Interview

RoxBlog interview with Per Gessle – PART 1 – “Just because she’s gone, it doesn’t mean that she’s forgotten.”

by

For this interview with Per, as always, I had prepared quite some questions that I sent to him before the debut album release of PG Roxette. As you all know, there are several parallel projects going on now, so it’s probably even more of a busy period for him than it usually is. He promised to try to get back to me before the release date, but than he came up with the idea, what if we do a Zoom meeting. Ojoj. I always preferred writing to talking when it comes to me, but you don’t say no, when such an opportunity arises.

We set the date, 26th October and planned a 30-40-minute-long meeting. We went on talking for almost 1.5 hours. It was a long chat, full of insights, so I decided to share it in two parts. Just like our meeting happened in two parts. Read this article until the end to see why.

I enjoyed listening to him so much that at 1 or 2 points I was even a bit distracted, then I suddenly realized that hey, I have to ask the next question. I’m so not used to this. Haha.

After the usual online meeting phrases – “Can you see me? Can you hear me?” – and Per explaining he is “so thrilled every time this works”, we discuss he has been doing radio all afternoon. Swedish radio, so I’ll have some “work” to do, to translate it. Haha. [Already done.] I get to know that it was on Mix Megapol with Lotta Bromé. Tomorrow [Thursday] is a day for German media, so Per says there is a lot of blah blah blah going on now.

Patrícia Peres: – Congratulations on 2 sold out shows for Gyllene Tider!

Per Gessle: – Yeah! Thank you! It’s fun. It’s pretty scary to release these tickets, because we never release tickets this early before. But it’s a new ball game now. Everyone is releasing tickets and there is so much competition going on, so you have to be ahead of everything. October isn’t the typical Gyllene Tider month. You know, we always feel like when we should start present something, it should be in the spring, when people are anticipating the summer. Now we’re going into the darkness here.

PP: – But there is always light coming after that and there are already 2 sold out shows!

PG: – Yeah, I think we made good decisions. We didn’t charge too much money for the tickets and we have children’s tickets.

PP: – Fans are very happy with the ticket prices.

PG: – And I think that’s good too, because we’re going into recession and I know lots of artists who charge so much money and they don’t sell any tickets because people don’t have the money anymore.

PP: – In Hungary you can’t buy tickets that cheap. Any concerts I bought tickets for were much more expensive than GT tickets. And we are far from Sweden.

            

Here I thank Per for offering this online meeting option. He could have just said that he doesn’t have the time or is not interested. He says it’s fine, he just thought that it would take a lot of time for him now to answer all my questions in written form and he thought maybe if I get all the info from the “Per Gessle Talks P-UD!” recordings, then I don’t have to ask some of those questions. Haha. I tell him the more info he gives me, the more questions I have. He laughs.

PP: – By the way, it’s a very good idea to release these talks, because it’s really fun and cool for all the fans to hear YOU talking about this project and the songs.

PG: – Yeah, I started doing that when I released the “Gammal kärlek rostar aldrig” album. Then I noticed there is so many streams. I don’t know why people want to hear…

PP: – Haha. It’s a rhetorical question, right?

PG: – There are also videos in which I talk. They are not the same as what’s on Spotify. So maybe I tell the opposite in the videos and there is contradiction.

PP: – Haha. OK. Well… I just wanted to ask you about the name PG Roxette, of course. You talked a lot about it, why you chose it, but I would like to know if this project has ever been planned under your own name. You probably decided it earlier, but the first time we could hear about PG Roxette was when the Metallica cover happened.

PG: – There have been many options. One option was to use the Roxette name, but then I felt like I should sort of make a point that it’s not really the old Roxette. It’s an extension or a new chapter of Roxette. So I had to make a quick decision when the Metallica thing happened, because they were going to release that song. So I decided to go with PG Roxette and then the rest of it followed naturally, so to speak. I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but the Roxette name is such a strong brand anyway, so it’s good to have that in there.

PP: – Absolutely. I agree.

PG: – It’s the same thing as what I was just talking to this journalist on the radio about the Mono Mind thing. Mono Mind was great when nobody knew it was me, but then as soon as people know it’s me, it becomes just another project. And with a fake voice, sort of. So… I think it’s a good thing and I don’t know what’s gonna happen in the future. We’ll see. The original plan for PG Roxette was to do a tour, because I wanted to play the Roxette songs. But then Pelle died, so we couldn’t tour. And then the corona thing happened, so everything got delayed and delayed. So I said let’s do this album instead and use these players, Jonas, Helena and Dea. I didn’t really get that power of Helena and Dea combined until I did the Metallica song and then I realized that they sounded so amazing together. So Dea came down to Christoffer’s studio and overdubbed what Helena already had done. That’s how we basically created these voices.

PP: – Ah, OK. I thought that you originally wrote the songs for three voices.

PG: – No. It was just a sound that I wanted, so Helena and Dea only worked together in the studio at the same time on the Metallica song. Otherwise they worked separately. Most of Helena’s vocals were recorded in Halmstad at the T&A studio and then Dea came down to Skåne to Christoffer’s studio.

PP: – It’s very interesting, because you mentioned how their voices are working together, but it’s really hard to make a distinction whether it’s only Helena or it’s Dea and Helena together.

PG: – Hard to do. On certain tracks, like “Watch Me Come Undone” or “You Hurt The One You Love The Most” I tried to put them on separate sides, so you can hear Dea on one side and Helena on the other side. So you can sort of follow what they are doing. I just let them sing whatever they wanted and direct them a little bit. Then when we mixed the album, we just got through all the channels, cut the phrases and put them here and there.

PP: – You dedicated “Pop-Up Dynamo!” to Marie. I think most of us fans expected it, but reading these two words “For Marie” was really heart-warming and heart-breaking at the same time. What does this dedication mean to you?

PG: – Well, if Marie would have been around and in good shape, we would have continued to work together. She couldn’t really sing anymore when we did the “Good Karma” album. It was a really tough album to make. Of course, when I continue the Roxette legacy, even though she’s not here, she’s there anyway. Maybe you can’t hear her, but she is part of it anyway. So it felt natural to do that. Just because she’s gone, it doesn’t mean that she’s forgotten. That’s the way it is.

PP: – Regarding this link between “Look Sharp!” and “Joyride”, we, fans were very surprised, because when you said that it’s a link, we thought OK, but Marie is not there anymore, so can it be a real link? And then you said it’s a sister album to them and then the other day you said in an interview that it’s a cousin. I think cousin is the closest relation to those two albums, because it has this ’80s and ’90s vibe to it, but it’s different. It’s not how Roxette really sounded back in the ’80s and ’90s.

PG: – I think that maybe it’s me who hasn’t really been clear about it. I haven’t explained it properly. I mean it’s not like a sibling to “Look Sharp!” and “Joyride” in that sense that it sounds the same, it’s just that it’s that kind of sounds and that kind of way. You can hear so much classic Clarence keyboards in there, which is very much the old Roxette style, but I didn’t want to do an album that sounded like 1989. It has to sound 2022. It has to sound modern. This is probably the closest you can get without being too retro. I didn’t want to make it like a retro album, but at the same time, I didn’t want it to sound like a Mono Mind record with real voices. Maybe some people think that it sounds more like “Good Karma” than “Joyride”. I don’t know.

PP: – It sounds a bit like “Good Karma”, it sounds a bit like “Crash! Boom! Bang!”, it sounds a bit like “Look Sharp!”, a bit like “Joyride”, so it’s a mix of everything.

PG: – Yeah and that’s obviously because it’s my songs and it’s my style of writing and that shines through in everything. It’s always very difficult to describe music in words, you know. It sounds like this or it sounds like that. The attitude we had when we started producing was that we should do something like a sibling to “Joyride” and “Look Sharp!” and don’t do too many overdubs. If you listen to “Dressed For Success” or “Sleeping Single” or even “The Look”… I heard “The Look” today in my headphones when I was at the radio station. There are hardly any instruments there, there are only like a bass synth, an overdub bass, some guitars and a pad here and there and then voices and drum machine and that’s it. It’s very ’80s. “Watch Me Come Undone” is sort of the same thing. It’s very ’80s, even though it sounds modern in a way. It’s the closest I could get.

PP: – Your demos in the “Look Sharp!” and “Joyride” era were quite produced. Now how should we imagine the demos for “Pop-Up Dynamo!”?

PG: – I made pretty produced demos. Hahaha.

PP: – Do they sound almost the same as the final songs?

PG: – Not really, because Clarence and Magnus, especially Magnus is really into the analog synthesizers and I have lots of them myself. You know, Jupiter 8, Jupiter 6 and Prophet 5 and all those synthesizers. So we used those, but when I made the demos, I didn’t use them at all. So it was Clarence and Magnus who created this ’80s sound. But eventually, I’m sure I would release the demos on a birthday. Hahaha.

PP: – Surprise, surprise! Haha.

PG: – These type of songs that are like pop songs, it’s really hard to present them on an acoustic guitar. I have to show Clarence and Magnus what I want with this song, which direction I wanted to go. So I have to make a demo, which sort of makes sense. The only song I didn’t have a demo for is the one I wrote with Giorgio Tuinfort.

PP: – You released “Look Sharp!” at the age of 30, now you are in your 60s. How was the uptempo PG back then and how he is now? How challenging was it to write such songs?

PG: – It’s always harder to write fast songs than slow songs. It’s the same with the new Gyllene Tider album. I think that album is the best album we’ve ever done, because there is so much energy in it and …

PP: – Sorry to interrupt, but when did you record it? We just heard the news that it’s already done. When did you record it? You were touring all the time! Haha.

PG: – Hahaha. We started recording it in November last year. You know we had to cancel touring then and so I didn’t tour before Christmas. When we got back on tour in April, the album was done.

PP: – Gosh! Wow!

PG: – We were also like “how the hell did we do this?”. Hahaha. We were very motivated and I was really motivated. Same with this album, “Pop-Up Dynamo!”. I just felt like I wanted to do Roxette. When you write a song for Roxette, it has to have a certain amount of sophistication in there. It’s pretty smart and advanced with all the modulations. As soon as Clarence is involved and you put the responsibility on his shoulders, it becomes like a fulfilled production thing, which is not the case with Gyllene Tider. Gyllene Tider is much more… [he is snapping his fingers] It’s five people trying to make sense. Half of the time we don’t make sense at all, but when we make sense, it sort of explodes. It’s so different writing an uptempo song for Roxette compared to Gyllene Tider. And I can’t really explain it. It’s just so different.

PP: – Very cool! I just hope that at the age of 90 you will still write uptempo songs. Haha. Earlier you said that you couldn’t really go back to that writing style, how you wrote songs in the ’80s and ’90s. Now how was it possible for you to go back to that way of thinking?

PG: – You know, so many things that I say can be interpreted in so many ways. For me it’s a big difference how I write today compared to when I was younger, but at the same time it’s exactly the same. It’s because it’s the same style, my roots are still the same and my musical ideals and what I like about music is the same. And I haven’t really changed them. I’m pretty conservative when it comes to my songwriting. So in that sense, nothing has changed. But, what has really happened is that time has gone by. I mean, I’m older now and the more you know, the more professional you get. Even though you might not necessarily notice it yourself, you tend to change because you become professional. And also you have written so many songs. It happens that I’m writing and bump into something that I feel sounds really interesting and then I think shit, I used this on “(Do You Get) Excited?” or I used this on “Fading Like A Flower” or I used it on “Honung och guld”. So of course it becomes more and more difficult, because you’ve done so many songs, you’ve written so many songs. I think it’s so rewarding when you write a really simple uptempo Gyllene Tider song and it works and it sounds great. It’s really hard to do now and it wasn’t hard to do when I was 20. Hahaha. It’s hard to do, but then it’s so rewarding to be able to do that. It’s the same with the PG Roxette album. In a way, it’s very fragile because it’s a debut album in a sense. It’s the first time I do a Roxette album without Marie, so there are things that I might change. If I’m going to do another album, it’s going to be different from this one, because I had to do this album first before I go into the next chapter. So in a way, it’s like an experiment to see how it sounds and how we could do things.

PP: – It might be a stupid question, because even your 30-40-year-old albums sound amazing today, but as an artist, did you think it might get “outdated” during those 2 years while you kept “Pop-Up Dynamo!” in the can? With an album lying around for such a long time, is there any temptation or “risk” of wanting to remake it or change anything after it’s ready, but not yet released? Did you change anything on this album since it was ready?

PG: – Yeah, I did. First of all, I think you have to make a decision early on that when the album is done, it’s done. Otherwise you’re going to change it all the time. But what I did was that I took away one uptempo song. It was 12 songs to begin with. And I did that because I thought the album didn’t need that. I’m going to release that song next year instead. Because it’s a really cool song. I think one of the side effects of my style of writing is that if you hear one song at a time and you listen to other artists in between, all these songs sort of make sense. If you listen to them altogether, they sort of disturb each other, because they are all very powerful in their own right. It was the same problem with “Joyride” and “Look Sharp!”. That’s why I put “Jezebel” on this album.

PP: – Yeah, I was going to ask you about the balance.

PG: – Yes. That song doesn’t fit the album at all, but that’s why it has to be there. And also that’s one of the reasons why I took away this uptempo track, because it got too many songs. You overdose on your stuff. But that’s something you learn.

PP: – Regarding the production, who had what role in it?

PG: – Well, like I said, I did the demos and the demos showed the direction. Then we talked about the direction and Clarence and Magnus did backing tracks and then they sent the tracks to me and I changed everything I didn’t like. Hahaha. Then I did the vocals basically on my own in the studio and Helena’s vocals as well with Mats in Halmstad. Then it went back to Magnus and Clarence to sort of organize everything. After you’ve done the vocals, you have to sort of adjust certain things. You feel like maybe you need something here or there. It’s a production thing. The last thing we did was to go to Christoffer’s studio and do some overdubs. Also, we did all the Jonas Isacsson stuff at the Sweetspot Studio in Harplinge early on. So he was involved really early on. Christoffer wasn’t that involved this time. We did of course Dea’s vocals with him and he did some overdubs, some guitar parts as well and he did this strange synthesizer, Ondes Martenot. Have you heard about that one?

PP: – Yeah, from you and I had to look it up to see what’s that.

PG: – They are really hard to get, those machines. And here you have to be sort of selected by this family to be able to buy it. And Christoffer was selected. He was the list for years! So he got it and it sounds like a little bird. It’s a synthesizer from the 1930s or so and it’s really complicated to play. You have a little ring and a string and you move your finger like this and it’s [here Per makes some Ondes Martenot noise while demonstrating how it works, haha]. Anyway, it’s a sound that sounds really special, and we put it as soon as we needed something instead of doing a string melody or something. We used this machine instead, because it’s special, it’s unique. Then of course I did three songs alone with Christoffer, including “Jezebel”. And the only one we used was “Jezebel”. I did another version of “Sunflower” with Chris, but that sounded terrible so I used my demo instead, which is what was released. And then we did another song, which was terrible, but I kept that song for the Gyllene Tider album, because it sounded much more GT than Roxette.

PP: – Hmm! Interesting! So you translated this song into Swedish?

PG: – Yeah, I translated it, so now there is this English and the Swedish Gyllene Tider version of it.

PP: – I hope we will get to hear both of them one day!

PG: – That will be coming up, I’m sure.

PP: – A couple of minutes ago you mentioned Jonas. I have to say we all thought that – because of him – there would be more guitars involved. How was your collaboration after so many years?

PG: – It was good and it was fun. Jonas is a great player. Actually, I felt like a little bit of what you’re saying. I felt like there was a little bit too little guitar. So that’s one of the reasons why I wrote and put “Headphones On” in there, because I wanted to get a proper guitar solo. It’s so unfashionable with a guitar solo these days. Working with him also on the Metallica song was great, because he is such a great player. I think it was mainly in Clarence’s and Magnus’s backing tracks that they didn’t really use that many guitars. Actually, “The Loneliest Girl In The World” had much more guitars at one stage, but we took away the guitars, because we kept the synthesizers instead.

PP: – Does it make any difference when you write a song on guitar or piano and then you make it as a synth production?

PG: – No, not really. I mean, you decide that when you make the demo. You feel what the song’s temperature is or whatever you want to call it. I think if you’re going to have a guitar riff that’s like in “Sleeping In My Car” or something like that, you have to write that when you write the song. Because it’s really hard to do it later. Let’s say you have a song like “The Loneliest Girl In The World” and you try to make a guitar riff in the intro. It doesn’t really make sense, because there is so many things going on anyway. And that’s exactly what happened with that particular song. But that’s a very good question. Generally speaking, I think we should have a little bit more guitars on this album. But next time! Hahaha.

PP: – It sounds much fun anway, but on the next album, maybe more guitars, yes.

PG: – There is so much guitar on the Gyllene Tider album, so you will be happy.

PP: – Yeah, sounds promising. I’ll be happy with that for sure. Haha. Was your Ensoniq ESQ-1 involved at any stage?

PG: – [He smiles.] No, but I found the Jupiter 6 and the Jupiter 8. I took down all my synthesizers to Christoffer’s studio a long time ago and he put them away in the attic or somewhere. I told him that I wanted them back for this recording, so I got all these synthesizers back and some of them were in terrible shape. The keys were stuck, stuff like that. They were fixed by some guy in Malmö. Eventually, they became like mint condition, so Magnus and Clarence used them a lot. Magnus, you know, he’s really into that kind of stuff, so it was Christmas Eve every day for him. Hahaha.

PP: – Three guys play the synth on the album: Magnus, Chris and Clarence. What is the difference between their style?

PG: – Well, Clarence of course is a keyboard player, so he can play properly. Magnus is more of a programmer and Magnus isn’t a very good piano player. Christoffer is in between. He can play anything, but he can’t really play piano like Clarence. So they have different roles. When it comes to Christoffer, he didn’t really program that much. He was more like the end station for this production. I think he got fed up programming when we did the Mono Mind album and the “Good Karma” album. It was too much for him. He doesn’t really like that anymore. Hahaha. We did the Mono Mind album before we did “Good Karma” and that was an amazing recording to do, because we really did something we hadn’t touched before productionwise. Then doing all these experiments with the computers and the voices. We learned so much from that and we took a lot of that knowledge into the production of “Good Karma”. But then “Good Karma” had other problems. That is Marie’s voice. So we had to work so hard to make her sound OK. In the original version of “Let Your Heart Dance With Me” she didn’t sound very good. That’s one of the reasons why we didn’t put that on the album. Then many years later Ronny Lahti mixed that song and he could actually make Marie sound great on that. So she sounds amazing on the single I think. But she didn’t sound that good when we worked with her.

PP: – Was there any song originally written for Marie to sing? I mean one of these songs that are on “Pop-Up Dynamo!” now.

PG: – Hmmm. Let me think. No, I think all of these songs are new. Hmmm. No. They are new songs, all of them. The oldest song is “Jezebel”. I wrote that in 2017.

PP: – What project did you write it for?

PG: – I think it was after Nashville. I wrote a couple of acoustic songs that I recorded with Helena. And “Jezebel” is one of them. I recorded it with Christoffer on my own and I just felt that I needed something to break the radio-friendly pop songs on the album. Hahaha. When you make an album, it’s always like putting a puzzle together. As soon as you get a new song, it changes all the other songs.

PP: – Getting down to the songs, “Walking On Air” was the trigger track. You wrote it for “Top Gun: Maverick”. How should we imagine the request you got to write a song for the movie? Did you get the complete script of that one scene you wrote the song for?

PG: – I got an email saying that they were interested in a song for a particular scene and the scene was a couple of people dancing on the beach. So they wanted this like a summer vibe thing. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I think that there isn’t a scene like that in it.

PP: – I asked a friend of mine who watched it and he said that there is a beach scene but no one is dancing there.

PG: – Once in a while I get requests like that and normally I don’t really deal with it, but since this was such a big movie, I thought it could be worthwhile to do it. I just loved this song when I wrote it. This is a great song and that sort of triggered the whole idea that maybe I should do a Roxette album in that style. Then the idea of doing this “sibling” to “Joyride” and “Look Sharp!” came about. It was definitely the trigger track. As you know it, when I wrote it for the movie, it was only Helena singing it. Because I thought it made more sense. But then of course I changed it to myself.

Originally, the meeting would come to an end here, Zoom says it’s just 4 minutes left, but I still have some questions left and so I ask Per if he still has time. He says absolutely, we can go on, no worries. But I explain that the Zoom meeting will end anyway, so I will have to send another invitation, I assume. I usually do Zoom meetings with agency people who send me the invitations, so this time I only registered on Zoom for being able to schedule this meeting. Non-premium users can only have 40-minute meetings.

While I’m already at creating the new invitation, Per says he thinks all these apps are so complicated. Then he mentions “we have something called Teams here in Sweden”. Hallelujah! I laughed because that’s exactly the app we use at my company and I’m more familiar with that. Also, there is no time limit. It’s just that whenever there was an online media interview with Per, I saw he always used Zoom and also when he said we could meet online, he suggested Zoom. So I didn’t think about asking if Teams could also be fine for him. Haha. Whatever. He now suggests we can make a Teams thing instead if I prefer that. So I start creating a Teams invitation. While I’m at it, he starts scanning my shelves behind me and notices I have the “Akustiska kvällar” book there (among many other things). He says he is waiting for Anders Roos to send him footage from the studio, because he was there when they were recording the new album with Gyllene Tider. I find it promising. [If you check Gyllene Tider’s Facebook site, you can see that in the meantime he received the footage from Anders.]

The Teams invitation is sent and Per says he lets me go, he goes back to his mail and we start all over again. Ciao! Ciao!

END OF PART 1

Stills are from the Zoom meeting.

Click here for PART 2!

Per Gessle on “Halv tre med Lotta Bromé” on Mix Megapol

by

Per Gessle was Lotta Bromé’s guest on radio Mix Megapol on 26th October. You can listen to the interview HERE.

Before Per was on air, the radio played The Look by Roxette and När vi två blir en by Gyllene Tider.

Lotta welcomes Per on the show and he thanks for that. Lotta asks Per how he is doing. Mr. G replies he is actually very well. Lotta asks why and Per laughs, because it’s a weekday. Lotta is curious if PG has any fun things to do now that he is in Stockholm. Mr. G thinks there are only fun things around him and a lot is happening right now. Gyllene Tider ticket sales and tour and a new album and everything possible.

Lotta asks Per how he is functioning. Whether he is always in a hurry or he is one of those who have ADHD or if it’s just that he is a very creative being. Per thinks he is a combination of all that. He usually says that he probably has all the letter combinations except I and Q. [They are laughing.]

Lotta is curious if Per was good at school. He was quite uninterested in school. He liked art and drawing and English and Swedish. Lotta finds it strange that Per hasn’t mentioned music. PG says he wasn’t that interested, music teaching was quite boring in his time. He doesn’t know how it goes nowadays, but back then there were a lot of theory things.

So the question is, when he found music in his life. It came very early thanks to his 7-year-older brother who had a massive record collection. Already as a 6-7-8-year-old, he was completely engaged in the pop universe. Lotta asks if Per’s brother had a good taste. He had very broad and good taste that Per thinks he has carried with him. It was everything from Hepstars to Led Zeppelin. So Lotta thinks it was PG’s brother who laid the foundation for Per’s chords. Per agrees. It’s his brother’s record collection that he dug into until he got his own back then.

Lotta wants to know how many records Per has in his collection. Mr. G has gotten rid of a lot since then, but he has maybe a couple of thousand LPs left. A lot of singles too. He split the collection and keeps the vinyls in Halmstad, while the CDs are in Stockholm. He has a record player in both places. He is also using Spotify, but he likes to buy vinyls for the sake of the cover. He loves record covers and the smell of vinyl records. Holding the record and listening to it is magical. Lotta says her 16-year-old daughter started collecting vinyls, using amplifiers and speakers and stuff. Per can identify with that. You think about all the music you grew up with. Aladdin Sane by David Bowie or Sticky Fingers by the Stones or Sgt. Pepper. Without the cover it’s just empty. Album covers are like the face of the music.

Lotta says Per asked her not to invite him for too early on the radio show, because he is old. Now it’s afternoon and she asks Per if he has already woken up. PG has woken up.

They get down to Gyllene Tider and Per tells it was hysterical back in the days. It was crazy in 1980-81. He lived with his mother, his father had passed away by then and his siblings, 7 and 14 years older had already moved out. Lotta is curious what Per’s mother thought of the people standing outside their door the whole time. Mr. G says she took it pretty well, until people started stealing the laundry that was hung on the dash and the number plate of the car. Then she thought it was time for Per to get his own apartment. So he found one. He had a very close relationship with his mother. She was very supportive [Per says the word „supportive” in English], as it’s called in Halland. It was Per’s father who thought you should get a real job instead of fooling around with 3 chords. He had a real job, he was a plumber.

Per’s family members passed away in 3 years and it was tough of course, it always is, everyone knows that when you lose your relatives. But that happened when Per was quite mature himself and as a man you can handle it in a different way than when you are small. It was harder when his father passed away when he was only 19. It was difficult in a way, but there isn’t much to do. You go through that and you learn to live with it. The older you get, the more human people disappear around you, so you learn to deal with it in a way, even if it’s difficult.

Lotta remembers that Per once said that when relatives disappear, you get different values. She is curious what values he thought of. Per can’t remember he said that, but he thinks that when you lose friends and relatives, you become thoughtful. You think through what you are doing. This pandemic was a shock to the system that lasted for years. Per thinks people changed a lot, how they travel and stuff like that. Also one of the reasons for a Gyllene Tider comeback is because they have realized that, perhaps, you should value things and value things in a different way. Value relationships, for example.

Lotta plays Tittar på dig när du dansar and asks Per to tell something about it. He hasn’t heard it in a long time, but he recorded it in Nashville. Using flute and mandolin. Lotta asks if those were real instruments. Absolutely yes, Per replies, ”oh my god, it’s Nashville!”. Lotta says there are other projects when Per is not using real instruments, but rather technical stuff. She thinks of Mono Mind. Per likes switching between his projects, jumping between different things. You do an acoustic tour, then you want to do something electrical next month. Then Gyllene Tider. GT is very organic. It’s played hardcore.

Lotta asks when the tour starts. It starts on 7th July in Halmstad next summer. To the question how many gigs there will be Per replies you never know with this little band. Right now there are probably 15, 16, 17, 18 booked. Two extras were added today. Lotta asks Per how many times they said it’s over. Mr. G says they didn’t really say that more than once, in 2019. And that’s what they meant back then. The decision was initiated by Micke Syd, who thought they should stop when they were at their peak and alive, but as Per said before, the pandemic came and he started thinking again. He started writing songs that had that clear Gyllene Tider feel to them and presented them to the band. All of a sudden everyone wanted to be back on the train. On tour they will of course play the old goodies, but he hopes they will play something new as well, because the new record feels fantastic. Although you won’t be able to listen to it until next spring. Lotta asks Per if he comes back on the show when the date for the album release is decided. They kind of agree on meeting at 3 pm on Maundy Thursday.

Lotta is curious about this new project, PG Roxette. Per tells that a new album is coming out on Friday. It’s called Pop-Up Dynamo! and it’s actually a continuation of Roxette. After a lot of tossing and turning, he decided to go on with that train as well. It wasn’t an obvious decision, but time passed and he felt that he wanted to. Continuing that journey mostly comes from the fact that he would like to continue playing the Roxette songs live. He wrote almost all of these songs and he doesn’t want to put the lid on. He also has to say that he is not trying and has never tried to replace Marie in any way. There are these two fantastic girls who were backing vocalists on Roxette tours for many years. It’s Dea Norberg and Helena Josefsson who came forward when they were needed.

Lotta has just looked at the dates and realized that Marie passed away shortly after Per’s family members passed away, so it must have been quite tough years. Of course it was tough, Per says and then their fantastic drummer Pelle Alsing also passed away not long after. So it was tough.

Lotta says that Marie wrote it in her biography that the last tour they went on was the best rehabilitation. Per says Marie was absolutely fantastic, because she never gave up. He remembers when in the spring of 2016 Marie wanted to meet him in her home and said she couldn’t continue. They had a big summer tour booked and had sold several hundred thousand tickets in Europe. She said she couldn’t do it anymore, but she actually toured from 2009 to 2016. They did several hundreds of concerts together. She did that because she was so strong and she wanted to do that. She was just amazing. Lotta notices that it’s still hard for Per to talk about it. Mr. G says it’s tough indeed. She was a special person.

Lotta tells that Marie’s family has decided to put a part of her wardrobe on auction and the money will go to Stockholm’s City Mission in full. Lotta thinks she would have liked that. Per absolutely agrees.

From the new album Lotta plays Watch Me Come Undone. It has this wonderful ’80s style, Per says. This whole album is a cousin to the ’80s and ’90s records that they did with Roxette. Look Sharp! and Joyride.

Lotta is curious if PG Roxette will tour next autumn. Per thinks it’s not a bad idea. Nothing planned yet, but it’s in his plans to go out and play Roxette songs. Lotta says he should release this one in Spanish as well as they did before. Per hopes he doesn’t have to do that. Lotta says she heard Per was so lazy or didn’t want to sing in Spanish that he gave all the songs to Marie to sing. Per explains it was a ballad record and so he chose the ballads that Marie sang and he escaped.

Lotta wants to know how many ballads there are on the new Gyllene Tider album. Per thinks and says there are no ballads on the album at all. It’s full speed from A to Z, just like how it should be.

Lotta asks how much music Per has in his head and how it can be enough for this many projects all the time. Mr. G doesn’t really know the answer. He is writing all the time, so it gets more and more and as long as it’s fun, he won’t stop. He says that if you are motivated and having fun, it’s music, it’s not a job. He is not the kind of person who gets up every day and sits down at the piano or writes a song. He just writes when he feels like it. Per usually says that he writes as little as possible.

Lotta and PG agree again on meeting at Easter. They wish merry Xmas to each other and happy new year. And with this, the show ends.

Stills are from PG Roxette’s The idea behind the album video.

Hallandsposten interview with Per Gessle about Gyllene Tider’s new album and tour in 2023

by

Jan-Owe Wikström did an interview with Per for Hallandsposten after the news about Gyllene Tider’s 2023 comeback came out. It all started with a newly purchased guitar, Mr. G says.

I bought a new guitar just over a year ago and when I do that, plug it into the amplifier and start playing, it usually automatically turns into a new song. And this one definitely screamed for Gyllene Tider.

In connection with the upcoming shooting of the Gyllene Tider movie, which is planned to be released in 2024, Per, MP, Göran, Anders and Micke Syd have also met more often than usual. Per told the guys he had written two damn good GT songs and wondered if they should record them. No one said no, so it spurred him on and he wrote ten more.

Almost a year ago, Per and MP went to the Tits & Ass Studio and recorded them. Then in spring the rest of the band joined the recording in Sweetspot Studio in Harplinge. The result is: twelve songs that Per is very proud of and satisfied with.

It’s catchy, uptempo, 2.30 and breathes vinyl and it’s the best GT record we’ve made. A completely different energy compared to “Samma skrot och korn”, which was made to play live.

The previous album was recorded in twelve days at Studios La Fabrique outside Saint-Rémy de Provence, down on the French Riviera. Now it was on home soil with the band themselves as producers.

The difference was that back then everything should be ready when we left. Here, we have been able to listen to and change and screw things up because we own the studio ourselves.

After all, everything is so easy with this band. No prestige, no egos but – magic. I can’t put my finger on it, but Anders and Micke play together in a different way than with other musicians, I sing in a different way in Gyllene Tider, MP’s guitar sounds a certain way, Göran’s organ… yes, everything becomes Gyllene Tider.

The record was ready in spring 2022 and it will be released in spring 2023. And yes, the title of it is Hux flux. Just like one of the songs’ title and the name of the upcoming summer tour.

While Per already during the recording of Samma skrot och korn in France felt that the band was too good to stop even then and the same feeling emerged during the tour in three of the other members, Micke Syd was adamant that this would be the dignified farewell. Per explains they respected and bought it and also thought it would be like that.

But while I never want to recklessly put myself in a hopeless or possibly fatal situation and I never say never, I understand how Micke thought. He is a good, spiritual guy who lives in the moment and then felt that we would finish on top when everyone was alive and in good health. At the same time, Micke is the one who is out the most and plays GT songs in various contexts, so when the record and tour came up, he was almost the first to say yes.

Per also believes that the corona pandemic probably affected everyone more than you think.

Yes, I can only speak for myself, but it gave you a different perspective on everything. You are more thoughtful, appreciate what you have and it became a different way of thinking, a different pace. Like, for example, my acoustic tour. I don’t think it would have come off otherwise. Not now anyway.

On 7th July next summer, Gyllene Tider will be at Brottet in Halmstad again for the premiere of the Hux flux tour. They booked the venues last summer because nowadays you have to be out in good time. Partly for the ticket sales vis-a-vis other artists, partly so that the venues are free.

If Malin-My Wall and Dea Norberg will join the band like the last tour, Per doesn’t want to reveal.

And of course there might be more than one concert at home in Halmstad and maybe the grand finale won’t be in Ullevi in Gothenburg.

Of course, it depends on how big the interest is, and then the neighbouring countries will come into the picture as well. But we are heading towards a recession, so the goal is for the tickets to be as cheap as possible, even though the costs are triple. Rather that people can afford it and that it becomes a public celebration.

And this time the word farewell is not mentioned…

Per Gessle interview and “The Loneliest Girl In The World” premiere on P4 Extra

by

Svjetlana Pastuhovic did an interview with Per Gessle on Swedish Radio on 2nd June. PG was guest of the day on P4 Extra and he talked about PG Roxette, the debut single, Marie, Roxette, the Roxette musical, Gyllene Tider and songwriting. The interview starts at 28:39 into the program. Listen HERE!

Svjetlana welcomes Per and introduces him as a small town guy who showed great interest in music at a very early age. His nerdiness led him to success and worldwide fame. Now he returns to one of his biggest successes, Svjetlana says. Per thanks for having him on the show. Svjetlana is uncertain, maybe „return” is not the right word when it comes to PG Roxette. Per tells one can say it’s a new chapter in Roxette’s history.

PG can be pronounced the Swedish way or if you want to make it sound cool, the English way, Per says. He laughs. Svjetlana asks Per how HE pronounces it. PG then pronounces the initials the Swedish way. The debut single is out the next day (3rd June), but Swedish Radio got the chance to play it for the first time on radio and they are very happy about it. Svjetlana asks Per how he feels about it. Per tells the whole PG Roxette project is a new chapter, as he already mentioned and it’s based on him and the old Roxette band. He brought in several people who helped him e.g. with the singing and production. It took about a year to record the album and it was much fun. He looks very much forward to release it. Per got very good response from those around the world whom he already showed the songs. It feels great.

Here they premiere the The Loneliest Girl In The World. Svjetlana tells she becomes happy when she hears this song. Per says it’s nice to hear. He tells it’s an ear candy. The album comes out in September. Mr. G tells he tried to write an uptempo album and it’s a challenge to write such pop songs. Especially when you are getting older, because it’s something that you do very easily when you are 20. It becomes harder when you get older, because you have written so much and you become too sophisticated in your writing when you know all the tricks. Svjetlana is curious what Per means by this, if it means you get more serious when you get older. PG tells pop music builds very much on instant energy and it’s just there when you are younger. When you have written hundreds of songs, you learned all the crafts very well and it’s hard to write these 3-chord pop songs when you get a bit older. Per thinks Svjetlana probably has also noticed it regarding other artists that the finest and fastest songs they wrote in their twenties. Svjetlana asks PG if he was struggling with this a bit. Per tells he had the idea that he would make a sibling to Roxette’s albums they recorded at the end of the 80’s, beginning of the 90’s, so he tried to think about how he was working back then. Then he sat down and spent time with writing. Actually, it went very well. The Loneliest Girl In The World was the third or fourth song he has written that immediately felt it had a great chorus.

Svjetlana wants to know if it was an obvious choice to go on as PG Roxette. Per tells it wasn’t obvious at all, because it was really tough when Marie passed away in 2019, so he didn’t really know what to do with Roxette. He knew there is the legacy of Roxette that someone has to take care of. Also, he devoted 30 years of his life to Roxette and he has written almost all the Roxette songs and it would have felt weird not to go on with Roxette in a way. He has the ambition to take PG Roxette on tour and play the old Roxette songs. There is a huge amount of people around the world who still like those songs.

Svjetlana tells Marie was ill for many years and she is curious if Marie and Per talked about the future of Roxette. Per asks if Svjetlana means about the future without Marie. Svjetlana says yes, because Marie was ill for a long time, however, when she got better, they went on tour together again. Per tells Marie was ill for 17 years before she passed away. She never really got better, but despite the doctors’ advice, she went on tour between 2010 and 2016. It was fantastic that she did that. In 2018 Per went on a European tour that was called Per Gessle’s Roxette and Marie had no problem with that. She thought like Per, that someone has to take good care of the legacy. If you look at other artists who kept their audience, they worked actively, e.g. Queen with the Bohemian Rhapsody movie or ABBA with the Mamma Mia! musical and movies and now also with the Abbatars in London. Per thinks you have to work actively to keep the legacy alive. You just have to let it go on and who else could take better care of the legacy than Per himself. It’s not about replacing Marie with another singer – even if Per worked together with several female singers on this record. Dea Norberg and Helena Josefsson appear the most on this album. Both of them worked with Roxette as backing vocalists on tours. But there are other female singers as well, so it has Per and his songs in focus.

Svjetlana asks how it was to look back on the 80’s and 90’s, those crazy times when they were touring so much with Roxette. Mr. G says it was crazy indeed. They had their peak for 8 years between 1988 and 1995. They were touring all around the world, they had 4 US No. 1s and they were the most played artists for 3 years in a row. It was a fantastic period. Svjetlana asks how they could cope with their success. PG tells when you are in the middle of it, you don’t think about that. You are working, you go on. He was anyway triggered by it back then. When they toured with and promoted Look Sharp! he wrote Joyride, when they toured with Joyride he wrote their next album, Crash! Boom! Bang!, etc. Svjetlana notices that Per wanted to do more and more. She asks how he felt about it back in the days. PG says he travelled all around the world, but didn’t really see much. He was mainly in hotel rooms and at the concerts. When you are in such busy period, you just can’t make it. After the pandemic it’s fun to travel to cities he knows he had been to before, but doesn’t remember much. When you wanted to keep everything at the same high level as they did their things, you had to work 24 hours a day and stay focused and keep yourself in top shape. It’s like what sportsmen do. They enjoyed being up on stage every night and perform to tons of people who loved what they were doing. That’s the best reward ever. It’s a fantastic job Per has, he says. Even if it was tough at times, it only has positive sides.

Svjetlana says it’s almost unreal what happened with Roxette abroad, all their success. She asks if there is melancholy besides pride when Per thinks back at those times and if such thing can happen again. Per says it can’t happen again, because we live in different times now. It’s 30 years of his life he has devoted to Roxette and he is very proud of Roxette. As he already said, when you are thirty, you are at a certain stage in your life, now that he is 63, he is at another stage. He of course hopes that the new album works well, but it’s not the most important, it’s not why he made it. He made it because he wanted to have fun and he tries to follow his way as a songwriter and artist. He is doing several things at the same time. He has just finished an acoustic tour in Sweden with 31 gigs, they had a Gyllene Tider tour earlier, many other things.

Here Svjetlana plays What’s She Like?, which she knows is a special song for Per. After playing it, she tells how wonderfully Marie sings. Per agrees, she sings fantastically. Svjetlana asks if this song will appear in the Roxette musical. Per laughs and says it’s a very exciting project. There is a very nice script that the musical will be built on, a book written by Jane Fallon. Per thinks that Roxette’s music matches very well in such a conetxt. There are so many nuances in the Roxette song catalogue, one could use really many of them. It’s gonna be tricky to match the songs to the story though. What’s She Like? could be one of the songs used, they both think.

Svjetlana tells Roxette sold more than 80 million records, they had an international career, there are millions of Swedish crowns on their bank account. She is curious what is Per’s driving force still. PG tells it’s about finding your place in life. He is super grateful that he could work with music fulltime, writing songs and playing them since he was in his teens. It’s not just a way he is following all the time, it’s not like he has plans that in 5 years he has to reach this or that. He has a lot of ideas and tries to implement them as well as he can. Svjetlana says, so it’s not fame, not money, not such things. Per says it mattered when he was young, e.g. when they started Gyllene Tider. When they played at schools, they dreamed about playing in Stockholm or Gothenburg, when an album became gold, they wanted a platinum, when they had a platinum, they wanted to have a double platinum. That’s how people work. It was the same with Roxette. The idea at the beginning was that they wanted to go abroad, because he himself felt he covered Sweden with Gyllene Tider’s success. But when Marie and Per talked about abroad, they meant Belgium, Germany or the Netherlands. Or maybe playing in Copenhagen. Svjetlana laughs and asks „no South America or China in your thoughts?” Per laughs and says no and also not the success that they had in the US.

Regarding keeping the legacy alive, Svjetlana asks Per if he is doing it because he thinks Roxette would be forgotten. Per says he knows there is a fantastic power in Roxette’s music. Also in his Swedish music. It’s not that he thinks that „oh, maybe in 30 years we would be forgotten”. He wants to experience it again, to be standing on stage, singing his songs and feel the communication with his audience. It’s the most awesome feeling. The acoustic tour he did was one of the most amazing things he did so far. It was so intimate in those small theatres in an acoustic arrangement. Sometimes it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. In certain songs he played only one string at a time, because it was so quiet. It was awesome that people were sitting there and listening. It was also fantastic that he played some old Gyllene Tider songs in a totally new arrangement. Lyrics of songs like Ljudet av ett annat hjärta that he wrote when he was 22, had a totally different meaning, both  for him and for everyone else, now that he sang it as a 63-year-old. There is another thing in there what wasn’t there in Gyllene Tider in 1981. There is a different energy as well, but the core of the song changes. And it also feels good for Per as a songwriter that the time goes by and the lyric becomes a different thing. It’s the same with What’s She Like? When he wrote it, he wrote it for Marie, because he knew that when Marie sings it, it will have a totally different meaning when he sings it. If he sang it, it would have been What’s He Like? That’s awesome in music. You can change it all the time.

Svjetlana tells she asked people about Per and most of them said he is an ordinary guy. She asks Per if that’s correct. Per says he doesn’t know what „ordinary guy” means and it’s hard for him to judge, but he is happy that people think so, because he doesn’t think he is an unusual guy, even if he has had an unusual life. He had much luck in many ways, but he is also very ambitious. His family and friends often say that he is working too much, but that’s in his personality and he knows you have to work much to get to where you want to be. He is not talking only about commercial success, but also about his writing. He wants to do his best all the time, otherwise he can’t sleep well at night. He laughs. Svjetlana notices Per has high expectations of himself. Per agrees. Svjetlana says the other thing people mentioned was they were wondering how Per keeps himself in shape. PG says he tries to pay attention to what he eats. When he was a kid, he looked quite like a meatball at school. That was always his Achilles heel, but especially during the past few years he tried to shape up. Svjetlana asks if Per is training. He quickly reacts he isn’t at all. He is rather walking and listening to things he is working with or tries to hatch an idea and to find answers to all the weird and stupid questions about his projects. So he sticks to his headphones, he is antisocial and he is in his own bubble then.

As a last question, Svjetlana asks Per about Gyllene Tider. PG says it’s a nice little band. Svjetlana thinks it’s a damn good band. Per says it’s also something he is very proud of. He is very proud of them being good friends and that they have fun when they meet. He can’t promise anything, but he hopes that there will be more Gyllene Tider in the future. But he doesn’t know anything yet.

Svjetlana thanks Per for coming to the show, PG also thanks for having him.

Aftonbladet interview with Per Gessle about PG Roxette

by

As Per Magnusson from Aftonbladet informs, Per Gessle had just been in Halmstad City to leave a picture for framing before the interview. He had just got back from London where he saw the Abbatars (ABBA Voyage – and thought the first twenty minutes were absolutely fantastic) and met his British record company (which is very enthusiastic about his new music). He also discussed the upcoming Roxette musical with author Jane Fallon (who is Ricky Gervais’ partner).

But above all, Per is in full swing to start a new chapter in Roxette’s life. Before he has come to a decision, he had spent lots of months staggering back and forth about what he would do next.

I’ve been thinking for a long time about what I should do with Roxette. It’s not an easy question and there is no obvious answer, because Roxette is so much the bond between Marie and me. But I’ve been writing these songs my whole life. Leaving them behind and not using the legacy feels very strange. But replacing Marie with another girl and starting a new duo has never been on the agenda.

Per Gessle began writing songs that eventually ended up with Clarence Öfwerman, Roxette’s producer and Magnus Börjeson, bass player in Roxette. The music became like a sibling to the records “Look Sharp!” and “Joyride”. The rest of Roxette’s live band came in: Jonas Isacsson, Christoffer Lundquist, Helena Josefsson and Dea Norberg. The result is PG Roxette, a development of Roxette based on the frontman. The first taster was released on 3rd June. In the 3:01-long single, “The Loneliest Girl In The World”, it feels like Per Gessle has released all the wounds and sad memories. Just another classic pop song, one last time.

When such a chorus is born, you become so happy. The most difficult thing that exists nowadays is to write uptempo songs. It’s probably because you have used all the tricks already and it’s hard to surprise yourself. It’s easier to write a sophisticated ballad, it’s more where you are in life. But writing a clever three-chord song is tricky if you’re not 22. I already thought so when I was 35.

Per Magnusson is wondering if one can even make such happy and uncomplicated pop music in 2022. At the same time there is a bittersweet undertone that goes all the way back to “Flickan i en Cole Porter-sång”.

It’s fun that you say that, because there are many who have said the same thing. The production is very ’89-’91. But the presentation feels modern, I think. What is retro is my style of writing songs. Almost no one writes pop music that way anymore. The album is übercatchy, but doesn’t sound like anything on Spotify’s top 50 – and I think that’s good.

Aftonbladet asks if Per can tell anything more about “Pop-Up Dynamo!” coming in September.

I won’t reveal too much, but there are more singers on the album that fit into the context. In the end there will be eleven songs. It’s same as the single. Classic Roxette, just like we worked on “The Look”. There is an acoustic song, but otherwise it’s full blast. I’m very happy with this record.

Aftonbladet is curious if it was a difficult decision to make the album without Marie.

Yes, it was difficult to make the decision to take the step. But I hope to be able to play Roxette songs around the world more times. Of course, I can play twenty-five Roxette songs and call myself Per Gessle, but the brand is still Roxette. It feels strange not to use something that I’ve been involved in and built since 1986. But of course, there is nothing I want more than that Marie was involved and sang on this record. On the other hand, I know how difficult it was for her to work with “Good Karma”, the last Roxette record. It is as it is. What can you do? But sure, it’s hard.

Per Magnusson tells Per Gessle is extremely productive as a songwriter and artist. The projects have taken turns throughout his career. He is curious what PG’s driving force is.

I actually don’t know, it’s an interesting question. I just like playing pop music. I just got home from these thirty-one gigs we did acoustically. It was great to sit down and feel the power of, e.g., “Juni, juli, augusti”. Many of these songs mean so much to me that I just have to do it. That’s me. There is no direct driving force, I just can’t help it.

Aftonbladet wants to know if it’s more about the creative process than a fifth Billboard No.1 nowadays.

I want everything to be as big as possible, but it must be based on it being fun. The way Roxette succeeded is completely incomprehensible. But I have no idea how it happened. Therefore, I can’t try to do it again. If you want to do music for a long time, you have to do different things and stop staring blindly at old successes.

Per Magnusson is curious what the dream scenario looks like with this project.

I hope to be able to gather the whole band and play live someday. Now, unfortunately, Pelle Alsing, our old drummer, also passed away. Huge loss for all of us. But it would be fun to tour for real. These songs still have their power. It would be great fun to do a world tour of course. Damn, I’m young!

In the article Per also tells he has no special plans for the summer. He will probably spend most of his time in Halmstad.

Album image “Pop-Up Dynamo!” PG Roxette. Photo by Fredrik Etoall.