Hundåren – podcast interview with Per Gessle by Tomas Andersson Wij

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Tomas Andersson Wij had Per Gessle as a premiere guest in his new podcast, Hundåren. Hundåren means years of hard work and difficult conditions. So the guys were talking about the tough periods in Per’s career. It’s not the first time Tomas did an interview with Mr. G. You could already read a great one in Per’s book, Texter, klotter & funderingar.

During this podcast recording, the guys are sitting in Per’s office in Stockholm. He bought it in the 90’s and for a while it was a complete recording studio. Per shows to Tomas where the mixing board was and tells there they recorded e.g. Belinda Carlisle’s Always Breaking My Heart. Then he realized he was too bad at technical stuff, so he was anyway in the hands of technicians and this way he didn’t need that mixing board. Now he plays the piano and his guitars there. Tomas says there is art on the walls: Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger, Joni Mitchell, Anton Corbijn. He adds Per’s wife sits in a room opposite Mr. G’s. Per tells Åsa is into design, she creates lamps and deals with pots and welds and sketches. They are not there at the same time too often. They live in the same building on Strandvägen, one floor under the office. They have a great view on Djurgården.

Tomas starts asking Per about 1983. By then they had 3 successful years with Gyllene Tider. They sold 170.000 copies of their debut album, 370.000 of Moderna Tider and 185.000 of Puls. There was a GT fever in Sweden during those years. Per says everything went so fast and it was a very intense period. They had long tours and they managed to surpass the sales of their debut album with Moderna Tider. När vi två blir en was released as a single in autumn 1980 and the album came out in spring 1981. Before recording the third album, they decided they should do something different. In autumn 1981 Anders Herrlin and Per left the country, they ended up in Westwood, Woodstock, USA. There they lived even at John Sebastian from The Lovin’ Spoonful for a couple of days. They came back and recorded the third album. It was a bit more grown-up, more mature with all the ballads on it. They went on the Sommartider tour in 1982 and it was a big success, but then the band members had to join the military service. Tomas tells he read Elvis Presley’s story that he also had to join the military service at the peak of his career. Per tells green didn’t suit him, so he escaped. Tomas asks how, but Per doesn’t want to share details. All he can tell is that there were 3 guys who didn’t want to do the military service, but all others in the band wanted to. So the 3 guys, including Per found a way to escape, which wasn’t too difficult at the time. Tomas asks if they simulated mental illness. Per says sort of.

Then Per started making his first solo album that came out in 1983. Per says it was a natural progress and it was cheered by Kjell Andersson at EMI, who signed Gyllene Tider earlier. He thought Per has a kind of singer songwriter quality that didn’t really come out on GT’s albums. Except in Honung och guld or in Flickan i en Cole Porter-sång maybe. It felt good for Per to write more lyric-based music. He always liked pop with a little country touch. He also wanted to get rid of his teenage voice, so he sang all tones and his voice became darker. Tomas asks Mr. G if he had a complex with his voice. Per says it wasn’t really a complex, but he thought his voice was very much associated with Gyllene Tider and was limited and that often blocked the songs as well. That was one thing why he wanted to start Roxette. He didn’t want to sing at all.

Tomas asks if Mr. G had the feeling that he wanted to get rid of the teenage idol Per. Per says he doesn’t know, he just needed to express himself differently. He loved playing pop songs with GT, but recording his solo album was different. He doesn’t say it was better, it was just different. Mr. G says people liked them, but they didn’t have good or strong reputation in the music business. In Stockholm they felt like outsiders, hillbillies. It was a bit like that with Roxette too in Sweden. Per sees it during all his life that it doesn’t matter how much success you achieve, you don’t really get the reputation in the music industry. But that’s not the case with the people you are working together with.

In 1983 the guys in GT didn’t know which way to go in music. They decided for making an English album, The Heartland Café. They tried to break through with it abroad. That was released in the US under the name Roxette in 1984. Teaser Japanese was the first single and they had an expensive video shot to it. The guys felt they couldn’t top what they had achieved in Sweden and they felt they should do something different. At the same time, digitalization and synth pop became popular, but the guys were still in the Tom Petty and the Heartbrakers mood. They started listening to a lot of synth pop music, mainly through Anders Herrlin, but it was difficult to merge with their music. One can hear there is a little synth trial on The Heartland Café and Per’s next solo album. None of them really had the capacity for synth music. They all came from another generation and they felt their sound was a bit too off, but at the same time, that was the GT sound. The Heartland Café was produced by Lasse Lindbom, who also produced the first three GT albums and he wasn’t too interested in the synth world. When you want to change something, you certainly have to change the producer, here to someone who is familiar with synth music, so it was a strange decision to keep Lasse as the producer.

Tomas says earlier GT had an ocean of people in the audience, then only 800-900 people in the crowd. How did that feel to be a frontman and see that? Per says he can’t really remember, but those were tough times. They were very young and when you’re young, it’s hard to feel if things go downhill. You are confused and desperate even if it’s still working. You are thinking about what to do and how to do it to be back on the right track again. That was their first tour that wasn’t sold out. They had Janne Bark with them as an extra guitarist and Marie Fredriksson and Ulrika Uhlin as backing vocalists. Back then Per thought it was a good decision to strengthen the band with Janne and the girls, later he thought it was totally stupid, because Gyllene Tider is them 5 and this way it became something totally different. They were probably inspired by Robbie Robertson joining Tom Petty. Tomas adds they wanted to play their English songs, but the crowd wanted to hear their Swedish hits. Per says back then they were quite convinced what they did was good. Those were tough times. Also, when you expand the band that’s a proof of not being sure about your thing.

Tomas says the guys were also convinced they should break through in the US. What happened that they didn’t manage? Per says they were thrilled to sell albums abroad and they were happy that EMI invested so much money in the Teaser Japanese video. They had a meeting at the hotel in Halmstad to discuss their plans about how to go on. Then during that dinner Anders said he didn’t want to continue with the band. The guys were shocked. Tomas asks what arguments Anders had. Per says he wanted to move to Stockholm, he got a job at a music store. He wanted to start a new life. So, he moved to Stockholm, worked at a music store and became a synth nerd. Some years later he was programming Roxette’s albums.

Tomas asks if there was tension, if Anders thought Per was the driving force and he should just do his own stuff. Per says everyone thought so. Per says he had a love and hate relationship with the band. He loves Gyllene Tider and he loves the guys and even now when they became older, it’s fantastic to play together or just talk. But when you are twenty something, there is always a lot of fight. Who should be standing in the front, one thinks this, the other thinks that. The one who shouts louder wins. It was Per who was singing and he wrote most of the music and all the lyrics and he was the most interested in the music business. Anders and Mats were more interested in technical stuff. Anders, Micke Syd and MP had a totally different quality in making music vs. Per and Göran. Göran was a quite OK keyboard guy, but Anders, Micke and Mats were fantastically talented musicians. That was a weird recipe that worked out incredibly fine.

Tomas asks if Per remembers how he wrote the to-do list before that meeting with the band. Mr. G says he remembers it well. It was even published in one of the GT books. There were things like ”we should do a Swedish album”, ”we should find a producer”. They talked about Tomas Ledin as producer, as well as Anders Glenmark. They still had the support from their record label. He thought to write more songs and make demos, but it didn’t happen. The last thing they recorded, Galning ended up on Per’s next solo album. That would have been a GT song on a new GT album.

When Per looks back on his career, he of course thinks about Gyllene Tider, but he thinks about Roxette above all and all the decisions they made. They brought Marie on tour and she was singing on Vandrar i ett sommarregn on TV and she was there on Per’s first solo album. It all led to Roxette. That’s the big picture.

Tomas gets back to 1984. Per still lived in Halmstad and Tomas is interested in how people looked at Per in Halmstad when GT started to fade. Per felt quite isolated there. When GT broke through in 1980 / 1981, there were so many bands in Halmstad. More than 100. Per didn’t have contact with anyone except Marie. Once there was a voting in Hallandsposten about the most popular band in Halmstad and another band won it, even if GT was the biggest. So he didn’t really feel the appreciation back then. At the age of 24-25 it’s a hard feeling to deal with. Tomas asks how it affected Per. He says it pulled him away even more from socializing. He didn’t go to the disco or to clubs, he rather met people at home.

Anne-Lie Rydé played Per’s song, Segla på ett moln in Halmstad in 1984. And when she said it was written by Per Gessle, there was booing in the crowd. Tomas asks whether it was because no one is a prophet in their own land or there was aggression because of the huge success Per had, coming from such a little town in Sweden. Per doesn’t know what they got really angry about. He says there are cute myths that people got so angry they ”closed” the ways with speed bumps in the surroundings where Per lived to make it more difficult for him to get home by car. He laughs. Per says all his life he spent a lot of time alone. When he was a kid, he didn’t have friends at school and he lived in his own bubble until the age of 16-17 when he met his friend, Peter. Peter played in a band where MP was the drummer. Then MP and Per became best friends. They started Gyllene Tider. Then everything went so fast. They had only 6 concerts when they became No. 1 with Flickorna på TV2. So between being an isolated zero and becoming Sweden’s biggest pop star it was appr. 5 years. Regarding the booing, Per says he didn’t feel it being destructive. He always felt he is good at what he is doing and that doesn’t mean he needed commercial success for that.

Tomas asks whether Per had a basic self-esteem or he doubted himself during the years after Gyllene Tider. Mr. G says he rather doubted what he should do. After his solo album in 1985 didn’t sell good (maybe 20.000 copies) he didn’t hear of his record label for almost a year. He wrote songs for a new album, but he didn’t have a record label behind him. Then he started writing songs for other artists. He got into contact with Torgny Söderberg and they wrote together Kärleken är evig, Lena Philipsson’s Melodifestivalen song in 1986. Then Per started writing songs for Lena and other bands from The Pinks to Shakin’ Fredrik. Tomas adds Per got orders from Bert Karlsson and his gang too. Per mentions Lili & Sussie, too. He says he felt that it’s not what he is good at, he is not a good team player in this sense. He can’t write a song that will come out differently vs. how he thinks it would be good. So he felt very uncomfortable in that situation. Per remembers he was sitting for hours over a verse for some Lena Philipsson song and one verse was worse than the other. He knew that it wasn’t what he wanted to do.

Tomas starts talking about Per’s first solo album. He says in GT lyrics there were a lot of references to people (e.g. Paul McCartney, Buddy Holly) and the lyrics were playful, while on his first solo album he went black and white on the cover and he looks serious there, he sings about autumn and deserted beach. Per felt he wanted to change the style, but he wasn’t sure he could do that. He felt it wasn’t really his ”language”, even if now when he looks back, he thinks Tända en sticka till has a very nice lyric. Back then it wasn’t really his thing. He wasn’t ready for being a singer songwriter. Tomas adds Per was also very young at the time. Per agrees and says he thought there were more adult people who should write and perform such songs. It felt strange to release such songs under the same record label as Ulf Lundell and have the same producer as him, with the same band he recorded with. Per wasn’t really comfortable with that. It was never a plan to continue doing that. The second solo album had that singer songwriter element, but that was more pop style. Then the third solo album was never recorded. It became Roxette’s first album after Per tarnslated the lyrics to English. He always felt he was better at making pop music, so his style, his spontaneous ”language” wasn’t really his first solo album. Tomas tells Per’s debut album sold 60.000 copies which is a fantastic number even today, but once he sold almost 400.000 copies from an album with GT a year before, it must have felt a steep fall for him. Mr. G says it was another type of music and another type of audience. He was very proud that it became a gold album, but he still didn’t feel really comfortable with the record itself. It was too early for him. It was more Kjell Andersson’s album who Per thinks felt very comfortable with the Lundell union. Tomas adds the album sounds very Lundell-ish. Per agrees and he says he liked that era of Lundell. It was magically good, he had his very own style back then. Tomas asks Per if he knows Lundell was sick of GT’s success. Per laughs and says he knows, but who wasn’t sick of that. He adds when he released his first solo album, it came out the same week as David Bowie’s Let’s Dance under the same record label and he felt totally excluded, because everyone was working on David Bowie. But that was David Bowie. Tomas tells Ulf Lundell released a compilation album with the title Innan jag anfölls av indianerna (Before I was attacked by the Indians). Per smiles and says rumor has it the Indians were Gyllene Tider. It was never confirmed, but that’s what they say.

Tomas tells Per wasn’t in a very good economic situation at the time. He earned appr. 1.000 crowns per week. Tomas is curious how it affected Per. Per laughs and says when you don’t do anything that doesn’t cost a thing. He lived cheaply and was driving a Golf. Tomas says one would think that all the hits they did with GT generated so much money they could live on. Per says they lived good on that for a while, but back then you didn’t earn too much money on concerts. It wasn’t about the bad contracts only, but the fact that there wasn’t too much money in that business. One toured to promote their album and you earned money on selling your album and from the copyright after radio plays. Tomas asks Per how he wanted to propose to his wife and if he was forced to ask for more money, for example to buy rings. Per laughs and says despite it all, it was a lovely period. Now looking back, it’s great to see how all the endings led to something good with all the coincidences and luck or a meeting with someone at the right time during Per’s career.

Tomas asks what the key happenings were at the time. In 1985 Per had a call from Benny Hedlund who established Alpha Records together with Sanji Tandan. Per met Benny at Café Opera and Benny told him they signed Pernilla Wahlgren, but that was a secret and he shouldn’t tell anyone. Pernilla just broke through and Benny asked Per to write her a song. Per came up with Svarta glas, a dance song inspired by Michael Jackson. Mr. G thought it became cool and he sent it to Benny, but he never got back to Per. The demo however reached the boss, Roffe Nygren at EMI. He liked it a lot and told Per he should translate it into English and record it with Marie, so they have the song they always talked about with Marie to do something together.

Tomas says Per and Marie had been friends since a long time, but Marie had her own successful solo career at the time. She was working together with Lasse Lindbom who produced the old GT albums. Tomas says Lasse didn’t think Marie should do anything together with Per. They guys laugh. It was a big thing that Marie wanted to sing with Mr. G. Tomas asks if Per looked at Marie as a star back then. Per says he thought Marie had all the qualities he didn’t have. She sang well, she wasn’t as good on stage as she became later, but she had all the qualities Per liked and so he was super happy that she wanted to sing on Neverending Love that was released in summer 1986. Lasse Lindbom and Kjell Andersson didn’t want to risk Marie’s solo career, so that’s why Marie and Per didn’t appear on the single cover, in case it would be a flop. But it became a huge hit, so they decided to record a whole album. Per translated the songs he wrote for his third solo album into English. The only song he wrote especially for Roxette’s debut album was Secrets That She Keeps and there was a song written by Marie, Voices. Roxette was a hobby project for quite a long time. Even then when they went on the Badrock tour with Björn Skifs in 1987.

Tomas asks Per if he did any solo gigs to promote his solo albums. Mr. G says he didn’t. However, he, Marie, Mats MP Persson and Lasse Lindbom had an acoustic hobby band that played in small clubs on the West coast. They played everything from Love The One You’re With through Marie’s Ännu doftar kärlek to Per’s Tända en sticka till and maybe some GT songs. Tomas asks why Per didn’t do any solo concerts. Mr. G says he probably thoght it wouldn’t be too big and he couldn’t have sold many tickets. Tomas says Per was not the kind of person who wanted to play at all costs. He wanted to reach some level. Per says nowadays it’s cool to play at all levels, but back in the days he thought each step he should take higher and higher. And it was hard to top Gyllene Tider, of course. Per didn’t want to play KB in Malmö, he wanted to play Scandinavium. When he was looking for his identity, he asked himself whether he was an artist or a songwriter. After Roxette happened, he realized there is a much better singer and a fantastic front figure and he can just support her, while he can still sing or come to the front as well. That was a much more comfortable role for his artistry those times. So it’s about finding yourself, who you are.

Tomas asks Per about how self-confident he was at the beginning of the 80’s. Per thinks he had quite weak self-confidence then. Gyllene Tider helped him in a way, but he was so young and he was looking for his identity. One thinks that someone’s personality comes through the lyrics at that young age. He always says that his lyrics are mostly fiction. It can start with a personal thing, but lead to something totally different in verse 2. Tomas asks whom Per talked to when he lost his self-confidence. Before Per met his wife, it was Janne Beime, his business man who has always been a great support to Mr. G. He always told Per he would succeed with this or that. And he was right. He became kind of a father substitute for Per. Mr. G’s father died in 1978 and Janne came into Per’s life in 1980. He is 15 years older than Per or so and helped him a lot. Not on the creative side, but e.g. when he bought Hotel Tylösand or in other businesses.

Tomas says Per’s father never saw Per’s success and that they broke through with GT. He asks Mr. G how it felt. Per tells he had a strange relationship with his father. There was a radio program in the 70’s, Bandet går. You could send in your own songs and they played them. If your songs were really good, you could get a half-an-hour program for your own, Bandet går vidare. They had this chance with Gyllene Tider, but before that, they were played maybe 3-4 times on Bandet går. One of the songs the radio played was En av dem där which was a kind of punk song. Per’s father heard it and he told Per he didn’t sing really well. That was him. But Per says his mother was very supportive. She bought Per’s first guitar in 1975 or 1976. It was a Bjärton that cost maybe 1.500-2.000 crowns. That was a lot of money for someone who couldn’t play the guitar. It sounded fantastic and was easy to tune. Its string height was good too, so he could avoid having bleeding fingertips. That was the time when Per started writing songs. He wrote e.g. När alla vännerna gått hem and Billy on that guitar. After high school, Per and his friend, Peter became troubadours employed by the city council. They got a contract for 3 months twice, so for 6 months they were playing at nursing homes for old people. It was scary, but great at the same time. Peter playd guitar and flute and Per played guitar and sang. There are a lot of stories. They got a schedule when to go where. One of the places was the long-term care at the hospital in Halmstad. They had never been there and when they got in, there was no one there. So they just entered a hall where there were two patients on the two sides so they put two chairs in the middle, sat down and started playing. Suddenly a nurse came in and wondered what they were doing there. Just then, one of the two guys woke up, it was a young guy who had an accident and had been in coma. So they woke him up with their song. Maybe they played something he recognized. Then many doctors came in and stood around the guy’s bed and the staff asked Per and Peter to get out. Then it turned out they shouldn’t have played there, there was something wrong in the schedule. So that was also a coincidence that they woke someone up from coma.

Another story is when at a lunch there were 6 old ladies and gentlemen sitting around the table, eating their soup. Per had a capo for the guitar. 96-year-old Eskil was sitting there and had it in his mouth. He had dipped it in the soup, because he probably thought it was cracking bread or something. Those were fun times. There is a photo that was published in Hallandsposten where Peter and Per are playing at a nursing home. On Per’s bachelor party, before he got married in 1993, they forced Per to go back to a nursing home to play Drömmen om Elin for the patients. That was much fun.

Per says the hardest thing is to play in front of only a few people. It’s easier to play at Ullevi or Scandinavium or Globen, because there you can ”hide” behind the huge production, there are a lot of tricks and techniques and lights, but you are sitting ”naked” in front of 5 people, so that was a good practice.

All pics in the article are from Tomas Andersson Wij’s Instagram. Listen to Hundåren HERE!

Per Gessle interview on Sverige! on SVT

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An interview with Per Gessle is to be broadcast on SVT tomorrow at 19:00, but it’s already available online on SVT Play. Program leader of Sverige!, Fredrik Önnevall talked to Per last week in Malmö. The program starts with a few seconds teaser, then the real deal is 7:22 into. Watch HERE!

Fredrik introduces Per’s career summary, showing footage from the past and tells Mr. G is releasing a new album where he looks back on his 44 years of songwriting career. Then the interview starts.

Fredrik asks Per how come he spent his summer with looking back on his music archives. Per says these days you spend a lot of time at home, there is no travelling. Somewhere around Easter he started to get eager to play, so he thought he records something acoustic and tries to play as many instruments as possible himself. Then he thought, shit, he doesn’t have any songs, but then he realized there are a lot of songs from back in time. So he went through his archives, songs he wrote since the early 80’s. He found many songs he still likes and were clumsily recorded or songs he wrote for others, e.g. Segla på ett moln for Anne-Lie Rydé or I din hand for Svante Thuresson. Those he never recorded and so he tested a lot of them. It became some quite nice months in the studio.

Fredrik asks if the songs were available on old reels. Per says they were mainly on cassettes. Mr. G realized that he has been writing songs since 44 years and that’s a long time. Fredrik says Per recorded a lot of songs in the beginning of the 80’s, when he was 20+ years old. Now he is 60+ and Fredrik is interested in how it is to sing those songs now, if Per still approves of the lyrics. Per says he rewrote some of them, because the expressions were a bit clumsy and it’s also important that the texts must be relevant still. Certain old songs have the feeling that feels good, so it was just about to make them maybe a bit more simple. The album is acoustic based, so he tried to make it as minimalist as possible.

Fredrik says it’s not only music from the past, but there are newly written songs. In May Per wrote Mamma and Pappa. Per’s father died when he was 19, in 1978. The day he died, Gyllene Tider broke through. That was the day when the first article about GT was written in Expressen by Mats Olsson. It was a strange feeling. The end of something and the beginning of something else.

Fredrik says many in Per’s surroundings, in his family passed away during the past years: his mother, his brother, his sister. Per says those were hard times and you’ll probably never understand that. It’s always difficult when something ends. It was the same with Marie when she passed away in December last year. She was sick for such a long time and you would think you kind of prepared for that, but when it happens, it’s still very hard to deal with it. Fredrik asks in what way Per reacted differently than he thought. Per says it’s mainly the feeling that Maire is not there anymore. You can’t call her or meet her. It’s an emptiness that changes you. Maybe not overnight, but it becomes a different life.

Fredrik asks what Per misses the most about Marie. He misses their relationship, their friendship and all they went through. They did a fantastic journey together. He misses to talk about that with her and to plan new things with her. So he misses her as a good friend. He knew Marie since 1978-79 when they shared rehearsal studio, Marie with her own band, Per with Gyllene Tider. So it’s a very long friendship that suddenly ended. It’s tough.

Fredrik asks what Per thinks was about the chemistry between them why it worked so well. Per says it’s many things. They both came from small towns and they were pretty much similar. Both of them were ambitious and had the same type of humor. At the same time, they were quite different. They were good at different things. And that made 1+1 = 3. Marie sang much better than Per, Per was more interested in music industry and how it worked. Marie could make the songs immensely much better than they actually were, because she made them her own. It Must Have Been Love, Listen To Your Heart or Queen Of Rain for example. She made them her own, you believed her and it’s a great quality to have as an artist.

Fredrik mentions Roxette also releases new music and is curious about how it is possible. Per says they release a collection, Bag Of Trix which consists of unreleased songs, bonus tracks that were released on e.g. a CD single in Japan or a strange mix from the US. For example, Joyride became No. 1 in the US, but the radios play a different version in the US than what was released in Sweden and that US version was never released in Sweden.

Fredrik says there is a new video to one of the new songs. Per says his wife recorded most of what can bee seen in the video. Those days you had a real camera with you, nowadays it’s much easier. It’s much fun to see those recordings. They were travelling around the world for appr. 8 years. That was the golden era in Roxette’s history between 1988 and 1995. Fredrik asks how far it feels for Per now. Mr. G says it feels like it was a long time ago, but at the same time, it doesn’t feel like another person. He is still in that and is still touring all the time. He is reminded of Roxette all the time, many fans are still there. Fredrik asks if Per remembers all the happenings in the video. Mr. G says no, but he remembers when they had that giant fence and gave autographs through it. It was crazy. They had police escort and they had to run all the time. They were there around the whole world, but they didn’t see anything, because they were at the concert, then locked in the hotel room, then at the airport and off to another country. Fredrik asks if there is anything Per misses from those days. Per says he misses it all, it was a fantastic journey. He wouldn’t want to undo that. He would love to do that again, but in a different way.

Fredrik says Per always had the same people around him during his career and asks why is that. Mr. G says he likes long relationships. He says he’s been married since two thousand years, it feels like that now. Haha. He still works with Clarence Öfwerman, Roxette’s first producer, Marie since the 70’s, Gyllene Tider is also an old band.

Per’s home is still in Halmstad. He says you breathe in a different way in Halmstad. He is a small town guy. Fredrik asks how it is when Per Gessle goes out in Halmstad. Per says that’s fine, but of course he is more alert in Halmstad than in any other place. Sometimes it’s like a small event when he fuels his car or shops at ICA or goes to the pharmacy. People are very nice, there is never anything negative. Mr. G says people praise you the whole time and that gives an ego boost. Sometimes he just sits in the car and drives around Halmstad and look how things have changed. He drives around his old area where he grew up near Folkparken, his old schools, Örjans vall. It’s probably a sign of getting old, but he also often collects ideas for his texts. He wants to go back to that, write about it and color it for himself.

Fredrik asks what the word ”safety” means to Per. Mr. G says he needs substance all the time. He doesn’t like to jump around, he is a little ”late blooomer” in everything. He digs deep into things and that’s how he becomes good at them. He can do a very few things, but what he can do, he is pretty good at. It’s typically him.

Fredrik asks how many songs are lying around on old demo tapes. Per says there is a lot of unreleased stuff, but there is also crap stuff. The other day he found an old folder of texts and text ideas from the late 70’s. It’s from the time when GT’s first album was written. It was depressingly lousy. Haha.

Fredrik thanks for the interview.

 

 

Stills are from the program.

Per Gessle’s Nine Peaks of Nordic Rox – Glam rock

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Nordic Rox on Sirius XM kicked off a new program on 5th October, presenting 9 of Per Gessle’s favourite songs in certain areas, eg. new wave, glam rock, singer songwriters, songs about certain topics, e.g. flowers or cars every month.

Starting the show, Sven asks Per to tell about how he started collecting records. Per tells his first record was The Kink Kontroversy by The Kinks. His brother owned it and he needed money to buy cigarettes. Nobody in the family knew about him being a smoker, except Per. Mr. G was 6-7 years old at the time, his brother was 7 years older than him and he was a fan of records. When he had money left after buying cigarettes, he bought records. Per tells he loved the album sleeve of The Kink Kontroversy, the close-up of Dave Davies on the guitar and the wonderful songs on it: Till the End of the Day, Where Have All The Good Times Gone, Milk Cow Blues. Per got really hooked. The only thing he wanted as Xmas or birthday presents was records. He remembers getting Last Train to Clarksville by The Monkees, Little Man by Sonny & Cher, Day Tripper. Per says he had 100 LPs when he was 10 years old, which is amazing, especially because he is not coming from a very wealthy family. Those days you could earn some easy money by selling newspapers on Saturdays and Per started doing that really early on. The only thing he was interested in was music.

Sven says Per started writing music himself and later they also established Roxette and he has numerous hits inspired by his vast collection. Mr. G says he had many successful records, but he didn’t invent the wheel. He says he is a product of his record collection. Everyone is influenced by something or someone. The Beatles were inspired by Little Richard, Tom Petty by The Byrds. Per was inspired by the 60’s and the 70’s in particular. That’s when he was young and the music you listen to and get hooked on when you are young is going to stay with you forever. Even today when he is 61 years old, when he writes music today, most of it is still based on the 60’s and 70’s.

The first theme the guys are talking about is the glam rock era, when Per was 13-15 years old. Sven asks if there is a difference between glam rock and glitter rock. Per thinks there is no real difference. For him glam rock is when people started looking silly with lipstick on, all the guys started to dress up. Actually, girls as well, thinking of ABBA. There were many artists who were not really glam rock, but they looked like glam rock. Mr. G says they were never glam rockers. They just dressed up because it was fashion.

The first song Per picks is Killer Queen by Queen, released in 1974. Per says he is not the biggest Queen fan in the world, but he really loves this song. For him it’s part of the era when Queen were part of the glam rock scene. Freddie Mercury with feathers and platform shoes on. Sven asks how Per reacted when he heard the Killer Queen for the first time. Mr. G thinks it’s a stand out song for the time as well, because it’s so well produced. All the vocal arrangements sounded like nothing else. He didn’t hear anything like this since The Beach Boys. The whole album is really good. Sven also thinks it’s an amazing album and he likes the most when Queen is trying to play hard rock, because it doesn’t sound like Deep Purple, it sounds like nothing else. Per adds it doesn’t sound like Led Zeppelin either. It sounds like Queen.

Alice Cooper is next. Per says for him, living in the North of Europe, the only glam rock artist from the States he could think of was New York Dolls. He never liked them because they didn’t have good songs. They looked amazing though. If you check YouTube clips of them playing live, it’s just amazing to watch. He didn’t buy their first album, because when he listened to it in the record store, he didn’t like the songs. When he started thinking if there is anyone from the States who he really liked, he came up with Alice Cooper. Per’s first Alice Cooper experience was when he released the song Elected. Per bought it on a single. He thought that was a really cool song. Then he heard School’s Out. Then he thought the Billion Dollar Babies album was a masterpiece and Alice Cooper wore make-up. Mr. G picks No More Mr. Nice Guy from Billion Dollar Babies and it’s a great great song for him. Sven adds Billion Dollar Babies was Alice’s best selling album and this was basically his peak as an artist. Pat Boone made a cover of No More Mr. Nice Guy in the 90’s for his album In A Metal Mood, ironic metal versions by Pat Boone. Per didn’t know it. He laughs and says he wants to listen to that one.

Gary Glitter is next. He had many hits in England and in Sweden, e.g. Rock and Roll, I’m The Leader of the Gang (I Am), Hello, Hello, I’m Back Again. The song Per picks is Do You Wanna Touch Me from 1973. What he really liked about Gary Glitter is the sound of the record. He wrote all the songs together with Mike Leander and they had a distinctive sound with all the echoes and drum sounds, it just knocked Per out when he was a kid and it still does. Americans know it more thanks to the Joan Jett version. She recorded it as a cover on her first album, Bad Reputation in the 80’s. Per thinks that’s a great cover as well.

Sven asks Per if he ever put on make-up in the 70’s during the glam rock era. Per says he didn’t, but he had platform shoes. He remembers he went to a David Bowie concert in Gothenburg in 1976. There were 8-9000 people in the audience and most of the fans came dressed up as Ziggy Stardust and David Bowie of course came out on stage looking like Frank Sinatra. Per says they’ve always been a little bit late in Sweden. Haha.

Sven tells before the Ramones were formed, the band members were into glitter rock. Joey had that jumpsuit and knee-high platform boots and with that he became well over 2 metres long and had a wobbly walk in those boots. He also had feathers. Per says: pictures please!

Next is a British band, Slade formed in Wolverhampton in the 60’s. Per says they were never really a glam rock band, but they became a glam rock band. They were extremely big in Sweden, most of their singles were No. 1 there. Per was never a huge fan, but he loves the song he picks, Cum On Feel the Noize. Sven tends to like the band Sweet more, but he likes Slade’s Chrsitmas single, Merry Xmas Everybody. Per always hated that one.

Lou Reed is next. He made an album, Transformer produced by David Bowie, which Per thinks is Lou Reed’s best album. It came out during the glam rock era, so he put the make-up on. He used David Bowie’s band, Mick Ronson played the guitar. Per picks Vicious. He could have picked Walk on the Wild Side as well. Bowie was in a helpful mode in 1972. He helped out Iggy Pop, Mott the Hoople and also revitalized Lou Reed. He was very busy back in the days. The idea to Vicious came from Andy Warhol. He asked Lou Reed ”Why don’t you write a song called ”Vicious”?” Lou Reed asked what kind of vicious. Andy replied ”Oh, you know, vicious like I hit you with a flower.” And he just wrote it down. Per says it’s a brilliant line. Later Lou Reed went on to a harder rock sound, which Sven thinks is absolutely phenomenal. The version of Vicious on Lou Reed Live is just amazing. Per thinks he didn’t buy Transformer upon its release, but a couple of years later. He remembers buying Rock ’n’ Roll Animal. That was the first time Mr. G heard The Velvet Underground. There were glam rock magazines in Sweden and Lou Reed was all over the place. Because he had make-up on. He was a dangerous guy.

You can’t make a glam rock list without David Bowie. Per picks Starman from the Ziggy Stardust album, which Per considers to be one of the best albums ever made. It’s very much part of Per’s life. That era of David Bowie’s career is just amazing: Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Pin Ups, Diamond Dogs. 5 amazing albums for Per in the glam rock period. The guys agree that they love many more albums from Bowie, they should dedicate a program for him. He is one of the biggest artists ever in rock and pop and when you look back at him when he was on top of his game, it’s a very long period of time, from 1971 to 1983. Then he became uninteresting for Per, after his Let’s Dance album he just disappeared. Sven adds he thinks it was uninteresting for David as well. Sven tells they often laugh at the Tom Petty line ”Their A&R man said “I don’t hear a single””, but Per also heard this sentence during his career and actually, every recording artist has heard it. Bowie also heard it when they were recording the Ziggy Stardust album. Dennis Katz told him the album didn’t contain a single. Bowie wrote Starman after this comment, which replaced Round and Round (a cover of Chuck Berry’s Around and Around) on the track listing at the last minute. Per thinks that was a good choice. He likes Round and Round because of Mick Ronson’s amazing guitar sound, but Starman is a wonderful song. Sven says sometimes these record company guys are right. Per immediately reacts: ”No!”. And they both laugh. Mr. G says he read that David Bowie was very much into this ”Somewhere over the rainbow” (and he sings it), so he used that ”There’s a starman waiting in the sky” (and he sings it) jump in the melody. Mr. G thinks it’s really cool, he didn’t know it at the time. Sven is wondering if that was a conscious thing. Per thinks Bowie tried to find a way of using that trick in the melody, which isn’t very easy to do. Per also tells that in the early 70’s it was almost impossible to find these artists on television. There was TV once a week, 30 minutes pop music. The first time he saw David Bowie moving around was just amazing.

One of the best glam rock acts ever is T. Rex. They had many single hits in England and in Sweden as well. Not that many in the States though. Sven tells they had only one single in the US, Get It On in disguise. It was released under the title Bang a Gong (Get It On). They were big in Europe, but in Sweden they were like gods. They had great songs: Jeepster, 20th Century Boy, Telegram Sam. They came from the 60’s hippie thing with acoustic sets. There was Marc Bolan on guitar and Mickey Finn on congas. Sven says: ”What can go wrong?” Per says: ”What conga wrong?” Haha. Per picks Metal Guru. He loves it and thinks it’s a great track. Tony Visconti produced it. Using the strings and the girls putting octave voices on Marc Bolan’s low voice is great. It’s got this magic sound to it. All those T. Rex recordings have an alternative touch, but still sound commercial. It sounds like hit records in the 70’s. They broke through with the song Ride a White Swan, moving from Tyrannosaurus Rex to T. Rex. Sven adds maybe Marc Bolan’s range of artistry or his bag of tricks was a bit more limited than Bowie’s, but for a while he was unstoppable. Per tells he also looked amazing.

No. 2 on the list is Sweet. Per says they didn’t have a big career in the US. They had a big song, Love Is Like Oxygen later on in their career, but in the early 70’s they were unstoppable in England and in Sweden. Per remembers he bought all their singles, Poppa Joe, Wig-Wam Bam, written by Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn. Producer was Phil Wainman. Then came The Ballroom Blitz and it was like the song of the year. Everyone loved it with the introduction of the band in the intro. The sound of this single was amazing. They wanted to become a little harder and toughened their sound. Sven says they wanted to upgrade their fanbase from 12 to 14 year-olds. Per says he knows the feeling. Haha. Per tells Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman wrote many songs for Smokie, Suzi Quatro, Mud. Mike Chapman also became a great producer for e.g. Blondie and The Knack. There was something in every song that stood out of it. A gimmick or something in the title or in the sound. Sweet sounded like Sweet, Mud sounded like Mud, Smokie sounded like Smokie. There were distinctive differences between all the bands and they had very simple, but very catchy songs. Per thinks The Ballroom Blitz is a strange song with this drum thing going on in the verses and sounds different to everything else. Great singers, great band, great drummer, Mick Tucker.

No. 1 is All the Young Dudes by Mott the Hoople, written by David Bowie. This is a magic song to Per. Bowie wrote this song for the band when they were splitting up. He suggested Suffragette City, which both Per and Sven think would have sounded great by Mott the Hoople, but they didn’t like it, so Bowie gave them All the Young Dudes. He is singing backing vocals on it. Mott the Hoople was very much Ian Hunter’s songwriting, but then came Bowie and presented them with this song. Per thinks All the Young Dudes is one of the best songs he knows. The band recorded 4 albums that went nowhere and they were touring forever. Then suddenly they became a glam rock band with high heel shoes and one of the biggest bands in England. Everything was a success after Bowie came and spread his gold dust. However, Sven tells that they were very close to breaking up after the All the Young Dudes album. Their Ballad of Mott the Hoople (26th March 1972, Zürich) from the Mott album sounds like a break-up song. Mick Ralph left the band and formed Bad Company with Paul Rodgers, Simon Kirke and Boz Burrell.

Per’s Top 9 glam rock songs:

9. Queen – Killer Queen
8. Alice Cooper – No More Mr. Nice Guy
7. Gary Glitter – Do You Wanna Touch Me
6. Slade – Cum On Feel the Noize
5. Lou Reed – Vicious
4. David Bowie – Starman
3. T. Rex – Metal Guru
2. Sweet – The Ballroom Blitz
1. Mott the Hoople – All the Young Dudes

Thanks for the technical support, János Tóth.

Roxette’s long-time manager Marie Dimberg receives Honorary award for Swedish Music Export

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As we posted about it yesterday, at a ceremony at the Swedish Department of Foreign Affairs, Marie Dimberg was awarded the Swedish Government’s Honorary award for a lifetime achievement of Music Export.

Marie Dimberg says she was very surprised, honoured and happy when chairman of the jury for this called her quite some time ago – actually the day after Marie Fredriksson’s passing.

She tells:

My work has always been more of a lifestyle than an actual job. It’s impossible to describe the feeling of being at a Roxette concert in e.g. Johannesburg and the crowd of 50-60.000 people sing a long in a song written in small town Halmstad. Or to be part of a dream come true when Peter Jöback enters the stage on Broadway as Phantom of the Opera, one of the world’s most iconic roles. To see Agnes’ ”Release Me” climb the charts and a star is born. To hear Peter Gabriel praise Loney Dear and his incredible talent. I’ve had the privilege to be part of all of this and so much more. Those feelings are the fireworks, the goosebumps and the reward for the basis of everything; hard work and great teamwork.

Marie started her management in 1997. She began her career at EMI Records, in Sweden continued as VP of International in London and before leaving she was Marketing Director of EMI Sweden. Marie was instrumental already from the start of Roxette’s international breakthrough. Marie has been named the Most Influential Woman in the Swedish music industry and 2016 she was awarded the Denniz Pop Award for The Most Valuable Person.

2017 she teamed up with partner Tomas Jernberg and created the nordic management company Dimberg Jernberg. The company currently represents: Roxette, Per Gessle, Jonas Åkerlund, Christopher, Nause, Peter Jöback, Loney Dear, Molly Hammar, Gyllene Tider, Frida Öhrn, LOK, Emmi Christensson and BJOERN.

With new Roxette releases, and big successes with multi-platinum selling danish artist Christopher – being one of the biggest male pop stars in his home country, ramping up his career especially in Asia, and many exciting projects for 2021 in the making, the company is more vivid than ever.

See Marie talking about receiving the award HERE.

Very well deserved, Marie! Big congrats and keep up the good work!

 

Photo to the left by Sara Brynedal: Marie Dimberg and Anna Hallberg, Minister for Foreign Trade and Nordic Affairs at the ceremony; Photo to the right by Karin Törnblom

Roxette – Listen To Your Heart played 6 million times on US radio

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BMI yesterday paid tribute to the top UK and European songwriters, composers and music publishers of the most-performed songs of the previous year with the 2020 BMI London Awards. Among others, honourees for Million-Air Awards were celebrated across BMI’s digital and social channels. To recognise their remarkable achievements, BMI created a special page on its website where fans can watch video messages, listen to award-winning songs and take a look back at the best award show moments throughout the years. Click HERE to reach the site.

American radios played Listen To Your Heart now more than 6 million times! That means more than 62 years if it were constantly played! Amazing, isn’t it?

Roxette reached their 2nd No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with LTYH on 4th November 1989. In 1998 they received an award from BMI for this song being played over 2 million times on American radio. Phil Graham of BMI said it was very unusual for a song to get over the 2 million mark in such a short space of time. In October 2006, helped by DHT’s cover, Roxette were awarded again by BMI for the song’s 3 millionth broadcast on American radio. Per and MP got the Million-Air Award for 4 million plays in 2008 and for 5 million plays in 2014.

Listen To Your Heart was covered by an American hard rock band, Through Fire and they put the song back on the US charts in March 2020. The cover spent 16 weeks on Mainstream Rock Billboard music chart and peaked at No. 32.

Congratulations to Per Gessle and Mats MP Persson for creating this wonderful song that never gets old and for reaching the 6 million mark! And of course, neverending love to Marie Fredriksson!

Thanks for the hint, Tina Engmann!