Per Gessle: We just had a fantastic breakfast! They served steak at 10 o’clock in the morning on the flight, and, I mean, I can’t have steak…

Bernd Rengelshausen, EMI Austria: Was it an Austrian Airlines flight?

PG: FinAir!

BR: FinAir? Ah, from Helsinki!

PG: … and people started to drink, like, Cognacs and Whiskys – at 10 o’clock in the morning! I mean, 3 o’clock in the afternoon, that’s my limit! Anyway. Yea.

Stefan Schönhacker, Fan Club: I’ll come up with some clever questions, at least that’s what I hope. Your solo album might as well be from the Sixties, judging by the sound. Do you think you were born 30 years too late?

PG: No, not really. I think if this album would have come out in the Sixties I would’ve been Elvis, because nothing sounded like this in the Sixties! But I guess you have a point in a way how the songs are structured and everything, my roots are very much from the Sixties and the Seventies. I don’t know, I just like that sort of music… I like singles, you know, I like songs more than albums, I never really… everything I’ve done – I always write songs to be singles, and every album that we’ve made with Roxette is for me just a bunch of singles, and this album is just a bunch of singles. So, in that sense, it’s very old-fashioned. On the other hand, for me it’s all about songs, it’s all about, you know, communicating through a song, cos that’s the element that struck me when I was a little kid, you know: why on earth did I like “Dizzy Miss Lizzy” instead of “Yesterday”? I don’t know. I just…

Reporter #1: “Dizzy Miss Lizzy”? Really?

PG: Yea, that was my first favorite song. It was the flipside to “Yesterday”. I was hating “Yesterday”, but I loved “Dizzy Miss Lizzy”, and you can always ask yourself “Why?” – I don’t know, I don’t have the answer, it’s just something, some electricity in certain songs that just keeps… that just keeps people kicking, and for me it’s just – it’s always been like that. So, yea… no, I don’t think I was born 30 years too late. No. Long answer to a short question.

FC: You mentioned Elvis again. A whole track on your album is dedicated to Elvis [“Elvis In Germany (Let’s Celebrate!)”]. What is it that makes him so special for you?

PG: He’s got such a fantastic hip name. Elvis. It’s so cool!

FC: So, is this the reason why you dropped your first name for this solo album, because “Gess-le” sounds more “El-vis”?

PG: Well, I never thought about that, but maybe! It’s a Freudian sort of thing, and… I think, Elvis is like the Godfather of it all. If there wasn’t an Elvis, there wouldn’t have been a John Lennon. Even people who are in their twenties today and play in rock bands, even if they know it or not, they are influenced by Elvis because Elvis influenced what we call pop music or rock music so much. So I mean, Elvis is like, he is more like a symbol, you know. But the reason for that song is basically because I passed a NATO base in Germany while touring, and I just came to think about that Elvis did his military service in Germany. So I thought, hey, that’s a hell of a title to a song, “Elvis In Germany”! So I just made up this whole story and tried to link, you know, Sergeant Pepper to Major Tom to Colonel Parker in the same verse, which was quite funny to do. So it’s just, you know, rubbish, basically, the whole story. I didn’t know what it was all about. But it’s just my version of what happened when Elvis came to Germany. Afterwards I bought a book about Elvis and read about it, when he came, and nothing, of course, made sense, you know, it wasn’t like it’s in the song at all. But it doesn’t really matter. Elvis don’t mind. – “Elvis Don’t Mind”, that’s a great title!

FC: Is The World According To Gessle a once-in-a-lifetime project, or can we expect more English solo stuff from you some day in the future?

PG: Well, it depends. I mean, if you asked me a year ago about making a solo album, I would’ve said “no, why?”, you know, there was no reason to do it. The only reason I did it was because Marie told me she was pregnant, and she needed to extend her break, basically. And I said, shit, what am I gonna do, because I had all these songs, and I wanted to do an album which was very much a guitar album, so I said, okay, I’ll do an album so I have something to do while waiting for you. So, maybe there comes a time, maybe an opportunity comes up to do something without Marie. But I always consider Roxette to be my priority and to be what’s it all about for me. And so, I can’t really see… I mean, Marie and I, we talk a lot, and we socialize a lot, so I can’t really see an ending to Roxette. But just like she’s been doing solo albums in Swedish once in a while, it might happen that I do something on my own. Sometimes I think it’s good that you do something on your own, because you tend to find a different responsibility, you work with new people, it’s like new fresh air in the room you know. Sometimes it’s good, especially when the band is getting old like Roxette is. We’ve been around for eleven years since we started out. It’s good to work with other people, you know, get some new points of view, new blood in.

FC: Many up-tempo songs can be found on your solo album. Does this mean that Roxette will turn into a pure ballads band, or will you keep on recording tracks like, for example, “I Love The Sound of Crashing Guitars” with Roxette as well?

PG: Yea, that’s an interesting question, because on the way from the airport here I said to Marie [Dimberg] who’s from EMI Records that I haven’t done ballads for a while, so I’ll have to write lots of ballads for the new Roxette album, without thinking. So maybe you have a point here. The reason for picking so many up-tempo songs is basically because I don’t really see myself as a big ballad singer. I don’t see myself as a big singer anyway. But I mean, songs like “You Don’t Understand Me” or “It Must Have Been Love”, I can’t really do that, because, you know, Marie is much better doing that. So I almost got away with “I Want You to Know”, but that was about it. That’s the ballad on this album. My voice… I’m not like a big singer. I’ve always been singing. I started to sing in my first band because nobody else wanted to sing, and the reason for putting Roxette together in the first place was that I wanted to find a proper singer for my material and Marie wanted someone who wrote songs for her voice, so that’s how we, theoretically, we said, we have something here. I’m more like a delivery boy when it comes to singing, I can deliver a song, but I can’t really, I’m not like a big singer.

FC: You just said that you judge yourself as a minor singer. Is this what you try to hide by distorting your records?

PG: Nah, not really. It’s more like… I like distorted sounds, and I think it’s… my voice is quite soft, and, you know, when you work in the studio, certain voices sound… you know, like the girls in ABBA, for instance, they sound really really cool when they overdub, you know, overdub the vocal tracks all the time. But if you use just one vocal take, they sound really thin. And I have a certain thing with my voice, if I overdub it, it doesn’t sound good at all, but if I distort it a little bit, it sounds really cool. So, I mean, certain vocals, voices, need certain things to make them attractive. Certain singers, like… if you listen to the new McCartney album, especially those songs that Jeff Lynn produced, they don’t really use any echoes at all, and his voice is very dry. And to be able to do that, you have to have a perfect pitch on your voice, like Tom Petty is always doing that, because he sings very very clean and on a perfect pitch. So if you are a singer like that, which I am not, you can do it like that. So you have to find the… over the years, you learn how you… it’s the same with microphones! My voice sounds shit in certain microphones, and it sounds really cool in other microphones. So, two singers don’t necessarily have the same options, you know. It’s just a matter of finding something that feels attractive.

FC: So we won’t see an end of distortion in the near future?

PG: No, I mean, propably… I even dragged Marie into distortion now, she sees a lot of distorted voices on her demos! I think it’s nice. Especially if you have, like on “Do You Wanna Be My Baby”, there’s a clean voice in the middle, and then it’s double tracked and triple tracked, and we distort it on the outside, which makes the whole bunch of voices sound really, sort of, interesting, I think.

FC: Yea, but it causes clipping, of course. I guess you’ve read about it in our Review?

PG: Yea, but that’s… I don’t think so. I think…

FC: There’s still the possibility to distort the voices in the studio and then put them on the CD in 1:a quality…

PG: Yea, but it’s… 1:a quality is like… I don’t agree, because quality is a very relative thing, you know. Certain things are not meant to sound perfect, they are meant to sound distorted. And that doesn’t mean that they are worse or better than anything else, I mean, it’s… some people complain, you can’t have a scratch on a record, it’s like, crrrch, crrrch, crrrch, all the time. But I think it’s part of the rythm, part of the group. So it’s like… nah, I just… it’s a matter of taste.

Reporter #2: Do you sometimes feel like doing something totally different?

PG: Like cooking?

R2: Or do you write songs that don’t fit to you and put it in the shops?

PG: No, everything I write fits me because it’s me. It’s just that… I never really think about it, like changing or, you know… I just write, and sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad. But there’s no hidden secret dream of a Jazz Per Gessle or like a Heavy Metal Per Gessle, or a Techno Per Gessle.

FC: Country?

PG: Yea, well, Country would be fun! But, I mean, there is… I can’t see myself doing a Country album, but there are certain elements in Country Music that I really like. Especially the instruments, like Pedal Steel Guitar and that kind of stuff. And I like the idea of all this story-telling that they have traditionally in Country Music which is really interesting I think. But there is no sort of… there is not like another side to me.

R2: But you said in our phone interview that you are interested in modern styles of music, like Prodigy and so on…

PG: Yea, sure – but that doesn’t mean that I want to do it myself! Because, I think, to be able to write music, you have to have a relationship with that sort of music, it’s something that has to come natural to you. I can’t… it would be silly of me to start, sort of, try to play Chopin on piano because I have no relationship to Chopin at all. It is the same with The Chemical Brothers or Prodigy. I don’t have a relationship with that. I find it very interesting, especially since they are breaking down, especially The Chemical Brothers, is breaking down the structures of the songs, you know, no choruses, no verses, in the classic sense, which I find very interesting. But I can’t really see myself doing it because I don’t know how to do it. The only way I could do it, probably, is if I start working with someone who is really into that kind of stuff so he opens up the doors for me so I can, sort of, get into that sort of vein and then use my own working…

R1: The Chemical Brothers have worked with Oasis, maybe they will work with you!

PG: Yea… do you really think The Chemical Brothers are on the new Oasis album? I mean, Noel Gallagher was on the single.

R1: Yea.

PG: That’s not the same thing, doing something with Oasis. I mean, that’s probably because he parted with this even guy from Lemonheads too, they did something. You can do certain things, but that doesn’t mean… I don’t think this was a serious attempt on doing something else. I mean, it’s probably because they are mates, you know. So I don’t know. But it’s… you can never know. But it’s not the really important thing. The important thing is that you, for me anyway, it is really important to be true to the things that you like and the things that you feel comfortable while doing, and I hate all this discussions with people that say, hey, you have to listen, the new album has to be more dance-oriented, this new album must be this or must be that, and I say, why? Just because the current charts are like that? That has nothing to do with me, I mean, I don’t make, you know, make up the charts, and in my little world the charts would look very different. But that doesn’t mean I have to change my music just to transform it into, like, chartable. I always think the challenge must be to change the charts, you know, I think, in the end of the days, like we’ve talked before, it’s all about songs. If you have a good song, it comes through, no matter what. Celine Dion, which I don’t particularly like at all, she sold 21 million albums, or, whatever, I mean, it’s so many records from different genres that come through, which is great!

R1: Do you have any idea why the Swedish pop acts, like Roxette, ABBA, Ace Of Base, are so popular in Europe, and Austrian bands are not popular in Europe? I think that’s because the people can understand what the bands are singing, they have really easy understandable choruses and the music and also the lyrics…

PG: Yea, I always get this question, why are the Swedish bands so successful, what is the phenomenon of Swedish music, and I don’t have an answer. I think there must obviously be lots of answers to it. First of all I think…

(tape recorder of R1 stops)

R1: I don’t have a second tape… I will keep it in mind.

PG: Keep it in mind. It’s not very interesting anyway.

FC: I’ll copy that for you!

PG: First of all I think the music that comes out of a country reflects the country. Swedish people have always been into, you know, melodic pop, you know, it’s always been… the town I come from which is about 80 000 people living there, in the early Eighties, we had like 120 pop bands, everyone was into pop music. That’s one of the reasons I think. I mean, if you listen to German pop music or German rock music, it very much reflects Germany. So I think that has a lot to do with it. But also I think Swedish people in general, especially kids, tend to speak much better English than, let’s say, German people do. And I think that has only to do with one thing, and that’s the subtitling of TV which obviously doesn’t really exist in certain parts of Europe, I don’t know how it is here, but if you are to France or to Germany, it’s like you can’t really find an English-speaking channel. So that sort of educates people to speak English, and if you want to go abroad, I mean, obviously you have to do it in… it’s like watching those Finnish racing drivers doing interviews. They speak English with a very big Finnish accent. That’s very charming if you are a racing driver, but it’s hopeless if you are a singer! So I mean, you have to learn these things, it’s a fundamental thing. Otherwise, I don’t know, because I don’t think Swedish people or Swedish musicians are better or the singers are better or the producers are better, because they are not. It’s just about, you know. The only thing I hope is that… since the English started to sort of look at the Scandinavians like a phenomenon and they sort of write about it, then suddenly it becomes fashion, it becomes a trend. And trends always end, you know. (thinks) T-R-E-N-D… Hmm. I just hope it’s certain qualities in the records that come out of Sweden, you know.

R1: The history continues: ABBA, Roxette, Ace of Base, The Cardigans…

FC: The Wannadies…

PG: Yea, but still… you are talking about 25 years, and you mentioned six names!

R1: Yea, but ABBA is in the Seventies, Roxette in the Eighties and Nineties, and maybe The Cardigans…

PG: Yea, maybe. Well, I don’t know. Obviously, all the bands that you mentioned are very different from each other, so there’s no sort of… it’s not like we are following in the footsteps of ABBA or whatever.

R1: But there’s melody… there’s melody and then the rest.

PG: I don’t know. There’s a new generation of music coming out of Sweden now. We have like a generation of immigrants coming through, especially in the big cities, which are not very big compared to European big cities, but for our standards they are quite big, which also affects music, you know, it’s more… global, a global way of thinking. There’s for example, which comes from Ethiopia, she works out of Sweden, she’s very good, she’s very talented, for her, I’m sure… I mean, she speaks Swedish, she was born there, but for her, she works for the world, because that’s the attitude. There’s lots of them who think like that. Even just going back to ’89 when Roxette happened, it was really hard to… you know, most bands worked in Swedish, today hardly anyone works in Swedish.

FC: A question coming from the Internet. EMI is going to take legal action against people who have Roxette images or sound files on their home pages on the Internet.

PG: Is that true?

FC: Yea… that was actually a newspaper article where you were quoted that you agree with this. Now, the question is: don’t you think that this will kill a lot of free promotion that you got on the Internet?

PG: I got dragged into this discussion… this guy, this journalist… it was Oasis, or Sony actually, who did come out and said something, and he wanted me to comment on this, and I said, I don’t have a comment because I haven’t really read Oasis’ statement or Sony’s statement, and I can’t comment anything, in Sweden it’s like a full page just like this. So I just said to my press agent that one, two sentences, and she gave these two sentences, and it was like this big quote. And the only thing I said was that I think that the copyright should always be taken care of. It’s the same with piracy, record piracy and everything. If artists, and it has nothing to do with successful artists or money or anything, it’s just… if you are a writer of books or scripts or whatever and no one is taking care of your copyrights, it’s gonna be chaos, and that reflects Internet as well, I mean, if it’s a problem for the record industry or the book industry or the movie industry or whatever that the Internet is getting out of hand, I think something should be done about it. That’s the only thing I said, so I think… I mean, there is, of course, the Internet promotes for us. I’ve never seen this as a problem for Roxette. I mean, if I go and seek on Roxette, I find like 50 Homepages from Roxette…

FC: At least, yea…

PG: Yea, and I don’t have a problem with that at all, as long as people are not selling my new album there if it’s not a legal album, you know. That’s what I think the industry is talking about. Oasis probably just sees a lot of merchandise being sold which they don’t have control of, or, I mean, illegal stuff, and so they probably… since they are selling tons and tons of things that we don’t do, they probably feel like they are losing a lot of money, so they want to stop it and I can understand that, you know. Because Internet should be, just like you said, it should be like a big thing for everyone, it’s a fantastic thing, but it shouldn’t be used for illegal things. And if someone… so the only thing I was basically talking about was basically to protect copyrights.

BR: The last questions, please…

R2: You could have stopped working years and years ago and go to a sunny island and everything, why are you still doing so much work, I mean, now you are doing promotion going across Europe and so on which is really exhausting I think, why do you do this?

PG: Because it’s fun, because it’s… I didn’t start doing this because I wanted to retire and go to a sunny island. I don’t like sunny islands! For me it has just been, if you release an album, the best way I can make this album reach as many listeners as possible which is why I made the album in the first place is to promote it, and I make life a lot easier for Bernd [Roxette’s Promotion Manager at EMI Austria] and for the other guys around the world if I go here or go there and talk about it. So for me it’s just like… it’s not exhausting. Sometimes it is, but nevertheless it’s part of what I do, and I don’t have a problem with that, I can do this for like a lot more months. So I don’t have a problem with it.

R2: Would you say somebody who sold 45 million records is happier than somebody else?

PG: Well, he’s not happier than the one who sold 55 million!

FC: What are your expectations for the Fanclub Meeting in Cologne that you’ll attend on Saturday?

PG: To survive… that’s my target.

R1: I’ve heard that the first Roxette album is re-released in December…

PG: Yea, October!

R1: There are plans about a CD-ROM part because the album is just about 45 minutes long and so there’s some space for CD-ROM activities?

PG: Yea, we’ve talked about that. We’ve talked about releasing it and put some bonus tracks on it, B-sides and stuff that was hard to find, and also put on maybe three or four of the old ridiculous videos that we made in the early days, which I think should definitely be out so we can, you know, stand in the corner and be very shameful, embarassed. That’s the way we are! No skeletons in the closet!

BR: Okay, thank you, thanx a lot!

PG: We have to stay here because the coffee was great! Excellent coffee!