Per Interview On Radio Halland

This is a transcription of a radio interview with Per, broadcasted on Swedish Radio Halland the 31:st December 99.

PG (Per): It's the same as before, you get your questions, and then you answer them.
R (Reporter): About doing promotion and making interiews.
PG: Before it has always been if we were togheter, but everyone knows now that we aren't. I think it's why we paused for 3,5 years, I guess that's what people are most curious about. I don't have a good answer to that, it just turned out that way.
R: There came some things in between, as it use to do sometimes.
To be be out on promotion, which you have almost the whole year Per, what do you think about it?
PG: It's quite fun, in a way. Now we chose with Have a nice day to not tour, and play, so the only way to come out and talk and meet journalists and people, is to do promotion. So I think it's pretty fun. Moreover we've made it in a quite pleasant dose this time, in itself we've been over the whole globe basically, Asia and South America. But it hasn't been three months in a row and such, we've taken a couple of months and the we have gone home. It was quite nice.
PG: It's much about, when you release a new record, to be seen, to do big tv-programmes, and obviously it helps, in the big countries you do these big tv-programmes on a Saturday night and of course it has an effect. Here in Sweden it has become a big difference I think, if you say, since the 80's, when Gyllene started. Then it was enough to do Måndagsbörsen and then it was done. but since we've got another tv system, radio system you have to do many programmes. It's not enough with one tv-programme or one radio station, you have to work all the time. So it's more job for us. But I don't have a problem with that, it's another way of working.

PG:We lie on about 1.8 million and it maybe doesn't say so much to people, but....
R:About disappointment
PG: It's a good figure and so, but it's lower than what we usually have. We wanted to sell 2 million and over and that was our target, so we didn't succeed with that. It's mostly due to the fact that we still haven't released our record in America, in North America.
R:Why is that?
PG: Because we have broken our co- operation with our record company there. So we're simply trying to get a new partner. But now time has gone and things haven't turned out as we wanted, we've talked with many different companies but haven't really got anywhere. We haven't even released our Greatest Hits record in the USA so we still have that left and it's possible that we take some pearls from Have A Nice Day, Wish I Could Fly for example, and put on the Greatest Hits record if that would be of interest. So there are different variants. But as for me, I think Wish I Could Fly is yesterday's news.

PG: I have big countries, big markets in for example Spain, Italy, Germany, south-east Asia, like Indonesia, Malaysia...
R: About success.
PG: Europe excluding England has gone damn good. I think England has been a disappointment. It's the same thing there, we've totally lost foothold with our record company in England. Unfortunately, but those things happen. We have worked together with the same record company through all the years so it's a new time now. New people, new faces.
R: And a new record.
PG: Yes, it's time now. We started recording two weeks ago. So the thought is to have a new record out next Christmas, that's our target.

R: Scholarship, county scholarship, gratulations.
PG: Thanks.
R: What do you think about that?
PG: It's very nice, to be noticed in different ways, so it's great really.
R: Do you get many in a year?
PG: No, I don't have a subscription on scholarships. No, it's not so often.
R: Have you recieved many keys and such to cities during your tours?
PG: No, not many but I think we have the key to Detroit, of all places. And there was a city I don't remember where that could have been, somewhere in Japan I think. But it's also thinly sown in the bunch of keys. It's mostly gold records and a competion in some magazine or something like that, but not if you mean more cultural things, it's pretty seldom.
R: Do you miss it?
PG: No, I don't. You know so little of what there is so you don't think about it. A scholarship, it's fun to get a scholarship here in Halmstad, from Hallands county council. But what am I doing with the key to Detroit, really?
R: It doesn't fit anywhere.
PG: No, it doesn't fit anywhere, and they don't make any fun cars any longer.

PG: My first meetings with music, it was about...
R: About music and feelings
PG: Melodies, sounds. It was a voice, that describes a feeling. It can be lustful feelings or anything. Music gives away some, I don't know, it's an own alphabet in some kind of way.
R: Is it hard on your part as an originator to create these feelings? Is that what you search for all the time?
PG: Yes, that's what you search for all the time. I am my only, own, only judge so I try to feel for myself how it feels. Does this sound exactly the way I want it to sound? If it does sound so I react the way I want that you should react, and if I do that it's good. If I don't then I haven't done right. That's really my only key. The next phase is of course to play for other people. But it use to correspond, when I'm uncertain about a thing and play it, then I notice right away that people don't react at all on it. And I understand why they don't react, even if they maybe don't understand it themselves. If I walk in and listen to a record I don't know about I don't have any, I'm all free from prejudices. You react very spontaneous on music. That's wonderful. Of everything I write I use very little. Yesterday we sat in the studio here in Halmstad, me and Mats MP, for 14 hours, and I said to Mats: Now we've been sitting here for 14 hours and we have made 52 seconds of music, and it's not even finished. It's the beginning of a song we're working with. And what we've done in this short period of time is supersifted of an even bigger amount of things I've written, so it's very little.
R: Does it feel powerless sometimes?
PG: No, it's like that, it has to be like that. You can't take take the first that comes along and believe it will be good. It's a searching all the time.
R: About writing books and pain paintings
PG: It's a job like any other, you search for, it's like when you sit and write a book and write 2000 pages and it becomes 200 in the end. It's like that... I guess.
R: Yea, I suppose so too. Have you written a book?
PG: No, I don't know how to do it. But it would be fun, I like to write but I don't know if I have the patience. Sometimes I think it would have been nice to do something else where you convey a similar type of creativity. I'm always looking for to get out such things, but in what way besides the music I don't know. We've had pretty much finicky job with our house down here in Halmstad, architecture things, fitting-up and all that, and that has been very fun. It's a thing I share very much with my wife, who's very good at this. And I see similarities, just like in music, in architecture or art overall. It's the same thing really.
R: I've never asked you, do you paint paintings?
PG: No, I did when I was younger, it hasn't come to anything either. But I think I will do that as time goes. It's also about to dare to do it, to dare to fail in it, because you always want to be so good. I feel more relaxed now than about 5-6 years ago. So why not? With pleasure.

Interviewer: Pelle Hörmander
Radio Halland
from 31 December 1999
Transcription and translation by Martina Karlsson

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