Releases

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

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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 to release Late Night Concert

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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!

Q&A with Per Gessle in Classic Pop magazine

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In the Jan/Feb 2021 issue of Classic Pop magazine (UK) there is a Q&A with Per Gessle about Roxette’s Bag Of Trix release.

Steve O’Brien asks Per to tell how this boxset came into existence. Mr. G tells he was looking around for live stuff and found so much material that he had forgotten about. There are a couple of leftover tracks from the Good Karma album that were never finished. He explains that during the recordings Marie had good days and bad days, so as soon as they had enough material for an album, they just stopped. Then he found songs from their Abbey Road session from the 90’s and some old demos too. Per explains there was a lot of material that had got lost (e.g. bonus tracks on CD singles) when they moved from CD into streaming.

Steve is curious how the name Bag Of Trix came about. Mr. G tells he has a list of titles and phrases in his computer and those could be song titles or album titles. When this compilation came into sight he started thinking and he thought of Bag Of Tricks.

Then I changed the ’Tricks’ to ’Trix’ so it reminds you of Roxette. It’s the marketing guy in me, I suppose.

Steve asks Per about the process, how he found all these songs. Mr. G tells he has a big archive of cassettes, CDs, CD-Rs and DAT tapes, all going back to the 70’s. Over the past 10 years he’s been transferring everything to his computer.

Only the other day, I found five cassettes that I’d forgotten about, from the early 80’s before Roxette. I wish I was more organized, though – I’m a seven out of 10.

Steve wants to know if Per rediscovered any songs that he wished, in retrospect, that they had included on an album. Per says on every album they had 8-10 leftovers, because they always had so much material. He thinks most of the time they made the right choices.

There are a couple of tracks off every album which I don’t really rate, like ’Physical Fascination’ off ’Joyride’, I think that’s a crap song.

Steve asks which songs from Bag Of Trix Per is most excited about sharing with fans. Mr. G thinks the live version of Wish I Could Fly is great and the Tom Lord-Alge mix of Soul Deep is really good, too.

Regarding what to include and what not to include, Per tells Classic Pop magazine that the original idea was to see if they can make one album with leftovers and then it just grew. Then someone reminded him about the Spanish tracks and that they weren’t available anymore, so it just went on and on.

To Steve’s question about how it felt revisiting the songs Mr. G replied that it was a very positive thing. He remembers Roxette very fondly, they had an amazing journey together.

It’s terrible when I think about Marie, she was only 44 years old when she got ill. But I listen to it and it’s all coming back. I just love to hear her voice still.

Per tells he is currently releasing a Swedish acoustic album [so the interview must have been done end of October / beginning of November 2020 /PP] and he is also writing a new album in English.

I’ve recorded eight tracks for that so far. Hopefully, that’ll be done by next spring. And one of these years, I’ll go out and do another tour. I miss touring.

The magazine published a Bag Of Trix review as well which is rather based on comparing this release to The RoxBox (Roxette 86-06). One sentence I had to laugh at: ”It’s hard to criticise the motives behind Bag Of Trix, as the collector gene means we all want every cough and spit from the vaults.” Haha. So true. The coughs and spits on those later found five cassettes would just be perfect for a next release from the vaults.

Marie Fredriksson – Sea of Love

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It’s 9th December and it has been a year since Marie Fredriksson passed away. On the anniversary, the single Sea of Love is released on the family’s initiative to honor the memory of Marie. This is the last song Marie recorded.

During Marie’s final years, she released a series of singles that were close to her heart; the jazz ballad Alone Again (2017), the blues cover I Want To Go (2017) and the big band ballad Sing Me a Song which was released in 2018 in connection with Marie’s 60th birthday.

Sea of Love was inspired by the demonstrations in Stockholm after the terrorist attack on Drottninggatan 2017, and the sea of people who stood up for love and reconciliation.

Listen to Sea of Love HERE.

Sea of Love

Like a sea of love, of love

You and I, me and you
You’re so strong and I’m so blue
Close to you I feel the sun
One for all and all for one

Place yourself in a world
Where every voice could be heard
Not just me, not just you
But all of us like a sea, sea of love, of love, of love

I woke up in a dream
We were one just like a team
We marched together with a common goal
Peace in mind and in your soul

Free to live your only life
Without hate and with no strife
In a world where we could live
Side by side like the sea, sea of love, of love, of love

You and I, me and you
You’re so strong and I’m so blue
Close to you I feel the sun
One for all and all for one

Composed by Mikael Bolyos

 

Per Gessle interview for German media – “Marie will always be a legend”

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Spot on news agency in Germany did an interview with Per Gessle related to the Bag of Trix release. Vol. 3 is out today!

On “Bag of Trix” you release rediscovered Roxette songs. What can the fans expect?

PG: “Bag of Trix” is a compilation of previously unreleased songs, most of them from the 80’s.
There are also alternative versions of published songs and songs that were simply lost when switching to streaming. But the songs are definitely worth listening to, I am really satisfied with this album!

Have you found any songs that you would no longer stand behind?

PG: Regarding some songs I think to myself: they weren’t that good. But there isn’t a song that I regret because they were all fun to make. When I listen to Roxette songs from the 80’s, I sometimes think that some of the lyrics were not the best. But I was still young then and not yet able to express what I wanted. And besides that, as soon as Marie started to sing, it almost didn’t matter what she sang.

How does it feel for you to release new albums by Roxette without Marie?

PG: Even if I’m releasing the album without her, she’s still part of it. She’s part of every song. I try to think positively and not let my grief drag me down, because then I wouldn’t be able to continue working on our joint projects. She was seriously ill for so many years – since 2002 – and at some point you get used to the idea that one day she will no longer be with us. It is now almost a year since she passed away and I am trying to look ahead. It didn’t deter me from going through our collection. To hear the songs that I recorded with Marie makes me proud in a special way. A lot of the songs are incredibly good and Marie was a great singer. She was just magical. She made my songs a lot better than they actually were. I think that while listening. We worked together for so many decades which is why I wrote most of my songs especially for her. For me as a songwriter, the way she performed was the greatest gift. When I hear her sing, I always have a smile on my face.

How do you deal with being asked repeatedly about Marie Fredriksson?

PG: She was part of my life since I was 19 and was like a sister to me. That’s why she’s always there and I remember her all the time, for example when I hear a Roxette song. She means so much to so many people and that’s why I like to talk about her. She deserves it, she was a wonderful person. She will always remain a legend and inspire many young people.
I have a lot of contact with her family. I know her husband Mikael very well. We keep in touch and see each other regularly.

You have been a successful musician on stage for several decades. Are you taking it easy now?

PG: I like to be busy. I still write songs, I write all the time. My wife says I work all the time. In Sweden I regularly publish music – including songs in Swedish. But I’m still working on English songs. I’m in the studio several days a week and if it weren’t for the pandemic I would definitely go on tour.

Could you imagine going on tour alone under the name Roxette, if it’s possible to tour again after the pandemic?

PG: I would never revive Roxette with a new female singer. But of course I like to play the songs at gigs, which is why I want to work with female singers in the future. That would of course not be Roxette, but after all I wrote the songs and thirty years of my life consisted of Roxette.