Gyllene Tider

As you may have seen on our website, we organized two contests to get the chance to win a meet & greet with Gyllene Tider in Halmstad or in Stockholm. Appart from that, many newspapers have organized meet & greet contests and some fans organized these meetings on their own.

The meet & greets are always a nice chance to meet the whole band, get something signed, chat a bit with them and then get a group picture of all the winners and then have a big smile on your face for some hours, days and weeks and I think it’s worth writing about it and spread this good vibe around.

So here are some of the stories!

Halmstad was the first concert of the tour so everything seemed to be very “new”. I gathered all the 6 winners plus two fans from Peru, found Thomas Evensson, who would be taking pictures at the meet&greet like he has done in some occasions in the past and we headed to the meeting point where Cecilia from Live Nation met us to go backstage.

We had to wait a bit longer than planned, so we got to know each other a bit better. And we realized that we were a very international group: Australia, US, Poland, Germany, Argentina, Denmark, Peru and Spain/Austria.

John from USA explained how he got to know about the contest and that he had won.

“In the spring, the idea of taking a summer trip to London came up. My husband and I made our plans and when we set the dates I got a crazy idea! Let’s go see Gyllene Tider! We can catch the opening show! I actually convinced my better half to do this, we would fly to Copenhagen the morning of the show, get a car, drive to Halmstad, rock out, drive back to Copenhagen and fly back to London continuing our trip.

When we were in London I saw on RoxetteBlog page on Facebook a contest to attend a meet and greet before the show! Just answer a simple question and see if you are chosen. I sent off my email from my iphone. Then later on I check my email and saw Judith had emailed me… I get to go to the m&g!

Well YEAH! How cool is this? I was stoked to just see the show, now I get to meet the band?!?”

Cecilia from Argentina told us how she got the news that she had won. “It was on the 3rd of July in the morning. I checked Facebook and I saw a message from a friend saying ‘Say hi to the Beatles’. I was half asleep and took a while to realize that I had won. I checked my emails and saw that it was true. I jumped, screamed and could only say “I won! I won!” to the friend I am travelling with.”

Everybody was very excited as it was the first time to meet the 5 guys for some of us. Including myself.

Finally it was the time to go in. The m&g took place in the same building we met Roxette back in 2010. The location was a bit dark to take good pictures, so we moved outside. After some minutes the 5 guys showed up and greeted us with a smile.

The first to approach us was Micke Syd, who took some time to talk with all of us. He seemed to be very excited about the tour premiere. Göran explained that he was feeling a bit sick, but ready to rock. Per was in a happy mood, joking with some of us.

“I had the DATPR LP with me, I wanted to have it signed inside. When Per came to me I was holding the LP in my hands, he looked at the LP, then he looked at me, then again at the LP, ‘Your shirt has the same colour than the LP. It fits very well, you are melting with the LP’, he said. He was probably waiting for a reaction from my side, but I couldn’t bring out any intelligent answer to his comment. Celestte tried to help me out with a comment, but I don’t remember anymore what she said. I think then I just said something like ‘I can hide behind the LP if you want’ and we all laughed,” tells Nicole from Germany. “It was a great experience, thank you for making this possible!”

And that was it. We were guided back to the concert area, everybody wearing a big smile.

“Per Gessle just gave me a high 5!” tells John. “And the show was terrific”.

“The whole band was in great mood, it was a great experience, thank you!” says Cecilia from Argentina.

The m&g in Stockholm was … different. It started off with the fact that the security staff would not let anybody with a seat ticket into the standing area, where we were to meet Cecilia from Live Nation. After some talking and showing some of the emails I had exchanged with the management they finally let me in. There I met the 4 winners of the contest, Tomasz from RXB and two fans from Argentina I was asked to collect for the m&g. Thomas also joined us, he would be taking pictures this time around too.

This time there were two more groups waiting to meet Gyllene Tider: the winners of the Aftonbladet contest and some sponsors.

We had to wait a little bit this time as well, but we all have stories to tell so we spent the time sharing our concert experiences. We were again a very international group: Poland, US, Switzerland, Sweden, Spain/Austria and Argentina.

The new Tele2 Arena is rather big, so we had to walk through cables and a big backstage area to get to the room where we would meet the band. Once there we were split in groups and given the instructions: we would stand in a line as usual, get our items signed and then we would take a group photo. This time we also got a Gyllene Tider postcard from EMI in case we wanted to have that one signed.

Everybody seemed to be interested in the m&g because when the guys showed up, I could count at least 3 people (from EMI and Åsa) filming the event with their smartphones. Cecilia from Live Nation explained that we were the group of winners of the RoxetteBlog contest, and Per smiled and said “Great website!” and went on talking to each of the fans. Micke Syd was the last one to join, he knows Thomas Evensson and he always jokes with him “YOU again?” he said to him when he saw him taking pictures, “don’t they have any other photographer?” – well, it’s my fault to keep asking Thomas if he can take the pictures of the M&G if I know he is around. He is doing a great job with that as you can see!

I was asked to take the group to a side right after the picture, so I was not standing in the line this time, but watching from aside. It all went so quick that I don’t even know how I ended up in the picture, I think Bo just said I should be on the picture too and put me where you see me ?

After that we moved to one side and waited until we were showed our way back to the venue.
“it was great to meet them, I never thought I would meet the 5 of them like this, thank you!” said Christine from Switzerland.

Jorge and Sebastian from Argentina met the band in Örebro.

Two fans from Argentina, the four Spanish funny fans (Mariana, Alex, Estanislao and Rosa) responsible for cheering up the band and the front rows with their crazy wigs and Sandra from Germany who is going to all their concerts met GT in Gävle.

“The meet & greet in Gävle came totally unexpected for me. When I got the message from Judith I was very surprised…” tells Sandra, “the M&G went smooth, I used the opportunity to thank Micke for his help in Jönköping when he tried to fix a problem with the car of a friend. It was very nice and different from what I expected.”

Sandra also got the chance to get her car signed by all the guys in Skövde. MP, Anders and Göran finally signed the car after the concert thanks to the help of BoJo and Johan from Show Security Sweden. “Awesome sommar, awesome memories. Tack alla!” says Sandra.