Rock, Set And Match

It's about timing. To be right at the right place at the right time.
Like Gyllene Tider's "Flickorna på TV2".
Like Roxette's "The look" and "Joyride".
And maybe like "Have a nice day".
Jan-Owe Wikström talks with Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle about inspiration, children - and the new record.

- Yes, it feels like our music style is beginning to be right again. When "Crash! Boom! Bang!" was released the stage was a lot of dance and hip hop. Buth when Aerosmith's "You don't wanna miss a thing" became no. 1 last year it was the first no. 1 pop song on the USA list since Mr. Big in 1992, Per Gessle points out.
Roxette is back.
Five years after the last real CD "Crash! Boom! Bang!", four years after the band ended their last world tour on Red Square in Moscow on May the 1:st and fully three years after Roxette's last single "She doesn't live here anymore" from the group's greatest hits-album will Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson conquer the world again.
Rock, set and match one more time, kind of.
But Per isn't worried. At least he doesn't show it.
- No, since we've never been a trend band and never gonna win any hip contests it is how good the new record is that will decide everything. Then there's much of Roxette in The Corrs, Beautiful South and Savage Garden, but if there's someone who's allowed to sound like Roxette it's probably - Roxette?! Therefore you may never underrate the trademark Roxette, it's extremely strong.
Oh yes, over 30 million sold albums and a whole bunch of millions of singles is pretty good proof ot that. At the same time as the Roxette composer Per's own solo cd "The world according to Gessle" not became the success that was expected.

Not yet another guitar record

But it was that and Gyllene Tider which, in a way, became landmark for Roxette's new album.
- I decided to make one more guitar record. After my solo record and Gyllene it was a bit too much.
The sound got updated to late 90's, more hi-tech, machines, dance beat and (real) strings and less guitars. Without renouncing Roxette's melodious trademark and vocal contrasts between Fredriksson and Gessle.
In autumn 1997 Per wrote eleven new songs of which two survived when the recordings started in spring 1998 in the studio The Spanish house outside Marbella on Spain's suncoast which up to then had been used by Björk and INXS, but above all by modern dance artists like Howie B, Nelly Hooper and Goldie. The rest was written during the journey. A journey which took a good deal longer time than what was planned from the start. And then it wasn't due to the 40 year old Gessle's new life as dad, "The big step into the adult world was when I became a dad", to the 18 months old son Gabriel.
More to the recordings with four producers, Per, Marie, Clarence Öfverman and Michael Ilbert besides that Brainpools bass player Christoffer Lundquist was totally new in the gang.
- There has never been such turbulence, so much fighting and discussions around a Roxette recording like this one. But it was four different wills which led the development forward where we managed to meet somewhere on the way, says Marie.
Per nods agreeing:
- If you should describe our features simply then Clarence is the sophisticated, Ilbert a lot Indie, Marie more traditional and I the ruthless who can throw myself between the styles and think that both Backstreet Boys, Fatboy Slim and Massive Attack are good. At the same time we have many common connections and therefore the result became exciting and good. Damned good.

Inspiration from the tumble-drier

During the interview in the several million house in Sandhamn outside Halmstad the artist Gessle has to switch to the dad role quickly when Gabriel, in mummy Åsa's and the nursemaid Sofia's absence, starts to play with a motorcycle in miniature.
- I dont think you should have that, Per says and places the thing which in actual fact turns out to be a fully working antique from 1910(!) at the highest top on a shelf!
Gabriel has also a song dedicated to him on the new cd, the blue, a little jazz redolent "I was so lucky".
- Yes, I wrote it for him. I started at nine o' clock in the morning, was finished a quiarter to two, went to the studio Tits & Ass and began recording at two o' clock and was finished twelve hours later. And the version on the record is almost identical to the demo apart from Jonas Knutsson's fantastic saxophone.
He was born when Roxette after seven years of more or less continuously work between 1988 and 1995 had taken a break.
- But it doesn't mean that I have to choose between the family and the career. Instead it's about planning and for me it's very important to have both Åsa and Gabriel with me on the journeys. To both have the cookie and eat it at the same time, kind of.
And not enough that the interest for cars and motorcycles that both father and son have - Gabriel's toys can, with a silly sound or something like that, start the inspiration to a new song in Per.
- The more strange the original idea is - the more I like it. It's about being keen, to be able to construe your own taste and then convert it to your own reference library.
Per mentions the vacuum cleaner, the dishwasher and the tumble-drier whose sound becomes a monotonous rhythm, a pulse, as (almost) just as big inspiration source as the groove in a disco song or the strumming on the guitar or the piano.
- Therefore I also try to write in keys which I don't manage. Then I do many mistakes and it's from the mistakes the odd, funny ideas come up.
Of the 42 written songs 19 got recorded of which 14 ended up on the cd.
- Then, for instance, we had to scrap an intended single which really didn't have a natural place on the record. That's the big difference between writing one single song or for a whole album. Suddenly you realize that there are certain songs missing to make the record feel complete. So the last tracks I wrote were "Anyone", "I was so lucky", "Crush on you" and "Stars" which are very different but were needed on "Have a nice day", Per explains of which the two last mentioned, euro popy "Stars" with its children's choir and suggestive "Crush on you" maybe stand the most for Roxette's new, updated sound.

Damn good under pressure

And writing under pressure is something, unlike many others, that pleases the pop artist Per.
- Yes, I'm damn good at it, actually - to write a song within a certain category. I can do that in one evening and it turns out good, he declares without wanting to sound cocky.
- At the same time I think it's easier to write song with an obvious melody, like "Salvation" compared to suggestive songs which more are built on rhythm.
- On the other hand it becomes a totally different situation if I don't know what style it should be because that's what makes the music so difficult - that it's boundless.
He does indeed go out on the Internet every now and then on Roxette's homepages, to anonymous plant small news, make rumours and by that increase that interest, but to be no.1 on the lists is not as important as before. - No, even if it certainly would be a bonus, I aim at quality instead, both in the songs, in the performance and in the concerts.
- Through the years I've become a better workman and I don't jump on the first best idea anymore.
So even it it sometimes slinks in a loop that we think we've heard before, he doesn't want to be called a pop thief.
- There's probably no songwriter that deliberately copies and keeps something that someone else has done already - then you're simply looking for trouble. But at the same time it seems like it's in the human's nature to always want to compare and then it has its source from somewhere, Beatles from Buddy Holly, Rolling Stones from the rhythm & blues and so on. And it wasn't me who invented music.
Beatles is also echoing somewhere in the background when Marie for the first time contributes with a whole Roxette song, the pop song "Waiting for the rain", where she as written both lyrics and music.
- I wrote it in five minutes, it was just there suddenly. But since it was by the piano it was much ballad over it from the beginning which then got speeded up in the studio to become what it became on the record, she explains proudly.
The promotion journeys before "Have a nice day" are already in full swing. Big parts of Europe are ready covered and during spring it's time for another visit to England and Germany among others and longer trips to Japan, South America, South Africa and South east Asia.
And in autumn hopefully the USA, the lost country
- Yes, there's a latent interest for Roxette there after our four no.1 hits, so with the right backup maybe we can take back some land there. That'a maybe the thing I regret the most in the career, that we didn't steer up the USA better when Roxette was loosing there. At the same time we didn't have the possibility to do it at that point, Per admits.

Jass a new passion!

Both he and Marie hope for a new world tour - a decision which will be taken some time during the spring.
- Yes, that's what I long for the most, to stand on stage again and sing live, says the scene person Fredriksson.
- But the thought is that it shall be concert arenas in the size of Globen and Scandinavium and it all depends on how the record gets received and sells. Because we are not going to tour for the touring's sake, Gessle points out.
He has already started to write new songs.
Dance songs
- Yes, I really want to record one more record. And just dance songs I don't master so then the challenge would be even bigger.
But in his spare time in the house in Sandhamn or at Strandvägen in Stockholm he listens to another kind of music.
- Jazz! Yes, it's true. When I work with pop music I don't have a need to listen to it and therefore have I bought a few jazz records lately. Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk and above all - Mose Allison, he's great, Per affirms and puts on the record.
Hello music lovers!
The pop fanatic Gessle likes jazz!
For a little while "Neverending love" feels endlessly far away.
But on February 15:th the remix of "Wish I could fly" is released and a week later "Have a nice day".
Then the game begins seriously. Rock, set and match.

Jan-Owe Wikström
Entré
from January 1999
Translated by Martina Karlsson

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