★ c’mon join the joyride everybody! ★

PROJECT: LIVE SYDNEY 1991

Well, this one just got even more interesting…

Back in March, when we sat down with Per for our big #ROX40 Interview, somewhere amongst four decades of Roxette stories he casually dropped a rather exciting piece of information: something was happening with Sydney 1991.

He’d been working with Mats ‘MP’ Persson on the live recordings, the audio had been properly mixed and, more importantly, Per confirmed that it was going to be released…

“The audio for that has been mixed properly by Mats ‘MP’ Persson, and it sounds fantastic!
It’s going to be released. It’s likely to be a triple vinyl thing because it’s really really wonderful.
Marie and Jonas doing ‘Soul Deep’ is like an 8 minute treat, sounds so good.”

Per Gessle, TDR x PG #ROX40 Interview, March 2026

Fast forward seven months and suddenly Roxette Live Sydney 1991 has appeared again, only this time Per is sitting at Atlantis Studios in Stockholm with Stefan Boman putting the finishing touches to something considerably more visual…

“Stefan Boman at Atlantis Studios in Stockholm has pulled some final tricks on the master of Roxette Live Sydney 1991!
MP did the mixing. Live movie? Yes. TV? Yes. Albums? Yes. Stay tuned for more info, folks.”

Per Gessle, Instagram, 8th October 2026

“Working with the mighty Stefan Boman at Atlantis Studios in Stockholm on the Roxette Live Sydney 1991 Project!
Live movie? Si si. Albums? Si si. Stay tuned for more info, folks.”

Roxette Official, Instagram, 8th October 2026

Naturally, we had questions, so we spoke to Per this morning and, well, there’s some very good news… and a little bit of not quite what we hoped news too. However, it’s all positive in our eyes, do read on…

★ A little restoration magic from a magic friend ★

The final mastering work on the new concert movie has been taking place at Stockholm’s legendary Atlantis Studios with Stefan Boman.

If the name sounds familiar, it should…

Stefan began his career at ABBA’s Polar Studios, later co-founded Park Studios and has worked with everyone from Kent and The Cardigans to Ghost, Def Leppard and, naturally, Roxette. He’s also rather handy when it comes to restoring, mixing and mastering archive material.

The original Sydney footage was shot on real (Kodak) film rather than early ’90s videotape, so there is potentially a lot of visual information sitting inside whatever elements have survived.

Exactly how far the restoration has gone, and in what resolution we’ll eventually see it, remains to be confirmed, but we’ll be very interested to see what they’ve managed to pull out of those old reels.

★ Sydney… we have a problem ★

Let’s get the slightly disappointing bit out of the way first.

There isn’t a complete Sydney concert film sitting somewhere in The Roxette Vault waiting to be dusted off. We wish there was, and apparently so does Per.

The original raw film material was held by PMI, EMI’s film division in London, before eventually finding its way back to Sweden many years later. Unfortunately, somewhere during those thirty-five years between then and now, quite a bit of it appears to have vanished…

“What’s a shame is that a lot of the raw film footage seems to have vanished.
35 years have passed since everything was recorded!”

And that isn’t the only problem. It turns out several songs weren’t filmed in the first place. Yes, really.

‘Fading Like A Flower’, ‘Spending My Time’ and ‘Listen To Your Heart’ already had proper promotional videos, so apparently nobody thought it particularly important to point a film camera at them during the Sydney shows. 1991 logic?

“It has also turned out that several songs were NOT filmed at all. For instance,
the songs that already had ‘real’ music videos (Fading, Listen, Spending).
They weren’t filmed. Don’t ask me why…”

We won’t, Per, although we’d quite like a word with whoever made that decision.

There are other gaps too. Everything was shot on real (Kodak) film, which of course meant changing physical reels during the concert, so sometimes the cameras simply weren’t rolling while other songs survive with incomplete or rather odd coverage.

So if, like us, you immediately imagined a pristine two-hour uncut Join The Joyride concert suddenly appearing in the archive… alas, no.

But don’t wander off disappointed just yet, there are some amazing things to come…

★ What DOES exist is rather exciting… ★

The surviving material has now been handed to a film crew who have gone through everything that remains, re-edited it and created a completely new version of Roxette Live Sydney 1991 using the newly mixed soundtrack.

So this isn’t simply an extended ‘LIVEISM’ or the old VHS with a few missing songs slotted back into place. It is a newly assembled concert movie created from the original material that has actually survived the past thirty-five years.

Per estimates that the finished version runs for around 70 minutes, although the exact runtime hasn’t yet been confirmed, and describes the result as “an astonishing time trip and at times fantastic”.

Considering the amount of material that has either disappeared, was never filmed in the first place or survives only partially because of reel changes, seventy minutes is actually a substantial result. As Per himself points out, “around 70 minutes is pretty much spot on when it comes to music films, if you ask me…”

Fair point, and importantly, this time it comes with a completely newly mixed and remastered soundtrack, which brings us to the really good news…

★ The AUDIO is complete! ★

While the movie archive has a few holes in it, the audio archive doesn’t.

Per confirmed to us this morning that together with MP they have worked through the recordings from the four Sydney concerts and, unlike the film, the newly mixed audio contains the full gig…

“On the positive side, of course, the soundtrack from the four Sydney gigs
has been mixed and sorted out by MP and me, and it sounds fab!
Quite an awesome little band in this era, indeed!”

And, just to make absolutely sure there’s no confusion:

“To be clear, the audio mix is the full, complete gig!
It’s only the film material that falls a bit short.”

Now that is exciting!

Thirty-five years after the Join The Joyride World Tour rolled into Sydney, we finally get the complete audio show officially. Maybe not every second of it on film, but we’ll be able to hear Roxette loud and clear, and in all their glory.

★ c’mon join the joyride! ★

The Join The Joyride World Tour 1991-1992 was Roxette going properly global. 108 concerts. More than 1.5 million people.

Europe, Australia, North America and South America, with Marie, Per and the Roxette Band in spectacular form right in the middle of that enormous early ’90s peak. Sydney got rather lucky too. Roxette played the Sydney Entertainment Centre four times during December 1991, on the 7th, 8th, 9th and 13th.

And of course we already know quite a lot of what happened there, because in 1992 we got ‘LIVEISM’.

★ LIVEISM ★

‘LIVEISM’ was a brilliant little time capsule, but a complete concert it most definitely wasn’t.

The 77-minute VHS and LaserDisc mixed Sydney live performances with backstage material, bits and pieces from the Tour and, rather cheekily, the promotional videos for ‘Church Of Your Heart’, ‘(Do You Get) Excited?’ and the brand new ‘How Do You Do!’ thrown in too.

We loved it. We still do. But there was always an awful lot of Sydney missing.

Even when ‘LIVEISM’ finally made it onto DVD as part of the 2018 ‘Boxette’ Collection, it remained exactly what it had always been: the 1992 edit.

Turns out there was plenty more music sitting in the archive…

★ SYDNEY 1991 > The FULL Setlist ★

Here’s what we understand the complete Sydney set to have been:

Hotblooded * ^
Dangerous *
Fading Like A Flower (Every Time You Leave) ^
Church Of Your Heart * =
Sleeping Single
Spending My Time
Watercolours In The Rain *
Paint ^
Knockin’ On Every Door *
Dance Away
The Big L *
Things Will Never Be The Same *
It Must Have Been Love * ^
Dressed For Success * ^
Soul Deep *
The Look * ^ +
(Do You Get) Excited? * =
Joyride * ^ +
Listen To Your Heart
Perfect Day *

* Released on ‘LIVEISM’ VHS / LaserDisc
+ Released on ‘Tourism’
^ Released separately as a B-side / bonus track
= Appeared on ‘LIVEISM’ as the promotional video rather than the live Sydney performance

Which leaves six live performances that have never received an official release:

★ Church Of Your Heart
★ Sleeping Single
★ Spending My Time
★ Dance Away
★ (Do You Get) Excited?
★ Listen To Your Heart

And now we know something else: at least ‘Spending My Time’ and ‘Listen To Your Heart’ won’t suddenly materialise in the new concert movie because, bizarrely, they were never filmed in the first place.

The audio though? That’s another story entirely.

★ So… what are we actually getting? ★

There are still a few pieces of the puzzle missing, of course.

We don’t yet have a release date, final title or complete breakdown of how the Project will appear, although Per has confirmed that the newly assembled film is being prepared for television and that albums are also part of the plan.

Back in March Per told us that the audio release was likely to become a triple-vinyl set, and nothing we’ve heard since suggests that those plans have disappeared, although the final formats and configuration are still to be confirmed. However, we would imagine something like:

★ New Concert Movie
★ Triple Vinyl (as Per mentioned back in March)
★ CD (TBC)
★ Streaming

What we now know for certain is that the Sydney Project goes considerably further than the audio release we first heard about earlier this year. The surviving film has been revisited and re-edited into an entirely new concert movie of around seventy minutes, while MP and Per have completed a new mix of the full concert from the recordings of the four Sydney shows.

The frustrating part is that thirty-five years haven’t been particularly kind to the film archive. Some of the original footage appears to have disappeared completely, several performances were never filmed in the first place and others survive only partially because the cameras were being reloaded at precisely the wrong moment.

So no, the complete concert movie we initially imagined might be sitting untouched somewhere in The Roxette Vault doesn’t exist. BUT the music does, and what remains on film has now been pulled back out of the archive, re-edited and reunited with that newly mixed soundtrack to create something we haven’t seen before.

Which, when you think about it, is something rather special indeed. We can’t wait.

‘LIVEISM‘ can now be considered the trailer, as it looks like we’re finally being treated to the full audio and a new movie.

And while we wait… hopefully not too long, here’s a playlist of the tracks we do have available on Streaming already.
(Other tracks released as b-sides are ‘Paint‘ and ‘It Must Have Been Love‘ (‘Queen of Rain’ Single), ‘Dressed For Success‘ (‘Fingertips’93’ Single)).

___________________________________________________________

Big Thanx! to Per for his time this morning.

Header + EP Playlist Live Image taken from the’Spending My Time‘
Limited Edition 7″ Single Poster Sleeve

All other photographs via Roxette Official + Per Gessle Socials
Copyright remains with original owners.