podcast

Per Gessle is back on Framgångspodden

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You might remember that Alexander Pärleros did a podcast interview with Per Gessle appr. 4 years ago and shared it in February 2018 on Framgångspodden. Now it was time for another round with Mr. G to ask him about success, creativity and the loss of Marie Fredriksson. You can listen to the podcast HERE (no. 540 is the interview with Per).

Alexander is very happy that Per is back on his podcast. He introduces PG as a living legend. Together with Roxette, he put Sweden on the map and as a front figure in Gyllene Tider he also created immortal hits. He is undeniably one of Sweden’s most successful artists and greatest music exports of all time. He is currently on an unplugged tour.

Per remembers that the first Framgångspodden episode with him came out in 2018. Alexander asks PG if he is good at remembering the years – what happened when. Per tells he is not really good at that, but when he thinks about a year, he thinks about what he was doing then. When he thinks about Gyllene Tider’s Dags att tänka på refrängen album, it was 2013, Roxette’s Have A Nice Day came out in 1999. Per also tells that if you ask his wife or his friends if he is good at remembering dates, they will for sure reply he isn’t.

Alexander tells that last time he asked Per about what he eats for breakfast and PG replied he always eats the same thing: coffee with milk and 2 sandwiches. One with apricot marmalade & cheese and one with ham & mustard & chives. Alexander is curious if anything has changed since then. Per laughs and tells he still eats the same, he only added tomato. He says there is a clash in the mouth between tomato and apricot marmalade if you eat them at the same time, but it’s fine if you have a little break between the two. Alexander laughs and says it’s nice to hear that even PG can develop his eating habits. Per tells it’s the same with lunch. If he is on tour or out in town, he won’t eat the same, but at home he likes it like that.

Alexander asks Per if there is any routine PG was doing during this year, anything he is doing for feeling good. Mr. G tells he thinks he is fine, he tries to walk 1 hour each day if the weather outside is not so scary, like in Stockholm today, drizzling all day. While walking, he is either on the phone or listening to music or just contemplating. It has become more than a routine, it’s rather a way to exist, which is important for him. But he likes routines – to eat dinner at a set time or watch TV almost always at the same time.

Alexander is doing the interview via Zoom and since he sees Per’s office, he asks what that picture of a cow is on the wall. Mr. G tells it’s an Andy Warhol painting that he has since the end of the 80’s.

Alexander tells Per goes on an unplugged tour and it seems to be quite sold out, he couldn’t really find tickets for that. Mr. G tells there are a few tickets left for Karlstad and Halmstad’s second gig and maybe a few for Linköping and Norrköping. [So the interview was done before 5th November 2021. /PP] The biggest venue they play is Filadelfia in Stockholm, for 1,400 people. The whole idea came from the pandemic, because there were very strict rules. He has a hotel in Tylösand and decided to play there 2 acoustic gigs for a smaller amount of people, 475 in the crowd. It went so fine that in the end they did 10 shows. It was much fun and intimate. Per has never played gigs like these and he says that you become naked in a way at such a concert. It’s very different to when you play a big production e.g. at Stockholm Globe Arena or in big soccer stadiums. Here it’s more silent, acoustic and there are anecdotes he tells in between the songs. It’s a very exciting concept for Per. Doing the same concept at theatres around Sweden is going to be much fun.

Alexander says it sounds like something Sweden needs at this time after the restrictions. Per thinks everyone in Sweden needs a party most of all. He says that’s why he will also play Gyllene Tider hits. The guys are laughing. Per says it’s gonna be nice and calm. The band will be sitting, the audience will be sitting. It fits the season and it’s going to be a lovely autumn for everyone.

Alexander asks Per about Marie, telling that PG lost his mother, sister and brother in a short period and then Marie in 2019. Mr. G says it was of course a difficult period. Marie was ill for a long time and mentally you were prepared in a way that one day she will no longer be with us. It was the same with his mother, who died at the age of 88. His sister had cancer and his brother had lung cancer. His brother was only 62 when he died. It happened very suddenly, so it was tough. But life goes on, however, there is no day you don’t think of them. He is reminded of Marie all the time. He learned to live with that. The older you get, the more people disappear from your life. Also your idols. E.g. Charlie Watts from The Rolling Stones passed away a couple of weeks ago. All Per’s super favourite artists, e.g. David Bowie or Tom Petty have left us. You get older, so it will go on like this.

Alexander tells Per grew up in Furet district of Halmstad and he is curious if Per remembers when he got his first guitar. Mr. G tells they had an unplayable guitar at home, which had only two strings. So all you could do with that was striking tough poses. He also remembers that at school they had to do some woodwork and he sawed out an electric guitar. It had no strings though, it just looked like a guitar. He thinks his brother had a guitar, but that was crap too. The first real guitar that could also be played was bought by Per’s mother. Per got it quite late, in 1975 if he remembers right, when he was 16. It was a nylon-string guitar, a Bjärton Estrella made in Sweden. He learned fingerpicking on it, playing Leonard Cohen songs. It wasn’t too rocky, he says. Per bought his first real electric guitar when they started with Gyllene Tider. Some of them travelled to London to buy guitars and amplifiers. He had a summer job at Fammarps mushrooms and weighed mushrooms. All the money he earned he spent on a wine-red Gibson Les Paul Custom. Dave Davies in The Kinks had one like that, so PG wanted to have the same. The only difference was that Per’s was a 2-pickup, while Dave Davies’ was a 3-pickup. It was stupid enough that they had no money to pay the VAT, so they smuggled the guitars. They got caught and came home empty-handed. Per then wrote a long letter of apology to the customs. He wrote that it wasn’t their intention to break the law and they didn’t know they should have paid VAT. They got a fine of 2,000 crowns, which was a fortune back then, but got their instruments back. True story, he says. Per still has that guitar and played it on GT’s first album, on Flickorna på TV2, for example.

Per tells the first setup of Gyllene Tider was Micke Syd, MP, PG and Janne Carlsson, but after Janne left the band, Anders Herrlin and Göran Fritzon joined them. It must have been January 1979. They got a record deal with EMI the same year and recorded their first album. There were a couple of years when they tried to find their sound. They came from nowhere when they met and they spent all their time rehearsing and learning the craft. They had to learn how to write a song, how the bass works, how a band works at all. They started sending their recordings to all record labels in spring and they got their EMI contract in autumn, so all went quite fast anyway. 3 years after he got his first nylon-string guitar. GT played 6 gigs in front of an audience before they became No. 1 with Flickorna på TV2.

Alexander asks how Flickorna på TV2 came about. Per says MP and he were influenced by Elvis Costello’s Watching The Detectives. It has a strange reggae beat. They wanted to record Flickorna på TV2 that way. It didn’t go so well, but that was the song’s identity, pretending to be reggae. It wasn’t until they sat in the studio to record their first album to figure out how to simplify the beat. The song really stood out. The lyric idea came from Hasse & Tage (a Swedish comedian duo). Their word play of the only thing they get to turn on when they get home is the TV was the base. There was also a lot of talk on TV2 back then, Catrin Jacobs was on. It was in Per’s teenage years. Alexander asks if the guys met the girls on TV2 and if the girls thanked for the song, because even more people started watching the TV. PG says he can’t remember, but there weren’t too many channels in that era anyway.

The single was released right before Christmas 1979 and the album was released in February 1980. It wasn’t hysterical yet, but in autumn 1980 when they released När vi två blir en as a single it started to become very big. The song was No. 1 in Sweden for months and that led them to their second album, Moderna Tider. Then came an explosion: record in sales and a huge indoor tour in Sweden. He lived at his mother back then and all what was movable, disappeared. Even the laundry on dry in the garden. Fans stole everything. Haha. When he turned 22 in January 1981, he got appr. 3,000 letters. There were 3 big sacks full of letters in front of his mother’s house. Then came 100 letters each day or so.

Per also talks about the accident in Kristianopel that happened before a GT concert in 1981. 3 fans died because of stampede at the entrance. It was tough, they couldn’t imagine such things could happen.

Another hysterical era in Per’s career was the beginning of the 90’s when Roxette toured South America. Appr. 1,000 fans were waiting in front of their hotel, singing songs at night. PG tells all the Formula 1 teams were at the same hotel and they were complaining. When Per was down in the hall and the F1 guys realized he is from Roxette, they said: „Oh you, you fucker, you kept us up all night!” Haha.

Alexander is curious how Roxette came about. Per says it came step by step. He met Marie at the end of the 70’s at the rehearsal studio they shared, Gyllene Tider and Marie’s band, Strul. She was singing fantastically and played the keyboards. She had a kind of musicality Per had never seen before. They simply became friends. Gyllene Tider broke through, but Marie’s band didn’t have as much success then. They shared a dream to succeed with their music abroad. It was a natural way of development for Gyllene Tider to try their luck abroad and they recorded their fourth album, The Heartlan Café in English. It was released in the US, but nothing really happened with that. Marie’s primary goal was to get a record deal in Sweden. Her career went uphill, while Per’s went downhill. GT broke up and PG’s solo stuff didn’t go too well either. Per was asked to write a song for Pernilla Wahlgren. He wrote Svarta glas, which he thought was perfect for Pernilla, but she never recorded it. Per’s demo was circulating at EMI and the boss, Rolf Nygren suggested PG to write English lyrics to it and record it with Marie. Rolf thought then they would have the perfect song to succeed with abroad. Per thought it was a brilliant idea and Marie was also in, however, her producer and her own record label thought she shouldn’t work together with Per, but rather focus on her solo career. Nevertheless, Marie wanted to work with Per and they recorded Neverending Love. It didn’t become a hit abroad, but a big hit in Sweden and that led to the chance they could record the first Roxette album. Everything went so fast and Per had no songs in English. However, he had songs in Swedish he wrote for his never-released upcoming solo album and quickly translated the texts to English. There were a lot of coincidences that led to Roxette. After the first Roxette album, Marie went back to her Swedish solo stuff, while Per, triggered by Roxette’s success in Sweden, started writing songs for the album that became Look Sharp!

Mr. G talks about the story of It Must Have Been Love ending up in Pretty Woman and tells that the movie’s title first was 3,000. Per talks about Germany, which was the biggest market in Europe back then, but nothing really happened with Roxette outside Sweden. Their German record label told them they should write a Christmas song, because then it might be easier for them to be played on the radio. So in 1987 Per wrote a Christmas song, It Must Have Been Love (Christmas for the Broken Hearted). They released it in Sweden and it became a gold record, but Germans didn’t like it. The record label in Germany didn’t release it. Marie went back to her Swedish solo, Per started writing songs for the next Roxette album, so IMHBL was kind of forgotten. After they broke through, they were sitting in Los Angeles, having lunch with their US record label and they were asked to be part of the soundtrack to Pretty Woman. They told David Bowie was in, Robert Palmer and several other EMI artists as well. Per couldn’t go home and write a new song for the movie, because they were constantly on the road doing promotions. They were heading to New Zealand then. He said, „but we have a damn good Christmas song!” They updated the intro a bit, took away the Christmas reference, Marie sang a bit and they were ready and gave the recording to their US label. Roxette was recording their next album, Joyride in 1990 and at the old EMI studio in Skärmarbrink Per got a call from the director of Pretty Woman, Garry Marshall. Per didn’t know who he was, they never met. Garry just wanted to tell that he loved the song so much he had given it a great place in the movie and there is no dialogue over it. Per hadn’t seen the movie, so he didn’t know what Garry was talking about, but thanked for it. Marie and Per were invited for the screening of the movie. Mr. G remembers that they were watching it in a theatre and there was an earthquake and someone told them „don’t worry, this is an earthquake-safe building!” Per thinks it’s cool they could be part of the movie, because it became a huge success, one of the biggest movies of all time and IMHBL became a huge song as well. Still one of their biggest songs. Anytime Per hears it he thinks of Marie, how amazing she was, what a fantastic singer she was. PG tells you can find hundreds of covers of IMHBL on YouTube, but there is no version that comes close to Marie’s capacity of singing it.

Per tells again that Marie and he had this common ambition to try to succeed abroad. They loved the romanticism in old pop and rock culture. It was very different vs. what it is today. They wanted to go outside Sweden and play pop and rock music. It was a dream they shared. They also recognized very early that they were good at different things. Marie was an unbeatable singer and Per’s job was rather being the director. Writing songs, planning and networking. Per was always triggered by success, then he became double as good next time. Other people become stressed by success and take a step back, but Per has always been the opposite. The more they worked, the more Per wanted to work. That was also a difference between Per and Marie. The bigger they became, the less Marie wanted to work, Per laughs. They were a very good team.

Alexander asks PG about the creative process. He had written a lot of big hits during that period. Per tells he has never found a formula. There is a big difference between him and today’s pop music. He wrote almost everything himself, text and music. Nowadays artists work a lot in teams of 6-8 different people. One writes the melody, the other finds the groove etc. and that makes it less personal. Roxette’s success is based on several things: they decided to stay in Stockholm, not to record in Los Angeles or London or New York, to work with Swedish musicians and a Swedish producer, Clarence Öfwerman; Per’s songs and Marie’s fantastic voice that sounded like no one else. ABBA did the same and no one else sounds like ABBA. The problem nowadays is that there are too many songs that sound exactly the same. Everyone works with the same computer program, all have the same plugin and same sound. It’s very hard to stand out. When you work the old, organic way, you play real piano, real saxophone, real guitar or real drums, there is a unique sound. If you think about Charlie Watts for example, no one else sounds like him. If you look at the premiere video of their current tour, it sounds OK, but it doesn’t sound like The Rolling Stones now. Charlie’s style affected the whole band. It’s the same with Roxette. Jonas Isacsson’s fantastic guitar playing style put a stamp on Roxette’s early recordings. Per’s songwriting style and how he builds a song also affects the sound, Marie’s singing style and the choice of keys as well. Clarence’s fantastic arrangement and sound choice too. All this makes it special. But Per has no special way of writing a song. He was writing songs constantly. He thinks this comes from the fact that he grew up with the music of the 60’s and 70’s, which is very melodic. Everything he works with is adjusted to melodies. He listens to melodies and harmonies in a different way. It’s hard for him to listen to hip hop music, because there is almost no melody. It’s more grooves and sounds than real melody.

Alexander asks Per to tell an example how a hit of Per’s was written, if he had a phrase first. PG tells he always has his antennas out. It can be an expression or anything to start with. For Joyride it was e.g. a note his then girlfriend, now wife left on the piano, „Hej din tok, jag älskar dig!” and that became „Hello, you fool, I love you!” It sounds like a super lovely chorus. Then he read an interview with Paul McCartney where he said writing songs with John Lennon was like being on a long joyride. So it became „Hello, you fool, I love you! C’mon join the joyride!” It’s a damn good slogan, it’s positive and exciting and colorful. There were a lot of associations and a world came alive in Per’s head, so it went very fast to write this song. He wrote Spending My Time the same day in the afternoon. It was a great Saturday, he laughs.

The Look was written when he bought a new synth and tried to learn how to program it. He used chords A, G and D. It was extremely simple and then he started singing the first thing that came out of his head, „walking like a man, hitting like a hammer, she’s a juvenile scam”. It didn’t sound wise, it meant nothing, it was more about the rhythm and sound. Per’s idea was that Marie should sing it, that’s why it was „he’s got the look” first, but she didn’t want to sing it, because she thought it was too strange and didn’t fit her style. It’s like rap in a way. She was just singing the chorus and that also made the song special.

Per says sometimes it’s like solving a puzzle when you write songs, other times it can be that you write a long lyric and you find a melody half year later and you edit the text to match it. Spending My Time’s lyrics was written before there was music to it. There are a lot of examples. No song is like the other.

Alexander asks Per when he is in his most creative status, maybe in the evening or at weekends or when drinking a good wine. PG says he tries to work as little as possible. He is not the type who goes to the studio and plays the instruments 5-6 hours a day. He only writes when he has something on his mind. There has to be a project or a purpose to write. Mr. G usually writes during the day and not really after drinking wine at brunch, he laughs. He says he must be focused. Per works very intensively when he is working, in his own bubble. His wife leaves him in his bubble until he is ready. PG doesn’t know where his creativity comes from. He likes to write and it’s the way of expressing himself.

Alexander is curious about how it was when Roxette was huge in the US. Per tells it came in different stages. When they broke through with The Look, no one knew who they were. They were from Sweden, which was very strange and most people thought they would have a mayfly’s life. When they released their second single, Dressed For Success in the US it peaked at No. 14 on Billboard. Radios didn’t want to play DFS, it was only The Look that existed from Roxette. Then the third single was Listen To Your Heart and the radios started playing it and it became No. 1. So it happened in different stages. It was overwhelming to have success there and Per thinks they should have focused more on the US. But they had success everywhere else too: in Australia, Japan, South America, Europe etc. The US became only one of the markets. If they focused more on it, they should have stayed there for a year and block everything else, because the US is so huge from New York to Los Angeles. They decided to go everywhere else instead. They had to pay the price for that in the US. Their American record label was bought up and then they kind of lost that market.

Per is thankful for the journey they could do with Roxette. Before they broke through with The Look, they had been working in Sweden for 10 years as professional musicians and they knew it very well that it’s very difficult to succeed internationally. When it happened at the same time everywhere, they were happy: „oh, we have to travel to Sydney, we have to travel to Tokyo, we have to travel to Moscow”. They were thankful that people were interested in them all around the world. When they travelled to South America, there was an economic crisis in the world and a lot of artists cancelled their tours in South America, because you could earn nothing there. Marie and Per still wanted to go, because they thought it would be fun to play their songs in there. Everything exploded then. Theatres of the capacity of 4,000 became soccer stadiums instead and it became a gigantic tour for Roxette. Their experience there was incomparable. That was the greatest memory on the Joyride tour. They never played soccer stadiums before. It’s like Ullevi with 50-60 thousand people. Everyone was singing along. When they arrived to Cordoba, there was a long line of people from the airport to the hotel waving to them. It was magical to be on that whole journey. The first night they played in Buenos Aires there were 50,000 people and they had to add an extra show the next day and sold the rights to broadcast it on Argentina TV1 and the other existing channel broadcast Roxette live in Zurich from half a year ago.

To the question how they succeeded Per replies they were at the right place at the right time and they could deliver. They were of course ambitious and determined. Mr. G says when you work with your own art and own creativity, it’s actually not like a job, it’s more like your hobby, your personality. His whole existence is his work in a way. There is not other art like music, he thinks. You can be on any content, play to different nations with different religions or cultural backgrounds, speaking different languages, there is nothing in common among them, but they all sing along the same songs. It’s amazing to be part of it and hear your songs being sung by fans all around the world. You have to pinch your arms all the time. And those songs are still huge. New generations are coming and they also like them. It’s fantastic.

Alexander asks Per if there is anything he wishes he would have known when he was 20-25 what he knows now. Per thinks there is one thing that is better when you are getting older and it’s the experience that most of the things can be sorted out. When you are young you are more stressed and you are rather on the edge all the time. When you get older you realize that not everything is so important. The unplugged tour, where his music is so much in focus in that intimate atmosphere, he feels like he couldn’t have done 25 years ago. Now he dares to do it and it feels more natural now to take such a step. Mr. G says it wasn’t a real answer to Alexander’s question, but it’s difficult to answer that, because each part of your life is so different. You are in different situations, e.g. when you are 20-25 years old, you build things, you might find your partner and raise a family, then when you are 30 there is another stage and when you are 40 it’s again a different thing. Per says experience and routine help a lot. Go and play each night for an audience and that becomes an everyday routine. Then you have this feeling you want to leave your comfort zone a bit in between. Per thinks when you work with your creativity it’s important to try new things. If you change one key figure in the team before each major project to bring new blood, the others will stand a little on their toes to prove themselves in front of that new member and everyone can be influenced by him. You become a bit different when new people come into your circle. Per thinks it’s good to think about such things.

Alexander asks Per about the worst setbacks in his career. Mr. G tells he didn’t have too many. The worst was when GT broke up in 1984 and he released his second solo album in 1985. Those were very weird times. After his second solo album he had no record deal anymore and started writing songs for other artists. It didn’t suit him to be a hired gun. He always wanted to write for himself. Actually, before Roxette there were appr. 2 years like that.

Alexander asks how it affected Per privately when he was tired or a little lost in his career. Per says he tries to avoid boredom by having many branches on his tree. He had Roxette, Gyllene Tider, his solo stuff, Mono Mind. When he gets tired of one thing, he starts dealing with another. It helped him a lot even when Roxette was huge, to e.g. go back to Gyllene Tider a bit, because it was different and it was in Swedish. That’s how he tries to fool himself. He has never had a mental collapse or anything like that. He tells he can be confused how the music industry has changed during the past decade with streaming and all that. How the pop romanticism disappeared with its album sleeves and videos. We live in a different time now. Pop music’s sole purpose is to reflect its own era. If you look at pop music of the 60’s and 70’s, it reflects very well that era. Fashion, music, movies, all went hand in hand. If you look at today’s pop music, it’s efficient and based on formulas, everything has to be in a certain way. Radio channels play the same type of music all the time. For Gyllene Tider from 1979 from Halmstad it would be very diffult to make it today. They were rather outsiders and then managed to become mainstream in a strange way. Roxette was outsider since they came from Sweden. When they were to release The Look in England, their English record label said in their press release tat Roxette was an Amercian band. Today it’s difficult to succeed when you are an outsider. If you look at all the Netflix movies or HBO series, they follow the same formulas to be efficient. It makes it cheaper to produce that way. When they worked on Joyride, they had no budget. It doesn’t work like that anymore. Alexander agrees that nowadays everyone wants to earn on what they do as soon as possible. Per can understand that it’s like this in the hardcore business, but this way there is a compromise between the artistic expression and earning money.

There comes the section of the last three questions. The first is if Per has any Netflix or HBO series to recommend. Mr. G thinks The Undoing is very good, he watched Midnight Mass too – Åsa likes horror movies, Per says.

The next question is what Per suggests those who want to go outside the box. The only hint Per can tell is that you have to follow your gut feeling all the time. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you will become extremely rich or successful, but you will feel good doing that. At the same time, he has to tell that his personality and his way of thinking wouldn’t have worked today, because he is not the one who wants to compromise. It’s always sad to hear when nowadays a record label doesn’t want to sign artists who play real instruments, because it takes more time for them to become good. It’s easier to work on computers. That’s how it works today, but it’s good to know how it is to play in a band, when everyone plays the same song. It feels fantastic to be a part of that. Mr. G has no secret recipe, he suggests to do your thing at full throttle, pedal to the metal.

The last question is what Per will be doing in the coming years. PG says he is touring in autumn (2021), then in spring (2022) he releases a new English album and hopes he will be able to tour with it around the world. He thinks it’s a lovely album and he is very satisfied with it. He has no other plans yet. Throw in the towel, he laughs.

Alexander thanks Per for being there and they say goodbye to each other.

Mats MP Persson on Skiss podcast about himself, Gyllene Tider and Roxette

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Musician Morgan Lydemo is doing a podcast, Skiss where he meets influential people from different corners of the music industry, who have managed to develop and build a stable platform for themselves with the help of musical talent, hard work and a sense of entrepreneurship. This time he invited Mats MP Persson who was involved in two of the biggest acts of Swedish music history, to talk about himself, the songs he was involved in, Gyllene Tider, Per Gessle and Roxette. You can listen to the podcast episode HERE.

Morgan introduces MP as a producer, songwriter and musician and is uncertain about Mats being a drummer or a guitarist in the first place. MP tells that in his teens he started out as a drummer, but of course, many know him as the guitarist in Gyllene Tider. Morgan tells MP is recording most of the demos of Per Gessle and he asks Mats if he is also doing the final production of the songs. MP tells final production he doesn’t do so often, but last year they recorded a home-made solo album for Per and that was mastered by MP. Demos are recorded at his studio since the early 80’s and it’s fun that they are also released on albums to show how the songs started out. Some are very much produced, some are very simple.

MP tells that at high school he played in a band as a drummer. The bassist, Peter Nilsson was friends with Per Gessle and Per visited them at their rehearsal studio in the attic of MP’s grandma’s house. MP thinks Per changed then completely. Until then he was sitting at home translating Leonard Cohen lyrics, listening to David Bowie, playing a nylon-string guitar nicely, but the rock ’n’ roll experience in the rehearsal studio changed him and he thought that was what he wanted to do.

Morgan asks MP if one can say that he is Per Gessle’s right hand both in Gyllene Tider and Roxette. MP says Per writes a lot himself, but it happened that MP had some ideas before PG started writing and Per thought those were fun to build on. When that happens, both of them are stated as composers of the song. Regarding their collaboration, Mats says it can only work well if you realize that making it together is one step ahead vs. if you are doing it on your own and the other is doing it on his own. Then the collaboration is perfect. Morgan notices that if they have been working together since so long, it must be working fine between them. MP adds of course there are discussions like could we change this or that, related to the arrangement or so and it’s fun. MP has a well-isolated studio and he thinks his stuff there simply fits Per quite well. Often when Per comes to the studio, MP just puts on the right microphone capsule and Per sounds absolutely fantastic, his voice. Per feels safe there and has MP as a sounding board when he sings. Per decides 80% himself and then asks MP for his opinion.

Morgan asks MP how it was to start a band when they started playing together, how different it was vs. nowadays. MP says he hasn’t really been following the music scene nowadays, but today it’s more about computers and music programs, back then it was a must to build a band, have a rehearsal studio, rehearse a lot and do something that no one else was doing or at least do it better than anyone else, create your own identity. The lead singer often became the face of the band. You had to play a lot to be better and better at playing your instrument. It cost a lot of efforts, but if you were talented, it was probably all worth it.

Morgan says Halmstad has always been a big music scene. MP says he and Per were influenced by the punk era at the end of the 70’s, the sound was awesome, they thought. There were a lot of bands in Halmstad those days.

Morgan compares Gyllene Tider to ABBA in the sense that they weren’t so popular in the homefront. MP says GT was on TV on Måndagsbörsen in 1980 and played some songs there. Everyone in Sweden was watching that TV program back then. Himmel No. 7 and Flickorna på TV2 were already out on a single. They picked Himmel No. 7 as the A side, but Flickorna på TV2 was played at discos in Stockholm, so there was a second release of the single as a double A side. They had a huge break-through then and played live on TV. It was awesome. One could see what effect appearing live on a TV show had back then. There were only two TV channels those days.

They were touring, they rehearsed a lot in the studio and they weren’t really social, but had their close friends around them. MP tells that in another sound recording they talked about 1978-79 when they spent ten thousand hours at the rehearsal studio. They were there every day instead of going to the soccer field or running after girls. The money they earned with their summer jobs they spent on strings and cables. They were really focused. MP thinks it comes from those days that whenever they sit down to play together, it’s still there. All of them 5 ride in the same tempo and everyone strives towards one aim. When there is e.g. another drummer or bassist playing those songs, it’s different. Not better or worse, just different. The beat is not the same. All 5 of them live different lives, but when they get together there is a smile on their faces and they know they are there for the sake of music.

Morgan says Listen To Your Heart is probably the most known song MP composed together with Per. He asks MP to mention some more Roxette songs where he was co-writer. Mats mentions (Do You Get) Excited? and Spending My Time from the Joyride album. As per Gyllene Tider, he can’t remember anymore, but it was mainly their first album, e.g. Flickorna på TV2, Ska vi älska, så ska vi älska till Buddy Holly, (Dansar inte lika bra som) Sjömän.

Getting back to LTYH, Morgan asks MP to tell the story of the song, how it was written. MP remembers that they were sitting in the studio in Gullbrandstorp or Styrdal in 1988. MP recorded something on the sequencer, what became the verse part of LTYH, one can say. Per came in with a paper and wanted to record something totally different, but he asked what that was. He thought the melody could work with the text he had on the paper. He put the paper to the side and they started working with the melody. For the next day, Per added another part and they did a simple demo. It’s Per who is singing on the demo. MP says it felt like a little happy accident, because if Per hadn’t entered the studio when Mats was playing that melody, maybe it would have never turned up.

Talking about the studio work, Morgan asks MP if he thinks the new generation is missing anything when it comes to the old studio techniques. MP says that in a way it’s fun to have the limitations of tapes and distortions and such things. When they started, he didn’t have a 24-track multitrack recorder, but an 8-channel recorder, then in 1989 they upgraded to a 16-track recorder and used it until 1998. Now it’s computers and it’s much easier to manipulate the sounds. Morgan says it’s easy to sound good nowadays. MP agrees. Mats adds that it’s e.g. fun for him if there are 4 choruses in a song, he wants to record all four. Copy-paste of course saves time, but it’s more fun in the old school way.

Morgan asks for some basic tips from MP as producer and technician for those musicians who would like to build their own studio. What is what they should think about in the first place. MP repeats that when they started they had a simple mixer and an 8-channel recorder. He adds tips about microphones and amps. He says he still likes coloured sounds, which can e.g. be a strange frequency or a certain distortion. It’s so easy with the plug-ins nowadays. One has to test them.

Morgan asks MP about GT’s break-up in 1985, how it was and how it felt. MP says it was a horrible feeling. They all felt that they had reached a career that they couldn’t top. Before that, they felt they did everything they could in Sweden, so they recorded an English album, The Heartland Café under the name Roxette, not Golden Times. MP thinks the album sounds quite good, but what they did before was not reflected on that album. It became a mini LP with 6 songs in the US, but it didn’t sell at all. Anders wanted to leave the band, so they broke-up in 1985. For Per then came Roxette, a collaboration with Marie Fredriksson, trying something in English with her. It was fun, MP says and in the end, GT’s break-up was a milestone in Roxette’s history. MP adds he started working at Halmstad airport at the time to be on the safe side, so he was recording demos with Per and working at the airport.

Morgan asks MP about GT’s comebacks too. Mats says that in 1989 both he and Per turned 30, then Roxette was on tour for a long time, then they made the album Crash! Boom! Bang! and went on tour again. Then there was a pause and there was this Halmstad All Stars happening at Stora torg in Halmstad in 1995 and the guys in GT were asked if they could put together something for that event. It became so huge that journalists wrote it was time for a comeback of GT. So the guys decided for what became Återtåget and it was fantastic with sold out concerts all around.

There was a longer break when Marie got ill and Per did his Mazarin album in Christoffer Lundquist’s studio in 2002 and went on tour in the summer of 2003. Then came the idea to celebrate GT’s 25th anniversary in 2004. They wanted to do the same size tour as Återtåget was, but they had to book football stadiums instead. So instead of venues of 10.000 they played venues of 20-25.000, then there was Stockholm Stadium and Ullevi too. It was totally crazy, of course.

Mats remembers Marie was a secret guest at their last show on the Återtåget tour at Brottet in Halmstad and it was fun when she was singing a verse of När alla vännerna gått hem. It was like being on a completely different planet. It gives you goosebumps, Morgan says, she was one of the best singers.

MP says there are a lot of things and happenings that became really successful, but all projects take a lot of time and energy. In between their big GT tours they didn’t do anything related to Gyllene Tider. What MP thinks is that a lot of people who listened to them in the beginning of the 80’s are the same age as them 5 and as they got older, they would have also loved to relive their youth. They have now kids and grandchildren and the guys can see that there are different generations at their shows. They are very fortunate. Before they got their record contract in 1979, they – mainly Per – sent mails to e.g Mats Olsson at Expressen, to Aftonbladet, to record labels they also sent cassettes again and again and again, quite frequently. It was kind of a ritual every wekk. One doesn’t have this kind of energy nowadays. They thought they had something in them, they believed in themselves.

Their songs live their own lives, new generations are also listening to them. Morgan says they are evergreens. Mats tells when they were recording Puls, they were looking for a sound and they were inspired by the big American sound that Tom Petty represented. When they thought they were ready, Kjell Andersson at EMI said there was no hit on the album. They needed a hit for the summer. Then Per went and wrote Sommartider, so that was the last song they recorded and it became a huge hit.

Morgan asks MP to tell some more anecdotes he thinks would be interesting for the listeners to hear. MP laughs and says there are some he can’t tell. He says many thought they had a lot of girls around them, a girlfriend here and there, but it wasn’t the case. They were really nice and good guys and were focusing on their job. MP also talks about touring in the 80’s and that they had the same financial management as Björn Skifs.

At the end of the interview Morgan asks MP to pick one option from two made-up happenings (related to music and Gyllene Tider) and then pick another one from other two made-up stories and here it turns out that MP played the trumpet until the age of 15, but he can’t really play the violin.

Morgan asks for some closing thoughts and MP says to play music for people who enjoy it is pure happiness and so satisfying. Music spreads joy, he thinks.

Pic by Patrícia Peres, Ronneby, GT40 tour 2019

Micke Syd Andersson on Made in Halmstad

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Christian Albinsson did a podcast interview with Micke Syd for Made in Halmstad. Listen to it HERE!

Micke talks about his name that it’s really Micke Syd Andersson. Syd was his nickname, because there was another musician, guitarist Micke „Nord” Andersson and it was confusing that they had the same name. Micke says the fun thing is that they both had hairdressers called Maria. Micke Nord is from Dalarna in the North and Syd is from Halmstad in the South, so that’s how they got their nicknames.

It turns out that Micke Syd loves driving. He was driving the tour bus on the GT tour and Christian tells it’s hard to imagine a band doing it nowadays. Micke says they are from another generation, they learned everything themselves. In Gyllene Tider all of them had different qualities. MP and Micke Syd were always the ones who fixed and controlled everything themselves. Their fundamental personalities haven’t changed much. The band brought the instruments themselves to the concerts and set up things for the gigs. They did 150 concerts in 1980, if he remembers right. They had Anders Herrlin’s brother as lighting technician and a friend from Gullbrandstorp as the sound technician.

Micke is 59 years old now and was grown up in Harplinge.

Christian asks Micke about his salary. Syd says when they broke through with GT they had Janne Beime to help them with the financial things. Janne was 35 years old then and they were 18-19. Janne still works together with Per. Micke Syd says he has never had a steady job and never really knew what he would earn money on in the next year. He has what he needs, he is not interested in cars or any other things that cost a lot of money. He has a Plug-in Hybrid Ford Kuga.

Christian asks Micke what he is interested in. Syd says „life, music, my family, my wife”.

Christian is curious if Micke has always been positive. Syd says he is not always positive, but he tries to be. He has been working a lot on it. He is the type who sees the opportunities and thinks how he feels on the inside can be seen on the outside. At the age of 35 you realize that you are not as hot as you were at the age of 20 or 30 and you start managing your life differently. Then he had kids, he divorced. Micke says he is tender on the inside. He says he e.g never drank alcohol or used other stuff. Looking back he thinks he took the right decision, how he has lived his life. He says life is tough anyway, sometimes even for him.

Christian says GT broke through when they were very young and there must have been many parties. Micke says Halmstad was very lively back then and there were indeed a lot of parties and alcohol and he doesn’t know why, but he ignored it. He was driving the tour bus, MP also did that during the first year.

Christian asks what Micke thinks when he says the word Halmstad. Syd says it’s home. He says it’s very strange, because he has been living in Stockholm now for 35 years, so for more years than in Halmstad, but home is still Halmstad. His parents still live there. Stockholm will never become home. Micke says all of them in the band are hillbillies, Halmstad characterized them and how they dealt with their career. They had those un-popidolish pop idol genes and even if they were so different personalities and they still are, they made awesome pop together. There is something very special about them.

Micke Syd is a HBK fan when it comes to soccer. He talks about his favourite players and tells he always had a dream to play in HBK, but he stopped playing football when he was 17. He thinks there is a similarity how you pick your instrument and your position in a football team. Micke was a goalkeeper and says drummers are usually goalkeepers. If you look at it from a psychological point of view, the goalkeeper is a quite exposed position and if he makes a mistake, it’s seen immediately. That’s the case with the drummer too. If he doesn’t do his job well, then the whole band won’t be so good. Micke likes that challenge. He says he has always been a team player and loves teams.

Christian mentions QBTQ (four brave bulls in Spanish), Adam Alsing’s house band on his talk show. Micke Syd was a member of the band in the 90’s for 5 years. Micke tells a story when an adult film actress was on the show and after the program the band went to the swingers club with her where she met other adult film people and partied with them. That was surreal, Micke says.

Christian asks Micke about Halmstad. Micke says summer is Halmstad. He tells that when they had the rehearsals before their last tour with GT, he lived in a house in Frösakull with his wife, Helena for almost a month. It was near Prins Bertils stig and it was magical that each morning he could walk through the woods, along the beach and up to Hotel Tylösand. Christian says he heard the guys rehearsing, but didn’t dare to disturb them. Micke says they tried old songs they never played. One of them was Sista gången jag såg Annie from their debut album. Christian thinks that was their best album. Micke Syd explains when you are young and you just want to make music and your creativity is on a high, it can be heard. For the second album they thought much more about how they should sound, how they should play, etc.

Christian asks about the lyrics that they sound different when a 20-year-old sings them vs. when you sing them now at the age of 60. He means Flickorna på TV2. Micke thinks that the songs belong to those who they play them for. These songs still have their audiences and they associate these songs with happenings and experiences in their lives, so when they play them to the crowds, there is a contact between the band and the audience. He tells these are timeless songs and carry the summer feeling. The songs they play are the ones people want to hear. He remembers he saw Tom Petty live once and he expected to hear the songs he was listening to when Tom was the God for them in GT and he got disappointed, because Tom played his new songs from the new album. Syd says Per wrote so friendly texts that they are still working with teens nowadays. They sing along När vi två blir en, for example. Even if life has changed a lot, people still experience these feelings in life and music is their soundtrack to it. Different bands mean different things for different audiences. On the last tour GT played new songs too, which the guys liked, but still they played the old songs and then you could see a different crowd reaction, when they realized it’s this or that song they knew and associated an experience with it.

Micke says he and Helena went to Halmstad’s city entre and it felt totally dead. He says it’s the same with many other city centres, but it’s sad how fun it was back then and how it is now.

Christian asks Micke when he feels the best. Syd says when he is with his family and when he is playing. They have grown-up children now and they don’t meet very often, but when they meet, he sees and thinks they did a good job. Both Helena and him. They don’t have kids together, but their children are like syblings. So it’s lovely when they are together.

Christian is curious when Micke feels the worst. He says at 3 in the morning. Haha. Syd says he is a sensitive person. He is Pisces and Pisces are sensitive. He is thinking a lot about things. He thinks many things are not managed well in the music branch now and it feels that those who should make it better don’t do their job. He thinks it’s the same in the whole world, but since he lives in Sweden, he talks about that.

To the question how he develops himself Micke replies that everyone has their better and worse sides and he is still learning a lot. He learned a lot about life. There is peace that everyone is looking for. You have to be good to yourself and then it will be visible on the outside as well. Positivity comes through and it motivates him. He says you always have the possibility to change yourself.

Christian asks how Micke is as a lover. He answers Christian should ask Helena. But he thinks he is like when he plays the drums: he recognizes, he listens and feels and he wants to please.

Christian says he heard Micke increase the pace in a song when he gets excited. Micke says everyone has their own tricks. Christian realized it when they 5 play together in GT, it’s so much different to when they play the songs in other constellations. Micke tells a story when in 2013 they played (Dansar inte lika bra som) Sjömän, there was a background screen with different images during the verses and the choruses. The lighting technician came to Micke when they had the final rehearsal in Halmstad Arena and said he couldn’t tune it right for the chorus. It worked for the verses, but not for the chorus. Then Micke asked for a little screen in front of him and played in the pace according to that, so that the film came in the right pace as well. Then when the guys listened to the song they liked it, but they thought something felt strange. Everyone was doing what they had been doing for more than 30 years except for Micke, because he was checking the screen and played according to that. He felt like a restrained horse.

Christina asks Micke how he was at school. He says he was nice except towards one guy. He has never been in a fight except for with that one guy at school and Micke’s brother. He tells he has always been fair.

Regarding the band, Christian tells Per and Micke take different positions, but with the same determination, while Anders, Göran and MP are more in the background. Syd says it has to do with their personalities as well. Per and him are different, but they want the same thing, to do something good. And that’s been like that since the beginning. Christian says Micke mentioned earlier he is a team player and on stage they are indeed a team, but he is curious if they are a team off stage as well. Micke says in the band they all have different musical qualities, but the differences were refined over the years, not only musically. All of them developed and they have fun together when they meet. When they recorded their last album in France, Micke was driving to there with a friend and driving back with Helena. It was practical, because there was stuff they couldn’t have brought there on a flight and he also thought that it was the cheapest option for him. Christian asks if you really think about that when you record an album. Micke says the music industry has changed a lot. These days you don’t earn money when people are listening to music digitally. But the creative process, the recordings cost a lot. You can earn on tour then. But ask people if they want to work gratis. Spotify earns millions, but you get nothing. Micke can’t understand that. It’s not OK. So, recordings cost much and you get a little contribution from the record label, but otherwise, the rest is paid by you.

Regarding who is driven to what extent Micke says MP is not that driven, he is more silent, but his musicality is great. He is cautious, he has always been. It’s so nice to see that they got this far in their career and in a way they are still the same. Micke tells a fun story. When they took the press photos in France, everyone was dressed up, then they checked the photos and saw that MP was wearing his slippers. It didn’t really feel like a pop idol, so they had to photoshop the picture and put jeans on him. [Haha. Yeah, one could realize it already back then, when they shared the picture on GT’s Facebook page. See photos: MP in slippers; photoshopped press photo. /PP] No one really thought about that or cared much. There is something charming in that. When they are on stage, they create something cool, but they are still the guys from Harplinge and Åled and so.

Christian mentions words and asks Micke te react on them in one word. To Halmia he reacts Gessle, to Per Gessle he reacts Halmia, to Harplinge he reacts home. Regarding Hallandian dialects he says there are at least 5 and he loves that.

Christian is curious if Micke will get fat again. Syd says he won’t. Christian asks what was it that wasn’t so good in being fat. For Micke the change was about being healthy and of course also being on stage in top shape. He lost 18 kg in 4 months, he gained 5 kg back though, but he still keeps himself fit. It was a good challenge for him.

Christian asks Micke how he ended up in Gyllene Tider. Syd says Per and MP asked him. He played the drums and Janne Carlsson was the bassist. Then Anders became the bassist and Göran joined them. Then there was the Farfisa. Micke says there were many coincidences in their history or they weren’t coincidences at all.

Christian is curious how it was to break through when they were so young. Syd says such things he can’t remember much. They were 18-19 years old and suddenly people started screaming after them. They called his mom’s hairdresser salon or were lying in the ditch in front of it waiting for Micke to come home. People stole washed clothes from Per’s garden. Such things happened. They all lived with their parents at the time. They were the non-smoker generation, however, Göran and MP smoked. But they advertised jeans and soft drink. They were who they were and he thinks that was their key to success. If you watch Parkliv, you can see what outfit they had. Nothing special. Christian asks when they met other artists who they maybe thought were cooler, maybe Europe, what Micke thinks they thought about Gyllene Tider. Doesn’t he think they thought they were frumpish? Micke thinks they rather thought about their platinum albums. Haha.

Regarding the recordings in France, Micke says it was much fun. They decided that it would be their last album. It was Micke’s idea. The others thought it was a good idea when he told them why he thought so. They had a unique career and all of them 5 are still there. They decided to record the album in a totally different way at a different place than ever before. If they travelled only to Stockholm, it wouldn’t have been the same. They had to go further and be in that Gyllene Tider vibe. Christoffer Lundquist was there with them. They didn’t listen to the demos, they decided just to play and see what happens. Per did the demos with MP, so he knew them, but not the others. They had a big space where the studio was, it was very nice. It was just them and 2 French technicians. There were cooks who prepared meals for them, so they could just concentrate on their work. They created the songs from scratch and it was a very creative process. The surroundings were magical. Micke says he is a lonely guy, so they weren’t hanging out together after work. He likes to contemplate and look at things. There was a gym, they could go out in the garden, so they didn’t have to be together all the time. They all loved it and they loved the result of their work as well. It became a very good album. What they created during their career they could do it only together, them 5. And to know that what they did meant a lot for people and also that they did something good in their lives is great. When they were 20 they just wanted to be pop idols, but 40 years later they still had fun making music together.

Christian asks if they sat down to discuss the problems they had before. Micke says not really. You can only sort things out if you are interested in it and it has to come from both sides. The problem stays there until you solve it. Sometimes it would just be about opening that door and talk about it, but sometimes it’s hard to open the door.

Christian asks Micke about money. Micke says it doesn’t mean much to him. It’s important until the point he can live his own life. It was important for him to raise his kids and live where he wanted to live.

Micke knows a lot of people spend a lot of money to see them on tour and it feels nice that they can give back something via their music. On the last tour they invited a group of policemen, firefighters and ambulance, as well as defense veterans to thank for their service. Anders Thornberg was also there. He is the National Police Commissioner and is also from Halmstad. He is the brother of Per Thornberg, great saxophonist. Many don’t know that Anders is also a great musician, he plays the drums. They shared their drumset in the 70’s when they played at the same rehearsal studio. Micke says at one concert Anders was at the mixing board and Micke started playing the wrong song at some point. Shit happens. There were 10 thousand people, he said they start again. It was fun. He says he later explained the rason was that he was nervous because of Anders Thornberg being there. [Haha. That happened in Eskilstuna. /PP] He says he also managed to get tickets for fans from South America. They flew in from South America, but they couldn’t get tickets, so of course he sorted it out.

Christian asks about the last song on the last concert, how it felt. Micke says it happened in Halmstad and it was very special. The song was När alla vännerna gått hem and when he came to the front of stage he saw there were many people holding up a TACK sign. He is still touched by that. It was nice to close it all at home. A lot of people came who had been following them for more than 30 years and also people from several parts of the world to see them. He cried during the last song and you could see that all the others were so touched too.

Micke is contemplating what if they hadn’t told it was the last one, how would it have been. What would have happened then. He thinks it wouldn’t have been the same. Earlier they never said it was the last tour. They came back several times. They are still good at what they are doing. He says it’s different when he performs the songs separately from the band or when Per performs them on his solo tours. It’s never the same as when they 5 play together.

Micke says he likes meeting people. He likes to perform for smaller crowds and see people’s happy faces and he also likes to stand there at Ullevi. He mentions he took a selfie at Ullevi with 55 thousand people in 2019. That was cool.

Christian thanks Micke for the conversation and Micke says it’s his pleasure and he is thankful he could be on the podcast.

Per Gessle podcast interview on Hemma hos Strage

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On 24th December a new podcast interview with Per Gessle was published by Hemma hos Strage. Fredrik Strage is a Swedish journalist and author who writes about pop culture.

Per starts with introducing himself and wishing merry Christmas to all who are listening. He says he is sitting in beautiful Kungsholmen, Stockholm together with Fredrik. Fredrik welcomes Mr. G and asks him to imagine he celebrates Christmas there and asks him what he would wish for as a Christmas present. Per says if it has to be a gadget then he thinks it would be a new iPhone, because he skipped some generations of iPhones, so he thinks he would need an iPhone 12. Fredrik says he hopes Santa brings vaccine for Christmas. Per agrees. Fredrik also mentions a present he would like to have and it’s Anton Corbijn’s new Depeche Mode photo book. Fredrik tells it costs 700 bucks and is wondering if Per gets it gratis. Mr. G smiles and says it can happen. He tells it’s published by Taschen and they have so many fantastic books. Per has a big David Hockney book at home, published by them. Fredrik tells DM fans are quite upset because of the high price of the book. Mr. G says there will surely be a cheaper version of it.

The guys start talking about It Must Have Been Love that it started out as a Christmas song written for Germany. Per tells when they released their debut album, Pearls of Passion they were quite disappointed that EMI Germany didn’t do anything with that. Nothing happened. Then some boss there suggested they should release a Christmas song, because it might be easier to get airplay on German radio with that. Per thought it was a cool idea, so he wrote It Must Have Been Love. They recorded it and released it as a single in Sweden actually the same day as Triad released Tänd ett ljus under the same record label. IMHBL became a big hit, a platinum single in Sweden, but Germany didn’t want to release it, they didn’t like the song. So it felt it was all in vain. Marie then released a solo album and Per wrote songs for a new Roxette album that became Look Sharp! Fredrik points out that when Per wrote IMHBL he was thinking about Christmas. Mr. G says in the original text you can hear „it’s a hard Christmas day, I dream away” and later Christmas day was changed to winter’s day. He says he doesn’t want to go into details too much, but when they were big in the US there was a lunch in Los Angeles where Marie and him were sitting with EMI. The A&R guy told he bought the rights to a movie then called 3000, starring Richard Gere and a new actress, Julia Roberts. It was planned to be a low-budget film. So they bought the soundtrack rights and David Bowie, Natalie Cole were in. They thought Roxette could also be in, they should just write a song. Per said they had no time for that, they were travelling all the time, but he thought they had this Christmas song, he could rewrite the text and update the production. Some weeks later when they were back in Sweden, Marie sang certain parts of the song again, they made a new intro and it was mixed in the US by Humberto Gatica who was a hip mixing engineer at the time. The title of the movie was changed to Pretty Woman. IMHBL became a big hit and the movie even bigger.

Fredrik asks Per how his 2020 was. Mr. G says it was an OK year for him in a way. It’s been very calm and creative, but at the same time it’s tough to live in this world of pandemic. All travellings are cancelled, the music industry is put down. Not the production, but the live stuff. There are a lot of musicians and technicians who can’t do anything now. And it’s not only the music business, but also theatres and so on. It’s terrible.

Fredrik asks which was the last concert Per gave or attended. Per says he can’t remember. It must have been autumn or winter last year when he attended a concert and they had the big Gyllene Tider tour last summer.

Fredrik tells Per just released Gammal kärlek rostar aldrig where he revisits his old songs. According to Fredrik, Nypon och ljung sounds like a bit happier Emmylou Harris. There are some country vibes in it. Per says there are a lot of country vibes in his music and one can easily create it by singing in a certain key or e.g. using lap steel. When they recorded Nypon och ljung he actually thought of J.J. Cale and his drum box. It’s that playful pop he likes a lot. The idea behind GKRA was that Mr. G plays as many instruments himself as possible. At the beginning he thought he would play all of them, but then he realized he is not a good bassist or drummer. Fredrik says his favourite on the album is Viskar that was released on Per’s second solo album. That record wasn’t a big success back then in 1985. Fredrik asks if that was a difficult period for Per during the mid 80’s. Mr. G tells 1984-85 were tough years for him. His idea was to keep Gyllene Tider as his pop project and paralelly start a singer songwriter career as a solo artist. But suddenly, GT was over so he only had this singer songwriter thing that felt uncomfortable, because he wasn’t Ulf Lundell or Magnus Lindberg or others of that quality at the same record label. So he felt a bit lost. He then wrote songs in Swedish for a third solo album that had never been recorded because he didn’t have a recording contract. That later became Roxette’s debut album, for which Per translated the lyrics into English. There was only one song that wasn’t translated into English, Kom ut till stranden. That is now the closing song on GKRA. Back then it was too long and too difficult for Per to translate.

Fredrik mentions that on the album cover of Scener Per looks quite different to the colorful Per in Roxette. He looks more like a singer songwriter on that picture, it could be Leonard Cohen even. Per says there was a new focus, to go away from that Gyllene Tider look, from the pop star look. But that was no problem, because a big part of him is coming from that music style. He loves Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell. They have inspired him as much as T. Rex or the Ramones. Talking about Leonard Cohen, Mr. G picks Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye to be played in the podcast. He chose it because he learned fingerpicking on his nylon-string guitar thanks to this song. Per also sings the first line of Leonard Cohen’s Sisters of Mercy and tells when they are talking about Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell, these fantastically talented songwriters, they always get their credits as fantastic lyricists, but one shouldn’t forget that they are fantastic composers as well. They wrote fantastic music. Both their poetry and melodies are amazing. Leonard Cohen’s first 3-4-5 albums are full of fab songs. Then came Hallelujah, which is a quite hopeless song in his version, but it’s a fantastic song in many other versions. Bob Dylan wrote so many hits for other bands. Fredrik says when you listen to Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues by Bob Dylan, it’s not the nicest, but when you listen to it covered by Nina Simone, it is. Per adds Manfred Mann’s cover of Just Like a Woman, Don’t Think Twice (It’s Alright) by The Turtles and Mr. Tambourine Man by The Byrds.

Fredrik says singer songwriters often write depressive texts, but Per is not associated with that. However, there is a song, Billy. Fredrik asks Per if he tried to write more social realistic texts back then. Mr. G says he doesn’t think so. He wrote many texts like that for Gyllene Tider’s first album, but Billy came out already before that on a self-financed EP. När alla vännerna gått hem was also on it, written in 1977 when PG was 18 years old. He was also inspired by Patti Smith. Per says a good way to learn how to write songs was to translate the lyrics from English to Swedish. That’s what he did. He remembers translating Cygnet Committee by David Bowie, Helen of Troy by John Cale, Ain’t It Strange by Patti Smith. He also started writing those heavier type of texts and contemplating teenage lyrics. Per has a whole lot of texts in his archives that result in a blushing face when you read them now, but back then they were important. Fredrik asks if Billy was a real person. Per says not directly, but there was a Billy type in the gang. Fredrik tells: „who doesn’t live anymore”. Per says he doesn’t know. He disappeared.

Fredrik talks about Let Your Heart Dance With Me, the first postum Roxette song and the video to it that includes old footage. Per says they did 3 of such videos to 3 songs on Bag of Trix. All of them are home videos and it’s fantastic, but at the same time it’s also sad watching them. All who knew Marie and are close to them were touched by these videos, also the fans. Fredrik says there are a lot of videos from South America in there and he is curious why Roxette became so big there. Per says it’s owing to different things. In Argentina you didn’t have to be English or American, there was no difference for them between Madonna or Roxette in that sense. In Sweden everyone was convinced back then that pop and rock music must come from England or the US. Another thing is that they had a lot of airplays on radio, but when they went there to perform live it was the Gulf War era. All bands and artists (The Rolling Stones, Madonna, Guns N’ Roses, Michael Jackson) cancelled their shows in South America, because there was no money. Roxette were told they could go there, but they wouldn’t earn money on that. Marie and Per, coming from a small town in Sweden thought why to earn money on that when it’s fantastic itself to be playing in South America. The whole band and crew thought the same, so they went there. They were to play 5-6000 seaters, but when they started selling tickets, the venues were changed to football stadiums in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Chile. In Chile it was very turbulent politically and Roxette became some sorts of students’ band, a youth band and they still are, based on the communication coming from Chile.

Fredrik mentions that Wham! was the first band to play in China in 1985, then Roxette played there 10 years later. Fredrik asks if they had to change anything in the lyrics. Per says he had to rewrite the text of Sleeping In My Car in the chorus. You can’t make love in the car. Fredrik asks what it was changed to. Per can’t remember, maybe „make up”, „make out” or something like that. It was Marie who was singing, but she was singing the original text. But on paper it was rewritten and that was kind of approved by the authorities.

Another song Per picked for the podcast is I’m A Believer by The Monkees. It was one of Mr. G’s first singles and it’s incredibly good music. It was written by Neil Diamond who is a fantastic pop composer. The organ in it reminds Fredrik of Gyllene Tider. Per says Göran’s Farfisa organ became their trademark. It’s something they came up with in the studio. There was this pop tradition of Elvis Costello and the Attractions, they used a Vox organ. Göran had his Farfisa and the guys in GT thought it sounded cooler than others, because everyone else in Sweden was using Hammond organ.

Fredrik asks Per about synths, if they wanted Gyllene Tider to sound more like British bands during those times. Per says he liked synths and synth pop, but he thought GT wasn’t ready. He thinks that GT didn’t sound like how he wanted them to sound before Det är över nu. Then it was Michael Ilbert who produced them and GT started to sound like Per imagined they should sound. Fredrik asks if that was the conflict why Anders Herrlin decided to leave the band, because he liked new wave pop and synth very much. Per says there were other things that led to him leaving. Anders wanted to move to Stockholm. He had a girlfriend and they wanted to move on, while the others wanted to stay in Halmstad. Anders also thought that Per stayed with power pop, two guitars and the organ sound and that didn’t lead to anywhere. He wanted to try new ways. Which is good, Per thinks. In the end it was good for all of them. Anders became so good at synth and programming that they could use his talent later in Roxette, for example. He was programming Look Sharp! Fredrik mentions the programming on It Must Have Been Love was done on a Synclavier that must have cost a fortune. Per laughs and tells there was a studio in Stockholm, Audio Sweden that had a Synclavier, so they could use that for IMHBL.

When they recorded the first Roxette album, Per wanted to make a synth-based album, but Clarence Öfwerman, their producer didn’t want it. He thought that they were a damn good band, so they recorded with real musicians, Jonas Isacsson, Tommy Cassemar, Pelle Alsing. And that wasn’t a bad idea. Per was very satisfied and it was also awesome to work with Marie’s voice. But when they were to record their second album, Clarence thought they should go on with the same band, while Per didn’t think so. They actually recorded 3-4 songs with the band, but they didn’t use those. Then came Anders and they got a fresh sound.

Fredrik asks how many unreleased Roxette songs there are still after Bag of Trix. Per says he has much material, but it depends what Fredrik means by unreleased. On Bag of Trix there are a lot of demos. Earlier Per released many of his demos, but not the ones where Marie was singing, but now they are out too. There is for example a sketch of how Listen To Your Heart’s verse was written, 45 seconds of it or so, but there are no ready-made songs. Fredrik tells that on Bag of Trix one can hear how they „talked” before the band started playing and asks how it felt to hear these recordings. Mr. G says it was fun. He remembers some silly jokes or a foolish counting in.

Fredrik is curious how many boxes and deluxe editions Per bought himself. Mr. G says he got hold of Tom Petty’s latest stuff. He has a record player and he buys a lot of second-hand LPs. He buys physical copies for the sake of the album sleeves. Nowadays, when he listens to Kraftwerk for example, he has the album sleeve in his hands, but he listens to it on Spotify in his office. He reads the lyrics and looks at the pictures, like before. The boxes he also buys physically because there is a lot of information inside. In the Tom Petty box there are a lot of comments related to each song, Joni Mitchell released a CD box, Love Has Many Faces that includes a lot of her writing, which she doesn’t do often.

Tom Petty is one of Per’s absolute favourites, so he picked a song from him, Something Big, which is an awesome song from his Hard Promises album. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers was the band that Gyllene Tider always wanted to be, but never really managed. Per laughs. He says there was something in Tom Petty and his band that all five of them liked.

Per met Tom Petty in 1989 in Amsterdam where Tom shouted from a balcony: „Hey man, I love your record!” The Look was No. 1 then. Marie and Per were doing a TV interview and when they looked up to see who was shouting it was fantastic to see that it was Tom Petty. Back in time Per met a journalist in Los Angeles who knew Mr. G was a big Tom Petty fan. After Tom Petty passed away, PG got mail from that Los Angeles guy and he told he interviewed Tom Petty in 1992. He went through his papers from that interview and found a signed Tom Petty photo where he wrote: „Dear Per, Hope to see you soon. Good luck with everything! Tom Petty” Now it’s framed in Per’s office.

Fredrik tells he heard another story about Tom Petty that once he appeared at a grill party with a Gyllene Tider record under his arm. Per says it was a Swedish girl who was there at the same party, but he doesn’t know if the story is true. However, he saw a YouTube clip in which Tom was asked which is the strangest cover he heard of a song of his. Tom says it’s a Swedish band he can’t pronounce the name of, their cover of I Need To Know. Vill ha ett svar by Gyllene Tider. Per thinks it’s fun.

Fredrik starts talking about Prince and his song U Got The Look from his album, Sign o’ the Times. He says he heard Prince wanted to sue Roxette because The Look was similar to his song, at least the expression in it. Per says he never heard of that. He knows which song Fredrik talks about, but they are not similar except for „the look” being in the title.

Fredrik also tells he met Johan Kinde some weeks ago and he told an old story. He was dating Marie Fredriksson in the early 90’s and he was hanging out with Roxette on tours. He said it felt a bit like being a giggolo, being able to meet Marie only in the suites. They laugh. So Johan told a story that once they were in London and Orup popped up and they were discussing Minneapolis funk and Prince and James Brown. Per was tired of the discussion and said the only black record he had was Kylie Minogue’s first album. Per laughs and says that was a joke. PG says he likes R&B of the 60’s. He bought Al Green’s music when he was young. Sha-La-La and stuff like that. But it was always silent during such discussions, Per laughs again. Fredrik says it must have been difficult for Orup to decide whether Per was so advanced that he knew Kylie had a black inspiration on her album. PG says he was an early Donald Trump. A manipulator. Haha.

Fredrik asks Per if he ever met Prince. PG says he didn’t, but he was at Paisley Park Studio and he met Prince’s assitant. Marie was there too so it must have been during Roxette times. The assitant showed them Prince’s house and Per remembers it had a removable glass roof, a giant bed, a giant white cage with a giant white bird and a dance hall with mirror on the walls. Fredrik asked if it inspired Per when he had his house built in Halmstad. Mr. G says he tried to skip purple color.

Fredrik mentions that Little Jinder once there was on his podcast and she picked Paint from Roxette, because she liked the sound of it, the lightness of the 80’s in it. That inspired the sound of one of her singles. She was tired of modern productions. Per says the whole Look Sharp! album is produced that way. Sleeping Single, Dance Away, there are almost no instruments on those songs. There are guitar phrases and synth-based grooves and effects, a little ear candy. And everything is based on Marie’s voice. Paint is the song that sounds the best on the album.

Regarding sound image, Per thinks there is a band that never sounded bad. They are The Kinks. The first album he bought was The Kink Kontroversy. The next song Per picked is Till the End of the Day which he always liked a lot. The guitar solo is played by Dave Davies and Per has been trying to play it since he was 6, but never managed.

Fredrik says he read Sven Lindström’s book about Roxette and found it interesting. Regarding the 4 US No.1 hits he says no other Swedish artist could achieve this success, but Roxette was neglected by EMI in the US despite this fact. Per tells they were never on speaking terms with EMI in the US. First they refused Roxette, but when Atlantic Records wanted to sign them, EMI popped up again and since they were at EMI in Sweden, they ended up at EMI in the US as well. When Joyride album was released in 1991, the first single, Joyride became No. 1, the second single, Fading Like A Flower became No. 2. The big song that should have kicked in before their US tour was Spending My Time. It was climbing on the Billboard charts like a rocket, but EMI was sold to SBK in the meantime, a record label formed by Martin Bandier and Charles Koppelman. 120 people got fired at EMI US overnight and the next day the SBK staff took over and since then nothing happened with Roxette in the US. Roxette felt it wouldn’t work in the US, so they focused on all other markets instead. Australia, Europe, South Africa, South America.

Fredrik mentions that in Sven’s book he read that in 2000 there was a gig in Omaha, USA for 20 people. At the same time, US radio still played Roxette songs a lot. So there was a huge difference between live and radio attention. Per tells in 2000 they released a compilation album under Edel Records. Then they did a little unplugged tour in the US. They played e.g. Virgin Megastore in New York. It wasn’t really a concert. They played like 4 songs to support radio stations would play their new single. Wish I Could Fly maybe.

Fredrik asks Per about his best memories of the last Roxette tours. Per says Marie got ill in autumn 2002 and it wasn’t in the plans that she would do a comeback. Per did a solo tour in 2009 with his Party Crasher album and when they played Amsterdam, Marie and her husband Micke came to see him. Per then asked Marie if she would like to come up on stage and they would play an old Roxette song. It was a club with maybe 1000 in the audience. Marie didn’t want to, she said she didn’t perform for so many years, but in the end Per talked her into it and said they could perform Listen To Your Heart or It Must Have Been Love. So Marie decided to come up on stage for the encore and Per presented her. The reactions were totally amazing. He could see all the fans were crying and he still gets goosebumps when he is talking about it. On stage they all got emotional as well. The response Marie got was incomparable. Per thinks it was Listen To Your Heart they played. [It was IMHBL.] Mr. G says Marie was thrilled after this experience of course and some weeks later she called Per if he could write songs for a new Roxette album. Per was of course happy about it and the album later became Charm School. Marie wanted to perform more and they discussed how to go on. The doctors advised her maybe it’s not the best idea to go on tour, but she wanted to. They got an offer for Night of the Proms where they played some songs with the support of a smyphonic orchestra. They were the headliners and they thought it wasn’t a bad idea to go on that tour, to start with that for Marie. It was superb for all of them in the band.

Fredrik tells he knows it was hard for Marie to learn new lyrics. He is curious how it worked in the studio when they were recording. Per says it became worse year by year. When they recorded the last album it was very difficult. She could sing one verse at a time, it was hard for Marie to remember things. But the old lyrics were much easier for her. It happened that she missed a line, but that happens to Per too. The old lyrics for her were like a prayer, but it was totally different with new stuff. Fredrik asks if she could use prompter on stage. Per says she couldn’t, because she lost the sight in one eye, so she wouldn’t be able to read. They tried with big letters and so, but it didn’t help her at all. On the last tour they didn’t play any new songs, only the old ones.

Fredrik says he saw a YouTube clip where Marie came up on stage and then fell over, but stood up like nothing happened, hi fived Per and she went ahead performing. What an incredible fighter she was. Per confirms she was a fighter all the time. It took some time for her to decide to sit during the concerts, because she had problems with her leg. It must have been something with the nerves, because sometimes that feeling or pain suddenly disappeared. But after she decided to sit, it became easier for her. It was of course terribly hard for her and for everyone around her, but she was so grateful that she could come back and meet all her fans, the wonderful Roxette people out there and she wanted to perform. It overshadowed all the difficulties.

Fredrik asks Per when they met for the last time. Mr. G says it was about a month before she passed away. Fredrik asks if they worked on something, but Per says no, they were just talking.

Fredrik tells he knows Per lost many in his surroundings over the past 10 years. His mother, sister and brother. He is curious if Per is a type of person who stays positive all the time and how he gets through the dark times. Mr. G says he is quite a positive person himself, but it’s difficult to absorb it when people close to you disappear. Marie was ill for 17 years and there is only one in twenty who survives this illness for 5 years, but she survived for 17 years. She was a fighter. She wanted to tour, so they toured for more than 5 years. It’s inconceivable if you think about it. It’s against all odds. Per’s mother was 88 and then you know the end would come, but it was different with his brother. He wasn’t old, but he had lung cancer. His sister also had cancer, she was a little older. You think that you are prepared for that, but you can’t really get prepared for that. There are questions all the time how he feels regarding Marie. He feels emptiness. He can’t call her up, they can’t chat, they can’t discuss ideas and thoughts. With Marie they kind of lived together for like 30 years and they experienced so much together that only them 2 experienced. Per can’t talk about this or that with his record company or other musicians, because it was their baby, Marie’s and Per’s baby.

Fredrik tells there are 2 songs on Gammal kärlek rostar aldrig: Mamma and Pappa and he is curious if this wonderful image in the lyrics of Pappa – Han la en sönderriven lapp i min hand / ”Vind och vatten, himmel och eld / Var snäll mot allt, var snäll mot dig själv” – is self-experienced. Per says what he writes in his lyrics did not necessarily happen, but he always tries to make them interesting. Regarding the image Fredrik asks about he says he likes this image, when someone leaves a note and „be kind to yourself” is written on it. He likes it because it’s so easy to blame ourselves all the time for many things in different situations and everyone would feel better if we wouldn’t blame ourselves in some situations. It’s a reflection he thought is very nice. When he wrote it he could identify with it very much, but he never got such a note from his father. Fredrik tells Per’s father died very early, in 1978. He was the fastest plumber in the West. Per tells his father’s father was a plumber as well. Per says he spent the 60’s in Frösakull and Tylösand with his father and grandfather, because that was their work territory. They had a little shed and Per was there often. Fredrik is curious if Per learned how the fix a leak. Per laughs and says no, he is lousy when it comes to such things, but he wishes he would be a handy man.

Per picks another song and tells one of the artists who meant the most to him is John Holm. He made 2 of the best Swedish albums: Sordin and Lagt kort ligger. Per could have chosen any of the songs on those two albums, but he picked Sommaräng, which he thinks is a masterpiece. The album is produced by Anders Burman and there is a lovely sound on it. It’s warm and there is a lovely burning fire. It’s like the early Pugh Rogefeldt albums, there is a wonderful analog feeling in those. Fredrik tells he often thinks of John Holm when he passes Sabbatsberg. John has a song called Ett enskilt rum på Sabbatsberg, the closing track on his first album. Per says that song also affected him very much when he grew up. He loved John Holm’s voice and his expression. Per started singing in Gyllene Tider because no one else wanted to. There were a lot of people commenting on his voice, because he has a special voice and a lot of people compared it to John Holm’s. Per never thought of himself as a great singer. He always thought John Holm’s special voice is magical. Over the years, Per’s voice also became some kind of trademark. He says he got self-confidence from John Holm’s voice when he started singing. Fredrik says John Holm still has a bright voice. It’s not as deep as Leonard Cohen or Ulf Lundell. Per says he himself can sing in different keys. In fast songs he picks the keys that are the most suitable for him, but he has a wide range. He can sing quite low. Not like Leonard Cohen though. Per says he always liked Cohen’s voice because it’s easy to add a female voice to his one or two octaves higher. Mr. G used it also with his voice during the past 20 years with Helena Josefsson, but even in Roxette they used it as well. E.g. in IMHBL it resulted in a very effective sound.

Fredrik tells a British author and well-known feminist, Caitlin Moran has the motto: ”Don’t bore us, get to the chorus.” Fredrik says that is how someone should live, as it is in the title of one of Roxette’s compilation albums. American manager Herbie Herbert told this to Roxette. Per can’t remember in what context Herbie told this to them. He thinks maybe he played a song to them and it had a too long intro. He was the manager of Journey and he was Roxette’s manager in the US for some years. Fredrik says Per has quite a strong pop focus and the chorus is very important there. Mr. G says he is listening to different types of music and he likes different types of music, but when he is writing, his home ground is melodic pop music. It’s about choruses, gimmicks, something that makes you interested.

Per says a good example of effective pop music is Ever Fallen in Love by Buzzcocks. He always loved it. It was released when they started with Gyllene Tider and they played it all the time, together with New Rose by The Damned.

Fredrik asks how important punk was for Per. Mr. G says it was very important. Punk came in several stages. When he was 17 in 1976 it was the Ramones, then there was Horses by Patti Smith, then came British punk, the Sex Pistols. That was what reached them in Sweden if one wasn’t a Television or a Talking Heads nerd. The most important what punk gave Per besides very good pop songs is that it was OK to play even if you weren’t especially good at playing. It suited Mr. G very well, because he wasn’t especially good. Gyllene Tider was a quite good band except for Göran’s and Per’s playing when they started. So the punk gave them some sort of justification. Those were exciting times. The whole decade in the 70’s was filled with so many fluctuations in music styles. There was commercial music and glam rock, disco, black music, progressive music, hard rock, you can think of Kraftwerk or David Bowie or Berlin. Everything happened in the same decade and there came punk, a lovely hybrid of noise and ingenious choruses. Buzzcocks is a good example for that. Fredrik says Gyllene Tider sounded more like Buzzcocks than Sex Pistols. Fredrik thinks GT’s most punkish song is Rembrandt, and he finds it fun that Per used Rembrandt for the most punkish song, while Bruce Springsteen used Rembrandt in his least punkish song, I Ain’t Got You (I got a house full of Rembrandt and priceless art / And all the little girls they want to tear me apart). Per tells he knows he listened a lot to Jonathan Richman and his song Pablo Picasso (by the Modern Lovers) was the inspiration to use Rembrandt. He can’t remember exactly, but it was kind of an insider joke to write something in Swedish about Rembrandt. Fredrik asks Per if he has any Rembrandt in his house. Mr. G says unfortunately, he doesn’t have any. He says he should call Bruce and laughs. But Fredrik tells Per has Warhol in his collection. Mr. G says no large originals, but some Polaroids and graphics.

Fredrik tells one of the first songs he heard from Per was Ska vi älska, så ska vi älska till Buddy Holly. He was 7 years old then and he remembers he thought Per was singing wrong, because he couldn’t get what „till” meant in the text [to make love to Buddy Holly]. Fredrik is now wondering why would someone make love to Buddy Holly, because it’s not really erotic music. Per says he doesn’t know. Sometimes he is wondering why the lyrics became how they are. On the first album there are songs like (Dansar inte lika bra som) Sjömän, Revolver upp about Tony and there was Billy. These are about some kind of persons. Unlike others he knew back then, Per always loved lyrics. He loved David Bowie’s lyrics. Bowie cut up the text with William Burroughs’ technique and rearranged the words to create a new text. Then it became e.g. Watch That Man. Per says he never tested this method himself, but you can test it in a simple way when you just write down things you come up with and then some days later you get back to that list and try to create a story based on those words. It’s a bit like Sjömän and Buddy Holly. Buddy Holly has a different logic than Sjömän though. It’s also a bit like how he tried to write The Look. The first verse is a text to help to remember the rhythm. Per tells „never was a quitter” comes from Nick Lowe’s Born Fighter. Later he read the text and listened to the rhythm and thought the text was not that bad. It doesn’t mean anything, but it’s like I Am The Walrus. So he continued this way of writing for the rest of the lyrics and made it a bit simpler in the choruses. Reading the second verse, Fredrik asks if a person has a T-bone at all. The guys are laughing and Per says he doesn’t know. He says he remembers that in the US he was told no American or English person could have written these lyrics and that’s why it was fun for them. Mr. G tells you don’t always need to be completely logical in the text, it’s pop music for God’s sake.

Per tells you can’t pick songs without picking a song from The Beatles. He chose a song that probably started all his pop romance, his love for pop music. It was the back side of the Yesterday single, Dizzy Miss Lizzy with the world’s best guitar riff and John Lennon in top shape at the mic in 1965. Per says the 60’s sound itself seems to be so far away, more than the 70’s sound. Strong tambourines and many crash cymbals, it’s pretty hard to listen to. Nowadays we are listening to music on computers or mobiles and it’s not really wise. CD quality or vinyl quality is not the same as listening to music on a fucking iPhone. Fredrik says indeed, nowadays you just hold up your smartphone and tell each other to listen to this or that song, it’s very good. Fredrik tells Motown Records, founded by Berry Gordy had a special sound. Their singles sounded effective on radio too. Per says if you are listening to good old mono mixes, they sound much better than old stereo mixes.

Fredrik tells he plays a scary song to Per, from a German industrial music group, Einstürzende Neubauten. Fredrik was listening to them a lot in the 90’s. Their singer is Blixa Bargeld who is most known for being guitarist in Nick Cave’s band. He is exactly the same age as Per, he was born the same day in the same year. Per says it’s fantastic. Fredrik says he always thought they are long-lost twins. Per laughs. Mr. G says he has never heard this music before, but it reminds him of David Bowie. It sounded like a Bowie-riff. He thinks it’s good.

Fredrik asks Per what his plans are after Christmas. Mr. G says he is recording a new English album. He had the idea to make an uptempo pop record he hasn’t done since long. He was a bit away from this way of making music. He wants to make it a bit synth-based. It became a quite lovely trip, but it’s not ready yet. Mr. G says it’s fun to make this album.

Fredrik tells the most successful Swedish pop composers besides Per are Benny and Björn from Abba and Max Martin. All 3 of them made musicals based on their music. He is curious if Per has ever thought about it, a big Roxette or Gessle musical. Per says absolutely and he thinks it will happen. There were some ideas, but most of them were rejected by Per mainly because they didn’t keep the standards in the script or the story. But he thinks it’s a natural way to go and both his solo music, but especially Roxette’s music would work very well in a musical. These are big songs that fit a musical quite well, from Crash! Boom! Bang! to Listen To Your Heart. It’s a long way to make a good musical on a proper level and in the right way.

Fredrik tells Per also mentioned lately that he wouldn’t mind having a Gyllene Tider comeback, which is quite soon after last year’s farewell tour. Per laughs and says everyone was asking if it’s really over and he said yes, they decided it was their last tour last year, but he personally thinks that it’s a pity that GT is over, because he thinks it’s a fantastically good pop band. When they decided to do the last tour, it was Micke Syd’s idea to close this chapter until all 5 of them are in good shape and are healthy. If it didn’t happen, normally they would come back in the next 6 or 7 years and then they are 6-7 years older and who knows if they are still alive then. So it’s better to end it and all of them thought it was a correct and sympathetic idea. But Per also knows when they did their last gig they looked at each other and thought „is it really the end?” Fredrik tells he remembers Per told earlier they decided to do less shows with Roxette, because they were not 50 anymore. Per laughs and says it’s a bit like that, but mainly during this time of pandemic, you miss playing in front of an audience and also playing together with the band you miss a lot. He tried to do different things, e.g. YouTube clips where he is playing live and sings, because it’s fun. When you are a touring artist, you feel like home on tour and you miss it.

Per tells David Bowie was an artist who inspired him very much and was always high up on his list. Bowie’s catalogue is awesome from 1969 to 1983. Until his Let’s Dance album – which Per thinks is underrated and that was the first record Fredrik bought. Per thinks almost no other artist had such a long period of making fantastic music. Per picked Drive-In Saturday, a forgotten song from the Aladdin Sane album. It was a single and Per likes how good Bowie was at the pastiche of the 50’s and 60’s. Absolute Beginners is also a good example of that.

Fredrik is curious if Per has ever met Bowie. Mr. G says he met him in a hurry on his Serious Moonlight tour in Lyon, France and only said hi. Per was there with EMA Telstar (Live Nation Sweden today). He says it was lovely to meet Bowie, but he was super shy. And there were no smartphones those days, so there is no picture of that meeting. Haha. Bowie was quite blonde and it was a fantastic concert.

Fredrik tells he heard it in a podcast that Nitzer Ebb, a British industrial band was asked to join Bowie on his 1987 tour as a support act, but they rejected. Per reacts: „What???” Fredrik says it sounds insane now, but how lead vocalist of Nitzer Ebb, Douglas McCarthy says, people tend to forget how low status Bowie had in the second half of the 80’s. He wasn’t appreciated anywhere. Per says that’s right. Mr. G says he actually stopped at Let’s Dance. Anything he released after that, Per was not interested in. However, Mr. G thinks Bowie made one of his best ever songs, Time Will Crawl well after Let’s Dance. The guys can’t remember whether it was on his Outside or Never Let Me Down or Heathen album. [Actually, Fredrik was right, it was released on Never Let Me Down (1987).] From the modern times, that’s the most played song at Per’s. It’s awesome. The end of the 80’s was a strange time in music anyway, he says. He laughs and says maybe that’s why they managed to break through with Roxette then.

Fredrik tells there is a fun story from the Legends of Rock tour where Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis performed together. They played in Malmö at the end of the 90’s and Little Richard went to the reception at the hotel and asked for the biggest suite, but he was told they have a nice suite, but the biggest was already occupied by Bowie. Little Richard asked the receptionist to show him to the suite and he told Bowie: „David, get the hell out of my room!” And Bowie moved out. Per laughs and says nice to hear it. One must love such stories.

While Nypon och ljung starts playing, Per says it was a fun conversation and wishes merry Christmas and a fantastic 2021 to all who listened. Fredrik wishes merry Christmas to Per and thanks him for all the music and he hopes Mr. G will also have a brilliant 2021 without pandemic and many concerts.

Picture from Hemma hos Strage

Per Gessle podcast interview by Rhino

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Rhino is the catalogue development and marketing division of Warner Music Group, founded in 1978. They started a podcast series in 2018 and hosts Rich Mahan and John Hughes now welcomed Per Gessle in it. Listen to it HERE!

Per talks about the times Marie and he met, the story of their break-through in the US with The Look and how things changed after that. The guys also talk about Listen To Your Heart, touring, playing large venues, as well as Per’s Los Angeles adventures with Anders Herrlin in 1981. It Must Have Been Love is also popping up of course, as well as the recordings of Good Karma. Rich, John and Per discuss Roxette being a power pop band and Mr. G talks about Bag of Trix too, where he shares details about Let Your Heart Dance With Me and Piece of Cake. The guys talk about EMI and several Roxette albums, as well as Per’s other music projects like Mono Mind or his Swedish band, Gyllene Tider. Per talks a bit about his latest Swedish solo album too, as well as songwriting. The podcast ends with talking about Marie, how she made Per’s songs much better and how she made the songs her own.

 

Stills are from the podcast episode teaser.