P4 Extra

Per Gessle’s single premiere on P4 Extra

by

P4 Extra premiered Per Gessle’s new single, Beredd last Thursday. Titti Schultz invited Per on the show. You can listen to it HERE, 43:24 into the program.

Titti welcomes Per and offers him some sweets. Some remaining candies from the Eurovision panel where they discussed the songs. Per points at a sweet and says it looks completely life-threatening. He loves sweets. Titti is curious if there are any of those in the bowl that Per is particularly fond of. Per says he actually likes all of them. He likes everything with chocolate. He also likes liquorice, black liquorice, salty liquorice and sweet liquorice. He points at one that he doesn’t like. Titti says it’s peach. Mr. G says it’s the kind of nonsense he doesn’t have. He says he has reached the age that he likes Bridge Blanding and stuff like that. Titti says it’s something you grow up to. Haha.

Titti says she has claimed today that Per has become a bit sociable (longing for company). Sällskapssjuk. At least that’s the title of the upcoming album, coming this fall. The first taste comes tomorrow. Titti says Per sings a duet with Molly Sandén, but Per corrects her that it’s Molly Hammar. Titti excuses herself and says it’s her who read it completely wrong. She laughs and says they will have to cut that out later.

Titti asks Per if he considers himself a sociable person. She is curious if it’s more fun to work with others than to work alone. Per thinks he is sociable, like anyone else. But he is quite much of a lone wolf as well. It is a rather solitary work that he has chosen, to write and compose and think about ideas. He is pretty much to himself. Titti says there are artists who gather in large groups and are working on creating songs together. She wants to know if that would have worked for Per. Mr. G says he has tried that, but he gets tired, because there is so much compromising and that doesn’t suit him. But of course, he also needs feedback. If we look at his entire career, he has been very dependent on collaborators. Producers, Marie Fredriksson, the entire Gyllene Tider band, not to mention all the people behind the scenes who have helped him. So he is not alone in that way. Titti asks if it is always Per Gessle who has the last word. Per asks back if she means on planet earth. Haha. Titti says, knowing Per, the world would look different if he had the last word. She referred to having the last word regarding Per’s music. PG’s reaction is „absolutely”. He has always been lucky and privileged to be in the position of being able to do so.

Titti wants to know how Molly Hammar and Per found each other, how this collaboration came about. Per says it came about because he thought of writing an album in Swedish. After a while he realized that it would be fun to do a lot of duets. And that’s why the record is called Sällskapssjuk. It contains seven or eight duets. He can’t really remember, but it doesn’t matter. Haha. And if he had this song, he thought he would love to work with Molly, because she is a fantastic singer. She has that little extra that makes you want to listen to her. He met Molly in a TV show a few years ago, then he got into contact with her and asked if she wanted to join. Per was so proud and happy that she said yes. Then Molly came to Halmstad and they spent a few hours in the studio. Then they had a good dinner in Tylösand and now Per is sitting here.

Titti says we have to wait a little longer for the album, but the first single is here. It’s called Beredd. Titti is curious if there are only newly written songs on the album or if Per has picked up any favourites from the past. Per says there is an old Gyllene Tider song that they did on their English record in 1984. He translated it into Swedish and he has recorded it in a completely different version, so you might not even recognize it. That sounds exciting, Titti says.

Titti asks Per if he could tell about some more duet partners that he has worked together with, but Per doesn’t reveal any other names. You’ll have to wait and see. Titti accepts that she shouldn’t be nagging Per.

Titti mentions that the last time they met, they were talking about the Gyllene Tider movie that was in the making back then. Now the premiere is getting closer, the film is out this summer. Titti is curious how much of it Per has seen. PG says he hasn’t seen much more than 5-6 scenes, which are much fun. He is really looking forward to this movie. He thinks he said that when they last met that the script is great fun and he really hopes that the film will be as fun as the script. Because then it is a home run and everyone will love it.

Titti and Per start talking about Joyride – The Musical, the Roxette musical, which has its world premiere at Malmö Opera this autumn. Titti is happy that it comes true, because earlier there were thoughts about a musical, but it has been scrapped before. Per says, many people have contacted them and wanted to do a Roxette musical, but it has always failed on the script, that the script has not felt good enough. It’s not that easy to make a script where you have to add this song catalogue in the right way. But now they have succeeded. The story is based on a book called Got You Back, written by Jane Fallon from England. It’s a very exciting project. Per says anything can happen, but he thinks it will be amazing. Titti guesses Per is pretty much involved in it. PG confirms. Last week he was down in Malmö for two days and attended the readings and met people and listened and discussed. So he is absolutely involved. After all, these are his songs. Titti says Per has to have the last word there too. They are laughing.

Titti thinks it will be lovely to hear the whole album of duets. Now they should listen to Per and Molly Hammar. It’s the premiere, because this song is not out yet. It is released tomorrow.

Before they play the song, Titti thanks Per for coming and says it was nice to see him. PG says it’s always fun. Titti offers Mr. G the remaining sweets. They are laughing.

Photo by Helen Ling, Swedish Radio

Thanx for the hint regarding the interview, Martina Letochová!

Per Gessle and Anders Herrlin about Gyllene Tider on P4 Extra

by

P4 Extra on Swedish Radio had Per Gessle and Anders Herrlin as their guests on 31st May. Program leader Titti Schultz asked the guys about Gyllene Tider. You can listen to it HERE!

Titti welcomes 2/5 of Gyllene Tider and says they are back again. Per says that’s pretty accurate to say so, being back AGAIN. It’s 4 years since the last time. Titti says there are so many immortal songs of theirs, e.g. she can’t even say Juni, juli, augusti to anyone anymore without a melodic loop coming up with it. The same thing goes for Gå & fiska!, however, she doesn’t say that very often, but so do others. She says the guys have sort of penetrated our consciousnesses in a way. She is curious if that was well thought out. Anders says it’s a long-term plan to penetrate Swedish DNA. They already had that when they started. Per says that’s a seventies idea.

Titti wants to know what happened after the 2019 farewell tour. Anders says they regretted it. Per says the pandemic happened. It was Micke Syd who thought they should quit in 2019 with the flag on top and Per thought that was a pretty good idea. But then the pandemic came and then they all started to think differently. They started to appreciate other things, such as old friends and hangouts. The idea just popped up to maybe record some new songs and maybe maybe maybe go on tour sometime when it’s possible again. So it’s not a planned comeback, it just happened.

Titti is curious what the guys do together when they don’t make music and are not touring, but hang out together. Maybe BBQing together? Anders says it’s top secret. Haha. He says they are BBQing and drinking. Per says they don’t hang out very much in private. It mostly happens when they are recording and if you are going on a tour in a few months, it’s actually quite nice to start that journey with getting together for a few weeks and record some new music and eat lunch and BBQ together. It’s good to have that social activity. Titti asks if they go fishing together. That never happened, the guys say. It’s not their cup of tea.

Titti picked a song from GT that she thinks is among the best the guys have done. It’s Flickan i en Cole Porter-sång. She asks if it will be on the setlist in summer. Per confirms they will play it, so Titti promises to come to a concert then. It’s such a good song, Titti thinks and she asks the guys to admit  it themselves that they are incredibly happy with this song. Anders says it’s a fantastic song. Per laughs. Titti says she isn’t sure if Anders is ironic now. Anders says he is mostly serious. He thinks this song turned out great.

Gyllene Tider becomes a feature film. Titti asks the guys to tell more about it. Per says it won’t be a documentary. It’s not about Gyllene Tider’s 40 years, but about 5 teenage boys who come from a small town and against all odds start a band and end up in big Stockholm and break through and become one of Sweden’s biggest bands in the early ’80s. So it’s a feel-good movie.

Titti asks Per if he knows who will play him. PG knows it, but can’t tell more about it yet. Anders says that later today he is going to meet the guy who plays him. Anders will talk about his life. Titti says it feels like Anders is looking forward to it. Anders confirms it. Titti says Anders should tell the guy that he was named Sweden’s most handsome guy in 1981 in Veckorevyn. Titti says Anders is probably not completely happy with that himself, but it’s fun.

Titti asks if it really feels like the band could make it against all odds, if it was such an uphill battle. Per says the fact that they became so successful was really a tall order. They had actually done only 6 gigs in front of an audience before they became No. 1 with Flickorna på TV2. So they didn’t know anything and in that way it’s incredibly rare to happen.

Anders says he quit his regular job when they got a gig. They were quite ambitious. Titti is thinking what Anders’ parents could have said then, but realizes that Anders is an electrician anyway, so he always has something to fall back on. Titti asks Per if he has a real job. PG says he doesn’t have any. He worked at Fammarps Mushroom Cultivation and weighed mushrooms. He was there with another guy and there were 350 girls, so it was a great job. He remembers that while waiting for the mushrooms, he was sitting in a small truck they had and wrote songs. Among others, he wrote (Dansar inte lika bra som) Sjömän, back then. Titti says she had no idea about this.

Titti mentions that recently she heard Per wrote the official song for the Table Tennis EC in Malmö. The Craziest Thing is coming this autumn. Anders writes music for various series, Titti shares. Per says Anders is very good and handsome. Titti laughs and says he even has a paper about it. Anders says he is dealing with film music and GT music. He doesn’t do much else.

Titti asks Anders if he writes the music for the GT feature film. Anders says no, it would be too close and it gets too goofy, so they let someone else do it.

After Titti asks Anders what he is dreaming about, Anders shares that last night he dreamed that he found a huge amount of money in the forest in a large suitcase and it was euro notes. Titti asks if Per Gessle was written on the suitcase. Haha. Anders says he was so damn afraid to take it. He looked around all the time, not that he was being chased by someone. Titti laughs and says she thought about a dream music project or TV series, so a dream in that context. Haha. Anders says he dreams of just continuing with what he is doing, to make fun projects all the time. He works together with his wife and it seems to be a successful concept. They have been together for 23 years and work and have a child together. It works very well.

Here they listen to a new GT song, Chans. Titti asks the guys if they want to say something about it. Per says it’s a song that sums up pretty much how they sound right now.

Titti says the fun thing is, what the listeners can’t hear now is that she gets practically involved in planning the tour. During the song being played the guys were discussing how to perform the songs live and stuff like that. It’s fun for Titti who is tone deaf (she says it about herself).

Titti mentions that it wasn’t obvious at the beginning who was going to play the bass in the band. She asks if they decided it with playing rock paper scissors. Andrs says it’s just that Micke Syd had a bass in his lap and so he got it. Anders was so damn bad at drums, so they changed. Titti asks whether Micke could play the drums at all or he was a talent. He was damn good and he still is, Anders says.

Titti shares that Per became the frontman, because no one else was interested. PG says it was because nobody else wanted to sing. He likes to sing and stand in the front and that impression you get there. PG remembers when he was 7 or 8 years old, he forced his friends to play and act like a band and he mimed to I’m A Believer by The Monkees. Titti asks what his friends really wanted to do. Per says they probably wanted to play hockey games.

Titti asks PG if he had any other strong interest besides music. These days she knows it’s cars, but if there was anything else back then. Per says when he thinks back on his life, there was a lot of pop music, so he spent all his time sitting with his headphones on and listening to Herman’s Hermits singles, The Kinks and stuff like that.

Titti is curious how Anders and Per found each other. It was actually via MP. Per says that first they had another bassist in Gyllene Tider, but that didn’t go too well and so PG left the band on New Year’s Eve. It was dramatic. Instead of the bassist being fired, Per quit. He was going to start a new band with Anders and then MP also wanted to join this new band and then Micke too, so in the end only the old bass player stayed in the old band. Titti says so he could say he is the only original member of Gyllene Tider. Per laughs and says there is some truth in it, actually.

Titti wants to know when the guys realized that their success is for real. Maybe when they started having fans and people started stealing stuff from their parents’ garden? Anders says it was after they appeared on Måndagsbörsen on TV and they played Flickorna på TV2. Then it all exploded. They were on tour and when they played in Rottneros there were so many people, thousands of them. Then the guys realized that wow, there was something going on here.

Regarding stuff being stolen from their surroundings, Anders says people stole underpants from their garden. But those were his father’s. Haha. Everything that was loose disappeared, Per says. E.g. number plate on the car, antennas and stuff like that. PG remembers when he turned 21 he still lived at home with his mother. Then 3 large sacks of mail arrived. 2800 birthday cards. Titti asks if Per read them all. PG says he even replied to them all. Haha. And it still happens these days, Titti guesses.

Here they start talking about the new album, Hux Flux and that they go on tour this summer. It’s a little huxflux for them, because they decided they would finish in 2019, but all of a sudden they changed their minds. Per wrote a song called Hux Flux and thought that this is not a bad title for this whole project.

Titti asks the guys if they have any plans for how long they will be up and running this time before they call it quits. Per says they shouldn’t put themselves in such a situation again. Titti says she is already looking forward to the next comeback.

Titti asks what the guys are looking the most forward to in summer. Anders says to play in front of people, because it’s so much fun. Per says touring is actually pretty tough, except for the hours you play for people. That’s why you do it. The rest is waiting and changing hotel rooms and changing cities all the time. You get tired of it quite quickly.

Titti says there will be a sixth member on tour, Uno. PG says, yes, Uno Svenningsson is the support act on this tour. He is a lovely guy and very talented. He is going to be a great opener both for the band and for the audience.

Titti thanks the guys for joining her on the show and lets Anders go and meet his younger self in film form. The guys thank Titti for the invitation.

Photo from P4 Extra’s story by Helen Ling

Per Gessle interview and “The Loneliest Girl In The World” premiere on P4 Extra

by

Svjetlana Pastuhovic did an interview with Per Gessle on Swedish Radio on 2nd June. PG was guest of the day on P4 Extra and he talked about PG Roxette, the debut single, Marie, Roxette, the Roxette musical, Gyllene Tider and songwriting. The interview starts at 28:39 into the program. Listen HERE!

Svjetlana welcomes Per and introduces him as a small town guy who showed great interest in music at a very early age. His nerdiness led him to success and worldwide fame. Now he returns to one of his biggest successes, Svjetlana says. Per thanks for having him on the show. Svjetlana is uncertain, maybe „return” is not the right word when it comes to PG Roxette. Per tells one can say it’s a new chapter in Roxette’s history.

PG can be pronounced the Swedish way or if you want to make it sound cool, the English way, Per says. He laughs. Svjetlana asks Per how HE pronounces it. PG then pronounces the initials the Swedish way. The debut single is out the next day (3rd June), but Swedish Radio got the chance to play it for the first time on radio and they are very happy about it. Svjetlana asks Per how he feels about it. Per tells the whole PG Roxette project is a new chapter, as he already mentioned and it’s based on him and the old Roxette band. He brought in several people who helped him e.g. with the singing and production. It took about a year to record the album and it was much fun. He looks very much forward to release it. Per got very good response from those around the world whom he already showed the songs. It feels great.

Here they premiere the The Loneliest Girl In The World. Svjetlana tells she becomes happy when she hears this song. Per says it’s nice to hear. He tells it’s an ear candy. The album comes out in September. Mr. G tells he tried to write an uptempo album and it’s a challenge to write such pop songs. Especially when you are getting older, because it’s something that you do very easily when you are 20. It becomes harder when you get older, because you have written so much and you become too sophisticated in your writing when you know all the tricks. Svjetlana is curious what Per means by this, if it means you get more serious when you get older. PG tells pop music builds very much on instant energy and it’s just there when you are younger. When you have written hundreds of songs, you learned all the crafts very well and it’s hard to write these 3-chord pop songs when you get a bit older. Per thinks Svjetlana probably has also noticed it regarding other artists that the finest and fastest songs they wrote in their twenties. Svjetlana asks PG if he was struggling with this a bit. Per tells he had the idea that he would make a sibling to Roxette’s albums they recorded at the end of the 80’s, beginning of the 90’s, so he tried to think about how he was working back then. Then he sat down and spent time with writing. Actually, it went very well. The Loneliest Girl In The World was the third or fourth song he has written that immediately felt it had a great chorus.

Svjetlana wants to know if it was an obvious choice to go on as PG Roxette. Per tells it wasn’t obvious at all, because it was really tough when Marie passed away in 2019, so he didn’t really know what to do with Roxette. He knew there is the legacy of Roxette that someone has to take care of. Also, he devoted 30 years of his life to Roxette and he has written almost all the Roxette songs and it would have felt weird not to go on with Roxette in a way. He has the ambition to take PG Roxette on tour and play the old Roxette songs. There is a huge amount of people around the world who still like those songs.

Svjetlana tells Marie was ill for many years and she is curious if Marie and Per talked about the future of Roxette. Per asks if Svjetlana means about the future without Marie. Svjetlana says yes, because Marie was ill for a long time, however, when she got better, they went on tour together again. Per tells Marie was ill for 17 years before she passed away. She never really got better, but despite the doctors’ advice, she went on tour between 2010 and 2016. It was fantastic that she did that. In 2018 Per went on a European tour that was called Per Gessle’s Roxette and Marie had no problem with that. She thought like Per, that someone has to take good care of the legacy. If you look at other artists who kept their audience, they worked actively, e.g. Queen with the Bohemian Rhapsody movie or ABBA with the Mamma Mia! musical and movies and now also with the Abbatars in London. Per thinks you have to work actively to keep the legacy alive. You just have to let it go on and who else could take better care of the legacy than Per himself. It’s not about replacing Marie with another singer – even if Per worked together with several female singers on this record. Dea Norberg and Helena Josefsson appear the most on this album. Both of them worked with Roxette as backing vocalists on tours. But there are other female singers as well, so it has Per and his songs in focus.

Svjetlana asks how it was to look back on the 80’s and 90’s, those crazy times when they were touring so much with Roxette. Mr. G says it was crazy indeed. They had their peak for 8 years between 1988 and 1995. They were touring all around the world, they had 4 US No. 1s and they were the most played artists for 3 years in a row. It was a fantastic period. Svjetlana asks how they could cope with their success. PG tells when you are in the middle of it, you don’t think about that. You are working, you go on. He was anyway triggered by it back then. When they toured with and promoted Look Sharp! he wrote Joyride, when they toured with Joyride he wrote their next album, Crash! Boom! Bang!, etc. Svjetlana notices that Per wanted to do more and more. She asks how he felt about it back in the days. PG says he travelled all around the world, but didn’t really see much. He was mainly in hotel rooms and at the concerts. When you are in such busy period, you just can’t make it. After the pandemic it’s fun to travel to cities he knows he had been to before, but doesn’t remember much. When you wanted to keep everything at the same high level as they did their things, you had to work 24 hours a day and stay focused and keep yourself in top shape. It’s like what sportsmen do. They enjoyed being up on stage every night and perform to tons of people who loved what they were doing. That’s the best reward ever. It’s a fantastic job Per has, he says. Even if it was tough at times, it only has positive sides.

Svjetlana says it’s almost unreal what happened with Roxette abroad, all their success. She asks if there is melancholy besides pride when Per thinks back at those times and if such thing can happen again. Per says it can’t happen again, because we live in different times now. It’s 30 years of his life he has devoted to Roxette and he is very proud of Roxette. As he already said, when you are thirty, you are at a certain stage in your life, now that he is 63, he is at another stage. He of course hopes that the new album works well, but it’s not the most important, it’s not why he made it. He made it because he wanted to have fun and he tries to follow his way as a songwriter and artist. He is doing several things at the same time. He has just finished an acoustic tour in Sweden with 31 gigs, they had a Gyllene Tider tour earlier, many other things.

Here Svjetlana plays What’s She Like?, which she knows is a special song for Per. After playing it, she tells how wonderfully Marie sings. Per agrees, she sings fantastically. Svjetlana asks if this song will appear in the Roxette musical. Per laughs and says it’s a very exciting project. There is a very nice script that the musical will be built on, a book written by Jane Fallon. Per thinks that Roxette’s music matches very well in such a conetxt. There are so many nuances in the Roxette song catalogue, one could use really many of them. It’s gonna be tricky to match the songs to the story though. What’s She Like? could be one of the songs used, they both think.

Svjetlana tells Roxette sold more than 80 million records, they had an international career, there are millions of Swedish crowns on their bank account. She is curious what is Per’s driving force still. PG tells it’s about finding your place in life. He is super grateful that he could work with music fulltime, writing songs and playing them since he was in his teens. It’s not just a way he is following all the time, it’s not like he has plans that in 5 years he has to reach this or that. He has a lot of ideas and tries to implement them as well as he can. Svjetlana says, so it’s not fame, not money, not such things. Per says it mattered when he was young, e.g. when they started Gyllene Tider. When they played at schools, they dreamed about playing in Stockholm or Gothenburg, when an album became gold, they wanted a platinum, when they had a platinum, they wanted to have a double platinum. That’s how people work. It was the same with Roxette. The idea at the beginning was that they wanted to go abroad, because he himself felt he covered Sweden with Gyllene Tider’s success. But when Marie and Per talked about abroad, they meant Belgium, Germany or the Netherlands. Or maybe playing in Copenhagen. Svjetlana laughs and asks „no South America or China in your thoughts?” Per laughs and says no and also not the success that they had in the US.

Regarding keeping the legacy alive, Svjetlana asks Per if he is doing it because he thinks Roxette would be forgotten. Per says he knows there is a fantastic power in Roxette’s music. Also in his Swedish music. It’s not that he thinks that „oh, maybe in 30 years we would be forgotten”. He wants to experience it again, to be standing on stage, singing his songs and feel the communication with his audience. It’s the most awesome feeling. The acoustic tour he did was one of the most amazing things he did so far. It was so intimate in those small theatres in an acoustic arrangement. Sometimes it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. In certain songs he played only one string at a time, because it was so quiet. It was awesome that people were sitting there and listening. It was also fantastic that he played some old Gyllene Tider songs in a totally new arrangement. Lyrics of songs like Ljudet av ett annat hjärta that he wrote when he was 22, had a totally different meaning, both  for him and for everyone else, now that he sang it as a 63-year-old. There is another thing in there what wasn’t there in Gyllene Tider in 1981. There is a different energy as well, but the core of the song changes. And it also feels good for Per as a songwriter that the time goes by and the lyric becomes a different thing. It’s the same with What’s She Like? When he wrote it, he wrote it for Marie, because he knew that when Marie sings it, it will have a totally different meaning when he sings it. If he sang it, it would have been What’s He Like? That’s awesome in music. You can change it all the time.

Svjetlana tells she asked people about Per and most of them said he is an ordinary guy. She asks Per if that’s correct. Per says he doesn’t know what „ordinary guy” means and it’s hard for him to judge, but he is happy that people think so, because he doesn’t think he is an unusual guy, even if he has had an unusual life. He had much luck in many ways, but he is also very ambitious. His family and friends often say that he is working too much, but that’s in his personality and he knows you have to work much to get to where you want to be. He is not talking only about commercial success, but also about his writing. He wants to do his best all the time, otherwise he can’t sleep well at night. He laughs. Svjetlana notices Per has high expectations of himself. Per agrees. Svjetlana says the other thing people mentioned was they were wondering how Per keeps himself in shape. PG says he tries to pay attention to what he eats. When he was a kid, he looked quite like a meatball at school. That was always his Achilles heel, but especially during the past few years he tried to shape up. Svjetlana asks if Per is training. He quickly reacts he isn’t at all. He is rather walking and listening to things he is working with or tries to hatch an idea and to find answers to all the weird and stupid questions about his projects. So he sticks to his headphones, he is antisocial and he is in his own bubble then.

As a last question, Svjetlana asks Per about Gyllene Tider. PG says it’s a nice little band. Svjetlana thinks it’s a damn good band. Per says it’s also something he is very proud of. He is very proud of them being good friends and that they have fun when they meet. He can’t promise anything, but he hopes that there will be more Gyllene Tider in the future. But he doesn’t know anything yet.

Svjetlana thanks Per for coming to the show, PG also thanks for having him.

Per Gessle on P4 Extra

by

Per Gessle was a guest on P4 Extra, Swedish Radio last Friday. Host Erik Blix asked him about his new solo album, Gyllene Tider, Marie Fredriksson, Roxette and his new project.

Erik asks Per what the album title, Gammal kärlek rostar aldrig means to him. Mr. G says it means to him more or less what it says. He realized that this album is an old love that’s still there. One can say it’s a pandemic album, because he started recording it while he was isolated in Halmstad. Erik says it’s Per and Paul McCartney (who did the same). Per laughs and says there are more who did the same. Per had the idea to record acoustic songs and play as many instruments as possible himself. He didn’t have any material for that, so he thought he should dig deep into his archives from the 80’s, 90’s and 2000’s. There are a lot of songs he thinks didn’t come out of their shadow before. He says it was exciting.

They play Ömhet here. Erik says Per sings together with Helena Josefsson. Mr. G tells Helena is fantastic and it would have been difficult to record this song without her. She is awesome. Ömhet was written right after Mazarin was recorded in 2002. The text remained the same, but he wrote new music to it for Gyllene Tider’s Dags att tänka på refrängen album, but they never recorded it. Then it was lying in the drawer until now. Erik asks how many songs Per has in the drawer. Per reacts: ”You don’t want to know!” And laughs. He himself doesn’t know it exactly either. There are tons of sketches. Before he starts a new project, he is listening to some of his old stuff to get inspiration. He has been writing songs for such a long time and he felt that slowly but surely his style is changing a bit. Erik asks if it can happen that a sketch matures, that earlier Per thought nah, it’s not good for anything, but now it seems to work. Mr. G says it can happen, for example that the text in a verse has a good idea, but it doesn’t reach the goal or you couldn’t make it in 1986, but maybe now you can get your teeth into it. On GKRA it happened that Per corrected verses he thought were clumsy. And there is also the fact that if you write a song when you are 25 and sing it when you are 61, it gets a different meaning. Erik asks if it was the case with Ömhet. PG says not really, because there the lyric is straightforward, but Tända en sticka till is a good example. It was released on Per’s first solo LP in 1983, he wrote it in 1982, so when he sings it today, there is a sentimental, nostalgic feel to it. It changes the text’s angle.

Per tells he works together with Helena since Mazarin. She came to sing backing vocals on 1 song and ended up singing on 10. He knew he wanted a female voice and they did a little audition at the studio in Skåne. Helena was the first he heard on the audition and he said he doesn’t want to listen to the others. She was the one he wanted.

Erik asks Per why he decided to make this album an acoustic one. Mr. G says he wanted to make it personal and organic and he wanted to play as many instrument as possible himself. There is mainly piano and acoustic guitar. He also tried playing bass and drums, but he realized his limits. Erik adds Paul McCartney plays all instruments himself. Per says he knows it. He is very curious about Paul’s new album. He is amazed that at his age, Paul is so sharp and he is doing this recording in his home studio alone.

Erik asks Per if he rewrote any of the lyrics for the album. Per tells he rewrote certain verses. There are songs in the drawer that have a text Per was not satisfied with, but now he has the capacity to make them relevant.

Mr. G tells now he is making an English album and he’s got a kick doing it. Erik asks when it will be released. Per says when it’s ready. They laugh. Erik says it sounds like a good startegy.

They play Du kommer så nära (du blir alldeles suddig) here. It’s a duet with Uno Svenningsson. Erik asks Per when he wrote this song and what it is about. He wrote it for En händig man in 2006. First it was mostly just an observation that sometimes things get so close that they get really blurred and you can’t really take it in. Per tells he didn’t know Uno too well. He called Per in summer and asked if they could meet and have dinner together. Per said sure, just he has to sing on one of his songs first. Then Per quickly changed the key in the song so that it suits Uno’s and Per’s voice. Mr. G thinks Uno is a lovely person and he has a fantastic voice.

Erik tells Per is more acoustic during these recent years and his music is softer. He asks if Per became softer over the years. Mr. G laughs and says he doesn’t know. It’s hard for him to answer this question because he thinks he is the same as he has always been. PG says he is lucky that he has a big tree with a lot of branches: Gyllene Tider, Roxette, solo in English and in Swedish, Mono Mind. Many different things. His classic singer songwriter side is reflected in this new album.

Erik asks Mr. G about Gyllene Tider and says he opened the door to a comeback. Per smiles and says: ”That I can never keep quiet…” They did their last tour last year, but who knows. There is nothing planned. He loves the guys in GT and he loves playing with them. When the five of them play together, the outcome is always something very special.

The guys start talking about Roxette. Erik asks Per to describe his friendship with Marie. Per says it’s hard to describe it shortly, but they got to know each other when they were teens, at the end of the 70’s. They shared a rehearsal studio in Sperlingsholm, outside Halmtad. Per was in Gyllene Tider and Marie was in Strul. So they have been friends since then. That friendship became a musical partnership in which they could develop their good sides. The basic idea with Roxette was that Per writes the songs and Marie sings. Marie could sing fantastically and Per could write OK songs. Sometimes it felt like 1 and 1 makes 3. Per says he is incredibly proud of the journey they were on together and feels honoured to have worked together with Marie over so many years. Erik tells Roxette started out as a game with a friend. Per tells they had the ambition and dream to succeed outside Sweden. They loved pop and rock music and they liked the same bands and artists, David Bowie, Joni Mitchell, The Beatles. When they were sitting and chatting in Per’s apartment in Halmstad, they were talking about Germany, Norway, Denmark or Belgium. To succeed in the US and play there and in South America and Roxette being global surpassed their dreams. They had their heydays between 1988 and 1995. Then Marie had her second child and wanted to have a break, so they had a break after the Crash! Boom! Bang! tour. During those 8 years they were together 24 hours a day and worked. Erik adds they travelled around the world, but probably didn’t see anything. Something like that, Per confirms. They were constantly travelling to another city, another country or were locked in their hotel rooms, spent their times at airports.

Erik asks Per how much he misses Marie. Per says it’s difficult to talk about it. It’s almost a year ago that she passed away. There is emptiness. When you lose someone very close or your family member, there is emptiness. It’s difficult to deal with it. Even in Marie’s case when they were kind of prepared, because she was sick for a long time. But still, when it happens, you know that you can’t get prepared for that. Erik asks if Per misses the partnership as well, to work together with someone the way they worked together. Mr. G says of course he misses it, however, the last albums they recorded in a different way than they recorded before Marie’s illness. It wasn’t such an intensive cooperation as during the years before her illness. But there is something special when you are working together with someone or with a band like GT. There are things that only they can share, something only Marie and Per could discuss, Roxette’s success, since it’s them who achieved it with a lot of people’s support around them. There was an enormous tightness between them, so of course he is missing it. He misses calling her and chat and fight and joke around. Erik asks if they did that often. Per says maybe not as often as they should have, but one thinks about it only now. After Marie got ill in 2002, she of course became much more private and he respected it.

Erik asks Per about his musical partnerships, how those work. Per says he is much of a lone wolf, mainly in the creative part of his work. He writes alone and he doesn’t take orders easily if someone wants to tell him how this or that should be. It’s hard for him to write music for someone else. It’s difficult to keep the balance. But then he of course needs other musicians and other singers and other producers who help him on the way.

As an end to the conversation, Erik asks Per to pick a Roxette song to play. Mr. G chooses Let Your Heart Dance With Me that was released recently. A leftover song from their last recordings. He says it’s so nice to hear Marie on it again.

Per Gessle interview on P4 Extra on Mother’s Day

by

Titti Schultz did an interview with Per Gessle today on P4 Extra on Swedish Radio. It starts at 1:42:42. After Titti welcomes Per, he says it’s an adorable weekend and the weather is fantastic on the Best Coast (West Coast). He is in Halmstad during corona time, because he lives there. He laughs. He has been home since Easter. Titti asks Per if he is thinking about corona or if everything is as usual. Mr. G says his life hasn’t changed a lot, because he most of the time works alone or only with a very few people. So it’s rather business as usual for him, but he has been very productive during this period. He wrote a lot of English songs and in between, Mamma and Pappa poppud up on a sunny Tuesday morning. He was dealing with a totally different type of music and then suddenly an idea came to his mind that shit, it’s mother’s day soon, so why not writing a song about a mom. It went quite easily and then he thought he should write a song about a dad, too. It was much harder. He laughs. He booked the studio, he worked there for 2 afternoons and then came Helena Josefsson to sing and then it was ready. It happened only in 2 weeks and it never went this fast before.

Titti says she knows Per’s mom is not among us anymore and asked Per if he celebrates her mom on a day like this. He said it doesn’t happen like this directly. Now there is another mom in his family, his wife, so it became rather her day. Per says when you are young, you don’t care too much about Mother’s Day, but by getting older, you think more about how it is to be parents and that kids are growing up. He thinks it’s a nice day. Tradition in their family is to give flowers and cake.

Titti asks Per if he thinks Mother’s Day has more meaning now for other families during corona time. Per thinks it could be. He thinks it’s a very special period we are going through now. It’s something we haven’t experienced before. When there is uncertainty, family and friends are more in focus and you realize that you can’t take any basic things for granted.

Per says he read that there were a lot of weddings cancelled. During this time people either still get married after the social distancing period or they get divorced. Titti says there can be a baby boom too.

Titti gets back to the songs and asks Per about the English songs he has been writing when Mamma and Pappa popped up. Mr. G tells he has Mono Mind, an electronic pop music project, but he was also writing guitar-based classic pop music. He doesn’t know yet what the future brings, but he wants to continue touring and play and make himself heard in a way. What he is writing now is based on the music he grew up with, the 60’s and 70’s (as usual) mixed with modern music. He can’t say anything about when this music will be out, but maybe next Mother’s Day. He laughs.

Titti asks if Per wants to say anything before she pushes the play button for Mamma. Per says just sit calmly and listen to the lovely lyrics and

Mom is the best!