Skicka ett vykort, älskling!
Det hjärta som brinner
(Dansar inte lika bra som) Sjömän
Flickorna på TV2
Juni, juli, augusti
Ljudet av ett annat hjärta
Billy
(Hon vill ha) Puls
Gå & fiska!
(Kom så ska vi) Leva livet,
Ska vi älska, så ska vi älska till Buddy Holly,
Tylö sun, (California Sun)
Det är över nu
Kung av sand
Sommartider/Flickan i en Cole Porter-sång
Marie i växeln
När vi två blir en
När alla vännerna gått hem

Liner notes

It’s 1976 and Per Gessle and Mats Persson go to the same high school. They’re 17 years old and have only a preoccupied interest of the guidance counselors’ tips of useful future occupations. Investigation secretary. Mushroom sorter. Train conductor. Wood shop teacher. The possibilities are infinite. But they have already made up their minds. They are going to be pop stars.

As a first step they form the duo Grape Rock, write songs and immediately start to record them at home. The songs are titled “Saken slår mej som på huvudet” [The thing hits me like over the head] and “Ernst é full” [Ernst’s Drunk].

Not unexpectedly, Grape Rock works against the wind during 1976-77. Punk rock has just broken through, but Grape Rock sounds more like glam rock than punk rock. And besides, the two of them feel that the interest in songs about Ernst’s degree of intoxication is limited. Something must be done. New members are called in and for a while fresh blood is pouring into the rehearsal place. Finally the team is locked on PER GESSLE, MATS MP PERSSON, ANDERS HERRLIN, GÖRAN FRITZSON, and MICKE ANDERSSON.

At the same time punk rock has been relieved by something called “new wave”. It’s 1978 and the pop stars in England and USA bleach their hair with something called hydrogen peroxide, wear thin ties and write short pop songs with cool lyrics. Grape Rock listens, learns and is enchanted. The more futurely directed Gyllene Tider replaces the somewhat dusty boogie-sounding name. Per bleaches his hair. Ready, set, go!

PER: When we started a lot of leftist spaced out things were the norm. Music movement times. Ragnar Borgedahl, The Boiled Egg and such. ANDERS: Then the Sex Pistols came to Halmstad, they trashed the Esso Motor Hotel and after that we thought everything we did was punk rock. We wrote to Swedish Radio: “Hi we are a punk band from Halmstad”. PER: One of the first songs went like this (sings aggressively) “I dyed my hair blue – just to – scare my teacher!”. But I think we never understood the thing about punk rock, the song was over 6 minutes long!

At about this time Göran Fritzson takes the step into Swedish music history. He decides to buy himself a Farfisa organ.

GÖRAN: I’d learned to play the electric organ at the Hagström music school. At first I had a Panther organ that totally blew. Then an ad came up about a Farfisa. We bought it from a dance band musician. I didn’t know how it sounded, just that it was Italian. ANDERS: It was a Hammond clone that dance bands used to use, since it was easier to carry. The plastic had a special scent that always was present in the rehearsal studio. MATS: Rarely has an organ done so much for so few.

Convinced that they just have formed the best pop group in the world Gyllene Tider records a self financed EP during the fall of 1978. It’s sent to most record companies. Tommy Rander at Nacksving Records likes the record and gets in touch. But he wonders where the group stands politically. The members see this as a dubious encroachment on their creative process and deny further invitations. Will anyone else bite? A morning in January 1979 Per Gessle is awakened by a phone call from Kjell Andersson at the record company EMI. The phone call creates an intensive phone chain to the rest of the group.

ANDERS: The phone rang and my brother picked it up. He put down the receiver and said “Hey, it’s MP. It’s happened. You’re going to be pop stars now!”. I wondered what he was talking about. So I took the call and there was MP sounding all solemn and weird and just said “Look… we’re gonna be it now…”. MATS: Per had just called me. He was really taken. “Kjelle called”, he said. Kjelle who? “Of EMI, he likes Billy”. MICKE: It was one of the biggest moments in my life. Except when I had a child. PER: You can’t compare getting a record company with having a child. This is not a question of life or death, it’s much bigger than that!

The call from EMI triggers red alert in the group. Every other activity is set aside. Buried in the rehearsal studio the group records demo after demo after demo for the LP that looms over the horizon.

PER: When Kjelle called in January 1979 we all go so incredibly motivated. MICKE: I’ve never seen a band that rehearsed so resolutely. Everything else became unimportant. The group took all our time. PER: Kjelle became our catalyst and our creative springboard. We made a lot of demos of songs after he called, songs we never used: “Faller morgonregn igen” [Falls Morning Rain Again], “Mona Lisa”, “Hjärtekrossaren” [The Heartbreaker], “Hästar i natten” [Horses in the Night] , “Är det jag?” [Is It Me?] and so on. MICKE: We tried all sorts of things. We could’ve debuted with a triple album, we had that many songs. The rest of music-Halmstad observed the intended pop stars with some distance. What kind of bunch was that – and what could become of them?

MATS: Many Halmstad groups thought we were silly who were into this pop thing. PER: We listened to Blondie, Rubinoos, Greg Kihn and all this new wave stuff. MATS: Lots of groups did considerably harder things. Symphonic rock and such. “Yeah yeah, pop – we did that too, five years ago”. PER: And we had dyed hair. ANDERS: But we hardly didn’t hang out in musician circles. At least not us, who weren’t even from town. We came from Harplinge. Talk about being square.

EMI sends down the intended producer Lasse Lindbom to Halmstad. He becomes the group’s first contact with the pop business and makes a striking impression on his future adepts.

ANDERS:  Lindbom was severely hung over, wore shades and walked around in the snow slush in purple sneakers. PER: We were incredibly impressed. But he had really just taken a coffee break from his real mission in Halmstad, to take care of Sydkraft, another Halmstad band that EMI was dealing with. GÖRAN: We played “Lätt fånget, lätt förgånget” [Easy Come, Easy go]. MATS:  He yawned.

Lasse Lindbom takes his purple sneakers and shades and goes back to Stockholm to report. EMI decides to take on Gyllene Tider. The band travels to Stockholm to record. Sighing with enchantment before all technical thingies the quintet steps into, judged by their eyes, the gigantic recording studio. Brought with them they have a bunch of songs that strive in different directions.

PER: We ourselves didn’t know then what was so good or unique with Gyllene Tider. Kjelle probably knew the most about the direction, considering what songs ended up on the first album. “Sjömän”, “Revolver upp”, “Flickorna på TV2” represented the slightly odd, while ”Sista gången jag såg Annie”, ”Himmel No 7” and ”Guld” were more grown up.

The record career therefore is initiated with a dud. In January 1980 Gyllene Tider’s first single on EMI is released, “Himmel No 7”, a controlled rock-disco flirt smelling like Factory. The b-side is a little trifle named “Flickorna på TV2”. A fun thing. But not a hit. A perfect b-side. That’s how they thought.

PER: Not us nor EMI realized that the hit song was “Flickorna på TV2”. The audience decided that. Of course that makes the odd things work. GÖRAN: I wonder what would’ve happened if we’ve broken through with “Sista gången jag såg Annie”? MICKE: The last time we ever saw a record contract, maybe.
Now things heat up. Suddenly “Flickorna på TV2” is everywhere. On the radio. On TV. On tour. Suddenly the rehearsal talks about becoming the Biggest Act in Sweden are turning reality.

It’s the summer of 1980 and Gyllene Tider is thrown into a new existence. They’re pop idols and they have a summer tour. Screaming fans at the concerts, bags full of fan mail, jealous guys yelling “damn faggots” at the concerts – it’s just to get used to it. And in the middle of it all a new album is needed. After the summer tour 1980 six new songs are recorded: “Vänta på mej”, “Kärleken är inte blind”, “När vi två blir en”, ”Det hjärta som brinner”, ”Leva livet” and ”När alla vännerna gått hem”. ”När vi två blir en” is released as the single. It sells 150,000 copies and torpedoes for 18 weeks all competition on the singles charts. The group’s biggest hit is a fact at youth centers, discos and bridal showers. Sweden is paralyzed with Farfisa fever.

The beforehand interest in Gyllene Tider’s second LP “MODERNA TIDER” was bull marketed due to the ever-increasing delay of it. Under time pressure Per starts writing a battery of new songs. The record is finished in January 1981 and the EP “SWING & SWEET”, with Swedish versions of e.g. Tom Petty’s “I Need To Know” (“Vill ha ett svar”) and Mott the Hoople’s  “The Golden Age of Rock ‘n’ Roll” (“Gyllene Tider för rock ‘n’ roll”) is added as a bonus.

ANDERS: We didn’t know if Gyllene Tider would dance only for a summer. Therefore I’ll never forget when we sat at Operakällaren and found out that “Moderna Tider” had pre-orders in excess of 130,000 copies. PER: We did a spring tour in indoor sports arenas in connection with the release of the album. It was chaos all the way through. Unbelievable that no one got seriously hurt already back then. ANDERS: But we had a few close calls. PER: The spring tour ’81 was the most hysterical period, since no one was prepared for what came. Everything just exploded, we couldn’t do record signings, we couldn’t walk the streets. And then came the first concert of the summer leg of the tour, in Kristianopel, where the terrible accident happened, where the chaos led to three people being crushed to death. It was horrible.

Not since the Hep Stars swept through the middle of the 60s could anyone remember a similar hysteria around a Swedish pop band. In the tour bus sat a confused bunch of people and wondered what the hell was going on.

PER: We always felt a size too small for our success. And we had no one to talk to. We didn’t know how to act on big stages, if we had the right clothes, how the band should be placed, all these important details. We did what we felt was right.

1981 zooms by in a jiffy. The tour is documented by Lasse Hallström in the movie “Parkliv!”. “MODERNA TIDER” sells an astronomical 400,000 copies. But soon it’s 1982 and a new workday again.

The third album, “PULS” is to be recorded and Gessle brings in a bundle of songs that show a more romantic side of the group. “Puls” lacks a given single for a long time, but the problem gets a simple solution when “Sommartider” is recorded as the last song in May. In spite of the pull of their biggest hit ever “Puls” only sells half of what “Moderna Tider” did. Halmstad’s biggest export takes it with control. 200,000 copies of a pop album isn’t all that bad either.

Then four fifths of the band had to do a tour in the army. Per, who doesn’t look good in green, records a solo album instead. The summer of 1983 Gyllene Tider is reunited, and this time to conquer the world. “HEARTLAND CAFÉ” is the group’s run at a career as rock stars in the heaviest division. Outside of Sweden the LP is released under a new name, Roxette. “Teaser Japanese” is to that date the most expensive music video ever made in Sweden, but the world remains cold regarding “Roxette”. So far…

Now things are starting to crack. Spring of 1984 Gyllene Tider goes on a tour to back “Heartland Café” up. Marie Fredriksson tags along as backup singer. But the venues are scarcely populated. PER: I never confessed to myself that Gyllene Tider had gone down in popularity. I made myself believe that this all was only a temporary slope. When we switched to English we were cocky as hell. We knew we would break in the USA. There was never an option. MICKE: At the same time we knew that “Puls” had sold less than “Moderna Tider”. PER: Yes, but we’re still talking about 200.000 records. I’m totally convinced that if we had continued… you wanted to be studio musicians, there was a lot of talk about that… but had we continued, we had risen and done a damned good thing. ANDERS: But the air had gotten out of the whole thing. PER: We all felt the same way really. But I never had the guts to break up the band. We didn’t have anything besides Gyllene Tider.

Then it turns 1989 and the compilation album “INSTANT HITS” is released. The cash tellers go ka-ching and when it all goes silent “Instant Hits” has sold 190.000 copies. Everybody realizes something is about to happen. Gyllene Tider is getting hot again, without lifting a finger.

During the first half of the 90s, the band is still in hibernation while Roxette harvests incredible success all over the world. But in 1995 an unexpected competition arises between the two groups. A new Gyllene Tider collection is preceded by the newly recorded single “Det är over nu”. It turns quickly into a summer torment and when the band reunites for a single concert at Stora Torg in Halmstad 15,000 people are crowded before the stage. More people want in and the concert is a huge success. The group has rested into shape and is better than ever. Without anyone really realizing how. But one can always speculate.

MICKE: There can’t be many bands that have played together as much as we did during 1979-81. We live on that still. We just rehearsed once before the Stora Torg gig. And still one wasn’t at all nervous. We knew were to place the cupboard, so to speak. And that’s more than just doing it by heart. MATS: There’s something more… ANDERS: That’s the essence of a group, to complete each other. GÖRAN: I don’t have any brothers, but I can imagine it feels like it does in Gyllene Tider.

Enough. Put your hankies away. Summer of ’95 the ultimate compilation-CD “HALMSTADS PÄRLOR” is released, the next two years it sells 500,000 copies. And now the thunder from below begins. “Give us our Gyllene Tider back!” Sweden’s, at that time, biggest newspaper demands. The winter is spent in thought. Wrong or right? Nostalgia or legitimate? Boring or fun? The band goes for the latter alternatives. There is a tour together with Wilmer X. And just in time for Återtåget a new EP is released with four new Gyllene-hits: “Gå & fiska!”, “Juni, juli, augusti”, “Harplinge”, and “Faller ner på knä”. Everything is, in other words, just the way it should be if you’re Sweden’s Biggest Pop Act.  Just one more detail to fix.

GÖRAN:  The legs of the Farfisa! ALL:  Say what? GÖRAN: They’re shot...gotta fix them before the tour. ANDERS: Easy. Go to a good blacksmith and he’ll set you up with a socket, then he’ll bend them back and then just chrome them. GÖRAN: Chrome what?? I don’t want them to be chromed…  ALL:  Damned sure you’re gonna chrome the legs! GÖRAN: Nope, they should be red, they were red from the beginning. ANDERS: Hey, there’s a band in England that has the exact same organ as you. MATS: Call them. Ask them if you can have their legs. “Hello my name is Göran Fritzson, I have trouble with my Farfisa’s legs”.

Time to round off. The show is about to begin. It’s been a long journey for Sweden’s Biggest Pop Act. From Harplinge to Hammersmith. From Getinge to Gettysburg. And now they’re back. Without mullets. But with three chords, slightly dirty teenage songs and Swedish music history’s most distinct Farfisa organ. Say hi to the audience!

ANDERS: We’re still better than Noice! PER: Don’t forget to yell “hey hey” after “Sommartider”. MATS: Pop music should before anything be happy. MICKE: Who’s driving? GÖRAN: It was fun getting through!