I decided to wait a few days before writing my reflection on Roxette as it has been too hard to type anything without becoming upset.
Instead of writing something sad, I would share with you how I fell in love with Per & Marie.
Rewind to 1989. I was 15 years old. A friend of mine used to introduce me to new music after school, each week, in the school library.
In one particular week in June, he introduced me to 2 bands. One was a Swedish band called Roxette with a song called The Look.
The other was an Australian band called 1927 with debut single That's When I Think Of You.
I loved both songs.
Then later that year, I was in a van in Malaysia, where my cousin was playing Look Sharp! on cassette.
I heard Chances and Dangerous for the very first time. Wow - I wished for both songs to be singles in Australia.
They would do well. Especially Chances, which sounded so beautifully electronic. Dangerous was also an incredible track.
(Of course Dangerous became a single in OZ and did very well)
At this point The Look, Dressed For Success and Listen To Your Heart had gone through the OZ charts and did really well.
This band was huge in Australia by this time and I was already into them on the strength of the 3 singles.
But after buying Look Sharp! cassette in Malaysia I was in love with them.
From then on, I ended up collecting almost everything Roxette released.
I would love them so much that I would even have dreams owning Roxette tracks that actually don't exist in reality.
Especially 12 inch singles with glorious picture sleeves with Per and Marie containing non existent extended mixes/remixes. (To this day I would pine for a 7 min extended mix of Dance Away as a bside)
Fast forward to 2012, I turned up at the Roxette concert in Adelaide without any knowledge who the support act was.
It was 1927. It was like coming full circle. This was such a huge surprise.
Both bands put on a great show. Per and Marie and the band were great.
It would be the last time I would get to see them live.
And now In Dec 2019, I think this band will always be part of my life.
Like many in this condolences book, they have brought me such great joy, especially in the low times.
Thank you for the music - you were/are one of the most unique bands ever to grace my ears
Remembrance book for Marie Fredriksson
Dear fellow friends, dear fans of Marie Fredriksson, dear Roxette fans, dear kind people in this world,
our friend Marie has passed away on December 9, and many, many people in the world are heartbroken and would like to express their feelings. Not everyone can do so on the social media, not everyone can do so by coming to Sweden and signing the official remembrance book laid out in Stockholm.
We want to collect your thoughts, your grieve, but also your finest memories with Marie here. Please write down what you always wanted to say to her, we will collect each single entry of yours, put them into one single book and send it over to Marie’s family to show them how much she made this world better through you.
Thank you.
[All entries made before January 1, 2020 were taken over for the book. You will still be able to add your messages now but we cannot consider them for the book to Marie’s family anymore as it has been printed by now.]
The Daily Roxette had one copy of the book printed early January 2020 and handed it over to Marie Dimberg, Roxette’s manager and a very good friend of Marie Fredriksson and her family, in Göteborg on January 20, 2020. The printed version of the book is nearly 800 pages thick and it has a white cover. Its title “Tack för allt Marie” (Thank you for everything Marie) is written in silver and red letters on its sleeve.
Here you see some quick photos of the book, sadly there has never been a chance to take proper photos of this one copy as it arrived just before the evening we headed to Göteborg for the “En kväll för Marie Fredriksson” show.
If you are interested, you can download a simplified version (the printed version contains a few more blank pages to separate the chapters, for instance) of the book with all entries right here.
The entries are sorted alphabetically by names, this file is also searchable.
Entries with non-latin character sets are at the very end of the book. Most URLs have been removed as they make little sense in a printed book.
Download the file “TackForAlltMarieByTDR.pdf”