Jonas Åkerlund

Per Gessle’s cookhouse

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Per’s latest posts made many fans wonder what Mr. G is cooking again. First you see him posting a video, getting ready to work with Clarence. In a different time zone. Okay, it’s music in the making, not just a random holiday. Then bang, there is a Sunday selfie with Anders Herrlin, Clarence Öfwerman and Per. Anders? Hm hm… Then it comes to your mind that Anders is very much into soundtracks and you remember Per said in an interview quite some time ago that he is working together with Jonas Åkerlund again on a soundtrack for Jonas’ new movie. Jonas is indeed working on a new film. The title is Lords of Chaos and it’s based on a true story. It was announced already in May 2015 that Jonas is directing this movie, but the shooting was a bit delayed for whatever reasons. Now it seems Mr. Åkerlund is very busy with it and the project is in pre-production phase.

Back to Mr. G’s new dice, the storyline on IMDb states: A teenager’s quest to launch Norwegian Black Metal in Oslo in the 1980s results in a very violent outcome.

Black metal… Aha… What does Per have to do with black metal??? Oh my… Then ooops, he posts a picture of Christoffer Lundquist and Clarence Öfwerman hanging out with a cutout Alan Jackson (famous country musician) and he writes ”Chris, Anders & Clare preparing yet another heavy metal arrangement.” Heavy metal… so why Alan Jackson? Just to confuse us… Oh, Alan Jackson has a good-looking country bar in Nashville.

Back to the movie. You check anything related to the ”music by” section of Lords of Chaos, but all you can find related to sounds / music so far is that Mattias Eklund’s name is stated as re-recording mixer / supervising sound editor. Mattias was there to edit sounds for Small Apartments as well. You know, the movie with beautiful soundtrack music by Per Gessle.

So is Per making black metal music together with Anders, Clarence and Chris? Or are they all there in Nashville for country music only? Haha. This guy is certainly not running out of projects. Good for us!

 

PerAndersClarence_US
Picture taken from Roxette’s Facebook page

Update on 2nd November 2016: Helena Josefsson joined the gang in Nashville for 3 days & they are recording together with Jessica Sweetman (British singer / songwriter). Jessica says: “Yesterday [1st November] I was recording in the Blackbird Studios in Nashville with Per Gessle from Roxette. I am so happy that I am going to be featured on a song of his that he is releasing next year. Per and his team are such wonderful souls and incredibly talented musicians. I feel blessed I have had this opportunity of collaborating with them on this project.”

Update on 5th November 2016: Drummer Elizabeth Goodfellow joined Per Gessle & Co in Nashville. Elizabeth also worked together with Helena Josefsson and Christoffer Lundquist at AGM a month ago. Elizabeth says: “Just wrapped up tracking drums for Per Gessle! It’s an honor to play for a songwriter I listened to on the radio since before I can remember. So grateful to keep growing and learning. Thank you!”

 

Roxette Diaries at the Berlinale

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As we posted about it some days ago, LevelK, a sales company handling international sales and distribution and managing the distribution rights for quality films and TV productions worldwide started to deal with the Roxette Diaries. They bring the documentary as part of their Berlin International Film Festival line-up.

They describe the docu as:

The extraordinary pop documentary ROXETTE DIARIES that through self shot video material presents an intimate portrait and an unique insight into the world of one of the 80’s and 90’s biggest pop bands.

Roxette Diaries is in clear focus. Roxette appears on the cover of LevelK’s festival magazine (click HERE to download) in which you can find 2 pages about the docu, including Rox pics from the past.

Nice promo for this long-awaited film, which is set to be released on 7th March. Now it’s out really soon.

 

rox_diaries_levelk_1_rs  rox_diaries_levelk_2_rs

Thanx for finding the magazine, Roxette Cafe.

 

Roxette Diaries premiere in August!

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As we already wrote about it earlier, a Roxette movie is coming. According to Hallandsposten (1; 2), the Roxette Diaries behind-the-scenes documentary directed by Jonas Åkerlund will premiere in August at the Way Out West Festival. The festival is between 13th and 15th August 2015 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

As you know, Jonas got exclusive access to a huge amount of private videos filmed backstage during Roxette’s world tours, in studios, during PR tours and at other places. He received the videos in April 2014 and now he created a story about Roxette. The first updates were about tapes from 1988-2001, but later Per said what you’ll see in the movie is from 1986-1995. Now Hallandsposten mentions 1988-2001 again, but he used our article as reference, so it’s probably 1986-1995 in the end. Let’s see what happens.

Watch the fantastic trailer on Mr. Åkerlund‘s website HERE!

Hopefully, the movie will be available soon to a wider audience, too.

roxette_diaries_premiere

P.S.: Thanx for reading us, Hallandsposten. 😉

Roxette Diaries – a movie coming soon!

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You might remember that a bit more than a year ago, April 2014 Per posted updates (1; 2) about a cooperation with Jonas Åkerlund involving old video tapes related to Roxette. This was what he wrote back then:

MONDAY UPDATE w/ EXCITING NEWS: Going through loads of old Hi-8 and DV videotapes (mainly shot by Åsa) from 1988-2001 with Jonas Åkerlund and his gang.
Backstage, in the studio, video shootings, photo shoots – you name it. Have an idea to make a proper film out of it. What do you think? Cool or what? /P.

It seems the project is now very close to take form of a movie. Cool or what?

A trailer has been shared by the movie’s editor, Emma Backman. (Update: the trailer has been set (back?) to private. Probably, it was too early to publish it.) The film is directed by the most awesome Jonas Åkerlund and this fact itself guarantees a most amazing result. But that you’ll see already from the trailer.

The film will include tons of forgotten home videos and real behind the scenes of video clip shootings, photo and studio sessions, interviews, concerts, etc. More than you could ever think about! As Per says, all videos are from the years 1986-1995, so the quality of them is not compatible with the 21st century. But who cares, really? It’s so fantastic to have that many funny and magical moments documented in the past and now we will have access to them. Speechless is the word!

This is what Per says about the project:

Everything (and more) happened to Roxette between 1986 and 1995. This was the era where a videocamera wasn’t something you saw every day. The technical quality you would get was so-so but today I’m really happy we covered hundreds of hours of film from these magic years.

The ambition was to shoot everything. Studio-sessions, back-stage-parties, rehearsals. My wife, Åsa, was the commander-in-chief when it came to capture promo- and TV-shows as well as the extensive touring all over the world.

All in all I gave about 180 Hi-8/VHS-tapes to director Jonas Åkerlund and asked him if he and his team could do something special with it. Maybe create a movie that captured the spirit of Roxette in the early days as well as being honest, silly and fun to watch. Hey, I think they succeeded. Enjoy the Roxette Diaries.

Huge thanks to Åsa for filming so much over the years and that she still hasn’t got tired of it, using the camera for shooting more and more magic! We highly appreciate it!

As you can see, Jonas got appr. 180 tapes, a huge amount of material to go through. I’m sure there would have been many volunteers to help Mr. Åkerlund. The first updates were about tapes from 1988-2001, but now Per says what you’ll see in the movie is from 1986-1995. Does it mean it’s just a first part and later on there will be a vol. 2 with 1996-2001 videos? Then a 3rd part? Who’s in for a neverending movie?

Release date is unknown yet, but the film is coming soon! Whose soon? Hopefully, not Per’s. 😉

Roxette_Diaries_trailer_stills_rs

Stills are from the trailer. (Update: the trailer is set to private now, probably, because it was too early to publish it. Business as usual. 😉 )

Thanx to Roxette Diaries for googling “Roxette Diaries” and finding the trailer!

Update: So it’s Per’s soon. 🙂

ROXETTE DIARIES. Yep, it’s done. Waiting for subtitles. Release date? Soon! Cheers, P.

 

Per’s He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother video is out!

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Per Gessle mentioned it several times that a video has been done for his cover version of The Hollies’ He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother, which was released on Per’s Small Apartments soundtrack album. We had to wait approximately the same amount of time for this video as for Jonas Åkerlund’s movie. But finally, it’s out!

The video is not connected to the movie in any way, so fortunately, you won’t see Matt Lucas in his undies, but 2 very cute boys. The storyline is lovely and really beautifully done. You’ll see that Jens Jansson, the director of the video, is not only a very talented drummer, but also good at doing such videos. However, I must add one thing. I was very much looking forward to Per appearing in the video, but for the first watch I felt like the way he is in it, its style somehow doesn’t fit the whole story. Then watched it again & again and if we look at him as a narrator, he does fit in. So all in all, it’s a nice one.

PG_HAHHMB_01  PG_HAHHMB_02

The parts with Per are shot at the same place where the pic for the album booklet and CD cover was taken of Per, Clarence and Chris. It’s from 2012.

The song is still a killer one! Per’s best cover of all times, I would say. We’re so lucky that the usage rights for the original song were too expensive.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma8HZb5IXTQ

 

Per thanked the fans on Twitter for waiting so long for the video:

Finally, the video is out. Thanx for waiting a year or so… /P.