Per Gessle Hokan: a life filled with music

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Per Hokan is known worldwide as a talented musician, instrumentalist, author of many world hits and founder of a large number of popular projects. Hokan's work is consistently praised by critics, noting the high quality of the compositions, the depth of the lyrics, and the excellent arrangements of Per's songs. The musician became famous thanks to the Roxette project, created together with the famous singer Marie Fredriksson.

Biography

Per Gessle Håkan was born on January 12, 1959 in Halmstad, Sweden, the son of a plumbing company owner and a painting teacher.

Per's parents instilled in the boy a love of music, and the childhood of the future star was spent studying performers of different genres, acquiring music discs and trying to form his own band.

The young artist's first project was the band Pepcis, which Per founded when he was five years old. He and his friends got together at Per's house, took various household items, turned on music and gave "home concerts" for relatives.

By tenOver the years, Per Gessle had amassed a collection of hundreds of vinyl records and spent time with older guys, among whom he had authority due to his colossal knowledge.

Gyllene Tider

At the age of 13, Per met Mats Persson, who was several years older than him and had sufficient knowledge to create a musical group. Together with two other guys, they create the group Gyllene Tider, which soon becomes quite popular by the standards of Sweden, so popular that in 1980 Per Gessle was trusted to write a song that will be submitted to the Eurovision Song Contest from Sweden.

For Dina Bruna Ogons Skull, co-written by Per with Mats Persson, was performed by Lasse Lindbom and placed last on the list. The composition was warmly received in the homeland of the musician and was published in large numbers.

Failure does not discourage Per, and in the same year he writes a number of songs for the album Gyllene Tider, which was called Moderna Tider. The album went platinum almost immediately, staying at number one on all Swedish music charts for over sixteen weeks.

Soon, Per Gessle met Marie Fredriksson, who by that time was already a famous singer. The musical tastes of Marie and Per turned out to be similar, and the musician invites the girl to participate in his projects.

Marie took part in the recording of several albums of the group, and also performed some songs on Per's solo album.

Roxette

After a couple of years, Per decides to create a project that would perform songs in the "melodic pop-rock" genre. This leads to the recording of the album Pearls Of Passion, which was created by the musician with the support of Marie. Per understands that the sound of the album is significantly different from everything he has released before, and creates the Roxette project, starting to actively create new material. A year later, the single The Look is released, which brings Peru and Marie world fame.

Taking a break of two years, Roxette went on a long tour, which brought the band incredible popularity and secured the position of Per Gessle's new project on the musical Olympus.

Present

In 2004, Per took part in the anniversary concert of Gyllene Tider and recorded a new album with them, going on a long tour with the group.

The next year, Per will devote himself entirely to recording his solo album Son of a Plumber, which received incredibly high marks from music critics and went platinum in Sweden and some European countries.

Gessle's biography of Per Håkan was published in 2007 as a book called Att vara Per Gessle. In addition to the musician himself. The well-known Swedish journalist and writer Sven Lindstrom worked on the book.

The book tells about the life and career of Per, the difficulties that arose while working on various projects.

From 2009 to 2013, Per took part in several tours of Roxette and Gyllene Tider, after which the musician immediately recordedthree albums - one with each of the projects and one solo album.

In 2014, The Per Gessle Archives released a large-scale publication, which includes ten discs with previously unreleased material, as well as two rather voluminous books telling about Per Gessle's projects.

The Collector's Edition received high praise from critics, praising the quality of the published music material.

In 2017, Per releases two full-length albums at once with his songs - En vacker natt and En vacker dag. The musician's fans consider the album a conceptual duology.

Family

Per Gessle Hokan always tried to hide his personal life from journalists, not making his loved ones objects of cameras.

In 1993, the musician married Osa Nordin, his longtime fan and girlfriend, and four years later the couple had a son, Gabriel Titus Gessle.

The musician and his wife did their best to hide Titus from annoying paparazzi, and immediately after the birth of the boy, the couple flew to Spain for eight months.

In 2013, Per's brother, Bengt Gessle, died of lung cancer, a year later, the musician's sister, Gunilla, died of a similar cancer. In 2015, Per Gessle's mother, Elisabeth Gessle, tragically died.