Radio

Per Gessle on Nordic Rox – September 2023

by

Per Gessle and Sven Lindström recorded the next episode of Nordic Rox in Halmstad. They are featuring one of Per’s favourite bands from the ’60s, a Stockholm based band called Ola & The Janglers. Sven says here comes the 10,000 dollar question: what does jangler mean? PG hasn’t got a clue, but he thinks it sounds cool. Sven agrees. He says they know the „jingle jangle morning” that Dylan had in his lyric and he also thinks he saw some definition that the jangler was some person who was useless in doing something. Sven: „You know, he’s been jangling with this forever.” PG: „Like you.” Sven: „Haha. Exactly. Another version pointed out a guy like you, and that was the dark web version that a jangler was someone who kicked another guy in the balls.” PG: „Alright. Thank you very much.” Sven says that since they are from Sweden, they don’t actually have a clue, they just accept that the band is called Ola & The Janglers.

The guys start off with one of their favourite artists who is on repeat playing on Nordic Rox. It’s Adiam Dymott and the track is from her self-titled album from 2009 and it’s called Pizza.

Swedish ’90s pop, Fishtank by This Perfect Day comes next. It’s a great song, Per thinks, taken from their album C-60 from 1997. Sven asks Per what C-60 makes him think of. PG replies cassettes, of course.

The latest and greatest single from First Aid Kit called Turning Onto You is next. It’s taken from their latest album Palomino.

Before the guys sink their teeth into Ola & The Janglers, they take a look at Gyllene Tider and play Sunday Driver, Yea. The English lyrics to a song that Per wrote for his Swedish band. PG explains that the album is in Swedish, but one song was originally in English, so he decided to make an English version as well. Waking up the power pop monster that’s been dormant for a couple of years, Sven says. As they mentioned on the last show, the band has been on a successful tour around Sweden for 6-7 weeks, winding up doing some festivals in Finland and a big show in Norway as well.

Chris Craft No 9 by The Shanes comes next. The Shanes is a ’60s band from the northern part of Sweden. Sven thinks that this is one of the best original Swedish pop songs that came out in the ’60s. Mr. G thinks it still sounds good. Sven says no wonder, because it was recorded at the Abbey Road Studios. Per thinks it’s cool.

Endeavor by Timo Räisänen, a great indie track from the mid noughties is played next.

Speaking about cool bands, Ola & The Janglers from Stockholm, Sweden are today’s featured artist. The guys play 4 tracks from them that sort of paint a picture of what they were all about. Per says he liked this band a lot when he was a kid and he actually had their first album, Surprise Surprise. It was based on this old Rolling Stones song called Surprise Surprise. It was Ola & The Janglers’ first hit record in Sweden. It brought them into the Tio i topp show (Top10 show). That made them instant pop stars in Sweden in 1965. They were a great live band as well and had a very distinctive sound, because they had this Hammond organ, which was great. Johannes Olsson was an amazing player and they sounded really good. Most of the stuff they did was original material, but at the same time, many of their hits were cover versions. But they had a really, really gifted songwriter in the guitarist Claes af Geijerstam. He eventually became the front of house guy for ABBA. When ABBA did their world tours in the late ’70s, he was the front of house guy. And to add even more credentials, he won the Eurovision Song Contest in Sweden with another guy called Göran Fristorp in 1973. Sven says Per didn’t ask for that kind of information, but he got it anyway. Per says we could have lived without that. Haha. Here they play Surprise Surprise.

The second Ola & The Janglers song was written by Claes af Geijerstam. It’s a 1966 track called Bird’s Eye View Of You. Sven asks Per if he can remember listening to his transistor radio when this came on the air. PG can remember it, he definitely heard this song on the radio when he was young. This is from an album called Limelight and he had that album and loved it. It’s a really cool one, he thinks. Sven says the singer, Ola Håkansson was really original. He could sound a bit punky in the rocker numbers, but also being rather sweet in the ballads. He had this Mick Jagger style, Per adds. You could tell that he was influenced by Jagger. He went on to be the lead guy of the band called Secret Service in the ’80s. Eventually he became a record executive in charge of the TEN record label, which hosts, for instance, Sara Larsson these days. He worked a lot with Robyn as well. He never lost his magic hit touch, he is one of the big guys in the Swedish music industry.

The guys stick to 1966 when Ola & The Janglers were fresh out of school. Sven says Per claims 1966 is the best pop year ever. PG confirms and adds 1971 as well. Sven says he is not totally convinced. He claims 1965 is a contender, but they don’t go into that debate right now. Haha.

Ola & The Janglers made two albums in 1966. The second album was Patterns. It’s a great album too, Per thinks. They did a magnificent version of a Jackie DeShannon song. They actually did a couple of Jackie DeShannon songs, but this is Per’s favourite, Come And Stay With Me. A great track. You just get reminded what an amazing songwriter and artist Jackie DeShannon was. Per adds that when you hear this band, it’s a great little pop band. Johannes Olsson who played the Hammond organ made this great sound. It reminds you a little bit of The Zombies. Speaking of The Zombies, Ola & The Janglers did a version of She’s Not There very early on. They were heavily inspired by them. Sven likes the guitar sound here. By late 1965, the guitarist and songwriter Claes af Geijerstam had entered the band. He replaced the original guitarist. Sven thinks he does a really great guitar solo on this track. Per agrees. The ’60s guitar style is all over the place as well, so it just became a really, really good pop band.

Sven says 1966 was a great year for pop music and a very young Per Gessle who was glued to the transistor radio. Haha. The guys wind up the Ola & The Janglers tribute with a song from their first album written by guitar player Claes af Geijerstam. This one was a big hit, the first number one single they had in Sweden. Love Was On Your Mind is a beautiful little pop tune, Sven thinks. Per mentions that the band had an American hit in 1969. They did a cover version of Let’s Dance by Chris Montez and it peaked at No. 92 on the Billboard chart. One of the first Swedish artists entering the Billboard Hot 100.

Garage rock explosion delivered by The Peepshows in the shape of Cheap Thrills comes next. Then it’s Power Man And Astro Girl by Kristjan Eastman. Snack by Sydkraft from Halmstad, Sweden is played next. A short lived new wave band active in the late ’70s. The song title translates to something between hot air and pure bullshit.

Slowing things down a little bit, the guys play a beautiful cover of Broder Daniel’s Shoreline by Anna Ternheim. The Cat by True Lies, a band from Malmö is next and that wraps up this episode of Nordic Rox.

Cigarettes by Anita Lindblom closes the show, as usual.

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

Thanks for your support, Sven!

Per Gessle on Nordic Rox – August 2023

by

In the middle of Gyllene Tider’s Hux Flux tour, Per Gessle and Sven Lindström sat together in Halmstad to record the August episode of Nordic Rox.

Per asks Sven how he is doing. Sven replies he is fine, but he can hear Per is a bit hoarse. It’s because he is touring at the moment, singing four or five times a week, so at his age this happens. Working hard, Sven says. Mr. G says it’s cool, it’s been a great tour. Sven informs that he was there in Malmö and he also saw the premiere in Halmstad and Per seems to be in top shape with the band. PG says it’s a great little band.

Mr. G says he always tells the crowd that this is the 8th summer tour they are doing with Gyllene Tider, his Swedish band and it’s the 5th comeback tour. They disbanded in the mid ’80s and had 5 comeback tours since then. Sven asks Per what he thinks, why they are still so popular. Per says quite a lot of their songs have become sort of classics in Sweden. It’s the back catalogue they are playing. They released a new album a month ago, which is going fine. It’s just that people prefer the old stuff, which PG can understand. It’s the same thing when he goes to watch his old heroes, e.g. McCartney or the Stones or Springsteen. He wants to hear his favourite songs from the past. He doesn’t want to hear the new album.

Sven says he saw Nick Lowe in Malmö half a year ago and somewhere in the middle of the show, he said „I’m now going to say the most dreaded words in show business: and here’s a new song”. The guys are laughing. Per says it’s like that and it’s a bit unfortunate, because for him as a writer, he is always trying to look forward and trying to be living in the now thing. But Gyllene Tider in particular, when it comes to that band, it has become very much a nostalgic act. Which is fine, he is not complaining.

Sven says GT has a new song in English. Per explains he wrote this song in English and when they recorded the new album, he translated it into Swedish. So it’s on the album in Swedish, but they did a version with the English lyrics as well, just for fun. They put it on the B side on a vinyl single. The guys play Sunday Driver Yea.

The next song is He’s Peculiar by Vibeke Saugestad, power pop queen of Norway. Great track, Sven thinks. He says he checked out a few of Vibeke’s albums. Per’s bandmate in Roxette, Magnus Börjeson was playing with her and producing her. PG thinks she is very good.

Then comes Staffan Hellstrand’s beautiful song, Lilla fågelblå, which translates into tiny bluebird. Staffan was on the same label as Per, on EMI. Sven thinks the Swedish garage rock band, The Nomads was playing with him on this one, which made the whole thing a bit edgier than it had been before. Per thinks it’s a great song.

Getting back to Sunday Driver Yea and the new album of GT, Sven mentions that every time Per buys a new guitar, he writes a new song. Per confirms. He doesn’t really buy that many guitars anymore, but every time you pick up a new guitar, you start to play in a different manner. You find new things on an instrument. He bought an old Gretsch guitar, this sort of square guitar of Bo Diddley style and he plugged it into his little amplifier in his office and out came these guitar riffs. Out of nowhere, it just happened. Sven thought with that guitar, it was destined to become a Bo Diddley beat, but it went the other direction. It went to a punk rock thing instead, Per says. He doesn’t know why. It’s just the way it goes.

Sven says GT is going to finish off their tour in the upcoming weeks with a majestic gig in Gothenburg on 5th August. Per says they are playing at the Ullevi football stadium there and it’s the fourth time they play there. It’s a big venue.

Making a soft transition to the next song, Sven mentions that the next song is by Tages, a group from Gothenburg. Per thinks Tages was probably the best Swedish band in the ’60s.

They wrote their own material most of the time and they were a great band. Every Raindrop Means A Lot is a brilliant song even today, PG thinks. Sven says they looked rather cool. He thinks they went over to London to Canopy Street to get their gear. They really had a sharp mod look to them. PG agrees. Sven says Tages is probably the worst group name in the pop world in Sweden in the ’60s. It’s an old Swedish name dated by far already then. But he thinks they chose this for ironic purposes, because nobody else would come up with a name like that. Per thinks maybe someone in the band had Tages as a second name. Sven says they have to check that out. Anyway, the song is brilliant Swedish pop from 1967.

The next track is Say Lou Lou’s latest single, which is a cover of the old Kate Bush song, You’re The One.

Here comes this episode’s special. The guys feature Teddybears with four songs. Sven asks Per what his relation with Teddybears is. PG says he didn’t really know anything about them until they had their first hits. He knows they started in the early ’90s, but it was later on that he heard about them, the Punkrocker song. They have an album called Rock ‘n’ Roll Highschool, which Per thought was really cool. Sven explains that that was the album they broke through in 2000. It was actually their third album. Sven says neither he, nor Per is into the metal world or too much in the hardcore punk world, but he just checked them out a bit and it’s interesting to see how they are described. They started out as a grindcore band in 1991. Sven says then you question yourself, what’s a grindcore band. Per says he hasn’t got a clue. It’s an extreme form of hardcore punk and metal with a connection to both death metal and crust punk, Sven informs. The guys don’t get any wiser by this info though. Haha. The Teddybears made two albums in the early ’90s as this kind of grindcore band until somebody came up with a brilliant idea that maybe they should change style. Then they got a very distinct sound to them when they had their breakthrough with Punkrocker and all those songs that the guys are going to listen to, Cobrastyle and Rocket Scientist. These sounded very typical Teddybears. It’s a bit hard to describe the style. It’s rock and it’s also a bit of pop. There is a bit of electronica to it too. And it’s an interesting, very individual, personal style. Great productions as well, PG adds. So here comes Punkrocker, the song that dominated the Swedish airwaves in the early noughties.

The next song is only 14 years old. Get Mama A House is a brilliant track from 2009, Per thinks. Great single and typical of the Teddybears late style, Sven thinks. They got their inspiration from Jamaica. But they have influences from and you could hear Devo a lot, Per adds. Sven agrees, you can hear all these electronic sounds. Almost like toy sounds. Per always loves these productions. He finds them cool. The weirder sounds of the new wave stuff, Sven says. When the band performs, they hide themselves behind gigantic bear masks. They look really cool. Per doesn’t really know how they look for real, but it doesn’t really matter. The brothers Jokke and Klas Ålund are in the band. Per knows Klas produced Swedish singer Robyn and he also worked with Britney Spears.

Get Mama A House is featuring Desmond Forster. One of many collaborations of Teddybears. They always seem to collaborate with a lot of interesting artists. On the album called Devil’s Music in 2010, they worked with The Flaming Lips and The B-52s. Rocket Scientist, the opening track on that album they did with American rapper Eve. This could be their best song for Per. It’s a brilliant, very cool track.

The 4th and final song on this episode’s special is Cobrastyle. Proof that things can only get better, especially if you are talking about Teddybears. The song features Jamaican dancehall musician, Mad Cobra. Sven asks Per how is that for an artist’s name. PG finds it cool. Sven jokes, „your name is Per Gessle. His name is Mad Cobra.” PG says „he wins”. Haha. Mr. G says this song pops up here and there. You hear it in different movies, commercials, computer games. It’s just a timeless style and it’s really cool and very original.

Sven says they forgot to mention that Iggy Pop did the vocals on the American version of Punkrocker. How is that for punk rock royalty!

The special is over and the song the guys play next is I’m Kingfisher’s The Pain Of Happiness. Then comes Kaleidoscope Dream by The Northern Belle.

The last song on the show is Wailing Wall by Todd Rundgren. Per says the big question is, how on earth Todd Rundgren wound up on Nordic Rox. It’s not easy, Sven says, but if your name is Todd and your last name is Rundgren (pronounced in the English way) or Rundgren as Sven would say in Swedish, then it’s easier, because Todd’s father is of Swedish descent. This makes it easier to slip into the Nordic Rox playlist. Wailing Wall is a beautiful song.

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

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

Thanks for your support, Sven!

Per Gessle on Nordic Rox – July 2023

by

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

by

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

by

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