 Leave your comments on Neil's column in our Columnists Guestbook: He loves to read your feedback!
| Super Trouper
A couple of nights ago, I decided that the television cabinet in the lounge needed sorting out. There were CDs, DVDs and videotapes all over the place and it had gotten to the stage where it had irritated me for long enough. In doing so, and trying to make space, I found all my vinyl ABBA records, the original albums as well as the 7” and 12” singles.
I’d actually forgotten I had them stored in the cabinet and why I’ve got them there in the first place escapes me as the rest of my record collection is in a cupboard gathering dust. Not that it really matters, I’m sure there are many of us who hardly play a record these days. I’ve more than likely only kept mine for sentimental reasons and the fact that they cost me a fortune at the time and I cannot bring myself to getting rid of them, and who can ever forget the sound of the needle on the vinyl as the record player started playing?
Over the years, I’ve inherited a few ABBA records that people no longer wanted and have accepted them graciously even though I already had them and on quite a few occasions I’ve been informed that they could be worth quite a lot of money. I’ve never had the heart to inform anyone to the contrary and just politely smiled and added the gesture to the growing vinyl collection. There have also been cases where I’ve bought an additional copy of an ABBA album or single because I wanted it for the different cover like the UK release of The Album and there have been the picture discs that have cost a fortune but were always something I wanted and could never get at the time when they were originally released.
My little discovery the other night took me down memory lane and I fondly remembered where every ABBA album I had, had come from, who had given it to me and for what Birthday or Christmas it was and how much I’d paid for the ‘Voulez Vous’ and ‘Slipping Through My Fingers’ picture discs.
I’d also forgotten how clear and beautiful the album covers were, no matter how worn and scuffed they have become with age. The ABBA CD covers most certainly do not offer the clarity that the original vinyl album covers did!
One of my fondest memories looking through the ABBA albums was of ‘Super Trouper’. It took me straight back to the summer and December of 1980. As I wrote in one of previous columns, my Dad had brought me the 7” of ‘The Winner Takes It All’ from the UK when it first came out and I was so chuffed at school and amongst my friends especially in light of the fact that I had the new ABBA song on vinyl before a lot of others had even heard it on the radio! Of course I loved the video as well when it came out, and I still do. ABBA managed to portray sadness and happiness in a very emotional sad song.
The 7” single of ‘The Winner Takes It All’ was just the taster and I eagerly awaited the release of the new ABBA album. It had been a long time since ‘Voulez Vous’ in May 1979. Greatest Hits Volume 2 in December 1979 did not really offer much other than the ‘Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)’ single, and despite ABBA having completed their second world tour in the latter half of 1979, the new album scheduled for release at the end of 1980 was quite overdue, well as far as this fan was concerned.
As a family we went to Cape Town for our holiday that December and I remember leaving home the day after John Lennon had been assassinated. I was all of 12, just finished junior school and thought I was the bee’s knees. I had seen the new ABBA album ‘Super Trouper’ in shops but was not allowed to add it to my collection.
Pocket money in those days would have taken months to save to buy the album and my parents were not interested in buying it for me as we were about to go on holiday and money was tight. At every available opportunity I poured over the album in shops eagerly wanting to know and hear what was inside the cover with ABBA looking so professional and classy and to this day, the cover of ‘Super Trouper’ is one of my favourite ABBA album covers.
My wait to get the ‘Super Trouper’ album was not in vain as my parents gave it to me for Christmas in 1980. Fortunately the house we were staying in had a record player and I could once again be mesmerized by my 4 idols and in the process more than likely drove my parents and my sister round the bend with ABBA. My sister and I had to take turns playing our music between the ‘Super Trouper’ and ‘Xanadu’ albums.
From the second side 1 of the record started with ‘Super Trouper beams are gonna blind me………’ I was in seventh heaven and I’m sure that the first listen of the song left such an impact on me that when I hear the start of ‘Super Trouper’ today I still get goose bumps.
With ‘Super Trouper’, ABBA once again proved that they had what it took to give the fans what they wanted. The advance sales in the UK alone were enormous, what a way to end off the first year of the 1980’s.
The voices of Agnetha and Frida were a musical match made in heaven and to me it was never more evident than on the beginning of ‘Super Trouper’ and which continued throughout the entire album. Today the ‘Super Trouper’ album remains one of my favourite ABBA albums to play from start to finish and enjoy it in one sitting, and to think that it first came out 25 years ago this December, it is hard to believe that I’m still enjoying it so much after all these years, all the songs still sound as fresh as they did when I first heard them back in 1980.
The video for the ‘Super Trouper’ single release was different, but then how else do you make video for a song based on a spotlight!! Agnetha’s number 1 finger, as well as her raised arm during appropriate moments of the song has delighted me for years and Frida was just gorgeous.
I don’t think there is a song on the album that I don’t like. I’ve always thought Agnetha delivered a superb solo performance on both ‘The Winner Takes It All’ and ‘Lay All Your Love On Me’ and Frida the same on ‘Andante, Andante’ and ‘Our Last Summer’. ‘The Piper’ I still find fascinating, ‘On And On And On’ is still a great party song and ‘Me And I’ is fun and I just love the chorus. It is such a pity that ‘Happy New Year’ became dated with the ‘end of ‘89’ bit.
I remember being so excited to have a ‘live’ ABBA track on ‘Super Trouper’ with ‘The Way Old Friends Do’. I did not have anything in my collection that had a live ABBA track and so this was a first. It was only years later that I managed to get my hands on the live version of ‘I Wonder’ when a friends mother gave me her copy of the 7” single of ‘The Name Of The Game’. It was only later that I realized that ‘The Way Old Friends Do’ was not really that ‘live’ and after seeing the performance on the ‘ABBA In Concert’ DVD last year, it made the moment of really seeing ABBA perform it live so much more special.
The 2001 remaster of ‘Super Trouper’ has the wonderful ‘Put On Your White Sombrero’ added, which I first heard in 1994, and it is a pity that it was not originally on the ‘Super Trouper’ album, the voices of Frida and Agnetha really complement each other even if they are not always singing in harmony with one another. I don’t know if ‘Put On Your White Sombrero’ could well have been hit if it was a single release but it most certainly is a lovely track.
The ‘Super Trouper’ album must have been a great accomplishment for all four ABBA members, I can’t imagine it being an easy one to make, but they did and it put them back where they belonged, on TOP!
Thanks for reading!
Neil |
