HALMSTAD (UPDATED) - Radio Halland's Pelle Hörmander tells The Daily Roxette today that he has known Per Gessle for most of his professional life… going all the way back to the days of Gyllene Tider. He feels he knows Per well enough to deeply understand that "the situation with Marie has really 'rocked' him… it's really shaken him."

  Every year around Christmas, Hörmander conducts an interview with Per that is broadcast on this regional radio station. The tradition continued this year, when Per visited the Radio Halland studio on December 23rd.

  "Per says that the treatment Marie is receiving for the cancer is "rough"… but he is optimistic about the future, even mentioning the possibility of touring again." But, of course, Roxette's future is dependent upon Marie's health. He also repeated that when a family member or friend suffers from something like that, it's clearly obvious that it's a shock for everyone.
  Per speaks with an open heart about his feelings concerning Marie's sickness in this interview — sound clips of which are now available (see link below).

   As previously reported, Per says that Marie was able to add her vocal track to the the new single which will come out early next year.

• SR's Radio Halland Interview with Per (In Swedish)

Here, translated by TDR News Editor Thomas Evensson, are excerpts from the interview (as most of our readers are already familiar with the story of how Per first heard about Marie's situation, we're excluding that):



  - Have you been able to help Marie?


  I don’t know. Not much more than to fulfill what we had agreed on beforehand… like releasing this album and such. We agreed together on these releases. A cool thing is that Marie added her vocals to our new single last month!

  - How is she today?


  It’s up and down, she has good days and not so good days. On a scale, she is pretty bad… but she's a strong and tuff gal so she will be back!


 - What can the fans do?


  Marie is very thankful for all her mail and greetings from the fans. Keep that up!


 - How does this affect Roxette? Any future plans?


  Not much really. Apart from the Ballad Hits and the Pop Hits, we have no future plans. The only thing that we canceled was the tour. I’m sure this thing in itself won’t affect Roxette's being or not being. It may affect how we work in the future though.



  "This same week when Marie fell ill we had two more serious happenings in our family — in our circle of friends — so I was sort of prepared," Per continued.