Nordic Rox

Per Gessle on Nordic Rox – January 2022

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Episode No. 501 of Nordic Rox on Sirius XM was broadcast on 2nd January. Per Gessle and Sven Lindström are still in party mood after celebrating the 500th episode. They go through the songs they played the most during the past 15 years.

The guys start talking about The Cardigans and Sven is curious if Per remembers anything about them when they popped up in Mr. G’s life in the 90’s. PG says they did some great songs, Peter Svensson was the main writer and Nina Persson was the lead singer. It was a breath of fresh air when they came out. Their songs stood the test of time pretty well when you hear them on the radio, Per thinks. They are obviously one of the guys’ favourites on Nordic Rox. Sven and PG play My Favourite Game from their fourth album, Gran Turismo.

Next song is The Band from the debut album of Mando Diao. Bring ‘Em In was released in 2002. When singer Björn Dixgård met Gustaf Norén, the other singer in the band on a party, they ended up sitting there all night, discussing The Beatles. That’s a good start. Per tells Sven „it could have been us!” The guys are laughing.

Sven asks Per what he remembers most from the 90’s music scene. Mr. G says the early 90’s for them was very hectic with Roxette. They toured a lot, the MTV thing was very big, then the grunge thing came, the British stuff with Oasis and Blur happened in the mid 90’s. Productionwise and musically things changed, you had influences by bands like e.g. Massive Attack. Per likes the 80’s and 90’s sound a lot, probably because he was working so much in those decades and so he was very much part of it. Today when he works in the studio programming stuff, he tends to go back to the 90’s a bit and listen to what he was doing. He likes those drum loops from the 90’s. Sven thinks there is a great variety of hits from the 90’s which is quite fun and interesting. It’s like the second wave of the 60’s in different clothes. Per thinks it’s also a bit more melody-driven than pop music is today. Back then it was more pop, nowadays it’s more hip hop. Per says Sven and he are getting older, their roots are in the 60’s and 70’s, so of course the 90’s are much closer to where they come from.

Sven adds there was also a creative wave of pop stuff in Sweden inspired by Roxette’s success. They kicked the door open in 1989 showing – as the second band after ABBA – that it was possible to break through internationally. Sven thinks that inspired a lot of Swedish bands. PG says he is sure it did, because it’s a small country and if someone makes it as big as they did, all the other artists think „if they can do it, we certainly can do it too”. The competition is always there. PG thinks that’s a good thing. If you inspire your friends and fellow musicians and artists in your own native country, it’s just amazing. The 90’s were big, so many Swedish acts happened, e.g. Ace of Base, Robyn, Popsicle. Here Not Forever is played by Popsicle. Next one is the beautiful Julian by Say Lou Lou.

Sven tells he is sitting there with Per while he is taking a rare break in songwriting. He asks PG when he started writing songs. Per says he started writing lyrics when he was 13-14 years old. He was really into lyrics for some reason. He was pretty influenced by the singer-songwriter movement in the 70’s. Then the new wave happened which inspired people like PG who couldn’t play anything to be able to form a band. Then he started writing pop tunes. That’s his style and that’s where he comes from. He comes from the melodic songwriting tradition, based in the 60’s. Sven is curious if Per has any idea of how many songs he has written. Per doesn’t know. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. Sven mentions that a couple of years ago PG released a 10-CD box of demos. The Per Gessle Archives Vol. 1, Per laughs. He says there are so many songs. He bought the Pete Townshend demo albums and from a fan point of view he thought that it was really interesting to hear what it sounds like when a songwriter starts off, the ideas before the band or an additional singer comes in. So he just felt like there are lots of people interested in his work or interested in how the songs started out. Normally, he tends to make demos of every song he makes. Not all the time though. Sometimes it’s just fascinating to go into the studio with a bunch of people without demos, just present them verbally and see what happens. The thing with the demo can be that if it turns out really cool, it’s sort of blocking you in the next phase. Because you always go back to the demo and prefer it sometimes, which is a nightmare if you collaborate with other people. So there are pros and cons. Generally speaking, Per thinks if you are interested in an artist, it’s great to hear the demos as well. The raw idea, where the song comes from. And sometimes you have a different intro, different tempo, different key, so… maybe it’s just Per, but he is a little bit of a nerd, he says. The guys are laughing.

Sven says the 10-CD box called volume 1 is signaling that there is plenty more fish in that sea. PG says he has so many songs and demos on cassettes and DAT tapes, as well as on mini discs, so he stumble into new demos all the time. Some of them he forgot about, some were recorded by Roxette or other people. There might be another box. Sven says they will dig deep into it when it arrives. Per says „good luck”.

Next song is She Owns The Streets by The Raveonettes from Denmark. It’s one of Per’s favourite tracks from the band. Another song they play is Do You Know by The Lollipops, also from Denmark from 1964. This is probably the first ever Danish music Per ever heard in his life, he remembers this song from when he was a kid. PG says there was a guy, Svend Asmussen (Danish jazz violinist) who was on Swedish TV all the time, but he wasn’t in the pop field. Sven thinks Do You Know was a knockout. It was on the Swedish Top10 chart, Tio i topp. The guitarist and bassist in the band were brothers, Sven tells. They were 13-14 years old which adds a great vibe to it. Per says Denmark rulez.

The guys go back to Sweden and play a slightly obscure artist, Paola. Above The Candy Store is next. All Per knows about Paola is that she was produced by Klas Åhlund from the band Teddybears. Per thinks they were a couple in the early years of this century. Klas wrote and produced the song Hang With Me which Robyn made into a massive hit. Mr. G thinks that’s a good song.

After that comes Bandstarter by Brainpool. PG says he loves Brainpool. His publishing company signed them when they were really young and worked with them for 2-3 albums. Bandstarter is from the second album and it was their big breakthrough song in Sweden. Sven says it was massive in the mid 90’s. They were supporting Roxette on the European leg of their Crash! Boom! Bang! world tour in 1995. It’s a great band and Per still works with the bass player, Christoffer Lundquist, who is one of Per’s key players in his band producing and playing everything with strings on. Sven tells Chris is a multitalented genius. Per says he wouldn’t call Christoffer a genius, but he is good. Sven says Chris doesn’t listen to this show so he won’t go to Per’s head. The guys are laughing. PG goes on with telling the lead singer of Brainpool, Janne left the band, but they continued as a trio and every third year they are doing gigs. They just pop up making a gig somewhere or a rock opera.

The next song is Istället för musik förvirring (Instead of music confusion) by the magnificent Swedish band Bob Hund (Bob the dog, if you translate it). Per says you have to practice your Swedish once in a while and the track has a great title and it’s a great song. Before they play it, Sven says „fasten your seatbelts”. The band didn’t sound like anything else when they came out in the 90’s. Per says it’s vacuum cleaner music. He thinks you have to see them live to understand what they are about. The lyrics are really cool, Thomas Öberg is just a great lyric writer. He makes you think a lot when you listen to his stuff.

While sitting in sunny Stockholm, the guys pick Manchild by Neneh Cherry. PG thinks it’s such a great song and Neneh Cherry is such an amazing singer. She is not really working too much these days and Per misses her a lot. The song is from the album Raw Like Sushi. Per says now it sounds old-fashioned, but it was a long time ago and he thinks it’s really cool.

The guys are wrapping up the show, ending it with a bang in the shape of Roxette. Sven picks Opportunity Nox. He is curious what Per remembers about writing that one. PG says they were supposed to release two compilation albums, one with uptempo songs and one with ballads, so they needed a couple of new tracks. He wrote 8-10 new songs and picked two uptempo and two ballads. Opportunity Nox was one of them. They worked with slightly new people in the production team. Per plays the lead guitar solo which is why it sounds like it does. The guys are lauging and say they like it. Per says it’s got a great energy to it. This side of Roxette is something that he cherishes, the power pop side of Roxette. Sven is curious if the remaining songs that didn’t make the compilation albums will pop up on The Per Gessle Archives Vol. 14. The guys are laughing and Per says if he can find them, then probably yes. That’s the only way to do it, to get one great song you have to write 3 or 4, Mr. G adds.

After Roxette is speeding up the pop tempo, the guys say goodbye and Anita Lindblom’s Cigarettes closes the episode.

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

Thanks for the technical support to János Tóth!

Per Gessle on Nordic Rox – Room Service 20

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You might remember that in the June episode of Nordic Rox on Sirius XM, at the end of the Joyride 30th anniversary chat, Per Gessle and Sven Lindström mentioned they would celebrate the 20th anniversary of Room Service in the next episode. That episode was broadcast in September, but it took a bit more time than usually to get access to that part. Thanx a lot for Sven’s support!

Just like the Joyride 30 episode, Room Service 20 was also recorded in Per’s kitchen in Stockholm, so the guys probably had a full day anniversary recording. Per says it’s a great little kitchen, they have a lot of meetings there and exquisite lunches. Sven introduces the show: „another day, another anniversary, they say in the pop business”. Per laughs and says „that’s what happens when you’re getting old”.

Per tells Room Service is one of his favourite Roxette albums, maybe because they recorded it in the old ABBA studio in Stockholm. It’s closed now, most studios are closed these days. Mr. G says they worked with a new engineer, Ronny Lahti, a guy that Per is still working with. It was a fun album to make.

The guys play an ABBA song, Voulez-Vous that was recorded in Florida instead of that Stockholm studio. Then comes Broder Daniel’s Army Of Dreamers. The next one is Titiyo’s probably biggest hit, Come Along from 2001 to check the atmosphere of the year when Room Service was released.

Sven asks Per how he remembers 2001 and if there is anything that sticks out. Mr. G says he was touring, they did a big European tour with Roxette. Apart from that, he probably had a big hangover. The guys are laughing and Per asks Sven how he remembers that year. Sven says he wasn’t touring, but he was probably stuck with a hangover.

Here they play I’m Alive by The Hives, one of Per’s favourite bands. Then comes Get Some by Lykke Li and Hopeless Case Of A Kid In Denial by The Hellacopters. Regarding The Hives, Sven tells it was their first single in 7 years when they released it two years ago. Mr. G says they play fast, but are pretty slow in releasing records. Sven says they just don’t do it like Per, working 24/7. PG says he doesn’t do that either, it just looks like that. The guys are laughing. Per says he just keeps himself busy, he likes it like that, he likes to work a lot. If you have a project going on or a record or a career for that matter, you have to work, Per adds. You have to maximize everything and at the same time you have to challenge yourself and try to expand your possibilities and explore new things all the time. When it comes to writing or when it comes to producing and performing as well. It’s hard to do. Sven asks Per if he is the kind of person who can work endlessly as long as he doesn’t feel like it’s work, when he is driving it himself. Mr. G says he is a very lucky guy, because he winded up with a profession that doesn’t feel like a profession. When he looks back on his life, it has always been about pop and rock music. Eventually, he could make a living out of playing pop music and writing music and it’s just a blessing. So for him it doesn’t feel like he is going to work. Of course there are days, especially in the old days when you did endless months of promoting, then it becomes a work. You deal with journalits, you are doing photo sessions and in-stores and it becomes tedious after a while. But at the end of the day it’s a tiny price to pay for being able to do what you love the most, which is being part of this crazy industry.

Sven says one piece of that crazy industry is The Centre Of The Heart (Is A Suburb To The Brain). Per tells he wrote this track for Have A Nice Day. They even recorded it for HAND, but there was something missing, it just didn’t feel right. They just left it, forgot about it and later when Per was in France he came to think of it. He heard some other music which reminded him of TCOTH, but it was much faster. He called Clarence and told him they should go back to TCOTH and speed it up, to make it a little bit more uptempo, because it had all the great ingredients, it’s catchy and has a great chorus. It became the first single of Room Service. Sven tells Roxette pemiered it on Melodifestivalen (ESC) on Swedish TV. Sven asks Per about the lyric, mainly this part „a suburb to the brain”. Per laughs and says „it just makes sense, doesn’t it?” The guys are playing the song.

Sven asks Per about the international release of Room Service. Mr. G says of course it has tough competition when you compare it to Look Sharp! or Joyride, but it went very well and they had lots of success with the three singles from it.

Regarding the tour PG says they hadn’t been touring since 1995, so in 2001 they had a slightly different band and they started working with Jonas Åkerlund who designed the stage set with lots of clips. It was different vs. what they had done before.

Sven tells the album sleeve was shot at The Madonna Inn, San Luis Obispo, California. Per tells they went there for almost a week to shoot the TCOTH video. Jonas is not only an awesome music video director, but an amazing photographer as well. They spent a whole day taking pictures in different locations of that amazing place. Madonna Inn is just the craziest place Per has ever seen. Mr. G tells it was fun and the video became great as well.

The next track is My World, MY Love, My Life which is one of Per’s favourites and Sven asks PG what makes it so special for him. Per tells some songs just turn out great soundwise. He has always loved the sound of this track. He loves Jonas Isacsson’s guitar playing, the melody, Marie’s voice and the key she sings in. It sums up that era of Roxette very well for Per. It’s the closing track of the album.

After the song is played, Per says it’s 20 years… Sven asks „it’s 20 years of…?” PG replies „wisdom!” Sven is curious if Per got wiser. Mr. G laughs and replies „of course, by the minute!” Sven says Room Service is an interesting album in many ways. He adds it could have been the last Roxette album, because in 2002 Marie got ill and the future for Roxette looked really dark. Per says in a way it became the last album, the last of that main, classic Roxette era. Marie’s illness affected her so much. When she came back in 2010 it was a different thing. Sven tells that against all odds Marie recovered from this really severe illness and made a comeback with Roxette. They enjoyed many years of incredible touring then. Per says Marie was an amazon for sure. She came back in 2009. They did 55 shows with Night of the Proms, they headlined that in Europe and it was a great start for Marie to come back, because even though they were the headliners, they only did 5 songs. She wanted to see how it felt and it felt actually good for her. She got better and better and she loved being on stage. She felt at home there. After that they decided to go back on the road as Roxette, so they continued working for another 5.5 years. Those 20 years since Room Service contained some amazing drama.

Sven asks Per what his thoughts were back then, in 2000-2001, where Roxette was going. Per always says they had amazing success all over the world during those 8 years between 1988 and 1995, they worked constantly and did all those world tours. In 1995 Marie wanted to have a second child, she wanted to take a break for a couple of years, so Per did a lot of other things with Gyllene Tider and solo stuff, as well as doing compilation albums with Roxette. This meant he had to write three or four songs for Roxette. Then they did a comback in 1999 with Have A Nice Day, but decided not to tour, mainly because Per had become a father and Marie wanted to stay home with her kids. They waited for another album, Room Service to tour with. The journey went on. Who knows what would have happened if Marie wouldn’t have become ill in 2002.

The guys play one of the main ballads of the album, Milk And Toast And Honey. Sven asks Per if he remembers writing this one. Mr. G tells he had this song in his head for many months before he even bothered to write it down. It’s a natural song for him, it came natural with its baselines and everything. Per heard the melodies, all the chords and modulations, he was just waiting for a good idea for a lyric. He got the title and created something around the title. It went very smooth. Mr. G loves this song and the video a lot. The clip was shot in the Stockholm archipelago and Marie is just amazing. She is singing so well and makes it a really beautiful song.

Towards the end of the episode Sven says they had Joyride 30th anniversary, Room Service 20th anniversary, but they all pale in comparison to Gyllene Tider celebrating the 40th anniversary of Moderna Tider. Per tells it was released in 1981 and it became a megahit in Sweden. Mr. G says it was crazy days, Sven adds GT were insane teenage idols, having Beatlesque popularity. PG adds they toured a whole year in Scandinavia and especially the summer was really amazing. Sven tells GT was heavily influenced by the new wave, punk and power pop era, as well as the 60’s. The guys play (Kom så ska vi) Leva livet from the album. Per is thinking how to translate it into English. Sven says „Come on and let’s live life!”, Per says „C’mon, join the joyride!” Haha. PG tells it was a big song for them. He wrote it on his 21st birthday. Per: „Why didn’t I have a party? Maybe I had a party afterwards.” Sven: „You were working!” Per: „Ah, I was working, of course, even in the 80’s.” They are laughing.

Before saying thanks to the listeners, Sven tells it was a teaser for an upcoming show featuring the power pop sounds of Gyllene Tider.

The show ends with Anita Lindblom’s Cigarettes as usual.

 

Per Gessle on Nordic Rox – 500th episode

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Per Gessle and Sven Lindström celebrated the 500th episode of Nordic Rox on Sirius XM last Sunday, 5th December.

The guys are chatting in Stockholm, talking about the beginnings 15 years ago. Per tells it was before Sven’s time. He started doing the show with Viktor Petrovski after he got a request from Sirius XM to do a show where they would play Scandinavian and Nordic music. Mr. G found it a cool idea. He wouldn’t have been able to do it on his own, so he needed someone to collaborate with. Viktor, a Swedish music journalist came up. It was fun and then Sven came along. Sven inserts „to make things worse”. The guys are laughing. Mr. G tells Sven is also a music journalist and author and his knowledge about Scandinavian music is pretty big. „Together we were unbeatable”, Per says. Sven tells it was a fun story when Scott Greenstein at Sirius – who came up with the idea, because he loves Scandinavian music – persuaded PG. He really came off as a fan when he discussed his idea with Per. Mr. G tells the first time they met, Scott quoted one of Per’s Swedish songs in Swedish for him. PG says it was pretty impressive that he took it seriously and learned Swedish for that. Per feels very honoured to have been part of this during the past 15 years. It’s pretty crazy.

Mr. G tells 15 years in the music industry is a very long time. Lots of things happened music-wise, the style of pop and rock music has changed. Per adds they are both – Sven and he – 15 years older, but their hearts still beat for the old stuff, they still prefer the old production styles and the old sounds. Even though Per is listening to a lot of new music as well to see what’s going on. The problem is that you’ve heard so much music throughout your life that you always compare things. The knowledge you have is incredible, because you’re getting old. Haha. Per has been a music fan since he was 5 years old, Sven tells. PG adds he had an older borther, a young teenager in the mid 60’s who bought all the records of The Beatles, The Kinks, The Lovin’ Spoonful, The Byrds, so ever since he was very young, pop music has been his entire life. „My wife doesn’t like that, but that’s the truth”, Per says. Haha.

The guys dig deep into some Scandinavian classics and they kick off with one of their favourite bands’ song, Sister Surround by The Soundtrack of Our Lives from Gothenburg. Sven tells they had quite surrealistic album titles, e.g. Welcome to the Infant Freebase. Per thinks it’s a good title. Their second album’s title is Extended Revelation for the Psychic Weaklings of Western Civilization. „It’s no wonder they broke up”, Per laughs. Mr. G thinks they were an amazing band and it’s sad that they didn’t break through even bigger than they had. They had it all. A great front person, Ebbot Lundberg, the band was really cool with really good players and they also had great songs. They had success, but they didn’t become massive. For Per they are still one of the best bands that ever came out of Sweden.

The next track is Adiam Dymott’s Miss You. Then they play Hate To Say I Told You So by The Hives, another amazing band. They are the best when you see them live, PG thinks. HTSITYS, their breakthrough hit sounds a bit like MC5 on steroids to Mr. G. He loves it, it’s a great great track. Sven tells they also had some surrealistic titles, e.g. Some People Know All Too Well How Bad Liquorice, or Any Candy for That Matter, Can Taste When Having Laid Out in the Sun Too Long – And I Think I Just Ate Too Much. The guys are laughing. „Hard to beat!”, Per says.

The next one is Cardiac Arrest by Teddybears feat. Robyn. Per thinks it’s a great song, full of energy. Sven asks Per when he wrote a song about a deadly disease. Mr. G says it hasn’t happened yet. For PG the Teddybears is a band you should digest in small doses. They are a perfect singles band, he thinks. Sven says he can actually indulge in the Teddybears, he likes them a lot. They started out as punks and then they switched, but you can still hear this punkish, new wavish style in their DNA. Per loves all the synthesizer sounds they use, these toy or computer sounds. It’s fun, young and fresh. When they get a proper song made, it’s sensational. And Robyn is an amazing singer. On the Swedish edition of the song Teddybears are featuring Maipei, but Per prefers the Robyn version (released on the international edition of the album).

The guys go back to Gothenburg, the second biggest city in Sweden on the West Coast. Mr. G says ever since the 60’s they had lots of great music coming out of Gothenburg. Broder Daniel’s Work is what they play and Pale Honey’s Lonesome is next, also from Gothenburg.

After these two tracks, Sven asks Per what he is busy with right now. Mr. G tells he is happy that things have opened up a bit and you are allowed to perform again in these corona times, so he is on tour now. It’s an unplugged tour with 15 shows. It’s something he has never really done before, so he is stepping out of his comfort zone a bit, talking a lot between the songs, telling some anecdotes from e.g. Roxette’s history. Per tells he has a beach hotel on the Swedish West Coast. When the regulations were still on, you could only have a certain amount of people attending and he was to do 2 acoustic shows at the hotel. But it felt so cool that it became 10 in the end. After those 10 gigs he felt he should do a tour, because it was much fun. It’s so different from everything else he has done. He digged into his files and vaults from the past and played songs he hasn’t played before. Per tells when he started out at the age of 18, he was unemployed in the late 70’s and he got a government supported job, being a troubadour playing for elderly people in elderly homes for 6 months with another guy. That’s how he actually started out performing in front of people, playing Swedish folk music at elderly homes and sneaking in 1-2 of his own songs that he started writing those days. „I’ve come full circle now, I’m playing for elderly people again, because I’m old now”, Per says and the guys are laughing. „It’s good fun, it’s a sold-out tour, I’m really pleased, the response has been amazing, so I’m just having a blast doing this”, Per adds. He is just happy that things are opening up a bit and he can speak for every artist, musician and technician on the planet. „We’ve been missing our work so much!” Sven tells the audience has been missing it as well. He heard that the hard thing now is to book the venues. Per says as son as the regulations are opening up, everyone wants to tour, so it’s really hard to get the venues. People are really starved for music and entertainment and socializing, so it goes very well for everyone.

Next song is Jerk It Out by Caesars Palace, then Nicole Sabouné’s Unseen Footage From A Forthcoming Funeral is played.

Sven and Per then talk a bit about the Joyride 30th anniversary release, and Sven asks Per how it is to zoom back 30 years, checking all Mr. G’s home videos and stuff like that. Per says it’s crazy how time passes by. He is getting used to it, but this year also his Swedish band celebrates the 40th anniversary of their Moderna Tider album. It was a big album in Scandinavia. It feels like every year there is a new anniversary. „If we stick around long enough, it’s gonna be a 50th anniversary coming up”, Sven says. From a fan point of view, Per as a Tom Petty fan says, you’re really into the things that you haven’t heard before, so he thinks a lot of people appreciate these anniversary releases with outtakes, alternative versions or demos. Sven agrees and says he has just seen the Tom Petty movie about recording Wildflowers and it was really heartwarming to see, you really miss him.

Regarding the Metallica cover Per did for Nothing Else Matters he says The Black Album also has its 30th anniversary this year and he was invited to be part of that. It’s cool that all those big albums have big anniversaries.

Reeperbahn, a Swedish band with German name is next. Per thinks their best song is Inget, so they play it on Nordic Rox. Then it’s Atomic Swing’s turn with Soul Free.

The guys get back to the Metallica cover topic and Sven says it’s unexpected to hear a Roxette cover of a Metallica classic. This is the first time PG entered the metal world. Mr. G tells when he first got the invitation he felt like „hm, I don’t know what to do with this”, because he doesn’t know how to transform a heavy metal song into his world. Then he came to think about Nothing Else Matters which is such a great track and Per remembers when it came around in the early 90’s, Marie and Per always joked about that it could have been a great Roxette ballad. It’s got such a great melody and amazing lyrics. Mr. G felt like „shit, I should give it a go”. He did the cover with the old Roxette band. They tried to treat it as a Roxette ballad. Sven says: „with Marie Fredriksson having passed away, you had two singers taking her place”. Per says the two girls are very special in their own separate ways, but when you combine their voices, a third person comes out. Per tried to use that and it sounded really cool. He thinks they nailed the song pretty well, it sounds great to him. Mr. G is really honoured to be part of it. They play Nothing Else Matters by PG Roxette on Nordic Rox.

With this the guys are wrapping up the show and just like any other time, Anita Lindblom’s Cigarettes is closing the 500th episode too.

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

Thanks for the technical support to János Tóth!

Per Gessle on Nordic Rox – June 2021 – Joyride 30

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Per Gessle and Sven Lindström celebrated Joyride’s 30th anniversary in Per’s kitchen in Stockholm in the June episode of Nordic Rox on Sirius XM last night.

There are pictures of Per’s icons in the kitchen. Sven mentions there is a John Lennon poster behind him, Per adds there is a signed poster from Sir Paul McCartney which he got as a birthday present a couple of years ago. There is also a great Anton Corbijn photography of Pete Townshend sitting in a London cab. Sven tells John is above Paul and asks Per if it’s a sign for something. Mr. G tells it’s just because John was already hanging there and when he got Paul’s poster, he just put it under John’s.

Sven tells Per has been around for more than 40 years and kicked off at the age of 20 or so. He asks Mr. G if it means he is getting old. PG tells it means he is getting experienced. Sven tells anniversaries come closer and closer and Per’s reaction is that every time he realizes it, he thinks ”oh, we have to make an anniversary edition!” Now it’s 30 years since Roxette released their 3rd album, Joyride. It will get a 4-LP box set and a 3-CD set anniversary release in autumn. It will contain demos, outtakes and alternative versions as well.

The guys now zoom back to 1991, but besides Joyride, they also play other songs on the show.

The first one they play is Adiam Dymott’s Pizza. Her first, self-titled album in 2009 was produced by Thomas Rusiak from the Teddybears (Swedish band).

The next song is Santa Monica Blue Waves by Chris Linn. Per would say it’s a one hit wonder, but it’s not even a hit. It was a semi-hit when it came out in 1981. Per bought it on a 7-inch vinyl and still has it and likes it. It’s produced by Ulf Wahlberg, who used to produce and be part of the Secret Service (Swedish band). They had lots of hits, especially in Europe. According to Per, it sounds so 80’s and he loves that.

Unseen Footage from a Forthcoming Funeral by Nicole Sabouné is next, released in 2012. It’s power synth pop and Per loves it too.

Sven asks if Mr. G remembers his plans when he was thinking about making Joyride. Sven adds Per came from being big in Sweden and then breaking through in the world with The Look, so this album was the first for them to be international stars. Mr. G tells it was difficult in a way, because Look Sharp! had 4 huge songs on it, Listen To Your Heart, Dangerous, Dressed For Success and The Look, and then It Must Have Been Love happened from the Pretty Woman movie. In 1990, when they started recording Joyride, they were a very big band all over the world, so of course there was a certain amount of pressure to come up with some more goodies. Per always felt they were on a roll. Their style of music was special, they had a certain sound created in Stockholm by Swedish musicians. Per wrote maybe 30 songs for this album and they recorded 15-16. They took it step by step. Having all the success gives a lot of energy, says PG. It was fun days in the studio. They didn’t have any budgets, because they were big, so they were just hanging out in the studio for 6 months and the record label paid for it.

Sven tells there was no time for chilling. When they were not in the studio, they did promotion trips all over the world. For 8 years they were living like that, Per says. They were either in the studio or did tours or promo tours. On those few days when they didn’t work, Per went back home and wrote songs and made demos. So there was a constant flow of creativity, which he loved more than Marie did. She needed a little bit more space outside of Roxette. Per liked to be in that Roxette bubble 24/7. Sven jokes that for Per life outside of Roxette was overrated. Per laughs and agrees.

Mr. G had an apartment in Halmstad and one day he found a note on the piano from his wife, Åsa. It said ”Hej, din tok, jag älskar dig”, which translates into ”Hello, you fool, I love you”. He thought it was such a great phrase, he had to use that in a song. So he started working on Joyride. The expression ”joyride” comes from an interview with Paul McCartney in which he said writing songs with John Lennon was like being on a long joyride. At the time Per didn’t know what a joyride was, that you steal and crash a car and just leave it. For him it was like a very positive journey. So he came up with ”join the joyride” and that became a slogan for the whole project.

The guys play Joyride in the Brian Malouf mix, which was customized for the American radio. The difference between the album version and this is that the mix got more drums and there is a different groove to it, it’s a little faster.

Joyride became Roxette’s 4th US No. 1. The follow up song was Fading Like A Flower, which peaked at No. 2. It’s probably Per’s favourite track from the album. Marie was outstanding when she was singing this one. It’s just custom-made for her. Per doesn’t really consider it a ballad, it’s a mid-tempo song. He can’t remember writing it, but he has the demo which includes the piano intro, so he wrote the piano intro. Normally, when he wrote songs for Roxette those days he didn’t really write the intros, because he knew they would be going to change them anyway.

Sven asks Per if he heard Marie on his mind when he was writing a song, how Marie would deliver it. Per says he did and he also tried to write the lyrics from a female perspective (he laughs and says it sometimes didn’t go that well), as Marie was supposed to sing it. Per thinks if a song is written from a guy’s point of view and it’s sung by a girl, it gets a different meaning. It’s interesting in duets, e.g. in Paint. He thought FLAF becomes a stronger lyric when it’s sung by a girl. Joyride was meant to be sung by Per. The Look was sung by Per but it was intended for Marie. She didn’t feel comfortable singing that dadadadada. Sven tells Per had no problem doing that. Mr. G laughs and says that was his limit. Haha. PG thinks a love song, like IMHBL, becomes stronger when it’s sung by a girl. It becomes a little bit more fragile. Using this female-male trick Per thinks was one of the reasons why Roxette became so successful.

The guys play FLAF here. Bryan Adams blocked it from the top position on the Billboard.

Sven asks Per about the drama during recordings of the Joyride video. Per says they were sitting on the hood of a fake Ferrari in which there was a hidden driver lying on the floor, so you couldn’t see him. That was a big mess and Marie and Per sometimes just fell off. He thinks it was fun though in the desert somewhere in California. It was in the MTV days and they spent a lot on making video clips.

The FLAF video they did in Stockholm, at the City Hall, in the very beautiful golden room. The video became an homage to Stockholm.

Per picked Spending My Time as the next song to be played. He says it felt like it was going to be the big song from the album, probably because IMHBL and LTYH were so big. SMT felt like a natural follow up to those ballads. Mr. G thinks it’s a great song. He co-wrote it with Mats MP Persson. Marie is doing an amazing job on it, as always. Sven says it sounds really tailor-made for her with this melancholic touch to it.

Per had the idea to write a lyric that starts in the morning and ends at night. He says Marie delivered it so well. It became a big song for them. When they did live shows, it was always a show stopper.

Sven tells he and Per started knowing each other in 1987, when Sven beat Per severely in a pop quiz contest. The guys are laughing. Sven mentions it because he remembers they met at a pop quiz contest in the summer of 1990, when Roxette was recording Joyride and Per was really ecstatic about having written a song. When Per arrived he said he wrote a song including a line ”I leave a kiss on your answering machine”. Per thinks it’s beautiful and very romantic. He says the end melody of SMT was written as the intro of the song. Then when they recorded it, they didn’t have an intro, just Marie starting the song. (Here Per sings ”What’s the time?”.) It’s probably because all the intros, especially to LTYH was so famous, so they tried to do something different.

That concludes the Joyride special and the guys are back to Nordic Rox ”normality”. So here comes a song from The Beathovens from 1966, Summer Sun. Per thinks it’s an amazing track, beautiful noise from the 60’s.

James by Ex Cops is next from Denmark. Per likes them a lot. Sven tells they were based in Brooklyn, but the singer, Amalie Bruun qualifies them for being on Nordic Rox. They broke up in 2015. It’s a trend of this kind of music disappearing up in thin air, Sven adds.

It’s time for some Swedish garage rock – one chord, one riff, what more can you ask for, as Sven says. They play Something Wicked by The Teenage Idols.

At the end of the June epsiode, Sven tells they will celebrate another anniversary in the next one, the 20th of Room Service. Per picks the opening track from the album, Real Sugar as a teaser. He always loved that one.

The guys thank everyone for listening and Anita Lindblom’s Cigarettes is closing the show.

Still is from the 4K anniversary version of the Joyride video.

Thanks for the technical support to János Tóth!

Per Gessle on Nordic Rox – May 2021

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The May episode of Nordic Rox on Sirius XM was broadcast last night.

Per thinks you can’t go wrong with the Teddybears, so the show starts with one of their songs, Different Sound.

The second track on the program is Song Three Blues by Alberta Cross. Great Anglo-Swedish band with a great singer, Petter Ericson Stakee.

The next song is Titiyo’s Come Along. Still a great song, according to Per.

From Venus to Everyday, the closing track from Atomic Swing’s debut album is next. Per thinks they are a great band. Sven always liked them, they have a sort of different twist to the rock sound. Sven thinks this song is not a hit single at all, but it’s fun sometimes to go into the albums and check out all the tracks. Per’s reaction to this is that Sven is so old. Sven laughs.

Mando Diao starts the next block with Down In The Past from their Hurricane Bar album.

You Can’t Hurry Love by The Concretes is next. Per thinks they are were good.

Then comes I Like It Like That from a strange guy calling himself Son of a Plumber, as Sven says. He adds, ”I happen to sit next to him”. Per laughs. Sven tells it’s one of Per’s many disguises. Mr. G tells this Son of a Plumber project was made in 2005. This track is a little bit more contemporary than most of the other songs on that album. He wrote I Like It Like That for Roxette, but they never recorded it, because it was just written before or at the same time when Marie got ill. So he recorded it for SOAP. He put the drums on one side of the speaker. Sven tells it’s The Beatles way, or Nick Lowe style, Per adds. Cracking Up has got the drums to the left, which is really cool, Mr. G thinks. Sven tells SOAP became a highly eclectic double vinyl album. The whole idea with this project was to pay homage to the music from the early 70’s which Per was raised on. Mr. G really loves that sound and that style. It was the time when he put all his music collection into the iPod, so he just realized there were so many songs he forgot about. He was just getting into that 70’s mood and he wanted to make an album that sounded like that. He spent a month in the studio in the south of Sweden together with two other silly people, very good friends of him, Clarence Öfwerman and Christoffer Lundquist. Sven says it’s amazing that the creative concept came from an exercise of transferring a lot of digital tracks to an iPod. Per says it just became an inspiration. Everyone who’s been raised on music of the 60’s and 70’s knows there are so many songs that you forget about. Songs you loved when you were a kid, when you were in your teens, suddenly they just pop up and you just remember those days. For him, transferring appr. ten thousand tracks into an iPod, there were so many songs he forgot about and suddenly they just came to life again.

Sven asks which are the 3 most fab songs from the 70’s that Per can think of. The 70’s is a very complex decade according to Mr. G, but from the early 70’s he thinks about Metal Guru by T. Rex, Moonshadow by Cat Stevens and Aqualung by Jethro Tull. Sven says Per’s last choice is funny, because it came out in 1971 and earlier they had a discussion about a British journalist, David Hepworth who is writing a lot of books and one of his books was about 1971. He claims 1971 is THE year in rock music. Sven asks Per if he agrees with David. Mr. G says 1971 was an amazing year in pop music: the Blue album by Joni Mitchell, some great Rod Stewart albums, Led Zeppelin IV came out, the solo albums from The Beatles, the list goes on and on. Per says: ”Hey, we’re getting old, man!” Sven reacts: ”And we’re also drifting away from the subject, which is Scandinavian music!” The guys are laughing.

So they get back to more good-looking music and Popsicle is next with Not Forever. Per thinks the band is magnificent. They were founded in the 90’s and Sven asks Per what he thinks about the 90’s in general. Mr. G says it was a hectic decade for him. They had the Roxette circus going on for many years, then he did some reunion stuff with his Swedish band in 1996 and he did some solo stuff and then back to Roxette, so it was a very busy decade. His son was born in 1997 and that changed his life… for a week, Per jokes. Haha. Sven says the 90’s brought some slight change in music, a bit of a harder edge in Britpop wave, which effected Per as well. Mr. G tells they were very much part of the 80’s and when the Nirvana and grunge scene happened in the 90’s it changed contemporary music a bit. In England you had e.g. Oasis and Blur. Per liked that too.

Sindy is also on the show with First Cut from his debut LP, Hits for Kids. The guys say Sindy is one of their favourites. He sounds like he is sitting somewhere in Sweden with his songs, recording them in his own closet or bedroom. He sounds like he is a bit cut off from the current trend of Scandinavian music, creating his own little universe.

Fanny de Aguiar’s Map comes next. Per thinks it’s also a great one.

All Over My Head by Imperial State Electric (feat. Nicke Andersson from The Hellacopters) is next. Per thinks the band is amazing and The Hellacopters is also a great band. Sven says you can hear they are related.

Sven thinks in the 90’s there was a Swedish creation boom and that leads them to Johannes Runemark, an interesting artist. Per tells Johannes is a songwriter and guitar player and wrote lots of stuff for big Swedish names, e.g. Veronica Maggio. He started a solo career under the name Kasino. Per thinks his song, Skriva om dig is really cool, he loves this vibe, this loop just goes on and on. It has a beautiful lyric too, so the listeners have to practice their Swedish. It’s the next song on Nordic Rox.

Per thanks everyone for listening and at the end of the show, before Anita Lindblom’s Cigarettes is played, the guys translate the title of Kasino’s song, „to write about you”, giving a little Swedish lesson, which Sven says is one of the many benefits of Nordic Rox. Mr. Lindström says they will be back with more good-looking music and that can be taken as a promise or a threat. The guys are laughing.

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

Thanks for the technical support to János Tóth!