Per Gessle

Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle on the album related to Kjell Andersson’s book

by

Kjell Andersson, former Head of A&R and producer at EMI Sweden publishes his autobiography, Ingen går hel ur det här – Mitt liv i den svenska musiken on 8th February. Over 40 years in the music industry, Kjell worked together with many of Sweden’s greatest artists. To name a few: Per Gessle, Gyllene Tider, Marie Fredriksson, Roxette, Mauro Scocco, Eva Dahlgren, Wilmer X, Björn Skifs, Ulf Lundell etc.

Besides the book, an album is also released where Kjell’s artists offer interpretations of mainly each other’s songs. What a cool idea to create an album like this! Title is Ingen går hel ur det här – Sånger från Kjell Andersson’s liv i den svenska musiken. You can listen to it HERE (after midnight your local time)! It’s very probable that this is a digital release only.

Tracklist (songs related to Marie or Per are in bold)

  1. Plura & Mauro Scocco – Nånting måste gå sönder
  2. Magnus Lindberg – Jag saknar oss
  3. Mauro Scocco – Ljusterö
  4. Andreas Mattsson & Tomas Andersson Wij – Landsvägspirater
  5. Johan & Jessica – Vägar
  6. Peter Lemarc – Sara-Li
  7. Per Gessle & Helena Josefsson – Sniglar oh krut – original: Ulf Lundell (1975)
  8. Basse Wickman – Spelmannen
  9. Marie Fredriksson – Här och nu – original: Basse Wickman (1988)
  10. Nisse Hellberg – Efter stormen – original: Marie Fredriksson (1987)
  11. Toni Holgersson – Om du kunde se mig
  12. Dan Hylander – Ännu doftar kärlek – original: Marie Fredriksson (1984)
  13. Niklas Strömstedt – På väg – original: Per Gessle (1983)
  14. Staffan Hellstrand – Rialto
  15. Lisa Ekdahl – Med kroppen mot jorden
  16. Björn Holm – Hemma till slut
  17. Triad – Den sjunde vågen – original: Marie Fredriksson (1986)
  18. Pernilla Andersson – Dina röda skor

While the recording of Per’s Lundell cover sounds recent, Marie’s recording of Här och nu is most probably from the end of the ’80s, judging by her vocals. Great to hear something so far unreleased by her! Per and Helena sound very authentic on the Lundell cover. This song would well fit the En vacker… sessions in their interpretation.

Covering a Marie song is always a challenge, I would say, and it’s very interesting that all 3 songs of hers are covered by male artists on this album. Triad (Niklas Strömstedt, Lasse Lindbom, Janne Bark) did a great job by interpreting Den sjunde vågen and Niklas Strömstedt’s cover of På väg is also very nice (he wrote the music to it anyway). Niklas already released this song as a duet with Per on his En gång i livet album.

Kjell’s book will for sure be an interesting reading as well!

Update on 9th February 2021: Unfortunately, both Marie’s and Per’s cover disappeared from the streaming sites. Per says: “There was a misunderstanding concerning the master rights to the songs. I’m sure “Sniglar och krut” (and Marie’s song) will pop up somewhere else down the road.“

Per Gessle contributed to the book The Beatles – Album by Album

by

Per Gessle contributed to a book, The Beatles – Album by Album: The Band and Their Music by Insiders, Experts & Eyewitnesses, published in 2019. It’s an original telling of the Fab Four’s story. This informative work tells the story of John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr from the band’s formative days in Hamburg to the split in 1970.

General Editor is Beatles insider Brian Southall, a former Press Officer at EMI (dealing with the Beatles’ solo projects) who began writing about music in the 1960s on a local newspaper. He published his first book – the official history of Abbey Road Studios – in 1982.

For this book, Brian gathered a team of experts – including former Apple Records CEO Tony Bramwell, singer Steve Harley, Sir Tim Rice and producer Chris Thomas – to write about each of the band’s record releases, from Please Please Me to Let It Be.

The English edition of the book is available HERE for example, but it’s also published in other languages.

It’s a very informative and well-edited Beatles book including tons of photos from studio sessions, live appearances, travelling etc. You’ll find info about each one of the Beatles albums including what the Beatles said about them and also what the critics said. Very enjoyable reading not only for die-hard Beatles nerds.

Per talks about the Beatles quite often in interviews and he can’t really put together a podcast top list of his favourite songs in different topics without adding a Beatles hit. His love for the Beatles’ music is neverending and even if you might have heard most of what he tells in this book, it’s always great to read his enthusiastic thoughts on music.

Picture of Per Gessle published in the book

PG about Rubber Soul

Per says in the book that he loves the sleeve because he loves John Lennon’s jacket. He has the cover picture by Robert Freeman in his office. He thinks the album has a very cool title.

’Norwegian Wood’ is one of my favourite tracks, then ’Think For Yourself’ with the fuzz guitar and ’Girl’ because of that magic Lennon voice. There were three writers but there were also three singers, which meant you never got bored with their sound.

Per thinks maybe the reason they were able to do all their music in such a short time was because there were three generators. They had so much energy and so many ideas that maybe they just had to pour it out. Per says in the book that we will never see that sort of output again in our lifetime. He also adds that pop music’s essence is to reflect the era when it is born.

PG about Revolver

I always say 1966 is the best year for pop music – and that’s because of ’Revolver’, which is such a great album. ’And Your Bird Can Sing’ is my favourite track and ’Taxman’ is such a great song. ’Here, There and Everywhere’ was played at my wedding; and they make it sound simple but if you try to play it, it’s really complicated.

In the book Per shares that he thinks it’s almost a perfect album and loves the sleeve by Klaus Voorman. He thinks this one is much heavier than Rubber Soul and it’s the last album where the songs were classic Beatles pop music but still had that edge in the production and the sound.

The guitar sound is heavier, it has much more rock to it than ’Rubber Soul’, which is much more of a pop record; and I think that’s what appeals to musicians and writers about ’Revolver’ – the hardest thing to do as a writer is to come up with a great pop song and make it raw, make it rough.

Mr. G tells in the book that in 1981 Gyllene Tider was the biggest band in Sweden and they released a special EP with four cover versions including the Beatles And Your Bird Can Sing, which he translated into Swedish and thinks it sounds really terrible. They tried to make it similar but weren’t capable. [GT’s cover is ‘Och jorden den är rund‘ from the ‘Swing & Sweet’ bonus EP to ‘Moderna Tider’. /PP]

We were in our early twenties and it was just like a throwaway thing – you could do that back then, just after punk and new wave – but today you can’t really touch that stuff.

PG about Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

In the book Per tells wherever you went, when it was released everyone played it, no matter where it was. It doesn’t happen today with any artist.

PG about The Beatles (The White Album)

Musically, I remember ’The White Album’ the best as I was nine years old. It was just an amazing record. It was so mesmerizing. I was really into pop music very early on because I had an older brother who showed me around pop music. I must have first heard it when it first came out: my brother would have bought it when it came out.

Per tells the author The White Album was so cool and Dear Prudence is his favourite song. He also always loved Cry Baby Cry.

There is some rawness to that album that is very appealing to me; and it felt like it was a wild album after ’Sgt. Pepper’ was more controlled.

Mr. G says in the book that everything about the album was special. He mentions Richard Hamilton’s white sleeve and the fact that it wasn’t too common to have lyrics printed with the album. Since English is their second language, being able to read the lyrics while hearing it was great.

I still have an original numbered album. The cover is a blank page and it goes so well with what the album is all about – it’s a blank page and was so different from ’Sgt. Pepper’.

Per thinks it was a magical record that opened up your imagination a lot. Not releasing any singles from the album is the opposite of how it is today and how it was in the fifties when it was all about singles.

Mr. G tells in the book that Benny Andersson from ABBA said once to him that the only song that he wished he had written was Martha My Dear and Per can understand him very well.

To be able to write and play it you have to have a certain musicality that you can’t really learn, it has to be inside you.

He adds:

The track ’Revolution 9’ was unbearable when you were nine years old but looking back it was the perfect follow-up to ’Tomorrow Never Knows’ and ’A Day in the Life’. Back then you had never heard anything like it before and that was obviously the only track you skipped when you played it.

Per says in the book that the production on The White Album is much more raw than Sgt. Pepper.

There is a hint of studio tricks but there’s also ’Helter Skelter’, which is like a jam session and ’Back in the U.S.S.R.’, which they could have played live just the way it was recorded.

Front cover of the book

Per Gessle on Nyhetsmorgon

by

Per Gessle was one of the guests on Nyhetsmorgon, TV4 this morning. He entered the studio after Jubël (Sebastian Atas and Victor Sjöström), a Swedish duo originating from Halmstad performed their song, Someone. Per mentions how good they are and shows thumbs up to them. Program leader Jenny Alversjö asks Mr. G if they worked together and Per tells that for example, in 2018 they wrote music together for Name You Beautiful, the official song for the World Table Tennis Championship in Halmstad.

Jenny asks Per about Christmas. PG says it was calm of course. It’s been a quite long, boring time for everyone, Per thinks. Then Jenny tells there was the Late Night Concert on TV4 in December and it came as a consolation in the darkness when we needed it most. Per tells it was fantastic. They’ve been sitting isolated for such a long time and couldn’t play and even if there was of course no audience for this event, it was fun to rehearse and meet the band. It was fun to play in an acoustic arrangement, he thinks it’s always special. It was like finding new ways for the songs and certain songs fit this intimate format, e.g. Tycker om när du tar på mig or Listen To Your Heart. He tried to pick songs from Roxette, Gyllene Tider and his solo career. It was exciting for him.

Jenny asks how it works not to strip down something that is the core of the song. Per says the core things in his songs are most often the lyrics and the melody, so this way one can even put these elements more into focus.

Here they show some parts of the concert and Jenny tells it was incredibly nice. She asks Per how he picked the songs for this event. For this concert Per says he tested 10-15 songs, maybe more and he simply chose the ones that felt best. One can feel it that some songs just don’t work in a toned-down version. The Look, for example, would have been quite meaningless to be played there.

Jenny tells Per has Billboard No. 1 songs and sold millions of albums and she is curious about Mr. G’s relationship to music today. Per says it’s quite unchanged. Music has always been his thing and he has never thought of music as his job.

Jenny asks Per about his plans whether he is thinking about new things or planning to work with his already existing catalogue in the way we could see him at the Late Night Concert. Mr. G says partly this and that. He thinks he has always had a very good setup: Gyllene Tider, which is a certain type of power pop, Roxette, which is a totally different style also productionwise, his solo stuff, which is more lyric-based, more of a singer songwriter style and Mono Mind, which is also a totally different music. He used to say there are different things on the same tree and it fits him very well, so he can do diverse things.

Jenny asks Per whether he had done everything he wanted to do or there is still something he dreams about. Mr. G says he has no special dream, he just wants to keep going with all what he is doing and wants to see what happens, be curious and test things.

Jenny asks how Per finds inspiration and where his creativity comes from. Per says it’s his way to express himself. He expresses his personality and creativity through music and texts, so it comes by itself in a way. Many think that he ”goes to work” at 9 and plays the piano and the guitar for 6 hours, but it doesn’t work for him like that. He writes down just what he must write down and it’s when he has something that must come out. It can be a melody or an idea or a text.

Jenny asks Per about the secret of being a hitmaker and if he feels it when he writes a song that it would become a hit. Per says it’s been long since the last time he wrote a hit. Pop music has changed so much and he sticks to his roots, so he is not a modern hitmaker anymore. He says there are so many things that have to work for a song to become a hit. It’s not just the song itself, but it’s also about timing, cooperations, luck and a thousand other things that should work at the same time. Regarding certain songs, e.g. The Look, when they recorded it in the studio in the 80’s it felt that it was very special, but that it would become No. 1 in 30 countries, you never know in advance. It Must Have Been Love was a very good ballad and then it became part of the movie, Pretty Woman and it became such a monster hit. Coincidence also plays a big role, Per says.

Jenny mentions Marie passed away more than a year ago and is curious how it is to play Roxette songs without Marie. Per says it’s terrible that Marie is not there anymore, but he feels that the music lives on and he sees that all around the world. He still wants to play these songs, they are such a big part of his life, more than 30 years of Roxette. He doesn’t want to close that door, but it will be different and he will never replace Marie. Jenny asks Per about griefing and missing Marie. Mr. G says it’s a constant feeling. You can never call her or talk to her again. Now Pelle Alsing, their drummer also passed away before Christmas and it also feels incomprehensible. It’s tough.

Jenny says she also knows Per is working in the studio now and is curious what the future brings. Mr. G says he is recording an English pop album and it sounds a bit like Roxette’s origins. It’s a bit difficult to write uptempo pop songs at his age even if he wrote so many of such songs before. He simply took the challange to write an awesome pop record. Jenny thinks it’s very exciting and Per agrees. He has no clue when the album is out, but he plans to release it this year. When it’s ready.

Stills are from the interview.

Per Gessle to release Late Night Concert

by

This year’s surprise of Per Gessle on his birthday is that he releases his unplugged Late Night Concert recorded at Cirkus in Stockholm on 19th November 2020 without an audience, broadcast on TV4 on 16th December 2020. Besides being available digitally from 15th January on YouTube and all streaming sites, it will get a physical release too. Available on CD from 29th January and on vinyl from 12th March.

Tracklist

  1. På promenad genom stan
  2. Tycker om när du tar på mig
  3. Listen To Your Heart
  4. Småstadsprat
  5. Honung och guld
  6. I din hand
  7. Segla på ett moln
  8. It Must Have Been Love (Christmas For The Broken Hearted)
  9. Ömhet

So it includes all 9 songs played, but the order of them is different to the order in which we could see the beautiful performance on TV4.

Listen to the album on digital platforms from Friday and pre-order your physical copies HERE!

Fab news! It’s really worth a release to be able to enjoy this concert anytime we want to!

A very happy birthday to Per!

Per Gessle on Nordic Rox – January 2021

by

In the latest 2 episodes of Nordic Rox Per Gessle and Sven Lindström got back to playing Nordic music instead of Per’s top favourites. For the fans it unfortunately means much less talking and less insights, but in the January episode Mr. G added some info related to his songs, so I thought to share the transcript here.

The guys are in Per’s Stockholm apartment and Sven tells they have a stack of records in front of them. Per adds there are lots of vinyl singles and asks Sven if he likes his apartment. Sven looks around and tells there are a lot of guitars, lots of records and music books, so what’s not to like.

Per says there will be some Swedish songs on the show and maybe even a Danish song. Sven adds, there will be something new, something old, something borrowed. Per adds something blue. First they have the Sahara Hotnights. Per thinks they are a great band, but he doesn’t think they are around there anymore. Sven tells they took a break, but they made some excellent records while they were kicking. The song they play is Mind Over Matter. Per says he loves that one.

The guys also play Undressed by Kim Cesarion. Per thinks it’s an amazing song. He doesn’t know much about Kim, but he is a Swedish guy and this is a wonderful song. Sven asks what makes the song so special. Per thinks it’s just a great track. Great production and convincing music.

Adiam Dymott’s Black Cloud is also played from her self-titled album. Sven says it’s a Nordic Rox favourite. The guys can’t really agree on how to pronounce her name. Per says it sounds very French. Sven tells she is from Uppsala. The album is produced by Thomas Rusiak, who worked a lot with Teddybears and made solo records as well.

A song by Metro Jets is played too, The Morning Show. David Birde of Brainpool and Magnus Börjesson teamed up for Metro Jets. Magnus played bass in Roxette for many years and now he is in Per’s solo band as well. Per tells he has no hair, but he is a great guy. Haha. This song was the signature song of Hipp Hipp!, a Swedish TV comedy show.

Sven jokes and tells Per now a band called Roxette is coming up, he doesn’t know if Per knows them. Mr. G says he heard about them. The song they play is a demo Per did for 7Twenty7 which was recorded in 1997 and it was written for the Have A Nice Day album. It sounded very different on the album and the demo is like how it was supposed to be. Guitar-driven power pop. Sven says he always preferred this version. Per says he knows it, Sven likes simple stuff. Sven adds it’s because it’s less synthesizers and more guitars. Per explains that for the album they took a different direction, to use more synthesizers and technology. Live they performed it more like how the demo is.

Teknikens under by Wilmer X is played. Per tells they are a great band and explains that the title means „the wonders of technology”. He thinks it’s a wonderful track. Kjell Andersson was the A&R guy at EMI and he was the mastermind when Wilmer X went from the garage rock style to a bit more 80’s production. The song is produced by Dan Sundquist. Per says he loves Wilmer X. Lead singer Nisse Hellberg sings in a very strong Southern accent, which makes it impossible for Stockholm people to understand what he is singing, but that doesn’t matter. It’s got a great attitude and it’s just great songwriting.

The Hives is also on the show, Hate to Say I Told You So. Per thinks they are also a great band and wonders what happened to them. He hasn’t heard anything from The Hives for a long time. Sven says they are not as prolific now as they used to be, but they pop up every now and then.

Hang With Me by Robyn is also played. Per says Sven is the biggest Robyn fan he knows. Sven laughs and says he loves the Body Talk album. Per says he knows and as soon as he looks away, Sven sneaks in another Robyn song, which is nice. Sven says and when he looks away, Per sneaks in a demo from himself. Haha.

Per tells during the pandemic he felt very isolated in the Swedish West coast in his house, so he went into the studio and recorded stuff that he wrote in the 80’s and 90’s and had this grand ambition to play all the instruments himself. It was a stupid idea, he laughs. Then says no, it wasn’t, but after the fourth or fifth song he realized he wasn’t a very good drummer and certainly not a good bass player. So he took some help from some local guys. It turned out to be a great album, it entered the charts at No. 1 in Sweden. Sven picked the first song off the album, Nypon och ljung. Per says he can’t translate it into English, because he doesn’t know the English words for that. Sven says the whole album has a homely feeling. Even if now Per has a great bass player and drummer on the album, he plays the guitar which is all over it. Per says that’s why he wanted to play as much as possible, because he is not the best musician in the world, but he wanted to make it personal. When he plays the piano or the harpsichord or the mouth organ or whatever, it’s him. And that’s what he wanted to do. He didn’t want a fancy production. He picked songs that are still relevant for him at least lyric-wise. Some songs he wrote when he was 23-25. Those lyrics get a different meaning when it’s sung by him in his sixties. You change the point of view what the lyric is all about. Suddenly you get a touch of sentimentality, it’s different with the experience. So for Per it turned out to be an interesting summer. For Sven it’s like Per wrote the songs, now he sings them and in between life happened. Mr. G says he has written almost 1000 songs in his life, these are the registered songs, so when he digged into the archives there were so many songs he forgot about. Some songs he was surprised by and some songs felt like „shit, what was I thinking?”. He realized that he changed his style of songwriting. He made longer songs when he was younger, he edits songs more now when he is older. He is trying to be a bit more efficient nowadays. He thinks that goes with being a musician all your life. Per says that was the story of his life and asks Sven „how about yours?” Haha. Sven says it’s even shorter. They laugh. Sven says let’s listen to the song, which is 2 minutes 35 seconds of bliss. The album’s title, Gammal kärlek rostar aldrig is a Swedish saying, meaning old love never dies. Per took that title because most of the stuff on the album is old and it fits the album pretty well.

Blue Fun – The Robert Palmer Mix by Mikael Rickfors is played from 1984. Per thinks it sounds great and is really cool. He thinks Mikael is an amazing singer. Sven says you can hear it in this version of the song, but in the original version his voice is unfortunately drowned in echo. Robert Palmer just stripped everything down.

Sleeping In My Car in Asha Ali’s interpretation is also played. Per thinks it’s a great version. Sven tells it’s different from the Roxette original. Per says the original choruses are in major and Asha is doing it in minor style.

Melody Club’s Baby is also on the show. Per thinks it’s a very good song. He asks Sven if the band is still around. Sven doesn’t think so. Their Face The Music album was great, Per loved it.

Miles Away by one of Sweden’s best garage rock bands, The Nomads is also played. Sven says Per has just finished playing air guitar. Per admits it, you can’t resist when you hear this one.

I’ve Been Waiting For You by ABBA is on the show. That’s a pretty early track from 1975. Per says it was a good year for the roses. Sven says it has its musical vibe to it, you can almost sense Mamma Mia! is coming up. Per says he loves this track.

She Owns the Streets by The Raveonettes is on. Per says he played it a lot, he loves it. Sven says they are a superb cool Danish duo.

A next song is Inivisible to Her by Brainpool, one of Per’s favourite bands. Mr. G says he misses the original setting of Brainpool. They still exist, they pop up every three years or so, doing something. The setting with Janne Kask as the singer was amazing. Per thinks their Painkiller album was their big breakthrough. It’s a brilliant album produced by Michael Ilbert. Christoffer Lundquist plays the bass. Sven says Per has spent many years in Christoffer’s studio in Skåne. Per says he became one of Mr. G’s cornerstones in his musical life ever since they started in the late 90’s. Per realizes how time flies. 20+ years and Chris hasn’t shaved since 1999. He has got this Rick Rubin look, he says. Sven says he’s got his mad professor look. They laugh and agree that it’s really cool.

The guys threaten to come back whenever you least expect it with more good-looking music on The Spectrum.

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

Thanks for the technical support to János Tóth!