The show in Berlin happened in Admiralspalast. It was a seated gig again and oh what a gig it was! So it really seems to be guaranteed that a seated concert can’t go wrong on this tour. I mean when it’s planned to be seated from the beginning.
The support act was Lee MacDougall as on every other German date. He was great in Berlin too and we had much fun listening to his stories and music. After he finished his unplugged song and stepped back, he tumbled over Per’s mic stand and said ”Sorry, Per!”. Haha.
Anders Roos was there and set all his cameras around the venue. The real deal started a bit after 21:00, with no setlist changes.
Setlist:
1. The Look
2. Milk And Toast And Honey
3. Crash! Boom! Bang!
4. Dressed For Success
5. She’s Got Nothing On (But The Radio)
6. Spending My Time
7. I’m Glad You Called
8. Small Town Talk
9. I Have A Party In My Head
10. It Must Have Been Love
11. Opportunity Nox
12. The Big L.
13. Fading Like A Flower
14. Doesn’t Make Sense
Band presentation
15. How Do You Do! (in a medley with No. 16)
16. Dangerous
Encore
17. Queen Of Rain
18. Joyride
Encore 2
19. Listen To Your Heart
20. The Sweet Hello, The Sad Goodbye
The show hasn’t even started when everyone was already on their feet, so we could rock to The Look which started with Per counting ”Eins, zwei, drei, vier!” Helena was on a high too and she even hi fived fans in the front row. Woohoo! Mr. G said it’s always a pleasure to be in Berlin and he played there with Roxette in 2015. Of course, many from the audience were there 3 years ago. Magnus too. PG said he would do a deep dive into the bucket of Roxette songs. He also said he sneaked in some of his solo songs, as we know him. He asked to sing along if we know the lyrics, to help them out, they love that.
When Per said thank you after MATAH, someone shouted from the crowd ”you’re welcome”. He laughed. Then he let us know that the most expensive pizzas you can find in the world are still in Capri, where Roxette went to record CBB.
Before DFS Per asked if we were ready for them speeding it up a bit. Yeah! Party party party that got even wilder during SGNO. Andreas’s drum solo ending was so cool in Berlin too. After the song Per said ”it felt good!” Oh yes, it did! Ah, as per the drums… Now it seems you can buy a drum head at the merch shop, customized to the actual city. There is a design related to the city, there is the Per Gessle’s Roxette logo and the name of the city on it. What else? It is signed by all band members and Per himself. From what I know, it was sold in London first, but there seems to be only 1 drum head like this per each city. Let us know if you know someone who got hold of the drum head in any other town. 😉
Before SMT Per talked about his good day in 1990 when he woke up in the morning, had nothing to do, but found a note on his piano saying ”Hello, you fool, I love you”. It was written by his wife, then girlfriend and he thought it was kind of cute, it just had to be a song. So he wrote Joyride and then he was exhausted, ate Swedish meatballs, watched 3-4 Ingmar Bergman movies just to get in the mood to write another song. Spending My Time. Helena singing it, she got a huge applause from the audience.
STT was loved by the audience. Chris got his well-deserved extra applause on it.
Then came Swedish hillbilly IHAPIMH and the party never ended until the show was over.
Per mentioned he started with 74 songs for the tour and asked the band to learn those songs. Magnus said and they did. Every verse, every chorus, every intro, every outro. It’s hard work. There was only one song Per wasn’t sure about playing, but it turned out to be Magnus’s all time fave song besides Kraftwerk’s The Model and the collective works of Karlheinz Stockhausen. IMHBL was the top. Per said Magnus is weird. The sing-along was the strongest on this song last night.
Then came the OppNox-TBL partytime. Nothing can beat it! Per and all the band members were like Duracell bunnies during both songs! Love Ola’s rocking solo in OppNox and also there is a tiny little detail I adore, an Ola-Magnus move in TBL after ”lonely at night”. So cool! After these 2 songs Per said ”that felt good too” and ”danke schön” and was cheered by the crowd.
The usual ’90s discussion was next between Per and Magnus. Magnus joked he had a flat in Prenzlauer Berg (part of Berlin) and spent all his life at the Panorama Bar, it was years and years of party. Then Per saved him, he got a phone call to come back to Sweden and play with Roxette and he said yes. Per said ”one saved soul”. Then Mr. G mentioned the next song went up to No. 2 in the US, didn’t make it to the top, but it’s a nice one from Joyride. FLAF was it, of course and Helena did great. What I love very much in this version of Fading Like A Flower is how Malin-My is plucking the violin. I don’t know if this is the right expression though. It’s when she’s not using the fiddlestick, but her fingers. Sounds wonderful!
DMS was the song of Duracell bunnies too. A real highlight on each gig. When we met Chris at the airport (flying from Warsaw to Berlin), we of course had to ask him how his hand was doing. He said it’s OK. In Brussels his hand was bleeding because of the fact that some part of the guitar fell off and under it there was a metal part which hurt his hand, since he didn’t pay attention when that part of the guitar flew away. Then in Warsaw he had no clue what hurt his hand why it started bleeding. He had quite deep wounds on both fingers that were bleeding during the concerts. He said the plaster isn’t really good for him, because then he can’t really hold the guitar pick. What’s your guess? Was his hand bleeding in Berlin? Haha, a real rock star!
After Per did the band presentation, he said ”that’s it and everything else is on computers”.
HDYD was also party on top. Its intro worked completely fine in Berlin too.
Before the first encore, the crowd didn’t stay quiet. We wanted more! And we got more! First QOR, then Joyride in which I love the intro part where Chris and Per are approaching each other and playing around.
No silence during the 2nd break either, the audience wanted the gang back on stage and oh they came back. Per thanked for it and said ”so many songs, so little time”. They performed LTYH that was awesome and the audience made their voices heard. Then as usual, TSHTSG closed the event and left us with the earworm again.
The only problem I had was with the lights. I don’t know what happened, but most of the time not the right happening and people were illuminated on stage. Sometimes Per’s face was half in shadow half in light, horizontally… Things like that. Sometimes it stayed even dark on stage. Strange. I hope the light technicians will do their job right next time, because those who were on the balcony last night also said that there were parts which they didn’t see clearly, because of being too dark.
Per’s comment after the concert:
BERLIN: Oh yea, back in Germany. Wonderful crowd in a beautiful venue. Thanx so much for all the singalongs + balloons + good vibes. We had a blast. Always special to play Berlin. Hope to be back soon with more music for you Berliners!!! Lots of love from P&Co.
All pics in the article are taken by Patrícia Peres.
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