Nordic Rox

Per Gessle and Sven Lindström are back to Sirius XM with the second part of their ’70s countdown on the August episode of Nordic Rox.

Before the guys get down to those 5 great songs from the ’70s, they stay in present tense and play Fire In Cairo, a new track by The Hellacopters. A wonderful song according to PG.

The next one is Black Hole by Edith Backlund. Per loves this song. It came out appr. 10 years ago. Then comes Send Her My Love by Robert Pehrsson’s Humbucker. Sven thinks it’s a great band name and Per agrees it’s a wonderful one, but he doesn’t know anything about Robert Pehrsson and his Humbucker. It sounds great, Mr. G likes it. Sven found this song on a list of Swedish garage rock.

The guys start talking about Gyllene Tider – Per says he knows those guys, haha. It’s Per’s power pop band from Halmstad. PG says they started off in 1978 and in 1979 they had their breakthrough. Sven says they made a major impact in Sweden in 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982 and around 1983 they were ready to conquer the world. Per says he did his first solo album in 1983 while the other guys in the band did their military service. The band had a comeback and they made an English album called The Heartland Café that came out in 1984. It’s not the best album in the world, PG says, but what’s interesting is that there is one track that was pretty popular called Break Another Heart. That was the first time where Per worked with Marie Fredriksson who he eventually formed Roxette with. Sven says it was released in the States and they used the name Roxette, so this is actually a teaser of what would become Roxette five years later. Per confirms, the first version of Roxette was actually these five guys. The album came out on Capitol Records in 1984. It sold about 225 copies, Sven adds. The guys are laughing. It didn’t sell that much. Per remembers going to Los Angeles and he went to Tower Records on Sunset and they had their own little section next to Roxy Music. PG thought it was so cool. Then the band split up and he started Roxette with Marie instead. It was a good idea, Mr. G says. Sven says if you are a record and vinyl nerd, which they grew up with of course, the bass player in Roxette, Magnus Börjeson had a band called Beagle in the early ’90s. They were really happy about that name, because that put them between The Beach Boys and The Beatles. Haha. Per thinks it’s brilliant.

Yours To Keep by Paola is next. Per thinks it’s a nice one; the Teddybears is involved in that song. Then comes Where The Wolf Bane Blooms by The Nomads, a superb garage rock band from Sweden. The song is from their debut album.

Here comes the ’70s list from No. 15 to No. 11. Sven warns the listeners, because if they are sensitive to sweetness and sugar, they should watch out. A super sugary track called Moviestar is next by Harpo, produced by Bengt Palmers, one of the biggest producers in Sweden in the old days. He produced Hooked On A Feeling, for instance, and he was really big, producing lots of artists for EMI Records in the ’70s. Moviestar was an enormous hit in 1975 and it was also an extremely big song in Germany. Harpo is still touring in Germany once in a while, Per adds. He says you couldn’t escape this one in the ’70s if you were in Sweden or in Germany. Per asks the listeners to fasten their seatbelts.

Sven says they got the reason to return to Bengt Palmers later on in the shows, because you can’t escape him.

No. 14 is a guy called Magnus Lindberg. He used to play in a band called Landslaget, before he became his own sort of singer-songwriter, eventually becoming a little bit more new wavish. He did two albums in the ’70s. They were pretty acoustic and very good. He’s got a wonderful voice according to Per. He writes his own songs as well. The guys picked Månsken Peggie (Moonlight Peggie). PG thinks it’s a beautiful song. It came out in the late ’70s.

No. 13 is a band of ’60s pop veterans, Secret Service. They consisted of lots of people from the band Ola & The Janglers from the ’60s and some veterans in the industry. The band had their own distinctive sound and original songs as well. Not bad in Per’s book. PG says it was pretty rare in the ’70s to have international success for Swedish artists. ABBA was probably the only exception. They probably woke Secret Service up to the idea. They became enormous in France and this is their breakthrough song, Oh Susie from 1979.

Now the guys go to the north of Sweden and play a wonderful, typical ’70s mix of modern music and old traditional Swedish folk music. Gammal jämtländsk brudmarsch (A wedding march from the county of Jämtland /in the north of Sweden/) was a big hit. It was an instrumental track by a girl playing the organ called Merit Hemmingson. It was a big one on the radio in the ’70s, produced by Bengt Palmers, who also produced Moviestar by Harpo we just heard. Sven says, he was back earlier than they expected. Haha. Sven thinks it’s an interesting mix of musical styles. Per says the first time he heard it, he loved it and he was just a kid. He still loves it. Sven thinks it might be the first time Merit is played on American radio.

This brings the guys up to new wavish sounds from mid Sweden. A band called Eldkvarn is next. They had a big breakthrough in the ’70s and they are still around on and off. They closed down the factory a couple of years ago, then they came back again. They have been really big and have their own distinctive sound as well. The songs are written by vocalist Plura Jonsson. Their current tour, a sort of new farewell tour is named Det är aldrig försent att lägga av (It’s never too late to quit). The guys are laughing. Per finds it a good tour name. When Eldkvarn started out in the mid ’70s, they were not called Eldkvarn (Fire mill), but Piska mig hårt (Whip me hard) instead. It probably caused some controversy, Sven thinks. Per has never listened to them that much. In the ’80s-’90s he listened to them a bit, but this is new music to him. It’s taken from their 1979 album where they totally change musical style from slightly progressive ’70s rock, Sven says. Per thinks it sounds like Elvis Costello & The Attractions came into their lives. Sven thinks that there is life for Eldkvarn before this year’s model and there is another life after. They took up their amps to eight or something and started speeding up the tempo. It’s not bad, Per likes it. So they play the title track from their album Pojkar, pojkar, pojkar (Boys, boys, boys), wrapping up the ’70s countdown on this show.

The guys take a trip to Copenhagen, Denmark. Here is She Owns The Streets by The Raveonettes. Sven thinks it’s a cool band. Per adds it’s one of their favourite bands.

The amazing sound of I Go For The Cheap Ones by Heavy Tiger is next. They are a female band from Stockholm. Per heard they haven’t been doing anything since 2019, but they are an amazing group and they are missed. Sven says they should come back, the world needs Heavy Tiger.

Sven and Per thank the listeners for joining them and Cigarettes by Anita Lindblom closes the show, as usual.

Pic by Patrícia Peres, Book Fair 2014, Gothenburg

Thanks for your support, Sven!

After doing the ’60s countdown, Per Gessle and Sven Lindström came back to Sirius XM in July and started a ’70s countdown for Nordic Rox. They listed their favourite Swedish and Scandinavian songs from the ’70s from 20 to 16 in this episode.

The guys are talking about another decade. Per says there were so many things happening on the Swedish music scene in the ’70s, so they are going to go through a couple of songs that they like. Then he adds that to tell the truth, they even included a couple of songs that they didn’t like. Haha. Sven says they are very open-minded and inclusive here on Nordic Rox.

Before getting down to the list, they kick off with a track by a band that made an album 30 years ago, and Sven thinks Per is familiar with it. PG says it’s Roxette and the album is called Crash! Boom! Bang! It was recorded in the isle of Capri in Italy. The song they play from CBB is Run To You. Sven asks Per what he remembers about this one. Mr. G remembers they spent like six weeks in Capri making the core of the album in 1993. It was good fun. INXS had just been in the studio when they arrived, so they inherited a lot of the INXS wine bottles. Haha. They had a great time and it was a very creative period in their lives. Marie just had her first child, so she had a family with her. They did some great stuff on that album. Sleeping In My Car, for example. Sven says a jubilee version of the album is coming out. Per confirms it’s coming out just before Christmas, the 30th anniversary release. Sven says they will get back to that one.

A new single from one of the guys’ favourite constellations comes next. It’s Say Lou Lou’s Above Love. Sven thinks it’s a great one, PG says it has a French touch to it. Sven saw all these French singers, Françoise Hardy, Brigitte Bardot. They made some cool ’60s pop songs with fussy guitars and that sort of touch is here as well.

Then comes Borderline by The Soundtrack Of Our Lives from the album Origin Vol. 1. There never was an Origin Vol. 2, but for some reason it was named Vol. 1. Per thinks the band has a classic sound, and it sounds like it’s really familiar, but at the same time, it stands out. They have a very distinctive sound. Every song you hear from their catalogue sounds like The Soundtrack Of Our Lives.

Nordic Rox continues with a new single by Noak Hellsing from Stockholm. The song is All Day. PG says he has never heard of Noak Hellsing before. He must be very young and very new. Sven says Per is right on both points. Mr. G thinks it’s a good song, Sven agrees.

Shimmy Shimmy Style by the Teddybears is next.

Then the guys are leaving the modern age and going back to the ’70s. Track No. 20 is by a guy called Ola Magnell. Per says Ola was a singer-songwriter in the early ’70s and he had a couple of so-so hits, but then he went on tour with another Swedish guy that was a little bit bigger than him called Pugh Rogefeldt. The song they play is a live recording from a live album coming out in 1974. Per was there at the recording of that album in his hometown, Halmstad. Mr. G was 15 years old at the time. He remembers it being an amazing show in a pretty small theatre in Halmstad. There were like 800 people or so. It was a sensational evening for a 15-year-old kid. Sven remembers Pugh, he was probably the biggest rock star in Sweden in 1974. Sven saw Pugh and Rainrock in his hometown at the disco called Barbarella. The bass player came out on stage in a jeans skirt and that was rather cool. Back to Ola, the guys play his breakthrough song Påtalåten. It’s done with the Pugh band and it’s a live version from 1974. Per thinks it’s really, really cool and hopes the listeners like it. Per thinks it’s a great song. It’s got this sort of country flavour combined with some Swedish folk music. The rhythm is really wonderful. Sven thinks that sort of mix sounds incredibly Swedish. A lot of people were looking back to folk music in the ’70s.

Speaking about that, one of Per’s favourite singers, Monica Törnell is up on position No. 19. Mr. G has had the pleasure of working with Monica a couple of times, singing together. She’s got a really amazing voice, Per thinks. She had a breakthrough in 1972. There was a Swedish singer-songwriter called Cornelis Vreeswijk, who unfortunately is not with us anymore. He found her and he got her a record deal. Monica made an album which was basically a lot of covers translated into Swedish. It’s really an outstanding album, because her voice is so outstanding, PG thinks. It’s the elite of the Swedish session musicians at the time playing. It sounds really cool with standup bass and amazing piano playing. Per just loves this song. The original, I Really Loved Harold was written by Melanie. It’s called Förut (när jag var liten) in Swedish. Sven asks Per if this was something that mesmerized him when he was a teenager. PG listened to this album a lot and this is his favourite track. Sven thinks Monica sounds like some kind of mythical figure living far up in the woods. Per loves her voice.

The guys travel to Hollywood, somewhere in Los Angeles in 1971. Gram Parsons And The Flying Burrito Brothers. The next song sounds like that at least. It’s a guy called Basse Wickman and it’s taken from his first album in 1976. Out On The Road is not a big hit, but both Sven and Per always loved Basse. Per says he’s got this amazing, velvety voice and he made some amazing albums. Actually, PG has never heard the debut album before, so this is a new one to him. Sven says it’s actually quite obscure. For some reason, he never really made it, but Sven thinks they have a couple of tracks that they are going to revisit on the ’80s list when they get there. Per agrees and says Basse had his peak in the ’80s. Now comes some sort of Swedish country rock. It didn’t make the charts in Sweden at all, but it sounds lovely, Per thinks.

No. 17 on the list is a group called Dag Vag. Sven says it’s some sort of slight new wave reggae. Mr. G says it’s more like ska music, like The Specials from England. Dag Vag was really outstanding in the ’70s on the Swedish music scene and made it big, Per says. Sven says they were a bit older than the new wave movement. He means they came from the hippie movement, more or less. Per agrees, but they used this punk new wave attitude to come through and they did it very well. They brought along Kenny Håkansson on guitar from the prog rock group Kebnekajse. He is an amazing guitar player. Everyone in the band had really weird names, alter egos. Per can’t remember the name of Kenny. Sven thinks he was called the Silver Surfer, but he is not sure. Dag Vag means a „vague day” in English, it doesn’t make sense. Sven says „if it doesn’t make you any wiser, you can trust us, we’re not wiser either.” And the song is called Dimma, which means „fog”. It’s probably the first time this song is played in the US.

The guys think they did a great job on this list, as always. Now they are moving to the late ’70s, 1979. There was a group called Factory, that was enormously big in Sweden. Per says, first of all, most of the songs from the ’70s they played are in Swedish, because it was a big thing in the ’70s to work in Swedish. In the ’60s nobody did that at all. But in the ’70s everyone changed. Pugh was probably the first one. So, Efter plugget (after school) by Factory was a huge hit in 1979. If you listen to it now, you can trace the influences by Supertramp a lot. Per remembers when he was a kid, this song was all over the place. Sven says it was rock disco, a sort of danceable rock music. It was the same time as Da Ya Think I’m Sexy? by Rod Stewart. That sort of style. Or Miss You by The Rolling Stones. This one was all over the airwaves in 1979, you couldn’t escape it, for good or for bad. People tried to dance to it. Sven remembers girls from that time looking slightly bored. At least when they (the guys) came up on the dance floor. Per says probably that was the reason why they looked bored. Haha.

This wraps up the ’70s list for July.

Nordic Rox continues with Nowhere Blue, an indie duo from Stockholm with a new track called Keep On Running Off.

Do You Love Me by Amanda Jenssen is next. Amanda is one of the guys’ favourites and the song is from her debut album Killing My Darlings, 2008. Per thinks it’s a wonderful song. Sven thinks she is an amazing artist and an amazing singer.

The beautiful sound of Doojiman & The Exploders is next and their wonderful Yeah Yeah Yeah, Per says. Garage rock in its prime from Sweden, taken from the album Sweden’s Newest Hit Makers, Sven adds. PG thinks it’s such a great title. Sven says it makes you think of how they marketed The Rolling Stones in the States back in 1964: England’s Newest Hitmakers.

The guys are ready to leave, they have to go. Studio time is up. They will be back with five more songs taken from the Swedish ’70s in the next show.

Sven and Per thank the listeners for joining them and Cigarettes by Anita Lindblom closes the show, as usual.

Photo by Anders Roos (2019)

Thanks for your support, Sven!

Per Gessle and Sven Lindström do the final countdown of their favourite Swedish and Scandinavian songs from the ’60s in the June episode of Nordic Rox. Now they list the Top 5 songs. Per says it’s a wonderful chart, he is really proud of it.

The guys say they also have some new material just released, pop-rock sounds from the Nordic countries. But first, they go back to the Swedish ’90s and check out a band called Gyllene Tider. Per says he has heard about them. Haha. Sven explains this is Per Gessle’s Swedish power pop group. They started in the late ’70s. The song they play is from 1994, 1995 maybe. PG wrote it while touring with Roxette. He wrote it in a backstage area in Tokyo, Japan, because Gyllene Tider was supposed to release a compilation album of all their hits and they needed some new tracks. So he wrote this one for the band and when he returned from Asia, he recorded it and it became a big song for them. Sven confirms it was a massive hit and totally right with the times. It paved the way for the Gyllene Tider comeback. They had been sleeping for a couple of years. Per says GT broke up in the mid ’80s and then he started to focus on Roxette for many years. Then Gyllene Tider made a comeback in 1996, mainly because of this song and also because of the old hits that had become very popular again with the new generation growing up. Timeless pop, you know what it’s like. Sven knows exactly what it sounds like, they are going to play it now. Det är över nu, translating to „it’s over now”. Strange title for a song to open a show, Sven thinks, but there you go, that’s Nordic Rox for you. Benjamin Button, Per says. Haha.

The next song they play is The Golden Age by The Asteroids Galaxy Tour from their debut album called Fruit. It’s one of Sven’s favourite bands from Denmark in the noughties.

Coming next is Crystal Heart by Kye Kepler. Per asks Sven if he knows anything about Mr. Kepler. Sven says he seems to be an interesting guy. His real name is Max Borglowe. He seems to be a multi-instrumentalist and a producer. He is also a 3D artist and when he is not making guitar pedals, he is busy writing songs and getting atmospheric synthesizer sounds together. Busy guy.

Coming up next another band that Per has got some association with, Eskobar. They were a special guest on Roxette’s final European tour in 2015. They were opening up for Roxette at 33, 34 shows all over Europe. Per thinks it’s a great band, he always liked them a lot. The song they play is a collaboration with Heather Nova, Someone New. Sven says it was a big hit for them. Heather Nova, interestingly enough, was born in 1967 in the Caribbean, where her parents sailed around on their own sailboat. She grew up there in the ’70s and part of the ’80s. Whereas Eskobar, they grew up in a suburb outside of Stockholm. That’s the way life goes.

Live Again by Goldielocks, a Finnish band of which the guys don’t know that much, but they like the song. They are going to see if they can research and check them out in future shows.

Young Folks by Peter Bjorn and John is next. Per thinks it’s a wonderful song from 2006. Sven says it was a major hit in America. Slightly underground growing. It’s still played today, especially here on Nordic Rox. This song features whistling and Per is not a stranger to whistling. Mr. G says he was always a big whistler. He whistled on the Joyride track and some other songs. He can’t do it anymore, though, because he changed his teeth. It’s part of history, Sven says. Yeah, so Per needs sample sounds. Sven informs that when the Joyride album or single came out, the vinyl version had a sort of writing by the label saying, „was it really necessary to whistle?”. Sven asks Per to share the story behind that. Mr. G says it was one of their agents who didn’t like Per’s whistling. He said, „was it really necessary to whistle?” and they all thought that was hilarious, because that was like the big hook in that song. So when they pressed the vinyl single, they engraved „was it really necessary to whistle?” just where the label starts. You could do those things with vinyls. Sven thinks the agent would probably have said the same thing about Young Folks. Per agrees.

Now the final five songs on the ’60s list are coming. It’s been really tricky to pick out the top five spots, Per thinks, because there are so many favourites of theirs. No. 5 is Ola & The Janglers from Stockholm with a song called Alex Is The Man, from the album Limelight, written by guitar player Claes af Geijerstam in 1966, which was a great year for pop music. Sven laughs. Per explains they always have this argument about which is the best year in pop music: 1966 or 1965 or the outsider, 1971. Sven says, as most people would agree, 1965, of course. Per says, no, no, no, no, no. Haha. The discussion is ongoing.

The next band on the list is from Stockholm called the Mascots. It’s one of the guys’ favourite groups. They had a song called Words Enough To Tell You. Per thinks it’s a great band and they have great songs. A Sad Boy, is their best song according to PG. He thinks it’s really beautiful. Sven agrees. It’s a melancholy minor song tune. And it’s on an album called Your Mascots. The song is from 1965. Not a bad year for pop music, Per says. Haha. This argument will never end.

The guys stay in Stockholm for the third band, maybe the biggest of all the Swedish ’60s band, the Hep Stars. Per says the band is featuring Benny Andersson on keyboards. He was one of the founders of ABBA. He wrote this song, Sunny Girl. If you have a screen available, you can see the album cover, Sven says. Up there in the left corner is a very young Benny Andersson. Sven what better song to follow a song called A Sad Boy than a Sunny Girl, Sven laughs. Per says you can actually hear the trademarks of Benny Andersson’s songwriting here, which he sort of developed, of course, when the ABBA thing happened in the ’70s. He’s got this wonderful knack of putting a great melody together. And it’s not like what you expect all the time. He does his own thing. Sven says Benny’s keyboard gives this song the baroque pop feeling to it. Sven thinks Sunny Girl was another level of Swedish pop songwriting back then. This song is from 1966, which is a great year of pop music, Per insists. He had this as a vinyl single.

No. 2 on the list is a band that wasn’t really a pop band. Sven is pretty sure, this is their first time on American radio. They were more like an easy listening dance band. But they had a knack of writing songs that got them accepted by the pop crowd as well. Yeah, they had so many hits. Per personally never liked to listen to them, because they didn’t have long hair. That was so important in the ’60s. You wanted all the bands to look really cool and have this attitude. This band, Sven-Ingvars, didn’t have that at all, but they had their own sound. They wrote their own songs. And they truly deserved the runner-up position on this chart, PG thinks. Apart from the long hair, another thing that made them a bit suspicious among the young pop listeners was that the parents liked them as well, Sven says. Per reacts „yeah, terrible”. Sven thinks the song is very charming. Something that might get lost here, because they come from a part of Sweden called Värmland, which is very close to Norway and they have this wonderful Swedish accent. The dialect is very special and they used it a lot when they were singing as well. To their advantage. And this song is called Börja om från början, translating to „begin from the beginning” or „start from scratch”. It’s a breakup song, basically and it’s from 1965.

Before the guys reveal their No. 1, Per says they don’t really have that much in common with Sven. But one thing they have in common is that they consider Tages to be the best band of the ’60s in Sweden. Sven says they had two singers, as they mentioned that before in the last show. Tommy Blom was the major singer. He was the most good-looking, but maybe not the best singer. But he was good, Per says. They had a great bass player in Göran Lagerberg, who was a great singer as well. He also was a great composer, he was the main songwriter. Tommy Blom was singing the verse and Göran Lagerberg came in singing the chorus. Per thinks it’s brilliant. They were produced by Anders Henriksson, a great producer in the ’60s and ’70s. This 1967 song, Every Raindrop Means A Lot is one of the highlights of Swedish pop music from the ’60s, for sure. It’s a masterpiece, a well-deserved number one. The guys hope the listeners agree.

Sven and Per play some more music. The Wannadies is a band from Skellefteå, slightly in the middle north of Sweden. Per considers it the north, but he is from the south. PG says everything above Stockholm is the north. Sven agrees. Stockholm is north as well for those who come from the south. Hit is taken from an album called Bagsy Me. Sven asks „why did the ’90s end?” Every song should sound like this, he thinks. Per thinks it’s a great song, he likes it.

Doing It Again Baby by Girl In Red is next. Then Broken Promise Land by Weeping Willows is wrapping up this episode of Nordic Rox.

The guys thank the listeners for joining them and Cigarettes by Anita Lindblom closes the show, as usual.

Photo by Anders Roos (2019)

Thanks for your support, Sven!

Per Gessle and Sven Lindström continue their countdown of their favourite Swedish and Scandinavian songs from the ’60s in the May episode of Nordic Rox. Now they list the songs from No. 10 to No. 6. The tension rises, they got some stuff on this list that Sven believes is played for the first time on American radio. History in the making.

Sven asks Per what’s up and PG says there are lots of things on his agenda. Preparing for the world premiere of the Roxette musical, Joyride – The Musical in September in Malmö. There will be 110 shows in Malmö, then they move to Stockholm and Europe, he hopes. Sven finds it exciting and says he lives just around the corner to Malmö Opera.

Before getting down to the ’60s list, the guys got a lot of new material to present. They kick off with a joint venture between Anglo-Swedish band Alberta Cross & Band Of Skulls and play their brand new single Born In Amazement. PG thinks it’s a good song.

Ellen Krauss latest single Cherry On Top is next. Ellen broke through during a show called the Denniz Pop Awards, five or six years ago. Denniz Pop is a legendary pop producer.

Fading Like A Flower by Roxette comes next. Per says it was peaking at number two on the Billboard chart in 1991. Sven is not really sure whether it was in spring or autumn. It wasn’t the first single, but the second. Joyride was the lead single. Per thinks it was summer of 1991 and says it was number one on the Cashbox chart. Cashbox was competing with Billboard in those days. Sven read somewhere ages ago that when John Kennedy grew up and he was going to school or university, in a sports competition he had won a silver medal and his father looked at him and said, you don’t win silver, you lose gold. So Sven is curious how it feels being number two. PG laughs and says they were pretty pleased with being number two. It was the peak period of Roxette, Joyride was the big album for them and they were on tour in 1991-92. Fading Like A Flower for Per sums up the sound, the essence of Roxette. Marie is doing a fantastic job singing and the production, everything is classic Roxette. He is glad Sven picked this song. Sven is curious if Per remembers writing it, but he doesn’t.

Nails And Beauty by a band from Malmö, Going Big is played next. The band is from Malmö and this is their latest single. Sven loves the harmony vocals. It sounds a bit chilly like Bram Tchaikovsky.

Say Lou Lou’s new single, Dust comes next. The guys say they played a lot of Say Lou Lou songs already before this show. Julian is still Per’s favourite song from them. That was their breakthrough song. Sven loves it too. It’s such a great production and great track, Per thinks. Sven read that Dust is on a new EP and Say Lou Lou is going to release a couple of EPs in the upcoming months.

Next is The Soundtrack Of Our Lives with a great song, Believe I’ve Found, which is the opening track of their album called Origin Vol. 1. They made some great albums in 2001 and 2003, Per says. They came from Gothenburg, a great music city. Sven would say they came out of the punk movement, but then found their Stones roots. They had a sound of their own. Per agrees and he thinks this is one of their best songs.

Now it’s time to move on to the Nordic Rox list of Scandinavian ’60s goodies. And there is an emphasis on Swedish acts, but the guys have a Danish act coming up. Sven asks Per if he thinks that the Eurovision Song Contest is anything known in the States. Per doesn’t think so. It’s a very European thing and it’s only for certain European people as well. Lots of people are not interested and have never been interested in it. But funnily enough, it seems like it survived and only grew bigger and bigger and bigger. It was the breakthrough show for ABBA. They won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974 with Waterloo. Sven adds ABBA sort of rewrote the music a bit, because the show became a lot more pop orientated after ABBA. It wasn’t before and after. Why Sven asked Per about this is because this guy they are going to play, he won the Swedish Eurovision Song Contest in 1968. Per and Sven picked this song for only one reason, because they love it. And because they are pretty sure it has never been played on US radio before. Det börjar verka kärlek, banne mej by Claes-Göran Hederström. Per thinks it’s a great track. The title is a bit tricky to translate, but it means It’s Starting To Look Like Love, Darn. Sven says this is also a kind of new chapter in Swedish Eurovision history, because here is when they started to move away from dramatic ballads and move closer to the pop era.

Most of the pop groups in Sweden sang in English, because that was the thing you did in the ’60s. Even today, of course. Ola & The Janglers is No. 9 on the list with a track called Love Was On Your Mind. Per loved that track when he was a kid and Sven loves it too. It was written by guitar player Claes af Geijerstam who was a really talented songwriter according to Per. There weren’t that many Swedish bands that wrote their own material. Sven guesses that Claes toured with ABBA later on as a backup singer. Per corrects Sven and says he was doing the front of house sound. There were a lot of hits for Ola & The Janglers. This song is sort of mega ’60s because it’s like a Swede pop ballad turning into some kind of The Swinging Blue Jeans frenzy and then back again. It’s really interesting.

Coming up next is Tages, an amazing band according to Per. They were called the Swedish Beatles. They also did covers of R&B songs and they wrote really wonderful pop songs themselves. It was like a mix, they had a little of everything. Great singer and bass guitar player in Göran Lagerberg and a wonderful front person in Tommy Bloom, who was all the girls’ hero. They also had a great producer, Anders Henriksson, one of the big producers in the ’60s and ’70s for them. Sven thinks their career started in 1964, very early on and it ended in the late ’60s, in 1968. The whole Swedish pop scene sort of ran out of steam. So a lot of those bands that were big in 1966, 1967, they quit and started doing other things. One of the last singles that Tages did is the one that the guys play at position No. 8 on their chart. Fantasy Island is a great song, Per thinks. He had this on a single when he was a kid. It’s a wonderful song, Sven agrees.

No. 7 brings us to Copenhagen, Denmark. Per says they have been pretty slow in playing Danish music on this show for so many years. Sven says, „for good reason. Did I say that?” Per says, „no, you didn’t say that.” Haha. The time has come to pick up one of the great songs from the ’60s. It’s two brothers and an uncle, who was almost the same age. The brothers were 14 and 13 when this was recorded and then it was released late in 1964. The brothers are Torben and Jørgen Lundgren. Per remembers this song when he grew up, but he must have heard it later on. Since Sven was three years older and much more mature than Per, he remembers when it came out. Sven thought they were sensational and their voices are so innocent. Per thinks the production of the song is really cool. The drum sounds great and it just sounds amazing. Sven agrees and says it entered the Swedish charts and they went down a storm in Sweden. The guys play Do You Know (How Much I Love You) by The Lollipops. After the song Sven says, The Lollipops clocking in at 1.56, that’s Ramones times. Per thinks it’s the perfect length of a pop song. Sven agrees.

The guys are back to Sweden to check out the founding father of the Swedish language in pop culture, Pugh Rogefeldt. Per says he was really early with writing songs in Swedish in the ’60s. The guys play his breakthrough song, Här kommer natten, (Here Comes The Night) from 1969. It wasn’t a big hit, but it was big enough to become a breakthrough for him. He became a really big figure on the scene for many years. Sven says he also rewrote the rules, because all the pop and rock guys in Sweden in the ’60s thought it would be too corny to write in Swedish. Per informs Pugh was very much influenced by artists like Captain Beefheart. He did some kind of strange sort of pop music and worked with a great producer, Anders Burman, a drummer who came from the jazz scene in the ’50s. Anders had his own indie label at the time and signed Pugh Rogefeldt. So he did three or four, maybe even five, amazing albums. Sven says we hear Georg ’Jojje’ Wadenius as well on guitar, who later would join Blood, Sweat & Tears. He was also in a band called Made in Sweden back then.

This Pugh song wraps up today’s snippet of the guy’s list of Scandinavian goodies from the ’60s. Next month they are back with the final countdown. (Here Per is humming the tune of Europe’s The Final Countdown.)

Coming up next is an interesting project by the Shout Out Louds from Sweden. They recorded an album in 2005 called Howl Howl Gaff Gaff and they have just recently made a new version called Howl Howl Gaff Gaff Revisited where they re-recorded a couple of songs. Per says they probably weren’t really happy with the original. Sven asks Per if he has ever considered re-recording any old material. Per says, absolutely, it happens all the time. Especially if you are not happy with it. It could be so many different things. Maybe the production didn’t work out or maybe it was recorded in the wrong key or the mood wasn’t right. Or you suddenly start to like the song more. Sven says we are going to hear a snippet of the 2005 version of a song called The Comeback and then we are going to seamlessly move into the 2024 version of The Comeback.

Sucker by Club 8 is played next. Per thinks it’s a great song. He doesn’t know anything about Club 8 though. Sven informs there is a band called Acid House Kings in Sweden and a band member there called Johan Angergård. This is his side project with a vocalist called Karolina Komstedt. Sucker is their latest single.

This wraps up the May episode of Nordic Rox. The guys thank the listeners for joining them and Cigarettes by Anita Lindblom closes the show, as usual.

Pic by Patrícia Peres, Book Fair 2014, Gothenburg

Thanks for your support, Sven!

Per Gessle and Sven Lindström recorded their April episode of Nordic Rox in March. The guys are having a good time, because it’s spring and they continue with their new special that contains their favourite Swedish and Scandinavian songs from the ’60s. They think the first episode was a great success, at least it felt like it, for them at least. They haven’t heard any comments from the audience yet, but they are sure they will come. This time they are going to count down from No. 15 to No. 11.

Before that, the guys kick off with something completely different. They start off with one of their favourite bands from Sweden ever, The Hives. Such a great band, Per says. Luckily for everyone, they are back in action again with their new album, The Death Of Randy Fitzsimmons. They are also touring everywhere now. The song played is Countdown To Shutdown.

The next song is He’s Peculiar by Norwegian power-pop star Vibeke. Per thinks she is amazing. She has lots of great songs.

Then comes Walking On Air by PG Roxette. Sven is curious about the story behind the song. Per tells him it’s the opening track of the PG Roxette album that came out in the fall of 2022, Pop-Up Dynamo! It was the first song that PG wrote for the album. Actually, he got a request to write a song for the Top Gun: Maverick movie, for a particular scene, which eventually they didn’t use. So they obviously didn’t use Per’s song either. But anyway, it became the kick-off for this album. It’s really cool, Per thinks. It’s like the missing link between Roxette’s Look Sharp! and Joyride sound-wise. The bridge between the ’80s and ’90s, so that’s why it sounds like it does. Sven thinks it’s a cool track. Per is really glad that Sven likes it.

Before the guys get down to their list of ’60s highlights, they play two more tracks. The band Hello Saferide is first. Per says, when Annika Norlin is working in English, she calls herself Hello Saferide. She has been doing some great tracks over the years. Sven says, this song is from 2008 or 2009. So it’s pretty old, PG reacts. It’s on a compilation album by the indie label Razzia Records and the track is called I Was Definitely Made For These Times.

The next track is the wonderful sound of The Hellacopter’s new single The Electric Index Eel. Sven thinks it’s good to hear them again. Per agrees and adds that this one came out in November last year. It sounds really fresh to his ears.

The best of Swedish music from the ’60s is coming. Per explains that what they are trying to do here is to focus a little bit on Scandinavian acts, especially Swedish acts from the ’60s who wrote their own material. So many bands and artists in those days were doing cover versions of American and English hits, but there were a few exceptions. Sven says, you can’t avoid a guy called Benny Andersson when you speak about original Swedish music. PG adds that he came out in the ’60s, before he formed ABBA with Björn Ulvaeus. He had this Hep Stars band. He wasn’t the original keyboard player there, but he became the second keyboard player and he changed the band forever. He was such a great writer. At position No. 15, the guys play Wedding, one of Hep Stars’ greatest songs. Sven loves this one from 1966. By then, it seemed like Benny could just write hits that went immediately up to the No. 1 position on the Swedish chart. Per agrees. 1966, by the way, is a great year in pop music, Mr. G says. Sven says they always debate about whether 1965 or 1966 is the best year. Per thinks 1966 is by far the best. Sven says it’s not a bad year. So we listen to the song, taken from one of Hep Stars’ best-selling albums, recorded and released in 1966. We hear Benny Andersson, future ABBA member, on the keyboards. Per thinks it’s a great track and it was released on Olga Records, an independent Swedish label.

Sven says, now it’s time to play some music in Swedish. Basically, everyone who was a pop star sang in English in the ’60s, because The Beatles did, but there were a few exceptions that actually sounded like a pop band, but sang in Swedish. Per says, this particular band Sven is talking about is Sven-Ingvars. They came from Värmland. Hillbilly, Sven says, but Per doesn’t want to say that. What made them stand out a bit, in a negative way, for Per, when he was a kid, was that they didn’t have long hair. They looked a little bit like how you were supposed to look. A sort of late ’50s look, Sven adds. For PG it felt like they weren’t really hip. They had people writing their music within the band. They were really great writers and great performers as well and they made some outstanding singles. Sven says they had a wonderful singer, Sven-Erik Magnusson. Mr. G adds, he sang with this dialect that made him stand out a bit. Those in the South thought it was a little bit so-so. Sven thought it was really charming. He adds that Värmland is close to Norway, up there in mid-Sweden and they have these people there who love to watch racing cars out on the gravel roads, in the woods. You wouldn’t expect a superb pop band to come out of the woods. Per says, in the ’60s, they had so many hits and they continued over the decades, up until Sven-Erik unfortunately died. Then the front position of Sven-Ingvars was taken by his son, Oscar and they continued up to this day. They are very successful and they are touring a lot. So this position on the chart is very well deserved. Sven says they are a class act for more than 60 years. And this track the guys play is from 1965 and it’s called Säg inte nej, säg kanske, which you can translate into Don’t say no, say maybe.

The next Swedish city is Gothenburg on the Swedish west coast. It’s the second song by Tages the guys play on this list. Per says, Tages is his favourite band from the ’60s. He thinks they are outstanding. Great writers, great singers, great players. They promoted themselves as the Swedish Beatles and PG can understand that. They were like a head bigger than most of the other bands. Sven says the song they play is from November 1966. Per inserts, 1966 is such a great year for pop music. Haha. Sven says there is a funny story behind this song, because it originated when the band was touring in Scandinavia. Their record label was Platina Records, another independent label. They really struck gold with Tages. The band played Denmark when their record company phoned them up on the road and said, hey, you guys, we need to print the sleeve for your new single. What’s it called? And they didn’t have a title. They didn’t even have a song. The band was unsure of what to record until (Sven is reading from the Wikipedia site here) they were sitting at the bar and guitarist Danne Larsson spotted an ad for Mac Baren Tobacco. Per remembers that tobacco, it was tobacco for the pipes. Sven confirms. And boom, the band had the title. The song is called Miss Mac Baren. Now all they lacked was a song, so they wrote one. They wrote it on the tour bus on the way to the recording session. According to Per, they did a wonderful job, because it’s such a great track. One of their best tracks. Sven thinks it’s pure hit and went straight up to No. 1 on the Swedish chart, he believes. PG was seven years old in 1966 and he has this song on a single, because he has loved that song ever since he was a kid. He still loves it.

The guys are moving up to Stockholm and back to 1965. Per says, that’s a good year too. They are heading for No. 12 on this chart with a band called The Mascots. Per says, they had some great songs as well. They sound very much like Mercy in style, with lots of harmonies. You can hear a little bit of Peter & Gordon in there as well.  They wrote their own songs, that’s why they are on this list. Words Enough To Tell You is a beautiful pop track that stood out in the Swedish ’60s. Per doesn’t know if this was a big hit. Sven doesn’t think so. There was a pop magazine called Bildjournalen in Sweden and they sometimes released a flexi single next to the magazine, on a sort of plastic. Sven remembers buying this one and it was rather hard to play it on his player. Per is curious how it worked. Sven says he used the vinyl single underneath it. He put the flexi disc on top of it. Per remembers this, his brother had such things. It was cool. You bought a magazine and you got two or four tracks for free. Sven says, that’s hard currency when you are 10 years old. Haha. Sven never gets tired of hearing this song and he still misses the feel of the flexi disc.

No. 11 on the list of classic ’60s moments in Scandinavia is a band from the north of Sweden called The Shanes. They had lots of hits. They did lots of covers, but this particular song that the guys picked is called Chris-Craft No. 9 was written by the main songwriter, Kit Sundqvist, who was playing the keyboards. There is a great guitar riff. Sven asks Per if he knows what a Chris-Craft is. He knows, it’s a boat. The band was from Kiruna. That’s really far up. That’s as far as you can go, basically, in Sweden. The song was recorded in the Abbey Road studio in London, The Beatles studio. PG didn’t know that. Sven guesses, when they started out in the early ’60s, sitting up there in Kiruna and when The Beatles came around and they realized that they wanted to be a pop band, they wouldn’t even dream of one day recording in the Abbey Road studio. Per thinks it’s really cool and it’s pretty rare that they have these acts from the far north making it big. Sweden is, by the way, a very narrow country, he explains. If you fly from the south to the very north, it’s a three-hour flight. It’s a very long country. So there is a big difference between the south and the north.

The guys will continue the chart in the next show, but they move into some more modern sounds now, the next song is just 15 years old. My Life Is Shit But I Am Funky by Konie. Per thinks it’s a cool one, he hasn’t heard it before, so he thanks Sven for bringing Konie into his life. Sven said, this sounds like basically a rough demo recorded at home. Per noticed that there was another guy involved, Joakim Åhlund was part of the production team. He is a great producer. He has been all over the place. He produced The Teddybears, for instance. A trademark of quality.

In The Dust by Atomic Swing is next. It’s one of the singles taken from their magnificent debut album. Per says Sven has a soft spot for Atomic Swing. He confirms, and says he still thinks they sound like nothing else really. They have their own brand. Per likes them too.

Then comes the beautiful sound of Tove Styrke and her song Start Walking from her recent album Hard. Per noticed that this song was produced by Lost Boy who also produced Kylie Minogue. He is a big producer in Europe, also a trademark of quality.

Sven moves on with a new track from Alberta Cross. Per doesn’t know anything about Alberta Cross. He asks whether it is a he or a she or an animal. Sven says it’s a band led by a Swedish singer, Petter Ericson Stakee. They have been based in the States and Sven thinks they are in England right now. He is not really sure. They moved 10, 15 years ago and have been working the live circuit and recording. So Far Out Of Reach is a track from late 2023.

The guys play one more song, All Day Long by The Royal Concept from Sweden. It’s their new single.

That brings the guys to the end of this show. All day long they have been sitting here talking about Swedish music from the ’60s. Per thinks it’s good fun. The ’60s was a very special time, the ’60s and the ’70s. He thinks they should do something similar with the ’70s. Sven thinks it’s a good idea. They will get back to that. He tells the listeners, you will never get rid of these lists. You have to live with this for the next year or so. Haha.

Cigarettes by Anita Lindblom closes the show, as usual.

Pic by Patrícia Peres, Book Fair 2014, Gothenburg

Thanks for your support, Sven!