The second part of my intro to the sheet music for Abba Gold. If parts of this read a bit like the intro to Bright Lights Dark Shadows, that's because Carl Magnus Palm and I worked on both together. My thanks to him for this and for opening up the world of Abba to me by writing his book all those years ago.
As is the case with all groups that enjoy
such spectacular success, all four members of Abba contributed crucial elements
to the whole. Björn Ulvaeus was a natural leader and pragmatic decision maker,
and also a keen, imaginative and slightly quirky lyricist, while Benny
Andersson was a naturally gifted composer of pop melodies, schooled on the
accordion as a child by his father and grandfather. Frida’s
gift was also inherited, in her case from the family of the mother she never
knew; a superb mid-range singer, Frida brought a wealth of experience, both professional
and personal, to bear in her interpretations of Björn and Benny’s songs. Blonde
Agnetha Fältskog’s higher register was crystal clear, verging on the
operatic, and although she was perceived as the group’s sex symbol she often
sang her lines with an air of wistful pathos that found empathy with forlorn women
everywhere. This trace of cool, Ibsen-like Scandinavian melancholy that
permeates much of Abba’s work, even in songs that appear on the surface to be
quite cheerful, is among their most distinctive – and unique – traits.
Although Stig Anderson is
generally credited as being the fifth member of Abba, an equally worthy
candidate is engineer Michael Tretow who, being a bit of an electronic boffin,
rose to the challenge that Björn and Benny offered him and in doing so
discovered Abba’s ‘third’ voice. This was the inimitable sound of Frida and
Agnetha singing together, layer upon layer of overdubbed backing vocals creating
the rich, all-enveloping choral landscape that became another of Abba’s distinguishing attributes. Coupled with exemplary musicianship from Björn
and Benny and the best Swedish session players available, the result was pop
perfection.
Just
as it does today, Abba’s music transcended fashion at the time it was released.
In the UK and continental Europe punk was all the rage during Abba’s glory
years while in America new wave and disco were battling it out with mainstream
rock delivered by men with beards in faded jeans, check shirts and cowboy
boots. The bright, often garish, clothing that Abba chose to wear was
idiosyncratic to say the least, while their romantic pop, based largely on
European melodic traditions, seemed out of phase with the times, though towards
the end of their career they did produce some fine disco workouts.
Reluctant
to tour until it proved impossible to refuse, Abba became pioneers of the video
boom, astutely realising that producing short films of themselves singing their
hits for distribution everywhere would preclude the need to perform hundreds of
concerts throughout the world. In the end, of course, they succumbed, with
predictable results – ticket riots, administrative chaos and general feelings
of discontent and homesickness that placed an insurmountable strain on the
relationships that held the group together.
Nevertheless,
Abba’s fame was truly international. Shrewdly, they recorded many of their
songs in Spanish and German as well as their native Swedish, with the result
that their music reached countries where
most other western pop has failed to penetrate. ‘Dancing Queen’ was a US number
one. In Australia their popularity was, and remains, second only to The
Beatles. Huge crowds gathered at airports and outside hotels wherever they went
on their memorably chaotic 1977 tour down under. Famously, that same year
London’s Royal Albert Hall received a reported 3.5 million ticket applications
for a total of 12,000 tickets available for two concerts.
The
group survived the breakdown of Björn’s marriage to Agnetha and, since Björn
was the group’s lyricist, it is generally assumed that Abba’s more
heart-rending songs, tracks like ‘Knowing Me Knowing You’, ‘One Of Us’ and the
peerless ‘Winner Takes It All’, were written from personal experience. Somehow,
the shifting relationships within the group added another, distinctly poignant,
string to their bow. By the time they last appeared together in December 1982,
Benny’s marriage to Frida was also over.
Abba
had run its course. Björn and Benny wanted to write musicals together; Frida,
the only member of the group who enjoyed performing live, wanted another shot
at a solo career; and Agnetha wanted nothing more than to be left alone to raise
her children. But the music remained, heard at parties, at nostalgia festivals
and, most notably, in discos frequented by the world’s gay communities. There
emerged a plethora of tribute bands, memorably led by an Australian outfit
called Björn Again whose shows became instant sell-outs. Pete Waterman of the
eighties chart-ruling team of Stock/Aitken/Waterman, singled out Lennon &
McCartney, The Beach Boys, Motown and Abba as the ultimate role models for
anyone who wanted to make hits, and when Waterman created the boy/girl group
Steps in the late ‘90s his homage to Abba was never more overt.
By
now many of the hippest stars from the next generation – U2, R.E.M., even
Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain – had all endorsed Abba. The icing on the cake was Mamma Mia!, the musical based around
their songs which, having now been seen by over 30 million theatregoers
worldwide, has become the most successful musical of all time. The movie
version, directed by the musical’s original director, Phyllida Lloyd, and
starring Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan, received its world premiere in June
2008, and is now on the way to becoming the highest-grossing musical film ever
in the UK.
The
ongoing success of everything that Abba bequeathed to the world, the Gold album of songs that have now become
standards, the musical, the film, the tribute bands, and the pleasure they
bring, is a triumph not just for the group or even its individual members. It
is proof positive that the world’s greatest popular music, as is contained
within these pages, remains and will forever remain universally loved by
succeeding generations for as long as our planet survives, truly a golden
legacy.
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