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Per Gessle on Nordic Rox – July 2024

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After doing the ’60s countdown, Per Gessle and Sven Lindström came back to Sirius XM in July and started a ’70s countdown for Nordic Rox. They listed their favourite Swedish and Scandinavian songs from the ’70s from 20 to 16 in this episode.

The guys are talking about another decade. Per says there were so many things happening on the Swedish music scene in the ’70s, so they are going to go through a couple of songs that they like. Then he adds that to tell the truth, they even included a couple of songs that they didn’t like. Haha. Sven says they are very open-minded and inclusive here on Nordic Rox.

Before getting down to the list, they kick off with a track by a band that made an album 30 years ago, and Sven thinks Per is familiar with it. PG says it’s Roxette and the album is called Crash! Boom! Bang! It was recorded in the isle of Capri in Italy. The song they play from CBB is Run To You. Sven asks Per what he remembers about this one. Mr. G remembers they spent like six weeks in Capri making the core of the album in 1993. It was good fun. INXS had just been in the studio when they arrived, so they inherited a lot of the INXS wine bottles. Haha. They had a great time and it was a very creative period in their lives. Marie just had her first child, so she had a family with her. They did some great stuff on that album. Sleeping In My Car, for example. Sven says a jubilee version of the album is coming out. Per confirms it’s coming out just before Christmas, the 30th anniversary release. Sven says they will get back to that one.

A new single from one of the guys’ favourite constellations comes next. It’s Say Lou Lou’s Above Love. Sven thinks it’s a great one, PG says it has a French touch to it. Sven saw all these French singers, Françoise Hardy, Brigitte Bardot. They made some cool ’60s pop songs with fussy guitars and that sort of touch is here as well.

Then comes Borderline by The Soundtrack Of Our Lives from the album Origin Vol. 1. There never was an Origin Vol. 2, but for some reason it was named Vol. 1. Per thinks the band has a classic sound, and it sounds like it’s really familiar, but at the same time, it stands out. They have a very distinctive sound. Every song you hear from their catalogue sounds like The Soundtrack Of Our Lives.

Nordic Rox continues with a new single by Noak Hellsing from Stockholm. The song is All Day. PG says he has never heard of Noak Hellsing before. He must be very young and very new. Sven says Per is right on both points. Mr. G thinks it’s a good song, Sven agrees.

Shimmy Shimmy Style by the Teddybears is next.

Then the guys are leaving the modern age and going back to the ’70s. Track No. 20 is by a guy called Ola Magnell. Per says Ola was a singer-songwriter in the early ’70s and he had a couple of so-so hits, but then he went on tour with another Swedish guy that was a little bit bigger than him called Pugh Rogefeldt. The song they play is a live recording from a live album coming out in 1974. Per was there at the recording of that album in his hometown, Halmstad. Mr. G was 15 years old at the time. He remembers it being an amazing show in a pretty small theatre in Halmstad. There were like 800 people or so. It was a sensational evening for a 15-year-old kid. Sven remembers Pugh, he was probably the biggest rock star in Sweden in 1974. Sven saw Pugh and Rainrock in his hometown at the disco called Barbarella. The bass player came out on stage in a jeans skirt and that was rather cool. Back to Ola, the guys play his breakthrough song Påtalåten. It’s done with the Pugh band and it’s a live version from 1974. Per thinks it’s really, really cool and hopes the listeners like it. Per thinks it’s a great song. It’s got this sort of country flavour combined with some Swedish folk music. The rhythm is really wonderful. Sven thinks that sort of mix sounds incredibly Swedish. A lot of people were looking back to folk music in the ’70s.

Speaking about that, one of Per’s favourite singers, Monica Törnell is up on position No. 19. Mr. G has had the pleasure of working with Monica a couple of times, singing together. She’s got a really amazing voice, Per thinks. She had a breakthrough in 1972. There was a Swedish singer-songwriter called Cornelis Vreeswijk, who unfortunately is not with us anymore. He found her and he got her a record deal. Monica made an album which was basically a lot of covers translated into Swedish. It’s really an outstanding album, because her voice is so outstanding, PG thinks. It’s the elite of the Swedish session musicians at the time playing. It sounds really cool with standup bass and amazing piano playing. Per just loves this song. The original, I Really Loved Harold was written by Melanie. It’s called Förut (när jag var liten) in Swedish. Sven asks Per if this was something that mesmerized him when he was a teenager. PG listened to this album a lot and this is his favourite track. Sven thinks Monica sounds like some kind of mythical figure living far up in the woods. Per loves her voice.

The guys travel to Hollywood, somewhere in Los Angeles in 1971. Gram Parsons And The Flying Burrito Brothers. The next song sounds like that at least. It’s a guy called Basse Wickman and it’s taken from his first album in 1976. Out On The Road is not a big hit, but both Sven and Per always loved Basse. Per says he’s got this amazing, velvety voice and he made some amazing albums. Actually, PG has never heard the debut album before, so this is a new one to him. Sven says it’s actually quite obscure. For some reason, he never really made it, but Sven thinks they have a couple of tracks that they are going to revisit on the ’80s list when they get there. Per agrees and says Basse had his peak in the ’80s. Now comes some sort of Swedish country rock. It didn’t make the charts in Sweden at all, but it sounds lovely, Per thinks.

No. 17 on the list is a group called Dag Vag. Sven says it’s some sort of slight new wave reggae. Mr. G says it’s more like ska music, like The Specials from England. Dag Vag was really outstanding in the ’70s on the Swedish music scene and made it big, Per says. Sven says they were a bit older than the new wave movement. He means they came from the hippie movement, more or less. Per agrees, but they used this punk new wave attitude to come through and they did it very well. They brought along Kenny Håkansson on guitar from the prog rock group Kebnekajse. He is an amazing guitar player. Everyone in the band had really weird names, alter egos. Per can’t remember the name of Kenny. Sven thinks he was called the Silver Surfer, but he is not sure. Dag Vag means a „vague day” in English, it doesn’t make sense. Sven says „if it doesn’t make you any wiser, you can trust us, we’re not wiser either.” And the song is called Dimma, which means „fog”. It’s probably the first time this song is played in the US.

The guys think they did a great job on this list, as always. Now they are moving to the late ’70s, 1979. There was a group called Factory, that was enormously big in Sweden. Per says, first of all, most of the songs from the ’70s they played are in Swedish, because it was a big thing in the ’70s to work in Swedish. In the ’60s nobody did that at all. But in the ’70s everyone changed. Pugh was probably the first one. So, Efter plugget (after school) by Factory was a huge hit in 1979. If you listen to it now, you can trace the influences by Supertramp a lot. Per remembers when he was a kid, this song was all over the place. Sven says it was rock disco, a sort of danceable rock music. It was the same time as Da Ya Think I’m Sexy? by Rod Stewart. That sort of style. Or Miss You by The Rolling Stones. This one was all over the airwaves in 1979, you couldn’t escape it, for good or for bad. People tried to dance to it. Sven remembers girls from that time looking slightly bored. At least when they (the guys) came up on the dance floor. Per says probably that was the reason why they looked bored. Haha.

This wraps up the ’70s list for July.

Nordic Rox continues with Nowhere Blue, an indie duo from Stockholm with a new track called Keep On Running Off.

Do You Love Me by Amanda Jenssen is next. Amanda is one of the guys’ favourites and the song is from her debut album Killing My Darlings, 2008. Per thinks it’s a wonderful song. Sven thinks she is an amazing artist and an amazing singer.

The beautiful sound of Doojiman & The Exploders is next and their wonderful Yeah Yeah Yeah, Per says. Garage rock in its prime from Sweden, taken from the album Sweden’s Newest Hit Makers, Sven adds. PG thinks it’s such a great title. Sven says it makes you think of how they marketed The Rolling Stones in the States back in 1964: England’s Newest Hitmakers.

The guys are ready to leave, they have to go. Studio time is up. They will be back with five more songs taken from the Swedish ’70s in the next show.

Sven and Per thank the listeners for joining them and Cigarettes by Anita Lindblom closes the show, as usual.

Photo by Anders Roos (2019)

Thanks for your support, Sven!

Per Gessle interview on Studio Ett about “Joyride – The Musical”

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Studio Ett, news magazine on Swedish Radio P1, did a phone interview with Per Gessle after he saw one of the final rehearsals of Joyride – The Musical on 3rd September. Listen to it HERE!

The program leaders welcome Per Gessle on the show. He is joining via phone from Halmstad. Per was in Malmö yesterday (on 3rd September) to see one of the final rehearsals. The program leaders are curious what it was like to see and hear Roxette songs in musical form. Mr. G says it was the first time he got to see it together with an audience and it was absolutely fantastic. It’s a strange experience, of course, but it’s awesome. It’s a new chapter in the book in a way. It’s amazing.

To the question in what way it is a strange experience, Per replies it’s awesome, it’s so big. There are almost 300 people who worked full time on this musical in Malmö. It’s a huge production and there are costumes, there is a 45-piece orchestra and everything is larger than life. Then they play these Roxette songs for 2.5 hours. It’s absolutely magical.

Per is asked if it was obvious to say yes to the musical. He says it wasn’t. They have been talking about it since 2015, actually. They got the first request then and he has been to various showcases in London and everywhere. Different companies, different producers presented different ideas, but they have all been turned down, because the script has never been good enough. Then they heard about Jane Fallon’s book, Got You Back and all of a sudden it felt like it could work with their music. It’s a cool story and it simply fits the music. Per doesn’t think the music itself has any major problems to fix so it works in a musical context. There are very big emotions and big melodies and there are a lot of ups and downs. So it fits the musical format very well.

As Per saw the show yesterday in Malmö with a lot of people, but there are many who of course haven’t seen it yet, the program leader asks him to describe it. Mr. G says that so far there were three rehearsals with invited audiences, e.g musical school children and others, but the actual premiere is on Friday. It’s magnificent. It’s a large venue for 1,400 people, it’s a fairly large theatre. It’s a fantastic production that has a huge orchestra and an enormously talented cast. There are many singers and dancers. You have to go and have a look yourself, he suggests.

The program leader says Roxette was Per and Marie Fredriksson, who passed away five years ago and is missed. She wasn’t really a musical girl, so the program leader is curious what Per thinks Marie would have thought about this musical. Per says Marie liked the musical idea. He thinks Marie would have thought this was great fun, because it keeps the Roxette spirit and the Roxette catalogue is shown to new audiences. Per thinks you should welcome such things. He thinks it’s the same they did with the Gyllene Tider movie that premiered this summer. You reach a new group of people, a new generation all the time with your music, so he thinks Marie would have thought this was amazing.

Speaking of the GT movie, it’s very much Per Gessle right now. Musical, film, Roxette tour with Lena Philipsson by his side next year, new solo album in October. Per turned 65 in January and the program leader asks him if this is how he picks up the pace. Per laughs and says he is retired now. He says he ended up on the cover of a pensioners’ magazine. He was shocked. Getting back to the question, it just happened. The movie and the musical were not really meant to come out with such a short interval, but it has become so. Per tries to keep up as much as he can. He likes his work and he loves working with all these projects. It’s incredibly exciting stuff, both the film and the musical and the solo album, which is mostly duets in Swedish, coming in October. It’s very exciting. Then the whole adventure with Lena Philipsson next year will also be a completely new blank page of what it will be. So he tries to keep up as best as he can.

Roxette has sold close to a hundred million records. It’s almost hard to take in. They have had enormous success. The program leader asks Per how often it comes to his mind when, for example, he was packing food boxes in Halmstad and his teacher came by and said „I knew this is where you would end up”. Per laughs and says it was like that. He says he came from a fairly simple childhood and very much lived in the middle of his little bubble all his life until he met MP and started a band in the late ’70s. It became Gyllene Tider. We all have our own destiny and lines to follow, so he tried to keep up as best as he could. It has been fantastic.

The program leader asks Per what of everything he does he would most like this teacher to see and hear. Per says, nothing, he didn’t like him. Per doesn’t think about it, it doesn’t matter anymore. There are so many adversities that you face, especially when you are young. It becomes a driving force. You have to show yourself that you can handle things. Per has always been quite a determined and ambitious type. It was one of many things that got him going.

The program leader mentions that as Per says, he loves to work and he loves his job, but a large part of his job was Marie Fredriksson. She wants to know how much Per misses her in everyday life and now that Joyride – The Musical is premiering. Mr. G says it’s been a long time since Marie passed away, but he thinks about her every day. Especially now, when so many Roxette-related things are going on. She is there in spirit somehow. The whole musical is an homage to her in a way, it’s also written in the program. It’s clear that she is felt. Per has to say that it’s highly emotional for him to sit in the theatre and hear all these songs. You kind of travel back to a lot of events, tours and things that they worked on over the years. It’s a common journey that’s completely unique, so it’s clear that Marie is there all the time.

The program leader asks what the strongest memory is that Per gets from watching this musical and hearing their songs. It’s above all the big Marie ballads, It Must Have Been Love, Spending My Time, Queen Of Rain, the songs that she represents. Every time you hear these songs, she sits next to them. It’s magical. Then there are some of her songs that are in the musical as well, songs that she has written, so it’s not just Per’s stuff. It’s amazing, Per thinks. He adds that he thinks a lot of people will like this, because it’s strong and a lot of people have a very big relationship with Roxette, especially with Marie.

The program leader says there are many people who have a relationship with Roxette all over the world. She is curious if Per thinks many people will go to Malmö to see the show. Mr. G says he actually knows that that is the case. Someone at Malmö Opera said that 45 percent of all tickets sold are bought by people who have never been to Malmö Opera before. It must mean that Roxette is a strong magnet.

Here the interview ends by thanking Per for joining Studio Ett.

Per Gessle and the creators about “Joyride – The Musical” on Swedish Radio P1 Kultur

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Swedish Radio P1 Kultur did a reportage about Joyride – The Musical before its world premiere on 6th September. Besides the main characters, the director and the costume designer, they also talked to Per. Listen to it HERE!

The program starts with the introduction of Roxette, a Swedish duo that took the world by storm in the late ’80s. They formed their band in 1986, but the first time Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle sang together on a record was five years earlier. Here they play Ingenting av vad du behöver, a Gyllene Tider song from 1981. Five years later they formed Roxette and became one of Sweden’s biggest pop exports.

Now their music has been revived in Joyride – The Musical at Malmö Opera, which has its world premiere on 6th September.

The program brings you behind the scenes, so you can take part in the preparations for the premiere. Before that, Jenny Teleman talks about good old MTV, her memories of those times and then Roxette’s history and heydays.

The script of the musical is based on English author Jane Fallon’s novel Got You Back, published in 2008. It’s a triangle drama that touches on topics such as infidelity and double life. So a lot of emotions are involved, which Roxette’s music fits perfectly. There are a few days left until the world premiere and you will get to accompany reporter Johanna Olofsson to take part in the preparations for Joyride – The Musical.

In one of the halls at Malmö Opera, rehearsals for Joyride – The Musical are in full swing. Jessica Marberger and Alexander Lycke, who play two of the main characters, are on stage and three child actors as well. The musical is not about Roxette itself, which Per Gessle is happy about.

Per says:

There has never been any discussion about writing a story about Roxette in particular. It’s not a documentary thing about Roxette. I think it’s more fun if it has an independent story and you use the music as the spice of this story.

The script is based on the novel Got You Back written by British author Jane Fallon. It has been reworked into a musical script by Klas Abrahamsson and then adjusted by director Guy Unsworth who wants to find a world where the music leads the drama.

Guy says:

This is my kind of adaptation of the piece, turning it into something that feels like it is a part of the music and related to the music. I wanted to find a world where the music would really lead the drama.

The story revolves around Stephanie who lives in London with Joe and their teenage daughter Stella. One day, Stephanie finds a note in Joe’s pocket that makes her suspect that he is cheating.

Jessica Marberger, who plays Stephanie, says:

I don’t want to reveal too much, but by accident, she discovers that her husband is in another relationship and everything she thought was very good was apparently not very good. So her world is turned a little upside down and then the whole story takes off.

When Stephanie contacts the note’s sender, Katie, it turns out that she is also in a relationship with Joe, who has been living a double life. The women then decide to join forces and take revenge on Joe played by Alexander Lycke.

Alexander says:

It’s basically infidelity, but I think it can hit quite a lot of people on how you feel in such a situation, also how you act, like these two women do. Roxette’s songs fit perfectly a story like this with broken heartache and such stuff. So it will be fun.

Guy says:

I think what’s amazing about Roxette’s music is particularly Per’s lyrics of a glimpse into the abstract world, or the non real world. The world of people’s minds. The music is expressing what people don’t say in real life. That’s really nice to have the dialogue representing the real world and then this music opening up that real world and exploring something more abstract and more magical inside.

Director Guy Unsworth believes that Per’s lyrics with their abstract qualities stand in good contrast to the dialogue in the musical that represents real life.

When Per Gessle is asked which songs will be included in the musical, the answer is:

It’s not that hard to guess, perhaps, but the big songs that are the sharpest in the musical world are of course our big ballads, Spending My Time, Listen To Your Heart, It Must Have Been Love,  Queen Of Rain, Fading Like A Flower. There are as many as you like. I write very melodic music and there are big gestures at times. It should fit in the musical world very well.

The music has been reworked by Per Gessle’s extended arms in Roxette, Clarence Öfwerman and Christoffer Lundquist in collaboration with Joakim Hallin, who is the conductor of the orchestra.

Per says:

I haven’t had any direct wishes or opinions about how it should be other than that I think it should be very much Roxette. I think the worst that can happen is that it sounds like a Roxette cover band playing this. You want it to sound like the soul of Roxette is present in some way. It sounds fuzzy, but I’m a little fuzzy sometimes.

To the question what the hardest part of the process has been so far, Per replies:

For me it’s getting used to the fact that you leave things to other people who decide. I’m quite used to doing what I want. When working with Malmö Opera and directors and orchestras, there are a lot of people involved. It’s a different way of working than I’m normally used to.

The program brings you to Malmö Opera’s costume studio. Costume designer Torbjörn Bergström says:

This is where all the costumes are made and now we are inside the actual tailoring. Here are all the tailors sitting, working feverishly on the Joyride costumes now.

300 costumes will be used in the show and half of them will be made from scratch with designs by Torbjörn Bergström.

Torbjörn continues:

Roxette for me is very colorful. Therefore, I immediately felt that it is important that there are a lot of colors in the performance. It’s 1994, but you can say that everything between 1989 and 1994 is part of this performance.

It was also in the ’90s when Roxette had its heydays, after they broke through in the US in 1989 with The Look. Today they have sold more than 80 million albums with a string of chart-topping hits.

In the costume studio, the work continues and the tailors ask Torbjörn for help in making a decision. This is how they work. It’s part of the job, Torbjörn says.

You have to make a lot of decisions all the time. Much of what you decide, you cannot change on stage, because once something is cut, it’s cut. And as a costume designer, you also design masks and wigs. If there is one thing that’s very definitive, it’s cutting a wig. It doesn’t grow back. Haha.

At the moment, ten costume designers and four tailors are working on costumes for the Joyride musical. Johanna talks to one of them, who test sews a T-shirt for one of the actors. She says it’s common to test sew things, especially when you are a little uncertain about the fabric and its characteristics. Test sewing makes you feel safe. She thinks it’s super fun working on the Joyride costumes, because they are very varied. All are individual costumes.

Torbjörn says:

It is very grateful that the set is in a world of fashion. That’s a very, very big advantage of this show. It would be difficult to bring in so much color and shape in other contexts. This way there is no limit to how much fashion and high fashion you can get into the show.

During the course of the musical, Stephanie’s character goes from working as a stylist to working as a designer, so the sewing room is filled with her half-finished costumes. Costume designer Torbjörn Bergström is standing at a workbench, flipping through his many sketches of models in colorful, pattern-softening creations.

Here you can see all the intricate patterns and then accessories on top of that. It must not be messy. It is very important. When I make a sketch, that’s why I often copy it down so that it’s quite small and I can see how it looks from a distance. You must remember that it is a very large theatre with many seats and many sit very far away. It is important that even those who sit very far away can take part in everything.

The reporter mentions that Roxette will go on tour and Per brings Lena Philipsson as the singer. Marie Fredriksson passed away in 2019, but Per thinks she would have liked that Roxette’s music now becomes a musical.

I think she would have thought it was amazing. She was much more interested in musicals than I really was from the beginning. So I think she would have thought this was really cool. I’ve never been a huge musical fan myself. It’s a new chapter in the book of my life and it’s exciting to step into it.

The first request to make Roxette into a musical came back in 2016.

There were different versions by several people. They have written scripts and they have even showcased it to me and performed eight songs with dancers and an orchestra in London. I have turned it down, because I didn’t like the script. So Malmö Opera was not the first one on it, but it became Malmö Opera, because it is a fantastic organization and it has a very fine and large orchestra. I was there at one of the previous orchestra rehearsals and it’s really cool to sit in the middle and hear a big orchestra play your music. It will be a completely different trip than two guitars and drums and bass that I’m used to in the rehearsal room.

To the question how important it is to him that Roxette’s music becomes a musical, Per replies:

It’s a big thing and it’s exciting. It feels great and I have a good feeling about it in every way. I hope this musical will be a success, so that it can go on around the planet, just like Roxette did once upon a time.

Interview with Per Gessle on Musikplats Stockholm

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Per Gessle was contacted by Fredrik Eliasson at Musikplats Stockholm on Swedish Radio and they talked via phone on the 23rd August show. Listen to the conversation HERE! It starts at 1:42:52 into the program.

Fredrik greets Per and congratulates him on his new song, Nyper mig i armen that became song of the week when it was released. Per thanks for that. Fredrik asks Per what it was like doing this song with Albin Lee Meldau. PG says it was fantastic. He had seen him and heard him, but he had never met Albin Lee before. When Per wrote this song for his upcoming duet album that will be released in autumn, he immediately thought of Albin Lee, so he contacted him and Albin Lee came to Halmstad. They had a great day in the studio and a good dinner. They shot the video for the song in Per’s garden in Halmstad. It was nice.

Per thinks his new album is a wonderful project. He was working with different female and male singers on it. It’s lovely.

Fredrik is curious what it has meant to Per to do these collaborations with Molly Hammar and Lena Philipsson among others. PG says he has always liked working with other voices. With Marie Fredriksson, Helena Josefsson and others. It’s mostly fun from the songwriting point of view. It’s fun to see what happens to a song when someone else sings it. When someone else interprets it. It’s a challenge and it’s exciting to do something that you don’t do every day.

Fredrik mentions the bridging generations, getting input from, for example, Albin Lee and Molly. He wants to know what has been the most educational for Per during these collaborations. Per says it’s fun to have some young blood. There are also some slightly older partners on the upcoming album, so it’s a mix. Fredrik thinks it must be cool to mix like that. PG confirms, it’s great fun. When you have a song and someone else sings it, all of a sudden it changes the energy, it changes temperature, because it’s interpreted in a completely new way. Per finds it cool and interesting as a songwriter.

Fredrik informs that there is a lot going on around Per. On 6th September, Joyride – The Musical, a Roxette musical premieres at Malmö Opera. He asks Per how it feels to him. PG says he is there at the rehearsals every now and then and it’s a fantastic journey to be a part of. It sounds wonderful. Last week he heard how it sounded with the orchestra and the band and it was magical. This week it’s costume rehearsal. He is incredibly happy to be part of this.

The premiere is in Malmö and the musical will be played there until spring. Fredrik asks Mr. G if they will take the musical to Stockholm as well. They certainly will. The whole idea of ??the musical is to take it all around the world. That is their ambition.

Fredrik asks Per what he thinks about his song catalogue in this context. What strikes Per musically is that much of his music fits very well in this context. It’s pretty grand music. It’s old-fashioned pop music that he writes, there is a lot of modulation, big themes, the ending. There are new musical parts all the time. Today’s pop music is very form-oriented. Other musicians write in a different way. Per’s music fits the format with a large orchestra, many voices and a good band. It’s great to be a part of it.

Speaking of Roxette, Fredrik says Per is going on a world tour with Lena Philipsson. PG says he has been thinking for many years what to do with the Roxette catalogue. Then when he was working with Lena, he thought she would be great to sing Roxette songs. They talked about it and did some testing. It sounded absolutely magical, Per thinks. Lena is a wonderful singer. Not as old as PG, but she has been around for quite some time.

This is not about forming a new Roxette or starting a new band. It’s about going out on tour and playing the Roxette catalogue from back in the days. It’s very exciting. They have brought the original Roxette band together. It will sound amazing. They start in Cape Town, South Africa at the end of February and continue in Australia. Then they will see what happens next. The demand is huge, Fredrik adds, for Roxette’s music live on stage. Per says ticket sales have been going great, so they are a bit overwhelmed by that. PG does notice that Roxette’s music is being played. When Marie passed away, there were only two ways to go. Either you shut down Roxette or you try to find ways to continue. He feels the same what Fredrik says, that there is a lot of interest. Then he feels, why not go out and play a little. He has written all these songs, so it would be fun to play them live for people. They will see how it goes, but it feels like a really fun project too.

Fredrik thanks Per for joining the show and they say goodbye to each other.

It Must Have Been Love comes as the next song.

Photo from Fredrik Eliasson’s Instagram from February 2024.

Per Gessle on Nordic Rox – June 2024

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Per Gessle and Sven Lindström do the final countdown of their favourite Swedish and Scandinavian songs from the ’60s in the June episode of Nordic Rox. Now they list the Top 5 songs. Per says it’s a wonderful chart, he is really proud of it.

The guys say they also have some new material just released, pop-rock sounds from the Nordic countries. But first, they go back to the Swedish ’90s and check out a band called Gyllene Tider. Per says he has heard about them. Haha. Sven explains this is Per Gessle’s Swedish power pop group. They started in the late ’70s. The song they play is from 1994, 1995 maybe. PG wrote it while touring with Roxette. He wrote it in a backstage area in Tokyo, Japan, because Gyllene Tider was supposed to release a compilation album of all their hits and they needed some new tracks. So he wrote this one for the band and when he returned from Asia, he recorded it and it became a big song for them. Sven confirms it was a massive hit and totally right with the times. It paved the way for the Gyllene Tider comeback. They had been sleeping for a couple of years. Per says GT broke up in the mid ’80s and then he started to focus on Roxette for many years. Then Gyllene Tider made a comeback in 1996, mainly because of this song and also because of the old hits that had become very popular again with the new generation growing up. Timeless pop, you know what it’s like. Sven knows exactly what it sounds like, they are going to play it now. Det är över nu, translating to „it’s over now”. Strange title for a song to open a show, Sven thinks, but there you go, that’s Nordic Rox for you. Benjamin Button, Per says. Haha.

The next song they play is The Golden Age by The Asteroids Galaxy Tour from their debut album called Fruit. It’s one of Sven’s favourite bands from Denmark in the noughties.

Coming next is Crystal Heart by Kye Kepler. Per asks Sven if he knows anything about Mr. Kepler. Sven says he seems to be an interesting guy. His real name is Max Borglowe. He seems to be a multi-instrumentalist and a producer. He is also a 3D artist and when he is not making guitar pedals, he is busy writing songs and getting atmospheric synthesizer sounds together. Busy guy.

Coming up next another band that Per has got some association with, Eskobar. They were a special guest on Roxette’s final European tour in 2015. They were opening up for Roxette at 33, 34 shows all over Europe. Per thinks it’s a great band, he always liked them a lot. The song they play is a collaboration with Heather Nova, Someone New. Sven says it was a big hit for them. Heather Nova, interestingly enough, was born in 1967 in the Caribbean, where her parents sailed around on their own sailboat. She grew up there in the ’70s and part of the ’80s. Whereas Eskobar, they grew up in a suburb outside of Stockholm. That’s the way life goes.

Live Again by Goldielocks, a Finnish band of which the guys don’t know that much, but they like the song. They are going to see if they can research and check them out in future shows.

Young Folks by Peter Bjorn and John is next. Per thinks it’s a wonderful song from 2006. Sven says it was a major hit in America. Slightly underground growing. It’s still played today, especially here on Nordic Rox. This song features whistling and Per is not a stranger to whistling. Mr. G says he was always a big whistler. He whistled on the Joyride track and some other songs. He can’t do it anymore, though, because he changed his teeth. It’s part of history, Sven says. Yeah, so Per needs sample sounds. Sven informs that when the Joyride album or single came out, the vinyl version had a sort of writing by the label saying, „was it really necessary to whistle?”. Sven asks Per to share the story behind that. Mr. G says it was one of their agents who didn’t like Per’s whistling. He said, „was it really necessary to whistle?” and they all thought that was hilarious, because that was like the big hook in that song. So when they pressed the vinyl single, they engraved „was it really necessary to whistle?” just where the label starts. You could do those things with vinyls. Sven thinks the agent would probably have said the same thing about Young Folks. Per agrees.

Now the final five songs on the ’60s list are coming. It’s been really tricky to pick out the top five spots, Per thinks, because there are so many favourites of theirs. No. 5 is Ola & The Janglers from Stockholm with a song called Alex Is The Man, from the album Limelight, written by guitar player Claes af Geijerstam in 1966, which was a great year for pop music. Sven laughs. Per explains they always have this argument about which is the best year in pop music: 1966 or 1965 or the outsider, 1971. Sven says, as most people would agree, 1965, of course. Per says, no, no, no, no, no. Haha. The discussion is ongoing.

The next band on the list is from Stockholm called the Mascots. It’s one of the guys’ favourite groups. They had a song called Words Enough To Tell You. Per thinks it’s a great band and they have great songs. A Sad Boy, is their best song according to PG. He thinks it’s really beautiful. Sven agrees. It’s a melancholy minor song tune. And it’s on an album called Your Mascots. The song is from 1965. Not a bad year for pop music, Per says. Haha. This argument will never end.

The guys stay in Stockholm for the third band, maybe the biggest of all the Swedish ’60s band, the Hep Stars. Per says the band is featuring Benny Andersson on keyboards. He was one of the founders of ABBA. He wrote this song, Sunny Girl. If you have a screen available, you can see the album cover, Sven says. Up there in the left corner is a very young Benny Andersson. Sven what better song to follow a song called A Sad Boy than a Sunny Girl, Sven laughs. Per says you can actually hear the trademarks of Benny Andersson’s songwriting here, which he sort of developed, of course, when the ABBA thing happened in the ’70s. He’s got this wonderful knack of putting a great melody together. And it’s not like what you expect all the time. He does his own thing. Sven says Benny’s keyboard gives this song the baroque pop feeling to it. Sven thinks Sunny Girl was another level of Swedish pop songwriting back then. This song is from 1966, which is a great year of pop music, Per insists. He had this as a vinyl single.

No. 2 on the list is a band that wasn’t really a pop band. Sven is pretty sure, this is their first time on American radio. They were more like an easy listening dance band. But they had a knack of writing songs that got them accepted by the pop crowd as well. Yeah, they had so many hits. Per personally never liked to listen to them, because they didn’t have long hair. That was so important in the ’60s. You wanted all the bands to look really cool and have this attitude. This band, Sven-Ingvars, didn’t have that at all, but they had their own sound. They wrote their own songs. And they truly deserved the runner-up position on this chart, PG thinks. Apart from the long hair, another thing that made them a bit suspicious among the young pop listeners was that the parents liked them as well, Sven says. Per reacts „yeah, terrible”. Sven thinks the song is very charming. Something that might get lost here, because they come from a part of Sweden called Värmland, which is very close to Norway and they have this wonderful Swedish accent. The dialect is very special and they used it a lot when they were singing as well. To their advantage. And this song is called Börja om från början, translating to „begin from the beginning” or „start from scratch”. It’s a breakup song, basically and it’s from 1965.

Before the guys reveal their No. 1, Per says they don’t really have that much in common with Sven. But one thing they have in common is that they consider Tages to be the best band of the ’60s in Sweden. Sven says they had two singers, as they mentioned that before in the last show. Tommy Blom was the major singer. He was the most good-looking, but maybe not the best singer. But he was good, Per says. They had a great bass player in Göran Lagerberg, who was a great singer as well. He also was a great composer, he was the main songwriter. Tommy Blom was singing the verse and Göran Lagerberg came in singing the chorus. Per thinks it’s brilliant. They were produced by Anders Henriksson, a great producer in the ’60s and ’70s. This 1967 song, Every Raindrop Means A Lot is one of the highlights of Swedish pop music from the ’60s, for sure. It’s a masterpiece, a well-deserved number one. The guys hope the listeners agree.

Sven and Per play some more music. The Wannadies is a band from Skellefteå, slightly in the middle north of Sweden. Per considers it the north, but he is from the south. PG says everything above Stockholm is the north. Sven agrees. Stockholm is north as well for those who come from the south. Hit is taken from an album called Bagsy Me. Sven asks „why did the ’90s end?” Every song should sound like this, he thinks. Per thinks it’s a great song, he likes it.

Doing It Again Baby by Girl In Red is next. Then Broken Promise Land by Weeping Willows is wrapping up this episode of Nordic Rox.

The guys thank the listeners for joining them and Cigarettes by Anita Lindblom closes the show, as usual.

Photo by Anders Roos (2019)

Thanks for your support, Sven!