Radio

Per Gessle on Nordic Rox – July 2023

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In the July episode of Nordic Rox, Per Gessle and Sven Lindström welcome listeners on the show from Per’s beautiful garden on the Swedish West Coast, waiting for the summer to kick in. Sven says it looks good after having a prolonged winter for 12 months or something. Per says it feels like that indeed.

Today’s featured artist is Amanda Jenssen. Per thinks she is amazing. She started out in 2007. She participated in this talent show called Idol and wound up in 2nd place. Sven thinks it’s quite symptomatic that she didn’t win. How good of an artist you really are, coming from a talent show? Sven asks Per about it. PG says you can’t really judge everyone, but he thinks it might be good not to win to have your own career and go from there. He guesses it’s a big and very good experience to be part of it. But still, it’s really hard to judge. The whole idea is sort of strange to begin with. But that’s another discussion, Per says. Sven says Amanda survived the eventual talent show trap and carved out a nice career for herself. Short though, it’s like she has taken a slight break in the last few years. The guys focus on the three albums she did from 2008 to 2012, and they picked 4 great songs. But before that, here comes an intro that Per might recognize, haha. Dangerous by Roxette from Sweden. Sven says the song was a US No.1 if he is not misinformed. Per says he is, because it was No.2. Sven says yeah, it was indeed. PG says they were like Amanda Jenssen, they were runner-up. But it was close, Sven says, haha.

The next song played is Kaleidoscope Dream by The Northern Belle, a wonderful band from Norway. Good Morning Midnight by Backyard Babies is next, then Sarah Klang’s new single, Mercedes is on. It’s a great song, Per thinks. It sounds really special. Sarah loves to drown in echo. To echo her voice and it creates this sort of hypnotic sound, which Per really likes a lot. She has a wonderful voice as well. The guys also play Electric by Melody Club. Both of them think it’s a good one. Hang With Me by the mighty Robyn is next from the album Body Talk Pt. 2.

The Amanda Jenssen Special begins here. The year after she was No.2 on Idol in 2007, she produced her first single and debut album, Killing My Darlings. And the first single was Do You Love Me? Per thinks it’s a great track. An instant hit for PG. There is something about her voice that Sven totally loves. He says it’s a bit… not hoarse, but… Per helps Sven out: „sexy”. Sven says it’s probably the word he was looking for. Per says he could see it on Sven’s face. Haha. Amanda wrote songs herself and she wrote in partnership with Pär Wiksten, who Per recognized from The Wannadies. This track is written by Vincent Pontare, who is an artist in his own right and the guys played him a lot of times before. He is a great writer as well and producer, PG says.

Coming up next is Dry My Soul, a track from Amanda’s third album, Hymns For The Haunted released in 2012. Sven loves this track. Per thinks it’s a good one. She’s got this very special voice and it just hits you as soon as you listen to it. Sven informs that she actually got pneumonia as a child on both lungs and that unfortunately left her with only 30% of lung capacity. Which is impossible to tell when you hear her sing. She sounds really powerful, PG thinks.

The guys slow things down a bit after this. They play a song by Amanda herself. Per thinks she is a great writer as well. She did this song called Illusionist, also from the Hymns For The Haunted album in 2012. It’s produced by Pär Wiksten. He was probably in another room when she recorded this, because there are no guitars in the beginning at least. They are a good team, Sven thinks. He loves The Wannadies, their attitude, pop-rock with great melodies. For Per, Illusionist is the stand-out track on that album.

In 2009, Amanda recorded her second album, Happyland and again partnered up with Pär Wiksten and they wrote the title track together. Pär produced most of the album. Happyland is a song the guys have been playing here on Nordic Rox quite a lot. Sven says there is a strange, wonderful atmosphere to this song. Per also thinks it’s very cool. Great production.

The Amanda Jenssen special is over. The guys go down to Malmö and play Gloria by Follin. Then comes The Sweetest Tune by Darling West. Ola & The Janglers is next with Not In My Life. A lovely sound from the ’60s. Per thinks this song was pretty influenced by The Zombies. Sven agrees. They must have listened to She’s Not There. PG thought about Time Of The Season. This song is from an album called Patterns, which Per had when he was a little kid. He still loves that album. It sounds really cool.

This wraps up the July episode of Nordic Rox. The guys thank everyone for listening, then Cigarettes by Anita Lindblom closes the show.

Still is from the Bag of Trix comment videos recorded by Anders Roos.

Thanks for your support, Sven!

Per Gessle on Nordic Rox – June 2023

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In May it was only Sven Lindström on Nordic Rox, but for the June episode, Per Gessle got back on track and joined him.

The guys focus on one of the biggest legends in Swedish rock history, Pugh Rogefeldt, who unfortunately passed away a couple of weeks ago. Sven says he left a mark on Swedish music and changed it more or less forever. Per agrees. Pugh was probably the first Swedish rock act to sing in Swedish. Nobody did that. Everyone in Europe thought that they had to write in English. Except in France, PG adds. Haha. In Sweden, in the ’60s, all those bands that were big, were either singing Middle of the Road songs in Swedish or they were doing rock and pop music based on Brit pop from the ’60s. Pugh Rogefeldt was the one in 1969 who did an album in Swedish. It took everyone by surprise and it earned him a Grammy. The first three or four albums he did were truly amazing, Mr. G says. Pugh actually influenced him a lot and lots of his peers too. Sven says Pugh made a massive impression on the scene. The guys will play 4 Rogefeldt songs and talk about them in a little while, but before that, they play some fasten-your-seatbelts songs.

Our Own Revolution by Brainpool is the opener. Per says it’s a sadly missed band. Sven adds they were discovered and signed by Per. Mr. G says oh yeah, he forgot about that. It happened once upon a time in the ’90s when he had a publishing company. Per says they were great writers and a great band. He thinks they did three or four albums. Christoffer Lundquist is on bass guitar here. Later he became Per’s producer and also lead guitar player in Roxette. He started out as a bass player. A very cool guy according to Sven.

Driving One Of Your Cars by Lisa Miskovsky is next. A great track according to Sven and Per. Then comes Just Kids by Lowland Circus.

The next song is (Do You Get) Excited? by Roxette. It’s one of the tracks from the massively successful Joyride album from 1991. Those were the days, the guys say. PG says Sven had hair those days. They are laughing. (Do You Get) Excited? is one of Per’s favourite songs from the album. He loves the sound of it. There are great guitar parts by Jonas Isacsson and Marie, of course, is singing the shit out of this song. Sven is curious if Per remembers writing and recording it. PG can’t really remember, but he says they had a big argument, because there is lots of modulations in this song. Per was really into modulations at the time and so he tried to use that in the arrangement of the song a lot. It’s got a little Led Zeppelin riffs, combined with a little drum machine here and there, it’s pretty special.

Broder Daniel’s Underground comes next. A lovely song, Mr. G thinks. Then it’s the Darkest Hour’s turn by Astrid S.

The guys get down to the Pugh Rogefeldt session. Sven says he was 22 years old when he made his debut album. He came from a small town and he was the father of two children. He didn’t expect anything, he didn’t really think anyone would listen to the album. PG says Pugh was lucky in a way, because there was a Swedish producer, Anders Burman, who had a record label called Metronome and he discovered him and put him together with two guys, Janne Carlsson on drums, who came from Hansson & Karlsson. Sven states that Hansson & Karlsson made the song Tax Free that Jimi Hendrix found about and recorded as well. To continue the story, Per says then there was this bass and guitar player called Georg Wadenius, who eventually became a member of Blood, Sweat & Tears three years later. So there is a slight American connection there, Sven says. PG says that Janne Carlsson on drums, Georg Wadenius on guitar and bass and Pugh on everything else, it was a great trio and great songs, unique songs. Like Per said earlier, Pugh was the first one to write in Swedish and he even created his own language on the second album. So three or four songs on that album are in his own language. Weird but nice, Mr. G says. Sven says Pugh was a very creative guy. He didn’t expect anything to happen, but as the months passed in 1969, more and more influential people in the radio and in the newspapers started to discover him. Then suddenly he became declared a complete genius. He said that it took him half a year to come down from that. He was elevated up to the stratosphere. Here the guys play the first Pugh song and it’s from his debut album. Här kommer natten was his breakthrough song. Per thinks it’s very good.

Sven says what happened after this album came out was that Pugh basically opened the door single-handedly for rock artists to express themselves in Swedish. And suddenly, from having been deemed impossible, everyone started to discover that Swedish was not that bad. PG thinks it’s cool. He did a couple of albums after this first one of course, which were very successful as well, and the second one was called Pughish. Pugh sort of invented his own language and that was the first album Per heard from him. It was the same for Sven. Per says he was about ten or eleven years old back then, maybe twelve. It’s a tremendous album. Then Pugh did an album called Hollywood, which was probably his bigger success up until the Bolla och Rulla album came in 1974. Sven says that was more of a straight ahead rock album and it was really successful. After that a couple of Swedish artists went on tour and recorded a Pugh song called Vandrar i ett regn (walking in the rain). The backing vocals on this are half crazy. It’s typically Pugh as well. Mr. G says it’s an homage to the Doo Wop ’50s style of music. This live recording is really special for Per, because he was at the show where they recorded it. They played in Per’s hometown and Pugh was a superstar at the time. PG was in the 8th row and just mesmerized by this concert. He really loves this double LP, Ett steg till.

After this live recording from 1974 is played, Sven says he and Per are celebrating Pugh Rogefeldt, the father of rock music with Swedish lyrics in Sweden. Per thinks that the most famous of Pugh’s songs is coming up next. Små lätta moln is also taken from the 1969 debut album. It has been covered by a lot of people, even though it’s a pretty strange song, but it’s beautiful. Sven agrees. He says Pugh is singing it with this original twist. Nobody sounded like him before that. Playful and inventive he was. PG says Pugh has got this very high-pitched voice, using falsettos and he is just doing his own thing. It’s a trademark sound, Mr. G thinks. Sven wants to know if there is anything Per as a songwriter picked up from Pugh that he is aware of. Mr. G says Pugh is a pretty unorthodox writer. He is not following any rules at all. Per was more rooted in the classic songwriting style when he started out, but he was influenced by Pugh for sure. Especially when it came to writing lyrics. Per started writing lyrics in Swedish and Pugh was definitely one guy to look up to. So if Per should say he was influenced by Pugh, it’s more about the lyrics than the music. Små lätta moln is translating into tiny light clouds, the guys say.

The last Pugh song Sven and Per play is from 1974. Per says it’s from a very raw album called Bolla och Rulla, which is a sloppy Swedish translation of rock ‘n’ roll. Sven says it’s also the typical Pugh attitude, twisting the words. By this time he had a good band. Both Per and Sven saw this tour in the summer of 1974. Per adds that Pugh toured Sweden all the time. He remembers going to this show as well and it was really good. The lead guitar player was actually his younger brother, Ingemar. He had a great Les Paul Special and it sounded amazing. Sven says to top it all off, the bassist was Roger Pettersson. He performed this show that Sven saw in a denim skirt. Per says he had that in Halmstad too. Sven says he always thought that Roger lost a bet or something, so he had to perform in that. But then he realized that it was a stage outfit. Per says he looked cool. At the time, it was the glam rock days, anything went. So it was cool. The song the guys play is the opening track on this album, and it’s called Hog farm. It’s about a hippie commune from the States that came to Sweden. Per says it was lots of scandals and drugs and minors and this and that.

Lambretta’s Bimbo is played. Ifrån mej själv by Dundertåget is the next one. Such a great one, Per loves it.

The guys thank everyone for listening, then as usual, Cigarettes by Anita Lindblom is closing the show.

Still is from the Bag of Trix comment videos recorded by Anders Roos.

Thanks for your support, Sven!

Per Gessle and Anders Herrlin about Gyllene Tider on P4 Extra

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P4 Extra on Swedish Radio had Per Gessle and Anders Herrlin as their guests on 31st May. Program leader Titti Schultz asked the guys about Gyllene Tider. You can listen to it HERE!

Titti welcomes 2/5 of Gyllene Tider and says they are back again. Per says that’s pretty accurate to say so, being back AGAIN. It’s 4 years since the last time. Titti says there are so many immortal songs of theirs, e.g. she can’t even say Juni, juli, augusti to anyone anymore without a melodic loop coming up with it. The same thing goes for Gå & fiska!, however, she doesn’t say that very often, but so do others. She says the guys have sort of penetrated our consciousnesses in a way. She is curious if that was well thought out. Anders says it’s a long-term plan to penetrate Swedish DNA. They already had that when they started. Per says that’s a seventies idea.

Titti wants to know what happened after the 2019 farewell tour. Anders says they regretted it. Per says the pandemic happened. It was Micke Syd who thought they should quit in 2019 with the flag on top and Per thought that was a pretty good idea. But then the pandemic came and then they all started to think differently. They started to appreciate other things, such as old friends and hangouts. The idea just popped up to maybe record some new songs and maybe maybe maybe go on tour sometime when it’s possible again. So it’s not a planned comeback, it just happened.

Titti is curious what the guys do together when they don’t make music and are not touring, but hang out together. Maybe BBQing together? Anders says it’s top secret. Haha. He says they are BBQing and drinking. Per says they don’t hang out very much in private. It mostly happens when they are recording and if you are going on a tour in a few months, it’s actually quite nice to start that journey with getting together for a few weeks and record some new music and eat lunch and BBQ together. It’s good to have that social activity. Titti asks if they go fishing together. That never happened, the guys say. It’s not their cup of tea.

Titti picked a song from GT that she thinks is among the best the guys have done. It’s Flickan i en Cole Porter-sång. She asks if it will be on the setlist in summer. Per confirms they will play it, so Titti promises to come to a concert then. It’s such a good song, Titti thinks and she asks the guys to admit  it themselves that they are incredibly happy with this song. Anders says it’s a fantastic song. Per laughs. Titti says she isn’t sure if Anders is ironic now. Anders says he is mostly serious. He thinks this song turned out great.

Gyllene Tider becomes a feature film. Titti asks the guys to tell more about it. Per says it won’t be a documentary. It’s not about Gyllene Tider’s 40 years, but about 5 teenage boys who come from a small town and against all odds start a band and end up in big Stockholm and break through and become one of Sweden’s biggest bands in the early ’80s. So it’s a feel-good movie.

Titti asks Per if he knows who will play him. PG knows it, but can’t tell more about it yet. Anders says that later today he is going to meet the guy who plays him. Anders will talk about his life. Titti says it feels like Anders is looking forward to it. Anders confirms it. Titti says Anders should tell the guy that he was named Sweden’s most handsome guy in 1981 in Veckorevyn. Titti says Anders is probably not completely happy with that himself, but it’s fun.

Titti asks if it really feels like the band could make it against all odds, if it was such an uphill battle. Per says the fact that they became so successful was really a tall order. They had actually done only 6 gigs in front of an audience before they became No. 1 with Flickorna på TV2. So they didn’t know anything and in that way it’s incredibly rare to happen.

Anders says he quit his regular job when they got a gig. They were quite ambitious. Titti is thinking what Anders’ parents could have said then, but realizes that Anders is an electrician anyway, so he always has something to fall back on. Titti asks Per if he has a real job. PG says he doesn’t have any. He worked at Fammarps Mushroom Cultivation and weighed mushrooms. He was there with another guy and there were 350 girls, so it was a great job. He remembers that while waiting for the mushrooms, he was sitting in a small truck they had and wrote songs. Among others, he wrote (Dansar inte lika bra som) Sjömän, back then. Titti says she had no idea about this.

Titti mentions that recently she heard Per wrote the official song for the Table Tennis EC in Malmö. The Craziest Thing is coming this autumn. Anders writes music for various series, Titti shares. Per says Anders is very good and handsome. Titti laughs and says he even has a paper about it. Anders says he is dealing with film music and GT music. He doesn’t do much else.

Titti asks Anders if he writes the music for the GT feature film. Anders says no, it would be too close and it gets too goofy, so they let someone else do it.

After Titti asks Anders what he is dreaming about, Anders shares that last night he dreamed that he found a huge amount of money in the forest in a large suitcase and it was euro notes. Titti asks if Per Gessle was written on the suitcase. Haha. Anders says he was so damn afraid to take it. He looked around all the time, not that he was being chased by someone. Titti laughs and says she thought about a dream music project or TV series, so a dream in that context. Haha. Anders says he dreams of just continuing with what he is doing, to make fun projects all the time. He works together with his wife and it seems to be a successful concept. They have been together for 23 years and work and have a child together. It works very well.

Here they listen to a new GT song, Chans. Titti asks the guys if they want to say something about it. Per says it’s a song that sums up pretty much how they sound right now.

Titti says the fun thing is, what the listeners can’t hear now is that she gets practically involved in planning the tour. During the song being played the guys were discussing how to perform the songs live and stuff like that. It’s fun for Titti who is tone deaf (she says it about herself).

Titti mentions that it wasn’t obvious at the beginning who was going to play the bass in the band. She asks if they decided it with playing rock paper scissors. Andrs says it’s just that Micke Syd had a bass in his lap and so he got it. Anders was so damn bad at drums, so they changed. Titti asks whether Micke could play the drums at all or he was a talent. He was damn good and he still is, Anders says.

Titti shares that Per became the frontman, because no one else was interested. PG says it was because nobody else wanted to sing. He likes to sing and stand in the front and that impression you get there. PG remembers when he was 7 or 8 years old, he forced his friends to play and act like a band and he mimed to I’m A Believer by The Monkees. Titti asks what his friends really wanted to do. Per says they probably wanted to play hockey games.

Titti asks PG if he had any other strong interest besides music. These days she knows it’s cars, but if there was anything else back then. Per says when he thinks back on his life, there was a lot of pop music, so he spent all his time sitting with his headphones on and listening to Herman’s Hermits singles, The Kinks and stuff like that.

Titti is curious how Anders and Per found each other. It was actually via MP. Per says that first they had another bassist in Gyllene Tider, but that didn’t go too well and so PG left the band on New Year’s Eve. It was dramatic. Instead of the bassist being fired, Per quit. He was going to start a new band with Anders and then MP also wanted to join this new band and then Micke too, so in the end only the old bass player stayed in the old band. Titti says so he could say he is the only original member of Gyllene Tider. Per laughs and says there is some truth in it, actually.

Titti wants to know when the guys realized that their success is for real. Maybe when they started having fans and people started stealing stuff from their parents’ garden? Anders says it was after they appeared on Måndagsbörsen on TV and they played Flickorna på TV2. Then it all exploded. They were on tour and when they played in Rottneros there were so many people, thousands of them. Then the guys realized that wow, there was something going on here.

Regarding stuff being stolen from their surroundings, Anders says people stole underpants from their garden. But those were his father’s. Haha. Everything that was loose disappeared, Per says. E.g. number plate on the car, antennas and stuff like that. PG remembers when he turned 21 he still lived at home with his mother. Then 3 large sacks of mail arrived. 2800 birthday cards. Titti asks if Per read them all. PG says he even replied to them all. Haha. And it still happens these days, Titti guesses.

Here they start talking about the new album, Hux Flux and that they go on tour this summer. It’s a little huxflux for them, because they decided they would finish in 2019, but all of a sudden they changed their minds. Per wrote a song called Hux Flux and thought that this is not a bad title for this whole project.

Titti asks the guys if they have any plans for how long they will be up and running this time before they call it quits. Per says they shouldn’t put themselves in such a situation again. Titti says she is already looking forward to the next comeback.

Titti asks what the guys are looking the most forward to in summer. Anders says to play in front of people, because it’s so much fun. Per says touring is actually pretty tough, except for the hours you play for people. That’s why you do it. The rest is waiting and changing hotel rooms and changing cities all the time. You get tired of it quite quickly.

Titti says there will be a sixth member on tour, Uno. PG says, yes, Uno Svenningsson is the support act on this tour. He is a lovely guy and very talented. He is going to be a great opener both for the band and for the audience.

Titti thanks the guys for joining her on the show and lets Anders go and meet his younger self in film form. The guys thank Titti for the invitation.

Photo from P4 Extra’s story by Helen Ling

Per Gessle and Anders Herrlin about Gyllene Tider on Gry Forssell med vänner, Mix Megapol

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Per Gessle and Anders Herrlin were guests of Gry Forssell med vänner on Swedish radio Mix Megapol on 31st May. You can listen to the morning show podcast HERE and listen to the 25-minute-long chat from 30:47 into the recording.

Gry welcomes Per and Anders in the studio after introducing Gyllene Tider’s history in short. Gry asks the guys how they are doing. Per says, all good, it’s Wednesday. Gry asks Per what it means to him. PG says it means that it’s the middle of the week. Gry suggests they should celebrate Wednesday just because it’s the middle of the week. Mr. G says it’s hump day (lillördag). Gry says weekend is getting closer. Per says he is the kind of guy who likes Mondays and Tuesdays, when everyone is back, you can reach anyone and get things started. Anders thinks the same, he says Mondays are the best. The program leaders are laughing. Per says they are from Halmstad. One of the program leader guys says it’s nice to hear that Per states Wednesday is hump day, because they had a long debate in the studio. Gry thinks Thursday is the new hump day. Per says „but you are from Gothenburg”. Haha. Gry says she lived there, but she is from Luleå.

Gry asks the guys how it feels that summer is approaching. Per says it feels amazing. It’s always a pleasure to play with this great little pop band that doesn’t grow on trees anymore. They stand for some rather old-fashioned kind of pop music. Gry says they kickstart every morning at 6 and Leva livet is a kind of kickstart song to get the day going. It’s a song where Per sings he is 21. That’s a completely different period of life. She is curious how GT as a band still manage to get that feeling so many years later. Per thinks life goes on and you become a different person over the years. He wrote Leva livet on his 21st birthday. What a damn birthday party it could have been, the guys are kidding him. They ask Anders if he was there too. Anders says he wasn’t invited. Haha.

Gry plays a little mash-up of Gyllene Tider song snippets here, a little look back on GT hits. Per says they will also play new songs on tour. They start rehearsing next weekend. PG thinks it’s going to be a lot of fun and like he said earlier, it’s a great band and it’s always fun to hang out and play together. The new album, Hux Flux is very upbeat and very energetic, so it will be fun to sink their teeth into some of those songs.

During the whole morning show different GT songs are played. Here Gry plays Dagar att dansa, the latest single. Per says it’s a nice song and Anders plays the bass damn well. Anders adds that Per sings very well. Haha.

After the song is played, Gry asks Anders how it feels. Anders says it feels fantastic. One of the program leaders asks the guys where the band name, Gyllene Tider comes from. Anders says it was from an article Mats Olsson wrote back then for Expressen. Per says they were already called Gyllene Tider when Mats wrote that article. They gave the name after an instrumental song with that title. Anders says he changed his mind. They are laughing. PG says Anders wasn’t even in the band at the time. Gry says there is another song now also called Gyllene Tider that came out a couple of weeks ago. Per corrects her that the title is Gyllene Tider igen.

Here comes the dilemma of the day (a part of the show). It’s about a 23-year-old girl, Sofia who has been dating a man for a year now. The relationship is kept secret from her family, but she feels that she should talk about it. The real dilemma is that the man is her mother’s friend. He is 50 years old. Her mother guessed that she met someone, but not that it is her friend. It’s strange when the man is visiting them, because they have to pretend that everything is as usual. Those who are looking for the best casual encounters may sign up for various dating apps.

The girl is afraid that her mother will be angry and disappointed because it is him. This man and her mother also have a past, they were together before the girl was born. The guys are thinking and say maybe it’s the girl’s father. Gry says it can’t be. At least she shopes so. She asks what Sofia should do. Jakob, one of the program leaders thinks it’s nothing to build on in this relationship. The man is 50, the girl is 23. He would advise to say goodbye to each other, but later if love conquers, he wishes good luck in that case. Gry says she read that Ulf Lundell’s girlfriend is 33 years old. Jakob says it’s a different case here, since the man was together with Sofia’s mother too. Per says he thinks she should sell her story to Netflix. Haha. It could be a good movie. Or a song. Anders says he has never heard such a story before, but if you meet and fall in love with someone like this, then it must mean something. So in the end the guys think Sofia should follow her heart. Later in this discussion Per throws in one of GT’s song titles, Kärleken är inte blind (Men ganska närsynt) (Love is not blind, but quite nearsighted). Haha.

Gry comes up with the idea of reading a tale about Gyllene Tider, hux flux (all of a sudden). She starts and when she stops, the guys have to finish the sentences. According to Wikipedia, Gyllene Tider is a band that was originally active between 1978 and 1985, but after that, they had several reunions and hux flux when per Gessle reads it, he thinks… PG says „that’s pretty much true”. Gry goes on. The last time Anders Herrlin put his bass on the shelf it was… Anders says „yesterday”. Haha. Gry goes on. But all of a sudden he felt… Anders says „I play a little more”. Gry goes on. The last time Per Gessle was in this studio, he revealed that he has never bathed in Tylösand and he is a man of principles. But the last time he surprised himself, it was when he… PG says „got here on time to the studio this morning”. Gry goes on. Karolina Widerström has seen a lot of films, but maybe she didn’t know that Anders Herrlin produces a lot of music for films. Anders never thought he would write film music, but… Anders says „he did it”. Gry goes on. Yesterday, the storyteller here in the studio drew attention to the mystery of actually owning ugly panties and the most uncomfortable that Per Gessle ever wore was… PG says „probably MP’s old slippers”. Anders laughs it’s good that it wasn’t his underpants. Gry goes on. Singer Dea Norberg, who was on tour with Roxette, but will also be on this summer’s GT tour, says that she wants to go on a horse ride with Per and Anders this summer. Per feels… PG says „Good God! Is that true?” Gry goes on. She is looking forward to it and she is going to make it happen. Gyllene Tider had a big farewell tour, there would be no more tours, but all of a sudden… Anders says „they are back again”. PG says „Micke Syd changed his mind”. With this, the short and intense GT tale ends.

Gry mentions that there will be a GT movie. She asks what the guys can tell about it. The shooting starts in August this year. It won’t be like a documentary, but a feature film about 5 small town teenage guys who, against all odds, succeed in making it. It’s about GT, but it’s not like a documentary about the success story, but it’s about when they started the band and when they broke through. The program leaders ask who will play the roles of the band members. Per says they can’t share the info. Anders says they are not allowed to say anything, but today he is going to meet the guy who plays him.

It’s much fun. Mr. G says the script is very cool, full of laughs and cries. Gry is curious how much the guys are involved in the project. Per says they are very much involved. It actually starts with Per and the time he met MP and they formed a band and then everything else happened. The movie should be out in summer 2024.

Gry gets back to Anders and film music. Anders says he has always been interested in that. It’s very difficult to enter this world, but he had worked with Anders Bagge and he got a foot in. Then he asked Anders and his partner with whom he worked together if they want to help him. So that’s the way it is. So now Anders is making film music every day. It’s his job. Per says: „What a guy!” Haha. Gry says PG also has quite a few side projects besides Gyllene Tider. She asks how it is going with Roxette. Per asks if Gry means PG Roxette. He says they released a new EP a couple of weeks ago. Gry says they talked about it earlier this morning. They have a program point where they try to guess what the most googled term in the last 24 hours is. Jakob guessed that it was Marie Fredriksson, who would have turned 65 yesterday. She was number one on the list of what people have googled the most. It was actually over 20,000 searches. Gry also mentions that SVT broadcast the 2020 tribute concert yesterday and asks if the guys watched it and how it felt. Anders says it was a terrible experience doing that, because there was so much pressure. Seeing all the pictures of Marie when she was young and in her peak. Then they were unprepared seeing all these films that were shown in the background. It came as a shock. You are used to being on stage and conveying energy of joy and all that. But this was like hell. It was very strange, they sat and cried. It was tough. Per adds that it was pretty close after she had passed away. That was a very tough day.

Talking about icons and singers who are unfortunately no longer with us, Gry mentions Tina Turner and she says both Anders and Per met her. She asks the guys to talk about this. Anders says he has a story about Tina. „Tina as I call her.” It was probably somewhere in Germany with Roxette, maybe in Hamburg. Tina would come and see them at the concert. Everyone was very excited. They were up on stage playing and all of a sudden Tina was standing by Anders side. And then she disappeared. After they finished playing, everyone went backstage and asked „what did she say? What did she say?” The organizer said she only said one thing, „I like the bass player”. Haha.

Per also met Tina, but he says he doesn’t have such a lovely story as Anders. He was in her home and had a dinner there. Tina invited them for dinner once in Cologne. She lived there back then. They were 12-14 people there. It was in connection with Roxette’s Crash! Boom! Bang! album. Per remembers that Tina had tons of golden records up on the walls. He thought that was a bit cheesy. Haha. Gry asks Per where he keeps his golden records. PG says not at home. They have a small Roxette and Gyllene Tider museum at Hotel Tylösand, where you can see those records.

Here they play Gyllene Tider igen. Gry asks what the guys could tell about the song. Per says it’s short, but it’s nice.

The last program point while the guys are still in the studio is 5 seconds. It’s a game. Per and Anders have to say 3 things in 5 seconds, replying to a question. Round 1, question to Per: Say 3 things in 5 seconds you do on hump day! PG says „sleep, wake up and eat breakfast”. Round 1, question to Anders: Say 3 things you would like to gild! Anders says „my body, my wife’s body, my son’s body”. Round 2, question to Per: 3 things that are punk. PG says „Anders Herrlin, MP Persson, Göran Fritzon”. Round 2, question to Anders: 3 things that happen on the subway. Anders says „dirt, dirt, dirt”. The program leaders say it’s only one thing, unfortunately. Anders says no, it’s not at all. These are different dirts. Round 3, question to Per: Say 3 Ferrari sounds! Mr. G says „bass, mid-range, treble”. Round 3, question to Anders: Say 3 things that sound like German! Here they start laughing and the 5 seconds are over. So Per wins, but he says Anders got much tougher questions.

The conversation ends with info about the summer tour that premieres on 7th July in Halmstad. Gry says to search in google where to buy tickets. Per says there will be 17 shows in Sweden, 2 in Finland an 1 in Norway. One of the program leader guys asks if there is any gig in Denmark. Per says no, they can come to Skåne. Haha.

Gry thanks the guys for joining. Per says it’s always a pleasure.

Still’s are from Gry Forssells stories.

Per Gessle on Nordic Rox – April 2023

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Per Gessle and Sven Lindström welcome you on the April episode of Nordic Rox. The guys are situated in sunny Halmstad. Per says it’s a sunny day and it’s really beautiful on the West Coast of Sweden.

Sven says they are in a perfect mood for presenting another special show featuring a group from Helsingborg, The Sounds. Per thinks The Sounds is a great band, they had quite a big success in the States as well. Sven informs they made an album and single called Living In America, and it eventually got them there. They toured the States a lot.

Before that, why not kick off with The Hives? Per thinks it’s a good idea, so they play Tick Tick Boom by The Hives. Not to be mistaken by any other band, Sven says. Per thinks it’s a great, great band. The song is from The Black And White Album. The second song is House Arrest by Stella Explorer. Another interesting track, Sven says. Per thinks she is great and he likes that song a lot. She is doing some really interesting stuff. This song is taken from the Dorkay House EP.

The next song is Run To You by Roxette from the Crash! Boom! Bang! album in 1994. Sven says that was the follow up to the Joyride album, if we are not counting the Tourism live thingy. Per says Tourism came in 1992. Sven asks if Per would say that the Crash! Boom! Bang! album was the proper follow up to Joyride. Mr. G says in a way it was. It was a follow up in the sense that it was another studio album. Tourism, the one in between, was basically recorded in hotel rooms and some live shows and this and that, all over the world while touring. Hearing a track like Run To You today, Sven is curious what triggers Per’s mind when he hears it. PG says first of all, he is always knocked out by Marie’s singing abilities. She was an amazing singer and she made his songs so much better than they actually were. She had this ability to make everything come alive. Great, great singer. Per thinks it’s a cool song, a great arrangement. They had a little problem with this one in the studio and he got stuck a bit with the production, but their bass player at the time came up with this idea to build the arrangement around acoustic guitars instead. So it changed shape a bit, but it turned out nice. It was a big hit for them in certain countries in Europe and Australia. Sven says it still sounds good. Per thanks for saying it.

The guys go down to Malmö and play Ray Wonder from the ’90s. We Got To Be Good To Each Other by Ray Wonder feat. Nina Ramsby is next. Then comes a new single by The Black Angels & The Raveonettes, My Tornado. It’s a track The Raveonettes had on their debut mini album, Whip It On, 2002. Sven thinks it’s a cool collaboration, The Black Angels being from Austin, Texas and The Raveonettes from Denmark. A 20-year-old track getting a new life. PG also thinks it’s cool and it sounds great.

Here comes this episode’s special, The Sounds. They are from Helsingborg and were formed in 1999. They have been working really, really hard since their debut in the early noughties. The guys play the title track from their debut album called Living In America. It didn’t immediately break them in the States, but it became a pretty big song, their big breakthrough in 2002. They started touring and really working hard for many years. Per says Maja Ivarsson is the name of the lead singer. Sven says she is terrific. Per thinks she is wonderful on stage, a great front person and a great singer as well. Sven agrees.

Mr. G says The Sounds is one of those bands that has been touring and touring and touring. They did so many shows supporting other bands like the Foo Fighters, No Doubt, and especially in the States they have been touring year in year out. Sven says they are a superhard-working band. Their second album actually brought them to the States for real. They recorded this album called Dying To Say This To You in Oakland, California with Jeff Saltzman. That was really the start of major touring. They played 200 shows in 2006. That’s a lot. Sven asks „how can you get away with that?” Per says „you have to be very young”. Sven says you can hear that they became incredibly tight as a band. He thinks this second album is super cool and sounds really good. Per agrees and they play the next song, Painted By Numbers, which is a great track.

Mr. G says The Sounds is a great band, they are cool, especially live. Maja Ivarsson is a great performer, a great singer and she is really wonderful to watch and listen to. Sven says she is an absolutely terrific rock’n’roll woman. Per introduces the next song, which is from The Sounds’ third album, Crossing The Rubicon. This one came out in 2009 and the first single is called No One Sleeps When I’m Awake. It’s got this really heavy sound to the production and it sounds really amazing still. Sven adds that Per especially likes the snare drum. PG says the snare drum sound is pretty heavy, he likes that. Sven loves the intro, the guitar intro is fantastic.

The guys move on with the fourth and final The Sounds song in this special. The band’s next album, Something To Die For came out in 2011. The track Sven and Per picked from that is The No No Song. PG thinks it’s a really great track and it’s got all The Sounds trademark. Sven says it’s got all The Sound sounds. Haha. The energetic guitar and the synthesizer doing this melody thing. Per thinks it sounds really cool.

Sven introduces the next song, Tuesday Afternoon. He thinks the word Beatlesque is what he is looking for. Per says this is a great band from the early ’90s in Sweden called Stonecake. They came and went. They managed to squeeze in this song in the pop history of Sweden. It was a big hit in Sweden. Sven says this was the first track they made more or less and they never became bigger than this one. Per says it’s a great song, you can hear their inspiration from The Beatles or from Smashing Pumpkins or The Move from the ’60s, Roy Wood’s The Move. A little bit of this, a little bit of that, but it’s a very catchy chorus. It was a big song and Per doesn’t know if it was number one in Sweden, but it was definitely a top five song. Sven says a million dollar chorus is waiting for you right here.

Year of Love by Jenny Hval is next. She is a Norwegian girl. She is one of Per’s current favourites. She is just amazing. She did an album last year called Classic Objects and this is the first song from that album. PG suggests checking her out if you get the chance. He spells her last name, Hval.

The guys play Blue Fun (The Robert Palmer Mix) by Mikael Rickfors. It’s the title track from his 1983 album. This one he sent to Robert Palmer in the Compass Point Studios. Per says Robert Palmer did a great mix of this song. It wasn’t on the original album. It was on a 12-inch single. Sven thinks it came out in 1984. Per doesn’t really know why they sent it to Robert Palmer and why he even bothered to work on this. Mr. G says Micke Rickfors used to be a great Swedish singer, but he also used to be the singer from The Hollies. A terrific singer. Sven thinks the studio version, the Swedish mix of Blue Fun is quite horrible. It’s a lot of echo and 6000 instruments playing at the same time. But it’s a great song, Per thinks. It’s really terrific. Sven thinks Robert Palmer just took basically everything down and then took a couple of things up, which made it so incredibly simple and dry. It’s really hard-hitting and Micke sings so well here.

This wraps up the show. The guys thank the listeners for joining them and as usual, Cigarettes by Anita Lindblom is the closing track.

Still is from the Bag of Trix comment videos recorded by Anders Roos.

Thanks for your support, Sven!