Titti Schultz

Per Gessle’s single premiere on P4 Extra

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P4 Extra premiered Per Gessle’s new single, Beredd last Thursday. Titti Schultz invited Per on the show. You can listen to it HERE, 43:24 into the program.

Titti welcomes Per and offers him some sweets. Some remaining candies from the Eurovision panel where they discussed the songs. Per points at a sweet and says it looks completely life-threatening. He loves sweets. Titti is curious if there are any of those in the bowl that Per is particularly fond of. Per says he actually likes all of them. He likes everything with chocolate. He also likes liquorice, black liquorice, salty liquorice and sweet liquorice. He points at one that he doesn’t like. Titti says it’s peach. Mr. G says it’s the kind of nonsense he doesn’t have. He says he has reached the age that he likes Bridge Blanding and stuff like that. Titti says it’s something you grow up to. Haha.

Titti says she has claimed today that Per has become a bit sociable (longing for company). Sällskapssjuk. At least that’s the title of the upcoming album, coming this fall. The first taste comes tomorrow. Titti says Per sings a duet with Molly Sandén, but Per corrects her that it’s Molly Hammar. Titti excuses herself and says it’s her who read it completely wrong. She laughs and says they will have to cut that out later.

Titti asks Per if he considers himself a sociable person. She is curious if it’s more fun to work with others than to work alone. Per thinks he is sociable, like anyone else. But he is quite much of a lone wolf as well. It is a rather solitary work that he has chosen, to write and compose and think about ideas. He is pretty much to himself. Titti says there are artists who gather in large groups and are working on creating songs together. She wants to know if that would have worked for Per. Mr. G says he has tried that, but he gets tired, because there is so much compromising and that doesn’t suit him. But of course, he also needs feedback. If we look at his entire career, he has been very dependent on collaborators. Producers, Marie Fredriksson, the entire Gyllene Tider band, not to mention all the people behind the scenes who have helped him. So he is not alone in that way. Titti asks if it is always Per Gessle who has the last word. Per asks back if she means on planet earth. Haha. Titti says, knowing Per, the world would look different if he had the last word. She referred to having the last word regarding Per’s music. PG’s reaction is „absolutely”. He has always been lucky and privileged to be in the position of being able to do so.

Titti wants to know how Molly Hammar and Per found each other, how this collaboration came about. Per says it came about because he thought of writing an album in Swedish. After a while he realized that it would be fun to do a lot of duets. And that’s why the record is called Sällskapssjuk. It contains seven or eight duets. He can’t really remember, but it doesn’t matter. Haha. And if he had this song, he thought he would love to work with Molly, because she is a fantastic singer. She has that little extra that makes you want to listen to her. He met Molly in a TV show a few years ago, then he got into contact with her and asked if she wanted to join. Per was so proud and happy that she said yes. Then Molly came to Halmstad and they spent a few hours in the studio. Then they had a good dinner in Tylösand and now Per is sitting here.

Titti says we have to wait a little longer for the album, but the first single is here. It’s called Beredd. Titti is curious if there are only newly written songs on the album or if Per has picked up any favourites from the past. Per says there is an old Gyllene Tider song that they did on their English record in 1984. He translated it into Swedish and he has recorded it in a completely different version, so you might not even recognize it. That sounds exciting, Titti says.

Titti asks Per if he could tell about some more duet partners that he has worked together with, but Per doesn’t reveal any other names. You’ll have to wait and see. Titti accepts that she shouldn’t be nagging Per.

Titti mentions that the last time they met, they were talking about the Gyllene Tider movie that was in the making back then. Now the premiere is getting closer, the film is out this summer. Titti is curious how much of it Per has seen. PG says he hasn’t seen much more than 5-6 scenes, which are much fun. He is really looking forward to this movie. He thinks he said that when they last met that the script is great fun and he really hopes that the film will be as fun as the script. Because then it is a home run and everyone will love it.

Titti and Per start talking about Joyride – The Musical, the Roxette musical, which has its world premiere at Malmö Opera this autumn. Titti is happy that it comes true, because earlier there were thoughts about a musical, but it has been scrapped before. Per says, many people have contacted them and wanted to do a Roxette musical, but it has always failed on the script, that the script has not felt good enough. It’s not that easy to make a script where you have to add this song catalogue in the right way. But now they have succeeded. The story is based on a book called Got You Back, written by Jane Fallon from England. It’s a very exciting project. Per says anything can happen, but he thinks it will be amazing. Titti guesses Per is pretty much involved in it. PG confirms. Last week he was down in Malmö for two days and attended the readings and met people and listened and discussed. So he is absolutely involved. After all, these are his songs. Titti says Per has to have the last word there too. They are laughing.

Titti thinks it will be lovely to hear the whole album of duets. Now they should listen to Per and Molly Hammar. It’s the premiere, because this song is not out yet. It is released tomorrow.

Before they play the song, Titti thanks Per for coming and says it was nice to see him. PG says it’s always fun. Titti offers Mr. G the remaining sweets. They are laughing.

Photo by Helen Ling, Swedish Radio

Thanx for the hint regarding the interview, Martina Letochová!

Per Gessle and Anders Herrlin about Gyllene Tider on P4 Extra

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P4 Extra on Swedish Radio had Per Gessle and Anders Herrlin as their guests on 31st May. Program leader Titti Schultz asked the guys about Gyllene Tider. You can listen to it HERE!

Titti welcomes 2/5 of Gyllene Tider and says they are back again. Per says that’s pretty accurate to say so, being back AGAIN. It’s 4 years since the last time. Titti says there are so many immortal songs of theirs, e.g. she can’t even say Juni, juli, augusti to anyone anymore without a melodic loop coming up with it. The same thing goes for Gå & fiska!, however, she doesn’t say that very often, but so do others. She says the guys have sort of penetrated our consciousnesses in a way. She is curious if that was well thought out. Anders says it’s a long-term plan to penetrate Swedish DNA. They already had that when they started. Per says that’s a seventies idea.

Titti wants to know what happened after the 2019 farewell tour. Anders says they regretted it. Per says the pandemic happened. It was Micke Syd who thought they should quit in 2019 with the flag on top and Per thought that was a pretty good idea. But then the pandemic came and then they all started to think differently. They started to appreciate other things, such as old friends and hangouts. The idea just popped up to maybe record some new songs and maybe maybe maybe go on tour sometime when it’s possible again. So it’s not a planned comeback, it just happened.

Titti is curious what the guys do together when they don’t make music and are not touring, but hang out together. Maybe BBQing together? Anders says it’s top secret. Haha. He says they are BBQing and drinking. Per says they don’t hang out very much in private. It mostly happens when they are recording and if you are going on a tour in a few months, it’s actually quite nice to start that journey with getting together for a few weeks and record some new music and eat lunch and BBQ together. It’s good to have that social activity. Titti asks if they go fishing together. That never happened, the guys say. It’s not their cup of tea.

Titti picked a song from GT that she thinks is among the best the guys have done. It’s Flickan i en Cole Porter-sång. She asks if it will be on the setlist in summer. Per confirms they will play it, so Titti promises to come to a concert then. It’s such a good song, Titti thinks and she asks the guys to admit  it themselves that they are incredibly happy with this song. Anders says it’s a fantastic song. Per laughs. Titti says she isn’t sure if Anders is ironic now. Anders says he is mostly serious. He thinks this song turned out great.

Gyllene Tider becomes a feature film. Titti asks the guys to tell more about it. Per says it won’t be a documentary. It’s not about Gyllene Tider’s 40 years, but about 5 teenage boys who come from a small town and against all odds start a band and end up in big Stockholm and break through and become one of Sweden’s biggest bands in the early ’80s. So it’s a feel-good movie.

Titti asks Per if he knows who will play him. PG knows it, but can’t tell more about it yet. Anders says that later today he is going to meet the guy who plays him. Anders will talk about his life. Titti says it feels like Anders is looking forward to it. Anders confirms it. Titti says Anders should tell the guy that he was named Sweden’s most handsome guy in 1981 in Veckorevyn. Titti says Anders is probably not completely happy with that himself, but it’s fun.

Titti asks if it really feels like the band could make it against all odds, if it was such an uphill battle. Per says the fact that they became so successful was really a tall order. They had actually done only 6 gigs in front of an audience before they became No. 1 with Flickorna på TV2. So they didn’t know anything and in that way it’s incredibly rare to happen.

Anders says he quit his regular job when they got a gig. They were quite ambitious. Titti is thinking what Anders’ parents could have said then, but realizes that Anders is an electrician anyway, so he always has something to fall back on. Titti asks Per if he has a real job. PG says he doesn’t have any. He worked at Fammarps Mushroom Cultivation and weighed mushrooms. He was there with another guy and there were 350 girls, so it was a great job. He remembers that while waiting for the mushrooms, he was sitting in a small truck they had and wrote songs. Among others, he wrote (Dansar inte lika bra som) Sjömän, back then. Titti says she had no idea about this.

Titti mentions that recently she heard Per wrote the official song for the Table Tennis EC in Malmö. The Craziest Thing is coming this autumn. Anders writes music for various series, Titti shares. Per says Anders is very good and handsome. Titti laughs and says he even has a paper about it. Anders says he is dealing with film music and GT music. He doesn’t do much else.

Titti asks Anders if he writes the music for the GT feature film. Anders says no, it would be too close and it gets too goofy, so they let someone else do it.

After Titti asks Anders what he is dreaming about, Anders shares that last night he dreamed that he found a huge amount of money in the forest in a large suitcase and it was euro notes. Titti asks if Per Gessle was written on the suitcase. Haha. Anders says he was so damn afraid to take it. He looked around all the time, not that he was being chased by someone. Titti laughs and says she thought about a dream music project or TV series, so a dream in that context. Haha. Anders says he dreams of just continuing with what he is doing, to make fun projects all the time. He works together with his wife and it seems to be a successful concept. They have been together for 23 years and work and have a child together. It works very well.

Here they listen to a new GT song, Chans. Titti asks the guys if they want to say something about it. Per says it’s a song that sums up pretty much how they sound right now.

Titti says the fun thing is, what the listeners can’t hear now is that she gets practically involved in planning the tour. During the song being played the guys were discussing how to perform the songs live and stuff like that. It’s fun for Titti who is tone deaf (she says it about herself).

Titti mentions that it wasn’t obvious at the beginning who was going to play the bass in the band. She asks if they decided it with playing rock paper scissors. Andrs says it’s just that Micke Syd had a bass in his lap and so he got it. Anders was so damn bad at drums, so they changed. Titti asks whether Micke could play the drums at all or he was a talent. He was damn good and he still is, Anders says.

Titti shares that Per became the frontman, because no one else was interested. PG says it was because nobody else wanted to sing. He likes to sing and stand in the front and that impression you get there. PG remembers when he was 7 or 8 years old, he forced his friends to play and act like a band and he mimed to I’m A Believer by The Monkees. Titti asks what his friends really wanted to do. Per says they probably wanted to play hockey games.

Titti asks PG if he had any other strong interest besides music. These days she knows it’s cars, but if there was anything else back then. Per says when he thinks back on his life, there was a lot of pop music, so he spent all his time sitting with his headphones on and listening to Herman’s Hermits singles, The Kinks and stuff like that.

Titti is curious how Anders and Per found each other. It was actually via MP. Per says that first they had another bassist in Gyllene Tider, but that didn’t go too well and so PG left the band on New Year’s Eve. It was dramatic. Instead of the bassist being fired, Per quit. He was going to start a new band with Anders and then MP also wanted to join this new band and then Micke too, so in the end only the old bass player stayed in the old band. Titti says so he could say he is the only original member of Gyllene Tider. Per laughs and says there is some truth in it, actually.

Titti wants to know when the guys realized that their success is for real. Maybe when they started having fans and people started stealing stuff from their parents’ garden? Anders says it was after they appeared on Måndagsbörsen on TV and they played Flickorna på TV2. Then it all exploded. They were on tour and when they played in Rottneros there were so many people, thousands of them. Then the guys realized that wow, there was something going on here.

Regarding stuff being stolen from their surroundings, Anders says people stole underpants from their garden. But those were his father’s. Haha. Everything that was loose disappeared, Per says. E.g. number plate on the car, antennas and stuff like that. PG remembers when he turned 21 he still lived at home with his mother. Then 3 large sacks of mail arrived. 2800 birthday cards. Titti asks if Per read them all. PG says he even replied to them all. Haha. And it still happens these days, Titti guesses.

Here they start talking about the new album, Hux Flux and that they go on tour this summer. It’s a little huxflux for them, because they decided they would finish in 2019, but all of a sudden they changed their minds. Per wrote a song called Hux Flux and thought that this is not a bad title for this whole project.

Titti asks the guys if they have any plans for how long they will be up and running this time before they call it quits. Per says they shouldn’t put themselves in such a situation again. Titti says she is already looking forward to the next comeback.

Titti asks what the guys are looking the most forward to in summer. Anders says to play in front of people, because it’s so much fun. Per says touring is actually pretty tough, except for the hours you play for people. That’s why you do it. The rest is waiting and changing hotel rooms and changing cities all the time. You get tired of it quite quickly.

Titti says there will be a sixth member on tour, Uno. PG says, yes, Uno Svenningsson is the support act on this tour. He is a lovely guy and very talented. He is going to be a great opener both for the band and for the audience.

Titti thanks the guys for joining her on the show and lets Anders go and meet his younger self in film form. The guys thank Titti for the invitation.

Photo from P4 Extra’s story by Helen Ling

Per Gessle interview on P4 Extra on Mother’s Day

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Titti Schultz did an interview with Per Gessle today on P4 Extra on Swedish Radio. It starts at 1:42:42. After Titti welcomes Per, he says it’s an adorable weekend and the weather is fantastic on the Best Coast (West Coast). He is in Halmstad during corona time, because he lives there. He laughs. He has been home since Easter. Titti asks Per if he is thinking about corona or if everything is as usual. Mr. G says his life hasn’t changed a lot, because he most of the time works alone or only with a very few people. So it’s rather business as usual for him, but he has been very productive during this period. He wrote a lot of English songs and in between, Mamma and Pappa poppud up on a sunny Tuesday morning. He was dealing with a totally different type of music and then suddenly an idea came to his mind that shit, it’s mother’s day soon, so why not writing a song about a mom. It went quite easily and then he thought he should write a song about a dad, too. It was much harder. He laughs. He booked the studio, he worked there for 2 afternoons and then came Helena Josefsson to sing and then it was ready. It happened only in 2 weeks and it never went this fast before.

Titti says she knows Per’s mom is not among us anymore and asked Per if he celebrates her mom on a day like this. He said it doesn’t happen like this directly. Now there is another mom in his family, his wife, so it became rather her day. Per says when you are young, you don’t care too much about Mother’s Day, but by getting older, you think more about how it is to be parents and that kids are growing up. He thinks it’s a nice day. Tradition in their family is to give flowers and cake.

Titti asks Per if he thinks Mother’s Day has more meaning now for other families during corona time. Per thinks it could be. He thinks it’s a very special period we are going through now. It’s something we haven’t experienced before. When there is uncertainty, family and friends are more in focus and you realize that you can’t take any basic things for granted.

Per says he read that there were a lot of weddings cancelled. During this time people either still get married after the social distancing period or they get divorced. Titti says there can be a baby boom too.

Titti gets back to the songs and asks Per about the English songs he has been writing when Mamma and Pappa popped up. Mr. G tells he has Mono Mind, an electronic pop music project, but he was also writing guitar-based classic pop music. He doesn’t know yet what the future brings, but he wants to continue touring and play and make himself heard in a way. What he is writing now is based on the music he grew up with, the 60’s and 70’s (as usual) mixed with modern music. He can’t say anything about when this music will be out, but maybe next Mother’s Day. He laughs.

Titti asks if Per wants to say anything before she pushes the play button for Mamma. Per says just sit calmly and listen to the lovely lyrics and

Mom is the best!

Per Gessle and Micke Syd Andersson on P4 Extra

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Per and Micke Syd were guests on Swedish Radio P4 Extra. Listen HERE! Their part starts at 28:40 and lasts until 53:35.

Reporter Titti Schultz asks the guys how long they have known each other. They say too long. Titti asks Micke if he worked at a bar before and what he did there. Micke Syd says he did everything except for doing the washing up.

Titti is curious if it is really going to be the last tour and the guys confirm it is. She asks how many summer songs they promise to release on the new album. Per says he doesn’t know, but there will be a lot of summer songs on tour.

Det är över nu is played and Titti shares with the listeners that Micke was air drumming in the studio during the song. Per says Det är över nu and also Sommartider, Det hjärta som brinner or Tylö sun for example are songs that can’t be rehearsed, because it’s a bit comic without an audience.

The guys say it’s the ’90s when they sounded the best. It was the period when they came back for the first time, with songs like Det är över nu, Kung av sand, Juni, juli, augusti, Gå & fiska!

Titti says one of her absolute favourite GT songs is Juni, juli, augusti and asks the guys if they have any favourite GT songs. Micke Syd says Juni, juli, augusti is much fun to play live. Per picks Faller ner på knä.

Talking about the new album, Samma skrot och korn, Per says it’s a bit more adult, more thoughtful and also sentimental and sad vs. their previous albums. It’s very nice pop music. The title refers to the band members. The guys recorded it in France and they went through a creative process that couldn’t have happened in a studio in Stockholm.

Regarding the tour Per and Micke say there will be some unexpected happenings, surprises, but they can’t tell anything about it yet. Micke Syd jokes there will be pole dance. Haha.

Titti asks if the guys are sentimental and feel nostalgic now that all this comes to an end. Micke Syd says he became sentimental already in France. At last there is a song again that HE sings, Låt denna trumslagarpojke sjunga! Titti asks if she can get a little snippet a capella. Per jokes that then he has to go away.

To the question if they get together often, the guys replied that they didn’t meet the five of them together since the last tour, but the recording sessions in France were fantastic and much fun.

About the new single, Jag drömde jag mötte Fluortanten, Per says there is a little Van Morrison turn in it, which is a little unexpected. Titti says this must be the very first song about a Fluortant. The song is played on the radio.

Titti asks Per if he could write a song like Flickorna på TV2 today and Mr. G replies he couldn’t. Titti asks if they will play it this summer. Per says for sure, because it’s great to play it. Regarding the setlist Per says they circulated a list of 51 songs that they will narrow down to 25-26 songs. There are 17-18 songs that they MUST play, but then they also want to include surprises and songs from the new album. The concerts are planned to be 2 hours long.

Titti thinks fans in the ’80s were different than fans today. Per says they are not, it’s juts that we live in a different era. It’s just that there is social media and mobile phones nowadays. Titti asks if there are groupies around, Micke Syd says no, they never really had the talent for that, to have groupies waiting for them at the hotel.

Faller ner på knä is played, but cut short due to news.

Titti asks Micke Syd if he has become a better drummer over the years. Micke says he has, just not technically, but how he plays. When he plays elsewhere, even when he played for Roxette in June Afternoon or She Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, it’s different vs. when he plays in GT. In Gyllene Tider it’s like coming home. In France for example the recordings went so fast, because they went with the flow.

Titti asks how they know a song is ready. Per says a song develops all the time. When they play it live it becomes different. He thinks sometimes it’s a pity that one writes a song, they record it in the studio and take it to an audience only later. It could be the other way around, playing the song for an audience 20-30 times before recording it.