Per Gessle was a guest of Gry Forssell med vänner on Swedish radio Mix Megapol on 30th November. You can listen to the morning show HERE and listen to the 20-minute-long chat from 20:10 into the program.
Gry welcomes Per in the studio by saying he has done everything from tear-jerking ballads in Swedish to international dance music. PG thanks for the warm welcome and to the question how he is, he replies he feels absolutely wonderful and it’s so much fun to be there. He mentions the radio has a nice Christmas tree. Gry explains they play Christmas music now all the way until Christmas to get into the right mood. She thinks it might be considered a bit of a jumpstart with Christmas decorations, but now after the First Sunday of Advent… Per thinks it’s totally fine. Gry is curious if Per has already decorated and the answer is a strict no. Then Gry asks if he will decorate and the answer is no again. Gry asks if Per is the Grinch. Haha. Per says he is bad at that sort of thing, but he thinks it’s kind of cozy. Gry is shocked how someone can make Christmas music and not be a Christmas decorator. She thinks it’s cheating. Per agrees and informs he wrote his new Christmas single in June. Haha.
One of the program leader guys says he found Sweden’s strangest word. It’s „nja”, the mix of „ja” (yes) and „nej” (no). He is wondering how it can be a word, both no and yes at the same time. Per thinks it’s typical Swedish.
Gry asks Per what he is thinking about today. Mr. G replies that it is so early. When he woke up this morning he was wondering what planet he was on. He tells he is not a morning person, but it got better over the years. Gry is curious whether Per stays in bed after waking up or gets up immediately. PG says he is up right away, otherwise it may get a bit too cozy. Haha.
Gry tells the listeners that they will play Per’s new Christmas song, but first she wants to hear about It Must Have Been Love, if it’s true that it’s a Christmas song. PG tells it was written as a Christmas song in 1987. They tried to get abroad with Roxette, also to Germany for example, but they said they couldn’t play anything from Roxette on the radio. They suggested that he should write a Christmas song to make it maybe a little easier then. So he wrote It Must Have Been Love and played it for them, but they didn’t like it at all. So it was released in Sweden only and became quite big at Christmas 1987. Then it was forgotten and later it appeared in Pretty Woman in 1990 and the rest is history.
After playing IMHBL, Gry tells sometimes you have to be happy that a song comes to an end because her colleague asks stupid questions. He asked Per about Gyllene Tider and reggae. Gry apologizes for the question and they are laughing. Per says they tried to make some kind of reggae version of Flickorna på TV2 and När vi två blir en, but it didn’t go too well. It was a bit of Halmstad reggae.
Here Gry reads a listener’s letter who asks for advice. She is 26 and has been going out with a guy since months, but she hasn’t told him about her past that she was a drug addict. The guy made it clear he hates drugs. She asks advice whether she should tell it to the guy or wait with it. Gry and Co. are discussing the topic and think the girl should tell her boyfriend about her past. Per thinks so too and also thinks it sounds like a quite tough relationship. They discuss that the guy thinks how can someone be so stupid to take drugs, but the girl also thinks it’s stupid, because she has stopped taking drugs. So they actually think the same. Attitude towards things is not really that simple that you can judge like that. Per thinks he shouldn’t be a hobby psychologist.
Gry tells it’s completely impossible to find scandals around Per Gessle. She doesn’t know whether Per is not involved in any or he is just hiding them very well. Per says he is very good at keeping his scandals a secret. One scandal Gry heard about, she says. Per says, „shit, what’s her name?” Haha. Gry says her name is Tylösand. She heard that Per has never bathed in Tylösand. PG says it’s true. Gry can’t believe it. Per says he has never gone down and dipped his toes in. He explains it’s because his father and grandfather were plumbers and they worked in Frösakull, so when he was a child in the ’60s and ’70s he was hanging out and bathed there. He had no close relationship with Tylösand. He was around 19, 20, 21 years old when he went down there and went to the nightclub to fool around a bit. It’s also the case that Gyllene Tider became big when he was 21 and after that it wasn’t really possible to just go down to the beach.
Gry asks Per about PG Roxette’s Christmas songs. The B side of the single was a song he wrote in 2013 for a musical that never happened. So it was lying around and matured a bit. It’s a very nice ballad, but then he thought he would write an uptempo song just out of the blue and that’s the one that became a single. Gry is curious how Per got the Christmas inspiration in the middle of summer. Per says you don’t need anything special, just to put on Santa’s hat at home. They are laughing. It’s just that you think and try to write something that is a little bit festive and lovely. Gry thinks it’s sweet that Per thinks about the single as an A side and B side thing, even if he also released it digitally. Per says it’s a sign that he is getting very old.
Gry asks Per what his first vinyl was. It was an LP by The Kinks, The Kink Kontroversy. He bought it in secret from his brother who needed money for cigarette.
The guys also talk about the happy news that Gyllene Tider goes on tour next summer. It’s called Hux Flux. They ask Per if we can expect new songs as well. PG says absolutely, there is a brand new LP already recorded. It will come out in spring and it’s also called Hux Flux. Gry says she doesn’t want Per to get her wrong, but all those who bought tickets and went on their farewell tour and stood at the front and cried and said, „now we’re part of something historic”… Do they ask for their money back now? Haha. Per says no, he hopes they had a nice evening. Mr. G says it’s an interesting discussion, though. What actually happened is that the pandemic came. It was Micke Syd at the time who thought they should do their last tour in 2019. And then when the pandemic happened, all of a sudden it felt like they might come up with something, do something more together and it started then with Per writing a bunch of songs for the band and they recorded them. It turned out to be a damn good record. Now they are going on tour again.
Here they play Wish You The Best For Xmas by PG Roxette.
Gry asks Per to tell a true and a false happening from his life. They will try to find out which one is true. Per says he has prepared a bit ambitiously for this, so instead of a statement he asks the question whether Gyllene Tider has ever been called Roxette or not. Per continues with a little explanation that in 1985 Gyllene Tider was over. It took 9 years until 1996 before the first comeback happened and the last album that Gyllene Tider recorded was in English. It was called The Heartland Café. This album was released in the US and Gyllene Tider was marketed under the name Roxette. True or false? The radio gang finds this question exciting. In 1985 they took a break, then in 1996 they came back. Per says it was with those songs, Juni, juli, augusti and Gå & fiska! Someone thinks it’s true, someone thinks it’s false. Someone thinks it was such a detailed story that it must be true. Per tells in the end that it’s true. Gyllene Tider’s English name was Roxette back then. Gry asks how come she didn’t know about it. Per says because she doesn’t read books about him. They are laughing. Per says Marie and he started Roxette one year later. The idea for the name came from a band Gyllene Tider listened to a lot, Dr. Feelgood, an English pub rock band. They have a song called Roxette that they all loved, so they took their name from that song.
Gry and Co. thank Per for coming to the show and hanging out with them. They wish Mr. G a nice Christmas break. Per wishes the same and thanks for inviting him and for the good sandwiches. Gry wishes Per a nice Christmas in Halmstad and asks him to come back to them before the GT tour.
Still is from Per’s Xmas single teaser video.