About a year before I
had decided that Omnibus Press, of which I was Editor-in-Chief, ought to
publish a substantial, warts-and-all biography of Abba and that its author had
to be a Swede. Existing biographies, written by British writers, only skimmed
the surface of their career and said very little about the real lives of those
involved, so I did some research and somehow found Magnus. Or he found me, and he
wrote to me as follows: “I was especially
pleased to learn that you recognised
the value of having a Swedish writer doing the book, since that would be necessary to be able to do interviews in
Swedish, not to mention that such a
writer would be better equipped to write knowledgeably about important aspects of Swedish history and culture.
“I believe I would be the perfect writer
for you,” he went on. “I have been occupied with in-depth research on ABBA and
the careers of the individual members for a decade now. I have innumerable
files in my computer that are chock-full with information about ABBA, thousands
of newspaper and magazine articles and hundreds of video items. I also have
access to a large worldwide network of knowledgeable ABBA fans who [will be] happy
to share their insights with me.
“I write fluently in English, and would
be able to provide you with a vivid, fair and wide-reaching portrait of the
group. I would perhaps not be able to give you Albert Goldman or Kitty Kelley,
but I could certainly strive for Johnny Rogan, whom I see as a role model for
writing a book like this in terms of giving appropriate space for aspects of
art and private and business matters.”
Well, he’s certainly confident, I
thought, and he wasn’t kidding about his Abba awareness, and in any case I
wasn’t after a Goldman/Kelly hatchet job anyway, more of the Rogan-style
approach exemplified in his Smiths book The
Severed Alliance.
Carl Magnus Palm
So I told Magnus about my brief but memorable friendship with
John and so keen was he to listen that it wasn’t until after we had finished
our main course that we turned our attention to Abba. I soon realised he knew
everything there was to know about Abba, or at least more than anyone else
barring the group themselves and those that worked for them, and that I had
found the ideal author for the Abba book I had in mind. The following day I met
with his literary agent, did a deal and in 2001 Omnibus Press published the
first of many editions of Bright Lights Dark Shadows: The Real Story
Of Abba, still in
print as a revised edition today, all 256,201 words of it in the latest edition,
its sales now standing at well over 50,000.
Magnus went on to write other Abba books, including a guide
to their music for Omnibus, and produce film documentaries on the group. He has
since become recognised as the world’s leading authority on Abba in much the
same way that Mark Lewisohn has made his name in a similar role for The
Beatles. Magnus writes sleeve notes for Abba’s enhanced catalogue reissues and,
like Mark with The Beatles, commands the respect of the members of Abba without
becoming a part of their organisation and therefore beholden to them in what he
writes about them. Through a deft blend of hard-earned knowledge and subtle
diplomacy, he has earned their trust, an ideal situation for a writer and
archivist. It almost goes without saying that he is as respected by Abba’s fans
worldwide as he is by the group themselves.
Perhaps inspired by Mark
Lewisohn’s books on The Beatles, most especially The Complete Beatles
Recording Sessions
(1988) which I would bet my house on his having read word for word, Magnus has
now excelled himself in terms of Abba scholarship by compiling Abba:
The Complete Recording Sessions*. Crowd funded by contributions from
fans, it is very classy but on the expensive side: a 448-page, magnificently
produced, large format illustrated work chronicling in extraordinary detail the
studio endeavours of Björn, Benny, Frida and Agnetha, from the earliest session
in which Björn & Benny took part together, in November 1966, right the way
through to the last, on 23 August 1982, when engineer Michael Tretow worked on
final mixes of ‘Cassandra’, ‘Under Attack’ and Abba’s exquisite swansong ‘The
Day Before You Came’.
Michael Tretow with the four members of Abba in the studio in 1978.
It is, of course, an
astonishing labour of love and Magnus has been assisted in his endeavours by
Björn and Benny and, to lesser extent, Frida and Agnetha. Perhaps most valuable,
though, was Tretow himself, who was on hand to guide him through Abba’s tape
archive and shed light on their recording process. Granted access to master
tapes, rejected mixes, alternative versions, rough cuts and pretty much
everything that was saved from every recording they ever made, Magnus has
painstakingly set down precisely what happened and when, and is thus able to
describe in precise terms how Abba’s music was assembled and how choices were made in regard to
what was released and what remained in the can. Scans of tape boxes and other
documents illustrate the chronological entries and along the way Magnus charts
the group’s development in terms of their success, ambition and enterprise, giving
an overview of each recording, singles and albums, as they were issued, setting
all this in a frame of everything else that was happening elsewhere in the
world of pop during the years when Abba was together. 
So, as an example of
what’s on offer, here we are on 10 September 1975, and the four members of Abba have assembled at
Metronome Studios in Stockholm to record the vocals for a song with the working
title of ‘Boogaloo’. Björn has finally come up with some lyrics: “The theme was
pretty unambiguous,” writes Magnus. “A 17-year-old girl, going out on a Friday
night to have a good time on the dance floor, flirting with guys who may or not
be ‘kings’ to her ‘queen’,” and after a few paragraphs about the sequencing of different
aspects of the backing track and, intriguingly, a verse that was later removed,
he points out that the final line of the chorus was ‘Dig in the dancing queen’,
“as in encouraging people to help themselves to food. The ambiguity was spotted
not too long after the album’s release, although one assumes that Björn, Benny
and Stig [manager Anderson] were relieved to realise that ‘dig in’ could be
interpreted as ‘digging’ which is how Bjorn prefers it to be today.”
Such detail might addle
the brain were it not for the pleasure this particular song has given the
world. It seems pretty much everyone involved knew they were on to something
special. “Frida has commented that Bjorn and Benny often wanted [her and
Agnetha] to sing in registers that were beyond their vocal capabilities,”
writes Magnus, “and certainly, on the ‘You can dance, you can jive’ section of
the chorus, especially at 02:58 in the finished recording, there’s a palpable
sense of the two vocalists only just managing to reach the notes, seemingly
fuelled by nothing else than an extra boost of energy and pure willpower. No
other pop band has ever been able to reproduce that particular sound and
feeling. ‘When we recorded the vocals for “Dancing Queen”, I remember we both
had the chills; the hair stood up on our arms,’ said Agnetha a few years
later.”
Nevertheless, no amount
of analysis and research in superb books like this can really explain the magic
of Abba, any more than they can explain the magic of The Beatles. There was
something in the air, of course, but it may have had something to do with what
Agnetha describes elsewhere in this book as a ‘strong sense of competition
between us [girls]’ while Frida goes as far as to admit: ‘We pushed each other.
Anything you can do I can do better!’ And while the two boys, as the group’s
writers, are often credited as the key members of Abba, Benny, the source of
all those melodies, isn’t so sure. “When you talk about concepts like ‘the Abba
sound’,” he tells Magnus, “you certainly have to mention the songs, the way we
arranged them, Michael [Tretow’s] contribution and all that, but take away Frida
and Agnetha and let two other girls sing their parts, and the ‘Abba sound’ goes
out of the window immediately. Their voices were simply the most important
ingredient of our overall sound structure.” I tend to agree.
ABBA:
The Complete Recording Sessions
is available only through a dedicated website:
abbathecompleterecordingsessions.com. Prices vary according to where it is to
be shipped, but in the UK it is approximately £94.
*
To avoid any misunderstanding I should point out that this book is a massively
upgraded and expanded edition of an earlier book by Magnus with the same title,
published in 1994.
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