HALMSTAD - The last concert of Gyllene Tider’s tour this summer will be in Halmstad on August 18. The concert was sold out but now another 2,000 tickets have been released. But that’s not enough. Gyllene Tider wants everyone in Halmstad to be able to see the local boys live on stage.

  “Seldom – if ever – has there been such positive energy and excessive love that Gyllene Tider has met around the country during this fantastic summer. We in the band thought that we should do something as generous in the last concert,” Per says in a press release issued today. “The idea is to get the whole town to take part in the concert and that’s why we’ll build a giant screen at Stora Torg (the city’s central square and marketplace) where everyone can come and enjoy our concert for free!”

  The press release also reveals that the screen will be 40 square meters and it weighs 29 tons.

  So far, there have been 424,458 people at Gyllene Tider’s concerts. The number will go to almost half-a-million as the tour ends in Halmstad. Today the tour organizers released extra tickets for the Sundsvall (1,000 tickets) and Oxelösund (2,000) concerts on August 13 and 17 respectively. The Skellefteå concert on August 14 is not yet sold out.

• TicNet/Biljett Direkt

GÖTEBORG - “And all year long I’ve been waiting for… June, July and August!”

  You can catch an interesting streamed video of Gyllene Tider performing “Juni, Juli, Augusti!” at their recent Ullevi concert in Göteborg. It’s available in both Real Media and Windows Media formats and includes the crowd’s reaction following the concert.

  In addition, on Aftonbladet’s site, you can see the same song – which is second on the set list – being performed at the Stadium in Stockholm.

• GP’s Video and Photo Album (Scroll down to Gyllene Tider and Web-TV)
• Aftonbladet’s Stockholm version (Look for Webb-TV)

GOTHENBURG - Roxette’s female half, Marie Fredriksson, attended Gyllene Tider’s record breaking concert Saturday. Marie told Per that she thought the concert was “fantastic,” according to a report in Aftonbladet.

  This was Marie’s first public appearance in months.

GOTHENBURG - Gyllene Tider tried hard to beat Bruce Springsteen’s attendance record at Ullevi and they did! Over 58,900 fans (58,954 according to Expressen; 58,984 according to Aftonbladet) sang along with the band yesterday night.


  And all the feelings came all at once. “This is the biggest thing that ever happened in my life, after my children being born” said Göran Fritzon to Aftonbladet. “I don’t really know what to say. I’m speechless,” added Per Gessle. “It was really hard to keep the tears in the first couple of songs,” confessed Micke “Syd” Andersson, “my voice trembled when I sang the backing vocals.”


  After the show the band went to the VIP area to celebrate the record with their families and friends who had come to support the band. Among these friends were Marie Fredriksson and Mikael Bolyos. “It was great that Marie could come,” told Per to Aftonbladet, “she said the concert was fantastic, but she is actually a big GT-fan,” added a laughing Per.

  Photos: Thomas Evensson/TDR

• Aftonbladet’s article
• Aftonbladet’s article II

STOCKHOLM (UPDATED) - Gyllene Tider will try to beat Bruce Springsteen’s [new] attendance record at Ullevi on Saturday, according to an article published today in Aftonbladet.


  The Boss gathered 58,310 people at Ullevi last summer and Gyllene Tider has so far sold 58,000 tickets, including the 600 that were put on sale yesterday. So, there are only 311 – to be exact – tickets left to sell to beat the record.


  The stage will be built today and once it is up, the concert organizers will see if they can fit more people in the stadium.


  “It would be fantastic to beat The Boss,” Per Gessle told Aftonbladet’s reporter Linda Hjertén. “I think beating such a record would go along with the whole tour experience.” Per added that he would pinch himself “to make sure I’m not dreaming.”


  Update: 500 tickets have been released today. They are available at Ticnet’s local ticket offices and at ATG’s offices.

• Aftonbladet’s article
• Ticnet.se

STOCKHOLM - After some The Hives hype, Gyllene Tider reclaims the #1 spot with “Finn 5 fel!” (3x platinum) on the album charts, while “GT25!” (gold) falls to #6 and “Mazarin” (5x platinum) to #27, after merely 59 weeks on the charts. “Tuffa tider”/”En sten…” falls to #12, but has acheived gold status (15,000).

HALMSTAD - With the kind permission of Hallandsposten, the daily newspaper serving this city and the surrounding region, The Daily Roxette has translated most of the content published in a special Summer 2004 supplement entitled “Gyllene Tider - Back Again.”

  Written by Jan-Owe Wikström, a sports reporter whose interest in music made him the paper’s “Per, GT, and Roxette” reporter as well, the articles have been translated by TDR News Editor Thomas Evensson and appear – along with our own account of this golden Swedish summer – on our newly launched Features page.

  To access this section, click on the “Features” tab above.

• TDR Features

STOCKHOLM - The Swedish tabloid Expressen published a short interview with Bengt Gessle, Per’s older brother, today. According to Bengt, Per writes poor, uninteresting lyrics and Per admits it himself.

  “I mentioned this to him last year and he simply said that he can’t write any other way, so he sticks to what he can write,” explained Bengt to Expressen’s reporter Tony Kaplan. On the other hand, Per’s brother, who is a lawyer in Helsingborg, believes that Per has improved - a lot! - as an artist throughout the years. “He has learnt his routine on stage and that makes him more confident.”


  “I’ve seen Gyllene Tider twice this summer and will see them again in Göteborg,” Bengt said, “but I am not a real Gyllene Tider fan.” Bengt revealed his favourite artists are Tommy Körberg, Eva Dahlgren and Helen Sjöholm with Benny Andersson’s orchestra. “And among the international artists, my favorites are John Lennon, the Beatles and the Stones.”

• Expressen’s article (in Swedish)
• Tommy Körberg
• Eva Dahlgren
• Helen Sjöholm

GÖTEBORG - “Sweden’s Biggest Boyband is in Town,” proclaims a full-page advertisement that’s been appearing for several weeks now in newspapers here in Göteborg. The circus-like display font used in the ad is unmistakable, given the success of “Finn 5 Fel!” and the advertising surrounding the release of that album. It’s the same font… so it’s obviously Gyllene Tider’s upcoming appearance at Ullevi this Saturday evening that’s being hyped, right?

  But having captured our attention, the ad continues by saying “Or more accurately, we’re almost always in town.” It turns out this clever ad is actually promoting the Göteborg Boys Choir (Göteborgs Gosskör), a group with members between the ages of 7 and 24 years old.

  It’s one more example of how pervasive the Gyllene Tider phenomenon is in Sweden this summer.

  Ulf Sollin, a spokesperson for the choir, tells TDR that the ad was created by Inform Reklambyrå and is one of a series of pro-bono ads the agency has produced recently to promote the choir and attract new members. Göteborgs-Posten, in turn, donated the space in their newspaper.

• Gothenburg Boys Choir

STOCKHOLM - In “Finn 5 Fel!”’s seventh week on the album charts, it falls to the second postion, having premiered on the chart at #1. The new Gyllene Tider album has now reached platinum status three times over, with some 180,000 copies sold. GT’s album was pushed out of the top spot by The Hives.

  “GT 25 Samtliga Hits!” stays at #5 while Per’s solo album from last summer, “Mazarin,” is at #23 in it’s 58th week on the charts. It has never left the Top 40 since the release 58 weeks ago.

  Both “En sten vid en sjö i en skog” and Tuffa tider” are in the top five on the Swedish radio charts this week at #3 and #5.