When Marie Fredriksson appeared on SVT’s Tack för musiken TV show in 2013 – which was fabulous and it was amazing to see Marie on it, hear her stories and her wonderful performances –, it was an obvious question when Per Gessle would also be a guest. I even asked program host Niklas Strömstedt via some website back then and he replied „we will see”. Well, we had to wait 10 years only. Haha.
Recording of the Tack för musiken TV show with Per took place at Intiman in Stockholm on 27th March. It’s great that one could buy a ticket to be part of the audience, because it’s always fun and very interesting to see how a TV show is made.
The recording started at 18:30, but the doors opened already one hour before. It was nice to bump into many fans, mainly from Sweden, but also Germany, Finland, the Netherlands and Hungary represented the European fan base.
The promo screen on the theatre facade showed Niklas Strömstedt and the dates and names of guests on the program during this season. Entering the theatre, your tickets got controlled and you could leave your stuff at the wardrobe and drink something at the bar.
Some minutes before the program started, we entered the theatre hall and found our seats. There were microphones and cameras all around the place. Microphones also in between some of the rows, so that they could record clear sound of the audience – singing and applauding.
On stage there was everything ready – instruments on the left and in the back, armchairs and tables on the right in the front. Peter Fredriksson and Mikael Nogueira-Svensson were technicians of the show, so it was nice to see them preparing the instruments and stuff and at one point, Malin-My Wall also appeared on stage to check her instruments and spot. Lovely!
When most people were already sitting, Åsa Gessle and Marie Dimberg came from backstage and sat down in the middle of row 7 or so. The hall got full and floor manager Pierre Bredstenslien entered the stage to share some instructions with us. He showed where the exits were and other useful info. He explained it was a TV show, the audience would also be visible on TV, so they would appreciate it if the crowd didn’t use their mobiles during the whole program, because it would look weird on TV. However, there would be parts when they ask us to use it – the lights when Per and Niklas perform It Must Have Been Love and they allowed us to take photos and videos during the last song, so that we could share content on social media with #tackförmusiken. Pierre also asked us to put the mobiles on mute or flight mode, so that no phones were ringing.
The first part of the fun was when they recorded our clapping and shouting and laughing based on instructions by Pierre. We laughed and cheered a lot already when the show hadn’t even started. Haha. They also checked the picture of the audience when we stood up, when we used the lights on mobiles etc. They checked all the noise we made after Pierre counted in: 3-2-1 – laughing out loud, loud applause, quieter laughter, looking at Per and reacting on something fun he just said. It was really entertaining, but we couldn’t wait for the main guest to appear at last. Haha.
Then the Tack för musiken band entered the stage. Ola Gustafsson, Charlotte Centervall, Jonas Gröning and Marcus Liliequist. Then came Niklas Strömstedt and he said we would do the world’s best TV show very soon.
And here the show starts and I switch to the transcript of the TV cut – watch it HERE! The program starts with Niklas and the band playing Det hjärta som brinner. That puts the audience in a party mood immediately.
After Niklas and the band finish the song, Niklas says he has known tonight’s protagonist for 45 years. He guided him and his friend Mats MP Persson around Stockholm city when they were there to record their first album. They didn’t have a clue. Niklas thinks they probably had never even used an escalator before. Since then they have been through a lot together. They have slept together head to toe at a billionaire’s place in Malmö and when his guest was interviewed on a TV sofa in Lisbon, Niklas stood behind a keyboard inside a strange cake, ready to start playback to Listen To Your Heart. Of course, he was also there when Gyllene Tider played their very first gig outside Halland. It was at the youth disco Village in Stockholm on 30th November 1979. Less than three months after this gig at Village, Gyllene Tider was No. 1 on the Swedish charts with Flickorna på TV2. The rest is modern Swedish pop history. Niklas welcomes Per Gessle on stage and the audience is cheering.
The guys take a seat and Niklas starts from the beginning. They are going back to Halmstad of the ’60s and Niklas shows a picture on the screen behind them. He asks Per who that guy he sees on the pic is. PG says he very much lived in a pop bubble. It was pop music for him from day one. As long as he can think back, it’s records and music and the romanticism around pop music. A little longer hair on the guys and noise and fuzzbox and stuff. Niklas wants to know if it was just music Per was interested in. Mr. G says he was a little interested in handball, soccer and ice hockey, but it was music that mattered. He remembers gathering together with his friends and everyone had these sticks from the Couronne game – cheap version of billiard, Niklas explains. Per forced his friends to have those sticks, so they would be The Animals or Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich and they mimed those songs. That was his youth, PG says. Niklas won’t force Per to do it now, but he is curious about what Per’s first real instrument was. It was the piano and Mr. G learned to play Für Elise with a classical piano teacher. Per explains he never understood that classical music is the same thing as popular music, that it is based on chords in the same way. Time went by and he left that piano thing behind, because he thought it was miserable. Reading sheet music and stuff like that wasn’t for PG. He wanted to go home and listen to Led Zeppelin. Niklas realizes that Per knows some sheet music. PG confirms, he knows G clef and stuff like that, but if you give him sheet music, he can’t play it.
Niklas wants to know when Per got his first guitar or if he bought it himself. Mr. G got a nylon string guitar from his mother. It might have been in 1975, when he was 15-16 years old. Per started writing lyrics a few years before, when he was 14-15, but he couldn’t write music. He wrote melodies to those lyrics. He says those lyrics are lousy, by the way. Niklas is curious if Per remembers a line. Per laughs and says no. Haha. He wrote melodies to the songs in his head and then for some reason, he got a really nice guitar from his mom. He points at the guitar, which is there next to him. Of course, Niklas wants to have a look at it and PG picks it up. There is a little crocheted cat hanging there on the guitar, made by Per’s mother. He explains they had a white cat in the family, named Sissel.
Niklas asks Per what he played on this guitar. PG played everything he could learn, e.g. Blowing In The Wind, Streets Of London. He even wrote songs on this one, e.g. Billy. Here he plays some tunes from Billy. He also wrote music to a Hjalmar Gullberg poem. It was one of the first songs. Per says Gullberg wrote much better lyrics than him. Haha. He asks if he should play it. Of course. The title of the poem is Lägg din hand i min om du har lust. Per takes a paper out of his back pocket and Niklas asks him if he always has the lyrics to that particular song with him. Haha. Per says it’s his shopping list for the next day. Haha. Per puts the lyrics on the table in front of them and Niklas flattens it out a bit. PG plays the song and says it was a seven-minute-long solo. He was maybe 16 when he wrote this song. Niklas can hear a little John Holm in it. PG says he loves John Holm. His first two-three records are magical. When he tried to learn to write songs, he translated a lot of Leonard Cohen, Bowie, Patti Smith, to try to learn how to write lyrics, how it goes. Niklas is curious what Per learned then. He learned how to tell a story and that there are countless ways to tell stories. He still uses that. Maybe you set a tone in the first verse, but then you completely change the environment in the second verse, although it’s about the same thing. There are different styles.
Niklas says they will soon talk about Per’s criminal past. He asks if it’s OK to do that. Per asks back if they have enough time for that. Niklas says they got extra time for that. Haha. But first, they are going to play a Gyllene Tider song that was inspired by a movie. Mr. G explains he saw a movie with Jack Lemmon called Save The Tiger. It’s a great movie. There is a scene where he is asked if there is anything he wishes for or if he is missing something that hasn’t happened and then he says, „I want that girl in a Cole Porter song”. Then Per thought, „shit, what a great title!”
The guys play Flickan i en Cole Porter-sång. The audience stands up and sings along.
The guys sit down again and Niklas states they were not called Gyllene Tider from the beginning. Per says they were called a lot of things, e.g. Hjärtekrossarna after Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, of course. That was their name for a few hours. Haha. There was Grape Rock, too. Original Grape Rock was just MP and Per. It was the two of them who started it all. They did a lot of Dr. Feelgood and Patti Smith covers. Then they started writing songs together. Niklas asks if they did that on real instruments. And why he is asking it is because he got hold of a document. A verdict. He shows a picture of it on the screen behind them. It’s a verdict from November 1977 where Per smuggled in 0.7 liters of spirits, an electric guitar, two microphones and two stands with cables. Per says the cables were important. Haha. Niklas asks where he bought these things. PG explains they went to London and he bought a Gibson guitar and an amplifier. When they got back to Sweden, they found out they should have paid VAT, but they didn’t have any money, so they took a chance and it was stupid. Niklas says Per has admitted the crime. PG confirms, he confessed and he sent a letter of remorse to the police where he wrote they were poor students who just wanted to play pop music and apologized. So he got the stuff back, but he was fined 2000 bucks, which was a fortune back then. Niklas says Per was still lucky that he got the instruments back, because it led to him playing and it led to an article in Expressen. Per says they were very ambitious and as soon as they wrote a new song and recorded it, they sent around demo tapes. They sent the tapes to radio programs and newspapers. Mats Olsson at Expressen was the first to write about Gyllene Tider. He liked their demos very much and he wrote: „Per Gessle lives on Hamiltonsväg in Halmstad”, in case record companies wanted to find him. Niklas asks if record companies were queueing up then. No, they weren’t. Haha.
Niklas says GT made the first real record after that. He has it with him and picks it out from under the table. Per smiles and says what a stock Niklas has here. Niklas reacts that he has a treasure trove underneath the table. He gives the yellow EP to Per and asks him to talk about it. PG says they recorded it in a little area called Kärleken outside Halmstad, in a four-channel studio. It was pressed in 900 copies and all records came crooked. The guys were totally depressed. They got 900 new records and they threw away all the crooked ones. They sent the album to all the record companies, Björn & Benny and also to EMI. Kjell Andersson from EMI responded. He liked Billy and När alla vännerna gått hem. Niklas says they should play a bit of När alla vännerna gått hem. They stay sitting in their armchairs and both of them play the guitar and Per sings.
The guys continue talking. Niklas says, the dream was of course to get a real record deal. He asks Per if it was difficult. PG says it wasn’t difficult. They made this EP and Kjell Andersson at EMI called him to tell he was interested and asked if they had more songs, similar to what he liked. Per said they had tons. Then EMI sent down a happy young man called Lasse Lindbom from Stockholm to check them out and he thought they were good, but they were quite like the cousins from the countryside. Per says it was true, but they got to record an album. Niklas says it wasn’t that easy. Per sent around a lot of cassettes to different record companies. PG says, but that was before they made the EP. Niklas says then they got a rejection letter. PG confirms, they got that all the time. Niklas shows one on the screen and asks Per to read it out loud.
„We have listened to your material with great interest. Unfortunately, we have no opportunity to use it in our planned production, but you are welcome to send us new contributions and ideas in the future. Yours sincerely, Polar Music AB, Björn and Benny through Åsa Bergold.”
Per says he has several rejection letters from Björn and Benny via Åsa Bergold. Niklas says he thinks they regret it a little now. He thinks they are still sitting and waiting. Per says they are sitting there depressed. Haha. Niklas shows a video on the screen. Its Björn:
„Hi Per! I just want to take the opportunity and say that we are still interested. If you have new material, send it in.”
Niklas says the chance is still there. Per laughs and says, „Thanks, Björn!”.
So, EMI agreed and Gyllene Tider was going to release their first single, but they picked the wrong A-side. Per explains, the record company wanted the single to be a song that had some kind of disco groove that was in trend at the time. Then the guys picked a song called Himmel No. 7 and since Flickorna på TV2 was their favourite, it became a double A-side. Niklas and Per talked about Village before, Village started playing it and then it started to spread. Even if it’s not so easy to dance to Flickorna på TV2, it went well anyway. Niklas confirms, it went great for those at Village to dance to the song and at Atlantic too. Niklas thinks it’s a fantastic title and it grabbed the attention. He also states Per had many fun titles, e.g. Ska vi älska, så ska vi älska till Buddy Holly, (Dansar inte lika bra som) Sjömän and he is curious where Per got all these from. Mr. G says he has always loved writing stories. When he started writing lyrics, he wanted them to have something that stood out. He loves nonsense lyrics, e.g. I Am The Walrus. Fantastic lyrics. Many Bob Dylan lyrics are very fuzzy. Per loves them. The Look is also such text. Here Niklas shows a part of the lyrics of The Look on the screen. Per starts reading it, but he immediately gets into the rhythm and kind of raps it and the audience is clapping to the rhythm. Niklas asks Per what the text means. Per’s reaction is: „Can’t you speak English?” Haha. Per thinks the text is obvious. Niklas says almost everyone he knows who writes songs in Swedish, always writes a kind of made up text in English first. Per says it was the case for him with the first verse. This one he read was the second verse. Niklas asks what the first verse is, so PG starts rapping that one too and the audience joins in. Per explains that the whole song is based on rhythm so he tried to find words that had that swing. Niklas is curious what the English-speaking audience thought of these lyrics. Per says they wondered what drugs he was doing. Haha. There was someone who said that no Englishman or American could have written this and that made it stand out and it became something special. Niklas states this was Roxette’s first US No. 1 and that was the beginning of their fabulous collaboration with Marie Fredriksson. Niklas says they will talk more about it later, but Per has managed to surround himself with many talented singers over the years. Now we meet one more, because they are going to play a brand new song. Niklas asks PG to tell more about it. Mr. G says there is a new record that will come out this fall, which contains a lot of duets. He has chosen a lot of female and male singers that he admires and thinks are fantastic, and one of the coolest of our time is Molly Hammar. Then Niklas invites the fantastic Molly Hammar on stage. The guys are greeting Molly and they perform Beredd together.
Niklas introduces the band after they finish the song. Jonas Gröning on keyboards, Marcus Liliequist on drums, Charlotte Centervall on bass, Ola Gustafsson on guitar and especially today, Malin-My Wall on accordion, violin and guitar.
The guys sit down again and Niklas says Per has had incredible success not only in Sweden, but also abroad. He thought they would remind us of what it has been like and show a footage from Per’s career on the screen. From Gyllene Tider through Roxette’s US break-through to award-winning moments. In the video, Julia Roberts is also shown from an old report, where she says It Must Have Been Love was the tearjerker song in their movie.
Niklas can see that Per is very touched when he sees these pictures. PG says it’s always incredibly fun to see Marie. Niklas thinks so too. Niklas wants to know what kind of memories come to life, when Per sees these pictures. Mr. G says it’s a long life, a long time. Gyllene Tider was fantastic in the ’80s, but it became a completely different thing when Roxette broke through. After all, they had about eight years that they just worked around the clock, between 1988 and 1995. Fantastic years. Niklas asks Per what the biggest thing was that he got to experience. PG says, at that time, it was not particularly common to succeed in the industry unless you were from England or the USA. So the whole thing to come from little Sweden and get all the hits. They were on the US charts for almost four years without falling off. They just changed the song. Then it spread to South America and Asia and Australia.
Niklas wants to go back to the beginning. A few years after the Gyllene Tider era, Per asked Marie Fredriksson if she wanted to start singing with him or collaborate with him. Niklas is curious what Marie thought then, because she was big then as a solo artist. Per smiles and says they got to know each other in the rehearsal studio in Harplinge in 1979. So they became good friends. They said early on that at some point they will do something together. But then the Gyllene Tider era hit and Marie got her own record deal. Then when Per’s career went down in 1985, he was a has-been when he was 26. Niklas says it’s easy to become one. In 1984-1985, Per wrote songs, mainly lyrics for other artists. Among other things, he wrote a song for Pernilla Wahlgren called Svarta glas. They never came back to say whether they liked it or not. Her record company didn’t get in touch. Niklas asks what happened to Svarta glas. Per didn’t have a record deal anymore, but he played it for EMI. The manager, Rolf Nygren, when he heard it, he said Per should write an English text to the song and record it with Marie. Rolf thought that’s exactly the song Per has always talked about needing. So PG wrote an English text called Neverending Love and that became the first Roxette single.
Niklas says the gang around Marie and maybe Marie herself was a bit unsure too. PG says the conditions for this were that it was in English, so it was something that did not compete with Marie’s career. She was on the way up with her career. Per was thrilled that Marie agreed to this, to record Neverending Love. It became a summer hit in 1986 in Sweden. Niklas shows the sleeve of the single and says they were a bit secretive. PG confirms, it was because if something went wrong, it would not affect Marie’s career. It was a strategic move from the record label. Per’s chance to keep Marie was to try to make it successful. Niklas thinks it must have been a pressure. PG says of course it was. He had made a Swedish album that was never recorded, because nobody wanted it. He translated it into English and it became Roxette’s first record. So all these songs like Soul Deep, I Call Your Name and Goodbye To You were written in Swedish first.
Niklas says Roxette is Sweden’s biggest music export after ABBA. Per thinks so. Niklas says they got a song in one of the world’s most popular movies. When Marie was on this show, she sang this song, a stripped down version on the sofa. Niklas thinks they should do it with Per too. PG agrees and the guys pick up their guitars and play It Must Have Been Love while the audience is holding up their mobiles with the lights on and singing along.
Niklas asks Per what he thinks is more fun: playing alone or in a band. The immediate answer is: in a band. Then you are part of a puzzle and it’s nice to find your role. Per usually says to all young people – that’s most people on Earth when you are Per’s age, haha – that everyone should try playing in a band. It’s a fantastic feeling that „I do this, you do that and you do that and together it will be this fantastic thing”. Playing in a band is magical.
Niklas says Per did a couple of solo records in the early ’80s. He is curious how it was. Per says it was chaotic. He made his first solo record the year when the others in Gyllene Tider did the obligatory military service. Per says he skipped it, because he was too kind and green didn’t fit him anyway. Haha. Then it became a singer-songwriter record. PG wasn’t quite ready for that. Both that record and the second album are pretty hard to listen to. Niklas asks Per if he has not grown in the singer-songwriter role. Mr. G says it’s a bit weird when you write that kind of lyrics when you are 22. Per was incredibly happy to make a record called Mazarin in 2002 after he had been working with Roxette for 18 years in English. Looking back, it feels like one of the most important records, because there Per was ready to make that kind of music and that kind of lyrics and you can feel and hear it.
Niklas says there was a song on Per’s first solo record that he remembers they wrote together in Per’s room while PG’s mom was making pancakes in the kitchen downstairs. Per says his mom really loved Niklas. Niklas says she loved Per much more. It was the opening track on that record which the guys have never played live together. It’s a lovely song, Per thinks. Niklas wrote the music and PG wrote the lyrics. Per asks if they should play it. Niklas asks the audience if they want to hear it. Of course, here comes a loud cheering, so the guys pick up their guitars, use Capo 2. Niklas asks Per if he needs a plectrum, but PG refuses it. Fingerstyle is better and they start to sing På väg. They hi-five when they finish the song and Per says it wasn’t bad. Niklas says then they got pancakes.
Niklas says Per talked about Mazarin that it was a very important record and it was so good and successful. He is curious if it has anything to do with not having any expectations. Per doesn’t really know. To predict if something is going to be successful is incredibly difficult. The most common question he gets is „how do you write a hit?”, but he has no idea. Everyone laughs here. Niklas says there were many hits on that album. Per confirms and says he didn’t even want to include Här kommer alla känslorna on the record, because he thought it sounded like that ’50s pastiche, a song without a chorus. But that was the one that everyone got hooked on, so Per had to bite the bullet and accept it. Niklas says there were more songs on that record that became hits, including the one they are going to play now. It’s Tycker om när du tar på mej.
After the song, the guys sit down and Niklas asks quick questions. First: major or minor? Per picks major. Niklas wouldn’t have thought so. PG explains that if you work in minor, you are locked in, but if you work in major, if you are a little ingenious, you can bring out a minor feel even only with major chords. This kind of melancholy can be achieved with major chords, which you are a bit stuck on if you work in minor.
Niklas wants to know what Per thinks is the world’s best song title. PG thinks Love Hurts is a good title. A good song title should make you curious about the song and Love Hurts is like that. You want to find out what it is about.
Niklas says Per prefers to write alone, he doesn’t often write with others, but he is curious if PG would be forced to write with someone, anyone in music history, who he would choose. Per says his big musical hero is Tom Petty. He recognizes a lot of Petty’s style in his own style. They have completely different traditions, but there are similarities. Mr. G thinks Tom Petty was a great songwriter and lyricist too. Burt Bacharach is another one who he always admired. It’s a different musical level than Per’s, but it’s amazing to be able to be on that level and still write such „simple” melodies.
Niklas asks Per what’s the first chord he plays when he picks up a guitar. PG tries it immediately in the air. Niklas tells him he can pick up a guitar and try, so Mr. G picks it up. He says he doesn’t know what chord it is, but he always takes this one. Here he plays a chord. It’s Am7, he thinks. Niklas says it comes from a real major guy. Haha.
Niklas wants to know how many guitars Per has. Per asks if they talk about the guitars he has here with him. No, Niklas talks about all of his guitars altogether. Per doesn’t know. A hundred maybe. 80-90-100. Guitars are like good friends. Every time you buy a guitar, you write a great little song. That’s what happens in Per’s case.
Niklas remembers that about 20 years ago, Per had the guitar hanging very low. He is curious why. PG says, it was tough. The guys stand up and demonstrate how it looked. Niklas says 30 years ago it was OK, but it gets more difficult when arthrosis strikes. That’s why Per quit holding the guitar like that. He had a disc herniation. Niklas asks if it was because of the guitar hanging so low. Per says he realized he had a disc herniation in the lower back in 1996, just before a Gyllene Tyder concert in Lysekil for 25,000 people. He was in the restroom and reached for a towel and felt ouch. Niklas asks what happened then. PG says they had to postpone the gig by 90 minutes. He got some weird injection that hasn’t let go since then. Haha.
While they are at it, Niklas asks Per what it’s like to age like a pop star. Haha. PG says it’s not that bad. He has crowned his career now with being on the cover of Senioren magazine. Haha. Niklas of course has the magazine underneath the table so he shows it to the camera. He says he got it home in the mailbox, but it must have gone wrong.
Niklas wants to know if Per sees any advantages of being older in the music business. Per can’t see any direct advantage in the industry, but he thinks it’s not so crazy to get older as a person. He is much calmer and takes everything easier now than before. Things are not as important as they used to be.
Talking about the future, there will be a musical. Niklas asks Per to tell more about it. PG says there is a Roxette musical that premieres on 6th September in Malmö. It’s called Joyride and it’s a whole new world for him. He hasn’t gotten into it before. It’s very exciting. There is also the Gyllene Tider movie this summer and then there is a bunch of other new stuff next year that you don’t know about.
Niklas thought they would end the show with one of those songs that’s featured in the Roxette musical. Niklas says when they rehearsed it, it was like being 12 years old. It was fun being in the rehearsal studio and it’s been a long time since he had this much fun. Per says it was noticeable on Niklas. Haha. Niklas thanks Per for coming and for 45 years of friendship. Per thanks for it too.
The guys stand up and they perform Dressed For Success together with the band. The audience stands up and party hard at the end of the show.
Regarding the songs, the ones the guys played on guitar while sitting were recorded during the talking, but all other songs were recorded separately, at the end of the session. So when the guys were talking about the upcoming songs, they stood up as if they were to start playing them, but then sat right back without playing the songs. Haha. There were some fun reactions both from Per’s side and from the audience during those moments. Only Flickan i en Cole Porter-sång was played twice, all other songs were performed only once. We were joking after the recording ended that we, the audience, should have messed it up, so they would have had to record it once again. Haha. Maybe next time.
There were also some more fun stories at the recording that are not included in the TV cut. It would have been impossible to include everything, since the recording took more than 2 hours and the TV cut is only 1 hour long. The program itself is still amazing. It’s much fun not only for hardcore fans, but also for those who want to know more about the artists who are guests on the show.
The TV team is very professional and did a fantastic job. The camera angles, the editing, the sound, everything is perfect, but it wouldn’t have been possible without the complete crew, the musicians, Molly as a guest star and of course, the main characters of the show, the two pop nerds and good old friends, Niklas Strömstedt and Per Gessle. Hats off to everyone involved and thank you for this beautiful program!
Stills are from Tack för musiken.
