Marie Fredriksson

Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle in the John Holm documentary

by

When I saw there is a documentary about John Holm, I wanted to watch it right away. Det finns så många vägar – en film om John Holm was recorded between 1980 and 2017. I was interested in it to get to know more about the artist who was a great inspiration to both Marie and Per.

I expected Mr. G to appear in the docu, but never thought Marie would be there talking too. Oh my God! 1:24 into the program and the first artist who is talking about John Holm is Marie Fredriksson. My heart skipped a beat. So amazing to see her! She tells John meant so much to her and to so many people in Sweden. Marie says he was kind of divine. Right after Ms. Effe, Per tells John wrote terribly good songs and he thinks there is no one else in Sweden who wrote so many good songs for one album as John for Sordin.

At 16:20 Per tells in a 1999 SVT archive report that John’s first 2 albums are the best 2 Swedish albums of all time. They meant a lot to Per. Those and Lundell’s early albums made him start writing songs.

At 44:38 you can hear Marie singing backing vocals for John on Verklighetens afton (1988). She says John Holm was an icon for her and she always loved his lyrics. Then meeting him in real life and singing with him was enormously awesome.

At 1:04:42 you can see Per attending his first ever John Holm gig in 2016. And we all know the story didn’t end there. Per and John recorded a duet, Det är vi tillsammans in 2017 for Per’s En vacker dag album.

In the documentary there are other artists, old friends, John’s son, journalists and producers, as well as John Holm himself talking. It’s a docu that is worth watching not only for his fans. A piece of music history about one of Sweden’s biggest artists, his ups and downs, his life, his music.

At the end there is written: In memory of Marie Fredriksson and Arne Arvidsson. So nice, yet so heartbreaking.

 

Stills are from the documentary. Unfortunately, it can only be watched in Sweden.

Marie Fredriksson tribute on Nordic Rox #4

by

A couple of days ago there was the final episode of the Marie tribute program on Nordic Rox, Sirius XM.

This time Per Gessle and Sven Lindström were back with 2 more classic tracks and Per commented on those songs. Until Mr. G joined Sven, Mr. Lindström played a Roxette beauty, A Thing About You from 2002.

The first song Per picked is from Roxette’s biggest selling album, Joyride. He chose Things Will Never Be The Same. Mr. G says it’s one of the fan favourites, it has always been very popular among the fans. Per always loved this track. It’s got that Roxette gimmick in there: Per is singing a bit and Marie is singing 80 percent of the song. It just made it sort of special and sounded like no one else. Like in Dressed For Success or Dangerous, it’s that little trick they used. TWNBTS has a Spanish guitar intro and outro. It sounded different. It has a beautiful melody and of course, amazing vocals by Marie. Sven asks Per if he remembers any special tricks in the songwriting regarding this song. Mr. G says if there are 2 singers, you can use the strengths or hide the weaknesses. They laugh. Per tells he basically wrote most of the songs for Marie’s voice, but then sometimes in the lyrics you can ask a question like ”Whatcha gonna tell your brother?” in DFS and she can answer. You can just use that you are two people, a female and a male having a dialogue in the lyric. It’s an old country trick. It makes sense in TWNBTS lyrically and it’s just a beautiful song. Sven asks Per if he remembers how he presented TWNBTS for Marie, if he played it live on an acoustic guitar or if he made a demo and sent it to her. Per thinks he made a demo in the studio. For Joyride he started making pretty advanced demos. Lots of the arrangements on that album were already there when he made the demos. Joyride for instance sounds almost the same as his demo. Songs which are sung by Marie become totally different when you record them, because you change the keys and as soon as you change the key, it sounds different. In TWNBTS they brought in the Spanish guitar part and producer Clarence Öfwerman’s trademark synthesizers are all over the place. A little drum machine is also in there. Per thinks it’s a cool track, a typical production for its era. You can hear its early ’90s sound to it. It’s very Roxette for Per. Sven says the title is perfect for the feelings we all had when Marie left us before Christmas last year.

After the song, Sven tells they are sitting in the ABBA room at Live Nation in Stockholm. Per asks him if he feels like a dancing queen. Sven replies ”not exactly” and asks Per if he feels like it. Per answers ”always”. Haha. He mentions he is looking at an old ABBA picture in the room, an old poster from the Voulez-Vous Tour when they played Gothenburg in the ’70s.

Queen Of Rain is the other song the guys are discussing. It was a single from Tourism in 1992. It was actually recorded for the Joyride album in 1990 and it was supposed to be the final track on Joyride, but then Per wrote a song called Perfect Day, which included an accordion. They thought it was fitting because it had a different sound to it, totally different to the other tracks on the album. So they used Perfect Day as the last song instead. They had a backing vocalist called Vicki Benckert who was also a great accordion player. Tourism was the tour album from the Joyride tour. Per says the album was recorded basically on the road. They booked studios in São Paulo, Copenhagen, Los Angeles. Some songs they recorded in hotel rooms. It was like a tour album, including a couple of live tracks as well, but most of it was studio recordings. The live recording of Joyride seamlessly goes over to QOR on the album. They did a video to QOR in Northern France. Per thinks it’s a beautiful song and it fits Marie perfectly. She is just a great singer and QOR sums up Marie really well for Per. Sven says they talked about her rock ’n’ roll side, but she also had this melancholy in her personality. Mr. G says Marie loved to sing songs like Queen Of Rain, Crash! Boom! Bang! or Spending My Time, telling stories. You can hear it in her voice that she becomes the song and that’s how she communicated so well to everyone who listened to her. Per thinks it’s one of his best songs if he may say so himself, but it’s Marie’s voice that brings it home. Amazing!

Waving goodbye in Kalmar 2015. Pic by Patrícia Peres

 

Thanx for the technical support to János Tóth.

13-year-old Gry Forssell interviews Marie Fredriksson in 1987

by

Gry Forssell was the speaker on Swedish Radio’s Sommar & Vinter i P1 program today. Gry is one of Sweden’s most popular program leaders. Among many other things, she talked about her great experience related to Marie Fredriksson. LISTEN to the program from 34:28 to 36:40 to hear it.

Marie was on a Club tour when her Efter stormen album came out in 1987 and she also visited Luleå where Gry grew up. There was a program called Himalaya on Swedish Radio. Gry’s mom worked there and her friend was the producer. Gry was there in the radio a lot of times with her mom. She was 13 when one day the producer asked if she wanted to interview Marie Fredriksson. Of course she wanted!

After Gry welcomed Marie to Luleå and she thanked for it and said it was nice to be there, Gry asked her how old she was when she decided to be a singer, an artist. Marie replied:

I was 6 years old. I already knew it at 6 or 7 that I wanted to be a singer or an actress. And I’ve been fighting for that since then actually.

Gry also asked how one can become a famous singer and whether it has to do anything with luck or you also have to be good. Marie told:

Of course you have to be able to sing, but you also have to have self confidence. The best you can do is that you sing as much as possible. Sing in front of your friends. When I was a child, I was singing a lot in front of the mirror. I was miming and acted as if I was on a popular TV program or in a big movie. I was fantasizing a lot about that.

Gry smiles and says Marie replied so patiently to her silly questions. Lovely!

Still is from Jacobs stege 1987.

Marie Fredriksson tribute on Nordic Rox #3

by

A few days ago there was the 3rd episode of the Marie tribute program on Nordic Rox, Sirius XM.

Before the guys are talking about 2 classic Roxette hits, Sven plays the first track from Bag of Trix, the upcoming archives collection of unreleased recordings by Roxette. The acoustic cover of The Beatles classic, Help! was recorded at Abbey Road Studios in 1995.

Then comes a discussion about a song from 1988, from Look Sharp! album. Per says he picked this song, because for him it sums up where Roxette was standing at the time productionwise. This is a very sparse production. Clarence is just an amazing producer and he relied on and had so much belief in Marie’s vocals, so he just scrapped everything and let Marie sing. This has got a great groove to it, a great guitar hook by Jonas Isacsson and it’s just about Marie’s voice. The demo Per is singing sounds crap, but when Marie delivers the song is just amazing. It’s Sleeping Single.

Per says when they were recording Look Sharp! they felt they were doing something very different. They had great songs and every song they recorded sounded better than the other one. Paint, Dangerous, Dressed For Success, The Look, Listen To Your Heart. Every song was so cool. They went to England to record 3 songs with a different producer which they didn’t like that much, but they wound up on the album anyway. Mr. G is very grateful to Clarence, because he trusted Per’s songs and he really trusted Marie’s voice, so he just focused on making the songs as good as possible.

Sven asks Per if Sleeping Single was an obvious single candidate. Mr. G says all songs on Look Sharp! were created to become singles. Eventually, they released 4 songs off the album and Sleeping Single wasn’t one of them, because they had The Look, Dressed For Success, Dangerous and Listen To Your Heart. Sven laughs and says ”heavy competition”. Paint was a huge song in South America. It wasn’t released as a single, but got heavy airplay as an album track, so it became a big song for Roxette. Dance Away was a big song for them live. Per could have also picked that one for the program, because Marie sings so beautifully in that one as well.

In Sleeping Single they used saxophone which they never did before. It sounded really cool. Saxophone and shoulder pads. Where did the 80’s go…, Per asks.

The third song they play is from Room Service. Per thinks it’s a good album, different from the other albums. It was the last album they recorded before Marie got ill, so it also has a very special place in Mr. G’s heart. It’s got a great sound, it’s not a heavy album at all. There aren’t big ballads on it. When they do the ballads they try to keep the production low. The song Per picked is My World, My Love, My Life, the closing track of the album. Mr. G loves the guitar riff that Jonas is playing and of course loves Marie’s voice on this one. It’s a typical Roxette song, but at the same time it’s not. He thought it was maybe the best song on the album when they recorded it. It’s a great track and Marie is just shining on this one.

Sven thinks Marie sings equally as good on Room Service as she did on the bigger Roxette albums 10 years earlier. Per agrees and says if you listen to the live recordings from the Room Service tour, you can hear she was singing so well. Maybe also because of her experience as they were in their 12th year of being international artists, so of course they learned a trick or two.

Stills are from this video.

Thanx for the technical support to János Tóth.

Interview with Helena von Zweigbergk – “I’ve never met anyone who has had the strength of Marie Fredriksson”

by

24.hu in Hungary did an e-mail interview with Helena von Zweigbergk in connection with the Hungarian edition of Marie Fredriksson’s biography (Listen To My Heart – Hallgass a szívemre) and published it yesterday, on Marie’s birthday.

The interview has a nice intro. Referring to the book, it says that the positive attitude to life and the spiritual power shines through the biography. By reading it, we can understand how Marie was able to defeat cancer and win almost two decades so she could see her children grow up and even be on stage again, even though years ago it seemed utterly unlikely.

Journalist Bence Inkei’s first question to Helena is if she stayed in touch with Maire after finishing the book in 2015. Helena says she visited Marie many times in her home. They had coffee and ate her favourite cinnamon rolls while they were talking and laughing a lot. And of course they were crying too. They became very good friends while they were working on the book. Afterwards, unfortunately, they couldn’t meet as often as they would have liked, as Helena had to work and Marie lived far away from her. But they stayed in a very good relationship.

According to 24.hu, the end of the book seemed pretty optimistic: it was spring, Marie was preparing for Roxette’s summer tour, but from the epilogue it turns out that the band stopped touring not long after, because of Marie’s condition. They ask Helena if it was unexpected that Marie’s condition got worse. Helena doesn’t really know. She says that for Marie, touring was a huge effort already back then. All the stress, the tight tour schedule, the travelling would have worn out anyone who was in a condition like her. She had constant problems with her legs, she could only perform while sitting. Everyone knew how hard it was. She loved her fans and being on stage, but it was too exhausting for her by then.

24.hu is curious about how Marie spent her life after publishing the book. Helena tells she spent it at rest. She loved being at home and living by her own rules. So whenever she could, she was at home. She loved her garden and spending her time with her family. She could hardly walk and that caused her a lot of sadness. On the other hand, it was a relief that she was no longer under any pressure.

To the question if Marie had any unfinished plans Helena replies that Marie was a very creative person who could express herself in many ways. She talked about writing a book of poems and writing even more new music. She also wanted to write something about her mother’s life, to express her love for her and tell her story.

24.hu asks if Marie’s traumatic childhood due to the tragedy that happened in her family helped her to fight against cancer for so long. According to Helena it probably helped. She has never met anyone who has had the strength of Marie. She seemed very shy in a way, but she was as stubborn as a mule and had the power of a tiger. Neither as a child nor as an adult was she pampered. She always knew she had to fight for what she wanted to achieve.

Based on the book, it’s not entirely clear for 24.hu whether Per and Marie were real friends or just co-workers. Helena thinks they were good friends. They made this incredible journey together and had known each other for a very long time. As Helena saw it, their relationship was pretty close, but it’s also true that outside of working together, they didn’t meet too often. They lived far away from each other and Marie had to live a very calm life to be able to go on tour and get enough rest.

One of the most shocking part of the book for Bence Inkei was that a tabloid provided false info about Marie’s condition, but they could get out of it without any consequences. Helena confirms that there were no legal consequences. Marie might have been able to get them punished, but then they would have had to go through that hell again and that would have occupied their thoughts. That would have placed a heavy burden on the family when they were going through a difficult period anyway.

24.hu asks if it is a coincidence that ABBA appears only once in the book. If there was any rivalry between Roxette and them. Helena doesn’t think so. They were popular in different times and in different styles. They respected each other.

According to 24.hu, Roxette still has a very strong and active fan base in Hungary. They ask Helena where she sees the band has the most fans. Helena many times wondered how much love Marie and Roxette had received from all over the world. For example, when Helena and Marie had a book signing session together in a store in Stockholm, a South African family was the first in line. They travelled just to meet Marie and ask her for an autograph. Helena knows Roxette has a big fan base in South America and of course in Hungary too.

Marie described herself as a kind of “rock and roll personality”. As a last question, 24.hu asks how Helena saw it. Helena tells Marie loved this attitude. She didn’t want to look kind and harmless. She loved wearing black leather stuff and partied a lot before her illness in real rock and roll style. There was some kind of raw power in her voice through which she could express her true self.

You can order the Hungarian edition of Marie’s biography HERE.