Benny story in SvD

In the Sunday edition of Svenska Dagbladet there was an article about Benny. Below is my translation of it.

Benny Andersson has made it possible that an old Swedish song is at the top of the charts. Now he's going on a mini-tour with Tommy Körberg and Helen Sjöholm and later Broadway's waiting and a plan to do a musical movie.

Three years ago the former Abba member formed BAO - Benny Anderssons Orkester. Now he and his gang are standing behind the vocalists Helen Sjöholm and Tommy Körberg.

We have all the same salary so we stand where we will claim the band members when we're trying to take a picture of the artists.

The strong attraction of BAO's repertoire of long forgotten songs and dances is big. Over 120,000 people bought the first album and the hit vår sista dans (Our Last Dance), with lyrics from Björn Ulvaeus spent 30 weeks in the charts. Around midsummer (= in the last week of June ) - when else - the follow up was released which already sold gold and took the group and the vocalist Helen Sjöholm to the top of the charts again. The song was called Du är min man (You Are My Man). The lyrics of this song were also written by Björn Ulvaeus.

And for the third time in a row BAO goes on a mini-tour with Helen Sjöholm and Tommy Körberg - a mobile dance floor is included in the luggage of the bus. This is music which is fit to dance to and for a concert. That's why the audience are enjoying themselves so much for three and a half hours.

We play neither ABBA or something from Chess or Kristina. We have our own repertoire with a lot of songs from the 40s. We play the songs of which we think that our orchestra is best equipped for, says Benny who's surprised of the response he's getting.

He suspects it's because BAO is the only player in its field. Helen Sjöholm agrees with him : if Benny wouldn't have done it, people perhaps wouldn't have bought the record. But to listen to it is like travelling in time and space. It's crazy , says Helen, who noticed that the big interest for the band hasn't stopped. There's no target group just the pleasure of enjoying it. And that 's because Benny has so strong feelings for the things he does, says she.

For Benny it's most about playing music which he thinks is best fit for violins, accordions and tuba. As a matter of fact that's how it all started before the pop circus and the Hep Stars. Inspired by his dad and grand dad Benny listened to folk music and played accordion at the age of six. He also came in contact with music from the radio and from records and heard everything from German schlager to Italian operettas.

"Now that this record is doing so well one could say that it fills an empty space in people's hearts. I've learned to trust my own feelings. But you'll never know. To make music takes a lot of time and we always want to do better than the last time partly because I've done so many things and partly because I don't want to rewrite the same song again and again. That's way it's so much fun to have this orchestra," says Benny who tries to create some music every day to keep the train riding and not to come to a stop.

The following project will be New York. Björn Ulvaeus has just finished a translation of Kristina. Now it's only a matter of finding a theatre somewhere on Broadway. If everything goes as planned, the musical will come to Broadway late 2005. Of course, it was a fun project even for Benny, who wants to start with something new. I'm thinking of making a movie - a musical movie. It has been a while since someone did this in Sweden, says Benny.

A song and dance movie?

Not necessarily dance but song. It would be fun to do something which I'm not used to do, but where I must learn to get the feeling of it. But it must start with a good structure, some material with which I can work with says Benny. Lars Rudolfsson confirms the plans :

"There are some plans in that direction and that would be a challenge to do. We have talked about it for many years," says Lars who has never directed a movie before.

"In the first place we want a good screenplay and not one which is based on a book. Because Benny likes to make music, music should play a big part in it and not just be the music of the movie. But as said before, there's no screenplay yet. But we promised each other to do something like this somewhere in the future," says Lars.

Published Originally in Svenska Dagbladet on Sunday August 8.

Translated into English thanks to ABBAMAILer Patrick Proost, Beerse, Belgium.