2008 World According to P, C & C (VII): TWATG 2008 released

"The World According to Gessle" was released May 2, 1997, it's now back, bigger and better. At least that's what EMI and Per want us to think. Are they right? Thomas Evensson, from TDR, got a little chat with Per himself regarding the re-release of this, among fans, widely liked album. The album was released May 9 in Germany and will be released May 14 in Sweden.

Per Gessle has been recording a new album in English since January 2008 at Christoffer Lundquist's AGM studio and they will keep on working until September 2008.

LJdM

The thing is that the album wasn't available at all anymore! I happened to notice this by chance at the EMI office in Stockholm and nobody could explain why it had been deleted. So I decided to put it back on the shelves, but of course with added material I know some people are interested in. First of all I wanted to make the re-release special. So basically I just asked myself what I as a fan, would want from an album like 'The World.' And the most obvious thing to me is 'behind the scenes' -material, like the original demos for instance. If you're really into an album it's always interesting to get to know how the working process got started and so on. On this release we're getting no less than 20 demos, of which only one has been released before, that being "June Afternoon," and that's not even counting the six B-sides from the singles that are on the first CD. The three Jonas Åkerlund videos of "Do You Wanna Be My Baby?," "Kix" and "I Want You to Know" weren't included but will be available somehow as downloads. It's not yet certain how though. Also missing is the Electronic Press Kit.

I haven't really listened to this album for many, many years and yes, to my surprise, both Clarence Öfwerman - who was with me during the new mastering - and myself loved it! I can hardly remember recording it though… Just fragments, bits and pieces. Don't ask me why… I remember that the basic idea was to use the Gyllene Tider-band since we just had done the very successful 'Återtåget' tour and the band sounded extremely tight at the time!! GT is still a brilliant power pop group if you ask me!! But it only lasted for five six songs if I remember it correctly. Then Christoffer, Jens and David from Brainpool came in and changed my life forever. These days I prefer to do my English work as the soothing sunny Son of a Plumber. But hell yes, someday I'll make the definitive ultra-catchy-power-pop-guitars-skweeked-to-13-sort-of-record! It would be nice. I have it in my system somewhere. It pops up every other Saturday night when I make silly dance moves.

I wrote many of the songs during the GT tour. To my (and to my family's) surprise I always seem to unwind from the crazy tour schedules writing new songs… I don't know why, it's always been like that. Maybe I get bored playing basically the same songs every night. I need new blood in my system… new stories, new truths, new lies.

TWATG was not "almost a Gyllene Tider album". Like I said before I only wanted to use the lads as backing musicians, I felt songs like 'Stupid,' 'Do You Wanna Be My Baby?,' 'Reporter,' 'Elvis in Germany' and 'T-T-T-Take It!' would fit this beautiful combo perfectly. Just the way it worked recording Roxette's 'June Afternoon' with these guys. But I was only partly right. Like I said, after a while we ran out of freash ideas.

There's nothing I can talk about at this point but you know me… there's always something waiting around the corner"

Per Gessle