Per Gessle

THE plecs, THE plecs! – special treat on Mr G’s birthday

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I always wanted to see Sandra Knospe’s amazing plec collection. Then I thought this is something that probably everyone else would be happy to see. So I asked Sunny what she would think about presenting her guitar picks on RXB in a separate section and she liked the idea. We immediately started working on this project and it took some time, but now we (Sandra and RXB) are extremely proud and happy to present the PLECtionary.

What other date could we find to publish it, if not Mr G’s 55th birthday? 😉 Have a splendido birthday in the sunshine, Per!

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In the PLECtionary you can find all the plecs – except those few ones Sandra is missing – which are related anyhow to the Rox World.

Hats off to Sunny to take all these beautiful shots. I can tell it’s not easy to take pics of the metallic print on plectrums and sometimes even the base colour of the guitar picks is tricky to be photographed, but as you can see, Sandra did a great job with it. Not mentioning the trivia she shared with us. It’s always a pleasure to work together with PERfectionists. 😉 HUGE thanx again, Sandra and I hope to see the missing bits of your collection here soon!

Click here and check out the PLECtionary! You’ll always find it in the menu above.

 

 

Per Gessle’s cooperation with Hep Stars

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Hep Stars was Sweden’s most successful band in the 60s. Benny Andersson (ABBA) was one of the members of the pop group back then. Actual members are: Svenne Hedlund, Bengan Arenblad, Totte Päivärinta, Todde Stoor and Joffe Enbom. One of their most popular song is ”Cadillac” (based on The Renegades’ ”Brand New Cadillac”). Cool song, isn’t it? Not sure if it’s the same baby and if the cadillac is big & black.

So, the guys are celebrating their 50th anniversary and for this reason, they are releasing an album in 2014 (4th week). Why am I writing about it? Because that album will contain a so far unpublished song written by Per Gessle. There will be 2 singles (”It´s Nice To Be Back”; ”I Wanna Be With You”), but I have no clue if any of these 2 songs is the one written by Mr G. Actually, there is a song with the title ”I Wanna Be With You” on The Lonely Boys album, but I guess it’s not the same, since they are talking about a so far unreleased song. UPDATE: As Per informs, it IS the song from The Lonely Boys… UPDATE (29th Jan 2014): here you can have a listen to it… Ehm… or maybe not if you don’t want to ruin what you have in your mind about this song.)

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This is not the first time Per Gessle cooperated with Hep Stars. When EMI released their compilation album (Hep Stars: 1964-69!), it was Per who compiled those 30 songs the double LP contains. Not sure about the year, since some websites say it was in the early 80s, some others say it was in 1992. Would be cool to know the whole story behind it.

Google helped me to remember an old, fantastic SOAP interview (10/06/2006) with Per done by Jan Gradvall, where besides many many other interesting things he also mentioned that Hep Stars was his first favourite band.

Per said in that interview: “I liked them. I envied my parents that they could see Hep Stars on stage. I asked my mother about this just recently, but she couldn’t remember anything. She is 81.”

“I liked Hep Stars so much that I forced my friends to pretend that we were a band. We stood there with Carrom sticks as guitars and mimed to “Sunny Girl” from Hep Stars and “It’s My Life” from The Animals. But my friends were totally uninterested in music. They thought I was weird.”

 

 

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Another interesting information is that the upcoming Hep Stars album was produced by Mats MP Persson.

MP played and worked together with Svenne several times in the past. You can find some pics of MP and his studio from the past HERE and some new ones HERE. Don’t forget to check the walls! 😉

BBC Four will broadcast a documentary with Svenne and MP in it on 27th Dec.

 

 

 

 

 

Pic of Per is from ”Gyllene Tider sommaren 2013” docu, pic of MP is from Hep Stars / Hep House Records FB site.

Long interview with Per Gessle in Livets Goda

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As Per already informed us some time ago, Livets Goda did a very long and veeery nice interview with Mr G. The December issue contains 16 pages of Per Gessle: awesome interview, 20 important songs, some wine tasting and hot photos of Per. Interview by Anders Enquist, photos by Erik Dahlström.

The magazine is available in Sweden at the newsstands from 10th December, but you can also have your own copy even if you don’t live in Sweden. Here you can buy the pdf version online for 50 SEK. (You can pay even via PayPal.) It is really worth it!

The interview is mainly about Per’s career in the music business, stories about how Gyllene Tider and Roxette started out, his solo projects, the 80’s when he met Åsa (he says it was the best thing that happened back then), The Look, the US, It Must Have Been Love, the Billboard, EMI, later years, Roxette comeback, GT comeback, how he became interested in wines, so briefly, kind of the whole story of his life so far. There are not too many real news in the interview, but it’s always nice to read Per Gessle’s thoughts and what he is saying about different songs, for example.

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THERE IS SOMETHING NEW: Per would like to record an acoustic album with some of his old songs.

Great news! 😉

You surely remember Mr Gessle was talking about the Top20 songs he was setting up for this article in Livets Goda. These are not his all time fave songs, but the ones meaning a lot to him. Here is the list:

1. Nina Simone: Wild Is The Wind
2. Heart: Love Alive
3. Air: Le Femme D’argent
4. Caitlin Rose: For The Rabbits
5. Big Star: September Gurls
6. The Young Rascals: How Can I Be Sure
7. Fleetwood Mac: That’s Alright
8. John Holm: Den Öde Stranden
9. The Beatles: Hey Jude
10. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers: Refugee
11. David Bowie: Lady Grinning Soul
12. Lorde: Royals
13. The Tornados: Telstar
14. Docent Död: Solglasögon
15. Divinyls: Pleasure And Pain
16. Joni Mitchell: Rainy Night House
17. Kenny Rogers: Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town
18. Frank Sinatra: It Was A Very Good Year
19. Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra: Summer Wine
20. The Buzzcocks: Ever Fallen In Love

 

Some probably think that I’m a super-capitalist who is just sitting there and earns a lot of money on nothing, while others think I’m a talented pop craftsman who knows far too much about pop music, a nerd … I don’t know …

There are many things I’m not talented in, but I’m good at melodies and writing songs. That’s what I can do, so I need people who are doing all the other stuff I can’t.

 

He also mentions in the interview that he always thought Marie is the world’s best singer since they met for the first time.

Per’s 5 favourite Roxette songs which are lesser-known (with his comments):
1. I’m Sorry – Great chorus, a hit in Brazil.
2. My World, My Love My Life – A damn good song.
3. It Takes You No Time To Get Here – Some country text and feeling.
4. Opportunity Nox – Our best pop wallop.
5. Sleeping Single – Marie sings amazing. She makes the album.

 

I have no idea why Roxette is still so big. Maybe it’s because of the songs, maybe there is a certain timelessness in many of the songs’ melodies. But why exactly us? Maybe it’s my Swedish poor self-confidence that makes me unable to respond to it …

Regarding the next Roxette tour he says that first Marie goes on tour, but sooner or later there will probably be a major Roxette tour. Bring it on!

 

Per Gessle – Sven Lindström seminar

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Thanks to TV4 Play we could see Per and Sven talking live about Sven’s book ”Roxette – Den osannolika resan tur och retur” at the book fair in Gothenburg. There was no new info during this seminar – we even knew Per has studio hours booked for October. He starts with them tomorrow, but still doesn’t know (of course… 😉 ) whether it is for solo or Roxette or anything else. They were discussing Roxette’s history, how they achieved their worldwide success, how it was with their comeback and how strong Marie is and always was. All what you can read in the book, too.

Funny part was when the moderator asked Per: ”OK. Marie had a great voice, but what about YOU?” 🙂

So no new info, but it was a great promotion for the book, taking into consideration that there were many people attending the book fair and that TV4 provided this live broadcast and surely makes the video available on their website later. We will provide you with a link to it as soon as it is up.

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Screenshot is from the live broadcast.

 

Update 2nd October: Unfortunately, TV4 won’t upload the video to TV4 Play, but Chrissie Röhrs was shooting appr. 10 minutes from the whole 45-minute-long session. You can find her videos here: video 1, video 2, video 3

 

Articles:

Göteborgs-Posten

LitteraturMagazinet article; review

Poplight review; article

 

Göteborg Book Fair – live broadcast

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Sven_L_Roxette_DORTOR_coverAs we already informed you, Per Gessle and Sven Lindström are going to appear at Göteborg Book Fair on Sunday, 29th September. Their seminar about Sven’s book ”Roxette – Den osannolika resan tur och retur” starts at 12:00 CET and has the title ”Roxette – inte bara en joyride” (= Roxette – not just a joyride).

The good news is that you can see & hear them live even if you can’t attend the event in person. Yaaaay! There will be a live broadcast on TV4 Play, which you can watch by clicking HERE. The seminar lasts for 45 minutes. Those who are there in Gothenburg, say hi to the cameras!

Don’t you just love Sundays?