Per Gessle was a guest on Söndagsintervjun on Swedish Radio P1. Listen to it HERE!
Until the recordings could start for the show, program leader Martin Wicklin thought to continue the small talk with Mr. G. He says it has been very special to listen to Gyllene Tider songs on repeat, the first albums, Gyllene Tider in the ’80s. Per says he avoided listening to those records for many, many years, because he thought he couldn’t listen to them. He thought everything sounded so bad. But recently, because of the GT movie, he went back to these first and second albums. On the third record, Puls, they started getting older and it feels both in the lyrics and stylistically. Martin smiles at the expression „getting older”, because PG was still only 23 then.
Here they start the program with Martin introducing Per Gessle, the king of pop. In Sweden, he has filled stadiums and sports fields for more than four decades both as a solo artist and with Gyllene Tider. With Roxette and Marie Fredriksson, he has sold over a hundred million records worldwide and had more Billboard number one hits in the US than all other Swedish artists combined. The breakthrough that was filmed in the movie Sommartider is in many ways an incredible story. In a short time, Per Gessle, a fairly lonely guy in his own fantasy bubble, became a celebrity.
In this interview, he opens up about the self-confidence that paved the way, but also about when his self-image failed from time to time and about the time with Roxette when he didn’t even want to be seen in pictures.
Martin welcomes Per and mentions all the actualities around him: the film about Gyllene Tider that premiered this summer, the musical about Roxette that premieres in Malmö in September, the upcoming solo album that will be released this fall and a world tour with Roxette.
Per corrects Martin that the Roxette musical is not about Roxette. The script is based on a book called Got You Back, written by Jane Fallon. It has been reworked so that the Roxette songs fit in somehow, but it’s not a story about Roxette as the Gyllene Tider film is a story about Gyllene Tider.
Martin is curious why there is so much happening around Per right now. Mr. G says there is always a lot going on around him. The film and the musical, that it happened in the same year, wasn’t really intended that way, but it turned out like this for various reasons. He thinks it’s fun. He tries to keep up as best as he can.
Martin asks Per how it feels to go on tour with Roxette for the first time since Marie Fredriksson passed away. Per says it feels exciting that he finally decided what he wants to do with the Roxette legacy and the Roxette catalogue. It was not obvious to continue, but there are only two ways to go for him after Marie’s passing. Either you shut down Roxette, or you find some way to manage these songs. He hasn’t really been able to decide what feels right, but as the years have passed, he has felt that the interest in Roxette’s music has continued to increase around the world. Besides that, he has written almost all of Roxette’s music and lyrics himself. When he worked with Lena Philipsson for his upcoming Swedish duet record, he realized that Lena has the capacity that he could imagine bringing into this project. It’s not about starting a new Roxette, or a new band with Lena Philipsson. It’s about going around and playing the Roxette catalogue.
Martin wants to know what the big difference is in doing this with Lena instead of Marie. Per doesn’t know yet, because they haven’t started rehearsing yet. They have tried to play some songs on the piano and sing and it sounds fantastic. Lena is a formidable singer. Per hasn’t had the chance to experience it yet, but he knows that Lena is a very talented artist on stage. So PG thinks she will be able to handle those arenas that they will end up in on tour. How it will turn out, he has no idea, but it feels good. He has known Lena since he was involved in writing her breakthrough song in 1986, Kärleken är evig, so they have a connection. She is great to work with.
Before this interview, Martin has been watching videos of old gigs with Roxette at those big arenas all around the world, with huge audiences. It was hysterical, he thinks. He asks Per to describe the feeling of being on that stage when the intro to The Look starts. Per says those were fantastic years. They had eight years, 1988-1995, which was their prime. For him, all those years are one big blur in a way. He also looks at those YouTube clips sometimes and thinks, shit, he can’t remember anything from this. But he knows it was overwhelming. When he talks to the people who travelled together with them in the band, or from the management, then he is reminded of various things that he forgot. It is a magical journey they have been part of. If iPhone existed at that time, there would be more videos to remember, he laughs. What happened all around is absolutely fantastic. When they played China in the mid ’90s, they were the second band in the world to get permission to play. It is incomparable. To quote his new single, he has to pinch his arm (Nyper mig i armen).
Martin is curious if that experience of being on stage in front of so many cheering people becomes like a drug. Per confirms and thinks it’s strange how you get used to it. Then such thoughts come that „what? is it only 30,000 tonight?” You learn quite quickly how to act. Some things work, other things don’t. Which then means that it will be acting in the end. Then if you come to your senses a little, you can think that it is absolutely fantastic that you were able to go to all these continents, to countries where they don’t even speak English. They have different religions, different politics, different skin colours, different languages, but everyone knows Roxette’s lyrics and songs by heart. It’s quite bizarre. There really isn’t a place where they haven’t been. That makes you a little dizzy. It’s absolutely incredible.
Martin asks Per about Sommartider, the movie about Gyllene Tider’s journey to the breakthrough in the late ’70s. He is curious how it felt to be portrayed in the movie. Per was a little skeptical at first. When the idea came up that the production company wanted to make a film, he imagined that they would make some huge tribute to Gyllene Tider’s long career. He wasn’t too interested in that. But when they told him about the idea that the film would end in 1982, when Sommartider was released, it became a completely different kind of film and then Per got curious. He got curious also because it’s not an easy film to make, because then that means it has to be very typical of the time and you have to find those people who can play them in the band. It could have been a flop, but it turned out to be a fantastically beautiful film and he applauds it as loud as he can. He thinks it has been super successful. Per has seen it six times, but he wants to see it again. Martin asks if it’s like a happy pill. Per confirms it is. He guesses that he and the other guys in the band, as well as those who have been in the inner circle see this film in a different way than other people do. But it’s a happy pill as long as it’s an underdog story. And it’s true. They were the underdogs, as much of an underdog as you can be.
Martin says it captures the energy around Gyllene Tider at that time. He was 11 years old when Sommartider came out and he remembers the GT fever that prevailed in Sweden through his slightly older cousins in northern Sweden who played Gyllene Tider with flaming cheeks. Martin wants to know how Per experienced the fuss at the time. PG says it was completely weird. He comes from a rather isolated existence. He created his own little planet, he was living in his own bubble. He didn’t have many friends. The thing that changed his life was when he was in high school and he met a guy who played in a band, in the same band as MP. MP and Per got super tight and started Gyllene Tider. Those were actually Per’s first friends. Going from that in 1976-77 to being Sweden’s biggest band in 1980 was a big difference, of course. So this whole Gyllene fever, as Martin called it, in 1980-82 was dizzying. After all, Per was 21 when they broke through.
The guys are talking in Halmstad, where it all began, so Martin is curious what this place means to Per. PG loves Halmstad. He has always lived in Halmstad, although he has an apartment in Stockholm too. The more years have passed now after the pandemic, he is in Halmstad more often than before, because he likes the peace there. Then of course they have Hotel Tylösand and he has a studio together with MP in town, in which he works a lot. He enjoys being in Halmstad. Everything is easier in a small town than in a big city, he says.
Martin talks about a scene in the mid ’70s where Per is a young teenager reading English pop magazines and one day he dyes red strands in his long hair and takes a walk through town. Martin is curious if Per remembers that walk. PG says he remembers being very afraid of how people would react to the way he looked and the way he dressed, but at the same time, he was so proud that he dared to take that step. You have to challenge yourself all the time. Sometimes the first attempt doesn’t work, but the second one does, or the third. That’s the way it’s been. You have to dare, you have to fail and you have to lose yourself and you have to do bad things to do good things. When you are young, it’s very difficult to deal with that. It’s not easier when you get older, but then you understand it in a different way. You have to learn to choose your wars and you have to learn that everything is connected somehow.
Martin says he read in connection with that walk that Per enjoyed the looks and also the giggles. He could enjoy being the one who dared. Mr. G says he did enjoy it, but of course he cared about reactions. It also depends on your current shape, how strong you feel. Every time you succeed at something, it could be your new hairstyle or your new torn jeans, you gain self-confidence. It’s all about gaining self-confidence and feeling seen in some way.
Martin thinks that at that age and in such a small town, it’s also a bit scary to stand out. Per confirms, it was very scary. There were many people who thought he was very odd and weird, but he also tried to take that as something positive. Martin asks how he did that. PG says you have to learn it somehow. He always had it easy at school and he remembers when he was in high school and they had an exam, he got everything right on the test. Then the teacher told the class that Per got all the answers right and the class booed him because of that. Then Per thought, how strange that is that you are booed because you did well. He learned a lot from that. You cannot let others decide what is right, you have to decide for yourself what is right. In this particular case, it was right to try to do as well as possible on that test. Things like that have shaped Per and made him strong and ambitious. He tried to find things in himself where he thought he had capacity and it has become music, because that’s what he can do.
Martin concludes that Per must also have been quite strong as an individual who could see that. First the class booed him even though he had done something good, then he walked through town with pink hair and they looked at him. This is daring. So it means that there was this strength in Per already as a little boy. PG says there was a longing to be in the center, to be able to direct his own life and not be painted into a corner by someone else. It’s probably his personality. He didn’t see it from that angle when he was growing up, but that’s the way it was.
Per has always had this interest in music, but until he met those friends at the age of 16-17, he was a rather lonely child who hated group work at school or maybe didn’t want to fit into the available groups. Martin is curious what kind of element music was in that life. Per was quite alone there making his lists. He says when he was an early teenager, he was overweight, he had glasses, he had pimples and long hair. He was a bit of a nerd. He thought that this world that pop music or the pop world offered him was much more exciting and attractive than the real world. The real world was pretty boring, he thought. So he sat there and made his lists and fantasized about different things that had to do with music. Of course, eventually there was a desire to play in a band himself and by then he had already started writing songs, mainly lyrics. He made his own recordings before he met Mats, MP in Gyllene Tider. There was a radio program called Bandet går at the time. Anyone could submit songs and Per did. He remembers they played one of his weird songs called Ser du alla människor and then he got his first fan letter. It was completely bizarre that someone he didn’t know had listened to his song and been touched by it. He will never forget that feeling. It was an incredible declaration of love for him and for what he had done. He was very touched by that and of course it gave more flavour to continue. Once they got started with Gyllene Tider, he had suddenly moved his pop fantasy from childhood to become his reality. He wasn’t at school all day, he went to the rehearsal room in Harplinge instead and planned new songs and new recordings.
Martin says it sounds like a big step to take from being in a very small bubble of your own, a pop music fantasy of your own to suddenly being in the center, at the front of the stage, leading a band in front of thousands of people. It was incredibly strange, Per confirms, and it went fast too.
Martin wants to know if it was difficult to go the complete opposite way. Per can’t say it was difficult. It was just weird. It was strange to get a sudden response to everything and gain appreciation. He also remembers that early on he thought they were very good. It is also in the film that they were constantly sending their demos to here and there and they were rejected by Björn and Benny and all sorts of people. They didn’t send the demos out by chance, they sent them out because they thought they were damn good and someone should bet on them. What Per tried to take from all the rejections was that they have to be better, so they stop being rejected. There was self-confidence in all of them.
Martin says it’s exciting to see what drive and self-confidence they had, because that was also a time when they were breaking new ground. Those days it was either prog or punk and there were many who looked down on this type of music that they brought. But they were full of self-confidence that what they were doing was good. Per says they loved their Blondie and Tom Petty records and he remembers listening to Bowie’s Diamond Dogs and Aladdin Sane a lot. They loved glam rock. Sure, there was a lot of resistance, but it was just a matter of going ahead. It sounds so simple. Haha.
At the same time, Martin knows that Per doubted himself many times. E.g. when it comes to his singing voice, but also regarding his weight when he was a child and his appearance. Martin thinks such thoughts are stuck with you throughout life. PG thinks that what you experience as a child, you carry with you your whole life. He has been aware that it has been difficult, of course, but at the same time, for the job he has chosen, if you are going to be an artist, you have to be pleased with yourself. You have to have self-confidence. Per says he has to know what to do with himself in front of an audience to maximize what he is good at. He has always tried to maximize himself in different ways. Martin asks him what it means. Per smiles and says that it means to make sure you maintain your weight for a few days so that the press photos look OK. It has to do with the entire presentation of what is now called the brand. How you present your concerts, your style, the album sleeve.
Martin finds it interesting. There is a lot of talk about physical things when it comes to women, but not so much about the feelings. Even Martin can have problems with press pictures of himself at times when he has weight problems or things like that. It’s hard to look at those pictures. He is curious how it has been for Per during his long career. PG says it’s also about self-confidence. If you don’t feel good about yourself – it doesn’t have to be a big thing, it could be that you just don’t feel comfortable with yourself – then of course it affects everything you do. That’s how it is to be human. You have to try to find the middle ground, so that you have the least possible resistance in your existence. It’s not that easy. Everyone who lives and listens to this knows that it’s the hardest thing there is, to find yourself in life, be tough against adversity, be generous and don’t feel guilty. It’s complicated, but that’s what it is to be human.
Martin asks Per when it was the most difficult for him. Per says, primarily when things have happened in his private life, of course those affected him. It affects your mood. Regarding Gyllene Tider or Roxette, of course he was affected if things didn’t turn out as he had thought. Then he was thinking „what did we do wrong?” or „isn’t it time to change the record label in Spain?”, things like that. You try to find scapegoats and learn something from that too. But usually, it’s private things that affect you. Per says he is 65 years old now, recently retired, haha, and he still thinks it has been a fairly smooth journey. Occasionally, a lot of tears and grinding teeth, but as a whole, it’s been smooth, a long career.
Martin asked this, because he read in Sven Lindström’s book about Roxette that before the release of Have A Nice Day in 1999, there was a period when Per chose not to appear in videos. There wasn’t even a tour then, because Per was uncomfortable with his appearance and weight at the time. Per confirms it was the case. He felt completely wrong. He had just gotten to know photographer Anton Corbijn who wanted to make some videos with them. They made one for Stars and Per appears only in a small box at the beginning of the video. Then there is another guy who plays his role in the clip. It was because he wasn’t comfortable with the way he looked. The next video they did with Anton in Portugal or in Italy maybe, Salvation. By then PG had lost a little weight so he started feeling more comfortable. That’s how it worked for him. He thought it didn’t benefit Roxette and the video if he was involved. Martin is curious what Per thinks about it today. Mr. G thinks it was the right decision. Haha. Martin asks if it wasn’t a wrong decision to bow down to the ideals of the time about what pop stars should look like. It wasn’t what Per was thinking about, it was just that he didn’t feel good about himself. His own image of himself was not what he wanted it to be. He has never cared about the ideals and that someone should look a certain way. So it wasn’t that he couldn’t live up to what a pop star should look like. It was entirely about how he felt.
Martin says that Per as a songwriter and artist has been at the top of the stratosphere. There are many examples of artists who have not managed to stay down to earth. Martin is curious how important has Åsa been for Per not to float away. Per smiles and says Åsa is amazing. They met back in 1984 and got married in 1993, so they have been together all their lives. When they met, it was the fall of 1984 and Per was about to become a has been at the age of 25. He had lost his record deal, Gyllene Tider was over. After all, Åsa never came into Per’s life to a set table. They had to build their relationship based on who they were. Mr. G remembers his accountant at the time cut his credit cards, because he had no money. He wrote songs for every possible artist. That was the time when he also wrote Kärleken är evig for Lena Philipsson, but he also wrote for Anna Book. He noticed clearly and early on that it didn’t suit him to write for others, because he had to compromise too much. Often they wanted his texts in the first place and then they wanted to rewrite them and make them simpler. It didn’t suit him at all. He preferred to be an artist himself and perform his own songs. And stand in the center, at the front, like when he was little, Martin adds. Per says, standing in the center was also strange with Roxette. When they did their first concerts in 1987, the first gigs were very strange for both Marie and Per. They were thinking about who would stand at the front and Per pretty quickly took a step back, because Marie was much better at it than he was. But it was an ego decision. Martin asks Per if it was difficult. PG says it was probably difficult. He can’t remember how it felt, but he does remember that it was a decision made by him. If Marie is going to sing, she gets to run this project. And then he came forward sometimes and sang some parts. Although on that tour they didn’t have The Look yet.
Martin says Åsa is also an important part of the GT film, how Per and Åsa met. Although for a long time Per’s lyrics were a lot about falling in love, meeting girls and such, it seemed that it was not so easy for him in practice to meet someone. Per laughs and says there were some girls before Åsa, but those relationships can’t be compared to that with Åsa. She was the big love and still is.
Martin asks Per if he thinks fame got in the way before Åsa. PG thinks it could be, because as soon as they broke through in 1980, they became… isolated is a wrong word, but they sort of became… All of a sudden everyone knows who you are and all of a sudden other demands are placed on you. Per can still feel that today, e.g. when he goes into a restaurant somewhere and he sees he is recognized, then he automatically becomes professional. He has been with other celebrities, international ones who tell stories. Per sees how people react when they enter a room. He laughs to himself. People are the same everywhere. Martin asks Per what he thinks when he sees those international celebrities. PG says it’s the same thing. He doesn’t know what celebrities represent, but one can see now how fixated everyone became on Truls at the table tennis Olympics. It’s the human way of being. Shit, check, there sits Leif G.W. Persson. Or check there, Tom Cruise. Martin asks Per if they are the people who make Per feel the way others look at him. Per replies no, but he can note how the surroundings behave then and how it buzzes. His friends tell him what people who walk behind him talk about after he left. He doesn’t mind it. It’s cool. Although it’s nothing he has strived for. This celebrity status is a love and hate relationship. He has always worked to make the things he does known. But you don’t really know what you’re getting yourself into, because you also become famous, not only the things you do. There is a price you have to pay for the fun of being an artist, Martin adds.
A few years after Per and Åsa got together, PG broke through with Roxette and there was a lovely little note Åsa wrote for Per one day and it became a big song. Martin wants to hear the story of that note. PG says they lived in an attic in Halmstad and Åsa had left a note on his grand piano one day. It said „Hej, din tok, jag älskar dig” (Hello, you fool, I love you). Per thought that was wonderful. He had just read an interview with Paul McCartney who said writing songs with John Lennon was like being on a long joyride. Then Per thought, what a nice word, joyride. He didn’t really know what that meant. Obviously, doing a joyride means that you steal a car, ride it and then dump it. Per didn’t know it back then. For him it was just a joy ride. So he put together Åsa’s little note with that word joyride and it became Hello, you fool, I love you. Come on, join the joyride. It worked just like that. Bang.
Then he wrote this badass song on acoustic guitar the same day. A little later that day he met MP, and then we wrote Spending My Time. So it was a good Tuesday. Haha.
Martin says Joyride became one of Per’s super hits and he thinks that it says quite a lot about how Per creates lyrics and music. PG agrees. He says he doesn’t sit and knead, or at least he tries not to. He doesn’t sit hour after hour and write, because he can’t focus on it anymore. It has to go fast and it has to be in the moment it happens. Many people ask him about this text, what it is about, where it comes from. Per has no idea. He collects stuff that is relevant to him in those 20 minutes it takes. That is his ambition anyway. There are many examples when he couldn’t manage it, but at least that’s what he is aiming for.
Martin says there are also many examples when Per succeeded, even if it is difficult to logically explain it. For example, The Look, which was their first No. 1 on the US Billboard. It has a very special text. Martin knows that the American DJs who heard The Look for the first time when an American exchange student brought this record from Sweden reacted immediately to the first lines of the lyrics. He asks Per to sing the first lines of the text and Per sings it: walking like a man / hitting like a hammer / she’s a juvenile scam / never was a quitter / tasty like a raindrop / she’s got the look.
Martin asks him what the text means. It’s just logical nonsense. Per had bought a new synth, a pretty cheap one and he tried to learn how to program it. He has always been a helpless case when it comes to technology, so trying to learn how to program a synth was a giant mission. The easiest way for him was to write a song, so he wrote bababababa and he came up with this rhythm in his head and wrote the first lines to remember the rhythm. It was almost some kind of rap. He wrote it down to remember it and then when he listened to it, he thought it was pretty cool. He was thinking what he should do with the rest of the song and he decided to continue writing in the same spirit. Then it became sort of logical. There was a bit of I Am The Walrus about it. Per actually wrote it for Marie to sing, so it was called He’s Got The Look, but she tried to sing it and it didn’t work at all. She couldn’t sing like that. It’s only three notes, after all. She came up with the idea of answering Per instead in the chorus and that made the whole chorus super cool. That’s how it works, you just try things out. A nonsense text is also a text.
Per Gessle has already done everything, he has topped everything, but he is not alone among great rock and pop artists who despite this, still continue making new music, releasing new songs and going on tours. Martin asks PG what he thinks the reason is for this. Per says it’s just something inside him, that he wants to get things out and that he gets curious. It doesn’t happen as often as it used to, writing Joyride in the morning and Spending My Time in the afternoon on the same day. It probably won’t happen again. When you are younger, there is a drive that’s fantastic and Per has always been triggered by success. That was one of the differences between Marie and him. Marie was quite fed up with success and thought they should take it easy. Per was the opposite. He thought they should do even bigger gigs and do even more things. He remembers when they were out on the Joyride tour in 1991-1992, he thought they should record an album during the tour. There was a lot of resistance around this from both the band and Marie, but it turned out to be a record called Tourism. Per wrote new songs during the tour. The first single was How Do You Do! and the album became a big one for them. It was because Per got enormous energy from success. It’s in his DNA.
Martin says Marie Fredriksson could say that she sometimes felt like a passenger next to Per and even the other members of Gyllene Tider could sense that sometimes Per was travelling on his own journey. Martin is curious if that was necessary for Per to be able to create. PG understands that the others felt that way, but there was no alternative. If he was to sit and wait for the other four in GT to decide what to do, then nothing gets done. It was a bit like that with Marie too. When Roxette started, Marie’s career was on the way up and Per’s career was going downhill. So his only weapon was to keep Marie in the Roxette project, to make Roxette successful, because as soon as they had made the first Roxette record, Marie made another Swedish solo album with her producer and then boyfriend. There was a time in the beginning before they broke through internationally that no one around Marie wanted her to work with Per. Marie’s record company, her producer, her family, her boyfriend. The only one who wanted to work with Per was Marie herself. It was fantastic, of course. The very first Roxette single, Neverending Love doesn’t have a picture of them on the cover, because if it were to flop, it would not affect Marie’s Swedish career negatively. That was the the record company’s strategy. So Per’s weapon was always to come up with songs like It Must Have Been Love, Queen Of Rain, Perfect Day or Spending My Time. Or Soul Deep which Marie loved to sing on the first album. So that she would want to stay.
Martin says Per has made more than a thousand songs. He is curious which song Per would pick if he had to choose one as a kind of soundtrack to this meeting they have had. The Look, for God’s sake, Per says. It’s the coolest song in his life. It has everything that a hit should have. He was sitting in a restaurant in Stockholm and then a guy who worked at another record company came to him and said, „have you seen that you are on the radio list in the USA?” Per didn’t know what the guy was talking about, but then he checked the Billboard and saw that The Look was among the Bubbling Under songs, the songs that were on their way up, possible chart climbers. There were 20 radio stations in that. There was Roxette and The Look on one station and Per understood absolutely nothing. Because The Look was not exactly what Roxette was supposed to be. The idea of Roxette was that Per wrote the songs and Marie sang them. The Look was sung by Per, so it was absolutely sensational that it was that song. For Per, it is an important one. It’s the coolest song he has done, Martin thinks. Per says it has become symbolic. It might not be the best song he has written, but it’s cool. Martin says Per mentioned it had everything, but he wants PG to list what it has. Mr. G says it has a sound, it has a riff, it’s unique, it has many parts. You don’t write music that way anymore, he adds. It has a sound that sounds like nothing else. It has to do with Clarence Öfwerman’s production and Jonas Isacsson. There is Per’s voice and Marie’s voice. This song is really crazy.
Here Per picks up the guitar and performs The Look and that closes the interview.
