Per Gessle

Per Gessle on Nyhetsmorgon on TV4 talking about Pugh Rogefeldt

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Per Gessle was a guest on TV4’s morning show, Nyhetsmorgon on 13th October, release day of his new single, a cover of Pugh Rogefeldt’s Vandrar i ett regn. Program leaders Sofia Geite and Steffo Törnquist interviewed him.

The interview starts with premiering the song’s video and after they play a short part of it, Steffo says it’s such a good song choice, because one could think it could have been written by Per. It fits Per very well. PG agrees that it’s a fantastic song. Steffo says Pugh was great and Per discovered him early. Mr. G says the first time he saw Pugh must have been 1974 in Halmstad’s folk park. He played there with his band, Rainrock. He had a scarf on his head and a long ponytail and after a few songs he took off the bandana and everyone saw he had shaved his hair and was bald, just had the ponytail left. The whole audience was shocked. Per says you had never seen anything like that before. Pugh took a bet with his brother, but when his brother saw how Pugh looked, he withdrew himself from the bet. Haha.

The following year Pugh was on tour and played at Halmstad Theatre. There they played, among other songs, Vandrar i ett regn, Per says. Steffo says it’s a song that makes you happy and it’s lovely. PG thinks it has fantastic lyrics and it’s a wonderful song. Pugh was a great songwriter. Steffo mentions a word Pugh uses, “gamman” for happy. “Glad och gamman” in the lyrics, Per thinks it’s a nice expression. He had to check what that meant.

Steffo says Pugh was purely musical too and very innovative. Per agrees. He says Pugh actually created his own language, Pughish. That was even the title of his second album, Pughish. He simply wrote lyrics in his own language. It’s very unique. So there was a musical madness in all this fantastic melodic work he did. Per likes his songs a lot. He thinks there are similarities between Pugh’s lyrics and for example John Lennon’s lyrics. Sometimes there are these kind of nonsense lyrics that you can make your own and you can interpret them as you want. A bit like how Per tried to write The Look. That song isn’t about anything, but you can make it your own. That’s the cool thing about pop music and PG thinks Pugh was a master of it.

Sofia mentions that there will be a tribute concert for Pugh at Cirkus in Stockholm. That place has been chosen for a reason, also because it was where Pugh had his last concert. Per was there in the audience then. He says it was a great concert, but it was a bit strange, because Pugh behaved a bit odd. Per doesn’t know why. He says he was there with his producer, sitting in the first row of the gallery and at one song Pugh went out into the audience and sang the song. He caught sight of Per, walked up to him and then he hugged Per. PG doesn’t really understand why. It was a long hug and a bit magical in a way. In retrospect now it feels super wonderful.

Steffo says Gyllene Tider and Pugh toured together. Per smiles and says Pugh wasn’t a support act, because he was too good for that, he was a special guest for Gyllene Tider in 2004. It was a huge tour. They of course met during the tour, but they didn’t travel together. On a tour it’s when they play, you are in the dressing room, changing clothes, you are getting ready for your part, putting on your make-up and stuff, Per says, so you often miss out on each other.

Sofia says that the big hug Pugh gave Per must have been a surprise for PG, because he and Pugh didn’t have a very tight relationship. Per confirms he was surprised. Pugh was 5-6 metres away from him when he caught sight of PG, so he doesn’t know why he got the feeling. Sofia says probably this relationship meant a lot to Pugh.

Per tells Sofia and Steffo that Pugh asked him to help put together the setlist of what he would play as the special guest on the GT tour. He knew Per was a big fan. Mr. G made a list based on the early records that he loved, Pughish and Hollywood. Pugh always wondered why Per chose these weird songs that he had basically forgotten about. But those songs were so good.

Sofia aks Per what it was like to meet his idol when he was young. Because she knows PG had the chance to meet Pugh in some hotel foyer. Per says when Pugh played the folk park in Halmstad, he and his friends knew that they would be staying at a hotel in Vallås, outside Halmstad. They went there to the hotel and waited for the band to come. The band came and then they walked half a metre past. The guys sat there and were too shy to say anything at the age of 14. They just wanted to be close to the pop gods. Haha.

Regarding the Gyllene Tider movie, Per says the shooting lasts until next week and the movie is out next summer. Steffo asks how it feels. Per says it’s scary, but it’s cool. He has seen a bit of it and it’s amazing. The script is awesome, so he hopes the film will be as good as the script is. It’s a movie about 5 crazy guys in a small town who start a band. But in the end, it’s not like a documentary about Gyllene Tider. It ends with Sommartider released in 1982, so it’s kind of about how the band got there. Sofia asks Per if he recognizes himself or he sees new sides of him in the movie. [Here they show the group picture of Gyllene Tider and the cast.] Per points at the picture and says he recognizes himself there. Haha. PG says the actors interpreted the film well and they are incredibly talented. The director is also wonderful. The program leaders say it’s fun and they look forward to it. They also wish Per to have a good time at the Pugh gala.

Stills are from the morning show.

Per Gessle covers Pugh Rogefeldt’s “Vandrar i ett regn”

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Swedish artist and songwriter Pugh Rogefeldt passed away on 1st May 2023. The day the sad news came out, Per remembered him like this:

He was a magnificent artist, songwriter, singer. My early teenage life was coloured in the most unlikely shades by Pugh’s magical songs, lyrics and imagination. The “Pughish” album was my favourite. I sat in the eighth row at Halmstad Theatre when the “Ett steg till” tour came to town and was completely mesmerized. One of the greatest moments in my career is when Pugh read the stanza “Mina damer och herrar, det är gyllene tider för rock’n’roll” so that we at Gyllene Tider could use his voice in the intro to the song “Gyllene Tider för rock’n’roll” in 1981. Many years later, in 2004, we had the honour of having him as a support act on GT’s 25th anniversary tour. He wanted me to help him put together his setlist for the tour. I was happy to do that. Amazing, when you think about it.

As a tribute, Per releases a single, Vandrar i ett regn, a cover of Pugh’s song. Mr. G recorded it in April 2023. He says:

“Vandrar i ett regn” was released on Pugh Rogefeldt’s live album “Ett steg till” in 1975. An album that – besides other places – was recorded at Halmstad Theatre in December 1974. I was then fifteen years old and there, of course. Since then I have always loved this song and now that I had the honor to be at a tribute gala for dear Pugh, it felt natural to record and release my own version.

I worked together with pure Halmstad musicians; MP from Gyllene Tider on mandolin, Gicken Johansson on bass and lap steel, Magnus Helgesson on drums and Linnea Olsson on vocals. As icing on the cake, Ola Gustafsson from Norrland has added his fine guitar loops here and there.

I know Pugh heard my version before he passed away and of course it feels fantastic and big. He was a unique artist with exciting and high ambitions where he did not always take the easiest path. Thanks Pugh.

In the June episode of Nordic Rox, the Pugh Rogefeldt special, PG mentioned that the backing vocals on the live recording of Vandrar i ett regn from the double LP, Ett steg till are half crazy. It’s typically Pugh as well. Mr. G says it’s an homage to the Doo Wop ’50s style of music.

The B side of the single is a so far unreleased version of “If I Knew Then (What I Know Now)”. Per says:

It’s basically the same backing track as “Om jag vetat då” from “En händig man”, but with new vocals and no girls around this time. Forgot about it, but found it in my files.

Mr. G will perform at the tribute concert for Pugh Rogefeldt at Cirkus in Stockholm on 18th October.

I’m very proud and grateful to be involved. Pugh has meant a lot to me and my generation. I understand that everyone wants to join. He was unique, a forerunner. I learned so much about how you can stretch languages. That’s what Pugh did. I learned that there are no rules and norms to follow. He was an amazing man. It will be wonderful to pay tribute to him.

Listen to the single on any streaming site (Spotify, Deezer, YouTube)! Pre-order the 7″ vinyl edition at Bengans, Ginza or some other Scandinavian webshop! The vinyl is out on 10th November.

A video to Vandrar i ett regn is also out soon!

Per Gessle about the magic of songwriting and musical nerdiness – interview by David Myhr for Studio.se

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David Myhr did a wonderful interview with Per Gessle about songwriting. The interview appeared on Studio.se in Swedish.

In the intro, David mentions that after ABBA, Roxette is Scandinavia’s biggest music export ever with their 75 million albums sold. Per Gessle’s success as a songwriter is monumental. He is one of only eighteen songwriters who as a sole songwriter had more than two No. 1 hits on Billboard’s Hot 100 list.

The guys met in Stockholm, in Per’s office on Strandvägen and talked about songwriting. Per thinks it’s always fun. Songwriting is an inexhaustible, hugely complex subject. At the same time, it’s also quite private in a way.

David says it has struck him that for all the incredible success, Per has often emphasized his musical limitations.

Per says:

I’ve always hid a little behind the fact that I was always the worst in the band, musically. Göran and I were always the worst in Gyllene! Because I wanted to write, I learned early on that I always have to work with people who are much, much better than I am. Even in Roxette, I handpicked everyone around me. And everyone was on a completely different musical level than I am. But… they can’t write my songs. I have used the fact that I can’t do many things to find other stuff.

David adds that Per believes that people who become too sophisticated and too good, easily lose the melodies, because they are looking for something else.

PG says a couple of his idols, e.g. Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell, are good examples of people who have overcomplicated their music. He thinks that knowing a little doesn’t have to be a disadvantage when it comes to songwriting. For those old songs that he wrote, “Billy” and “När alla vännerna gått hem”, from 1977-78, he didn’t know what keys and such things were. There he copied his role models without reinventing the wheel.

David says he has noticed that there is sometimes a superstition among some younger songwriters that they should invent something entirely their own, while everyone is in some form of tradition. That even The Beatles listened to Elvis, Buddy Holly or Chuck Berry.

Per says:

Everyone listens to everyone, sort of. You hear Woodie Guthrie when you listen to Bob Dylan… Of course you want to be unique and be yourself. But I wanted to belong to pop, the whole romanticism surrounding the pop world. Long hair on guys. The album covers. To enter another world in the headphones and listen to Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side Of The Moon”. There was an amazing romanticism about pop that wasn’t there in anything else.

Per talks nostalgically about his older brother, Bengt, who made Per as a six-seven-eight-year-old grow up with The Beatles, The Hollies, The Kinks, Lovin’ Spoonful, The Yardbirds and The Spencer Davis Group. To then find his own stuff like The Monkees. He also got into the singer/songwriter genre early on.

PG says:

I was very much a loner when I was growing up and lived a lot in this parallel universe called pop music. For myself. So I could kind of never see myself as a musician or an artist or singing or playing in front of people. It was absolutely not important. However, I was into writing and expressing myself very early on. I wrote lyrics long before I wrote music. I think it came from my mother. She always wrote her own fairy tales for us when we were small and illustrated them. Just for us.

David tells that Per got a Spanish guitar from his mother in 1976 and started playing Leonard Cohen songs fingerstyle. Then he also developed his understanding of both text and chords.

Per tried to translate Bowie’s “Cygnet Committee”. The long, really weird song on “Space Oddity”. And “Memory Of A Free Festival”. He loved that record, but he still doesn’t understand those lyrics. He bought a sheet music and learned the songs because the chords were written in it. He learned C, G7 and so on. But he also remembers his sister sitting and playing “Für Elise” on the piano. PG somehow never connected that (Per hums “Für Elise”) it’s an A minor! He realized it only many years later. Per learned to play the piano from some old lady in Halmstad and thought it was the most boring thing he had ever done in his entire life. Because she never connected that music to what PG was interested in. Had she told Per, “Look at this! Beethoven. A minor, E major, and so on. It’s exactly the same key as “House Of The Rising Sun”, it would have been a little easier. But Per gave up on that. He wasn’t interested in it. He thinks what saved him and made him really take a step forward was when he got to know Mats in Gyllene Tider. But it was also when the punk era came. The new wave. Then it was okay to be lousy and that appealed to Per enormously.

Per about song lyrics

Per talks about inspiration to understand what a song text can look like.

Mr. G says:

Take, for example, “Famous Blue Raincoat” by Leonard Cohen. It’s a letter. It even ends with “sincerely L Cohen” in the text itself. And it’s fascinating that a letter becomes a song text, but it’s not really that strange. If you write a short and concise message to someone, you can repeat the most important thing in the message and it becomes a chorus. It’s not far-fetched. So I mostly think that I hadn’t really found or understood this thing about form, and that it becomes easier if you stay within a form. If you look at, for example, “Billy”, the verses are of different lengths. They kind of stop when MP took over with the guitar and started cranking with his solo.

Song titles as a starting point

David thinks Per is a master of titles and he imagines a song idea often starts with the title. PG says it can start with the title. Titles are important. The title is like the face of the song, what makes one curious. He tells he has an archive of titles or more stanzas than titles that trigger his curiosity.

David says a common songwriting tip is “write down ideas from TV shows or book titles”. He is curious how it works for Per.

PG says:

I do exactly as you say. I have learned – not only because of age – but also for other reasons, that if you come up with something that you think is interesting, you have to write it down or record it. My phone is jam-packed with messages, tunes and stuff. It could be a title or a stanza or something like that. Or a rhythm. You hear something. It could even be that I’m inside a store where they play music in the room. And then I think “damn this sounds good”. But why don’t they do this instead? And then I can record myself humming it. Although changed, in my way. And then time passes. So when I come home and listen to it after three days, I don’t understand anything. I learned that you have to count in first so you understand later where the one is. It can be very exciting. Because there will be something that triggers something in me. Then something else is created from it and it becomes a third thing in the end.

David understands that Per doesn’t like to work as hard on songwriting as many people say you should. Like Benny Andersson who goes to his grand piano every day and sits there week after week.

Per says:

No, I don’t get that. I love to write but I do it as little as possible. Because it must be fun! The most difficult thing for me is if, for example, you write a song in English. And then I realize that it would have been great if it was in Swedish. And then I have to start over. Because I almost always write music and lyrics in symbiosis – roughly at the same time – which means that melodies and consonants and vowels and everything kind of fit together. So when I need to translate, I get so locked into how it really was from the beginning. It takes an immense amount of time and very rarely turns out well. So I try to avoid it, actually.

David says it’s kind of an editor’s job to sit down and sift through all the hundreds of voice memos. He is curious about how Per is doing that. PG explains that as soon as he records an idea, he transfers it to the computer where he has a folder called “workshop”. Beneath that, there is a folder called iPhone and there are hundreds of recordings. Text fragments are in another folder.

When Per is in town or sitting in a taxi, then it’s his iPhone that applies:

If you hear a strange person at Bromma airport singing in the toilet, it’s probably me. I usually call this part of the process “antennas out” and it goes on 24/7.

David says he has read that Per thought Gyllene Tider sounded the way he wanted at first around “Kung av sand” and “Juni, juli, augusti”. According to David, there is kind of a late Tom Petty vibe to that thing that the guys got together with Michael Ilbert.

PG says:

It was something I had felt all along. It’s hard to talk about Gyllene, because we finished so early. Lasse Lindbom, who produced us at the time, also didn’t understand what we wanted to aim at. When I tried to explain something, I couldn’t. But Ilbert understood it immediately.

David wants to know if Per works on a project-by-project basis, so that he didn’t happen to write a GT song in the middle of the Roxette circus.

Per says:

When I wrote Roxette songs, I wrote almost all the songs for Marie. Then there were songs that she didn’t want to sing for one reason or another. It could be that she thought it was a little too pop. But it was difficult to put a finger on where that line was. “The Big L” and “How Do You Do!” it gets a little bubblegum. But it kind of depended on what mood she was in. She loved it when I came up with this “Queen Of Rain” and the bigger songs. And when I tried to do something a bit R’n’B like “Soul Deep” or “Cry”, then she got to stretch that style a bit.

David is curious how Per works with demos.

PG says:

I often do several demo versions of the songs. It also goes in waves. Sometimes I just do acoustic demos. But if I’m going to involve other people, I often do it on synths. Maybe just a little loop or something, so that’s easy to change key then. So I don’t do five hours of work organically and then have to redo everything. I’m trying to find as much of the identity as possible for the song to go to the production level as soon as possible.

Key changes are an effective tool

The guys start talking about key changes or modulations as they are called. There is a variation David has noted in several songs that he tends to refer to as the “Per Gessle trick”. The verse in G and the chorus in A. Then back. He thinks it’s damn effective. “Jo-Anna Says”, “Kung av sand”, “June Afternoon” are just a few examples of Gessle songs where the choruses go a whole key above the verses.

PG says:

It is almost never sought. Or… I don’t think much. Everything is about efficiency in a song. If the melody is cool but ends up wrong, then there are different paths. If there are different singers – for example a boy and a girl – then you can use different octaves. Then it is solved by just the speed. But otherwise, if you want to keep the melodies as they are, you might need a modulation to make it “kick”.

It’s damn neat and that’s lovely. But people skip it! No one dares to change the key. It is such a simple trick that is only in your favor. Because once you’ve learned the song, you can’t hear the song without it. The melody gets better. It becomes a hook just from the speed!

David is curious whether it was usually Per’s experiments that led to these modulations or it was something that Clarence threw in as a hint sometimes.

Per says:

It certainly has happened. But usually they were written that way. There are so many songs that there were no rules! Clarence has probably done a lot of that too. But the songs for Marie that I demo sang on, when I wrote them, I might not have thought that I would sing the lead. Because I sang everything back then. If it was her song, her verse, her chorus and I’m going to sing it, then I have a problem that I have to solve. Both Clarence and Christoffer Lundquist have always been damn nice to help out. Magnus Börjeson too, for that matter.

David asks Per if he is talking in terms of tonic, dominant and subdominant parallel, but Per doesn’t really know what David means by that. Now David sounds like Clarence and Christoffer when they talk. When they sit and analyze something Per has done, they can sit and talk among themselves. PG sits next to them and doesn’t understand anything.

PG says:

I’ve gotten old enough that I’ve learned what I like. That’s also why I’ve always surrounded myself with like-minded people. But when you are in it for a long time, you have to leave your little house sometimes and test yourself and do things. It was probably a little bit of that too, which I think made us have such a relatively long, great career anyway. Because Marie knew her jazz, she knew her blues and Clarence knew his prog rock and Jonas knew his stuff, Jeff Beck tricks. And I knew a little of everything, but not very much.

The beginning of a song

David asks Per to take us into a typical scenario when a song is created.

Per says:

I usually never start writing a song with a title. First comes a musical idea that you think “this is damn hooky” or “this feels great”. Or “I would like to write something in six-eighths”. I’d like to have a certain feel, trying to play around with chords and stuff. And then comes something vague. When you have found a little temperature in what you are doing, you can start looking in your small archive if you want. Or maybe you already have it. While you sit and look for these chords, you might start singing something. Which might be exciting or trigger your imagination in some way. What takes time – much, much longer – is writing lyrics. Because when you get to writing the lyrics, you have quite a lot of music already written. Because otherwise you won’t get to the text anyway. The only time I’ve written music for a finished text is when that text has had another music that I didn’t think was good enough. Then the text remains.

David wants to know more about the process: „You have felt the mood of the musical idea and you may be browsing through your notes for phrases or alternatively start singing along to something. And then you enthusiastically finish writing the melody. Then comes the tough work of finishing the text?”

PG says:

But it can also be the case that the melody is ready, but it changes because I get into a text flow that requires a different melody. Everything works in symbiosis with each other. So it’s not set in stone. It is never set in stone. I also think that you should take that into account when it comes to songwriting, that songs are never ready. When you then play them with another band or with other people, they sound completely different. They are a creature in a way. After all, it can happen that you record a song, and then when you sit and listen to it during the mixing, you think “damn how long this is… we’ll cut out half the verse”. And then you get a completely different text.

David is curious about how Per finishes the lyrics.

Per says:

I have a hard time staying focused so I try to write a text in maybe an afternoon. Or… it’s different depending on how complicated the text is. Some texts are very strong for one’s self and sometimes I feel that I have something on my mind that I want to get down. I’m 90% there, but something is missing. And I don’t know what it is. Then it must take time and at least one night must have passed. And then maybe for breakfast… and then I might not even remember how the song goes. I haven’t worn it out. But then I just read the text straight up and down. That’s how I feel: “Damn it! It’s damn good. ” or “That’s clumsy. That’s not good!” And then I go to my office or to the studio and then I sit down again. I red-mark what I need to redo. So I’m constantly trying to trick myself into being focused somehow. Because I don’t get better from kneading. The song doesn’t get better from knowing it better. On the contrary. I trust 100 percent in my gut feeling, in my spontaneity.

I notice that when I work in the studio with other people as well. What I’m good at is capturing their spontaneity. Because they are not good at it themselves. Because they don’t know what they are doing. Most of them are very good singers and musicians, they just play damn well all the time. But they have a very hard time understanding when they are extremely good. But it suits me just fine. It’s a subjective thing. I remember Marie saying that she always thought she sang best when I was in the studio directing her. Because she didn’t hear it herself. She always sang well, but that stuff that was exceptionally good, she couldn’t pick them herself. And so it is for sure with my stuff. I cannot judge the quality. It means a lot to me. But if it is commercial…? I’m the worst in the world at picking singles. What is a hit? How to write a hit? I have no idea! I’m interested in pop music and it’s in the nature of pop music to be catchy. But I’m not too fond of modern pop music, because I don’t think it’s particularly catchy.

About choosing not to move forward with a song

David asks Per if he is good at killing his darlings.

PG says:

I usually “kill my darlings” earlier than that. It’s very rare that I go so far as to record it, even as an acoustic demo. The reason I do an acoustic demo is because, for example, Clarence or Christoffer say: “We don’t want your bloody demos! Record the songs acoustically and we’ll do the rest. So we’re open-minded”.

David is curious whether Per ever speaks on the subject or gives any type of workshops, teaching songwriting.

PG says:

No, I talk about so many other things all the time. When I release stuff, I don’t really need to talk about it anymore. Then I don’t want to talk too much about being creative. Because it takes away a bit of the mystery, the creativity. I think it’s my thing.

To David’s surprise that he could come and talk to Per about songwriting PG reacts:

I think it’s fun to talk. It’s a little different these days too. Because I do so very little. When I sit in Nyhetsmorgon and talk or do TikTok stuff, I just talk about the new songs and talk about how they came about and I try to remember. Nonsense. But what we’re talking about now is fun!

What makes a good melody

David asks Per what a good melody is.

Per says:

I’m always looking for something that gets me hooked. It’s a kind of rush when you hit it right. I remember sitting in that room writing (points to the office) “The Loneliest Girl In The World” as it came to be called. I was just sitting there plinking and then I started singing this (humming) and thought “how cool is that”. I just felt – like all of me – cool chorus! And then it was like putting together a puzzle. How do I maximize the chorus? And then I wrote the verses that didn’t get in the way of the chorus. And “what’s it going to be called?”. Then this idea “the loneliest girl in the world” came up. And then I thought maybe it’s too depressing. But, no, because sometimes it’s really exciting if you have something dark in a text, although the music maybe is bright. And vice versa. A good example is “Every Breath You Take” by The Police, which everyone thinks is such a super pop song. But there is a hell of a lot of “doom” in that text. There are lots of such examples and I’m not particularly afraid of such things, but it is mostly that it should feel good to sing and that you should be able to write a story around it in some way. And how do you write a story? It’s fact and fiction. You pick things up. For some texts you write maybe three stanzas when you feel a certain way. And those texts might be very powerful for yourself. And you live with them. And then, all of a sudden, when you write something that goes at the same temperature musically, maybe those stanzas fit very well. And then you develop them. It may start with something that is sad. Or something that you think is unfair. Something you think is questionable in your life.

Especially during the Roxette era, I almost always did a so-called “middle-eight”, a bridge. And they were usually super hooky. I’ve always thought that a bridge should always be so good it could be a chorus. Like a B chorus sort of thing. “Listen To Your Heart”, for example, has a very good bridge.

David says „where the key goes up a notch! Nice modulation!” PG says you notice that at a concert. Everyone loves to sing that bridge. There are plenty of such examples. David asks Per if he no longer tries to do such bridges.

PG says:

No, I don’t anymore. Because I tend to keep up with my time. I make the songs shorter and shorter. And then there is almost no room for a bridge. It feels like the time of bridges is over.

David wants to know whether you get better and better the more you write or you get worse and worse.

Per says:

You don’t get better and you don’t get worse. You become different, develop. I will not say “against your will”. But you develop because time goes by. What we talked about at the beginning, it’s good not to know very much. The hardest thing when you are my age is writing uptempo songs. That’s kind of why I wanted to make the new Gyllene Tider album (“Hux Flux”). I know a little too much, I’m a little too sophisticated and usually choose a different means of expression, other types of instruments and other types of tempos. So that’s why it’s been a challenge and you like that sometimes. You can’t write young music when you’re old, but you can write music based on the music you liked when you were young. Although you do it in a different way.

10 things to learn from Per Gessle

1. Listen a lot and let yourself be inspired

– You have listened so damn much. And then you like a certain style. Or multiple styles. And then you make something of it your own.

2. Save ideas

– If you come up with something that you think is interesting, you have to write it down or record it. My phone is jam-packed with messages, tunes and other stuff. It could be a title or a stanza or something like that. Or a rhythm.

3. Always have your “antennas out”

– It’s 24/7. It can happen now as we sit and talk. You might say something that I think “shit, I could use that for something”. Although you don’t notice that I noticed it.

4. Don’t get lost in technology if you’re not interested

– I’m not technically interested at all. So setting up a mixing desk and start working… it takes too much focus for me, so I lose sight of what I’m actually supposed to be doing.

5. Dare to change keys in the songs

– I’m writing Swedish songs right now and I’m currently working on a song where, after the chorus, I don’t want a theme. So then I did a solo that is exactly the same chord as the chorus. Just lowered. If the chorus goes in G, the solo goes exactly the same way just in F. Which then means that when I go back to the original key, you get a lift. You experience it as a key rise to the chorus. And that’s it! But you haven’t raised as all the choruses are in G. You’re tricking the ear all the time like this.

6. Learn what you like

– I don’t like three-part singing. It’s mostly just that when I listen to it, I don’t like it when it gets too thick. When it comes to vocal parts, I prefer fifth harmony. Perfect! Fifth is always the best. And then you might find a major 7th or a sixth that colors in a special way. I like that!

7. Find and keep your essence

– We created the typical Roxette sound from all these ingredients that we come from. I don’t think people realized this until after time has passed. Today, when I hear a Roxette song on the radio, I can think “damn, that sounds special!”. But I didn’t think so at the time. I just thought it sounded like us. At the same time, when we broke through, EMI wanted us to move to Los Angeles or New York. Or at least London to be closer to the industry. But we said we don’t want to do that because then we lose our whole essence. If we remove Jonas and Pelle and Clarence and all of them, we would have played Richard Marx!

8. Dare to play around!

– You can play around and you shouldn’t lock yourself up. At the same time, you have to respect what makes the song strong. It could be that a melody is very strong. So if you want to change anything, you have to do it wisely and with respect. If you now want to max out your song, which everyone wants to, then you have to know what you’re doing.

9. Pick up the feeling and temperature from other songs

– It’s not like now I’m going to write a song like this and it will be the same. But it is the temperature in the songs that you can take with you. That temperature opens like a door in yourself in some way. If I listen to “You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman” and I get into it, I can’t write music like that, but I can write a song with the same feeling, in my own way.

10. Everything leads to the next thing

– My songs are very much me and I live to write songs. That’s what I am. My wife and son and friends will probably sign it. But it also means that everything I do leads to the next thing. Every riff that doesn’t lead to anything allows me to get it out of my system, so I can move on to something else. You learn. It’s a long, long process.

About David Myhr

Besides being a writer, David Myhr is also a songwriter and artist and wants to know more about the phenomenon of songwriting. As a university lecturer, he both teaches and conducts research in the subject. He has discovered that trying to put into words what actually happens in the creative process of writing songs is extremely difficult. But he has just as fully given it to trying to get some of the biggest songwriters to do just that.

For the original article in Swedish and more photos click HERE!

Per Gessle on Nordic Rox – September 2023

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Per Gessle and Sven Lindström recorded the next episode of Nordic Rox in Halmstad. They are featuring one of Per’s favourite bands from the ’60s, a Stockholm based band called Ola & The Janglers. Sven says here comes the 10,000 dollar question: what does jangler mean? PG hasn’t got a clue, but he thinks it sounds cool. Sven agrees. He says they know the „jingle jangle morning” that Dylan had in his lyric and he also thinks he saw some definition that the jangler was some person who was useless in doing something. Sven: „You know, he’s been jangling with this forever.” PG: „Like you.” Sven: „Haha. Exactly. Another version pointed out a guy like you, and that was the dark web version that a jangler was someone who kicked another guy in the balls.” PG: „Alright. Thank you very much.” Sven says that since they are from Sweden, they don’t actually have a clue, they just accept that the band is called Ola & The Janglers.

The guys start off with one of their favourite artists who is on repeat playing on Nordic Rox. It’s Adiam Dymott and the track is from her self-titled album from 2009 and it’s called Pizza.

Swedish ’90s pop, Fishtank by This Perfect Day comes next. It’s a great song, Per thinks, taken from their album C-60 from 1997. Sven asks Per what C-60 makes him think of. PG replies cassettes, of course.

The latest and greatest single from First Aid Kit called Turning Onto You is next. It’s taken from their latest album Palomino.

Before the guys sink their teeth into Ola & The Janglers, they take a look at Gyllene Tider and play Sunday Driver, Yea. The English lyrics to a song that Per wrote for his Swedish band. PG explains that the album is in Swedish, but one song was originally in English, so he decided to make an English version as well. Waking up the power pop monster that’s been dormant for a couple of years, Sven says. As they mentioned on the last show, the band has been on a successful tour around Sweden for 6-7 weeks, winding up doing some festivals in Finland and a big show in Norway as well.

Chris Craft No 9 by The Shanes comes next. The Shanes is a ’60s band from the northern part of Sweden. Sven thinks that this is one of the best original Swedish pop songs that came out in the ’60s. Mr. G thinks it still sounds good. Sven says no wonder, because it was recorded at the Abbey Road Studios. Per thinks it’s cool.

Endeavor by Timo Räisänen, a great indie track from the mid noughties is played next.

Speaking about cool bands, Ola & The Janglers from Stockholm, Sweden are today’s featured artist. The guys play 4 tracks from them that sort of paint a picture of what they were all about. Per says he liked this band a lot when he was a kid and he actually had their first album, Surprise Surprise. It was based on this old Rolling Stones song called Surprise Surprise. It was Ola & The Janglers’ first hit record in Sweden. It brought them into the Tio i topp show (Top10 show). That made them instant pop stars in Sweden in 1965. They were a great live band as well and had a very distinctive sound, because they had this Hammond organ, which was great. Johannes Olsson was an amazing player and they sounded really good. Most of the stuff they did was original material, but at the same time, many of their hits were cover versions. But they had a really, really gifted songwriter in the guitarist Claes af Geijerstam. He eventually became the front of house guy for ABBA. When ABBA did their world tours in the late ’70s, he was the front of house guy. And to add even more credentials, he won the Eurovision Song Contest in Sweden with another guy called Göran Fristorp in 1973. Sven says Per didn’t ask for that kind of information, but he got it anyway. Per says we could have lived without that. Haha. Here they play Surprise Surprise.

The second Ola & The Janglers song was written by Claes af Geijerstam. It’s a 1966 track called Bird’s Eye View Of You. Sven asks Per if he can remember listening to his transistor radio when this came on the air. PG can remember it, he definitely heard this song on the radio when he was young. This is from an album called Limelight and he had that album and loved it. It’s a really cool one, he thinks. Sven says the singer, Ola Håkansson was really original. He could sound a bit punky in the rocker numbers, but also being rather sweet in the ballads. He had this Mick Jagger style, Per adds. You could tell that he was influenced by Jagger. He went on to be the lead guy of the band called Secret Service in the ’80s. Eventually he became a record executive in charge of the TEN record label, which hosts, for instance, Sara Larsson these days. He worked a lot with Robyn as well. He never lost his magic hit touch, he is one of the big guys in the Swedish music industry.

The guys stick to 1966 when Ola & The Janglers were fresh out of school. Sven says Per claims 1966 is the best pop year ever. PG confirms and adds 1971 as well. Sven says he is not totally convinced. He claims 1965 is a contender, but they don’t go into that debate right now. Haha.

Ola & The Janglers made two albums in 1966. The second album was Patterns. It’s a great album too, Per thinks. They did a magnificent version of a Jackie DeShannon song. They actually did a couple of Jackie DeShannon songs, but this is Per’s favourite, Come And Stay With Me. A great track. You just get reminded what an amazing songwriter and artist Jackie DeShannon was. Per adds that when you hear this band, it’s a great little pop band. Johannes Olsson who played the Hammond organ made this great sound. It reminds you a little bit of The Zombies. Speaking of The Zombies, Ola & The Janglers did a version of She’s Not There very early on. They were heavily inspired by them. Sven likes the guitar sound here. By late 1965, the guitarist and songwriter Claes af Geijerstam had entered the band. He replaced the original guitarist. Sven thinks he does a really great guitar solo on this track. Per agrees. The ’60s guitar style is all over the place as well, so it just became a really, really good pop band.

Sven says 1966 was a great year for pop music and a very young Per Gessle who was glued to the transistor radio. Haha. The guys wind up the Ola & The Janglers tribute with a song from their first album written by guitar player Claes af Geijerstam. This one was a big hit, the first number one single they had in Sweden. Love Was On Your Mind is a beautiful little pop tune, Sven thinks. Per mentions that the band had an American hit in 1969. They did a cover version of Let’s Dance by Chris Montez and it peaked at No. 92 on the Billboard chart. One of the first Swedish artists entering the Billboard Hot 100.

Garage rock explosion delivered by The Peepshows in the shape of Cheap Thrills comes next. Then it’s Power Man And Astro Girl by Kristjan Eastman. Snack by Sydkraft from Halmstad, Sweden is played next. A short lived new wave band active in the late ’70s. The song title translates to something between hot air and pure bullshit.

Slowing things down a little bit, the guys play a beautiful cover of Broder Daniel’s Shoreline by Anna Ternheim. The Cat by True Lies, a band from Malmö is next and that wraps up this episode of Nordic Rox.

Cigarettes by Anita Lindblom closes the show, as usual.

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

Thanks for your support, Sven!

Per Gessle on Nordic Rox – August 2023

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In the middle of Gyllene Tider’s Hux Flux tour, Per Gessle and Sven Lindström sat together in Halmstad to record the August episode of Nordic Rox.

Per asks Sven how he is doing. Sven replies he is fine, but he can hear Per is a bit hoarse. It’s because he is touring at the moment, singing four or five times a week, so at his age this happens. Working hard, Sven says. Mr. G says it’s cool, it’s been a great tour. Sven informs that he was there in Malmö and he also saw the premiere in Halmstad and Per seems to be in top shape with the band. PG says it’s a great little band.

Mr. G says he always tells the crowd that this is the 8th summer tour they are doing with Gyllene Tider, his Swedish band and it’s the 5th comeback tour. They disbanded in the mid ’80s and had 5 comeback tours since then. Sven asks Per what he thinks, why they are still so popular. Per says quite a lot of their songs have become sort of classics in Sweden. It’s the back catalogue they are playing. They released a new album a month ago, which is going fine. It’s just that people prefer the old stuff, which PG can understand. It’s the same thing when he goes to watch his old heroes, e.g. McCartney or the Stones or Springsteen. He wants to hear his favourite songs from the past. He doesn’t want to hear the new album.

Sven says he saw Nick Lowe in Malmö half a year ago and somewhere in the middle of the show, he said „I’m now going to say the most dreaded words in show business: and here’s a new song”. The guys are laughing. Per says it’s like that and it’s a bit unfortunate, because for him as a writer, he is always trying to look forward and trying to be living in the now thing. But Gyllene Tider in particular, when it comes to that band, it has become very much a nostalgic act. Which is fine, he is not complaining.

Sven says GT has a new song in English. Per explains he wrote this song in English and when they recorded the new album, he translated it into Swedish. So it’s on the album in Swedish, but they did a version with the English lyrics as well, just for fun. They put it on the B side on a vinyl single. The guys play Sunday Driver Yea.

The next song is He’s Peculiar by Vibeke Saugestad, power pop queen of Norway. Great track, Sven thinks. He says he checked out a few of Vibeke’s albums. Per’s bandmate in Roxette, Magnus Börjeson was playing with her and producing her. PG thinks she is very good.

Then comes Staffan Hellstrand’s beautiful song, Lilla fågelblå, which translates into tiny bluebird. Staffan was on the same label as Per, on EMI. Sven thinks the Swedish garage rock band, The Nomads was playing with him on this one, which made the whole thing a bit edgier than it had been before. Per thinks it’s a great song.

Getting back to Sunday Driver Yea and the new album of GT, Sven mentions that every time Per buys a new guitar, he writes a new song. Per confirms. He doesn’t really buy that many guitars anymore, but every time you pick up a new guitar, you start to play in a different manner. You find new things on an instrument. He bought an old Gretsch guitar, this sort of square guitar of Bo Diddley style and he plugged it into his little amplifier in his office and out came these guitar riffs. Out of nowhere, it just happened. Sven thought with that guitar, it was destined to become a Bo Diddley beat, but it went the other direction. It went to a punk rock thing instead, Per says. He doesn’t know why. It’s just the way it goes.

Sven says GT is going to finish off their tour in the upcoming weeks with a majestic gig in Gothenburg on 5th August. Per says they are playing at the Ullevi football stadium there and it’s the fourth time they play there. It’s a big venue.

Making a soft transition to the next song, Sven mentions that the next song is by Tages, a group from Gothenburg. Per thinks Tages was probably the best Swedish band in the ’60s.

They wrote their own material most of the time and they were a great band. Every Raindrop Means A Lot is a brilliant song even today, PG thinks. Sven says they looked rather cool. He thinks they went over to London to Canopy Street to get their gear. They really had a sharp mod look to them. PG agrees. Sven says Tages is probably the worst group name in the pop world in Sweden in the ’60s. It’s an old Swedish name dated by far already then. But he thinks they chose this for ironic purposes, because nobody else would come up with a name like that. Per thinks maybe someone in the band had Tages as a second name. Sven says they have to check that out. Anyway, the song is brilliant Swedish pop from 1967.

The next track is Say Lou Lou’s latest single, which is a cover of the old Kate Bush song, You’re The One.

Here comes this episode’s special. The guys feature Teddybears with four songs. Sven asks Per what his relation with Teddybears is. PG says he didn’t really know anything about them until they had their first hits. He knows they started in the early ’90s, but it was later on that he heard about them, the Punkrocker song. They have an album called Rock ‘n’ Roll Highschool, which Per thought was really cool. Sven explains that that was the album they broke through in 2000. It was actually their third album. Sven says neither he, nor Per is into the metal world or too much in the hardcore punk world, but he just checked them out a bit and it’s interesting to see how they are described. They started out as a grindcore band in 1991. Sven says then you question yourself, what’s a grindcore band. Per says he hasn’t got a clue. It’s an extreme form of hardcore punk and metal with a connection to both death metal and crust punk, Sven informs. The guys don’t get any wiser by this info though. Haha. The Teddybears made two albums in the early ’90s as this kind of grindcore band until somebody came up with a brilliant idea that maybe they should change style. Then they got a very distinct sound to them when they had their breakthrough with Punkrocker and all those songs that the guys are going to listen to, Cobrastyle and Rocket Scientist. These sounded very typical Teddybears. It’s a bit hard to describe the style. It’s rock and it’s also a bit of pop. There is a bit of electronica to it too. And it’s an interesting, very individual, personal style. Great productions as well, PG adds. So here comes Punkrocker, the song that dominated the Swedish airwaves in the early noughties.

The next song is only 14 years old. Get Mama A House is a brilliant track from 2009, Per thinks. Great single and typical of the Teddybears late style, Sven thinks. They got their inspiration from Jamaica. But they have influences from and you could hear Devo a lot, Per adds. Sven agrees, you can hear all these electronic sounds. Almost like toy sounds. Per always loves these productions. He finds them cool. The weirder sounds of the new wave stuff, Sven says. When the band performs, they hide themselves behind gigantic bear masks. They look really cool. Per doesn’t really know how they look for real, but it doesn’t really matter. The brothers Jokke and Klas Ålund are in the band. Per knows Klas produced Swedish singer Robyn and he also worked with Britney Spears.

Get Mama A House is featuring Desmond Forster. One of many collaborations of Teddybears. They always seem to collaborate with a lot of interesting artists. On the album called Devil’s Music in 2010, they worked with The Flaming Lips and The B-52s. Rocket Scientist, the opening track on that album they did with American rapper Eve. This could be their best song for Per. It’s a brilliant, very cool track.

The 4th and final song on this episode’s special is Cobrastyle. Proof that things can only get better, especially if you are talking about Teddybears. The song features Jamaican dancehall musician, Mad Cobra. Sven asks Per how is that for an artist’s name. PG finds it cool. Sven jokes, „your name is Per Gessle. His name is Mad Cobra.” PG says „he wins”. Haha. Mr. G says this song pops up here and there. You hear it in different movies, commercials, computer games. It’s just a timeless style and it’s really cool and very original.

Sven says they forgot to mention that Iggy Pop did the vocals on the American version of Punkrocker. How is that for punk rock royalty!

The special is over and the song the guys play next is I’m Kingfisher’s The Pain Of Happiness. Then comes Kaleidoscope Dream by The Northern Belle.

The last song on the show is Wailing Wall by Todd Rundgren. Per says the big question is, how on earth Todd Rundgren wound up on Nordic Rox. It’s not easy, Sven says, but if your name is Todd and your last name is Rundgren (pronounced in the English way) or Rundgren as Sven would say in Swedish, then it’s easier, because Todd’s father is of Swedish descent. This makes it easier to slip into the Nordic Rox playlist. Wailing Wall is a beautiful song.

The guys thank everyone for listening, then Cigarettes by Anita Lindblom closes the show, as usual.

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

Thanks for your support, Sven!