STOCKHOLM - With Roxette’s 20th Anniversary celebration really picking up steam, Per Gessle is on the road a lot these days, going from Stockholm to New York to Hamburg… with more travel plans in the works. Back home for the moment, he’s agreed to spend some time with The Daily Roxette. As always, we’re full of questions, and we know that this time together is limited, so we dive right in:

  Gyllene Tider is put on ice “forever,” Son of a Plumber is hard to beat in terms of quality, Roxette seems to take a lot of energy from Marie and reports are telling us that you are writing a book about your life. Will we see Per Gessle lying in a hammock on a sunny beach for the rest of his life? Can you tell us about your “secret” plans for 2007 that you hinted at on TV4?

  Yes, there is an authorized book coming out in, I guess, September next year. Sven Lindström is doing all the hard work, I’m just playing the leading role.

  I would love to do another SOAP album some day and yes, there might be some more Rox music in the future. Beyond that, sorry, but I can’t reveal anything [more right now]. But the hammock sounds nice… sunny beach even nicer…

  After having had a few stage appearances with Roxette over the last few weeks, you might be able to forecast how the near future of Roxette – especially regarding Marie’s situation – may look like. Will there be more Roxette in 2007 or will we have to wait until Rox25 for more hits? What options do you see at the moment?

  Same answer as before. I’m working on new things, new songs, new everything like I always do. I like to keep my head busy.

  You once mentioned that with the Mazarin tour you discovered the joy of such concerts. Do you feel like going on a huge tour again in the future? Let it be solo or with Rox or…

  Yes, I’m sure there will be more tours in the future. I like playing and singing my songs. I like getting the reaction I usually get from the audience. It’s hard to beat. It’s like a great go-cart lap. Read more…

HAMBURG - The first thing this reporter notices, when I arrive at the Color Line Arena in Hamburg the day before the Bravo gala on Saturday, is a group of Tokio Hotel fans.

  “For whom did you come?” asks one of the girls. She isn’t much older than 15 and fixes her makeup every three minutes. “Roxette,” I say and her reply is clear: “Who?”

  It continues like that the whole day, as fans hope to for a chance to see the various groups arrive for soundcheck and technical rehearsals. Nobody’s there for Roxette.

  It’s the same thing on Saturday. About four hours before the show starts, the Tokio Hotel fans are screaming their lungs out and waiting for their heros to appear on the red carpet. At first I too am waiting behind a barrier with my friends before planning to enter the arena through the press entrance. There’s no possibility to actually see the red carpet, but we do see the black Bravo cars labeled “Cars for Stars.” The crowd of people outside – more than 75% are younger than 16 – are simply hysterical, even though hardly anyone can see anything happening on the red carpet. You couldn’t even see that there’s somebody in a car. But luck is with us this time. My friends do see Marie before the show starts.

  At about 5:45 pm Roxette step onto the red carpet. Per, Marie and the band… far away from us. But for Marie, it was only to make her entrance, as only ten minutes later she is sitting in a small car, driving back to the hotel again with manager Marie Dimberg at her side (only to drive back to the venue again two hours later). It’s luck because they need to stop right behind a big barricade to get on the street. Marie sees one of the posters my friend had made, which greets her with the words “Welcome back Marie”. She looks at it for quite a long time, smiles and then she’s gone.

  At 8:45 pm the show has already been going for about two hours. In the press area, everybody’s talking about Marie… not Tokio Hotel. It’s obvious that in the eyes of the press, she is THE star of the evening, and it’s a foretaste of what one of the biggest German Sunday newspapers, Bild am Sonntag, will be writing the next day about her: “Roxette star sings herself back into [people’s] hearts.”

  Working meticulously, the photographers sort through the pictures they took of Roxette on the red carpet and are waiting for the performance and asking wondering amongst themselves how it will be. As a press reporter myself, I had the schedule and knew that it won’t be too much longer, so I quickly decide to go back to my seat in the hall. I know that they will play on the left stage and I too wait with anticipation. Afterwards my friends – who are sitting everywhere and nowhere in the hall – tell me that they could see when Marie and Per stepped on the stage and thought that they recognized that both of them were quite nervous. The only thing I notice after host Kai Pflaume has welcomed Roxette, is that the audience is suddenly getting louder.

  The audience jumps to their feet only a few seconds after the intro of “The Look” has started. Everyone seems to begin clapping to the beat and the performance becomes one of the few highlights of the evening. Now the mood is much better than it was all through the last two hours. It’s amazing! And Marie especially seems to notice it. Boldly, she finally conquers the whole stage. Even the celebrities in the front rows stand up as the music fades away and they too are clapping their hands.

  Directly after the Roxette performance I leave the hall. In front of the entrance, I meet the Tokio Hotel girl that I had met the day before. She runs over to me happily and says “Marie is her name, right? The female singer of Roxette? I DO know her. She has short blonde hair and an amazing voice.” Somehow she’s had this epiphany even though she didn’t have a ticket for the show and therefore missed seeing the fabulous live comeback of Roxette. Read more…

LONDON - Roxette entered the UK Top 40 album chart at #22 with new album “Hits!” this week, ahead of acts like Evanescence and Chris Rea.

  This is Roxette’s 8th album to hit the UK top 40; “The Ballad Hits” being their last back in February 2003 and the first being “Look Sharp!” (which entered at #4) way back in 1990 .


Animalkingdom contributed to this article.

• BBC Chart

STOCKHOLM - Both Aftonbladet and Expressen give the “Rox Box” three out of five, but not without reservations. Expressen’s Anders Nunstedt misses the version of “The Look” where Marie sings, and also the demo of “Svarta glas” that later became “Neverending Love,” while Aftonbladet’s Markus Larsson thinks the box is too much. Markus claims that about two and a half CD is “the rest” and is just filling and bad repeats.

  On the other hand Markus thinks that Marie’s voice is “damned great” and Per was a formidable hit machine during Roxette’s heydays. Both Markus Larsson and Anders Nunstedt feel that Roxette was the best between ’86-’92 (Larsson) or ’89-’91 (Nunstedt) and that Roxette can claim it was mismanaged as much as it wants, as the booklet does state. They both disagree with that.

  Nunstedt concludes that the box summarizes Roxette in a loving, well-made and generous way. “Roxette was great and really terrible.” Markus Larsson says that “Listen to Your Heart” is the best track and that Roxette made pop music that is way up there with what ABBA and the Ramones did.

  Additionally, Nunstedt gives “Hits” two stingers. He writes “On the album ’Have a Nice Day’ (1999) you hear a band that’s lost its compass. You don’t have to listen very carefully to ’Room Service’ (2001) to hear the sound of a duo that’s been lost in the woods so long that the search has ended.” He mentions that the point of this album is its first half, with songs like “It Must Have Been Love” and “Spending My Time.” He disagrees with the subtitle “Their 20 greatest songs” but can count at least eight of them.

• Aftonbladet’s review (In Swedish)
• Expressen’s “Hits” review (In Swedish. The “Box” review is not online.)

STOCKHOLM - According to TV4.se’s recent vote Roxette’s Best Video Ever is “Listen to Your Heart.” After a week of selecting finalists, 586 voters selected “Listen to Your Heart” as the final winner with more than 30% of the votes.

  The video for “Listen to Your Heart” was recorded at Borgholm castle ruin and directed by Doug Freel (“Dangerous,” “It Must Have Been Love,” “Joyride,” “Fading Like a Flower”). When released in the US Americans thought Roxette had had the castle ruin built just for the video’s sake…

  Roxette paid for the video themselves and it was recorded at the same time as the video for “Dangerous.” Marie was barefoot in the video, which resulted in her getting tons of shoes sent to her. And finally; the segment when the audience is holding sparklers in the video was recorded during “It Must Have Been Love.”

• TV4.se
• Doug Freel’s work

According to online Portuguese CD retail stores, it has been confirmed that due to delays, the new Roxette compilation and its 2CD (CD with DVD) will only be released on October 23 all over the country. It seems that the normal edition has arrived, yet it will not be on sale until the arrival of the deluxe edition. However, it was expected to be released on October 16 simultaneoulsly with other European countries.

STOCKHOLM (UPDATED) - On TV4.se you can now vote for Roxette’s best video through all times. There will be three videos a day to choose from. Next Tuesday all six winners will be fighting for Best Roxette Video ever.



  October 11: “The Look,” “A Thing About You” and “Wish I Could Fly”

  October 12: “Listen to Your Heart,” “Almost Unreal” and “The Center of the Heart.”

  October 13: “It Must Have Been Love,” “Run to You” and “Crash!Boom!Bang!.”

  October 14: “Joyride,” “Milk & Toast & Honey” and “How Do You Do!.”

  October 15: “Fading Like a Flower,” “Dangerous” and “Stars.”

  October 16: “Spending My Time,” “Sleeping in My Car” and “Dressed for Success.”



OK, so now it’s time to choose the best Roxette video of all times. The selection must have been a bit random by TV4 as they have only showed 18 out of about 45 videos. Take it for what it’s worth. The finalists are in bold.

• Per & Marie’s greeting to TV4’s viewers (In Swedish)

This week Roxette’s new single rockets 20 places up from last week’s #24 to #4 on the Swedish Topp 40 (airplay/sales chart). Three weeks ago “One Wish” debuted at #26, the next week it climbed only two spots but this week it became the biggest climber. All these three weeks the #1 belongs to Scissors Sisters’s “I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’.”

• Topp 40

Magic TV UK played the first showing of the new Roxette single “One Wish” today. Magic TV is a British music television station owned by EMAP who also owns Magic radio station. The video was played as part of a program called “Roxette - 10 steps through time.” The following videos were shown.

1 The Look

2 It Must Have Been Love

3 Listen to Your Heart

4 Dressed for Success

5 Joyride

6 Fading Like a Flower

7 Crash!Boom!Bang!

8 Almost Unreal

9 Wish I Could Fly

10 One Wish

  They also had facts and general comments running at the bottom of the screen. Examples: “Listen to Your Heart” has been played three million times in the US; if played back to back it would play for 27 years! They also mention that “It Must Have Been Love” is Roxette’s most successful single and was released twice in the UK; “Wish I Could Fly” was the most played song on radio in 1999 in Europe and that Roxette hasn’t entered the UK chart so far this century, and finally that “One Wish” may change that for them.

STOCKHOLM - 45 milllion albums later.

  Now Roxette starts over again. With a new style, new songs and a new Marie Fredriksson.

  “The lively Marie is gone. Of course she’s a different person today,” Per Gessle says.



By Anders Nunstedt, Expressen



  It’s 20 years ago this year that Roxette made its single debut in Sweden. The rest is pop history, now with a happy ending.

  It could have ended considerably worse. When Marie Fredriksson in the fall of 2002 was struck by a brain tumor, it was a shock not only for the Roxette singer but also for everyone close to her.



“It was scary”

  “It was scary. There are different grades of cancer and of course one lived in suspense. I don’t even think the chance was 50/50 for her to make it,” Per Gessle says.

  “It’s amazing that Marie has recovered. Now Roxette is back, even if on a different premise.

  Per Gessle, who has been amazingly productive during the 2000s, explains that the initiative to Roxette’s comeback came from Marie. “When the compilation became viable it was she who suggested that we should record a new song.”

  It became more than that. On the “Greatest Hits” record released on Wednesday there is, in addition to the single “One Wish,” the ballad “Reveal.”

  “Actually we haven’t discussed if we are going to do something more. I don’t know what I want to do. On the one hand it’s fun, of course, but I have no idea if there’s a point in continuing. It doesn’t feel so tempting to go on promotion trips and sing playback in Vienna, Hamburg and Madrid,” Gessle says.

  The question is also if Marie Fredriksson wants to, and can manage, a full commitment to Roxette.



“One reconsiders everything”

  “It’s naturally a different Marie today. When something like this happens one reconsiders everything. It doesn’t help how many gold records you have hanging on the wall when you get ill,” says Gessle.

  Per explains that “the singing voice is back at full strength, but there are other circumstances. She has a problem reading fast and trouble remembering things. Everything goes a little slower. Maybe it can be worked on, but it takes time.”

  Roxette’s participation in the “Världens barn” (Children of the World) gala tomorrow is a comeback against all odds.

  But there’s no doubt they’re back. “One Wish” immediately swooshed up to second place of the Swedish single chart and has also started to climb internationally.

  Today Per goes to New York to prepare Roxette’s upcoming U.S. release.

  “Who would’ve thought that,” Gessle says with a laugh. “Now we’re actually back, and have really no idea where it’s gonna end.”



English translation by Cecilia Isvén

• Expressen’s article (in Swedish - with photo of Per not shown here)