Baby-C said on June 9, 2007 09:20:

Here’s a translation of the article in Metro. Have fun reading, I know my english isn’t perfect.

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A new chapter in Per Gessles life:

IDOL. A gang of kids in the preschool age emediately flock around Per Gessle and asks for autographs when he shows up out at Djurgården. That sort of lights up his greatness. It’s been 30 years since he first formed the first popband Grape Rock at home in Halmstad - and he still entices a new crowd.

- I’l like a cartoon figure, you know! Not that I feel like one, but ofcourse I have noted that it is enourmously many generations that’s intrested of what I’m doing. I noticed that not least at the Gyllene-tour. It was kids like these and all the way up to grandmother and grandfather. That’s pretty cool!

Per Gessle is in his third breath. After the succeses with Gyllene Tider and Roxette he is bigger than ever on his homefield as a soloartist. Now the third solo album comes in the suite that begun with “Mazarin” and “Son of a plumber” - “En händig man”. But the title lies.
- But they say I’m kind of good at cleaning. I’m a bit of a pedant, actually.

In times of downloading you are a bit of a dinosaur, aren’t you? You still have the LP-format as your starting point.
- But I want it like that - and will always want to have it like that. Some things I don’t compromise with. Just the photoshoot (by Anton Corbijn in Lisbon) of the cover costed more than what the entire recordings did. For a cover! No one throughs out that much money on a cover anymore, but I want it like that.

- Why?
- Because I love covers. I still buy records because I want the information that covers give. What the artist look like - or atleast what they want to show of themselves. But my son, who soon will be 10 years old and like music like hell thinks CD’s are completely worthless. He doesn’t understand the point. Not to speak about when I try to play LP’s for him. Extremely remarkable, but totally unintresting, so there you feel old.

But you have still said that you get inspired by listening to your old recordcollection in downloaded format.
- Yes, like when you do a mixed track. First comes Nancy Sinatra, then Led Zeppelin, Creedence and then comes Håkan Hellström. It’s fantastic, like the oldfashioned melody radio. Today the radio is so extremely formatted, everything are so maximised. But I was lucky to get into the music business while it expanded all the time. We were not preticularily good, but we were given time to become great.

That’s the sort of things that the forthcoming biography “Att vara Per Gessle” (Being Per Gessle) will be all about?
- Yes, the book came to life on my suggestion when Marie (Fredriksson) was almost disapearing. I said that someone really should write a book about Roxette, while the people is still here, because we didn’t know what would happen to Marie. So the idea from the beginning was a book about Roxette. But Sven Lindström wanted to develop it to a biography about me.

How free hand has he gotten?
- The only thing I have had influense over is my own quotes, that they are correct and that I can live with them without being ashamed. I haven’t censored anything when someone else says something stupid about me. I’m not Gods best child and the book is supposed to give a good picture of the carrier. It has been very diffrent opinions about things, not least with Gyllene Tider but also with Roxette. Diffrent conflicts that it’s been spoken about, everything like that is there.
- But the last chapter isn’t written yet. The last piece is the tour this summer.
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Sascha said on June 9, 2007 11:18:

Thank you, sille-rox! Think I would have preferred a book about Roxette, written in english. :-P

crashroxer said on June 9, 2007 12:39:

What a stupid pic from hallandsposten!! *lol*

RobS said on June 9, 2007 14:33:

Thanks for the translation.

I was quite surprised to read that the book was originally supposed to be about Roxette, that would have been great. Maybe something in the future?

Will be interesting to see what’s actually in the book.