They are bigger and you can present the music and the idea behind the record in a proper way. Were you happy for the appearance of CD format in general and in this case? 3 tracks were not released on the original LP, but on the CD version. PP: – Different formats played an important role here. It was something our US manager Herbie Herbert once said and I loved it and thought it made sense in our particular corner of this crazy music biz. Did you take this phrase as a guiding line during songwriting? PP: – On the edge of the sleeve it’s written „Don’t bore us – get to the chorus”. I didn’t really succeed, but that was my master plan. When I wrote the „Joyride” album my ambition was to write only songs that were strong enough to become hit singles. But all of us came from different musical backgrounds so the answer wasn’t easy for everyone. What was Roxette all about? For me it was easy. That was always a constant discussion between Marie, Clarence and myself. Personally I wanted us primarily to be more pop than rock. PG: – We always wanted Roxette to be a colourful band. Did you also feel that your music got more colourful? PP: – The album sleeve became very colourful, it has definitely more colours than the first 2 Roxette album covers. The music we made turned out to be the perfect soundtrack to 1991 for some reason. The basic reason for Joyride’s success was the timing. I don’t know if that mattered, I don’t think so.
PP: – Because of the Gulf War, you had to postpone the album release. We were travelling the world constantly! But I guess I was fairly young, highly motivated and loved to be in this wonderful Roxette balloon with Marie. However, looking back and checking the drawers, I don’t really understand how I found the time to do all this writing and to record so many demos. The bigger she became, the better performances she made, both in the studio and on stage. The more success we got the better songs I wrote. You have to remember we came from nowhere (spelled S-W-E-D-E-N) so we didn’t take ANYTHING for granted. PG: – Oh, I was always triggered by success. PP: – After the success of „Look Sharp!”, how much did you feel the pressure to make something bigger and better? How did it effect your songwriting? Together with Warner I’m planning a beautiful box set for release later this year. It’s a very important album for us from every angle. Yea, well… there are so many record anniversaries going on all the time. No champagne yet, still on cappuccino time here!!! How do you feel about this anniversary? Have you already popped champagne? Patrícia Peres: – Hej Per! Your best selling record, „Joyride” is celebrating its 30th anniversary today! Congratulations! It’s a very important album both in your career and in Roxers’ life. I hope you’ll enjoy the reading as much as I enjoyed doing this interview with Mr. The little girl who in 1991 was sitting persistently in front of MTV to catch the video certainly wouldn’t have thought that 30 years later she would ask the guy in the world’s best power pop duo about this album. It’s been 30 years now since we joined the joyride and became magic friends. Music-wise Joyride was the first real life-changing experience for me and I’m quite sure I’m not the only one who felt the same when first heard either the title song or the complete record.