Per Hokan is known worldwide as a talented musician, instrumentalist, author of many world hits and the founder of a large number of popular projects. Hokan’s works are constantly praised by critics who note the high quality of the compositions, the depth of the lyrics, and the excellent arrangements of Pera’s songs. The musician became famous thanks to the Roxette project, created together with the famous singer Marie Fredriksson.
Biography
Per Gessle Hockan was born January 12, 1959 in Halmstad, Sweden, in the family of the owner of a plumbing installation company and painting teacher.
Pera's parents instilled in the boy a love of music, and the childhood of the future star passed in the study of artists of various genres, the acquisition of music CDs and attempts to assemble his own group.
The first project of the young artist was the group Pepcis, which Per founded when he was five years old. He and his friends gathered together at Per's house, took various household items, turned on music and gave “home concerts” for relatives.
By the age of ten, Per Gessle had assembled a collection of hundreds of vinyl records and spent time with older children, among whom he had authority thanks to 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 Peru Gessle is entrusted to write a song that will be presented at the Eurovision Song Contest from Sweden.
For Dina Bruna Ogons Skull, written by Per in collaboration with Mats Persson, was performed by Lasse Lindbom and finished last in the ranking. The composition was warmly received in the homeland of the musician and was published in a large circulation.
Failure does not discourage Pera, and in the same year he wrote a number of songs for the album Gyllene Tider, which was called Moderna Tider. The album almost immediately went platinum, holding on to first place in all of Sweden’s music charts for over sixteen weeks.
Soon, Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson met , who by that time was already a famous singer. Musical addictions of Marie and Pera turned out to be similar, and the musician invites the girl to participate in their projects.
Marie took part in recording several albums of the group, and also performed some songs on Pera's solo album.
Roxette
After a couple of years, Per decides to create a project that would perform songs in the genre of “melodic pop rock”. 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 that it released earlier, and creates the Roxette project, having begun actively creating 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 set off on a long tour, which brought the band incredible popularity and consolidated 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 with the group on a long tour.
The following year, Per completely devotes his entire life to the recording of his solo album Son of a Plumber, which received incredibly high marks from music critics and became platinum in Sweden and some European countries.
Gessle Per Hokan's biography was published in 2007 in the form of a book called Att vara Per Gessle. In addition to the musician himself. A well-known Swedish journalist and writer, Sven Lindstrom, worked on the book.
The book tells about the life and career of Per, the difficulties encountered when working on various projects.
From 2009 to 2013, Per took part in several tours of Roxette and Gyllene Tider, after which the musician recorded three albums at once - one for each of the projects and one solo album.
In 2014, the large-scale edition of The Per Gessle Archives was released, which includes ten disks with previously unreleased materials, as well as two rather voluminous books telling about Per Gessle's projects.
The collector's edition received high marks from critics who noted the quality of the published musical material.
In 2017, Per released two full-length albums at once with his songs - En vacker natt and En vacker dag. Fans of the musician consider the album a conceptual dilogy.
A family
Per Gessle Hokan always tried to hide his personal life from journalists, without making his relatives the objects of cameras.
In 1993, the musician married with Osa Nordin, his longtime fan and girlfriend, and four years later, the couple had a son, Gabriel Titus Gessle.
The musician and his wife made every effort to hide Titus from the annoying paparazzi, and immediately after the birth of the boy, the couple flew away to Spain for eight months.
In 2013, Pera’s brother, Bengt Gessle, dies of lung cancer, a year later the sister of the musician, Gunilla, died of a similar cancer. In 2015, the mother of Pera Gessle, Elizabeth Gessle, was tragically killed.