STOCKHOLM - It was only one week ago when Per Gessle received a platinum award during his appearance at SVT’s Allsång på Skansen for selling over 60,000 copies of his new solo album “Mazarin”.

  Today we are glad to announce that, precisely two weeks after the album release, 120,000 “Cupcakes” have been sold, meaning Per sums up another platinum award to his collection.

  According to Finnish tabloid Ilta-Sanomat, the current #1 song in Greece has a special relation with Per Gessle. The song, “All The Woman You Need”, was written by Finnish songwriters Macke Granberg and Patrick Sarin. They both work for Tom Bone Music - a publishing company owned by Per - and the song was written during a 3-day songwriting session in Per’s hotel last year. Per had invited musicians from different countries to Hotel Tylösand to create music together. “The song was written in the sunshine on the beach,” Macke Granberg says.

  “All The Woman You Need” is performed by Hi-5, the first band in Greece that was formed in the Popstars reality TV show. Their album has sold platinum (50,000 copies) during its first two weeks.

• Ilta-Sanomat article (in Finnish)
• Tom Bone Music
• Hi-5 (in Greek)

STOCKHOLM (UPDATED) - Earlier tonight Per performed “Här kommer alla känslorna”, and the classic Gyllene Tider-song “Kung av sand” from 1996, on the TV-show Allsång på Skansen. Per was also awarded a platinum award (60,000 copies) for almost 100,000 sold copies of “Mazarin”. Per looked very surprised and pleased. On being asked about the audience tonight he exclaimed “The best! The best!”


  Per Gessle has been Allsång på Skansen’s dream guest for many many years. This time around Per felt that he had something to contribute to the program.

 Besides Per, the other artists who performed at Allsång were Buddaboys (Eva Dahlgren and Mija and Greta Folkesson), who sang “Budda is a girl” and “Det var dans borti vägen”, Jerry Williams & The Boppers and After Shave.


  The program will be broadcast again on SVT1 on June 28th at 17.00 CET and July 2nd at 12.10 CET.

• Allsång på Skansen
• Buddaboys

STOCKHOLM - Per has caught a bad case of bronchitis, due to the cold and wet midsummer in Halmstad, according to a report published in Aftonbladet today.

  “I sound like Louis Armstrong, it’s really troublesome. If I can’t sing, what do I do?” says a worried Per, who is scheduled to perform tonight on the live TV show “Allsång på Skansen.”

  Whether he will perform his two songs together with his band “Mazarinerna” or not, no one knows yet. “The doctor said that this must heal itself and that the only thing that helps is a good dose of rest,” Per tells Aftonbladet.

  The show’s producer, Meta Bergkvist, says they don’t have a contingency plan. “We’ll see tomorrow” (read: today). “If he’s not better then, we’ll have to solve it somehow,” she says.

• Aftonbladet’s story (In Swedish)

STOCKHOLM (UPDATED) - Today the tickets for Per Gessle’s summer tour went on sale at Ticnet/Biljett Direkt. Already early in the morning three of the positions of Ticnet’s “Top 5” were taken by Gessle and, at the moment, four of the five positions are taken by Per. In addition, Halmstad’s concert has already been sold out.


  The other shows that are selling the most are Stockholm, Göteborg and Helsingborg. None of which are over 90% booked yet, according to TicNet’s system.

  Editor’s note: Tickets that aren’t picked up in time (within three days) go back into the system to be sold again.

• TicNet

HELSINKI - The international free newspaper Metro published a big Per Gessle interview in its Helsinki edition last week. Per’s album was released in Finland on the same day as in Sweden, so the topic is relevant. Per tells in the interview that the album was made just for fun.

  “It’s a personal record and made by my own terms,” he says. “I didn’t want the record company to mess up things. I’m tired of everything being so planned ahead. Everything is so narrow and adjusted in music business, especially internationally.”

  “I unsubscribed from the music magazines and stopped reading charts a couple of years ago. There was too much music I didn’t like,” Per says. “Actually, I follow the F1 season more than music business.”

  If you look back on your career as an artist, are you surprised how well you’ve done?

  “That’s something I haven’t been asked before. I think I am. At the same time, I think I am good at writing songs. That’s my main operations. If I compare Roxette’s success to its competitors, I think Roxette’s place in rock history is definitely well-deserved.”

  So, what’s a typical Per Gessle song?

  “At its best it’s short. I believe that if people like the song it will be played again. 2.39 - that’s a fantastic length for a pop track.”

  You have fought against music piracy. Aren’t CDs too expensive?

  “In my opinion it’s wrong if a whole generation is raised to believe that music is free. If you don’t pay the musicians, the music gets poorer. And if you compare the prices to the ones I pay for my son’s computer games, CDs aren’t that expensive.”

STOCKHOLM (UPDATED) - After the huge success with the album “Mazarin” we can hereby confirm the dates of Per Gessle’s tour. The album has reached platinum (60,000 copies) in record breaking time by selling in excess of 60,000 copies so far.

  Here are the confirmed tour dates:




July 29, Halmstad, Brottet - Sold out

July 30, Helsingborg, Sofiero Slott


August 1, Skövde, Boulognersskogen

August 2, Finspång, Rockslottet

August 3, Varberg, Fästningsrundan

August 5, Malmö, Mölleplatsen

August 6, Gothenburg, Trädgårdsföreningen

August 8, Kalmar, Kalmarsundsparken

August 9, Jönköping, Rådhusparken

August 10, Karlskrona, Sparregården

August 12, Stockholm, Sjöhistoriska Muséet

August 14, Sundsvall, Park Arena

August 15, Leksand, Sammilsdal

August 16, Karlstad, Mariebergsskogen

August 17, Eskilstuna, Sundbyholms Slott



 Tickets are 275 kronor (€30, $35) plus a service charge. Tickets are released Monday June 23 and are sold via BiljettDirekt/TicNet (0771-707070) and local ticket agencies.

  The tickets to the Sundsvall gig are more expensive (307-357 kronor) and impossible to get via ATG for some reason. One may have them send the tickets via registered mail though.


 Per Gessle’s tour is sponsored by AJProdukter.

• TicNet
• AJProdukter (In Swedish)
• EMA Telstar

STOCKHOLM (UPDATED) - It may have been the pressure from the media or from the fans, or Per Gessle’s own lust for touring, or the mix of all of it, but in the end, Per has managed to arrange a tour around the end of July to mid-August. The “around 14-gig” tour will take Per at least to Stockholm and Sofiero Slott in Helsingborg where Gyllene Tider started Återtåget tour in 1996. This time, however, the premier will be in Brottet, Halmstad on July 29th.

  Per’s band will be the same as at the release party: Helena Josefsson (backing vocals), Jonas Isacsson (guitars), Jens Jansson (drums), Christoffer Lundquist (guitars & backing vocals), Anders Herrlin (bass guitar) and Clarence Öfwerman (keyboards). TDR will publish more dates as they become available.

  “I never could’ve imagined this reception for my little mazarin,” says a happy Per Gessle, “and a tour was never in the cards. But we had so much fun in Halmstad and I can’t resist the possibility to take these songs out in the Swedish summer. They are sort of made for parks and picnics, and I hope the audience agrees with me… and wants to end the summer in a green park with a mazarin.”

STOCKHOLM - As TDR already announced earlier this week, Per will be signing his album “Mazarin”, to be released Monday, in different locations in Sweden. Here are the dates and times:




Monday, June 16th at 12:00 in Halmstad - Åhléns


Monday, June 16th at 17:00 in Stockholm - Åhléns City


Wednesday, June 18th at 15:00 in Malmö - Folk & Rock


Wednesday, June 18th at 17:00 in Lund - Folk & Rock


Friday, June 27th at 16:00 in Göteborg - Rocks

• Åhléns
• Folk & Rock
• Rocks

STOCKHOLM - Due to problems at the DVD pressing plant some of the limited edition of “Mazarin” is postponed until June 20. The normal version will be out as planned.

• CDON

HALMSTAD - Per Gessle enters one of the conference rooms at Hotel Tylösand around midnight, after a massively successful mini concert and a chaotic, but peaceful, record signing session. He looks very happy. On the whiteboard is the play list. It ends with “Billy”, a song we never got to hear (due to Per’s blistered fingers).

  “Will there be a tour?” TDR wonders after greeting Per and Li Eriksson, from Capitol Records.

  “The question of the day. I can’t answer that yet. We don’t know yet. Jens is busy. I’m a bit funny, I need my
key personnel when I tour… like Oscar who does my monitor sound. There are a lot of logistical problems, but if they are
solvable, then yes, I feel up for it. This I say without even having the album out yet,” Per laughs.


  But with this response from people and media regarding the single and all? “Yes, I know, these guys really love playing these songs. Christoffer on guitar is great, and during rehearsals we’ve really had fun. No prestige whatsoever. We all had fun.” Per talks at lengths about the recording sessions and rehearsals and he seems to glow when he does. One can tell this is something he has enjoyed immensely.

  If there will be a tour, will there be a big tour or a club tour or…? “If we do decide to go on the road it will be a summer tour, an outdoor venue tour, like Sofiero, Skansen, venues like that. Maybe 10-12 gigs. All the songs I do work so much better when you get that sing-along feeling, you know? Just look at Återtåget with the 24,000 plus audiences. That worked great! But at the same time I’d hate losing Jens… We will decide this week, we really have to.” He also reveals that the possible tour may even include Norway, Denmark and Finland.


  When asked about the reason for not having a video for the new single Per says “No one cares about a video anymore, who’d show it? ZTV??” “ZTV may very well play this video,” Li interjects. But Per is reluctant, “It would be more expensive to make a video than the whole album. Maybe a low budget thingie but…”


  Will there be a second and a third single?

  “Yes I’m sure, this guy at Capitol demands at least four singles! We’ve discussed which song it should be but we’ve reached no decision yet,” Per says. “We’ll have at least two singles,” Li says. “The song also depends on which
direction the album goes, and if there’s a tour,” Per states. Per also mentions that he stays out of the single decision making these days. “Denmark will release ’Gungar’ as a
single. EMI Denmark is crazy about it. What do you think should be the next single?” he continues. TDR suggests “Spegelboll”, “Tycker om när du tar på mej” or “Om du bara vill”. Li and Per agree that they all are good choices. “This is of course a very pleasant problem,” Li smiles.


  Will there be any record signings for the album? “Yes I think so, at the department store Åhlens in Stockholm and in Halmstad. Also Gothenburg and Malmö. Nothing up north this time. But if there’s a tour, I want to play up north this time, I haven’t been in Norrland [up north] in a hundred years!” he says (conveniently forgetting that he was up there in ’96). Li explains that the signing sessions – due to obvious reasons – work better when there’s a crowd.

  Read more…

STOCKHOLM - Yesterday Per Gessle accepted a prize for Roxette at the 10-year anniversary of Radio NRJ at Gröna Lund amusement park in Stockholm. The prize was presented by Ricky Martin.

  Roxette received the prize for being one of the most played acts on NRJ Sweden the last 10 years.

  Other well-known faces at the gala were Robyn, Dr. Alban, E-Type and many others.

• NRJ (In Swedish)

HALMSTAD (UPDATED) - Per Gessle threw a release party for friends, select media and competition winners Tuesday night to promote his new album “Mazarin”. About 600 people attended the club gig at Leif’s Lounge, the night club located in the lower level of Hotel Tylösand in Halmstad.

  Per and his band performed 10 songs at the mini concert. Joining Per onstage were Jonas Isacsson (celebrating his 23rd birthday, according to Per), Anders Herrlin (of Gyllene Tider), Jens Jansson (of Brainpool), Christoffer Lundquist and Helena Josefsson (soon to be married).

  The concert opened with Gyllene Tider’s “Kung av sand”, continued with the new song “Vilket håll du än går”, the album opener. After that “Om du bara vill”, “Gungar”, “Tycker om när du tar på mej”, “Födelsedag” (dedicated to Jonas), and “Här kommer alla känslorna”… all from the new album. After leaving the stage, the band returned almost immediately and played “På promenad genom stan” (alas without Marie), John Holm’s “Den öde stranden” (that Per claims he always has to play whenever he does something in Swedish), and finally the old Gyllene Tider rocker “Vill ha ett svar!” from “Swing & Sweet” (“Covers are fun,” says Per). “Billy” was, according to our information, mysteriously cut from the playlist.

  The concert was very well performed, with a surprisingly tight band. Commenting on this to The Daily Roxette afterwards, Per said “Really? We’ve only rehearsed for three days, and just forty minutes yesterday, so that’s great to hear!”

  Per was very pleased with the show, and has yet to decide if there will be a tour or not… but time is running out. “We will have to reach a decision this week,” he told TDR. The big problems are that Per’s key players, as he calls them, are partly booked with other artists. Jens will do a Japanse tour for instance. This is what they are trying to solve at the moment. “It’s all about logistics,” Per states. If a tour will come true, Per is aiming at venues like Sofiero in Helsingborg and Skansen in Stockholm.

  All in all, a nice evening with lots of happy fans. Prominent guests spotted by TDR included MP Persson, Micke Syd, Göran Fritzson, Peter Jöback, Frida Lyngstad and Björn Ulvaeus to mention a few.

  Editor’s Note: A strange but unfortunate rumor promising that the first 50 fans who got to Leif’s would get in for free seemed to have circulated, according to those managing the event. Apparently, this resulted in a bus full of 50-80 German fans arriving. “Naturally we let them in”, Per said.

• Article in Aftonbladet
• Article in Expressen
• Article in Hallandsposten
• Article in Göteborgs Posten (In Swedish)

STOCKHOLM - Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet streams, in an exclusive preview, four full songs from “Mazarin” today - “Här kommer alla känslorna (på en och samma gång)”, “På promenad genom stan”, “Spegelboll” and “Tycker om när du tar på mej”.

• Aftonbladet

STOCKHOLM - On June 6th Swedes celebrated their National Day. During one of the activities programmed for this day, Carl XVI Gustaf, the King of Sweden, gives national flags to the most dedicated civil organizations of the Kingdom of Sweden.

  By the end of the celebration a very familiar melody started to sound, for many Marie Fredriksson fans’ surprise, this song was “Tro”, which was interpreted by the Swedish singer Carola accompanied by the Arméns Musikkår (the Army Music Corps).

  The text, though, was modified and instead of “i en vintervärld” (“in a winter world”) Carola sang “i en sommarvärld” (“in a summer world”), to give it a special summer spirit.

  Carola celebrates this year her 20th anniversary as an artist and has released a greatest hits album which is currently #1 on the Swedish charts. “The Carola hysteria of the 80s is back,” wrote Aftonbladet in a recent article.

• SVT’s timetable for the show (in Swedish)

MALMÖ - Nature’s freedom and tasteless bass marks the new album.


He has played in arenas in Latin America, has had mega-hits in USA and Russia, has been played on MTV and has filled Stockholm’s Olympic stadium with sing-along fans. What else did Per Gessle have left to accomplish?


  A whole lot. He hadn’t recorded a solo album in the middle of a forest outside Vollsjö before. But now he has. “I did it on my own responsability. I decided to not to contact the record company before everything would already be finished,” Per explains to Sydsvenska Dagbladet (SD). “I started by writing down thoughts about the album. It should be about small town thoughts, but with big feelings.”


  Small town as in Halmstad? Well sure, but most of it was recorded in a substantially smaller place: Vollsjö in the middle of the province Skåne. Here the musician and producer Christoffer Lundqvist has his studio, twenty meters from his house. We’re talking seriously in the provinces here.

  “Clarence Öfwerman and I got rooms at the local bed & breakfast, a single room each. No families, no kids, just the two of us and Christoffer. We started our days by watching music movies, and finished them by playing disco. A lot of things we did imprinted on the album. If you would grind the three of us and everything we like it would sound just like the album,” Per Gessle says.


  “Christoffer has played a lot of guitar, he proved to be quite good. I play the bass, because I don’t know how to - so it gets to be charming. A guitarist doesn’t play the way a real bass player would. You do those sexy things you hear a bass player do, the fast climbs along the neck, but you do it at the wrong places. And maybe a bit too often. You get tasteless and totally ruthless. It’s fun when you can’t play for real, you get happy.”

• Sydsvenska Dagbladet’s article (In Swedish)

Read more…

STOCKHOLM - In today’s edition of Swedish tabloid Expressen Per says “It’s stealing. Of course the writers, producers and musicians should get paid. It’s not good when people feel it’s OK to download without paying. It’s not good when an entire generation takes it for granted that music is for free.”

  As we speak seven of the songs, although snippets, are available on the usual downloading sites. “I’m definitely glad that the entire album isn’t out yet. I see that many people on [The] Daily Roxette site are looking for it, but no one has found it. At least to my knowledge,” Per says to Expressen.

• Expressen’s article (In Swedish)

NORRKÖPING - In an action together, 1,200 European artists signed a petition to get the EU to lower the value added taxes (VAT) that apply to records, especially in countries like Sweden or Denmark, which have the highest taxes: 25%. In the other countries of the EU the tax is at the lowest about 15%, while, for example, books, newspapers or written music, can be as low as 5%.


  One of the Swedish artists who supports this action is Per Gessle, along with Eva Dahlgren, Uno Svenningsson, Robert Wells and Daniel Lemma. Other artists that can be found in this list are Elton John, Julio Iglesias, Andrea Bocelli and Eros Ramazotti.

• Article in Norrköpings Tidningar

STOCKHOLM - In a few weeks Per Gessle’s new album “Mazarin” is out. At the same time he debuts as a movie director. “I’ve made a DVD-movie called ’En mazarin blir till’ (The making of a mazarin). I’ve shot it myself and edited it in my computer,” Per Gessle tells Aftonbladet. The DVD is included with 5,000 copies of the album. “It’s rather than good, but you can see how much fun we had. The film radiates a hysterical feeling of happiness.”

  The new single “Här kommer alla känslorna” has started a movement in Sweden to get Gessle on tour. It has quickly become the most played song by the Swedish radio stations.

  The commotion surprises Gessle. “I didn’t expect anything like this. I didn’t even have a record deal when I started on “Mazarin”. This is an emotional insurrection toward the thinking of the business. I’ve just collected songs, recorded them myself and paid myself,” Per says in Aftonbladet.

  Per’s colleagues, like Mauro Scocco, Eva Dahlgren/Buddaboys and GES have had a hard year selling albums Aftonbladet claims. “Yeah the recording industry is in a deep crisis. But nothing like that is on my mind. I haven’t had to please anyone. I can bomb majorly and it’s OK. That way a whole new world opens up. You get more honest and spontaneous,” Per comments.

• Aftonbladet’s article (In Swedish)
• Do you want to see Per on tour?

Read more…