HALMSTAD - Fans who make the pilgrimage to Sweden this summer will have an additional “must see” destination to add to their list. The Länsmuséet in Halmstad, as previously reported, is mounting a major Gyllene Tider retrospective – Återblickar – that will depict the band’s career from their start in 1979 right up until today. The show opens on June 6th.

  “Gyllene Tider is a phenomenon in Sweden,” says Bo Ericson, the retrospective’s curator. “They’ve had a tremendous impact, not only on the music industry, but on popular culture here as well.”

  The Daily Roxette has been in contact recently with both Ericson and Håkan Kvist, who serves as the exhibit’s lead designer.

  “A few of my colleagues are terrified – really scared – about the stampede of visitors to come this summer,” says Ericson. “Even I’m kind of sweaty,” he admits. The museum is expecting 100,000 people will want to pass through the retrospective’s galleries, with extremely long lines expected on July 14th and 15th, the dates of the two GT25 concerts in Halmstad.

  The items on display will showcase not only the band’s own memories, but also those of their fans. The curators were able to locate two “girls,” now middle-aged women, who were huge Gyllene Tider fans at the beginning of the ’80s. From them, the museum has borrowed a lot of vintage material, like posters and photos from different magazines, newspaper articles, and other memorobilia. All of this will be assembled to show what a typical “teen girl’s room” might have looked like in the early ’80s when a lot of Swedish girls were “in love” with their adorable boy band and covered their rooms with Gyllene Tider posters and pictures.


  “For us, this is a whole new way of mounting an exhibition,” says Ericson. “It’s very modern.”

  The exhibition will have a kind of “media” room where one can not only experience the music of Gyllene Tider, but also be bombarded with moving images and pictures of all the records that Gyllene Tider has ever released. This video wall will be put together with about five large monitors and Kvist hopes it will give the whole room a really cool and overwhelming feeling.

  The exhibition will also give guests the possibility to see instruments, photos, never-before-seen film clips and – of course – records. So far, the museum has been able to obtain no less than five of Gyllene Tider’s guitars including a bass from Anders Herrlin and a Fender Telecaster from Per Gessle. Also on display will be a big (and rather heavy) Farfisa organ from Göran Fritzon.

  While museum exhibitions are usually serious, Ericson tells TDR that Återblickar will incorporate “a bit of a sense of humor.” The whole idea for the museum project was hatched, after all, while Ericson was drinking ouzo and beer with Mats “MP” Persson. The two have been friends and neighbors for years, and were vacationing together in Greece. Ericson, perhaps inspired by a successful ABBA exhibit that ran for a year at the Nordiska Museet in Stockholm, asked if there wasn’t a Gyllene Tider anniversary coming up. Once home, Ericson wrote up his proposal for a museum exhibition and MP presented it to the rest of the group.

  “We never asked the band as a group, or as individuals, for any help with the budget,” explains Ericson. The exhibit costs are attached to the museum’s annual budget, with some underwriting from local sponsors.

  Museum visitors will be able to purchase a commemorative exhibition poster, measuring 70x100 cm. Currently in production, the poster will be sold for 60 kronor (about €6.50). The entrance fee to the museum itself is 40 kronor (about €4.50).

  Working with the old private film clips and home movies the museum has collected, a prototype DVD has been produced. Copies of this proposed DVD are currently being reviewed by band members and the group’s management. If the necessary permissions are granted, this too will be available for sale at the museum’s gift shop.

  The retrospective is scheduled to remain open until the end of October.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Per-Axel Månsson, TDR’s lead reporter for this story, has also contributed to the exhibition by lending his Gyllene Tider record collection to be photographed for use on the video wall. Photos on right courtesy of the Museum of Halmstad. Additional reporting by Lars-Erik Olson.

• Museum of Halmstad (additional ’sneak preview’ photos, including larger versions of those shown here)