Per Gessle

Musical with Per Gessle’s songs

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Teater Halland got green light from Per Gessle to use his music in their upcoming musical “Halland Love Stories”. The approximately 2-hour-long (plus break) musical’s premiere is set to 2nd March 2018 on the Main Stage of Teater Halland in Varberg and then they will tour with it in other theaters of Halland and neighbouring regions in Sweden. There will be 4 actors in the musical.

The theater plans to ask the audience, those living in Halland to tell them their own love stories and from this collection, to Mr. G’s songs they will create a musical which will be a celebration of love.

According to the theater’s director, Anna Sjövall, Per thought it sounded like a very funny and nice idea. The musical will consist of Per’s Swedish songs and it will be a bit like Mamma Mia!

 

SVT talked to Per about the project and he said many of his songs are somehow rooted in Halmstad and the west coast so it felt nice that the theater thought of him. To the question which of his solo songs Per could relate spontaneously to the theme “Halland Love Stories” he replied:

“På promenad genom stan” or “För bra för att vara sant” are very much home for me. There are several songs on my new album (out in April), which also belong to Halmstad. Small town genes never disappear.

Per says he quite often receives international inquiries on various musical projects and ideas. It will certainly happen “down the road” when everything feels right. To the question if he has ever thought about writing a musical Mr. G replied:

No, but I’m still young.

SVT asked Per what songs he listened to more than once this year so far. Per says Linnea Henriksson’s new song “Säga mig” is very good. Bon Iver’s latest album is wonderfully weird. Mr. G says that after his trip to Nashville he ended up in an old-fashioned country-coma. Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson and such. Adorable. Alex Shields’ “New York City Ways” has been hot in the kitchen since Christmas, but he is biased there, as he was involved in writing it.

 

Per on tour – En vacker kväll poll #2

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Thank you for participating in the first of the polls! Here is poll #2, this time for Scener.

[yop_poll id=”22″]

The poll runs until January 29th and you can choose up to 3 songs.

Some days ago Per also posted a “Q&A” on FB asking for your input, songs you would like him to play or better not during the tour:

“Awite. Summer tour coming up. My intention is to play songs from the solo albums, from Gyllene Tider’s fluffy catalogue and from Rox. Any particular ones you’d like to hear? Or prefer that I leave out? Curious to know, dear you! /P.”

You can post your comments on Roxette‘s or PG‘s Facebook pages.

We also decided to gather all the polls in one place to make it easier to look at all the results.

Per on tour – En vacker kväll poll #1

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Per’s summer solo tour is around the corner. We know that it’s going to be a special evening and Per plans to play songs from all his catalogue, when Per announced the tour, he said: “I thought of playing songs that I wrote that meant a lot to me. From Roxette, Gyllene Tider and solo.” And this means there is a very extensive catalogue to choose from. So we thought it may be fun to start a series of polls and tell Per which songs are special to us and we would love to hear during the tour.

The big question was, how to put the polls together? So after some thinking we decided the polls will look like this: solo albums, Gyllene Tider, demos & other, Roxette and last but not least the new album.

  1. Per Gessle
  2. Scener
  3. The World According to Gessle
  4. Mazarin
  5. Son of a Plumber
  6. En händig man
  7. Party Crasher
  8. Gyllene Tider (incl. Pers Garage)
  9. Roxette (normal album songs only)
  10. Demos and other songs (that are not included in the above)
  11. The new album when we have it in our hands

Some of them will be huge polls but we will manage!

The target is to choose the songs you would like to hear live and we will present the results to Per hopefully soon enough for him to maybe include at least the top top favourite 🙂 (of course, we also wish that he plays at least 2,5 hours, why not 3, there is enough material for a one-day-concert…).

Looking forward to your input and of course the tour. And have lots of fun while voting for the songs and listening to the albums for the xxx-th time.

Thanks in advance for participating.

Here goes the first poll: Per Gessle – Released in 1983. Choose up to 3 songs from this album.

[yop_poll id=”21″]

This one will run until 22nd of January 2017.

Goodbye 2016, welcome 2017

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2016 was a sad year for music fans, many “big ones” left us, artists like David Bowie, Leonard Cohen or Prince that influenced Marie and Per in a way or another.

It hasn’t been a perfect year for the Rox-world either. Roxette officially started in 1986 with the release of Neverending Love and they were celebrating these 30 years together with an amazing tour that had started in 2014 and took them all around the globe – once again and for the second time since Marie’s came back on stage (with Roxette) in 2009. They were about to embark on the last leg of the tour and meet the audience in Europe once again when the bad news came: touring if over for Roxette. News that we all somehow expected one way or another, but it hurt when it eventually happened.

And I won’t deny it, I think I still haven’t gotten over it and finally understood that there is no more Roxette live anymore. There will be Per performing Roxette songs, as it was already in 2009, but it will simply not be the same. It’s nothing against Per, I loved the 2009 shows and I will surely love the upcoming tour. It’s just not the same without Marie. Roxette are two great friends making magic together and there is nothing that can replace that.

But not everything were bad news. And since I like to concentrate on the positive, here is a summary of what happened in 2016 (hope I didn’t forget any highlight) and what we can expect in 2017 (that we already know of):

  • Roxette visited South Africa early 2016 and gave five concerts there, including two sold out ones and new plectrums that you can find on the PLECtionary.
  • The RoXXXette on the road tour photo book was released in June. It even came with a special edition for Roxers, limited to 300 copies, numbered, signed by Per – all packed in a nice box. We are collecting pictures of all of them here, so if yours is still not featured, send it in!
  • Roxette released an amazing new album in June: Good Karma. Three singles have been released so far off this album. Roxette also recorded a very nice video for the first single “It Just Happens” and asked fans to participate to make the “Why Don’t You Bring Me Flowers” video, probably inspired by Jakub and Dawid who recorded a funny fan video for “Some Other Summer”.
  • Per launched a new record label, Space Station 12, together with Marie Dimberg.
  • We also interviewed Per a couple of times, regarding Good Karma and SS12.
  • Marie’s book was published in German with an additional chapter for this version where she tells she is fine and working on the issues with her leg. We wish her all the best!!
  • Following the announcement we gathered thank-you messages for Marie. Kirsten also organised a surprise for Marie’s birthday, with the participation of tons of fans it was possible to send her bunches of roses. Marie responded with this video on her Facebook page <3.
  • In the background many things have happened to the website, we have had some hiccups with the server but nothing that couldn’t be solved. I had to postpone the project to redesign/update the website due to an accident but … let’s see what 2017 will bring 🙂

2017 so far…

  • More or less out of the blue but somehow expected, Per announced a new album and tour for 2017. The album is planned for Spring, the tour will be (for now?) in Sweden and will start on July 6th in Helsingborg, check the tour dates here
  • A DVD-box containing Roxette live recordings will be released this year. In connection to this, fans got busy and creative already on January 2nd as you can see on this article.

Sounds exciting huh? As always, thanks for reading and participating! See you on the road latest in summer.

 

 

 

 

 

Per Gessle’s Top9 Christmas songs

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Somehow we could sense it wasn’t just a random post by Per yesterday when he shared the whole lot of the podcast series of Gessles nio i topp. Now we can see it was because there is a Christmas edition! Woohoo! Per and Sven sat together and had some Xmas fun their own way. They say they did it because of the very successful first season of Gessles nio i topp. Listen to the podcast HERE!

Per actually dislikes Christmas songs, but even in his career one of the biggest hits started out as a Christmas song. It Must Have Been Love (Christmas For The Broken Hearted) came out in 1987 and it became a gold record in Sweden. But the song became a worldwide hit only after it appeared in the movie Pretty Woman.

Mr. G’s Top9 Xmas songs:

9. Sjömansjul på Hawaii (1945)
8. The Who – Christmas (1969)
7. David Bowie and Bing Crosby – Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy (1982)
6. Wizzard – I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday (1973)
5. John & Yoko/Plastic Ono Band – Happy Xmas (War Is Over) (1971)
4. Slade – Merry Xmas Everybody (1973)
3. The Pogues feat. Kirsty MacColl – Fairytale of New York (1987)
2. Joni Mitchell – River (1971)
1. Charles Brown – Please Come Home for Christmas (1960)

 

The only Swedish Christmas song Per thinks is quite good is Sjömansjul på Hawaii from 1945. The music played on Hawaii guitar is quite cool, he thinks. Next song on Per’s list is The Who’s Christmas. One can find it on the double album, Tommy. Per says he is fascinated by that album and he can still listen to it from A to Z. The 7th best is Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy performed by David Bowie and Bing Crosby. The single became one of Bowie’s best selling in his career. Since Bowie hated Little Drummer Boy, he didn’t want to sing it and this way it was Crosby who sang that part and Bowie sang Peace on Earth which was written and added to the song especially for Bowie and Crosby. Per suggests you watch the video of the TV show. He understands why it became such a classic hit.

Song No. 6 is I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday by Wizzard, one of the best British glam rock bands. Per tells when Gyllene Tider got a contract at EMI in 1979, Lasse Lindbom was the producer and they made a Christmas album, Glitter, Glögg & Rock ‘N’ Roll with various EMI artists. 24:de December was GT’s debut song and Per also wrote Swedish lyrics to the Wizzard song and it became Om Jag Bara Fick En Elgitarr Till Jul performed by Lasse Lindbom Band on the album.

5th fave Christmas song is Happy Xmas (War Is Over) by John & Yoko/Plastic Ono Band. Per still has the original single in his collection. The coolest glam rock single according to Mr. G is Merry Xmas Everybody by Slade. Per thinks one of the most known Christmas songs is Fairytale of New York by The Pogues feat. Kirsty MacColl. Joni Mitchell’s River is magical music. And the No. 1 Christmas song is a fantastic one from 1960, Please Come Home for Christmas from Charles Brown. Even Eagles and Jon Bon Jovi did covers of this song.

It turns out Sven likes Christmas, he thinks it’s wonderful. Per asks if it isn’t sad that Christmas starts already in September nowadays and Sven says yeah it’s strange that Christmas songs start playing when birds are still singing. Per says he thinks Christmas is terrible nowadays, but he remembers it was nice when he got e.g. records for Christmas like Patterns by Ola & the Janglers in 1966. It’s an awesome album, he thinks.

Besides hearing some lovely ho-ho-ho’s, we get to know that the guys continue with their podcast on Swedish Radio in spring 2017. Awesome news!