Interview

Per Gessle interview on Studio Ett about “Joyride – The Musical”

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Studio Ett, news magazine on Swedish Radio P1, did a phone interview with Per Gessle after he saw one of the final rehearsals of Joyride – The Musical on 3rd September. Listen to it HERE!

The program leaders welcome Per Gessle on the show. He is joining via phone from Halmstad. Per was in Malmö yesterday (on 3rd September) to see one of the final rehearsals. The program leaders are curious what it was like to see and hear Roxette songs in musical form. Mr. G says it was the first time he got to see it together with an audience and it was absolutely fantastic. It’s a strange experience, of course, but it’s awesome. It’s a new chapter in the book in a way. It’s amazing.

To the question in what way it is a strange experience, Per replies it’s awesome, it’s so big. There are almost 300 people who worked full time on this musical in Malmö. It’s a huge production and there are costumes, there is a 45-piece orchestra and everything is larger than life. Then they play these Roxette songs for 2.5 hours. It’s absolutely magical.

Per is asked if it was obvious to say yes to the musical. He says it wasn’t. They have been talking about it since 2015, actually. They got the first request then and he has been to various showcases in London and everywhere. Different companies, different producers presented different ideas, but they have all been turned down, because the script has never been good enough. Then they heard about Jane Fallon’s book, Got You Back and all of a sudden it felt like it could work with their music. It’s a cool story and it simply fits the music. Per doesn’t think the music itself has any major problems to fix so it works in a musical context. There are very big emotions and big melodies and there are a lot of ups and downs. So it fits the musical format very well.

As Per saw the show yesterday in Malmö with a lot of people, but there are many who of course haven’t seen it yet, the program leader asks him to describe it. Mr. G says that so far there were three rehearsals with invited audiences, e.g musical school children and others, but the actual premiere is on Friday. It’s magnificent. It’s a large venue for 1,400 people, it’s a fairly large theatre. It’s a fantastic production that has a huge orchestra and an enormously talented cast. There are many singers and dancers. You have to go and have a look yourself, he suggests.

The program leader says Roxette was Per and Marie Fredriksson, who passed away five years ago and is missed. She wasn’t really a musical girl, so the program leader is curious what Per thinks Marie would have thought about this musical. Per says Marie liked the musical idea. He thinks Marie would have thought this was great fun, because it keeps the Roxette spirit and the Roxette catalogue is shown to new audiences. Per thinks you should welcome such things. He thinks it’s the same they did with the Gyllene Tider movie that premiered this summer. You reach a new group of people, a new generation all the time with your music, so he thinks Marie would have thought this was amazing.

Speaking of the GT movie, it’s very much Per Gessle right now. Musical, film, Roxette tour with Lena Philipsson by his side next year, new solo album in October. Per turned 65 in January and the program leader asks him if this is how he picks up the pace. Per laughs and says he is retired now. He says he ended up on the cover of a pensioners’ magazine. He was shocked. Getting back to the question, it just happened. The movie and the musical were not really meant to come out with such a short interval, but it has become so. Per tries to keep up as much as he can. He likes his work and he loves working with all these projects. It’s incredibly exciting stuff, both the film and the musical and the solo album, which is mostly duets in Swedish, coming in October. It’s very exciting. Then the whole adventure with Lena Philipsson next year will also be a completely new blank page of what it will be. So he tries to keep up as best as he can.

Roxette has sold close to a hundred million records. It’s almost hard to take in. They have had enormous success. The program leader asks Per how often it comes to his mind when, for example, he was packing food boxes in Halmstad and his teacher came by and said „I knew this is where you would end up”. Per laughs and says it was like that. He says he came from a fairly simple childhood and very much lived in the middle of his little bubble all his life until he met MP and started a band in the late ’70s. It became Gyllene Tider. We all have our own destiny and lines to follow, so he tried to keep up as best as he could. It has been fantastic.

The program leader asks Per what of everything he does he would most like this teacher to see and hear. Per says, nothing, he didn’t like him. Per doesn’t think about it, it doesn’t matter anymore. There are so many adversities that you face, especially when you are young. It becomes a driving force. You have to show yourself that you can handle things. Per has always been quite a determined and ambitious type. It was one of many things that got him going.

The program leader mentions that as Per says, he loves to work and he loves his job, but a large part of his job was Marie Fredriksson. She wants to know how much Per misses her in everyday life and now that Joyride – The Musical is premiering. Mr. G says it’s been a long time since Marie passed away, but he thinks about her every day. Especially now, when so many Roxette-related things are going on. She is there in spirit somehow. The whole musical is an homage to her in a way, it’s also written in the program. It’s clear that she is felt. Per has to say that it’s highly emotional for him to sit in the theatre and hear all these songs. You kind of travel back to a lot of events, tours and things that they worked on over the years. It’s a common journey that’s completely unique, so it’s clear that Marie is there all the time.

The program leader asks what the strongest memory is that Per gets from watching this musical and hearing their songs. It’s above all the big Marie ballads, It Must Have Been Love, Spending My Time, Queen Of Rain, the songs that she represents. Every time you hear these songs, she sits next to them. It’s magical. Then there are some of her songs that are in the musical as well, songs that she has written, so it’s not just Per’s stuff. It’s amazing, Per thinks. He adds that he thinks a lot of people will like this, because it’s strong and a lot of people have a very big relationship with Roxette, especially with Marie.

The program leader says there are many people who have a relationship with Roxette all over the world. She is curious if Per thinks many people will go to Malmö to see the show. Mr. G says he actually knows that that is the case. Someone at Malmö Opera said that 45 percent of all tickets sold are bought by people who have never been to Malmö Opera before. It must mean that Roxette is a strong magnet.

Here the interview ends by thanking Per for joining Studio Ett.

Per Gessle – King of pop and self-confidence

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Per Gessle was a guest on Söndagsintervjun on Swedish Radio P1. Listen to it HERE!

Until the recordings could start for the show, program leader Martin Wicklin thought to continue the small talk with Mr. G. He says it has been very special to listen to Gyllene Tider songs on repeat, the first albums, Gyllene Tider in the ’80s. Per says he avoided listening to those records for many, many years, because he thought he couldn’t listen to them. He thought everything sounded so bad. But recently, because of the GT movie, he went back to these first and second albums. On the third record, Puls, they started getting older and it feels both in the lyrics and stylistically. Martin smiles at the expression „getting older”, because PG was still only 23 then.

Here they start the program with Martin introducing Per Gessle, the king of pop. In Sweden, he has filled stadiums and sports fields for more than four decades both as a solo artist and with Gyllene Tider. With Roxette and Marie Fredriksson, he has sold over a hundred million records worldwide and had more Billboard number one hits in the US than all other Swedish artists combined. The breakthrough that was filmed in the movie Sommartider is in many ways an incredible story. In a short time, Per Gessle, a fairly lonely guy in his own fantasy bubble, became a celebrity.

In this interview, he opens up about the self-confidence that paved the way, but also about when his self-image failed from time to time and about the time with Roxette when he didn’t even want to be seen in pictures.

Martin welcomes Per and mentions all the actualities around him: the film about Gyllene Tider that premiered this summer, the musical about Roxette that premieres in Malmö in September, the upcoming solo album that will be released this fall and a world tour with Roxette.

Per corrects Martin that the Roxette musical is not about Roxette. The script is based on a book called Got You Back, written by Jane Fallon. It has been reworked so that the Roxette songs fit in somehow, but it’s not a story about Roxette as the Gyllene Tider film is a story about Gyllene Tider.

Martin is curious why there is so much happening around Per right now. Mr. G says there is always a lot going on around him. The film and the musical, that it happened in the same year, wasn’t really intended that way, but it turned out like this for various reasons. He thinks it’s fun. He tries to keep up as best as he can.

Martin asks Per how it feels to go on tour with Roxette for the first time since Marie Fredriksson passed away. Per says it feels exciting that he finally decided what he wants to do with the Roxette legacy and the Roxette catalogue. It was not obvious to continue, but there are only two ways to go for him after Marie’s passing. Either you shut down Roxette, or you find some way to manage these songs. He hasn’t really been able to decide what feels right, but as the years have passed, he has felt that the interest in Roxette’s music has continued to increase around the world. Besides that, he has written almost all of Roxette’s music and lyrics himself. When he worked with Lena Philipsson for his upcoming Swedish duet record, he realized that Lena has the capacity that he could imagine bringing into this project. It’s not about starting a new Roxette, or a new band with Lena Philipsson. It’s about going around and playing the Roxette catalogue.

Martin wants to know what the big difference is in doing this with Lena instead of Marie. Per doesn’t know yet, because they haven’t started rehearsing yet. They have tried to play some songs on the piano and sing and it sounds fantastic. Lena is a formidable singer. Per hasn’t had the chance to experience it yet, but he knows that Lena is a very talented artist on stage. So PG thinks she will be able to handle those arenas that they will end up in on tour. How it will turn out, he has no idea, but it feels good. He has known Lena since he was involved in writing her breakthrough song in 1986, Kärleken är evig, so they have a connection. She is great to work with.

Before this interview, Martin has been watching videos of old gigs with Roxette at those big arenas all around the world, with huge audiences. It was hysterical, he thinks. He asks Per to describe the feeling of being on that stage when the intro to The Look starts. Per says those were fantastic years. They had eight years, 1988-1995, which was their prime. For him, all those years are one big blur in a way. He also looks at those YouTube clips sometimes and thinks, shit, he can’t remember anything from this. But he knows it was overwhelming. When he talks to the people who travelled together with them in the band, or from the management, then he is reminded of various things that he forgot. It is a magical journey they have been part of. If iPhone existed at that time, there would be more videos to remember, he laughs. What happened all around is absolutely fantastic. When they played China in the mid ’90s, they were the second band in the world to get permission to play. It is incomparable. To quote his new single, he has to pinch his arm (Nyper mig i armen).

Martin is curious if that experience of being on stage in front of so many cheering people becomes like a drug. Per confirms and thinks it’s strange how you get used to it. Then such thoughts come that „what? is it only 30,000 tonight?” You learn quite quickly how to act. Some things work, other things don’t. Which then means that it will be acting in the end. Then if you come to your senses a little, you can think that it is absolutely fantastic that you were able to go to all these continents, to countries where they don’t even speak English. They have different religions, different politics, different skin colours, different languages, but everyone knows Roxette’s lyrics and songs by heart. It’s quite bizarre. There really isn’t a place where they haven’t been. That makes you a little dizzy. It’s absolutely incredible.

Martin asks Per about Sommartider, the movie about Gyllene Tider’s journey to the breakthrough in the late ’70s. He is curious how it felt to be portrayed in the movie. Per was a little skeptical at first. When the idea came up that the production company wanted to make a film, he imagined that they would make some huge tribute to Gyllene Tider’s long career. He wasn’t too interested in that. But when they told him about the idea that the film would end in 1982, when Sommartider was released, it became a completely different kind of film and then Per got curious. He got curious also because it’s not an easy film to make, because then that means it has to be very typical of the time and you have to find those people who can play them in the band. It could have been a flop, but it turned out to be a fantastically beautiful film and he applauds it as loud as he can. He thinks it has been super successful. Per has seen it six times, but he wants to see it again. Martin asks if it’s like a happy pill. Per confirms it is. He guesses that he and the other guys in the band, as well as those who have been in the inner circle see this film in a different way than other people do. But it’s a happy pill as long as it’s an underdog story. And it’s true. They were the underdogs, as much of an underdog as you can be.

Martin says it captures the energy around Gyllene Tider at that time. He was 11 years old when Sommartider came out and he remembers the GT fever that prevailed in Sweden through his slightly older cousins in northern Sweden who played Gyllene Tider with flaming cheeks. Martin wants to know how Per experienced the fuss at the time. PG says it was completely weird. He comes from a rather isolated existence. He created his own little planet, he was living in his own bubble. He didn’t have many friends. The thing that changed his life was when he was in high school and he met a guy who played in a band, in the same band as MP. MP and Per got super tight and started Gyllene Tider. Those were actually Per’s first friends. Going from that in 1976-77 to being Sweden’s biggest band in 1980 was a big difference, of course. So this whole Gyllene fever, as Martin called it, in 1980-82 was dizzying. After all, Per was 21 when they broke through.

The guys are talking in Halmstad, where it all began, so Martin is curious what this place means to Per. PG loves Halmstad. He has always lived in Halmstad, although he has an apartment in Stockholm too. The more years have passed now after the pandemic, he is in Halmstad more often than before, because he likes the peace there. Then of course they have Hotel Tylösand and he has a studio together with MP in town, in which he works a lot. He enjoys being in Halmstad. Everything is easier in a small town than in a big city, he says.

Martin talks about a scene in the mid ’70s where Per is a young teenager reading English pop magazines and one day he dyes red strands in his long hair and takes a walk through town. Martin is curious if Per remembers that walk. PG says he remembers being very afraid of how people would react to the way he looked and the way he dressed, but at the same time, he was so proud that he dared to take that step. You have to challenge yourself all the time. Sometimes the first attempt doesn’t work, but the second one does, or the third. That’s the way it’s been. You have to dare, you have to fail and you have to lose yourself and you have to do bad things to do good things. When you are young, it’s very difficult to deal with that. It’s not easier when you get older, but then you understand it in a different way. You have to learn to choose your wars and you have to learn that everything is connected somehow.

Martin says he read in connection with that walk that Per enjoyed the looks and also the giggles. He could enjoy being the one who dared. Mr. G says he did enjoy it, but of course he cared about reactions. It also depends on your current shape, how strong you feel. Every time you succeed at something, it could be your new hairstyle or your new torn jeans, you gain self-confidence. It’s all about gaining self-confidence and feeling seen in some way.

Martin thinks that at that age and in such a small town, it’s also a bit scary to stand out. Per confirms, it was very scary. There were many people who thought he was very odd and weird, but he also tried to take that as something positive. Martin asks how he did that. PG says you have to learn it somehow. He always had it easy at school and he remembers when he was in high school and they had an exam, he got everything right on the test. Then the teacher told the class that Per got all the answers right and the class booed him because of that. Then Per thought, how strange that is that you are booed because you did well. He learned a lot from that. You cannot let others decide what is right, you have to decide for yourself what is right. In this particular case, it was right to try to do as well as possible on that test. Things like that have shaped Per and made him strong and ambitious. He tried to find things in himself where he thought he had capacity and it has become music, because that’s what he can do.

Martin concludes that Per must also have been quite strong as an individual who could see that. First the class booed him even though he had done something good, then he walked through town with pink hair and they looked at him. This is daring. So it means that there was this strength in Per already as a little boy. PG says there was a longing to be in the center, to be able to direct his own life and not be painted into a corner by someone else. It’s probably his personality. He didn’t see it from that angle when he was growing up, but that’s the way it was.

Per has always had this interest in music, but until he met those friends at the age of 16-17, he was a rather lonely child who hated group work at school or maybe didn’t want to fit into the available groups. Martin is curious what kind of element music was in that life. Per was quite alone there making his lists. He says when he was an early teenager, he was overweight, he had glasses, he had pimples and long hair. He was a bit of a nerd. He thought that this world that pop music or the pop world offered him was much more exciting and attractive than the real world. The real world was pretty boring, he thought. So he sat there and made his lists and fantasized about different things that had to do with music. Of course, eventually there was a desire to play in a band himself and by then he had already started writing songs, mainly lyrics. He made his own recordings before he met Mats, MP in Gyllene Tider. There was a radio program called Bandet går at the time. Anyone could submit songs and Per did. He remembers they played one of his weird songs called Ser du alla människor and then he got his first fan letter. It was completely bizarre that someone he didn’t know had listened to his song and been touched by it. He will never forget that feeling. It was an incredible declaration of love for him and for what he had done. He was very touched by that and of course it gave more flavour to continue. Once they got started with Gyllene Tider, he had suddenly moved his pop fantasy from childhood to become his reality. He wasn’t at school all day, he went to the rehearsal room in Harplinge instead and planned new songs and new recordings.

Martin says it sounds like a big step to take from being in a very small bubble of your own, a pop music fantasy of your own to suddenly being in the center, at the front of the stage, leading a band in front of thousands of people. It was incredibly strange, Per confirms, and it went fast too.

Martin wants to know if it was difficult to go the complete opposite way. Per can’t say it was difficult. It was just weird. It was strange to get a sudden response to everything and gain appreciation. He also remembers that early on he thought they were very good. It is also in the film that they were constantly sending their demos to here and there and they were rejected by Björn and Benny and all sorts of people. They didn’t send the demos out by chance, they sent them out because they thought they were damn good and someone should bet on them. What Per tried to take from all the rejections was that they have to be better, so they stop being rejected. There was self-confidence in all of them.

Martin says it’s exciting to see what drive and self-confidence they had, because that was also a time when they were breaking new ground. Those days it was either prog or punk and there were many who looked down on this type of music that they brought. But they were full of self-confidence that what they were doing was good. Per says they loved their Blondie and Tom Petty records and he remembers listening to Bowie’s Diamond Dogs and Aladdin Sane a lot. They loved glam rock. Sure, there was a lot of resistance, but it was just a matter of going ahead. It sounds so simple. Haha.

At the same time, Martin knows that Per doubted himself many times. E.g. when it comes to his singing voice, but also regarding his weight when he was a child and his appearance. Martin thinks such thoughts are stuck with you throughout life. PG thinks that what you experience as a child, you carry with you your whole life. He has been aware that it has been difficult, of course, but at the same time, for the job he has chosen, if you are going to be an artist, you have to be pleased with yourself. You have to have self-confidence. Per says he has to know what to do with himself in front of an audience to maximize what he is good at. He has always tried to maximize himself in different ways. Martin asks him what it means. Per smiles and says that it means to make sure you maintain your weight for a few days so that the press photos look OK. It has to do with the entire presentation of what is now called the brand. How you present your concerts, your style, the album sleeve.

Martin finds it interesting. There is a lot of talk about physical things when it comes to women, but not so much about the feelings. Even Martin can have problems with press pictures of himself at times when he has weight problems or things like that. It’s hard to look at those pictures. He is curious how it has been for Per during his long career. PG says it’s also about self-confidence. If you don’t feel good about yourself – it doesn’t have to be a big thing, it could be that you just don’t feel comfortable with yourself – then of course it affects everything you do. That’s how it is to be human. You have to try to find the middle ground, so that you have the least possible resistance in your existence. It’s not that easy. Everyone who lives and listens to this knows that it’s the hardest thing there is, to find yourself in life, be tough against adversity, be generous and don’t feel guilty. It’s complicated, but that’s what it is to be human.

Martin asks Per when it was the most difficult for him. Per says, primarily when things have happened in his private life, of course those affected him. It affects your mood. Regarding Gyllene Tider or Roxette, of course he was affected if things didn’t turn out as he had thought. Then he was thinking „what did we do wrong?” or „isn’t it time to change the record label in Spain?”, things like that. You try to find scapegoats and learn something from that too. But usually, it’s private things that affect you. Per says he is 65 years old now, recently retired, haha, and he still thinks it has been a fairly smooth journey. Occasionally, a lot of tears and grinding teeth, but as a whole, it’s been smooth, a long career.

Martin asked this, because he read in Sven Lindström’s book about Roxette that before the release of Have A Nice Day in 1999, there was a period when Per chose not to appear in videos. There wasn’t even a tour then, because Per was uncomfortable with his appearance and weight at the time. Per confirms it was the case. He felt completely wrong. He had just gotten to know photographer Anton Corbijn who wanted to make some videos with them. They made one for Stars and Per appears only in a small box at the beginning of the video. Then there is another guy who plays his role in the clip. It was because he wasn’t comfortable with the way he looked. The next video they did with Anton in Portugal or in Italy maybe, Salvation. By then PG had lost a little weight so he started feeling more comfortable. That’s how it worked for him. He thought it didn’t benefit Roxette and the video if he was involved. Martin is curious what Per thinks about it today. Mr. G thinks it was the right decision. Haha. Martin asks if it wasn’t a wrong decision to bow down to the ideals of the time about what pop stars should look like. It wasn’t what Per was thinking about, it was just that he didn’t feel good about himself. His own image of himself was not what he wanted it to be. He has never cared about the ideals and that someone should look a certain way. So it wasn’t that he couldn’t live up to what a pop star should look like. It was entirely about how he felt.

Martin says that Per as a songwriter and artist has been at the top of the stratosphere. There are many examples of artists who have not managed to stay down to earth. Martin is curious how important has Åsa been for Per not to float away. Per smiles and says Åsa is amazing. They met back in 1984 and got married in 1993, so they have been together all their lives. When they met, it was the fall of 1984 and Per was about to become a has been at the age of 25. He had lost his record deal, Gyllene Tider was over. After all, Åsa never came into Per’s life to a set table. They had to build their relationship based on who they were. Mr. G remembers his accountant at the time cut his credit cards, because he had no money. He wrote songs for every possible artist. That was the time when he also wrote Kärleken är evig for Lena Philipsson, but he also wrote for Anna Book. He noticed clearly and early on that it didn’t suit him to write for others, because he had to compromise too much. Often they wanted his texts in the first place and then they wanted to rewrite them and make them simpler. It didn’t suit him at all. He preferred to be an artist himself and perform his own songs. And stand in the center, at the front, like when he was little, Martin adds. Per says, standing in the center was also strange with Roxette. When they did their first concerts in 1987, the first gigs were very strange for both Marie and Per. They were thinking about who would stand at the front and Per pretty quickly took a step back, because Marie was much better at it than he was. But it was an ego decision. Martin asks Per if it was difficult. PG says it was probably difficult. He can’t remember how it felt, but he does remember that it was a decision made by him. If Marie is going to sing, she gets to run this project. And then he came forward sometimes and sang some parts. Although on that tour they didn’t have The Look yet.

Martin says Åsa is also an important part of the GT film, how Per and Åsa met. Although for a long time Per’s lyrics were a lot about falling in love, meeting girls and such, it seemed that it was not so easy for him in practice to meet someone. Per laughs and says there were some girls before Åsa, but those relationships can’t be compared to that with Åsa. She was the big love and still is.

Martin asks Per if he thinks fame got in the way before Åsa. PG thinks it could be, because as soon as they broke through in 1980, they became… isolated is a wrong word, but they sort of became… All of a sudden everyone knows who you are and all of a sudden other demands are placed on you. Per can still feel that today, e.g. when he goes into a restaurant somewhere and he sees he is recognized, then he automatically becomes professional. He has been with other celebrities, international ones who tell stories. Per sees how people react when they enter a room. He laughs to himself. People are the same everywhere. Martin asks Per what he thinks when he sees those international celebrities. PG says it’s the same thing. He doesn’t know what celebrities represent, but one can see now how fixated everyone became on Truls at the table tennis Olympics. It’s the human way of being. Shit, check, there sits Leif G.W. Persson. Or check there, Tom Cruise. Martin asks Per if they are the people who make Per feel the way others look at him. Per replies no, but he can note how the surroundings behave then and how it buzzes. His friends tell him what people who walk behind him talk about after he left. He doesn’t mind it. It’s cool. Although it’s nothing he has strived for. This celebrity status is a love and hate relationship. He has always worked to make the things he does known. But you don’t really know what you’re getting yourself into, because you also become famous, not only the things you do. There is a price you have to pay for the fun of being an artist, Martin adds.

A few years after Per and Åsa got together, PG broke through with Roxette and there was a lovely little note Åsa wrote for Per one day and it became a big song. Martin wants to hear the story of that note. PG says they lived in an attic in Halmstad and Åsa had left a note on his grand piano one day. It said „Hej, din tok, jag älskar dig” (Hello, you fool, I love you). Per thought that was wonderful. He had just read an interview with Paul McCartney who said writing songs with John Lennon was like being on a long joyride. Then Per thought, what a nice word, joyride. He didn’t really know what that meant. Obviously, doing a joyride means that you steal a car, ride it and then dump it. Per didn’t know it back then. For him it was just a joy ride. So he put together Åsa’s little note with that word joyride and it became Hello, you fool, I love you. Come on, join the joyride. It worked just like that. Bang.

Then he wrote this badass song on acoustic guitar the same day. A little later that day he met MP, and then we wrote Spending My Time. So it was a good Tuesday. Haha.

Martin says Joyride became one of Per’s super hits and he thinks that it says quite a lot about how Per creates lyrics and music. PG agrees. He says he doesn’t sit and knead, or at least he tries not to. He doesn’t sit hour after hour and write, because he can’t focus on it anymore. It has to go fast and it has to be in the moment it happens. Many people ask him about this text, what it is about, where it comes from. Per has no idea. He collects stuff that is relevant to him in those 20 minutes it takes. That is his ambition anyway. There are many examples when he couldn’t manage it, but at least that’s what he is aiming for.

Martin says there are also many examples when Per succeeded, even if it is difficult to logically explain it. For example, The Look, which was their first No. 1 on the US Billboard. It has a very special text. Martin knows that the American DJs who heard The Look for the first time when an American exchange student brought this record from Sweden reacted immediately to the first lines of the lyrics. He asks Per to sing the first lines of the text and Per sings it: walking like a man / hitting like a hammer / she’s a juvenile scam / never was a quitter / tasty like a raindrop / she’s got the look.

Martin asks him what the text means. It’s just logical nonsense. Per had bought a new synth, a pretty cheap one and he tried to learn how to program it. He has always been a helpless case when it comes to technology, so trying to learn how to program a synth was a giant mission. The easiest way for him was to write a song, so he wrote bababababa and he came up with this rhythm in his head and wrote the first lines to remember the rhythm. It was almost some kind of rap. He wrote it down to remember it and then when he listened to it, he thought it was pretty cool. He was thinking what he should do with the rest of the song and he decided to continue writing in the same spirit. Then it became sort of logical. There was a bit of I Am The Walrus about it. Per actually wrote it for Marie to sing, so it was called He’s Got The Look, but she tried to sing it and it didn’t work at all. She couldn’t sing like that. It’s only three notes, after all. She came up with the idea of answering Per instead in the chorus and that made the whole chorus super cool. That’s how it works, you just try things out. A nonsense text is also a text.

Per Gessle has already done everything, he has topped everything, but he is not alone among great rock and pop artists who despite this, still continue making new music, releasing new songs and going on tours. Martin asks PG what he thinks the reason is for this. Per says it’s just something inside him, that he wants to get things out and that he gets curious. It doesn’t happen as often as it used to, writing Joyride in the morning and Spending My Time in the afternoon on the same day. It probably won’t happen again. When you are younger, there is a drive that’s fantastic and Per has always been triggered by success. That was one of the differences between Marie and him. Marie was quite fed up with success and thought they should take it easy. Per was the opposite. He thought they should do even bigger gigs and do even more things. He remembers when they were out on the Joyride tour in 1991-1992, he thought they should record an album during the tour. There was a lot of resistance around this from both the band and Marie, but it turned out to be a record called Tourism. Per wrote new songs during the tour. The first single was How Do You Do! and the album became a big one for them. It was because Per got enormous energy from success. It’s in his DNA.

Martin says Marie Fredriksson could say that she sometimes felt like a passenger next to Per and even the other members of Gyllene Tider could sense that sometimes Per was travelling on his own journey. Martin is curious if that was necessary for Per to be able to create. PG understands that the others felt that way, but there was no alternative. If he was to sit and wait for the other four in GT to decide what to do, then nothing gets done. It was a bit like that with Marie too. When Roxette started, Marie’s career was on the way up and Per’s career was going downhill. So his only weapon was to keep Marie in the Roxette project, to make Roxette successful, because as soon as they had made the first Roxette record, Marie made another Swedish solo album with her producer and then boyfriend. There was a time in the beginning before they broke through internationally that no one around Marie wanted her to work with Per. Marie’s record company, her producer, her family, her boyfriend. The only one who wanted to work with Per was Marie herself. It was fantastic, of course. The very first Roxette single, Neverending Love doesn’t have a picture of them on the cover, because if it were to flop, it would not affect Marie’s Swedish career negatively. That was the the record company’s strategy. So Per’s weapon was always to come up with songs like It Must Have Been Love, Queen Of Rain, Perfect Day or Spending My Time. Or Soul Deep which Marie loved to sing on the first album. So that she would want to stay.

Martin says Per has made more than a thousand songs. He is curious which song Per would pick if he had to choose one as a kind of soundtrack to this meeting they have had. The Look, for God’s sake, Per says. It’s the coolest song in his life. It has everything that a hit should have. He was sitting in a restaurant in Stockholm and then a guy who worked at another record company came to him and said, „have you seen that you are on the radio list in the USA?” Per didn’t know what the guy was talking about, but then he checked the Billboard and saw that The Look was among the Bubbling Under songs, the songs that were on their way up, possible chart climbers. There were 20 radio stations in that. There was Roxette and The Look on one station and Per understood absolutely nothing. Because The Look was not exactly what Roxette was supposed to be. The idea of Roxette was that Per wrote the songs and Marie sang them. The Look was sung by Per, so it was absolutely sensational that it was that song. For Per, it is an important one. It’s the coolest song he has done, Martin thinks. Per says it has become symbolic. It might not be the best song he has written, but it’s cool. Martin says Per mentioned it had everything, but he wants PG to list what it has. Mr. G says it has a sound, it has a riff, it’s unique, it has many parts. You don’t write music that way anymore, he adds. It has a sound that sounds like nothing else. It has to do with Clarence Öfwerman’s production and Jonas Isacsson. There is Per’s voice and Marie’s voice. This song is really crazy.

Here Per picks up the guitar and performs The Look and that closes the interview.

CBB30 – RoxBlog interview with Per Gessle – “If you’re lucky enough to have hits, you should cherish the moment, because it might never come again.”

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Roxette’s most amazing 5th album, Crash! Boom! Bang! celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. The album was released on 9th April and I wanted to do an interview with Per in April, but so many things came in between that we postponed it. Now the time has come and we could Zoom in for a chat about the CBB era. As usual, we touched on other projects as well, especially Joyride – The Musical that premieres on 6th September, but also his upcoming Swedish album and of course, there is a lot of talking about his songwriting. If you are strong enough to read it until the very end, you will get to know some details about the CBB30 anniversary release as well.

We met via Zoom on 20th August and Mr. G joined the meeting 5 minutes late. But he had the perfect excuse.

Per Gessle: – Hey, I’m sorry to keep you waiting!

Patrícia Peres: – Hej, no worries!

PG: – I was a good boy, I was buying flowers for my wife, because we have our wedding day tomorrow.

PP: – Aaaw, you’re very nice!

PG: – I do my best sometimes. Haha.

PP: – How are you doing?

PG: – I’m good. It’s busy. I’ve been working in the studio a bit and I’ve been going to Malmö quite a lot. I’ll be there tomorrow again for more rehearsals. What else? I’m recording a new video next week for another single from the new Swedish album.

PP: – Oh, so there will be another single.

PG: – I have one song, I won’t tell you that much about it, but it’s my favourite song on the album. It’s just an amazing song. Once in a while there is one song that means something special to you, like “Vid hennes sida” from “Samma skrot och korn”, for instance, which is my favourite song, or “Tycker om när du tar på mej” from “Mazarin”. It’s just my favourite song from the new album.

PP: – It sounds very exciting. I know you like to look into the future rather than looking back on the past, but it’s always so interesting to hear your thoughts on your albums in retrospect. “Crash! Boom! Bang!” turned 30 in April. You were after “Joyride” and “Tourism”. How do you remember the time when Roxette’s 5th album was still just an idea? What was your ambition when you started writing songs for this album?

PG: – I think I had big big big ambitions for this album, because I was really on a roll. I’ve always been that kind of person who, when something gets successful, or I get lots of self-confidence from people liking what I do, then I just want to do more of that. More work, actually. Marie was the opposite, because as soon as we got really, really big and toured all over the world, she wanted us to take it easy a bit, relax and enjoy life, blah, blah, blah. And I thought that was rubbish. That’s why I convinced… or forced everyone to do the “Tourism” album. Everyone was looking forward to touring the world, checking out all these beautiful countries and cities, but I told them that we’re going to go into the studios in Buenos Aires or this nightclub in Sao Paulo or wherever to do recordings. And they said, no, no, no, we don’t want to do that. Anyway, I got my way. That was a brilliant idea. And so for “Crash”, I was just really focused and did a lot of really focused writing. Some of my best songs are on that album. “What’s She Like? ” is a great song for me. [He has a note open on his computer, so he is checking it every now and then.] “Vulnerable” is a great song. It was in my head for a couple of years. I’d never bothered to make a demo, but I knew it by heart.

PP: – If we start with the sleeve that gives a face to the album, what does it tell about this record?

PG: – Well, we just wanted to do something that was really big and you could use it on a production on stage as well. So this checkered flag idea came up. That particular picture was one of my favourite pictures, but we couldn’t really use it, because I didn’t have any light in my face. So they had to work on the light in my face.

PP: – So you put it on the sleeve. Haha.

PG: – Haha. There are so many pictures from that session, but it took forever to paint that.

PP: – [I show the picture on the back of the booklet.] It’s a very cool pic too.

PG: – In those days, everything was larger than life. So it was like no budgets, any crazy idea deserved to be tried out. But it turned out to be a great sleeve. Looking back at the album, I think it’s a little bit too long. I think there are some crap songs on there, which I don’t like. “I Love The Sound Of Crashing Guitars” is a much better lyric than the music. I think that for me, that takes down the whole album. The title song is a beautiful one.

PP: – You recorded the album in London, Stockholm, Capri and Halmstad for 11 months, between February 1993 and January 1994. Why did you start the recordings in London and how did Capri come into sight?

PG: – I don’t know. I think we just wanted to change scenery and change studios. I think we were doing “Almost Unreal” for the Super Mario movie. It was actually made for another movie, the Hocus Pocus movie. So I think we did that in England and I guess we just felt comfortable hanging out in London for a while. When I think about that album, I think about Italy and Capri. We were there for a month or five weeks. That gave the whole album this particular vibe.

For me, it is an album where I had a lot of self-confidence as a writer. So it’s a little bit more sophisticated. For me, when I look back on “Look Sharp!”, “Joyride” and “Crash”, “Look Sharp!” is like I’m young or almost young anyway. “Joyride” is just a massive album. Every song was supposed to be singles. And on “Crash” I tried to get into being personal and trying to find my style.

PP: – Was it because of that that you started playing even more? I think you play more guitars on this album than before.

PG: – Yeah, I think so. We also expanded the band a bit and we had lots of different players. Christer Jansson played drums as well, and Micke Nord played guitar and Staffan Astner played guitar. [Staffan didn’t play on CBB, but on “Have A Nice Day” and here comes the explanation why he is mentioned.] Lots of people came down to the studio, I think. Sometimes I just mix up the album sessions, you know, I’m talking about something and then suddenly I realize, shit, no, that’s Spain and “Have A Nice Day”.

PP: – You mix up those sunny locations. Haha.

PG: – “Place Your Love” is something that I wanted to sound like my style. Jonas played on that one, but we couldn’t play acoustic guitar together, just the two of us, because we come from totally different schools of guitar playing. So I had to make a choice. It’s either going to be Jonas or it’s going to be me. And I chose me, because Jonas did all the stuff on “Watercolours In The Rain”, for instance. So this was like a new thing for me.

PP: – And how was the recording team in Capri? You were under one roof for a long time.

PG: – Yeah, so to speak. We had this fantastic studio. We had different bungalows and we had dinners together. We had the whole place to ourselves. So we worked, we tried different settings. I remember we tried playing acoustic guitars in the garden to see how that sounded, with no acoustic rooms around us. We just tried out different things, which was very inspiring. But at the end of the day, it’s all about the songs, all about the material. It’s 15 tracks on this album. If you get rid of five, you get a great album.

PP: – Nooo, it’s a perfect length! The album is very guitar-driven, but besides that, there are also noises of nature, as well as drums and strings. It has a very detailed sound. When you listen to it now, what do you think about the sound?

PG: – It sounds very expensive, haha, because it’s a lot of recordings and then re-recordings and trying things out in the studio instead of trying things out when you make demos. That’s the way we worked in those days. [He looks at his note on the computer.] There were leftovers, the bonus tracks on the CD. “Almost Unreal”, which is from the movie, and “Crazy About You”, which I thought was amazing. I thought that should be a single.

PP: – Yeah, that would have been the first single. Why did you drop it?

PG: – I never understood that, but we had this voting system. Nobody liked that at all. And “See Me”, I thought was a really beautiful song as well. For some reason, it didn’t make it. And then I think Marie chose “Go To Sleep” instead as the ending track. And I thought “Love Is All” was supposed to be the ending track. I think we closed the gigs with that on tour. I can’t remember, maybe we did.

PP: – You closed the shows with “Go To Sleep”.

PG: – “Love Is All” is a great song. It’s very simple, but very nice. It’s got a very interesting melody, but it’s too long. Come on! We’re not Pink Floyd. Haha.

PP: – Compared to “Joyride”, what is the biggest difference for you on “Crash! Boom! Bang!”?

PG: – Well, like I said, this is a way for me to become a little bit more personal, a little bit more finding my own style. And that is easier said than done. Of course, you have your own style, your own ambitions and you know what you want to achieve as a writer. But as time goes by, you get better and you get more sophisticated. You learn more, so slowly, without really noticing it yourself, you become a different writer. “The First Girl On The Moon”, for instance, I could never have done that on “Look Sharp! “. I was ready to write it for “Crash”. I think the title track is also beautiful. It’s a classic Roxette big ballad, which is amazing in the musical, by the way. All those ballads are just wow! Because they just fit with this big orchestra and it’s so sentimental.

PP: – Actually, now that you say “Crash! Boom! Bang!” is a classic Roxette ballad, compared to previous ones, it was different. The strings mixed with guitars give a wonderful warm sound to it. Your classic ballads were power ballads back then. So CBB was actually a bit different versus the ballads you did before.

PG: – Yeah. And also, it’s a different beat. I mean, it’s a 6/8 beat.

PP: – This is where I’m lost… Haha.

PG: – Haha. [Here he is humming the beat of CBB, then LTYH to show me the difference.] “Listen To Your Heart” is a normal 4/4. I always liked 6/8. I talked to someone the other day. Maybe it was Albin Lee [Meldau]. He said, he can’t write songs with that beat. And I said, if I have a great melody and it’s that typical 6/8 groove to it, it’s going to be amazing, because I don’t find it hard to do. The hard thing is to make it interesting, but that goes for every song. There are several examples. I just tried to think of other songs in that same beat that I’ve written. It will come to me in 20 minutes or so. I love that song. I think it’s great and Marie is singing it amazingly well.

PP: – This is one of the songs that had a video. The director was Michael Geoghegan, who made three videos for you for this album. Why did you pick him exactly?

PG: – I can’t remember, actually. We were looking for directors and his name came up from the English office, I think. We liked his work, but also, I think it was a political thing that we wanted to have the EMI UK office involved in the project. Sometimes you just do things like that. You let the English decide who’s going to do the remixing or the Americans or the French. Maybe if you have a great French remixer, the French company will get more interested in your project. So we did those sneaky things. It went like that.

PP: – In an early interview you mentioned that “Joyride” was a very American album, while CBB was very British.

PG: – I don’t really think so, actually. I never thought “Joyride” was an American album. I mean, the thing with Roxette, to begin with, is that we don’t really sound American or English. We sound Swedish. And all the players are Swedish. We tried sometimes. With “Listen To Your Heart”, for instance, we did our best to sound American, but if you listen to similar American bands at the time, they sound different. All those bands and Bryan Adams or whatever. So I don’t know. If I said that, I don’t know what I meant by it, because I never really thought so.

PP: – The opening track is “Harleys & Indians (Riders In The Sky)”. A real rock song and just by the title, one would think it’s about motorcycles, but it’s not. What was it inspired by?

PG: – Well, I was really into bikes in those days and I just wrote this track. I thought the whole song was interesting, because it was pretty different. It had a great guitar groove, guitar riff and also the chorus was amazing with Marie and me singing together. So it just sounded like a special song. I can live without it. It’s not a “The Look” for me. It’s not an important song on the album for me. But for me, the best songs are “Crash! Boom! Bang!”, I think “Run To You” became a great song. When I wrote it, it was a little bit more, as you probably heard on the demo, a more classic pop song. This arrangement was Anders Herrlin’s idea, to do this groove and use the strings. So we took away all those big electric guitars and it just turned out to be a nice song.

PP: – Yeah, definitely.

PG: – “Fireworks” I thought was cool, because it had a cool lyric. But it’s too long. Haha.

PP: – Well, the average length of the songs is four minutes on this album. Am I right that the working title of the album was “Fireworks”?

PG: – Yes.

PP: – What made you change it to “Crash! Boom! Bang!”?

PG: – Probably because “Crash! Boom! Bang!” was written later on and it’s an even better title, I think. I thought it was like crash! boom! bang! [here he demonstrates onomatopoeia (a sound written as a word)]. What’s his name? This American pop art guy, you know… that cartoonish style.

PP: – I can’t remember either, but I know you used that style on your archives sleeves. [Roy Lichtenstein style.]

PG: – It’s sort of cool. I can’t really remember why we changed it otherwise, but “Fireworks” is a good title, too. It’s a good title for a greatest hits album.

PP: – Next time! You mentioned “Run To You” and it also had a video, but it was directed by Jonas Åkerlund. The style is very different to the Geoghegan videos, nicely built around the touring life from travelling through soundchecks to being on stage. What did you want the viewers to get to know about you in this video?

PG: – As little as possible, probably. Haha. We had to shoot that video on the road, we didn’t have time to have a big production and go somewhere else. This idea came up to work with Jonas and he did a great job. When you do lots of videos for an album, it’s nice to have different styles. So it was fun. It turned out great.

PP: – I agree. “Sleeping in My Car” was the lead single. You told the story of it that the record label missed a single, so you wrote this one. It all happened very fast, writing the song and recording it, but do you remember how you started it? Was it the music or the title or the lyrics first?

PG: – I was listening a lot to Paul and Linda McCartney’s “Ram” album. And there is a song called “The Back Seat Of My Car” on that album, which I love. I got really pissed off when they said that they couldn’t really hear any single. I thought it was loaded with singles, of course. So I went home and I just came up with this idea and “Sleeping In My Car”.

The next day we booked Studio Two at EMI. We already had Studio One, so someone else had to move out from Studio Two. Haha. We made a demo there, which sounds crap, you probably heard it. Haha. But it was an instant way for me to present a new song to Clarence and everyone. Clarence didn’t like it at all, because he felt like it sounded like a Gyllene Tider track.

I basically handpicked players that I wanted to play on it, and they weren’t Roxette players. It was Mats Persson on percussion, who eventually became a percussion player on the tour. And Pelle Sirén, who used to play with X Models, which was an EMI band as well. He played guitar. I don’t know who played bass. Anders maybe?

PP: – Yeah, I think so.

PG: – So we did it very quickly and I just loved the energy of that song. So it was written and recorded just to show them, here is your single…

At the same time, I must say, it took a very long time to make that album. What also happened was that the British invasion happened. Oasis, Blur and all those bands came up. So suddenly I felt like, let’s do something that is sort of in that style, because that sort of Oasis guitar driven style is my home turf because of Gyllene Tider. So it’s nothing new to me. Let’s do it and let’s do it really loud and pump up the guitars and just have this… I don’t know how, but I managed to make the song quite interesting musically. I think the verse is in D minor and the chorus is in D major, which is quite unusual for a song. But it sounds natural when you listen to it. And when you manage to do something like that, you know you have something special going on. So musically, I felt like this is not a sellout, this is not a simple song and if you’re going to play it yourself, you’re going to notice that you’re in a lot of trouble, because you haven’t found out what to do. Haha.

PP: – When you look back now, do you agree that the album was missing the first single before this song?

PG: – Well, it depends. When you present an album, especially in those days when albums were so important. There were lots of bands like Def Leppard. They always released something quite complicated as the first single, but then the big smash was the second single. But then you have sort of presented that you’re here and you’re doing something special, blah, blah, blah. Today, everything has to be upfront immediately, and it has to be short, because people don’t have the attention span like they had 20 years ago. To answer your question, it depends on how you want to present the whole album. When you release “Sleeping In My Car”, if you like “Sleeping In My Car” and you don’t know anything about Roxette, you might be a little bit disappointed with the rest of the album, because there is no other song that sounds like that. On the other hand, if you go with “Run To You”, it doesn’t really reflect the album either. From a commercial point of view, maybe we should have gone with the title track, because a big Marie ballad is what everyone was used to at the time. I don’t know. Oh, and that’s the same with the “Sällskapssjuk” album. The first single was Molly, the second was Lena, and both those songs were co-produced by Andreas Broberger and Anton Ekström. Those are the only two songs that they are involved with. Now the third one, as you can hear, sounds pretty different.

PP: – Yeah, it’s very different.

PG: – It has a country vibe with Malin-My on violin.

PP: – It’s kind of Nashville style.

PG: – Yeah. And it’s got my new superheroes here, Fredrik “Gicken” Johansson and Magnus Helgesson, the bass player and guitar player from Halmstad. They play on the whole album. The next single is also very different, so it depends on how you want to present your project. Nothing’s right, nothing’s wrong.

PP: – “Sleeping In My Car” deserved a rocking video and it was also directed by Michael Geoghegan. What is your best memory from the shootings and how do you remember your and Marie’s acting?

PG: – Marie loved it and I was always very happy to make videos when she was singing, because it was less work for me. I only had to stay there, play chords and look as cool as possible, which was hopeless. Haha. But I did my best. We had a good time.

To do the “Crash” video was much more complicated. That took forever. You know that we had to reshoot it for technical reasons. But it was really complicated to do a video like that in those days.

PP: – It was very much ahead of its time.

PG: – Yeah. It’s just one sequence. It was a brilliant and very expensive idea. When we had to reshoot it, people were crying. The insurance company had to pay for everything.

PP: – So they were crying, too. Haha.

PG: – Haha. But in the end, it’s a beautiful video. I hope we can do… I’m sure we will do an HD version, because it’s really poor quality on YouTube.

PP: – It would be amazing to have all the videos in much better quality. Back to “Sleeping In My Car”, related to this song there was a protracted lawsuit. [A musician accused EMI and Per of plagiarism. Similarities appeared in the chord progression, but the independent expert concluded that there was no infringement of the copyright.] I don’t really want to talk about the case itself, but I’m curious how it works for you as a songwriter, that even if you hear a tremendous amount of songs and of course, nowadays it’s even more difficult to find out new things, you can still stick to your own style and don’t make the same sound as another artist. How does that work?

PG: – Haha. I think it’s easy for me, because I’m not a very competent musician. So even if I try to be Tom Petty or Paul McCartney, I’m not going to succeed. I’m not there on that level. Everything I’ve listened to all my life that I liked, I’ve used that in my own music. And I think if you talk to any artist or writer, they say the same thing. It would be really silly for anyone to say that they invented the wheel, because they haven’t. John Lennon loved all these ’50s stuff, which you could hear in his music. Tom Petty loved The Byrds and that kind of stuff. And Del Shannon. Everyone is influenced by the people that they like and they love, and I’m the same way. I try to figure out how they did that Al Green song. Especially when it comes to styles that I’m not really familiar with. Song styles that are maybe not melody driven, they are driven by the groove instead, the bass and the drums, which is really unfamiliar territory for me, I’m very melody driven, as you know. But if I’m trying to write something in a ’70s soul style, I’m totally lost. I don’t know what to do, but it turns out to be something else, which could be interesting.

PP: – You’re sailing.

PG: – Yeah. There’s no right, no wrong.

PP: – That’s the motto of the day.

PG: – It’s the truth!

PP: – “Vulnerable” was the fifth and final single from the album. How did you pick this word?

PG: – I think that was the whole idea with the song. It was that word. I love that word, it’s impossible to say.

PP: – Was it because of that why Marie didn’t want to sing it?

PG: – No, I don’t know. Did I write that for Marie? I can’t remember.

PP: – I don’t know. Probably not.

PG: – It’s a little soft for her. It should have been written differently if it was sung by her. Nevertheless, I always thought my vocals were crap on that one. One of these days I should re-record that and do it a little better. We never really played it live. We are talking about playing it live on the new tour.

PP: – Yes, please! We expected it to be played on your unplugged tour, because it would have fit so well, but it never happened.

PG: – I think we tried it out, but it just felt like it didn’t go anywhere. It’s got this string thing happening and that’s about it. It has very long verses, it’s like double verses every time, and it has a long chorus. Four minutes feels like eight minutes on stage. Haha. But we’ll see, we might use it.

PP: – I hope so! You just said that you were happy that Marie was the main character in the videos, but here it was you. How did it feel?

PG: – It was fun. I think it was shot in Australia.

PP: – Yeah, at Bondi Beach.

PG: – I have just vague memories of it, but it was fun. I felt very comfortable doing that. I was always proud of that song, the only thing I wasn’t proud of was my vocal performance. I thought it was really crap. Haha.

PP: – Haha. I like those vocals!

PG: – Yeah, lots of people love that song. Åsa loves it too, but I just wasn’t ready for it. It’s so different singing ballads, compared to singing uptempo songs. I don’t know why. In those days, I never really felt like I was ready to do that. I’ve been really a very late bloomer when it comes to singing properly. It’s somewhere around the mid ’90s, late ’90s, when I really start to think that I sang OK. On “The World According To Gessle” album there are some really nice ones. “Stupid” is good vocals. But most of these songs… “Fireworks” is not really good vocals.

PP: – I remember when we did the interview about your solo debut album on its 40th anniversary and first you said, oh, it’s a cool album. And then you said, this song is terrible, this song is terrible, this song is terrible. And now you do the same. Haha.

PG: – Haha. It’s because you find the mistakes looking back. At the same time, one of the things that got me in a very positive way, emotionally as well, at the musical rehearsal in Malmö, is that it’s such a massive catalogue of songs. It’s so many songs. And there are so many really, really nice songs. I’m not saying that to compete with anyone, but from my personal level, I’m really proud of some songs. When you hear lots of those songs in a row, it’s sort of heartbreaking. It’s all my life, basically.

PP: – There was your life in the GT movie, now there is your life in the Roxette musical.

PG: – Yeah, but it’s even more so in the musical, because it’s a bigger span. At the same time, for almost every song that you’ve done, if you listen to it, you want to change things. “Do You Wanna Go The Whole Way?”, for instance. I think that’s a great track, but it’s so slow. It should be…, you know, up with the tempo, so it becomes a bit more groovy. I don’t know why nobody noticed that in those days.

PP: – But Marie’s vocals are so powerful on it.

PG: – Maybe there was a trend, a Massive Attack thing going on in England at the time, or whatever that Clarence was really into, and he wanted to keep the tempo. I don’t know. I can’t remember. Speed it up, please!

PP: – Did Marie like to sing it?

PG: – I don’t know. I can’t remember recording it. I remember making the demo with Mats, and I thought it was a really nice melody, because it’s so unusual, that melody coming from me. So it must have been a mistake. That’s why I probably used it. [He is humming the melody.] It’s a really beautiful little thing there. I thought the title was interesting and I thought it was a cool song.

PP: – It’s a question in the title. There are two question titles on “Crash! Boom! Bang!”.

PG: – I love question marks!

PP: – Which is the best ever song with a question in the title?

PG: – On this album?

PP: – No, from anyone.

PG: – [He is thinking hard.] Oh, I can’t think of any song with a question mark. “What’s She Like?” got a question mark. I think it’s interesting to ask a question in the title. The title is the first thing you notice in a song. I just thought it makes you curious. I have to find out what’s she like.

PP: – There is this middle section with “The First Girl On The Moon” and “Place Your Love”. Can you tell me about this idea?

PG: – We had these two songs, and since the album was so long, we made it act one, act two, and put the acoustic stuff in the middle. I think those two songs are really nice, both of them. “The First Girl On The Moon” is a really wonderful song. “Place Your Love” is cool as well. Like I said, I was the one who was playing the guitar on that one.

PP: – “I Love The Sound Of Crashing Guitars” was inspired by Pete Townshend. What did he mean to you?

PG: – Oh, he’s a master! An amazing guitar player and even better writer. He’s just an amazing composer and the way he plays as well. He is doing really complicated things, but he makes it sound so simple. I’ve listened to The Who all my life. I still do. When I have nothing to do, I always go to YouTube and check out some The Who live from the old days. It just puts you in a brilliant mood, because that’s what it’s all about. This is what rock music is all about. A much more interesting band than, for instance, Led Zeppelin, because they have all these songs, “Baba O’Riley”, “Won’t Get Fooled Again” or “Behind Blue Eyes”, or even back to the ’60s, “Substitute” or “Happy Jack”. These are amazing songs. “I Love The Sound Of Crashing Guitars” could definitely be left out and forgotten in a drawer somewhere. Haha. I think it’s a nice idea for a lyric, but I think the music is bad.

PP: – Have you ever crashed a guitar?

PG: – No, I haven’t.

PP: – Not even by accident?

PG: – Well, no, but I left an acoustic guitar on stage once, and when I came back, someone had made a hole into it. It was a very nice acoustic guitar, so I had it repaired. I don’t know what happened to it. Something fell on it, probably, on tour somewhere.

I have a great Trini Lopez Gibson guitar that I have on tour as well, and I used that in the studio with Mats. I put it on the sofa and then I was going to sing, so I took away my watch. Then I threw my watch on the sofa and it hit the guitar and made this really big scratch on the guitar. [He demonstrates it with his hands.] Haha.

PP: – Ojoj. So you did crash a guitar. Haha. Now talking about MP, “Lies” is the only track where the music is written by you and MP. What was MP’s addition to this song? The vibes of it remind me a bit of Lenny Kravitz’s “Are You Gonna Go My Way”. Is there any relation to that?

PG: – No. I think the guitar riff is what MP wrote. It’s a silly track anyway. I don’t really like it. Haha. By the way, the la-la-la-la-lies, there was a The Who song called “La-La-La-Lies”. Maybe I borrowed that little phrase from them. I can’t remember. And we had another drummer there, Nicki Wallin. He was a heavy metal drummer who plays drums on that track. That’s one of those five songs that you can get rid of.

PP: – Then let’s talk about “I’m Sorry”.

PG: – Oh, “I’m Sorry” I think is a brilliant track!

PP: – In the Roxette demos talks with Sven you mentioned that it had the potential to become single material, but probably because of your fault that you held the production back to make it sound like the demo, it didn’t happen. Was it often the case back then?

PG: – It should have been a single, because it’s a really good title. “I’m Sorry”. I always loved that chorus. I think it’s a brilliant chorus. It’s so catchy. Maybe the production is compromised, because I wanted certain things and Clarence wanted other things. At the end of the day, nobody was really happy with what we’ve done with it. So that’s why it got really low on the album. It never became a single, but it’s a good track. I think it’s one of those songs that I would love to try to play live as well in the future. We’ll see.

PP: – Would be great! The last two tracks are “Love Is All (Shine Your Light On Me)” and “Go To Sleep”. Do you remember Marie’s first reaction and thoughts on “Love Is All”?

PG: – No, I don’t. I remember when I made the demo, it was sung by Camilla Gustafsson, who was singing on a few of my demos in those days. She did a great job. Musically, it’s a pretty interesting song. It’s all about these sustained chords. I thought it was really nice to have these angel style verses and then I’m coming in to do the chorus, which is very simple. It’s a very classic chord sequence. I thought it was great, but it’s too long. That was like this „Hey Jude” style. The same style we have at the end of “Doesn’t Make Sense”. You create like a new theme and it just goes on and on and on until you just puke. Haha. I think we overdid it on “Love Is All”. But I’m sure that if you check out the master tapes, the multitrack tapes, it’s probably five minutes longer.

PP: – So in the end, you shortened it. Haha. “Go To Sleep” is the only song to which Marie wrote the music. How did it work?

PG: – Well, I think Marie just had her first child when we recorded this album, so she was on and off in the studio. When she presented “Go To Sleep” and “See Me”, for some reason, we picked or she picked “Go To Sleep”. Maybe it was like a go to sleep song in the end. Personally, I prefer “See Me”. I think that’s a really wonderful song. We used that on “Travelling”, right?

PP: – Yes, it’s on “Travelling”.

PG: – A beautiful one!

PP: – You mentioned that Marie had her first child when you recorded this album and she recorded many of the vocals while she was pregnant. She said in an interview that it felt comfortable for her to make this album. Did you hear any difference in how she was singing?

PG: – No, not really. I remember what was different was that she wasn’t around that much as she used to be. But that was natural. Then, of course, that became the norm. Then she had another child, Oscar, and I became a parent as well. When we did the “Have A Nice Day” album in 1998 it was also different, because then suddenly we worked with Michael Ilbert who was producing, and he and Marie didn’t really get along that well. It became more and more me and Clarence and then me and Clarence and Christoffer. That was a little bit unfortunate, I thought. But it was Marie’s choice. Vocal wise, she was always amazing. I remember doing “Milk And Toast And Honey” for “Room Service”. It was just an amazing take, but she wasn’t really that interested anymore. I called her up and I said, “can’t you come to the studio and do another take on the end of the song? Because we have to alter the melody of it. So you have to bring the song home, so to speak.” So she did. But she came with a taxi, and she left the taxi outside. So she went in and sang the new melodies that I had written and it took like six minutes or so. Then she went away and we continued working. That was unfortunate a bit, but that was the way it turned out to be. She had family, so she had other priorities. And that was also what I guess became the ending of Roxette before Marie got ill. She wanted to do other things.

PP: – Four of the album songs were also released in Spanish: “Crash! Boom! Bang!”, “Run To You” (Directamente a ti), “I’m Sorry” (Cuánto lo siento) and “Vulnerable” (Tímida). 3 were sung by Marie, 1 by you. You tried to avoid singing in Spanish. How come you picked “Vulnerable” as well?

PG: – [He is hiding his face with his hands.] I tried to sing in Spanish and it just sounded so ridiculous. But Marie was really amazing. She didn’t speak Spanish at all, but she sounded great. The Head of EMI Spain, I think his name was Rafael Gil, he was a wonderful person. He came to Stockholm during that whole recording session and he was like the tutor to tell Marie how to pronounce things and what you can and can’t do. She didn’t have a clue what she was singing about and I certainly didn’t have a clue what I was singing, but I did my best. I never really listened to that album at all. But a lot of people liked it. It was a record label decision to do something in Spanish. I didn’t really like the idea, but then I remembered that The Beatles did stuff in German, so I said OK. Haha.

PP: – It’s fun that you did that. Which is the best title on the album?

PG: – Best title? “Crash! Boom! Bang!” is a good title. “Fireworks” is a good title. “Sleeping In My Car” is a good title. “The First Girl On The Moon” is interesting. “I Love The Sound Of Crashing Guitars” is a much better title than song. “What’s She Like?”, good. “Do You Wanna Go The Whole Way?”, good. “I’m Sorry”, good. “Love Is All”, hm. “Go To Sleep”, decent.

PP: – Which song has the best hook?

PG: – Best hook? [Per wanted to look at his note on the screen, but it went dark.]

PP: – The hook has gone. Haha.

PG: – I think “Sleeping In My Car” has got a great guitar riff. I think that’s pretty in your face. But I like the “bamm ba bamm” [he is humming it] on “Crash! Boom! Bang!” as well. That’s Burt Bacharach style. I’ve always loved that one.

PP: – Which song has the strongest lyrics?

PG: – “Crash”, I think. “What’s She Like?” is also a good lyric. For me, that was like the special song on the album.

PP: – And why was it so special to you?

PG: – Because everything was there. Marie’s voice is amazing, the song is there, the melody is there and the lyrics are there. And also Clarence’s choice of sounds, synthesizers [he has a problem pronouncing this word, haha]. I can’t speak after 16:30… Haha.

PP: – I’m sorry. Haha.

PG: – But anyway, he picked really wonderful sounds. It’s a very good song and it’s like mature Roxette. If someone who doesn’t know anything about Roxette and they pick “What’s She Like?” to represent Roxette, I’m more than happy.

PP: – Which chorus are you the most proud of?

PG: – Most proud of? “I’m Sorry”. It’s the best chorus. The “Sleeping In My Car” chorus is very efficient. “Vulnerable” has a nice chorus as well. But “I’m Sorry”, it’s a brilliant chorus.

PP: – The best melody?

PG: – I don’t know if it’s the best, but the most interesting melody for me is “Do You Wanna Go The Whole Way?” I think it’s really weird, very unlike me, like I said before. It’s irresistible. When I write something like that, I have to do something with it, because I’m stepping out of my comfort zone doing things like that. I don’t know how I do it, but I did it once for that one.

PP: – The coolest rhyme on this album? Do you remember all the lyrics? [He is thinking.] For me it’s “pills and thrills – Hollywood Hills”.

PG: – Yeah, and I like “vintage Jesus – crash the guitar into 1000 pieces”.

PP: – Aaah, that’s cool indeed!

PG: – That’s a nice lyric. It’s just that I don’t like the music. You know, I had that lyric lying around for quite a long time. I tried to write music to it, but it’s complicated, because it’s got all these really long sentences. It’s really hard to write in my style of music. I need shorter phrases, so I can sort of trick the ear a bit. This is hard for me to do. And when you use a lyric like that, that is so long sentences, it becomes a very long song. I lose interest.

PP: – Which song would be an instant hit in a 2024 remix? If it’s done by Bassflow. Haha.

PG: – Haha. There’s not that many. I mean, “Sleeping In My Car” is the obvious choice, because it’s sort of instant. You could do “Sleeping In My Car” in so many different ways. If someone would have done that in a Max Martin production style, it sounds like a hit record, because it’s got all those chord structures and those melodies and lyrics. This album was made by 35-year-old people. I mean, we were getting old already then. Haha.

PP: – Being on the charts was more important for you in the ’90s than it is today. How did you cope with the positions you reached with CBB after the success of “Joyride”? I mean CBB was a commercial success too.

PG: – Well, it was OK for us. The problem with “Crash” was that we didn’t have a deal in the States anymore, because our record label got sold. 127 people got sacked and 127 new people came in and they didn’t have any relationship with “Look Sharp!” or “Joyride” or Roxette. So, we were left out in the snow. They didn’t really want to release this album and that’s why we wound up in a campaign with McDonald’s, as you know, which was crazy. It was just a business thing for the label. Tina Turner and everyone was involved. They sold zillions and zillions of records, but we were the only ones who presented new music. Everything else was like compilations.

PP: – Ah, I didn’t know that. That it was compilations for other artists.

PG: – I thought it was a big mistake to do that. I told them so, but they convinced everyone, including the Swedish company, that that was the way to go. Knowing that, I felt like we lost our momentum in the States, which we did, and that really never came back.

PP: – I’ve checked the charts who was No. 1 around that time, April 1994. I was surprised to see “The Sign” by Ace Of Base was No. 1 for several weeks in March and May and April was owned by R. Kelly on the Billboard Hot 100. Wasn’t there any chance to change the record company to a more competent one back then?

PG: – No, because we were stuck with a long contract. So eventually, when “Have A Nice Day” came out in 1999, it was never released in the States at all. Then we found an independent label called Edel Records. Maybe we did a compilation. I think it was probably a compilation with all the old hits. [Edel America Records released a 16-track “Don’t Bore Us, Get To The Chorus” greatest hits compilation in the US in 2000.] We toured acoustically and did acoustic shows in the States.

PP: – At Virgin.

PG: – Yeah, Virgin Megastore in New York and some theatres here and there. But it was tough. The momentum was pretty much lost with “Crash” in the States. Thinking about that, I thought the response elsewhere was great.

PP: – The tour excluded the US, but still you did 81 concerts in 4 continents for more than 1 million people. That’s amazing!

PG: – The tour was a big success and we finally got to play South Africa. That was massive stadiums.

PP: – And also China! How proud were you that even Mick Jagger envied you for that?

PG: – That was fantastic! But all in all, when I look back, it was these eight years from 1988 to 1995, the heydays of the band. After that, we took a break, Marie had a second child and I did the first Gyllene Tider comeback in 1995-1996. Then “The World According To Gessle” in 1997.

PP: – The setlist included 8 songs from CBB.

PG: – Wow!

PP: – That’s more than half of the album. Why did you think it would work out fine to play so many new songs?

PG: – The “Crash” band was different from before. Suddenly we had Micke Nord Andersson on guitar, because he was such a great personality on stage, as well as being a great lap steel player. We had two drummers, Pelle and Mats Persson on percussion as well. So it was a different lineup. Probably, because of that. You could do that in those days. If you had a fanbase coming to your shows, they expected you to play songs that they haven’t heard on the last tour. Nowadays everyone, especially big artists, play the big songs. As soon as they play something from the new album, everyone goes and buys a beer, including me. Haha. I don’t know, it’s a different ball game.

PP: – How do you think the CBB era formed your fanbase?

PG: – Oh, I don’t know. I never thought about that. I think when you work mainly in a Top 40 format – everything I’ve done is based on what we call Top 40. It’s not Top 40 anymore, because it’s old, but it used to be Top 40. I think, if you have big songs, you’re going to keep your fans. If you don’t have big songs anymore, they’re going to move on to something else. Because most people aren’t super interested in everything you do. They are interested in certain things you do and you have to be aware of that. I always thought it was impossible and actually boring to try to have success all the time at any cost, because you have to follow your own line. We talked a little bit earlier about finding your own style and going from there. I think if you’re lucky enough to have your heart in pop music that is Top 40 anyway, you’re probably going to wind up having a hit record anyway down the road, because that’s what you’re going to get good at. But to sit down and try to create hits for an international market, when the main purpose is that it should be hits, I think that’s really stupid, because what you lose is your personality. That’s why I think lots of the current pop scene is really boring, because it’s written by eight people and there’s no one in charge. The artist isn’t in charge anymore. The producer might be in charge, but it’s like a mishmash of everything. And everything sounds like it’s the way it’s supposed to sound. I think that’s the end of a career. If you’re lucky enough to have hits, you should cherish the moment, because it might never come again. Suddenly, you want to work with some other people, or maybe you want to go in another direction, and then suddenly you lose 92% of all the people who loved the previous single. Haha. They don’t like violins, or they don’t like fiddles, or they don’t like lap steels or whatever. They think it’s too much dance or it’s too little guitars, or it’s too many guitars.

PP: – It has to please you, first of all.

PG: – If it doesn’t please me, I can’t see how I could finish the production, or finish the song even. When you write a song, you have to have a target or a goal, a direction that you want to go into with a song. And you have to fulfill that. In the ’80s, when my career went down in the mid ’80s and I started writing songs with other writers, I immediately realized that was not for me, because it’s so much compromise all the time. I write something, a lyric or whatever, and they say, oh, you have to change that line, you have to change that word, I can’t sing that word, blah, blah, blah. It winds up not being me anymore. It becomes something in between all the time and that is not what I want to do. That’s why I wanted to be an artist also. I wanted to make my own records, because then I could be in charge of…

PP: – …be your own boss.

PG: – Yeah, be my own boss, exactly. Amen.

PP: – The show in Johannesburg, South Africa was recorded to be released on VHS. You already shared a wonderful, remastered version of “Spending My Time”. Will we get to see the complete show remastered?

PG: – I think it’s done, actually. Absolutely, it’s on the way.

PP: – Fabulous! And earlier you promised a 30th anniversary release. What can we expect and when? I guess it will come only next year?

PG: – No, it’s coming for Christmas!

PP: – For Christmas this year? Yay!

PG: – It’s got 23 demos on it.

PP: – Wow!

PG: – There’s 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 [he is checking his note on the computer], at least 5 that’s never been published before. Some of them are out in The Per Gessle Archives box, but there’s a few that I found, like “Lies”, for instance, “What’s She Like?”. That’s a terrible demo. Ew! I remember that one.

PP: – Haha, we will love it, I’m sure!

PG: – And there’s other songs that didn’t make the album, but it was written during that era as well.

PP: – Sounds exciting! So it will be the upscaled version of the live thing, then the demos. What else can we expect?

PG: – It will be a physical product. I don’t know if it’s going to be a triple album or a triple CD or a double CD or whatever. But the concert will be separate. That’s the plan anyway. We talked about it the other day. I actually called Warner, because I knew I was going to talk to you, so I thought I might have some updated info.

PP: – Thank you!

PG: – We will release it at the end of November, early December. It’s in the can.

PP: – Great to have something to look forward to for Christmas as well.

PG: – I have a fantastic thing coming out on my birthday next year.

PP: – You are a teaser! Haha. So, in the musical, there will be “What’s She Like?”, “Crash! Boom! Bang!”… Any other songs from CBB? I guess “Sleeping In My Car” is in there too.

PG: – Yeah, “Sleeping In My Car” is in there. There are quite a few songs from “Crash”.

PP: – As real songs or as underscore?

PG: – No, with the lyrics and everything. There are lots of songs in the musical. More than I expected, actually. There are a few songs that I miss, but they couldn’t put them into the script.

PP: – If there are so many songs included, will there be any conversations between the characters or will they be only singing? Haha.

PG: – Haha. It’s a great story. I think it’s going to be marvellous to watch.

PP: – Can’t wait!

PG: – I brought MP with me the other day, and he was silent for like three hours. It’s really cool, and everyone is so passionate about it. It’s a wonderful team and everyone enjoys working together, so the vibe is just amazing. Tomorrow we are going to watch the costumes for the first time. They created 1180 pieces of wardrobe!

PP: – Wow! I’m always amazed by all these costumes in musicals.

PG: – This is far out. This guy, who used to work in London as well, but he’s a Swedish guy, he is just wild! He loved that era, late ’80s, early ’90s. The musical takes place in the early ’90s, so you’re going back to the ’90s, and it’s just amazing stuff that he’s done. It’s a really big production. I’m really happy we are doing it in Malmö, because it would have been impossible to do this in a private theatre. This is too big for that. So this is going to be wild. It’s a huge stage. That’s what makes Malmö so special. It’s really, really deep. There are things that you can’t really do in any location in Stockholm, for instance. So, yeah, it’s going to be exciting for sure.

PP: – I’m definitely very excited about it. OK, Per. It was a bit more than one hour. I’m very sorry for that.

PG: – Nah, it’s fine. I got my flowers. Haha.

PP: – Haha. Happy anniversary to you and happy celebration!

PG: – Thank you very much!

PP: – Then see you on the 6th!

PG: – See you on the 6th! Keep it up!

PP: – Thank you very much, Per! Bye-bye!

PG: – Thank you! Bye!

Stills are from the interview.

Åsa Gessle interview by Femina

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Malin Roos at Femina did an interview with Åsa Gessle and Anna Hållams took some wonderful photos of Fru Nordin in Tylösand.

Malin talks to Åsa at Hotel Tylösand, so she sees Åsa doing her thing around the hotel. A cushion has ended up askew in a sofa so that the seam can be seen. Nothing an ordinary eye would perceive, but Åsa sees everything and is there to rearrange it.

If you have created an environment, you want it to look like you have it in your head. I think it’s also good to show the staff that you have your heart in the details, because then they get it too.

Exactly what her official title is at Hotel Tylösand is a matter of mixed opinion. Her husband, who has been a co-owner of the hotel outside Halmstad since 1995, calls her “The Boss”, in short.

Åsa describes herself as “creative manager of renovations”, which turns out to mean everything from painting walls late at night to sitting in construction meetings at seven in the morning. Above all, she is behind the design.

When Femina is visiting, the hotel’s SPA has just opened after receiving a facelift. The result is just like the creator’s vision; a sacred oasis with very dark slate.

Åsa Gessle says that since she and her husband designed their first house in Halmstad in 1992, she had a teacher in Abelardo Gonzales, former professor of design at the School of Architecture in Lund.

Abelardo is my aesthetic school, he is super talented. Both Per and I are a little hurt that everything should be in line. Abelardo taught me to keep my eyes open and that nothing is impossible.

Preferred creative subjects in school

However, the interest in architecture and design goes back further than that, as Åsa was born and raised in a family with a strong craft tradition. Grandfather was a blacksmith, great-grandfather a slipper maker and both her grandmother and mother worked with sewing.

My mother was single with four children and a dog. We lived in a small three-room apartment in the Akka houses in Trelleborg and didn’t have much money, but my mother was creative. She sewed and knitted everything for us. You had to learn how to make changes with small means, which made me also quite handy.

Woodworking and sewing and domestic science were my subjects at school, I wasn’t as good at sitting still and studying.

To the question what she wanted to be, Åsa replies:

Stewardess. Until I started flying and realized I was afraid of flying.

Åsa Gessle was 20 when she moved to Halmstad in 1982 to open a clothing store with a boyfriend who was ten years older. She had never been to the capital of Halland County before and didn’t like it at all at first, she reveals:

I found it difficult to get into Halmstad and was in Trelleborg a lot. The guy and I drifted apart and separated. But then later I was out with my brother one evening in Halmstad and met a gang where one of the guys was Per…

It flashed a little.

To the question if she was listening to Gyllene Tider then, Åsa replies:

No, I had been in Paris and worked with modelling. In those days, you didn’t get information that way either, there were no mobile phones. It wasn’t my music either. I like dance bands and used to go to traditional Nordic dances on Sundays in Folkets Park in Trelleborg.

Gyllene Tider were basically over when Åsa and Per Gessle became a couple in 1984.

Åsa tells Femina that she was there at the fateful dinner in 1985 when the band’s bassist Anders Herrlin said he didn’t want to be in the band anymore – and that she was the spider in the web when she got them to play together again at Per’s 30th birthday party in 1989.

But at that time the focus was on a new band that was about to take over not only Sweden, but the world.

Marie Fredriksson’s death hit her hard

Åsa Gessle was working at a travel agency in Halmstad when things exploded with Roxette. She had booked flights and hotels for Per and Marie Fredriksson in the first years when her husband asked her to accompany him on a world tour in 1989. She went on leave, pushed aside her fear of flying and joined the Joyride world tour.

I was Per’s personal assistant, made sure that the suitcases were packed and arrived at the hotel and that Per was on the right radio station at the right time. That all the logistics worked for them.

Åsa says that the Roxette era also gave her a friendship with Marie Fredriksson.

We have traveled all our adult lives together. We hung out and were close, partied and had fun. We had a little tequila. We were young, no more than 30.

When Marie passed away in December 2019 as a result of a previous cancer, Åsa Gessle’s mother was also dying at home in Skåne. She describes an inhumanly tough time:

Marie passed away on Monday the ninth and my mother on Thursday the same week. I watched over my mother for ten days while Per sat by himself in Stockholm when Marie passed away. I couldn’t go away and comfort him and we couldn’t be together. It was a horrible week.

But I played a lot of Marie for my mother during her last days, “Tro” and “Ännu doftar kärlek”.

Two song titles that also match Åsa Gessle’s design expression well. The hotel in Tylösand is imbued with symbols of love – such as the heart on the roof above the new pool that is reflected in the water. She says it was an important detail for her.

You can certainly be perceived as a little girl who drew hearts everywhere, but for me it is important to show that we stand for love here, especially in a time where we are fed with so much evil and negative things that happen.

It may sound cliché, but love and peace are the fundamental things in the world.

In October, Åsa and her hitmaker husband have been together for 40 years. Malin asks what is the secret.

That you have your own life in the relationship.

Per and I have separate worlds. He has the world of music and I have this as mine. The fact that we both have a lot to do is fun, because we always have things to talk about and discuss when we see each other. Not as if we had been sitting on each other’s lap the whole time.

When Per was a guest on Framgångspodden podcast, he expressed that the fact that Åsa came along on the trips and tours was important for both Roxette and their relationship. On the other hand, Malin is curious if Åsa has ever felt that her career has been held back.

No, I haven’t thought about that. But maybe that’s why I think it’s extra fun to work now. Now it’s my time and that’s what Per says too: “now you get to do your part that has been held back”.

I have not only experienced what Roxette has given its audience, I have experienced a variety of cultures and made friends all over the world.

Malin noticed Richie Sambora in Bon Jovi on a picture on Åsa’s Instagram. Åsa is smiling:

Yes, it was a party in New York, a tough night.

I sat next to Richie at a dinner with Eddie Irvine, whom we have known for a long time. They were, of course, “completely ordinary people”, just like Per is an ordinary person, everyone else is. If you are in the middle of it, you don’t think about it, but of course, we’ve been invited to very fun events, like all the MTV galas in the past with Duran Duran and all sorts.

Malin is curious if there is someone Åsa has been starstruck by.

Yes, Paul McCartney whom we met in the green room at the Apollo in New York before the pandemic.

Travelling around the world has been an inspiration in Åsa’s profession. Hotel Tylösand’s extension The Front House is influenced by the Whitby Hotel in New York and she has borrowed the idea of ??green apples as a recurring interior detail from Hotel Delano in Miami.

Everyone laughed at the beginning, it wasn’t very popular, but today we always have green apples in front, except during Christmas time when they are red.

Shares life between Stockholm and Halmstad

Otherwise, Åsa Gessle’s signature color is black. But not black-black, she emphasizes and gives a lesson:

There is a difference between black and black, especially in interior design. I prefer a softness in the black, a warm brown-black tone. In the paint shop here, they have even come up with a code for “Åsa-black”.

Malin asks Åsa if she also goes Johnny Cash-style on clothes.

Yes, like one hundred percent of my wardrobe is black clothes. It started when we were touring. It was impossible to color match when we travelled so much, so black became a safe choice. I’d rather put on shoes in color or paint my nails.

Per is not as black.

No, he can have a little pink and purple. It comes from his mother’s color palette.

During the busiest touring years, Halmstad with the house and hotel was the place that Åsa and Per Gessle landed in order to gather strength, while the apartment in Stockholm was the base.

During and after the pandemic, Åsa has spent more time on the West Coast, partly because there have been several major renovations, partly because their son has left the nest.

Gabriel moved two years ago, that means I can be here more as well. My husband thinks it’s a bit boring though, he is a bit of a sociable person. Now Gabriel is probably the one of the two who copes best ha ha. Per doesn’t cook, so…

Malin wants to know how Per copes with it when Åsa is here.

It’s a bit difficult… but I make lunch boxes. He has two dishes at a place in Stockholm that he goes and buys, but otherwise I prepare for him to heat. He can do that and he can cook rice and pasta. But usually it is no more than two or three days.

Per and Åsa Gessle in the Gyllene Tider movie

Åsa smiles and tells Femina that 26-year-old Gabriel is a civil engineer in computer technology. In the same way that it was fundamental for her to have her own identity, it has been for their son, she explains.

Gabriel has always said that he doesn’t want to be known as “Per’s son”. He is a great musician, plays the grand piano and is very musical, but goes his own way. Then he has a lot to fall back on that he gets for free in his life anyway, but he is very conscious of having his own life and earning his own money.

He is independent and has attended KTH for five years. The fact that he has a “real profession” would have made his grandmother, Per’s mother happy. She wanted Per to become a pediatrician or a psychologist.

Instead, he became an internationally celebrated pop star.

Åsa Gessle explains that she herself has not exactly been in the spotlight, saying that she “doesn’t like it and prefers to stay behind”. So one wonders about the change. Anyone who follows Per Gessle on Instagram can note more pictures and warm posts about “The Boss”.

Yes, haha I wonder too. Something has happened. He is also getting older, maybe other sides will emerge.

In July, the film about Gyllene Tider premieres. One can assume that the nostalgia trip will involve both old and new fans from the group “hysterical girls” who roar “Per Gessle”. Åsa says that she takes the commotion in stride.

In the beginning, when I was young, I was maybe a little jealous, but you can’t think like that, it is what it is. Per has always been good at taking good care of his fans.

Åsa says it will be a very enjoyable film and reveals that she actually appears in a small role. She and the whole family.

We will do a Hitchcock-like cameo. Per and I, our son and his girlfriend.

Dreaming of building further

Åsa gets up, folds up a blanket and states that she still has sore muscles after the marathon dance in Västerhagen in Haverdal.

Gyllene Tider and Roxette in full glory, it doesn’t matter. Åsa from Trelleborg still has her heart in dance band music. She mentions Perikles, Sannex, Casanovas and Blender.

I don’t drink that much alcohol, and you can’t either when you go to sports dance. Then it’s packed between seven and eleven and you are completely exhausted afterwards.

However, dancing to a dance band is not something I can do with Per.

Åsa hopes to get the hotel management on board with her next dream project.

Even though it’s winter, it’s so beautiful here. The sea is amazing. The openness here is fantastic and you should take advantage of that wherever you are in the hotel.

Always take in the sea wherever you are. She likes view points. They want a sun deck on top of the SPA. They have investigated and it works, so they only need some years.

Åsa Gessle: 5 tips to lift your home

  1. Be bright!

“I’m not too happy with cold lights, I like to go towards warm tones in the lighting, preferably 2,700 Kelvin. Mixing light sources is nice, as is candlelight, which you can’t have too much of.

I also like to mix textures in the interior; hard, soft, shiny and fur. If you are calm, you can play more with materials. It is easier to change colors according to the season with a calm foundation and less expensive to lift a room with a new cushion than to repaint, for example.”

  1. Think about the details

“I don’t want it too cosy with lots of trinkets. Details are important and everything that makes a room alive contributes to the whole of the environment, like fruits, books and green plants.

I’m not a fan of plastic flowers. I think the oxygen, chlorophyll and scents that plants give make people feel good.”

  1. Sort through the wardrobe!

“I like to decorate with both old and new. I like to go to Myrornas and look for fun things for our home and for the hotel. So a tip is to look in the wardrobe for what is already there. Most have lots and you can also redo things.

I had some yellow pots that had been in storage for 20 years, suddenly they got new life. Everything can find a new place, recycling is very important to me.”

  1. Prioritize comfort

“There is great designer furniture that is wonderful to experience, but not always as comfortable to sit on. When I choose chairs and sofas, number one is that they are comfortable and good to sit in. Preferably practical too.”

  1. Dare black!

“When we started with dark, many people were skeptical and said it would be cold and hard, but it won’t be, if you use a softer black color with brown in it.

It’s individual, but personally, I find dark tones calming. It is also grateful to mix wood and nature with the black.”

All interview text is written by Malin Roos for Femina in Swedish. Here it is a translation by RoxBlog.

RoxBlog interview with Per Gessle – “If you like the songs and you are open-minded a little bit, give it a chance.”

by

It’s more than a month ago that the news regarding the Roxette In Concert 2025 tour came out and there are several parallel projects going on in Per Gessle’s world, so I asked him if we could talk about all what’s happening around him right now. We talked about Gyllene Tider – the live album and the movie –, Per’s upcoming duet album, “Joyride – The Musical” and of course, the Roxette tour that starts in South Africa next year.

It has become marathon-long, but I’ve created sections, so that you can read it in parts, if you think it’s too much Per at once. I think it can never be too much Per, though. Haha. Enjoy!

I met Per via Zoom on Friday, 7th June. He was in Halmstad, I was in Budapest.

Per Gessle: – Hello!

Patrícia Peres: – Hello!

PG: – How are you?

PP: – I’m good, thanks. I’m impressed you are on time! Haha.

PG: – It’s a first! I don’t know how it feels, but it feels okay.

PP: – How are you doing?

PG: – I’m OK. It’s a busy schedule from this week and upcoming weeks as well, so I’m trying to cope.

PP: – You’re always so busy.

PG: – It’s too much now. This year is crazy, because the musical and the movie came at the same time, which wasn’t supposed to be like that at all.

PP: – Yeah, everything at the same time. Are you in Halmstad now?

PG: – Yeah, it’s nice here, but the wind is pretty cold. I was trying to take a short walk before, but I was freezing. It’s 11 degrees.

PP: – Oh, it’s 29 here. Haha.

PG: – Oh my God! So you need air conditioning.

GYLLENE TIDER

PP: – Thank you for releasing Gyllene Tider live! It will be amazing to relive last summer!

PG: – We did a film as well, but it was just cameras on stage, so there is no footage of the crowds, which makes it sort of boring to watch after like five songs or so.

PP: – Ah, I wanted to ask if there is some kind of material for a DVD, because I remember Anders Roos was using cameras all over the place.

PG: – Yeah, we have the whole Ullevi show on footage, but I don’t know. Maybe we can use one or two songs in the future. We’ll see.

PP: – I’m happy to watch the whole thing. No matter how boring it seems to you. Haha.

PG: – I think it’s nice to have this album coming out. There is no point in releasing live albums, but now that the movie is coming out, you are getting a lot of media attention anyway. I think it’s a good album. MP did a great job mixing.

PP: – I already thought that it would be out last year, around Christmas, when you released the demos of “Good Karma”.

PG: – I don’t know why we waited. It was probably because of the movie. I can’t remember. We didn’t have any proper pictures, so we just made this old fashioned sleeve. We couldn’t find any good pictures in Anders Roos’ archives. There were pictures of me, pictures of MP, pictures of Göran, but there wasn’t a great band live thing, and so we thought we’d do it like this instead.

PP: – This will be out on 21st June and then the exhibition opens on 25th June.

PG: – Oh yeah, I forgot about that.

PP: – What will we see there? Except for your handprints.

PG: – They borrowed my old red guitar, and I think they’re going to recreate Michael’s childhood room he had when he was a kid, because he left it intact in his parents’ house still. Of course, he did, haha. I’m not really involved. I gave them some original lyrics, so they’re probably going to print them on bigger sizes.

PP: – That’s cool. I will check it out. Then the movie premieres in July.

PG: – Yeah, I’m going to see the movie again not this Monday, but next Monday. On 17th or whatever it is.

PP: – The final cut?

PG: – Hopefully, it will be the final cut, yeah. Last time I saw it, they didn’t have the end credits. It ends with Gyllene Tider playing Ullevi, sort of a short film thing, and it wasn’t there when I saw it. There were some additional things that had to be put in, like sound effects and stuff.

PP: – How many times did you watch it already?

PG: – Four times.

PP: – And do you still like it?

PG: – Yeah, I think it’s a great movie. I think it’s just what I hoped it should be. I didn’t want it to be like a big homage to a very long career. It’s basically a story about me, and growing up, and then getting together with MP and forming a band, and then the success happens. It’s really moving in parts and it’s really funny in parts. And the guys who play the band are wonderful. You really love them. And I think that’s the main thing, you get a great connection with those kids.

PP: – I started following them on social media, and it seems that they get along very well, and it feels like they became real friends.

PG: – Yeah, and it’s a good script. Of course, there are lots of liberties taken and not that many things are exactly the way it was. But nevertheless, it’s entertaining, and I think people are going to like it. I hope so. And I like the idea that it ends in 1982. So it doesn’t go on, and on, and on, and then gold records and bla bla bla… It’s not about that, really. It’s about five kids getting together and forming a band, which is a great thing even today.

PP: – You do a cameo in the film.

PG: – Yeah, I’m standing with a drink at Café Opera. Gabriel, my son is there as well. He is walking across the camera with a hat on. He looks really wonderful.

PP: – And the other guys in the band are there too?

PG: – Anders is in there, and hm…, I haven’t seen Michael, but he’s probably in there. I’m sure he is at several spots. Haha.

PP: – You yourself watch a lot of movies. How does it feel that you are the main character in a movie?

PG: – It feels OK. I thought it was going to be different. I thought it was going to be more emotional, but maybe it’s because I personally don’t recognize my parents, because they don’t look like my parents and I don’t recognize the house, because that wasn’t like the house I was raised in. Everything looks different, so I have to remind myself all the time while watching the movie that it’s about me. So at the end of the day, I’m not that affected by it. But Åsa got moved by it and Göran, the first time he saw it, it was just a week ago and he was sobbing.

PP: – He was already very moved during the shootings.

PG: – So people get affected by it. They have some test previews for different audiences, some tests that they do with movies, and they are getting really good reactions from people.

PP: – That sounds promising.

PG: – Normally, you only get the chance to be part of a movie like this when you’re dead.

PP: – Fortunately, that’s not the case.

PG: – You never know. There is always a risk when you do something like this, that it’s going to be terrible, and then you’re going to have to live with that for the rest of your life. But that’s always the risk. It’s the same with the musical or going on tour or doing this thing with Lena. There’s always a risk that it might screw up something.

PP: – Will there be a soundtrack to the movie?

PG: – There is a soundtrack, but I don’t know if it’s going to be released. I know that we talked about it, but I’m not part of it. It’s another company.

PP: – But you said that Valdemar was singing on it and the Roxette band was playing. So it’s not the other guys playing.

PG: – No, they can’t play.

PP: – But I think some of them can. I mean, Lancelot is playing the guitar, isn’t he?

PG: – Yeah, but in the movie, it’s Clarence, Christoffer, Norpan, the drummer, and Magnus Börjeson who is the bass guy, they tried to replicate the Gyllene Tider arrangements, note by note. It’s really hard to do, and it sounds really silly sometimes, but they did their best. And Valdemar is singing along with that. It doesn’t sound like Gyllene Tider, but it almost sounds like Gyllene Tider. You have to be pretty skilled to do that. It’s always funny to hear these guys playing Gyllene Tider tracks. Sometimes I do corporate gigs and we play “Gå & fiska!”, “Juni, juli, augusti”, “Det hjärta som brinner” with this band. It always sounds so funny, because they can’t play like Gyllene Tider can.

PP: – Yeah, of course.

PG: – It doesn’t work. It has to be done in a certain way. And nobody can play drums like Michael does.

PP: – It’s so funny that you call him Michael. Haha.

PG: – Yeah, Michael South.

PP: – Did you record anything together, the five of you and the guys in the movie?

PG: – No.

PP: – Not even “Sommartider”?

PG: – No. Everything was done at Christoffer’s studio. But I wasn’t there at all, I just listened. One of the first things we talked about like a year ago is that – since the movie ends in 1982 – there are so many songs that became big for Gyllene Tider, like “Gå & fiska!”, “Kung av sand”, “Juni, juli, augusti”, “Det är över nu”. How do you get those songs into the movie when they are born too late, so to speak? So what we did was to use those songs as underscores. There are instrumental versions in the movie of “Tuffa tider”, for instance, or “Juni, juli, augusti”, which is really beautiful. And that is the magic of Clarence and Christoffer. They’ve been doing that and then they went straight into doing the musical.

PP: – Sounds exciting. You said in an interview that you hope the movie will make kids start a band. Does it still happen these days that kids start a band?

PG: – No, but I thought maybe we can be the catalyst, the little spark that makes things happen. I just think that when you watch the movie, you feel the power of music and the music connecting people together and starting a band and creating this puzzle, which is amazing to be part of. We are all doing our own little thing in the band and we put it together. We play the same song at the same time. Haha. It’s a great feeling and it’s just something that I wish more young people would experience. It’s so different today when everyone is sitting on their smartphones or laptops and communicating like this, instead of communicating for real. Maybe it’s old school thinking.

PP: – Well, that would be great if this would start something, of course.

PG: – It’s the same with sports. If you play in a soccer team or a hockey team or whatever, you connect and you have your role to play within the team. It’s exactly the same thing. I just think it’s great when it comes to music, because music is so creative. It’s just amazing to create things together and find your own little spots. You feel like this is the right thing for me. When I started out, if those people wouldn’t have been right for me, I would never have had the success of becoming a writer, because you need the support and you need the collaboration all the time. Same with Roxette and everything I’ve done.

PP: – Do you plan any gigs this summer?

PG: – I have a couple of corporate gigs later on during the year, but I’ll wait until South Africa.

SÄLLSKAPSSJUK – THE DUET ALBUM

PP: – Getting down to the duet album…, by the way, I bet you are already working on a new album in the meantime.

PG: – Yeah, actually, I am. Haha. I’m working on a very… How should I put it? Special project. It’s really fun. I’m halfway through it, but I don’t know when it’s going to come out. I’ve really longed to go to the studio and do an old-fashioned record. Some recordings with just a band and being creative. It’s been over a year ago since I finished “Sällskapssjuk”. A year is a long time.

PP: – Last year, when we did the Per Gessle 40 interview in March, you said that the album was almost done, but you wouldn’t release it until in a year. We are used to it by now, because you’re always working like this, but how does it feel to keep something in the can for so long?

PG: – It’s terrible. I don’t like it at all. I want to record it and I want to release it the next day. I hate this thing that it lies around for a year. What happens is that you change your mind so much. Suddenly you get fed up with a song and you take it away. Actually, I recorded one new track this winter. It suddenly is on the album and that wasn’t supposed to be. I just felt like it’s a good song. So that’s what happens. You record new stuff and you put it on the album and then you have to remove stuff. It’s much better to close the drawer and then it’s done. You lose a little bit of your self-confidence, because if an album lies around for a year, you get tired of it. The magic around it when it was done sort of disappears. You get tired of it and you start to think that „maybe I shouldn’t release it at all or maybe I should”. Now I try to keep it fresh in a way, because when I released the singles, I decided early on that we should do videos. There will be a new single coming in August, also with a new video. And I just did the photo session for the album sleeve, which is nice. So you get new energy into it. I haven’t really listened to it for a couple of weeks now. But I think it’s a good album. I hope so.

PP: – One must love the word, “Sällskapssjuk”. At Swedish courses, they say that you can speak Swedish once you can pronounce the word “sjuksköterska”. “Sällskapssjuk” is a great contender for that. Haha. How did you come up with this word?

PG: – I don’t know. I just wrote this song and when I had the song, I had an idea for the cover, how it should look with that title. So the title became the album title as well. Then that idea of the cover didn’t work at all, so I had to do something else. But then it stuck with me. And I just felt – since it’s a lot of duets… When I started making the album, there weren’t any duets at all. It was one or two maybe with Helena, but no one else. But then after a while, I changed the concept and did a lot of duets and then “Sällskapssjuk” made sense as a title.

PP: – Was it the first song you wrote for this album?

PG: – I think the first songs were two old songs from the ’80s that I revisited. Those haven’t been released before, I think. I re-wrote the lyrics and I recorded them again. Sometimes when you go back to the ’80s, the interesting thing is that I wrote songs in a totally different way, in a totally different style than I do nowadays. I wrote much longer songs. Even if you go back to the early ’90s, songs like “The Big L.”, which has a really crazy structure. There are so many little themes. Or even “Joyride”. I don’t write songs like that anymore. If I’d written “Joyride” today, I would have kept the verse, maybe the bridge and the chorus. And that’s it. I wouldn’t have the [here he starts singing] “I take you on a skyride”.

PP: – We are lucky that you wrote these songs so long ago. Haha.

PG: – I see the Spotify top 10 list of favourite Roxette songs and all the songs are really long.

PP: – Those were different times. Now a song has to be only two minutes long, because otherwise many people don’t listen to them. As you say, the songs started out as solo songs. When you realized that these could be duets, did you write more songs as duets or you already had all the songs you wanted to include on the album?

PG: – Well, both. I wrote new songs that were duets to begin with, and then I took in people. I wrote down a lot of names of singers that I like. Then I played their songs for myself and checked out the range where their favourite keys were and if they fit. I called them up and asked if they wanted to sing. Sometimes I couldn’t use them, because then I would have had to re-record the whole track, because most of the time the tracks were already existing. What I did with Molly Hammar, for instance, I had to change the key in her verse. But it was only one tone, so it’s easily done. It’s the same with Marie. If she was going to sing a chorus and I’m going to sing the verse, you have to structure the song in a certain way. Otherwise, it won’t work.

PP: – When you are matching your duet partners to the songs, is it clearly from the sound point of view, that they would sound good on this or you have these lyrics and maybe one would fit this partner well or the other well or how do you decide?

PG: – First of all, when you invite someone to do a duet, the first thing that people ask is, are we going to write something together? Because nowadays everyone is part of the writing process. So that was my first information to everyone that we’re talking about a song that exists already, so it has nothing to do with writing. It’s just about singing. For all of them that I asked, it wasn’t a big issue. They are great singers. I just wanted them to be comfortable in the key, so they could do their best. You don’t really know until you sit down and play and sing together. I remember sending “Beredd” to Molly and she said it’s good, but it might be a little too high. So I transposed it down a bit and it suddenly felt perfect for her. Then the same thing happened with Lena and it was just perfect for her. It’s a little high for me in the chorus, though, but I did it like that, because this is how she’s going to sound the best in the verse.

PP: – How many songs are on the album in the end?

PG: – Thirteen.

PP: – And not all of them are duets.

PG: – No. Let me see. [He is reaching out for his iPhone and checking the tracklist.] I can’t remember them. Nine out of thirteen are duets. But then there are a couple of songs where Helena is singing backing vocals, which are not duets, but you can hear that it’s a girl singing.

PP: – It must be challenging to work with so many different partners. What was the most difficult in the process from a songwriter’s point of view and from a producer’s point of view?

PG: – There weren’t any problems at all. The songs that I chose to be duets, I could easily see if it was going to be sung by a girl. Does this lyric work for a girl to sing? The thing is, when you do a duet, a guy and a girl singing a duet, as a listener, you always think that they are singing towards each other. If it’s two guys singing, you sing out to someone else. That’s the perception you have. In “Sällskapssjuk” it feels like Lena is singing to me and I’m singing to Lena, right? If I would have been singing with Michael South, it wouldn’t have been like that at all. It’s more like a lyrical thing, if it works. Because the lyric itself changes its meaning when the conception is that you sing towards each other. I also think that at the end of the day, it’s good that you, as a listener, can decide yourself if they are singing to each other, or to me as a listener, or they are singing to someone else. You have to decide yourself. It’s easy to overthink things like that.

PP: – You probably won’t reveal any remaining duet partners, but I am guessing that, because earlier you posted a picture with Albin Lee Meldau at Hotel Tylösand, he might be one of them. He also has a song together with Molly Hammar now.

PG: – It’s not a good or bad guess. Hahaha.

PP: – And there is a wishful thinking, which is probably not only from my side, but a lot of fans were thinking about Agnes. Your “It Must Have Been Love” duet at the Marie tribute gala was simply amazing. Your voices fit very well.

PG: – Yeah, she’s really good. There are so many amazing singers out there. It’s been really a treat for me to hear them sing up close, so to speak. I haven’t been in the studio with Lena Philipsson ever, so I never really studied her technique or how she sings. She knocked me out totally when she was singing. She’s so professional. She is listening to suggestions and she makes them into her own style. She is doing all the right things.

PP: – Helena is singing backing vocals on several songs, and you also mentioned that she is singing on some songs where it’s kind of a duet between you. When there is a duet and you are singing with someone else, why is it important to have a backing vocalist? What makes a difference in the song?

PG: – When it comes to this particular album, it’s because the backing vocals were recorded before the lead vocals. Molly is also extremely professional, and she is really fast in the studio, so she was singing harmony vocals as well, overdubbing Helena’s. Then we used both of them in the song. Helena had already done it, when that song wasn’t a duet. It was just me singing and Helena was singing some ah-ahs and other stuff in the solo.

PP: – Interesting.

PG: – There are no rules. If it’s already there, there is no point in redoing it.

PP: – Malin-My Wall is also singing backing vocals on “Hjärta av glas”. Does she sing on any other song?

PG: – Yeah, she is singing backing vocals and she is playing the fiddle on one song.

PP: – Which do you think are the best female-male, female-female and male-male duets?

PG: – Oh, shit… Haha. Well, most of the early Beatles tracks were sort of duets, because John was singing the lead and then Paul was singing the bridge for the beat theme or whatever you want to call it. But the first thing that comes to mind is “Islands In The Stream”, the wonderful Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers song written by the Bee Gees. When it comes to guys, The Beatles tracks, “A Hard Day’s Night”, where John is singing the verse and Paul is singing [and here Per is singing] “when I’m home”. It’s beautiful. Or “Under Pressure” by David Bowie and the Queen, great stuff. Crosby, Stills & Nash. They sing harmonies and they are doing various leads.

PP: – Female-female?

PG: – Female-female… [Here he is thinking for a long long time.] I’m thinking about this. I can’t remember their names. K.D. Lang and two other girls were doing an album. “Atomic Number” is a song with three girls singing. Do you know that song?

PP: – I’m not sure.

PG: – It’s a great track. I can’t remember their names, but I can find it out. [He is reaching for his iPhone and googles it.] Lang, Case and Veirs. It’s just the surnames here. Doesn’t matter.

PP: – OK.

PG: – There is another great duet, which is actually not a duet, because it’s three people singing. It’s Don Henley, Mick Jagger and a girl singing. It’s on the last Don Henley solo album, the first song. I can’t remember the name. I’m sorry, I’m old. [The song is “Bramble Rose” and the girl singing with the guys is Miranda Lambert.]

PP: – Getting back to “Hjärta av glas”, it’s a B side, but what made you come back to this song again? You recorded it several times over the years. Why again now?

PG: – Very good question. I just listened to my acoustic version and I said that we should do a proper version. It was really early on. It was probably the first or second song we recorded for these early sessions. I felt immediately that I’m not going to use it on the album, but we finished it. And then I sped it up. It’s actually interesting, because I think the Spotify version is faster than the vinyl version.

PP: – Really?

PG: – Yeah, I think so. If you check the time, I think the one on Spotify is shorter, because it’s faster.

PP: – But how can it be? Don’t you send the same track to put it on the vinyl and put it on Spotify?

PG: – It’s the same mix. It’s just that after I’ve done the vinyl, I told MP to speed it up a little bit. So he did like four different versions with different tempos and I liked one of them. Then I said to Johan at Warner to use that one for Spotify. It’s a little bit faster. Nobody noticed, because it’s exactly the same mix. It’s just a little bit faster.

PP: – Tell me more about the recording team! You worked together with Andreas Broberger, Anton Ekström, Magnus Helgesson, Gicken Johansson, Per Thornberg…

PG: – The only songs that Andreas and Anton are involved with are the two current singles. The rest of them have nothing to do with them. So it’s made by me and my little band, which is basically Magnus Helgesson, Gicken Johansson on bass and lap steel and myself and Ola Gustafsson on guitar. Ola is also playing lap steel. MP is playing mandolin. There is lots of mandolin on this record. Clarence is playing piano and Hammond organ here and there. And there are saxophones and trumpets and there are lots of people.

PP: – Are the musicians from Halmstad?

PG: – No, only Gicken and Magnus. And MP and me. Haha.

PP: – Will there be more uptempo songs on the album as well?

PG: – Yeah. If you listen to that Pugh Rogefeldt song that I did, “Vandrar i ett regn”, that sounds very much like how the album sounds. The same people, except for Linnea. She is singing on another song as well, I think, in the backing vocals. She doesn’t sing in the lead. But that’s the lineup, how it sounds. It sounds more like that than it sounds like “Sällskapssjuk”, because that’s more programmed.

PP: – As you mentioned, the recordings went very fast with Molly. How was your cooperation?

PG: – I recorded her at the Sweetspot Studio, because MP was unavailable at the time. She is just wonderful. She is quick and she is just singing and it sounds amazing. Did you see this little short film that I published? That’s just the first time we sang the song together and it sounds perfect.

PP: – Yeah, it sounds perfect.

PG: – Other singers need to get into it a little bit more. Perfectionists, if you want, do a lot of takes. But I feel immediately if it’s going in the right direction or not. When it came to Molly, it took 10 minutes. That’s why she did all the backing vocals as well, because everything went so fast.

PP: – So it was like “we have one hour studio time left. Could you do some backing vocals?” Haha.

PG: – Haha. Exactly. I wish I had more songs for her to sing.

PP: – The B side of that single is actually the same song, but only sung by you. So was it how the album would have sounded if it stayed solo?

PG: – Yeah, well… “Ingen förstod vad som hände”, I called it that way to make a difference. But let me think. I think that song was done by me and MP first. And then we sent it to Andreas and Anton to finish it. Then they sent it back to us to do vocals. “Sällskapssjuk” was different. There I did a version which I didn’t like and then I sent it to Andreas, who started from scratch. He sent it to me and then I kept it. He wanted to continue, but I wouldn’t let him. I finished it myself. Every song has got its own story.

PP: – The first single came out in February, then the second in May. You said the next one will be out in August, right?

PG: – August yeah, mid August.

PP: – And the album is out in …?

PG: – I think late September.

PP: – OK, so not much time left until we can hear it.

PG: – Nowadays, when you release albums, you also have a lead track for the album. So I guess the fourth single will be the lead track from the album. I don’t know what song that’s going to be. Nah, I know, but I won’t tell you. Hahaha.

PP: – Regarding the singles, I’ve been wondering why the names are written like that: Per + Molly, Per + Lena. Why not Per Gessle feat. Lena Philipsson or Per Gessle feat. Molly Hammar? It’s your songs and I guess the album will run under the name Per Gessle.

PG: – It’s just that it makes it a little bit more personal. Everyone knows what our last name is anyway.

PP: – Yeah, sure. You wrote the lyrics of Lena’s breakthrough song, “Kärleken är evig” in 1986. How do you remember those times? How did you work together back then and how did your lyrics get to her?

PG: – It was actually through the guy who wrote the music, Torgny Söderberg. He was Lena’s producer. I think he was the one who found Lena to begin with. He wanted me to write the lyrics and he had this request that it had to be called “Kärleken är evig”. I thought that was a really silly title, so I suggested that it… Let me show you. [Here he is reaching out for a pen and paper and he starts drawing.] I suggested that if it’s going to be called “Kärleken är evig”… I wanted it to be called like this. Three symbols. Can you see this? [He shows the paper to the camera and I can see a heart, an equal sign and the symbol for infinity on it.]

PP: – Love. Is. Eternal.

PG: – I thought that this should be the title instead of “Kärleken är evig”. He said it’s too complicated, bla bla bla. Anyway, since I was stuck with that title, I had to follow the rules. The line [here he starts singing] “Kärleken är evig när vi är tillsammans”, it’s not written by me. It’s written by Torgny. He had to have that lyric in, because he thought that was so musical to sing. It was those two years in my life when I was really lost. I didn’t know what to do. I wrote the lyrics and then I forgot about it. But I remember having dinner with Lena. She must have been, I don’t know, 18-20. I was 27. I remember having dinner with her and Torgny and Alla Pugacheva. Do you remember Alla Pugacheva?

PP: – I do [and I look at him surprised].

PG: – She was at this dinner in Halmstad. I don’t know how. I think Torgny and that record label were signing her for Sweden. So for some reason, we were dining with Alla Pugacheva. Lena Philipsson 20 years old and Per Gessle 27 years old. Haha. Really weird.

PP: – You do have some strange moments in your life. Haha.

PG: – I wish there were pictures. Nowadays you take pictures of everything you do. But from those days you just have your memories. I can’t remember anything, I just remember which restaurant it was and I remember that Alla Pugacheva was there. I’ve seen pictures of when we were interviewed at the Eurovision Song Contest, but I can’t remember that at all. I’ve seen it on TV, so I know that it exists.

PP: – It does exist. I also checked out the video of it when I did the interview with Lena. Regarding “Sällskapssjuk”, what made you decide for Lena for this exact song? Was there anyone else on your mind for this song?

PG: – No, I thought the key was perfect for her. Like I said, it was a little bit too high for me. But on the other hand, if I stand on my toes and stretch a little bit, I can do it. It’s a little high to do live, but in the studio it works. I just felt like she’s going to do a great job on that one. And also the lyrics are her style. It just happened. It was fate.

PP: – It sounds very good and your vocals fit very well together.

PG: – Yeah, I think so. I think that goes for all the duets on this record. Every time someone else comes in, it sounds great. And then when I come in, it sounds also OK. Hahaha. My voice is so different from everyone else. But it works. It’s the same with the singles that we’ve done so far. I think it’s a win-win thing for the voices. I can sit listening to Molly and Lena all day, because they are wonderful singers.

PP: – The video you recorded for this song with Fredrik Etoall is really beautiful. There is just one thing we expected, that at the end you meet each other.

PG: – Well, we couldn’t, because we recorded on different days. Hahaha.

PP: – I guessed so. But somehow that last point is missing. But anyway, it’s beautiful.

PG: – Yeah, we talked about that too, but …

PP: – Next time.

PG: – Yeah, next time.

PP: – Fredrik took the sleeve pics for the singles. Did he take pictures of you and all the duet partners, even if they won’t all be singles?

PG: – Yeah, I have pictures. Not with all of them, but a few. [Here he starts thinking what he can and cannot tell, then he rather stops talking.]

PP: – Don’t reveal too much. Haha. The other day you were there with Fredrik to take the album sleeve pictures. Were you also recording a video that day?

PG: – No, it was just pictures for the album. We are shooting a video for the next single in a couple of weeks.

PP: – We saw footage of this photo session on your TikTok channel.

PG: – What TikTok thing?

PP: – Your channel. The one that you said a colleague who works with Marie Dimberg started for you.

PG: – I haven’t posted anything. It’s Dimberg’s team or it’s Warner.

PP: – It’s cool anyway. They should just make it a verified channel. Back to “Sällskapssjuk”, Staffan Karlsson wrote on his Facebook that it’s fascinating how a song can change depending on how you choose instruments. One version was power pop & older, the other was younger. So how was the song when you started with it and how it became different?

PG: – Like always, when you do the demo of a song. If I’m going to work with other producers, I normally just do an acoustic demo, but if I’m going to produce it myself, I have to find a direction. Sometimes you just don’t find it. That’s why I got a little bit lost with that song and that’s why I sent it to Andreas and told him to try out something different from his point of view. And that was much more interesting. It just happens like that sometimes. You get lost. It’s not supposed to be easy. Haha.

PP: – There is whistling in the song.

PG: – It’s not me!

PP: – Yeah, you mentioned in a recent interview that you can’t whistle anymore. Haha. Is that really the case?

PG: – [He is trying, but he can’t and he points at his lower teeth.] I don’t know who is whistling. It’s some friend to Andreas. I don’t know who it is. I changed the whistling melody, though. It was something else. So, I played it on the piano and asked to whistle this instead. He is whistling perfectly.

PP: – That’s very funny.

PG: – I wish I could whistle.

ROXETTE IN CONCERT 2025

PP: – We expect you to put back the whistle into “Joyride” on tour. Haha. Talking about your next step with Lena. Do you remember the exact moment when you realized that this is what I need for a future Roxette?

PG: – No, there wasn’t a moment like that. I was thinking a little bit about Lena, even before she sang on “Sällskapssjuk”. Because, to begin with, I think she is almost the same age as me. She is not as old as I am, but she is sort of my generation. She’s got so much experience. She is a great performer on stage. A great singer. She ticked all the boxes, so to speak. But it wasn’t until we worked in the studio when I realized how good she was. Then I felt like this might actually work. In theory, it was like a good idea, but I didn’t mention it to her. After we went to the studio, we had dinner and then she went home to Stockholm. I called her up later and asked if we could have a meeting when I came back to Stockholm. It was like a week later or so. I didn’t tell her anything on the phone. Then I just asked her when we met. I told her I have this idea and wondered what she thinks about it. She was like, oh. You could tell by her face she was shocked. The first thing she said was, of course, it’s impossible to replace Marie. I said, it’s not really about replacing Marie. It’s about keeping the legacy of the songs alive. The fire alive in the songs. It’s not like we are starting a new duo or starting a new band together. It’s more like keeping the songs alive. So she went home and she talked to a lot of people. She even talked to her mother.

PP: – Yeah, I read it in an interview. It’s lovely.

PG: – She was so surprised, because her mother thought this thing was so cool. Then we had another meeting and I said, OK, we’re positive, now I have to bring in Clarence and Christoffer. So Clarence and Christoffer came up to Stockholm. Clarence lives there, but Christoffer doesn’t. So we met the four of us and we sang and played Roxette songs together. To see how it felt. It just sounded amazing. Sometimes we used different keys than the originals, but you could tell that this is going to work.

PP: – Which songs did you try?

PG: – I can’t remember. The only song that Lena felt was really complicated was “Perfect Day”. But it was probably because it was in a low key. It was a complicated song because it’s really high. When you start singing other people’s songs, you have to find your own method. And I remember “Perfect Day”, for instance, when we played that song live, Marie always sang it like a plan B, so to speak, in the melody. In the studio it’s different. You have to adjust a little bit, so it works for you. I do that all the time as well. But it sounded great. I think what is really important for Lena is to make the songs her own, basically. Another thing which I think is crucial is that Lena is used to singing other people’s material. She writes her own songs as well, but lots of her hit songs in the past have been written by other people. It’s not an issue for her. Some singers only want to sing their own songs.

PP: – Yeah, but still, it’s very different for her. When I talked to her, we discussed it will be really different from what she has ever done during her life. Even if she sang other people’s lyrics, it’s now another band’s songs. It’s not like someone writes lyrics for her and she sings it.

PG: – It’s true. There is a difference. Lena doesn’t have any connection to guitar-driven music at all. She is more from the mainstream and the dance scene. But she’s got the capacity in her voice to sing songs like that. That’s also why I think she finds this stimulating, because it’s pretty different from what she’s done before. She is really open-minded when you ask her to try things out. I think it’s going to be really interesting. One thing that is crucial, I think, is that she has never really had a career outside Sweden, even though she’s been working in English. So when she is hitting the stage in South Africa or in Australia, she is going to blow people away, because she is so good. And they don’t know who she is. She is like the underdog here, but she is going to blow their minds, I’m sure. I have to shape up, otherwise she is going to wipe me off the stage. Haha.

PP: – Haha. You recorded “Sällskapssjuk” long ago, so this thing was on your mind for about a year now. How did it feel when the news exploded?

PG: – It felt amazing, because I was a little bit scared about the reactions. But everyone I talked to was really positive. Even journalists, who normally are not that positive, thought it was a really cool idea. Lena’s got a lot of respect from everyone because she is who she is. She’s been doing so many things here in Sweden, doing her own shows. She’s been doing all these festival things and this and that. I think she was looking for something else to do. This was special enough for her.

PP: – For you, it’s not a new thing to sing Roxette songs without Marie, but you never got so far as to what will happen next year. How do you see this, what will be the difference vs. your previous tours where you sang Roxette songs as well?

PG: – The big difference is that last time when I did my European tour in 2018, when Helena was singing the Roxette tracks like “Fading Like A Flower” or “Spending My Time”, we arranged the songs in a totally different way. So it didn’t really sound like the Roxette versions. That was on purpose. That was our intention. This time around, the arrangement is going to sound like Roxette. That’s why I brought Jonas Isacsson as well in the band. It’s going to sound like Roxette did on the “Joyride” tour, basically. We are going back to the original Roxette sound, but with Lena in there as well. So “Spending My Time” is going to be how “Spending My Time” sounded to begin with. I haven’t done that at all, not even with Marie, actually, because during the last five or six years we did the comeback tour, we skipped all the click tracks and all the sequences. We just played 100% live, very organic. So that was not the way Roxette was intended to begin with in the ’90s. But we are going back to the old style now, because we haven’t done that for many, many, many, many, many, many, many years.

PP: – And why South Africa and Australia? Actually, I don’t believe in accidents when it comes to Cape Town. The last Roxette show happened there and now the first one will happen there.

PG: – Yeah, someone told me, I didn’t know that. South Africa is a good place to start, because it’s in the same time zone as we are. So it’s very easy. Then Australia came up with its offers to do the tour there. So we said, let’s do it. Hopefully, we are going to do more. If it won’t be a disaster, we are going to continue. You never know.

PP: – Do we really have to wait until the shows take place? I mean, to wait with the dates for a European tour? I assume the venues have to be booked very much in advance. So I guess they are booked already.

PG: – In a perfect world, I would love to do a couple of shows before I make up my mind, but in the real world, you are right. If you’re going to do dates in Europe or in the States or wherever next year, you have to release those tickets in the fall. You’re probably right. There might be some more, but I don’t like to answer that question.

PP: – Yeah, I know, but I’m very positive. A lot of fans are asking you to come to the US, come to Argentina, come to Brazil, come to Europe. When you are in Europe, you can’t miss Sweden. It’s very nice to see it.

PG: – It’s going to be cool. I would love Roxette to be back on the arena circuit, because I would love to have a great production with visuals. We can’t bring a big production to South Africa or Australia, because we are playing lots of wineries and stuff like that. So it’s more like you’re having backdrops. But I would love to do a full production tour with Roxette. I think that would be amazing. Like we did with Gyllene Tider, with screens. You have to go to the arenas to do that. You can’t play the clubs with such screens.

PP: – Were your antennas out all the time checking what singer you could work with in Roxette? Were you doing this search during all your collaborations during the past years?

PG: – Yeah, I checked on a lot of people. I checked a lot of international singers. There are lots of suggestions from lots of people. Maybe you should call her or her, but it didn’t feel right. The good thing, like I said with Lena, is that she is a little older, she is experienced, she is Swedish and we have a history together. It’s actually almost too good to be true.

PP: – It actually is. When I was searching for news from the past and I saw your pictures and the Melodifestivalen video and stuff like that, it felt like it was something written in the books that it should happen.

PG: – Yeah, it’s weird, actually. Lena has always worked as a solo artist. So it’s a big step for her to get into the Roxette team suddenly. I don’t know her that well, but I think like two years ago, she wouldn’t have done it. She is matured and experienced. She probably feels like she has a lot to gain from doing this. It’s a challenge that she can’t do this on her own. It won’t happen at her age or my age to do these things out of the blue. I think it’s a wise move for her too.

PP: – For all of you. Can you mention a band where the original front person is not there anymore, but it works?

PG: – Well, the obvious one is Queen. But there are lots of bands. AC/DC has changed the vocalist, Journey. People come and go. I don’t have a problem with a band doing that. It’s just that for me, I don’t want to start a new band with someone. What I’m interested in is basically to keep the songs alive. That’s also one of the reasons why we are doing the musical. To keep the songs alive. And how do you do that properly? How can I help doing that? The best way to do that is to keep Roxette alive and play the songs. That can’t be done with Marie anymore, unfortunately.

PP: – A new chapter begins. Actually, I love your neverending drive. I don’t know how you always have this energy to restart or to challenge yourself and do something new all the time. That’s very inspiring.

PG: – Like I said, you think about how you could help to support this catalogue of songs. I was in the studio with Mats yesterday on another project, haha. We talked about what’s happening right now. This year is very much like a summary of what we’ve been doing all our lives. The musical is very much a summary of the Roxette success and the catalogue. The Gyllene Tider movie is an homage to when we were kids. And the tour coming up, it’s not about making a new album or promoting new music. It’s about playing old favourites that people want to hear, hopefully. You can only do these things when you have reached a certain age and you have all these hits and music lying around. I don’t really think that I’m being over-energetic about things. Haha.

PP: – I think you are. Haha. You are always very enthusiastic, but now it’s different when I see you talking about this project and also when I saw you in Australian TV interviews. You are shining brighter and brighter.

PG: – And it’s because of Lena and also because Jonas is back. I think it’s great. It’s such a long career. And on the Roxette tree of songs, there are so many songs. I would love to do a couple of them that maybe we didn’t play live ever with Marie. It’s really exciting. And I know the band is amazing. And we sell lots of tickets. That’s also good news.

PP: – That’s good news indeed. OK, so I think the European dates will come much sooner than you start playing the shows. Haha. Regarding the crowds, what do you think will attract the new generations to see you live and what will attract the old crowds to go and see you?

PG: – Obviously, the old ones will come because they like the songs and the songs mean a lot to them in their lives. New ones, I don’t know. It’s really difficult for young artists to get a catalogue like we have, like Bryan Adams has or Jeff Lynne has. It’s really hard to do that. I don’t know who is going to come, but I’m sure the majority will be a little older who experienced a lot of things through our music. We have the soundtrack to a lot of people’s lives. Gyllene Tider is a little bit different, though, because all these students every year sing “Sommartider”.

PP: – Have you heard them singing now? It’s that time of the year now.

PG: – When I’m in Stockholm, I hear them every day outside my window. I checked the Spotify page and 47 percent of everyone who is listening to Gyllene Tider is under 35. So that means that we have a future.

PP: – That’s cool! In 2018, Marie said OK for the Per Gessle’s Roxette tour. And I assume she would have said OK for this one, too. I also think that this will not only be good for the Roxette songs, but also to remember Marie. It feels like that.

PG: – Everything you do with Roxette is reminding people of Marie. It’s the same with the musical. It’s the same with Marie in the Gyllene Tider movie as well. She is so much part of the whole legacy, of course. If you think on the other side of the coin, if you don’t do anything with it, everything gets forgotten. The only thing to do is to work and to promote and to play. That’s why I’m really all the time into getting Roxette songs into movies and series or even commercials, if it’s a good commercial, because it reminds people of Marie and the songs and Roxette. I think that’s the only way to go.

PP: – I agree. I remember when in 2017 you were on your Swedish solo tour and you were singing “It Must Have Been Love”. It felt very strange, because that was already the time when we knew that we won’t hear it live from Marie anymore, because in 2016 she stopped touring. In 2018 it got better, because we already knew that it wouldn’t happen. Then after she passed away in 2019 and Pelle in 2020, and you did the acoustic gigs at Hotel Tylösand, you dedicated “Listen To Your Heart” to them. During the first shows, we were crying all the time when you played both “It Must Have Been Love” and “Listen To Your Heart”. It always got a bit better for our souls every time, but it was really heartbreaking. But remembering them, it was very much part of it all and it felt heartwarming. This time I think it will be very much different, because Lena is very different from Marie. I think it’s also very good that she is not the same style of person. I’m very excited about all this.

PG: – Yeah, the worst thing that could happen is that you look for a new singer that looks like Marie or sings like Marie. Like I said earlier, the best thing Lena can do is to bring her own personality into this team of people. That’s exactly what she is doing.

PP: – She said in the P4 Extra interview that it wasn’t an option to say no, because it could happen that she is sitting on the sofa watching TV and then she thinks that, oh shit, I could be in Australia. Haha. She is very cool.

PG: – Haha. All of us in Roxette, we’ve been touring all our lives all over the world, but she hasn’t. It’s an adventure to go to play Sydney and Melbourne and go to Tasmania. That’s really exciting and of course, you take those things for granted, but it’s an adventure for sure.

PP: – What do you think will be her strengths with foreign crowds and how do you think she will manage it? Because in Sweden, I can see that she can manage people in the audience very well.

PG: – I don’t know. I thought about that too. I wonder how it’s going to be being on stage, the two of us, because both of us are fronting the band and she is fronting my songs and I’m fronting my songs. How are we going to behave? How is the body language going to be? You have to find that out. But that’s also exciting, because it’s like starting anew again. When I did the Niklas Strömstedt show with Molly, that was the first time we played that song together on stage. It was weird, because I didn’t have a guitar and I was just looking around and realized, oh, now she is singing, now me. It can be really confusing the first few days, or at least at the rehearsals. You have to find that out.

PP: – For you, it’s always strange when you don’t have any instrument with you and you are just singing on stage.

PG: – Yeah, that’s scary.

PP: – But you two sounded very good on the show. I liked that.

PG: – That was a great band as well.

[Here he is busy with something on the floor, so I ask him if he is putting on his running shoes. Haha.]

PG: – Haha. No, I’m sitting on a chair with wheels on, and the wheel has just… [he holds up one wheel.] I have to fix it.

PP: – En händig man!

PG: – Haha, I’m the handyman.

PP: – What was Clarence’s first reaction when you told him about your idea?

PG: – First of all, Clarence was like, hmmmmm, to begin with, but then he thought about it and he was really supportive. Like I said, when we were singing, Christoffer was playing guitar, I was playing guitar, Clarence was playing piano and Lena was singing. Everyone was just like, wow, this is really cool. So he is extremely enthusiastic. Both Christoffer and Clarence are probably extremely tired of me, because they have been doing the musical. So they are just fed up with me. But I think at the end of the day, it’s different also when you are doing a musical, because it’s a big orchestra. It’s exciting.

PP: – And you are not there playing. Haha.

PG: – I’m not allowed.

PP: – Jonas Isacsson will also be in the gang this time. You played together at the Marie tribute gala for the first time after a long period and then worked together in PG Roxette as well. What were his thoughts when you asked him to join?

PG: – He was very, very positive. I think the first thing we did after many years, was the Metallica song, right? “Nothing Else Matters”. And then he did “Headphones On”. He was really into it immediately. He doesn’t do that much. He plays here and there, but he is not touring that much. So I thought maybe he doesn’t want to tour anymore.

PP: – Now there will be two on lead guitars, Jonas and Christoffer. How will it work?

PG: – It’s probably going to work a little bit like it did in 2018 when Ola was there. So sometimes Christoffer will move to lap steel or acoustic guitar. It doesn’t really make sense to have too many guitars. Or maybe they play electric guitars and I play acoustic guitar. We have to work all those things out.

PP: – How did you meet Magnus Norpan Eriksson? Can you tell a bit more about him? I only saw him working with you at corporate gigs, so I don’t really know much about him.

PG: – He was a very good friend of Pelle and he plays in a sort of similar style as Pelle. A little bit more pop-oriented than Pelle was. Norpan is actually the choice by Christoffer, Clarence and Magnus. I asked them who they wanted to play with in the band and they all wanted to play with Norpan. It works fine. He is a nice guy. I worked with so many different drummers. Andreas Dahlbäck, for instance. And Magnus Helgesson is now on the new album. Magnus is also pretty similar to how Pelle is as a drummer. Andreas Dahlbäck is not. He is like a jazz drummer, almost. Jens Jansson, he is a bit more like Micke Syd. Michael South. More like a pop drummer. But I think Norpan will be good.

PP: – He worked together with Ulf Lundelll and Lars Winnerbäck. Am I right?

PG: – I think so. I don’t know him that well. I only met him at corporate gigs. Haha. I think he is a good guy.

PP: – Magnus Börjeson got on the Roxette train in later years, but he has a secure place in the team. He is very good at stand up comedy as well. What do you think we can expect from him on this tour?

PG: – He is an amazing bass player, but he is also a great singer. And that is also something important. Clarence isn’t a good singer, Jonas isn’t a good singer. Christoffer is a great singer and Magnus is a great singer. Then we have Dea, we have Lena, and we have me. So we have five people singing. That’s also a very good thing. Magnus is a funny guy. I love playing with these people and hanging out with them. That’s really important too. I just hope that Lena melts in with the team and everyone in the crew. Everyone in the crew that we wanted on board is on board.

PP: – That’s cool. You worked a lot with Dea, she joined you first on the 2012 Roxette tour. How is it working with her?

PG: – She is great. She is very professional and she was really wonderful with Marie. Marie trusted her a lot. At the end of the tours we did with Marie, Marie forgot lyrics and stuff like that, but Dea was always helping her out. She is really wonderful to work with. She is a great singer, of course. We used her for Gyllene Tider as well. She was an obvious choice. And I think it’s great to have another girl in the band as well.

PP: – Regarding the tour name, you used Per Gessle’s Roxette in 2018, PG Roxette when you recorded new songs. Now you use simply Roxette In Concert. Why did you decide for that? And also, why did you decide not to use e.g. Roxette In Concert with Lena Philipsson?

PG: – When this idea came up, I talked to Micke, Marie’s husband about it. I would love to use only the name Roxette. Because that’s what it’s all about. It’s nothing new. It’s just old Roxette songs that we are doing. It’s to make things simple. It doesn’t really mean anything to anyone, Roxette In Concert featuring Lena Philipsson, because nobody knows who Lena Philipsson is.

PP: – Yeah, actually, that’s the difference with Queen + Adam Lambert.

PG: – If it would have been like Belinda Carlisle or… Madonna. Haha.

PP: – Haha. Better not.

PG: – I think this is efficient and straight to the point. We haven’t ever used “in concert” before, for some reason, we always used “live” or this or that, but never “in concert”. So why not?

PP: – From Mexico to Italy, from Argentina to Romania tons of online portals took over the news. How does it feel that Roxette was on the news WORLDWIDE again?

PG: – It feels great! I noticed that there was so much interest in this. I just hope that we can deliver and if we can deliver, I’m sure it will continue. Knowing myself, if it works, it’s going to get big and when it gets big, it’s going to get bigger and then it’s going to get bigger. But you never know. It can also just fall on its face. Haha.

PP: – I don’t think so. The media was very positive. I loved the extreme positivity of Australian media people. But of course, there are also some sceptical comments under the posts and it comes mainly from fans, hardcore fans. How do you deal with these sceptical comments and comments that say it’s not Roxette, because Roxette was Marie and Per? What can you tell them?

PG: – Like I said earlier, this is not about making a new Roxette or starting a new band for me. This is about playing the Roxette songs. And the only option to do that is to work with someone else who sings them. And like I said all the time, if Marie would have been alive, we would have probably been touring all the time, because the music is still very big. So at the end of the day, I think if you are complaining, if you don’t like to hear Roxette songs sung by someone else, don’t go to the concerts. But if you like the songs and you are open-minded a little bit, give it a chance. It won’t sound all the same, but that doesn’t mean that it’s going to sound bad. I think some people are really narrow-minded or conservative in a way. They want it to be the way it was all the time. And I can understand that, but that’s not how it works in reality. Like I said, the only other option is to not do anything. And that’s not a good option.

PP: – That’s not an option. Do you plan to do any gig before the tour starts in South Africa? Some gig in Europe, in Sweden, in Hotel Tylösand, in Stockholm, wherever? Haha.

PG: – I don’t think so. We haven’t talked about it. There are so many other things going on right now, the movie and musical. I’ve just put this tour on hold a little bit until at least after the summer. Whole January is a rehearsal month. So we are going to do a lot of rehearsing and choosing the right songs. I don’t think that there will be any shows at all, but I think, of course, we are going to do dress rehearsals and stuff like that.

PP: – Are you already thinking about which songs to play?

PG: – Yeah, I have a list. I think at the end of the day, we are going to do like 25, 26 songs on this show.

PP: – I would be surprised, because you usually play 21, 22 songs. But fingers crossed! Haha.

PG: – Haha. But now someone else is singing as well, so we can do more songs.

PP: – So let it be 30 then! Haha.

PG: – Haha. I think we are going to rehearse about 35 songs and then maybe we just feel immediately that this or that doesn’t work or this sounds exactly like that. I think it would be great to do some Roxette songs from the catalogue that we never played live before with Marie, because then it’s Lena’s chance to do her own thing in a different way. There are really great songs. “What’s She Like?”, for instance, “Vulnerable”, sung by me. We never really played that live.

PP: – I so hoped for it during the acoustic tour. But no, you didn’t play it.

PG: – Haha. “I’m Sorry” is a great song. “The Sweet Hello, The Sad Goodbye”, we never played that with Roxette, however, I played it on my own tour. There are a few options.

JOYRIDE – THE MUSICAL

PP: – Do you still join the rehearsals of the musical?

PG: – They are rehearsing and I was there last week checking out the costumes and dance, some rehearsing as well with the script and everything. I’m basically going there once a week to see what’s going on and to have lunch. Haha. It’s 270 people working on that musical right now. There are over a thousand pieces of costumes being created.

PP: – That’s huge!

PG: – There are eight people who are making the papers when they cut the clothing. I don’t know the English name for it. There are people doing woodwork and electricians. It’s just a big mess, but it’s fantastic. There is this band rehearsing. Clarence and Christoffer are basically in Christoffer’s studio working. Then there is Joakim Hallin, who is the conductor, and he is also in charge of the orchestration.

PP: – How did it work with picking the songs? Were you thinking about which songs to add or everyone came up with what should be included?

PG: – A long time ago, I made a list with the 20 most important songs. And then I did a sort of second division, 10 important songs, third division and so forth. At the end of the day, it’s about the book, the manuscript, and the manuscript has been rewritten several times. The director, Guy Unsworth has done a lot of things and he put in some songs that weren’t in there before. But of course, the key songs are in there. There was a song that I was missing, we talked about it, then he put it in there. You’re gonna get all the goodies.

PP: – What was Clarence’s and Christoffer’s job in this?

PG: – Let’s say, for instance, you do a song like “Crash! Boom! Bang!” and maybe you only do two verses and a chorus, and then it goes into something else, instrumental. All those little things are driven by the script and the actors and the dialogue. Maybe there is dialogue over an instrumental section of the song. So they have to customize all the songs. Also, they have to consider that there are three lead parts, one guy and two girls singing, maybe they have to use a different key. So you start from the original versions, and then you adapt it to what’s going to happen. It’s a hell of a job. And as soon as you change something in the script, you have to change the music. At this point, as we speak, nothing is set in stone yet, exactly which song is going to be in there. Because when you go into rehearsal, you might realize that shit, the musical is 25 minutes too long. We have to scrap a couple of songs, or we have to edit the dialogue or whatever. So it’s not until the last days that it’s finished.

PP: – Yeah, it’s constantly changing.

PG: – It’s really complex, and I’m really happy not to be part of it. Hahaha.

PP: – You don’t make it a secret that musicals are not your cup of tea.

PG: – No, the classic musicals are not. I’ve been to “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical”, which is about the Brill Building era in the ’60s in New York. It’s based on Carole King’s songs, but there are other songs from the writers of the Brill Building. “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” and all those songs. And I thought that was a really nice musical. It’s just, when you say the word musical to me, I immediately see and hear a certain style of singers and I don’t like that at all. That was one of my big issues when they were doing auditions for the “Joyride” musical, that we should try to avoid that style of singers. Nevertheless, most people who work in musicals automatically like that style. It’s a compromise all the time. We’ve been doing this musical for so many years now, so I just got used to it. It sounds like a musical suddenly.

PP: – And you like it.

PG: – You have to put on another cap. I don’t really have a problem with it anymore.

PP: – Have you seen the “Pretty Woman” musical?

PG: – No, I haven’t seen it.

PP: – I saw it. I think they have been playing it in Hungary for a year or so. I’m very disappointed that “It Must Have Been Love” is not included, because there is a spot where it would fit perfectly. Oh, well, originally, they excluded “Oh, Pretty Woman”, but on demand, they added it later. It was really stupid not to include even that exact song. But I think the musical itself, it’s very good. Also the music is very good. But these two songs… how they included “Oh, Pretty Woman”, you can feel that it was added later. And there is really a spot for “It Must Have Been Love”. Too bad.

PG: – It doesn’t matter, because now we have our own musical. Haha.

PP: – I’m really a big theatre fan as well. I go to the theatre several times a month, also to musicals. I will definitely suggest the local musical theatre people to watch “Joyride” and bring it here as soon as possible.

PG: – That’s the ambition anyway, to get it across to other countries as well. When they did the “Pretty Woman” musical, did they perform it in your native tongue then?

PP: – Yeah.

PG: – Even the songs?

PP: – The songs are sung in Hungarian, yes. But also the “Mamma Mia!” musical is sung in Hungarian.

PG: – Isn’t that crazy?

PP: – Well, the Roxette musical is played in Swedish, but the songs are in English. I think in Hungary it won’t be like that. A lot of people speak English and they know the big Roxette songs, but I’m not sure it would work with singing the songs in English here.

PG: – The “Pretty Woman” musical… hm… it might be a bad example, because the music to it was written for the musical. Those are not famous songs.

PP: – Yeah, but the “Mamma Mia!” musical, it contains famous songs.

PG: – But are the Hungarian lyrics to “Dancing Queen” or “Knowing Me, Knowing You” part of the story?

PP: – Yeah, but it’s the lyrics of the songs translated into Hungarian. It sounds good and it makes sense. It’s, of course, not the same as if I would hear them in English, because whenever I hear these songs, in my head I’m singing them in English. But on the stage, they sing them in Hungarian. I don’t think in Hungary it would work otherwise. So probably, if “Joyride” comes to Hungary, the lyrics will be translated. Well… good luck with “The Look”. Haha.

PG: – In our case, the lyrics in the songs have nothing to do with the story of the musical. It’s not like you write a musical around the lyrics. The lyrics are just the old classic pop songs, which I think is great, because that’s the identity of the song. And I think it would be weird to have “Spending My Time” or “Joyride” in Hungarian. I can understand the dialogues are in Hungarian, but when the song comes, it should be in English, with the original lyrics.

PP: – We will see. Maybe that will be the first musical with original lyrics.

PG: – It’s a delicate subject with the translations. It’s been like that forever. When I grew up, we heard so many songs on the radio sung in Swedish and we thought those were Swedish songs. Then it turned out they were translated from something else.

PP: – Let’s see what happens. I’m very excited about the musical and the movie and the album and the tour. There are so many things to be excited about. So thank you very much for your time during this busy period!

PG: – My pleasure. I’m going to fix my chair now. Haha.

PP: – Haha. I hope you can manage it.

PG: – Otherwise I call Åsa.

PP: – She can manage it for sure. Is she busy with the hotel?

PG: – Yeah, it’s a busy weekend. We opened up Bettans restaurant yesterday, so now there are a lot of people there. But it’s a little cold.

PP: – You need to dress up! Take your coat out of the closet! Haha. OK. Thank you very much, Per!

PG: – My pleasure, thank you.

PP: – Bye-bye!

PG: – Bye now!

Stills are from the interview.