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Per Gessle on Nordic Rox – July 2022

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The July episode, the 507th show of Nordic Rox on Sirius XM was dedicated to a dynamic band from the ’90s, Brainpool. They are one of the best bands ever to come out of Sweden, Per thinks.

Sven and PG kick the tracklist off with ShitKid’s Baby Roulette. Then comes Beguiled by The Hellacopters and it’s followed by Effortless by Sabina Ddumba from her Homeward Bound album.

Pay The Price by Roxette comes next and Sven says the songwriter happens to be sitting here. PG laughs. Mr. G tells the song is from their Have A Nice Day album from 1999. He remembers they spent much time in Marbella, Spain recording the album. They had a new co-producer, Michael Ilbert who was also the engineer. He made a big mark on this production. It sounds cool and quite different from the previous albums. Pay The Price has always been one of Sven’s favourites from this period. It sounds energetic and poppy and still you can hear it’s a Roxette track. Per likes it too, he thinks it’s great. HAND was like a comeback album for Roxette. They took four years off after the Crash! Boom! Bang! album Marie got her second child, Per did some solo stuff and worked with his Swedish band as well. They recorded loads of songs for HAND and PG thinks it’s a pretty strong album. They had some great singles on there as well, but Pay The Price is what we call an album track.

Troglodyte by Viagra Boys is the next song, a teaser from their upcoming album that will be released this summer. They were on a soldout US tour right now. Per thinks they are cool, hasn’t heard them before.

It’s time for the Brainpool section in the program. They are a band from the south of Sweden. They were supporting Roxette on the Crash! Boom! Bang! tour. Sven tells they sent demos to different music publishers and record companies, also to Jimmy Fun, Per’s label and PG picked them up. Per laughs and says that’s why they were support act for Roxette. They were signed to Per’s publishing company and they helped them to get a recording deal with Sony. The debut album was called Soda and it’s a terrific album according to Per. It was produced by Michael Ilbert. Per just loves this band. They have a great drummer, Jens, a great guitar player, David and a great bass player, Christoffer who eventually became a member of Roxette. Per has been working together with Christoffer since 1997 or so. Janne, who was the lead singer has got a hig-pitched voice. They have such tremendous energy and great songwriting, as well as amazing arrangements, very much due to Christoffer’s abilities. He is a great arranger. His favourite musician of all time is Brian Wilson from The Beach Boys and you can hear that in the way they do their arrangements. Per tells he could go on talking about Brainpool all day. Every Day was the first song Per has ever heard of them, so the guys play this one. Sven says it’s such an explosion. Per adds it’s got its punk and new wave attitude, but it’s still a pop song. It’s pretty soft, but it’s heavy at the same time. After the song Sven asks Per if he would be able to play this fast. Per asks „on what instrument? Citar?” The guys are laughing. It sounds fast, but it’s not that fast, PG says. Sven is curious how the demo sounded to this song. Mr. G tells it sounded like this. Not as polished though, but it had the same attitude and energy. It’s such a great song, he thinks. Sometimes you hear all these artists and bands having this attitude and energy, but the song is not there. But Brainpool had great songs as well. Sven adds it’s so much ’90s, the melody, the ’60s style and the sort of grunge punk thing.

The second album of the band was Painkiller. That was the big breakthrough for them in Sweden, especially with their song Bandstarter. It was a big hit on the radio. Sven is curious if they made any mark outside Sweden. Per tells not really. They were the support act for Roxette on the European tour leg, but unfortunately, nothing really happened. Painkiller is also a great album according to PG. It’s a little bit more mainstream, but still very cool. According to Sven, there is more of the classic rock tempo on this album. Per tells they were one year older then vs. the first album, so a little more mature. They were 23 instead of 22, they grew up. The guys are laughing.

Sven and Per play another song from the same album, Invisible To Her. It’s one of Per’s favourites, he thinks it’s wonderful. This is the closest thing to a ballad that you can get from Brainpool. It has a beautiful melody. Per was really sad when Janne, the lead singer left the group. He was also one of the main songwriters and it wasn’t the same after. His voice had that characteristic Brainpool touch to it. He became a doctor, by the way.

After the Brainpool session, the guys pick Andreas Johnson’s Glorious. A great track according to PG. Carnival by The Cardigans is next, from their second album, Life. They are a great band with beautiful sound. It was an interesting period for them. They broke through in Sweden first, then in Japan before they became big elsewhere in the world with Lovefool.

Next comes a Swedish song and then Lies by Peter Bjorn and John.

Daniel Norgren’s I Waited For You is the last song. He is an artist Per have missed, so he asks Sven to tell him a bit about Daniel. He debuted with an album in 2008. Sven missed that one too and the second as well, but he caught on in 2010 with the album Horrifying Deatheating Bloodspider. Because of the title Sven thought he must listen to this one. He is laughing. Per thinks Daniel has got an amazing voice. Sven tells he is a singer songwriter, rooted in ancient, pre-war blues. He is really convincing. He is mixing that old influence with a new attitude. Per thinks IWFY is beautiful and he’s got a new Swedish favourite here.

Anita Lindblom’s Cigarettes is closing the show as usual.

Stills are from a 2017 interview.

Thanks for your support, Sven!

Per Gessle on Nordic Rox – June 2022

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Per Gessle and Sven Lindström partly dedicated the June episode of Nordic Rox on Sirius XM to John Holm, a great singer songwriter from the ’70s, who was really influential to lots of today’s artists.

The guys kick off the show with a new Swedish band, Diskopunk. They play Snake Oil. Sven says they got a quite interesting sound there. Per agrees. The next song is also a new one, No Hotel by Lykke Li. The third song is by ABBA, a band Per has heard about before. Haha. He tells he was in London just recently and checked out ABBA Voyage, the Abbatars. Sven is curious about how it was. PG tells it was fascinating. The first twenty minutes was amazing, because the technology is mindblowing. After that it was a little bit like same, same. As a concept, it was really interesting. Mr. G thinks it’s a very nostalgic thing to see and hear them in their twenties on stage, even if they are avatars. It was really mindblowing. He understands why people reacted the way they did. It was a really great reaction. At the same time, you can’t compare it to a concert, because a real concert is all about the energy between the crowd and the artist and the artist feeds of the energy from the crowd and vice versa. Since everything is pre-recorded there, it’s just static. So no matter how people react, it’s exactly the same show everytime. That was the negative thing, but as a concept, it’s very interesting and Per is really glad that he went to see it. Sven asks if there is any special highlight Per would mention. Mr. G says he can tell it wasn’t the wine in the bar. Haha. The guys are laughing. Per tells they played a lot of songs he really likes, e.g. S.O.S., which he thinks is one of ABBA’s best songs. The whole show started with The Visitors, which Per thinks is a great track from the late period of ABBA. Sven tells it’s 50 years to the day when one of the first tracks, People Need Love came out. Per tells Sven „it’s your favourite track, right?” Sven laughs, „it’s not my favourite track. And I know it’s certainly not your favourite track either.” So the guys pick another song, Honey, Honey. Mr. G thinks it’s a real bubblegum thing from 1974. For some reason, he always loved this song. It sums up the very early part of ABBA. It’s hard to resist. It’s his guilty pleasure.

Next one is the comeback song of Sahara Hotnights, Gemini. It’s from their new album, Love In Times of Low Expectations. Sven asks Per what he thinks about this album title. PG thinks it’s a long one, but he loves the song, Gemini. It’s a great one with great production. He always liked Sahara Hotnights, they are doing good things. Sven says it’s nice to have them back.

The guys zoom back in time and warn the listeners that this will be a Swedish singing only artist, John Holm. Not to be confused with ’70s porn star John Holmes. It’s a dangerous name as an artist, Per says. The only thing they have in common is that they were both active in the ’70s. That’s what they know about, Per adds. PG spent hours and hours listening to John Holm in the early ’70s. Sven is curious what was it that struck him so hard with this guy. Mr. G says first of all it was his voice. He’s got a very special voice and the way he pronounces the lyrics is very special. The lyrics themselves are amazing. He is a very good writer. The first three albums he did were quite big and very influential on lots of artists from Per’s generation. It’s coming from the singer songwriter tradition and sounds very early ’70s, the whole thing. Later on, when PG started working himself, everyone was talking about that he had a strange voice, so he got a great self confidence, because John Holm also had a strange voice. Per identified with it. Sven says John used it to his advantage, he sounded like nobody else. Per tells that a couple of years ago, in 2016 he was in Nashville to record some solo stuff and when he came back, he invited John to join him on one of the tracks and they did a duet. It was amazing to work with him. He is a little bit older now, but of course, he’s still got that magic voice. The first track the guys play is taken from John’s debut album, 1972. Sommaräng is John’s best song, Per thinks. It translates to Summer meadow. If you understand the lyrics, you realize that it’s really beautiful.

PG tells John Holm is a magnificent artist from the ’70s. Sven tells when Per made his first solo album, he picked a song by John to cover, to kick off the album. This is the first song from the first John Holm album, Sordin. For Per, Den öde stranden has always been a stand-out track. He did a version of it with his band in 1983 – „shit, that’s a long time ago”, he says. In those days you played cover versions of your favourite songs just to show everyone where you come from musically. They played Blondie and The Byrds tracks with Roxette. Then when time went by, there were so many cover bands around, so it became a no-no to play cover versions for some reason. But anyway, Per recorded Den öde stranden for his first album. He thinks it’s a beautiful song and it’s got a great guitar riff. The title means The lonesome beach. Sven thinks it’s very poetic and he finds it interesting that Per and his Swedish band, Gyllene Tider were a power pop band, but when PG made his solo album, he chose John Holm, because he wanted to emphasize his more folky singer songwriter side. PG confirms and says it was a singer songwriter album. He wanted to do something different. There is no point in doing another power pop album if you’re still in a band, so he wanted to show another side of himself. That’s a good thing to do. If you are into so many different styles of music, it’s nice to have different branches on the tree. Especially if you are in a band. There are so many people who have their say and that means a lot of compromising. So sometimes it’s great to do things on your own and do something different. Here Per’s cover of Den öde stranden is played instead of John’s original.

The third pick by Per is his favourite from JH’s second album. It’s a duet, Maria, många mil och år från här, which translates to Maria, many miles and years from here. It’s got a great atmosphere and John’s voice is just amazing. When Per was listening to it back then, in 1972, he was in his early teens. Sven wants to know how it was the split between listening to this kind of singer songwriter stuff as opposed to harder, rocking, power pop stuff. Per liked both. He liked the singer songwriter movement a lot in the early ’70s even when he was young. Cat Stevens, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, all those artists. At the same time of course he loved the glam rock, David Bowie, Sweet & Slade. There were English bands that were big in Sweden at the time. He liked the prog rock, Aqualung by Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Nazareth. In those days you had so much time to listen to music, because that was the only thing that was around. Sven asks Per if it was his John Holm side that came up when he was sitting with his acoustic guitar in his boy room. PG tells when he started playing it was easier to just play the guitar and sing folk songs. He listened a lot to Swedish folk music from the past as well. What is interesting in music from the Nordic countries – the same goes for Northern England and Scotland – is that old folk music is really beautiful. Those melodies are in Per’s DNA. When he started writing songs himself, it was all about melodies. Per thinks if you ask Benny Andersson from ABBA, you’re gonna get the same answer. It’s in his blood to write melodic music, because that’s where they come from. When Per started out playing himself, it was very close to the singer songwriter tradition. Sven asks „but you wouldn’t bring an acoustic guitar to a Nazareth audition?” The guys are laughing and Per says no. Per loves Nazareth too. Razamanaz is an amazing album. Here the final track by John Holm is played, Maria, många mil och år från här.

The next song, How Do You Do! by Roxette is picked by Sven. It’s the lead single from Tourism, which celebrates 30 years this year. Sven asks PG what he remembers about writing this one. Mr. G wrote this for the summer leg of the Join The Joyride World Tour, which lasted 18 months. It was a very long tour. He wrote it in the spring and recorded it as the first single to be released in the summer of 1992. It was a huge hit for them, especially in Europe. In Germany it was No. 1 for 16 weeks or so. It’s got this little modulation. There is a key change between the verse and the bridge into the chorus to get the right key for Marie to kick in. The first time you hear it you just fall off your chair. It becomes like a gimmick in the song. They did that a lot. You had to balance your different keys, which is always tricky when there is a guy and a girl, but they did their best.

Bad Habit by Sofia Karlberg is next. The Two-Timing Touch and Broken Bones by The Hives is played. Such a great band, according to PG. The song is from their Tyrannosaurus Hives album from 2004. Popsicle from Sweden with one of their ’90s tracks, Sunkissed is next. Magnus Carlson, the singer of Weeping Willows is next with The Way of the Crowd. Per thinks he has a great voice and his solo project is always interesting. This song is featuring Trummor & Orgel and Sven thinks it’s cool music.

The guys say thanks for listening and Anita Lindblom’s Cigarettes is closing the show.

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

Thanks for your support, Sven!

Per Gessle interview and “The Loneliest Girl In The World” premiere on P4 Extra

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Svjetlana Pastuhovic did an interview with Per Gessle on Swedish Radio on 2nd June. PG was guest of the day on P4 Extra and he talked about PG Roxette, the debut single, Marie, Roxette, the Roxette musical, Gyllene Tider and songwriting. The interview starts at 28:39 into the program. Listen HERE!

Svjetlana welcomes Per and introduces him as a small town guy who showed great interest in music at a very early age. His nerdiness led him to success and worldwide fame. Now he returns to one of his biggest successes, Svjetlana says. Per thanks for having him on the show. Svjetlana is uncertain, maybe „return” is not the right word when it comes to PG Roxette. Per tells one can say it’s a new chapter in Roxette’s history.

PG can be pronounced the Swedish way or if you want to make it sound cool, the English way, Per says. He laughs. Svjetlana asks Per how HE pronounces it. PG then pronounces the initials the Swedish way. The debut single is out the next day (3rd June), but Swedish Radio got the chance to play it for the first time on radio and they are very happy about it. Svjetlana asks Per how he feels about it. Per tells the whole PG Roxette project is a new chapter, as he already mentioned and it’s based on him and the old Roxette band. He brought in several people who helped him e.g. with the singing and production. It took about a year to record the album and it was much fun. He looks very much forward to release it. Per got very good response from those around the world whom he already showed the songs. It feels great.

Here they premiere the The Loneliest Girl In The World. Svjetlana tells she becomes happy when she hears this song. Per says it’s nice to hear. He tells it’s an ear candy. The album comes out in September. Mr. G tells he tried to write an uptempo album and it’s a challenge to write such pop songs. Especially when you are getting older, because it’s something that you do very easily when you are 20. It becomes harder when you get older, because you have written so much and you become too sophisticated in your writing when you know all the tricks. Svjetlana is curious what Per means by this, if it means you get more serious when you get older. PG tells pop music builds very much on instant energy and it’s just there when you are younger. When you have written hundreds of songs, you learned all the crafts very well and it’s hard to write these 3-chord pop songs when you get a bit older. Per thinks Svjetlana probably has also noticed it regarding other artists that the finest and fastest songs they wrote in their twenties. Svjetlana asks PG if he was struggling with this a bit. Per tells he had the idea that he would make a sibling to Roxette’s albums they recorded at the end of the 80’s, beginning of the 90’s, so he tried to think about how he was working back then. Then he sat down and spent time with writing. Actually, it went very well. The Loneliest Girl In The World was the third or fourth song he has written that immediately felt it had a great chorus.

Svjetlana wants to know if it was an obvious choice to go on as PG Roxette. Per tells it wasn’t obvious at all, because it was really tough when Marie passed away in 2019, so he didn’t really know what to do with Roxette. He knew there is the legacy of Roxette that someone has to take care of. Also, he devoted 30 years of his life to Roxette and he has written almost all the Roxette songs and it would have felt weird not to go on with Roxette in a way. He has the ambition to take PG Roxette on tour and play the old Roxette songs. There is a huge amount of people around the world who still like those songs.

Svjetlana tells Marie was ill for many years and she is curious if Marie and Per talked about the future of Roxette. Per asks if Svjetlana means about the future without Marie. Svjetlana says yes, because Marie was ill for a long time, however, when she got better, they went on tour together again. Per tells Marie was ill for 17 years before she passed away. She never really got better, but despite the doctors’ advice, she went on tour between 2010 and 2016. It was fantastic that she did that. In 2018 Per went on a European tour that was called Per Gessle’s Roxette and Marie had no problem with that. She thought like Per, that someone has to take good care of the legacy. If you look at other artists who kept their audience, they worked actively, e.g. Queen with the Bohemian Rhapsody movie or ABBA with the Mamma Mia! musical and movies and now also with the Abbatars in London. Per thinks you have to work actively to keep the legacy alive. You just have to let it go on and who else could take better care of the legacy than Per himself. It’s not about replacing Marie with another singer – even if Per worked together with several female singers on this record. Dea Norberg and Helena Josefsson appear the most on this album. Both of them worked with Roxette as backing vocalists on tours. But there are other female singers as well, so it has Per and his songs in focus.

Svjetlana asks how it was to look back on the 80’s and 90’s, those crazy times when they were touring so much with Roxette. Mr. G says it was crazy indeed. They had their peak for 8 years between 1988 and 1995. They were touring all around the world, they had 4 US No. 1s and they were the most played artists for 3 years in a row. It was a fantastic period. Svjetlana asks how they could cope with their success. PG tells when you are in the middle of it, you don’t think about that. You are working, you go on. He was anyway triggered by it back then. When they toured with and promoted Look Sharp! he wrote Joyride, when they toured with Joyride he wrote their next album, Crash! Boom! Bang!, etc. Svjetlana notices that Per wanted to do more and more. She asks how he felt about it back in the days. PG says he travelled all around the world, but didn’t really see much. He was mainly in hotel rooms and at the concerts. When you are in such busy period, you just can’t make it. After the pandemic it’s fun to travel to cities he knows he had been to before, but doesn’t remember much. When you wanted to keep everything at the same high level as they did their things, you had to work 24 hours a day and stay focused and keep yourself in top shape. It’s like what sportsmen do. They enjoyed being up on stage every night and perform to tons of people who loved what they were doing. That’s the best reward ever. It’s a fantastic job Per has, he says. Even if it was tough at times, it only has positive sides.

Svjetlana says it’s almost unreal what happened with Roxette abroad, all their success. She asks if there is melancholy besides pride when Per thinks back at those times and if such thing can happen again. Per says it can’t happen again, because we live in different times now. It’s 30 years of his life he has devoted to Roxette and he is very proud of Roxette. As he already said, when you are thirty, you are at a certain stage in your life, now that he is 63, he is at another stage. He of course hopes that the new album works well, but it’s not the most important, it’s not why he made it. He made it because he wanted to have fun and he tries to follow his way as a songwriter and artist. He is doing several things at the same time. He has just finished an acoustic tour in Sweden with 31 gigs, they had a Gyllene Tider tour earlier, many other things.

Here Svjetlana plays What’s She Like?, which she knows is a special song for Per. After playing it, she tells how wonderfully Marie sings. Per agrees, she sings fantastically. Svjetlana asks if this song will appear in the Roxette musical. Per laughs and says it’s a very exciting project. There is a very nice script that the musical will be built on, a book written by Jane Fallon. Per thinks that Roxette’s music matches very well in such a conetxt. There are so many nuances in the Roxette song catalogue, one could use really many of them. It’s gonna be tricky to match the songs to the story though. What’s She Like? could be one of the songs used, they both think.

Svjetlana tells Roxette sold more than 80 million records, they had an international career, there are millions of Swedish crowns on their bank account. She is curious what is Per’s driving force still. PG tells it’s about finding your place in life. He is super grateful that he could work with music fulltime, writing songs and playing them since he was in his teens. It’s not just a way he is following all the time, it’s not like he has plans that in 5 years he has to reach this or that. He has a lot of ideas and tries to implement them as well as he can. Svjetlana says, so it’s not fame, not money, not such things. Per says it mattered when he was young, e.g. when they started Gyllene Tider. When they played at schools, they dreamed about playing in Stockholm or Gothenburg, when an album became gold, they wanted a platinum, when they had a platinum, they wanted to have a double platinum. That’s how people work. It was the same with Roxette. The idea at the beginning was that they wanted to go abroad, because he himself felt he covered Sweden with Gyllene Tider’s success. But when Marie and Per talked about abroad, they meant Belgium, Germany or the Netherlands. Or maybe playing in Copenhagen. Svjetlana laughs and asks „no South America or China in your thoughts?” Per laughs and says no and also not the success that they had in the US.

Regarding keeping the legacy alive, Svjetlana asks Per if he is doing it because he thinks Roxette would be forgotten. Per says he knows there is a fantastic power in Roxette’s music. Also in his Swedish music. It’s not that he thinks that „oh, maybe in 30 years we would be forgotten”. He wants to experience it again, to be standing on stage, singing his songs and feel the communication with his audience. It’s the most awesome feeling. The acoustic tour he did was one of the most amazing things he did so far. It was so intimate in those small theatres in an acoustic arrangement. Sometimes it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. In certain songs he played only one string at a time, because it was so quiet. It was awesome that people were sitting there and listening. It was also fantastic that he played some old Gyllene Tider songs in a totally new arrangement. Lyrics of songs like Ljudet av ett annat hjärta that he wrote when he was 22, had a totally different meaning, both  for him and for everyone else, now that he sang it as a 63-year-old. There is another thing in there what wasn’t there in Gyllene Tider in 1981. There is a different energy as well, but the core of the song changes. And it also feels good for Per as a songwriter that the time goes by and the lyric becomes a different thing. It’s the same with What’s She Like? When he wrote it, he wrote it for Marie, because he knew that when Marie sings it, it will have a totally different meaning when he sings it. If he sang it, it would have been What’s He Like? That’s awesome in music. You can change it all the time.

Svjetlana tells she asked people about Per and most of them said he is an ordinary guy. She asks Per if that’s correct. Per says he doesn’t know what „ordinary guy” means and it’s hard for him to judge, but he is happy that people think so, because he doesn’t think he is an unusual guy, even if he has had an unusual life. He had much luck in many ways, but he is also very ambitious. His family and friends often say that he is working too much, but that’s in his personality and he knows you have to work much to get to where you want to be. He is not talking only about commercial success, but also about his writing. He wants to do his best all the time, otherwise he can’t sleep well at night. He laughs. Svjetlana notices Per has high expectations of himself. Per agrees. Svjetlana says the other thing people mentioned was they were wondering how Per keeps himself in shape. PG says he tries to pay attention to what he eats. When he was a kid, he looked quite like a meatball at school. That was always his Achilles heel, but especially during the past few years he tried to shape up. Svjetlana asks if Per is training. He quickly reacts he isn’t at all. He is rather walking and listening to things he is working with or tries to hatch an idea and to find answers to all the weird and stupid questions about his projects. So he sticks to his headphones, he is antisocial and he is in his own bubble then.

As a last question, Svjetlana asks Per about Gyllene Tider. PG says it’s a nice little band. Svjetlana thinks it’s a damn good band. Per says it’s also something he is very proud of. He is very proud of them being good friends and that they have fun when they meet. He can’t promise anything, but he hopes that there will be more Gyllene Tider in the future. But he doesn’t know anything yet.

Svjetlana thanks Per for coming to the show, PG also thanks for having him.

Per Gessle on Nordic Rox – May 2022

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The May episode of Nordic Rox on Sirius XM was partly dedicated to the Swedish band November. Sven tells it’s going to be another special, retrospective, extravaganza pop show from the Nordic countries. Per adds they have an exciting setlist.

PG remembers November from the time he was a kid in the late 60’s, early 70’s. The guys plan to play three of their songs which Per is sure we haven’t heard before. Sven tells the band didn’t stay together that long. They are considered to be Sweden’s first hard rock band. They were inspired by Cream and Led Zeppelin. Mr. G tells November was a trio, guitar, bass and drums and the bass player, Christer Stålbrandt wrote most of the songs and he was also the lead singer. There is lots of blues in the background and they were all great musicians.

Before getting down to those three November songs, Sven and Per play Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight) by ABBA.

The next track is by The Soundtrack of Our Lives, one of their classic rock ’n’ roll songs, Nevermore. Per thinks it’s a great track. He says the drummer was probably out having lunch, because there is no drums in this one. Sven adds that the guitarist took over the mix and they just finished it. PG says „and they released the record without the drummer knowing it”. Haha. Per says it has a very special sound to it and it’s a wonderful track by a wonderful band.

The third song on the show is (Do You Get) Excited? by Roxette. Sven asks Per if he got excited when he heard the song now. Per tells it’s from the Joyride album and he thinks it’s one of the greatest Roxette tracks. Marie is singing just so beautifully. Jonas Isacsson plays the lead guitars here and he is doing an amazing job. It was recorded in 1990 at the EMI studio in Stockholm and sounds really cool. It’s one of the best tracks on Joyride, if you ask Per. That’s his humble opinion. Sven asks if he can zoom back in time when he hears the song, being in the studio and if he remembers anything from the recording. Per’s simple answer is „no” and the guys are laughing. But he remembers writing the song. They wrote it together with Mats MP Persson and he was really proud of all these modulations. They did that to make the song different. It was written for Marie to sing. Per loves the title and the whole thing about it. It was a great track from day 1, he thinks. „Says a visibly proud Per Gessle”, Sven says. PG’s reaction is „I’m blushing here”. Haha.

The next one is What Would Joan Jett Do? by The Launderettes, the Norwegian wonders, as Per calls them. Mr. G loves the title of the song and so does Sven. Sven asks „what would she do?” Per answers „she would love that song for sure”. PG also loves that guitar riff, it’s just amazing, he thinks and it’s impossible to play. He tried, but he couldn’t. Sven tells some say that a really great track should be able to play on an acoustic guitar, but he doesn’t think that applies to garage rock. The guys are laughing.

Starting the November special, Sven informs that the band got their name after the month, because they had their first gig in November. Their first album was En ny tid är här… (A new time has come…), released in 1970. The band was formed in Vällingby, a Stockholm suburb. The drummer, Björn Inge and the bassist Christer Stålbrandt formed the band with a British guitarist, Snowy White from Thin Lizzy. Sven doesn’t know what Snowy White was doing in Sweden. He asks Per what he thinks, if Snowy was chasing girls. PG says „probably. Everyone was doing that. Even them.” Sven tells they have to take a little break and listen to Snowy let the guitar loose in Thin Lizzy. So they play a bit of his guitar playing. Sven asks Mr. G if he bought the November album when it came out. PG tells his brother bought the debut album and Per bought the second album. He thinks the debut album is their best. It’s got some really great tracks. What was interesting at the time is that they were singing in Swedish. That was the period of time when suddenly everyone started to sing in Swedish. It was basically forbidden for some reason in the 60’s. Everyone was singing in English. Sven tells people thought it sounded a bit jerky to sing in Swedish. But it made sense, according to Per and suddenly there were bands like November and it sounded totally natural. The sound of the band is very raw, Per thinks, the mix is raw, but it sounds really cool. The guys play one of the band’s major hits, Mount Everest, the album opener on the first record.

Sven asks Per if he could see November live, but then he realizes that it was impossible, because Per was too small back then. PG confirms he was too young, but since Sven is much older than Per, he must have seen them. Sven tells he saw them in his hometown, Växjö in a tech gymnasium. He was 14, he was barely let in and he can’t remember that much. More than that he was severely impressed by the band and being there, trying to chat with some girls with moderate success. Haha.

The next November song is En annan värld (Another world). Sven says there is some serious frenzy from the drummer, Björn Inge. Per thinks he is a great technical drummer and he tells there is a lot of Ginger Baker inspiration here.

Snowy White went back to England, being disappointed by not getting success with the Swedish girls or whatever, Sven jokes. He was replaced by Richard Rolf, an amazing, young guitarist. Per tells he played an SG guitar. He got a great sound, Mr. G always loved his guitar sound. Richard is still around, still plays. His guitar sound was very much part of the distinctive sounds of the band. Sven tells the band toured endlessly for three years, they made three albums and then they ran out of gas. Per reacts „who can blame them”.

The third and last song by November is En ny tid är här on the show.

It’s time for some more contemporary rock, Sven thinks, so they play a song from 1998. They are lauging. Malmö band Wilmer X comes with För dum för pop. Per says Wilmer X is a great band. They are a blues band with a pop side to it. Nisse Hellberg writes the songs, he is a great pop guy, PG thinks. He writes wonderful pop ditties, once in a while. Haha. För dum för pop is one of Per’s favourite songs. He thinks it’s a great title and translates it into English as „Too stupid for pop”. Sven says „we can both recognize ourselves in that title”. PG’s reaction is „absolutely” and they are laughing.

Titiyo comes next with Lovin’ Out Of Nothing from 2004, written by Niclas Frisk from Atomic Swing. Per thinks it still sounds really cool.

The guys stay in southern Sweden, because there is so much good music coming out of there. The Men is a band formed from other garage bands, e.g. The Sinners and The Girls. When they grew up, they decided to get together, do business together and call themselves The Men. They are modsters, Sven tells, very hardcore, inspired by the Britih mod scene 1964-1966. The vespa thing, the clothing. The song the guys play, Don’t is a duet between the singer, Sven Köhler and his daughter who is rather disbelieving.

The last song is Big Big World by Emilia. Per really likes this track. It was everywhere on Swedish radio back then and it’s still got this instant hook in there. Sven says it couldn’t be simpler. Per agrees and thinks it’s just amazing. Everytime he hears it, he wishes he wrote it. The guys are laughing and say goodbye.

As usual, Anita Lindblom’s Cigarettes is closing 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 – April 2022 – a celebration of Marie Fredriksson

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The April episode of Nordic Rox on Sirius XM was recorded in sunny, but rather chilly Halmstad. Per is just back from his solid vacation, which he needed very much. He went away to the sun. „You have to get away a bit in the winter season. It’s really terrible”, he says. Sven says he thought Per’s swimming pool was preheated, but PG explains it’s not, it’s under a cover in winter.

Sven introduces the show as a celebration of Per’s dear friend, Marie Fredriksson, the iconic voice of Roxette. Per adds: „Yeah, my partner in crime”. The guys tell they would play some of Marie’s Swedish stuff, because she had several Swedish solo records in between Roxette albums. The songs „Marie basically wrote herself together with her producer and they are pretty good. Actually, they are very good”, Mr. G adds.

For starting the show they go back in time some 30 years to Rio de Janeiro and play a Roxette song, Fingertips ’93, a single released in 1993. Per tells the original version of the song is on the album Tourism. They had the idea to record all over the world when they were touring with the Joyride album. They recorded Fingertips in Rio de Janeiro and then added some stuff to it in the studio in Stockholm.

Sven asks how was it to hear this old track again. Per’s simple reply is: „scary” and he laughs. He tells it was a fun album to make. He had the idea to use the energy that happens to a band when you are touring for 18 months or so. The band hated him for this, because they wanted days off and Per dragged them into studios all over the world. They recorded e.g. in hotel rooms in Buenos Aires and also in Rio de Janeiro. Sven says, „so instead of being on the beach Ipanema and drinking beer and swimming in the sea, you recorded in the studio”. They are laughing. In LA they were at the Ocean Way Recording Studios to make some songs there. It turned out to be an interesting album. „When you are touring as much as we did in those days, you lose so much time. It was a very creative period for me as a writer, so I just wanted to record the songs I wrote instead of just waiting for another two years before you’re gonna go into the studio. So that was the main reason.”

The next song played is Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn. Then Done, Done, Done by Eagle-Eye Cherry is next. PG thinks Eagle-Eye’s got a great voice, he always loved it. His big hit, Save Tonight is still played on classic radio stations. According to Sven, there is a lot of good songs on his album, even the non-singles. Lot of great stuff hidden there. Per agrees.

Then the brand new single of Sophie Zelmani, The World Ain’t Pretty is on. There is a great picture of Sophie at Hotel Tylösand, taken by Anton Corbijn. Mr. G tells Sophie sounds the same as she always did, she’s got her own style. When she started out, it felt very fresh and she was very interesting, Per thinks. She is still doing great work.

The guys are talking about Marie that Per originally met her in his hometown, Halmstad. Sven tells Per was already an established pop star with his band, Gyllene Tider and Marie came on the scene a couple of years later. Per pushed her in the direction of EMI and so they shared the same record company. Per explains Marie started out being with another label, but nothing happened for her. She had some really great stuff, writing raw material. Per introduced her to his producer and his record label and she eventually got a record deal with those guys and made her first album. It was a big success. Already the first single was a big success in 1984. Sven tells Marie became engaged with producer Lasse Lindbom, who had produced Gyllene Tider as well. According to Sven, one of the biggest hits from her debut album was Ännu doftar kärlek. Per translates the title as „There’s still a scent of love in the air”. He thinks it’s a beautiful song.

Sven informs that Marie became one of the most popular Swedish female artists in the 80’s. Per tells this part of Marie came from the singer songwriter tradition. She was a great piano player and her voice was outstanding. ÄDK is very typical of her style.

Sven tells Marie’s biggest hits were ballads, but she also was a super rocker. She never really wrote rocking material, though. Per thinks this was one of the main reasons why she wanted to join him in Roxette, because he wrote that kind of material. PG never heard any rock or power pop song written by Marie. It wasn’t really her style. She liked to sit by the piano and just do these mid tempo ballads. She was very much into the lyrics and especially in her own material in Swedish it’s a lot about nature and emotions. It was important for her and Mr. G thinks it’s easier to go to the ballad side with this. Also, it fit Marie’s voice very well. She was singing with jazz bands, she sang RnB, she sang everything. She could sing anything, basically.

Sven adds that Marie touched something deep inside among the Swedish audience with another one of her highlights, Sparvöga. He translates the title as „Sparrow’s eye”. Per tells Sparvöga is a book from the 70’s which became a TV series and Marie wrote the theme song to it. It became a big hit for her. The TV series started in early February of 1989, around the same time when The Look happened in the US. So Marie recorded this song prior to Roxette’s breakthrough. The song is co-produced by Anders Herrlin, who eventually became an engineer and programmer for Roxette. It’s different style and different sound to Marie’s previous stuff.

The next hymn-like Marie classic is Tro from 1996. Per translates the title as „Believe”, but he tells it can also mean „Faith”. Sven tells Swedish language opens a lot of backdoors for interpretation. Per adds it’s a very complicated language and laughs. Mr. G thinks it’s a great song and it was also a big hit for Marie. She had a second child at the time and they had a break from Roxette for about three years. 1996 was the first year when they had a time off. Per was working with his Swedish band in the meantime, toured in Scandinavia and Marie did her own stuff as well. Sven tells they both seem to have needed that break. However, it wasn’t really a break, because it lasted for like 25 seconds, then both of them kicked off separate things. Per explains they needed a break from each other. They had been working very intense with Roxette, touring, recording and having that enormous amount of success for almost 8 years. Marie had a family, but Per didn’t have any children at the time. They just needed to do something else with other poeple. Even though they continued making music, it was in a different environment. „How can we miss you when you won’t go away”, as Herbie Herbert, Roxette’s Amercian manager said. Sven says Tro is a very typical Marie song. Per agrees and says it has a very beautiful melody and a very strong lyric. It’s pretty different also from Roxette. It’s a very long song, appr. 5 minutes. Per thinks Marie wanted to show another side of her art. Mr. G tells the song is from the album I en tid som vår, which translates into „In a time like ours”. He thinks it could also be translated into „In a time like spring”. As he said, Swedish is a very complicated language. It’s a bit like Japanese. They are laughing. The song wraps up the guys’ tribute to this fabulous singer’s Swedish career.

Sven and Per then dive deep into some Swedish rock ’n’ roll. The next song is The No No Song by The Sounds. Per thinks Maja Ivarsson is an amazing singer. The band had lots of hits in Sweden. Living In America was their breakthrough song. After they play The No No Song, to which both Sven and Per say „yes, yes”, Sven informs that Per was up on the kitchen floor dancing spontaneously. Per laughs and says „can’t help myself”.

The next one is a song by Magnus Carlson feat. Trummor & Orgel. Per tells Trummor & Orgel is a duo of two brothers who have this amazing jazzy combo. They have been doing this since 2003. PG thinks they are really amazing. Magnus Carlson is the lead singer of Weeping Willows. They teamed up and the result is quite amazing, the guys think. Magnus’ vocals are really captivating according to Sven. Per loves the Hammond organ and drums. It reminds him of a Swedish duo from the late 60’s, Hansson & Karlsson, who even worked with Jimi Hendrix a bit. Jimi covered one of their songs, Tax Free.

The guys play Black Hole by Edith Backlund. Per thinks she is amazing and it’s a great track. Then an irreplaceable, unchallenged band, the marvellous masters of Swedish garage rock, The Hives are played. Per thinks they are irresistible. A killer track, Die, All Right! from 2002 from their Veni Vidi Vicious album comes next. Good album title according to both Sven and Per.

Mr. Lindström and Mr. Gessle thank everyone for listening and say they will be back with more good-looking music from the Nordic countries.

Anita Lindblom’s Cigarettes is closing the show.

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

Thanks for your support, Sven!