The Beatles

Per Gessle contributed to the book The Beatles – Album by Album

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Per Gessle contributed to a book, The Beatles – Album by Album: The Band and Their Music by Insiders, Experts & Eyewitnesses, published in 2019. It’s an original telling of the Fab Four’s story. This informative work tells the story of John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr from the band’s formative days in Hamburg to the split in 1970.

General Editor is Beatles insider Brian Southall, a former Press Officer at EMI (dealing with the Beatles’ solo projects) who began writing about music in the 1960s on a local newspaper. He published his first book – the official history of Abbey Road Studios – in 1982.

For this book, Brian gathered a team of experts – including former Apple Records CEO Tony Bramwell, singer Steve Harley, Sir Tim Rice and producer Chris Thomas – to write about each of the band’s record releases, from Please Please Me to Let It Be.

The English edition of the book is available HERE for example, but it’s also published in other languages.

It’s a very informative and well-edited Beatles book including tons of photos from studio sessions, live appearances, travelling etc. You’ll find info about each one of the Beatles albums including what the Beatles said about them and also what the critics said. Very enjoyable reading not only for die-hard Beatles nerds.

Per talks about the Beatles quite often in interviews and he can’t really put together a podcast top list of his favourite songs in different topics without adding a Beatles hit. His love for the Beatles’ music is neverending and even if you might have heard most of what he tells in this book, it’s always great to read his enthusiastic thoughts on music.

Picture of Per Gessle published in the book

PG about Rubber Soul

Per says in the book that he loves the sleeve because he loves John Lennon’s jacket. He has the cover picture by Robert Freeman in his office. He thinks the album has a very cool title.

’Norwegian Wood’ is one of my favourite tracks, then ’Think For Yourself’ with the fuzz guitar and ’Girl’ because of that magic Lennon voice. There were three writers but there were also three singers, which meant you never got bored with their sound.

Per thinks maybe the reason they were able to do all their music in such a short time was because there were three generators. They had so much energy and so many ideas that maybe they just had to pour it out. Per says in the book that we will never see that sort of output again in our lifetime. He also adds that pop music’s essence is to reflect the era when it is born.

PG about Revolver

I always say 1966 is the best year for pop music – and that’s because of ’Revolver’, which is such a great album. ’And Your Bird Can Sing’ is my favourite track and ’Taxman’ is such a great song. ’Here, There and Everywhere’ was played at my wedding; and they make it sound simple but if you try to play it, it’s really complicated.

In the book Per shares that he thinks it’s almost a perfect album and loves the sleeve by Klaus Voorman. He thinks this one is much heavier than Rubber Soul and it’s the last album where the songs were classic Beatles pop music but still had that edge in the production and the sound.

The guitar sound is heavier, it has much more rock to it than ’Rubber Soul’, which is much more of a pop record; and I think that’s what appeals to musicians and writers about ’Revolver’ – the hardest thing to do as a writer is to come up with a great pop song and make it raw, make it rough.

Mr. G tells in the book that in 1981 Gyllene Tider was the biggest band in Sweden and they released a special EP with four cover versions including the Beatles And Your Bird Can Sing, which he translated into Swedish and thinks it sounds really terrible. They tried to make it similar but weren’t capable. [GT’s cover is ‘Och jorden den är rund‘ from the ‘Swing & Sweet’ bonus EP to ‘Moderna Tider’. /PP]

We were in our early twenties and it was just like a throwaway thing – you could do that back then, just after punk and new wave – but today you can’t really touch that stuff.

PG about Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

In the book Per tells wherever you went, when it was released everyone played it, no matter where it was. It doesn’t happen today with any artist.

PG about The Beatles (The White Album)

Musically, I remember ’The White Album’ the best as I was nine years old. It was just an amazing record. It was so mesmerizing. I was really into pop music very early on because I had an older brother who showed me around pop music. I must have first heard it when it first came out: my brother would have bought it when it came out.

Per tells the author The White Album was so cool and Dear Prudence is his favourite song. He also always loved Cry Baby Cry.

There is some rawness to that album that is very appealing to me; and it felt like it was a wild album after ’Sgt. Pepper’ was more controlled.

Mr. G says in the book that everything about the album was special. He mentions Richard Hamilton’s white sleeve and the fact that it wasn’t too common to have lyrics printed with the album. Since English is their second language, being able to read the lyrics while hearing it was great.

I still have an original numbered album. The cover is a blank page and it goes so well with what the album is all about – it’s a blank page and was so different from ’Sgt. Pepper’.

Per thinks it was a magical record that opened up your imagination a lot. Not releasing any singles from the album is the opposite of how it is today and how it was in the fifties when it was all about singles.

Mr. G tells in the book that Benny Andersson from ABBA said once to him that the only song that he wished he had written was Martha My Dear and Per can understand him very well.

To be able to write and play it you have to have a certain musicality that you can’t really learn, it has to be inside you.

He adds:

The track ’Revolution 9’ was unbearable when you were nine years old but looking back it was the perfect follow-up to ’Tomorrow Never Knows’ and ’A Day in the Life’. Back then you had never heard anything like it before and that was obviously the only track you skipped when you played it.

Per says in the book that the production on The White Album is much more raw than Sgt. Pepper.

There is a hint of studio tricks but there’s also ’Helter Skelter’, which is like a jam session and ’Back in the U.S.S.R.’, which they could have played live just the way it was recorded.

Front cover of the book

12 Peaks of The Beatles by Per Gessle

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In this 12 Peaks, Per Gessle and Sven Lindström feel like teenagers and talk about one of their favourite subjects on the planet, The Beatles. Huge thanks to Sven again for sharing the program with us! You can download the sound file in 3 parts from (link is valid until 22nd August).

Mr. G’s 12 favourite hits from The Beatles:

  1. 12 Peaks of The Beatles by Per GessleHey Jude (1968)
  2. A Day in the Life (1967)
  3. Taxman (1966)
  4. I Am the Walrus (1967)
  5. Something (1969)
  6. Dear Prudence (1968)
  7. Rain (1966)
  8. I Feel Fine (1964)
  9. I’m Down (1965)
  10. While My Guitar Gently Weeps (1968)
  11. Run for Your Life (1965)
  12. Strawberry Fields Forever (1967)

In PG’s book The Beatles is the biggest there ever was, the most influential band in his life. All their songs are masterpieces, so it was pretty easy to pick 12 favourites. It would be really difficult to find 12 bad Beatles songs, so there won’t be a 12 Peaks show like that.

Per says one of the best songs ever written is ”Hey Jude”. He thinks it’s brilliant and it changed the world for so many people.

The second song on the list is ”A Day in the Life”. When Per first heard it, there was just magic all over the place in his little room. His brother had the album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Per was listening to it all the time.

Mr. G’s 3rd fave hit is ”Taxman”, a song written by George Harrison and released as the opening track on the Revolver album, which is one of Per’s favourite Beatles albums. But he can’t really make up his mind about which album is really his favourite.

The fourth song is something completely different. Per thinks it’s one of the wildest songs he knows and every time he hears it, it puts a smile on his face. It’s ”I Am the Walrus”, John Lennon in top shape. Sven and Per are of course 2 of the biggest Beatles nerds and they talk about the hidden messages in the song, namely, the lines of Shakespeare’s play, King Lear which one can hear in ”I Am the Walrus” in the background in a radio broadcast.

”Something” was written by George Harrison and it’s on the Abbey Road album, which is a stunning piece of music. Another most favourite Beatles album for PG. ”Something” is probably the most mainstream track, covered by so many artists.

”Dear Prudence” has a beautiful melody, a simple production and it’s mesmerizing to hear this track. Per just loves the song forever and ever.

”Rain” is the B-side of Paperback Writer and it’s a magnificent song. The vocal performance by Lennon is just amazing. Per also loves the glasses everyone was wearing on the sleeve. Sven says things were starting to get slightly psychedelic then.

The intro to ”I Feel Fine” just blew Per’s mind when he was a kid. It’s still fantastic, but in those days you never heard anything like that. PG loves the great harmonies and the great voice of John Lennon in this song.

Before Per and Sven get down to the next hit, Per mentions Sven wears a Rubber Soul watch. Sven says it doesn’t work, but never mind. The clock is always quarter past Ringo. Haha.

”I’m Down” is a hidden gem according to Mr. G. He can’t remember which single had it as a B-side, because he always played this song all the time. [It was the B-side of Help! /PP]

”While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is a song written by George Harrison and it was also a stunning piece of music when it came out and it still is. There is Eric Clapton on guitar.

”Run for Your Life” is fantastic pop music. It’s from Rubber Soul, which is a great album and everyone loves it. It’s a jukebox and John Lennon’s voice at this time is just the best there is.

Per picked ”Strawberry Fields Forever” as the last track on his Beatles list. He thinks it’s a magnificent piece of recording and is a highlight in pop history for Mr. G. It’s still very unique and at the time it came out you never heard anything like this. Per says it was always so cool with The Beatles that they did so many different things all the time. You could never know what to expect.

Before they play the last song, Per and Sven talk about PG visiting John Lennon’s house on Menlove Avenue in Liverpool. Strawberry Fields was a place close to where John grew up. Per says it was very special to visit the house. They kept it intact, how it was when John grew up and the guide showed them a little room inside the door at the main entrance where John and Paul were singing, because there were great acoustics inside. Per says he was standing there and started singing to see how it feels like and it sounded fantastic in there. It was almost like an echo chamber.

 

Per Gessle’s deep song title analysis

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PG_Gradvall_podcastPer had been interviewed by Jan Gradvall for his Swedish Radio podcast and the program was made available last Saturday. You can listen to it or even download it from HERE. Per’s part starts at 7:18 and ends at 21:50. The second half of the program is an interview with Kajsa Grytt.

The topic was “I Want You”, a song title that you can find among The Beatles, Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello classic songs, but Jan and Per also went into a deep analysis of song titles in general.

Per’s opinion about Bob Dylan’s “I Want You” is that it’s an awesome song on Dylan’s fantastic Blonde on Blonde album. It was released in 1966 when Per was 7 years old, so he says he didn’t know what the song “I Want You” was about, but he remembers he listened to it a lot of times.

According to Per, “I Want You” is a very good, simple and direct title. It makes you curious. Gradvall asked him what makes a song title a good song title. Per says, even if today’s generation doesn’t really look at album covers, actually it’s usually the title of the song you see first. It has to raise curiosity about what the song is about. He thinks a good title is very important, but it’s also a matter of taste. He likes simple titles, but he also likes strange titles, e.g. of his GT songs ”Allt jag lärt mig i livet har jag lärt mig av Vera” or ”(Dansar inte lika bra som) Sjömän”. Per thinks many artists have boring song titles.

Jan asked Mr. G what he thinks, which his best song titles are. Per says “Dressed For Succes” is really good, “Ska vi älska, så ska vi älska till Buddy Holly” is very good, “Sleeping In My Car”, “How Do You Do!”, because it makes you curious what the song is about, “Queen Of Rain” is an exciting title, “Crash! Boom! Bang!” which is coming from Elvis Presley’s Jailhouse Rock [here he is singing the tunes 🙂 ], “Flickorna på TV2” is a superb title.

They talk about Elvis Costello as well. Per likes him and liked his first album and the song “Watching the Detectives”. He thinks he became a little bit too clever with a little bit too many chords for Per, but he is a fantastic musician and singer. He listened more to Costello’s producer, Nick Lowe. Per prefers simplicity and beautiful, simple melodies.

“I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” by The Beatles is very simple and direct. Per thinks it’s a fantastic mix and it’s an odd, but a damn good song on “Abbey Road”. The album came out when Per was 10 and it was an important one for him. “Come Together” is also an outstanding song on it. George Harrison’s “Something” and “Here Comes The Sun” are masterpieces on “Abbey Road”. “Octopus’s Garden” and Paul’s medley on side two are also fantastic. Per explains he did a medley on his “Son of a Plumber” album, the “Junior Suite” and it was inspired by the “Abbey Road” medley. It was real fun doing it.

Gradvall asked Per about his thoughts on The Beatles song titles. The early songs had more simple titles (“I Should Have Known Better”, “I’ll Cry Instead”, “Love Me Do”, “Please Please Me”), but later the titles became more nonsense and abstract, e.g. “Happiness Is A Warm Gun”, “Tomorrow Never Knows”, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”. If he looks back at Lennon titles, they were rather simple, e.g. “It’s So Hard”, “Jealous Guy”, “Imagine”, “God”.

Jan asked Per about his own “I Want You”. Mr. G clarifies it’s not his own song, he did it together with Marie Fredriksson, Eva Dahlgren and the Ratata guys in 1987, during their joint tour Rock runt riket. The producer was Anders Glenmark and it does sound like a Glenmarkish song.

To the question how many words are optimal in a song title Per replied sometimes he thinks as many as possible. For example, for the latest Gyllene Tider album he wrote a song with a long title “Jag tänker åka på en lång lång lång lång lång resa”. It could have been “Jag tänker åka på en lång resa”, but with 5 långs it sounds better and it is to emphasize how long the journey is. It’s that “The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill” is much better than “Bungalow Bill”. Or as an album title, “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars” is much better than “Ziggy Stardust”. But a song title can be short or long, the important thing is to raise curiosity. It can be a question that might not be answered in the song or e.g. he has the title “I Never Quite Got Over The Fact That The Beatles Broke Up” which is not in the lyrics, but the content reflects that he didn’t get over the fact.

 

Christoffer Lundquist: “Producing is about being open to whatever might happen”

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Judith and Kirsten met Christoffer Lundquist in Frankfurt before the show on Sunday. In the following interview you’ll find information about Christoffer’s career, love to music, touring with Per and Roxette and much more.

Judith: How did you start to play music, compose, get in to music?

Christoffer: My parents got me and my sister when I was 6 years old to play violin. And I hated that. I hated every second of it, and I never practiced, never did anything, was horrible, but I sort of discovered it was nice to play notes and find them for yourself, and make up little tunes, so when I was maybe 10 or 11 I skipped the violin and finally dared to tell my parents I didn’t want to do that anymore, and I got an old guitar from my aunt, who also introduced me to the Beatles. From then on I’ve done nothing but playing, try to write arrangements, I am a totally single-minded person, that’s the only thing I do.

J: How many instruments do you play?

C: I actually only play guitar and bass, you know, reasonably well, the rest is sort of just cheating, but since I buy so many instruments, I have the possibility to practice with them. I play a bit of decent flute, half-decent saxophone, clarinet, I got an oboe, that was fun for a year and then it was too hard, so I skipped that. I have so many different instruments in my studio, but they are all kind of keyboard instruments.

J: Was Brainpool your first band?

C: No, I had my own band when I was in high school, we played prog-rock, loooong 20-minute songs which I wrote and forced everyone else to play.

J: So when did you start to compose your own stuff?

C: Probably at the age of 10, when I got the guitar. That’s the reason for playing for me, to try to make your own music or play your own stuff.

J: Did you actually study music?

C: No, never, the three years of violin when I was 6 to 10 is all my music education.

J: And how did you get to Brainpool?

C: David Birde was a friend of mine from high school, he had Brainpool going, the bass player was to go and do this army service, so I just joined as a replacement for him. But it turned out that the four of us got along very well and we liked each other, so when his army was over, he was no longer welcome I am afraid, it’s a bit harsh, but it’s the way it was. That was I think 91. It took a few years until we got a record deal and released our first album.

J: How was it that Per discovered your music in first place?

C: He had just started this side of Jimmy Fun Music which was going to release other music, besides Per’s own. We were one of the first bands to send him some demos, just by chance, that’s just the kind of music Per likes. Besides that, our singer, Janne, he sounds a little bit like Per, a little bit of this childish voice if you like, a bit high pitched, so he just fell for it. Back then Per used to listen to all the demos which had to do with Jimmy Fun, later he got a bit tired of it, and didn’t care so much, but in the beginning he was really into it.

J: So it was actually his decision to publish your music.

C: Yes, his and Ben Marlene, the guy he had hired to run Jimmy Fun Music. So yes, we were the first band he signed.

J: Tell about your first album, Soda, which songs were included?

C: You normally collect the best songs from many years and put them on the first album, so that’s the way it worked with us. The second album was a bit more difficult because we had to write the same amount of good quality songs in a shorter period of time.

J: How did you write the songs? Did you compose them all together?

C: Janne and David wrote most of the songs, I helped with a couple of them, and then I was mostly into the arrangement and producing.

J: The style throughout the albums changed quite a lot.

C: Yes, that was because we got easily bored. Once we had done something, we wanted to try something else, different.

J: Indeed.. you started with some kind of punk and..

C: …and ended up with rock operas! Haha! That’s a huge change, I agree.

J: I actually got the first CD when you went on tour, during C!B!B!, you might not remember, it’s 15 years ago, some fans were waiting outside of the hotel for Roxette to come out, and you came out, all of you four, we stared to talk with you, you looked quite surprised we even knew who you were. How did you experience the touring with Roxette?

C: Well, we came from nowhere and in a couple of months we were suddenly playing to 15000 people in Barcelona, so we were just “aaaahhh!”. It was an amazing adventure. We soon realized it was amazing and fun and learnt a lot. But at the same time nobody really wanted to hear us, of course, I mean, that’s the way it is with support acts. We also realized that after a while, some of the hard-core Roxette fans sort of started to like us, so that was nice. We got a better reaction in some countries. But I remember a gig in Prague, where they had particularly big tickets, and “Roxette” was written on them with large printing, after we had played a couple of songs, people started to raise their “Roxette tickets” .. but well, it didn’t matter, we just played even faster and louder.

J: But I still remember in Barcelona some people sang along. My sister and I had spread your CD … We had lots of fun.

C: Yes, I remember that. That was fun, to find small groups of people at the shows who actually listened and sing along. I remember the gig in Barcelona, we didn’t get much reaction from the audience in general, but Spain is different, you know, so I remember I was playing, I just took a couple of steps to the left and then everybody stood up, I was like “WHAT?”, that had never happened before. Haha!

J: I remember there was even a fanclub, started by a Swedish girl called Annika.

C: Yeah! There was also a girl called Nadja, yes, I think that was the name, from Germany.. or maybe Austria? It was really crazy in Sweden for a year or two, a lot of young girls, like 14-year old girls who fell in love with Janne. It was a bit like Gyllene Tider but on a smaller scale. Btw, the first concert I ever went to was a Gyllene Tider concert, during Moderna Tider, I remember I listened to it in secret because I thought it was a big embarrassing, a bit girly music, and I liked heavy important prog rock, but there was something about his voice you couldn’t resist, couldn’t not listen to it, that hit me.

J: What happened then with Brainpool?

C: It was mainly, the three of us who are still in the band, we drifted apart from Janne, so to say. It’s not that we weren’t friends, but we didn’t have that much in common, didn’t spend that much time together. The three of us are like brothers, so I guess that was the reason, he felt it wasn’t fun anymore. I don’t think he coped very well with the fame and success thing, he just didn’t like it so after a couple of years he felt like he didn’t want to do that anymore.

But we continue, it’s still fun, even though it’s more a hobby band now.

J: Do you still meet and play?

C: We try sometimes, let’s make a new album, but we need time and money and we are busy with many other things, to support ourselves. But we will again, one day, I’m sure. The Junk rock opera is very much alive. The American director who did the show in LA with it, two years ago, is coming to my place in January, we’ll write some new songs for it and develop it. They’ve done like 30-40 shows and now he knows what he feels is missing in the plot, so he’s going to tell us “we need to change this here,” or “this character is not clear enough”, so we are going to record some new music in January. I am really looking forward to it. After that we’ll start working on new Roxette music.

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