but the scene was cut out of the movie, and I never heard from them again. So I kept it, started to write more songs in the same vein, and suddenly ”Walking On Air” had become the starting point for what would be the new PG Roxette album.

Dusted off the old synths

Having started to look back at the first golden Roxette years in the late 80’s and early 90’s, Per decided that he had to go down to the basement and get his old synthesizer workhorses från the 80’s up and running again.

If you want to go retro, get the right stuff, he smiles. So, I dusted off both the Jupiter 6 and 8, as well as my Prophet 5. A key or two was stuck, but after some TLC they were fit for fight again. Synth pop rules!

The recordings started in May 2020, and continued during the summer and autumn. By then a new offer had turned up; PG Roxette were asked to perform ”Nothing Else Matters” among the artists celebrating Metallica on the tribute album ”The Metallica Blacklist”.

One and one became three

Album image “Pop-Up Dynamo” PG Roxette. Photo by Fredrik Etoall.

The recording of ”Nothing Else Matters” made Per realize that the combination of Helena Josefsson’s and Dea Norberg’s voices, together with Per’s own vocals, would be the key ingredient on the new ”Pop-Up Dynamo!” album.

For me, it’s always been clear that Marie was impossible to replace, so until we recorded our version of ”Nothing Else Matters”, the idea was to use different singers through the album. But in this song, Helena and Dea was such a knockout combination that I decided to go with them all the way.

When Helena’s and Dea’s voices mix, it’s almost like they create a third persona. It’s a fabulous sound. And if you let them improvise on their own, they will come up with a whole palette of superb vocal takes, that you can play around with. And that, together with my vocals, became an integral part of the new album’s sound.

”My Chosen One” is the only exception from this rule on ”Pop-Up Dynamo!”, featuring a guest appearance by Swedish singer LÉON.

I heard a wonderful song on the radio, with a singer that reminded me a bit about Tanita Tikaram, who I loved in the 80’s. I had never heard of LÉON, but asked if she wanted to sing on the new album, which she did. I think the result became spectacular, and ”My Chosen One” is one of my favourites on the album.

The classic Roxette gang

Album image “Pop-Up Dynamo” PG Roxette. Photo by Fredrik Etoall.

Apart from that, the recordings of ”Pop-Up Dynamo!” has mostly been made with the inner Roxette circle: demoes and basic tracks recorded with long time collaborator Mats ”MP” Persson in the T&A studio in Halmstad, then down to the Malmö studio Farozon for further recordings with producers Clarence Öfwerman and Magnus Börjeson from the touring band, before final recordings at guitarist Christoffer Lundquist’s studio Aerosol Grey Machine.

Then it was mixed by Ronny Lahti, who also did Roxette’s ”Room Service” album in 2001, as well as created wonders with a few of my solo projects over the years.

Even guitarist Jonas Isacsson – whose electrifying riff once sent ”The Look” intro straight up in the pop stratosphere – is back in action again.

Guitar solos might not be the hottest thing in the universe right now, but if you’re looking back at Roxette’s heydays, you have to have at least one devastating guitar solo on the album. So, we let Jonas loose in ”Headphones On”. I don’t understand how he does it, but every time he starts playing, something magical happens.

A new ”Listen To Your Heart”

”You Hurt The One You Love The Most” was written in Amsterdam with Giorgio Tuinfort, who has collaborated with Michael Jackson, Gwen Stefani, Lady Gaga, Whitney Houston and numerous other superstars.

We had worked together with David Guetta and my Mono Mind project earlier, and now we were in a studio when Giorgio sat down by the piano and said: “Shouldn’t we write a new ’Listen To Your Heart’ together?” ’Hahaha – of course!’, I said, and 30 minutes later we had ’You Hurt The One You Love The Most’.

You could write a small novel about every song on ”Pop-Up Dynamo!”. But enough of the talk right now. Get your headphones on, press “play”, and discover the 2022 version of a pop phenomenon that never ceases to amaze.

“Pop-Up Dynamo!” is released on October 28.

Photos by Fredrik Etoall.

Click HERE for the Swedish version of the press release!

Per Gessle on “Halv tre med Lotta Bromé” on Mix Megapol

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Per Gessle was Lotta Bromé’s guest on radio Mix Megapol on 26th October. You can listen to the interview HERE.

Before Per was on air, the radio played The Look by Roxette and När vi två blir en by Gyllene Tider.

Lotta welcomes Per on the show and he thanks for that. Lotta asks Per how he is doing. Mr. G replies he is actually very well. Lotta asks why and Per laughs, because it’s a weekday. Lotta is curious if PG has any fun things to do now that he is in Stockholm. Mr. G thinks there are only fun things around him and a lot is happening right now. Gyllene Tider ticket sales and tour and a new album and everything possible.

Lotta asks Per how he is functioning. Whether he is always in a hurry or he is one of those who have ADHD or if it’s just that he is a very creative being. Per thinks he is a combination of all that. He usually says that he probably has all the letter combinations except I and Q. [They are laughing.]

Lotta is curious if Per was good at school. He was quite uninterested in school. He liked art and drawing and English and Swedish. Lotta finds it strange that Per hasn’t mentioned music. PG says he wasn’t that interested, music teaching was quite boring in his time. He doesn’t know how it goes nowadays, but back then there were a lot of theory things.

So the question is, when he found music in his life. It came very early thanks to his 7-year-older brother who had a massive record collection. Already as a 6-7-8-year-old, he was completely engaged in the pop universe. Lotta asks if Per’s brother had a good taste. He had very broad and good taste that Per thinks he has carried with him. It was everything from Hepstars to Led Zeppelin. So Lotta thinks it was PG’s brother who laid the foundation for Per’s chords. Per agrees. It’s his brother’s record collection that he dug into until he got his own back then.

Lotta wants to know how many records Per has in his collection. Mr. G has gotten rid of a lot since then, but he has maybe a couple of thousand LPs left. A lot of singles too. He split the collection and keeps the vinyls in Halmstad, while the CDs are in Stockholm. He has a record player in both places. He is also using Spotify, but he likes to buy vinyls for the sake of the cover. He loves record covers and the smell of vinyl records. Holding the record and listening to it is magical. Lotta says her 16-year-old daughter started collecting vinyls, using amplifiers and speakers and stuff. Per can identify with that. You think about all the music you grew up with. Aladdin Sane by David Bowie or Sticky Fingers by the Stones or Sgt. Pepper. Without the cover it’s just empty. Album covers are like the face of the music.

Lotta says Per asked her not to invite him for too early on the radio show, because he is old. Now it’s afternoon and she asks Per if he has already woken up. PG has woken up.

They get down to Gyllene Tider and Per tells it was hysterical back in the days. It was crazy in 1980-81. He lived with his mother, his father had passed away by then and his siblings, 7 and 14 years older had already moved out. Lotta is curious what Per’s mother thought of the people standing outside their door the whole time. Mr. G says she took it pretty well, until people started stealing the laundry that was hung on the dash and the number plate of the car. Then she thought it was time for Per to get his own apartment. So he found one. He had a very close relationship with his mother. She was very supportive [Per says the word „supportive” in English], as it’s called in Halland. It was Per’s father who thought you should get a real job instead of fooling around with 3 chords. He had a real job, he was a plumber.

Per’s family members passed away in 3 years and it was tough of course, it always is, everyone knows that when you lose your relatives. But that happened when Per was quite mature himself and as a man you can handle it in a different way than when you are small. It was harder when his father passed away when he was only 19. It was difficult in a way, but there isn’t much to do. You go through that and you learn to live with it. The older you get, the more human people disappear around you, so you learn to deal with it in a way, even if it’s difficult.

Lotta remembers that Per once said that when relatives disappear, you get different values. She is curious what values he thought of. Per can’t remember he said that, but he thinks that when you lose friends and relatives, you become thoughtful. You think through what you are doing. This pandemic was a shock to the system that lasted for years. Per thinks people changed a lot, how they travel and stuff like that. Also one of the reasons for a Gyllene Tider comeback is because they have realized that, perhaps, you should value things and value things in a different way. Value relationships, for example.

Lotta plays Tittar på dig när du dansar and asks Per to tell something about it. He hasn’t heard it in a long time, but he recorded it in Nashville. Using flute and mandolin. Lotta asks if those were real instruments. Absolutely yes, Per replies, ”oh my god, it’s Nashville!”. Lotta says there are other projects when Per is not using real instruments, but rather technical stuff. She thinks of Mono Mind. Per likes switching between his projects, jumping between different things. You do an acoustic tour, then you want to do something electrical next month. Then Gyllene Tider. GT is very organic. It’s played hardcore.

Lotta asks when the tour starts. It starts on 7th July in Halmstad next summer. To the question how many gigs there will be Per replies you never know with this little band. Right now there are probably 15, 16, 17, 18 booked. Two extras were added today. Lotta asks Per how many times they said it’s over. Mr. G says they didn’t really say that more than once, in 2019. And that’s what they meant back then. The decision was initiated by Micke Syd, who thought they should stop when they were at their peak and alive, but as Per said before, the pandemic came and he started thinking again. He started writing songs that had that clear Gyllene Tider feel to them and presented them to the band. All of a sudden everyone wanted to be back on the train. On tour they will of course play the old goodies, but he hopes they will play something new as well, because the new record feels fantastic. Although you won’t be able to listen to it until next spring. Lotta asks Per if he comes back on the show when the date for the album release is decided. They kind of agree on meeting at 3 pm on Maundy Thursday.

Lotta is curious about this new project, PG Roxette. Per tells that a new album is coming out on Friday. It’s called Pop-Up Dynamo! and it’s actually a continuation of Roxette. After a lot of tossing and turning, he decided to go on with that train as well. It wasn’t an obvious decision, but time passed and he felt that he wanted to. Continuing that journey mostly comes from the fact that he would like to continue playing the Roxette songs live. He wrote almost all of these songs and he doesn’t want to put the lid on. He also has to say that he is not trying and has never tried to replace Marie in any way. There are these two fantastic girls who were backing vocalists on Roxette tours for many years. It’s Dea Norberg and Helena Josefsson who came forward when they were needed.

Lotta has just looked at the dates and realized that Marie passed away shortly after Per’s family members passed away, so it must have been quite tough years. Of course it was tough, Per says and then their fantastic drummer Pelle Alsing also passed away not long after. So it was tough.

Lotta says that Marie wrote it in her biography that the last tour they went on was the best rehabilitation. Per says Marie was absolutely fantastic, because she never gave up. He remembers when in the spring of 2016 Marie wanted to meet him in her home and said she couldn’t continue. They had a big summer tour booked and had sold several hundred thousand tickets in Europe. She said she couldn’t do it anymore, but she actually toured from 2009 to 2016. They did several hundreds of concerts together. She did that because she was so strong and she wanted to do that. She was just amazing. Lotta notices that it’s still hard for Per to talk about it. Mr. G says it’s tough indeed. She was a special person.

Lotta tells that Marie’s family has decided to put a part of her wardrobe on auction and the money will go to Stockholm’s City Mission in full. Lotta thinks she would have liked that. Per absolutely agrees.

From the new album Lotta plays Watch Me Come Undone. It has this wonderful ’80s style, Per says. This whole album is a cousin to the ’80s and ’90s records that they did with Roxette. Look Sharp! and Joyride.

Lotta is curious if PG Roxette will tour next autumn. Per thinks it’s not a bad idea. Nothing planned yet, but it’s in his plans to go out and play Roxette songs. Lotta says he should release this one in Spanish as well as they did before. Per hopes he doesn’t have to do that. Lotta says she heard Per was so lazy or didn’t want to sing in Spanish that he gave all the songs to Marie to sing. Per explains it was a ballad record and so he chose the ballads that Marie sang and he escaped.

Lotta wants to know how many ballads there are on the new Gyllene Tider album. Per thinks and says there are no ballads on the album at all. It’s full speed from A to Z, just like how it should be.

Lotta asks how much music Per has in his head and how it can be enough for this many projects all the time. Mr. G doesn’t really know the answer. He is writing all the time, so it gets more and more and as long as it’s fun, he won’t stop. He says that if you are motivated and having fun, it’s music, it’s not a job. He is not the kind of person who gets up every day and sits down at the piano or writes a song. He just writes when he feels like it. Per usually says that he writes as little as possible.

Lotta and PG agree again on meeting at Easter. They wish merry Xmas to each other and happy new year. And with this, the show ends.

Stills are from PG Roxette’s The idea behind the album video.

PG Roxette – from tour to album – Per Gessle interview on Hallandsposten

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Jan-Owe Wikström did an interview with Per for Hallandsposten. You can read it HERE!

Eight days after Gyllene Tider announced their comeback with the album “Hux flux” and tour in the summer of 2023, Per Gessle now releases PG Roxette’s debut album “Pop-Up Dynamo!”.

PG explains:

Well, it was maybe a bit tight there, but since the tickets for the tour were to be released this week and PG Roxette is an international launch, it turned out that way.

In December, it is three years since the other half of Roxette, Marie Fredriksson, tragically passed away after a long illness. But then she had already been forced to step down in 2016 due to failing health.

So the idea of nurturing the legacy of Roxette has been there latently ever since and Marie and I also talked about it.

Finally he arrived at a crossroads.

It was to drop Roxette completely or to find a way to move on without Marie. Either on or off.

And what made me decide was that I noticed how much interest there was still for Roxette out there in the world through Spotify and all the streaming services. At the same time, I have written all the songs and felt that I wanted to keep them in my life.

I mean, I’ve devoted my entire adult life, almost 30 years, to the band, so it’s not something you just let go like that.

In 2018 Per went on a new tour under the name Per Gessle’s Roxette and the idea was also that there would be a new one as PG Roxette in 2020.

Per tells Hallandsposten:

Yes, the goal from the beginning was not to record new music, but to go out and tour with Roxette songs.

Until a certain pandemic struck and shut down and redrawn the world. Then Per had to think again. And song after song grew into a first PG Roxette record.

The idea was to make uptempo and very ’80s-’90s songs like on “Look Sharp!” and “Joyride”. But in 2022.

Jan-Owe says it sounds like Per has been listening to The Cars a lot, among other things.

Well, you had to root out all the old synthesizers from that time. Jupiter 6, Jupiter 8, Prophet and all those…

Instead of Christoffer Lundquist – who was responsible for Gyllene Tider’s and Per’s own solo albums lately – it was also Clarence Öfwerman and Magnus Börjeson who became producers.

Per says:

It has never been an issue to try to replace Marie, because it’s not possible.

So even though the idea was that I would now sing most of the time, I have always wanted to have girls along as well. And since Helena (Josefsson) and Dea (Norberg) were doing backing vocals on Roxette tours during the past few years, it was natural to bring them along.

The effect surprised even Per himself.

Yes, it was actually when we with PG Roxette were going to record “Nothing Else Matters” for Metallica’s anniversary album that we used both voices at the same time for the first time.

And then I discovered that together they became like a third persona, a new, completely unique voice. Much like Frida and Agnetha in ABBA. So then Dea had to go into the studio again and add her voice to the parts that Helena had already sung.

During the journey, Roxette’s drummer, Pelle Alsing, also suddenly passed away in 2020.

It came completely unexpectedly, like a shock. But it made me even stronger in my conviction to manage Roxette’s legacy, that the music should live on.

Therefore, Roxette guitarist Jonas Isacsson also became involved in PG Roxette early on.

Yes, it really will be Roxette with his guitar. Just like Gyllene Tider only plays Gyllene Tider with the five of us together, me, Micke (Syd), Anders (Herrlin), MP (Mats Persson) and Göran (Fritzon). It kind of just happens like that, can’t be explained or touched on.

Per about “Pop-Up Dynamo!”:

As the title suggests, it’s electric, pops up and is very uptempo. So if Gyllene Tider’s new record is like four tequila shots, this one is like seven…

The international PG Roxette tour will have to wait. There is a new Gyllene Tider trip in between.

New Roxette album without Marie Fredriksson – German News Agency

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The names Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle will forever be associated with pop duo Roxette. Three years after Fredriksson’s untimely death, Gessle is now releasing an album with a new project that bears their band name – and also the unmistakably pop Roxette sound of “Joyride” and other world hits of the past. “Pop-Up Dynamo!” will be released by Warner Music on Friday.

“I decided early on that we should go for this sound from the late ’80s, early ’90s, where my heart is basically,” Gessle told the DPA (German News Agency) ahead of the release of the album. Instead of adapting to very new formats, it’s better to stick with what you’re good at. “At the same time, I didn’t want to be nostalgic or too retro. I also wanted to sound modern,” emphasizes the now 63-year-old Swede. The result was an uptempo pop album. “It’s a mishmash of 1989 and 2022 – or 2021 when it was recorded,” Gessle said.

1989 – around this year was the heyday of Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson. As Roxette, the two Swedes stringed together one world success after another, including “The Look”, “Listen To Your Heart” and “It Must Have Been Love”. They sold about 80 million albums worldwide. Gessle wrote the songs, while Fredriksson’s stunning voice became a hit on German radio too.

In 2016 Roxette gave their last concert. On December 9, 2019, Fredriksson died at the age of just 61 after a long battle with cancer. Gessle also processed this musically, one year after her death, the song collection “Bag Of Trix” came out with unpublished and partly lost Roxette recordings.

Roxette is now continued as PG Roxette, the world hits of that time are followed by the album “Pop-Up Dynamo!”, dedicated to Marie Fredriksson. The sound remains the same, but a hardly replaceable voice has to be replaced. “This is a new chapter beginning,” says Gessle. “It would have felt strange to do a Roxette album without Marie.”

Fredriksson is therefore not heard on the album, but the longtime background singers Helena Josefsson and Dea Norberg. “Pop-Up Dynamo!” is different vs. music by Roxette, but somehow not. From the very first few seconds, “Walking On Air”, the record’s strong first and pre-release track, feels like a ’90s car ride with the radio turned on. The voices of Gessle, Josefsson and Norberg invite you to sing along, the melodies of several of the eleven songs remain supple in the ear.

In the middle of the album, for example with “You Hurt The One You Love The Most” and “Jezebel”, the music sometimes becomes calmer and more thoughtful, in between with “The Loneliest Girl In The World” – despite the sad title – audibly happier again. So Gessle has remained true to this mixture of the cheerful and the thoughtful, which also characterized Roxette. He’s not trying to be Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber.

Gessle didn’t shy away from getting the old synthesizers out of the basement. The Swede admits that “Pop-Up Dynamo!” is something different than today’s pop music. The album sounds so completely different from everything else that is musically circulating today. “Most pop music today is made on laptops or in that style,” he says. “It’s a development that has limited the music a bit.” Gessle himself stays within his old comfort boundaries – those of Roxette.