It Must Have Been Love — and still is
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Roxette put their tour success down to having a “magnificent catalogue of songs”.
Source: Supplied
THE only people not surprised about the enormous success of Roxette’s 2012 Australian comeback tour? Roxette.
It was the tour most local promoters passed on, worried it’d been too long since the Swedish duo dominated the airwaves with The Look, Listen To Your Heart, Joyride, It Must Have Been Love, Dangerous and Dressed For Success in the late ’80s and early ’90s.
Some thought the power of nostalgia might see Roxette fill a few theatres at best.
Cut to 2012 and Roxette played sold-out arenas right across Australia for two weeks.
Roxette on stage in Brisbane in 2012.
Source: News Limited
Roxette’s Per Gessle said the Australian return was a pleasant surprise, but also in line with the rest of the world.
“The music business has been crazy over the last decade, things changed so much,” Gessle says.
“If you’re not in the spotlight people lose interest. The reason we can still sell so many tickets is because we have a magnificent catalogue of songs. We have had so many hits.
“Today in Top 40 music it’s rare to get to build a catalogue like that. Everyone is famous for 15 minutes, they get a few hits if they’re lucky and then they’re gone. Everyone wants the new thing or the next thing.
“But we have this great catalogue of songs people grew up to, got married to. There were a lot of hits, sometimes I even forget how many we had. We had seven fantastic years, 1988 to 1995, we pumped out all these songs. Great times.”
Now they’re ready to do it all over again, returning to Australia next February.
After the 2012 tour, Gessle and bandmate Marie Fredriksson put Roxette on hold once again.
Gessle reactivated his original band Gyllene Tider, who formed in 1976 and had major success in Sweden. The band (whose name translates as Golden Age) have reunited before but never at this scale.
“Gyllene Tider is like the biggest band that ever was in Sweden,” Gessle says modestly. “We play football stadiums.”
Fredriksson was also not idle — embarking on a solo tour of Sweden. It was particularly poignant; the 2011/2012 Roxette tour was her first major world tour since doctors found she had a brain tumour in 2002 and she retreated from the spotlight. The singer was worried she’d be unable to remember lyrics or cope with long-haul touring.
Swedish duo Roxette played to sold-out arenas in 2012.
Source: Supplied
She ended the Roxette 2012 tour with flying colours and wanted to keep going.
“I didn’t believe she was going to tour solo, but Marie told me she desperately wanted to do it on her own,” Gessle says.
“She actually said ‘I don’t want you around, I want to do this myself’. And she did. And it was magnificent. It was a very low-key acoustic show, her Swedish material is not as commercial as Roxette, it’s more singer/songwriter. The more she works, the more she comes back (to health).
“She calls me every other day to talk about this upcoming Roxette tour, to ask about the new songs.
“What she went through was beyond a nightmare, but being on stage, the energy and love and affection she gets from the crowd is the perfect rehab for her.”
Gessle is about to do some musical housekeeping, with fans able to buy an 11 CD boxset of songs from his archives.
“I’ve been writing songs for 35 years now, so there’s a lot there,” Gessle, 55, says. “It makes me feel very old, but on the other hand it’s been a fantastic career. Going back and listening to some of the songs makes me blush.
“But then some of the songs were big international success stories. It’s interesting to hear how I first wrote Listen To Your Heart. It’s been a great trip.”
Marie Fredriksson performing in Munich in 2011.
Source: AFP
The musician has also embraced Facebook and social media, insisting on having a personal touch.
“It’s so formal when your management are doing it, it feels like it’s a publicity thing,” Gessle says. “I don’t want that. I want to stay close to the fans. I think it’s fantastic someone can send me a question and I can answer it myself. That means so much to people.
“I’m a fan myself. If I sent a question to Bruce Springsteen and I got a personal answer that would mean the world to me. I spent about 20 minutes a day on the Facebook page to see what’s going on, publish new things. It gets a tremendous response. You have to be very grateful you have people interested in your work after all these years.
“Coming from a small country like Sweden, when I started out I was working in Swedish. It’s fantastic to have all these branches on the tree, have an English career, an international career, and still record in Swedish. Most bands from Sweden can’t tour every year because the country’s too small. It’s a big world out there, you can tour forever. ”
Indeed, Gessle, who once calculated he loses over 2kg each show due to being energetic, is loving life on the road in his fifties.
“I actually enjoy touring and performing much more than I used to,” he says.
“It comes with age. Your career doesn’t become as important as it was. In your 20s you think you have to achieve all these things because you have your whole life ahead of you. But we achieved everything we could dream of, so everything we experience now are just bonus things, so why not just enjoy it?”
■ Roxette’s Australian tour will feature ‘80s band Boom Crash Opera as special guests.
Dates are Brisbane Entertainment Centre on February 1, Perth Arena February 14, Adelaide Entertainment Centre February 17, Rod Laver Arena February 20, WIN Entertainment Centre in Wollongong on February 23 and Qantas Credit Union Arena in Sydney on February 27.
Roxette will play two A Day on the Green shows, supported by Boom Crash Opera, Dragon and Eurogliders at Rochford Wines, Yarra Valley on February 21 and Bimbagden Winery in the Hunter Valley on February 28.
Tickets go on sale May 27. A News Corp Australia pre-sale offer begins on 10am Monday until 5pm Tuesday
