Per Gessle

The May episode of Nordic Rox on Sirius XM was broadcast last night.

Per thinks you can’t go wrong with the Teddybears, so the show starts with one of their songs, Different Sound.

The second track on the program is Song Three Blues by Alberta Cross. Great Anglo-Swedish band with a great singer, Petter Ericson Stakee.

The next song is Titiyo’s Come Along. Still a great song, according to Per.

From Venus to Everyday, the closing track from Atomic Swing’s debut album is next. Per thinks they are a great band. Sven always liked them, they have a sort of different twist to the rock sound. Sven thinks this song is not a hit single at all, but it’s fun sometimes to go into the albums and check out all the tracks. Per’s reaction to this is that Sven is so old. Sven laughs.

Mando Diao starts the next block with Down In The Past from their Hurricane Bar album.

You Can’t Hurry Love by The Concretes is next. Per thinks they are were good.

Then comes I Like It Like That from a strange guy calling himself Son of a Plumber, as Sven says. He adds, ”I happen to sit next to him”. Per laughs. Sven tells it’s one of Per’s many disguises. Mr. G tells this Son of a Plumber project was made in 2005. This track is a little bit more contemporary than most of the other songs on that album. He wrote I Like It Like That for Roxette, but they never recorded it, because it was just written before or at the same time when Marie got ill. So he recorded it for SOAP. He put the drums on one side of the speaker. Sven tells it’s The Beatles way, or Nick Lowe style, Per adds. Cracking Up has got the drums to the left, which is really cool, Mr. G thinks. Sven tells SOAP became a highly eclectic double vinyl album. The whole idea with this project was to pay homage to the music from the early 70’s which Per was raised on. Mr. G really loves that sound and that style. It was the time when he put all his music collection into the iPod, so he just realized there were so many songs he forgot about. He was just getting into that 70’s mood and he wanted to make an album that sounded like that. He spent a month in the studio in the south of Sweden together with two other silly people, very good friends of him, Clarence Öfwerman and Christoffer Lundquist. Sven says it’s amazing that the creative concept came from an exercise of transferring a lot of digital tracks to an iPod. Per says it just became an inspiration. Everyone who’s been raised on music of the 60’s and 70’s knows there are so many songs that you forget about. Songs you loved when you were a kid, when you were in your teens, suddenly they just pop up and you just remember those days. For him, transferring appr. ten thousand tracks into an iPod, there were so many songs he forgot about and suddenly they just came to life again.

Sven asks which are the 3 most fab songs from the 70’s that Per can think of. The 70’s is a very complex decade according to Mr. G, but from the early 70’s he thinks about Metal Guru by T. Rex, Moonshadow by Cat Stevens and Aqualung by Jethro Tull. Sven says Per’s last choice is funny, because it came out in 1971 and earlier they had a discussion about a British journalist, David Hepworth who is writing a lot of books and one of his books was about 1971. He claims 1971 is THE year in rock music. Sven asks Per if he agrees with David. Mr. G says 1971 was an amazing year in pop music: the Blue album by Joni Mitchell, some great Rod Stewart albums, Led Zeppelin IV came out, the solo albums from The Beatles, the list goes on and on. Per says: ”Hey, we’re getting old, man!” Sven reacts: ”And we’re also drifting away from the subject, which is Scandinavian music!” The guys are laughing.

So they get back to more good-looking music and Popsicle is next with Not Forever. Per thinks the band is magnificent. They were founded in the 90’s and Sven asks Per what he thinks about the 90’s in general. Mr. G says it was a hectic decade for him. They had the Roxette circus going on for many years, then he did some reunion stuff with his Swedish band in 1996 and he did some solo stuff and then back to Roxette, so it was a very busy decade. His son was born in 1997 and that changed his life… for a week, Per jokes. Haha. Sven says the 90’s brought some slight change in music, a bit of a harder edge in Britpop wave, which effected Per as well. Mr. G tells they were very much part of the 80’s and when the Nirvana and grunge scene happened in the 90’s it changed contemporary music a bit. In England you had e.g. Oasis and Blur. Per liked that too.

Sindy is also on the show with First Cut from his debut LP, Hits for Kids. The guys say Sindy is one of their favourites. He sounds like he is sitting somewhere in Sweden with his songs, recording them in his own closet or bedroom. He sounds like he is a bit cut off from the current trend of Scandinavian music, creating his own little universe.

Fanny de Aguiar’s Map comes next. Per thinks it’s also a great one.

All Over My Head by Imperial State Electric (feat. Nicke Andersson from The Hellacopters) is next. Per thinks the band is amazing and The Hellacopters is also a great band. Sven says you can hear they are related.

Sven thinks in the 90’s there was a Swedish creation boom and that leads them to Johannes Runemark, an interesting artist. Per tells Johannes is a songwriter and guitar player and wrote lots of stuff for big Swedish names, e.g. Veronica Maggio. He started a solo career under the name Kasino. Per thinks his song, Skriva om dig is really cool, he loves this vibe, this loop just goes on and on. It has a beautiful lyric too, so the listeners have to practice their Swedish. It’s the next song on Nordic Rox.

Per thanks everyone for listening and at the end of the show, before Anita Lindblom’s Cigarettes is played, the guys translate the title of Kasino’s song, „to write about you”, giving a little Swedish lesson, which Sven says is one of the many benefits of Nordic Rox. Mr. Lindström says they will be back with more good-looking music and that can be taken as a promise or a threat. The guys are laughing.

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

Thanks for the technical support to János Tóth!

The April show of Nordic Rox on Sirius XM was broadcast last night. Sven tells they are recording this episode in Per’s apartment in snowy Stockholm. Per corrects Sven that it’s not his apartment, it’s his office and studio. Sven says it looks like an apartment, there are lots of guitars, sofas… then Per asks if he can see any bed anywhere or a bathroom or kitchen. Sven thinks it’s obscured by all the guitars. Haha. Mr. G says this is the place where they make all the powerful decisions in the pop business and he writes all the songs. When he is in Stockholm, this is where he works. Sven tells that right behind him there is a piano. Per says he plays the piano a lot and writes most of his songs on acoustic guitar and piano, trying to make sense.

Sven asks Per what he has been up to lately. Mr. G says he’s been in the studio since May 2020, recording an English album and it’s pretty much done by now. He is doing some mixing and there are 2 tracks more to finish, but otherwise it’s going great and he is very pleased. Sven asks if it’s out this year and Mr. G replies „hopefully, yes”. It’s been a crazy year with the pandemic going on, so he tried to keep busy and forget about the real world.

The guys kick off with ABBA’s I’ve Been Waiting For You from the ABBA album. Per thinks this is the best record of the band. It’s very 70’s pop before the disco thing happened, before it got a little sophisticated production-wise. Hardcore pop music from the mid 70’s. SOS, Mamma Mia and So Long are also on this album.

Then comes Gyllene Tider’s Det kändes inte som maj. Per translates the title, It didn’t feel like May and says you have to practice your Swedish to understand the lyric. It’s from the last album GT did in 2019. Sven says it was GT’s farewell album and the band also did a farewell tour in the summer of 2019. He asks whether it’s definite or there is a door open for another farewell tour. Haha. Per says the world is full of doors, but for now Gyllene Tider is a closed chapter. 4 decades are good enough for anyone.

The next one is Per’s favourite The Cardigans song, My Favourite Game.

Komeda’s Boogie Woogie / Rock ‘N’ Roll is the next song. Per says he never heard this one before and asks Sven where he heard it. Sven says it was a totally insane beer commercial of Spendrups. They made some crazy TV advertising in the late 90’s with comedian Robert Gustavsson. Sven just felt he got to find this song. Per thinks it’s a cool one.

I’m in the Band from The Hellacopters is next. Sven loves this band, he thinks they have a unique sound. They are quite poppy, but hard-hitting with the guitar sound. Per thinks they are a great band with great musicians and great attitude.

Frida Öhrn’s cover of Fading Like A Flower comes next. It’s a classic song by Roxette. Sven asks if Per wrote this song in the office where they are sitting. Mr. G says he didn’t have this office yet in those days. FLAF came out on the Joyride album as the second single in April 1991. It spent the summer climbing up and it became No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 at the end of August. Per says it’s so depressing it didn’t reach the top spot. Sven asks Mr. G if he knows which song kept it out of the No. 1 spot. Per says he hopes it was something good. His guess is The Bangles, but Sven tells it was Bryan Adams, (Everything I Do) I Do It for You. Mr. G says he likes Bryan Adams, but it’s not his favourite song from him. He adds „I’m sorry, Bryan”. Haha. Back to Frida’s cover, Per says he knows the producer, Alex Shield and he informed Per they would do a cover of FLAF. Per thought it was a good idea. It’s got a timeless melody and Alex is a great producer and Frida is an amazing singer. Mr. G thinks this version sounds really cool and it gets a lot of airplay in Sweden.

The Raveonettes’ Endless SLeeper is next. Per thinks they are a magnificent band.

Land of 1000 Dances from Namelosers is also played from 1965. It’s a Wilson Pickett classic. Per says when you’re talking about Swedish pop music, everyone is talking about Namelosers’ version of this song. Sven adds it’s one of the first times they used fuzzbox on a Swedish pop recording. Per thinks it sounds great. Sven asks Per if he knows why they were called Namelosers. Mr. G doesn’t know. Their name was Beatchers (similar to The Beatles, trying to make a word play), but there was a band from Gothenburg called Beachers and they were pissed off because of the other band’s name. There was a pirate radio station in Öresund, Radio Syd and they stepped in to help the Beatchers find another name and arranged a competition. Someone came up with Namelosers and that was it. Per says it’s a great name for a band.

Listen To Your Heart’s brand new live version is next from Per’s Late Night Concert – Unplugged Cirkus performance. Per says he got invited to do an unplugged TV show. Because of the corona thing everything is closed down and the TV wanted to do a show in a very beautiful theatre in Stockholm without any audience. So Mr. G took part of his band with him, they rehearsed 10-15 songs here in his office and took it down to 9 songs from his Swedish stuff, some Roxette stuff and some from Gyllene Tider. Among those songs was LTYH which he thinks is really cool to do acoustically, because it sounds very different from the Roxette version. It’s a classic Roxette song, so they just did a very low key version. Per thinks it’s nice. It wasn’t meant to be commercially released, but everyone loved that TV show, so he decided to put it out on streaming services. It’s coming out on vinyl and CD as well. [So this episode was probably recorded early or mid January 2021. /PP]

Trouble Sleeping from the The Perishers is next. They are one of Per’s favourite bands of the early noughties. Mr. G thinks it’s such a great song, wonderful stuff. The guys say there were so many fabulous Swedish bands in the 90’s and in the noughties.

Sindy’s Next to Nothing comes next. Per thinks it’s fun music.

Brainpool’s Bandstarter is wrapping up the show. Per thinks they are an amazing band, they have so many great songs. Nowadays they play more of a progressive style, but this was the heydays when they did pop music. Sven asks Per if he thinks he could trick them into playing 2-minute songs again. Per laughs and says he doesn’t think so.

Sven closes the show by saying they need to get out of the studio. Per adds „let’s go out in the snow!” Haha.

As usual, Anita Lindblom’s Cigarettes is closing the program.

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

Thanks for the technical support to János Tóth!