It’s January 12, 1989. Roxette’s manager Marie Dimberg is standing next to a deserted road in the Australian countryside. The heat is oppressive and the dust dizzy.
She is admittedly on holiday, but now she has to make an important call home to Sweden. It’s Per Gessle’s birthday. The former youth idol has reached the age of 30. The heyday of the Golden Age is behind him and together with the rising star and friend Marie Fredriksson, he has formed the group Roxette. They have just released their second album Look Sharp! and in Sweden they are the hottest of all. But despite that, Per is dissatisfied when Marie Dimberg calls to congratulate him from the other side of the world.
– Then we would have sold 350,000 copies in Sweden. He said “nothing happens, you can come home now! Nothing happens”, says Marie Dimberg.
That things are going well at home in Sweden is not the most important thing for Per, he wants to beat abroad. Even though they have been fighting for it for three years now, no one abroad seems to be interested in the Swedish pop duo. The self-printed t-shirts, with the text “Today Sweden, tomorrow the world”, are starting to feel a little embarrassing at this point.
For Roxette, however, it is still not an issue if they will succeed, it’s a matter of when and Per is impatient. But he will not have to wait that long. Without either Per Gessle, Marie Fredriksson or the manager Marie Dimberg knowing about it, in the beginning of 1989 it started to bubble on the other side of the Atlantic. Thanks to an exchange student, Roxette’s song is spinning The Look right now at a local radio station in Minneapolis and it will get rings on the water.
P3 Music documentary about Roxette is the story of how two musicians from Halmstad in an odd way become world stars. With four listets in the USA, Roxette has succeeded in something no other Swede has done, neither before nor after.
The documentary is made by Hanna Frelin during the autumn of 2021.
Producer is Joanna Korbutiak.
Executive producer is Anna Johannessen.
The technician is Fredrik Nilsson.
P3 Music documentary is made by the production company Tredje Statsmakten Media.
One source we have had great use of is the book Roxette – the unlikely round trip by Sven Lindström.
Sound clips in the documentary come from Swedish Radio (“This is how the sound becomes” in 1986, After three in P3 in 1989, Kulturnytt, Ekot, Rrox in 1984), SVT (Glädjehuset in 1984, Jacobs Stege in 1986), America’s top 10 broadcast by All American Television, the documentary “A second chance” with Marie Fredriksson made by TV4 in 2004, the program “Late night with Luuk” on TV4 from 1998, Sky News Australia and filmed material from the concert in Amsterdam 2009 from the youtube accounts “Zynius” and “Eugene Commander”.
Source: ICELAND NEWS