29 Dec 1999

Nice days for P, C & C new team (IX): Roxette's Salvation and Lundquist's 30th birthday

There are not many news from Per Gessle and Roxette since last summer. They have had some promo performances in Europe, backed up by musicians Christopher Lundquist, Clarence Öfwerman and Per Pelle Alsing.

Last 29th November, Salvation, the last single outtaken from Have a Nice Day, was released, but there has been no promotion. I adore See me, an old song sung by Marie in 1993 and the second song in this single.

The same day in November, a special edition of Roxette's latest album was released in most Spanish speaking territories and in some other countries (e.g. The Netherlands and Germany). This limited edition includes the following Spanish recordings: Quisiera volar (Wish I could fly), Alguien (Anyone) and Lo siento (Salvation).

In September, Per Gessle confirmed it once more: there wouldn't be a Roxette tour coming up in the next months. According to Olle Berggren and Martina Karlsson, from Roxette Service, late on little Christmas eve, Per Gessle sat with Clarence Öfverman in the now legendary Tits&Ass studio outside Halmstad and thought about the future with Roxette.

On January 16, 2000, Christoffer Lundquist will be 30 years old. We can read some of his words about his childhood.



It's been a too much ballads during Roxette's career and the latest album, Have a Nice Day, had almost only ballad singles. I think I underestimated our absence when we took a break. There has happened a lot within the music industry while we were gone. This time it will be more up-tempo songs, more pop and more guitars. Dangerous if it gets too much like Celine Dion I recently thought about bands that have come in our footsteps, like Savage Garden. They are totally stuck with ballads. Think it's time to break that trend now. If you want to keep up with things in my age you need younger help from the outside (Chris Lundquist from Brainpool, Jimmy from April Tears, ...). A positive pop bomb. That's the thing I'm best at.

It's good to be back home. Home is where I wanna beeeeeee. I have been on the road so long. In January 2000, we'll continue the studio sessions and, hopefully, that's what's gonna take most of our time in the next 6-8 months or so. We'd love to have a new album out for Christmas 2000, and finally get a tour together. If everything goes well with the new records we're planning a tour with start in the beginning of January 2001. But if now the USA would wake up and we get a good record company where they maybe wants us to be available for radio and TV during that period, in that case we'll delay the tour a bit more.
Per Gessle



My parents got me and my sister when I was 6 years old to play violin. And I hated that. I hated every second of it, and I never practiced, never did anything, was horrible, but I sort of discovered it was nice to play notes and find them for yourself, and make up little tunes, so when I was maybe 10 or 11 I skipped the violin and finally dared to tell my parents I didn’t want to do that anymore, and I got an old guitar from my aunt, who also introduced me to the Beatles. I probably started to compose at the age of 10, when I got the guitar. That’s the reason for playing for me, to try to make your own music or play your own stuff. I didn’t study music. Never, the three years of violin when I was 6 to 10 is all my music education. From then on I’ve done nothing but playing, try to write arrangements, I am a totally single-minded person, that’s the only thing I do.

I actually only play guitar and bass, you know, reasonably well, the rest is sort of just cheating, but since I buy so many instruments, I have the possibility to practice with them. I play a bit of decent flute, half-decent saxophone, clarinet, I got an oboe, that was fun for a year and then it was too hard, so I skipped that. I have so many different instruments in my studio, but they are all kind of keyboard instruments.

1 comment:

LJdM said...

We took Christoffer Lundquist's words from a marvelous interview in roxetteblog.com (December, 2009). Thank you, Judith and Kirsten.