Stories from their 1991 Joyride tour of Australia suggest Marie and Per could drink most bands under the table. While they’ve avoided the drug cliché, Roxette have always enjoyed their alcohol. In the ‘80s and ‘90s when we were travelling the world we’d meet other artists and we’d be offered all sorts of things, but now I’m getting older I’m pretty pleased to say I still have my brain… or part of it at least.” It’s the same with the band and Marie – we were never part of that scene. Where I grew up in a small town there were a certain number of people fooling around with that sort of stuff, but I was never a part of that. “I’ve never really been into drugs at all. Given Lennon’s drug predilections during the era, has Gessle also found inspiration in LSD? It’s crazy.”įrom The Look and Joyride through to Good Karma’s 20BPM, Gessle’s lyrics have often betrayed his love of John Lennon’s psychedelic turns of phrase circa 1967. “I think there’s actually a version without that scene in it, because some countries didn’t want to play it. “It was banned in some places in the United States and they didn’t want to play it because of that,” Gessle says. The Look’s music clip proved controversial in some places, with one scene featuring Fredriksson playing guitar on the video set’s toilet. Gessle formed Roxette with Marie Fredriksson a few years after his ABBA-associated success, with their 1988 album Look Sharp! delivering chart-topping pop gold in Listen To Your Heart, Dressed For Success, Dangerous and The Look. I was lucky - it ended up paying my rent for two years!”
My song was chosen as the B-side to the single I Know There’s Something Going On, which sold something like five million copies. “ABBA was over and Frida was doing solo stuff, so for me working on a song with Phil Collins on her album was just amazing, it was a huge step for me. "I was 22 or 23 years old and I was still dreaming about international success,” Gessle recalls. Gessle found it in the song Threnody, a collaboration with ABBA’s Frida Lyngstad and her Something’s Going On album producer Phil Collins. It’s been fantastic.”Ī decade later Per Gessle would have a collection of platinum albums, number one singles and a garage of fast cars to his name as a member of Roxette, but in 1982 the songwriter was still searching for an international breakthrough. “In the ’80s when we started out, we didn’t expect anything like this at all. Discussing Roxette’s new album Good Karma, Gessle still seems amazed by the band’s 30 years of success.
“We’ve had a tremendous career and we’re really grateful for that,” Roxette’s Per Gessle says from his grand Halmstad home. Roxette. Photo by Richard Lautens/Toronto Star via Getty Images.
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