ABBA - THE LOVERS WHO CONQUERED THE WORLD

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Hi everybody! We are still digging out from the first snowstorm to hit the northeastern US. I thought I would take the time to share something with all of you. A few years ago, I went to a local record show, and found a bunch of ABBA stuff. I bought the "Pa Sondag" 45 by Agnetha and Christian, a 4 song 7" single by the Hootenanny Singers. I also bought a magazine from 1979 to commemorate ABBA's first US tour. It features excepts from a book called (imaginatively enough) 'ABBA' by Harry Edgington & Peter Himmelstrand. This book was also known as "ABBA - The Lovers Who Conquered The World. I thought everyone might enjoy reading some parts of it.

A COUPLE OF ENGAGEDS

Benny and Björn were in full flight, continuing their favorite discussion. The piano was closed, and Benny, instead of playing, had his arms folded on the lid, and his chin resting on them. He was giving his undivided attention to Björn, who had laid his guitar aside to try to put into words what he thought was lacking in them as a team. They had made a couple of records together, and both had disappeared below the surface after making scarcely a ripple. When they appeared onstage, the reception was encouraging enough. But something was certainly missing. This was their favorite discourse. To try to find what was missing. They did not realize that the ingredients which would transform them were only a few feet from them, in that flat at that very moment. they were called Agnetha and Anni-Frid, who were sitting in the next room having a chat on a much lighter vein. Björn now says, "It is a constant source of surprise to me that we were together as a foursome, going out together, spending a lot of time together in each other's company, before we realized the natural answer. It wasn't as if Agnetha and Anni-Frid had hidden their abilities as singers. They had become, in their own right, two of the most well-known singers in Sweden. It just took an extraordinarily long time for us to see the possibilities of the chemical reaction which might come about when we were all thrown in together."

It so happened that Björn and Benny had an upcoming engagement to sing at a cabaret restaurant called Valand in Gothenburg in November 1970. Björn recalled the good reception that he, Benny and Agnetha had received on the folk parks tour. Why not, he reasoned, add Anni-Frid to their act and make up a stage foursome? They called the girls in to pitch the idea to them. The reaction was somewhat short of ecstatic, but they agreed. "Why not give it a try?" said Anni-Frid.

The restaurant billed them as 'The Engaged Couples,' and announced the show as a one-off event. It was a very close facsimile of a disaster. Groups were extremely common in Swedish restaurants at the time and, while the audience quite liked the gentle diversion from their meals, the applause was lukewarm and the performers instantly forgettable. A music critic commented that they were quite pleasant, but that they could not sing together because Agnetha sang out of tune. He said: "The grouping does not come off."

The odd thing is that he was right. It was not a good show, and the realized it themselves. He was also right about Agnetha. She does have trouble singing in tune. It does not show so much when she is singing alone, but when she is in a group with others singing in tune, it does grate on the ears-though she does, in fact, have a very very fine voice. However, they were later able to overcome this problem with recording in the studio.

They tried the foursome presentation again in November 1971, this time at the Tragarn cabaret restaurant in Gothenburg. They still did not click, though the reviewers were a little kinder this time.

Stikkan Anderson had made a promise to both Benny and Björn, a promise which he was to regard almost as a holy vow. He said: "I told them very early on that I was convinced I could give them a big break internationally, as writers and as performers. I explained the very simple figures to them. The population of Sweden is in the region of seven million. But singing to just the English speaking world would give us an audience of three hundred million. Their early writing had been in Swedish, but I persuaded them, and they didn't need much pushing. that they should write their lyrics in English. I started helping them with their lyrics, because that part of the business was really my forte, and I knew my guidance would be helpful from there. Our three-way writing partnership has developed very fruitfully from there. They still produce the music, and between the three of us we find suitable matching lyrics. If you say to me that a three-man writing team sounds cumbersome and awkward, I can only agree with you. All I can say is that is works out. And works out very well." Each had something different to offer. Benny was a pop man, while Björn was into nice singing and sentimental music. The Hootenanny Singers produced nice, clean, and easy-going easy-to-listen-to songs, like 'Sweden's Most Beautiful Songs.'

An historic milestone which was indelibly to affect their careers came from Björn and Benny when they met up with Michael Tretow, the youngest of the technicians at the Metronome Studios in Stockholm. This man was to become the technical genius behind the ABBA sound. He worked as a tape technician at Metronome, and took a particular interest in the tapes brought in by the youngsters, with their new beat and sound. This was the early crosswords of pop music, when pop was really getting into its stride. This gave Tretow the opportunity to work with the up-and-coming young musicians in the business; like them he was young and continually experimenting all the time. He liked the young people, their approach and their music. It got so that when they took their material to the studios, they would specifically ask that he should handle it.

The path to ABBA was paved when Agnetha and Anni-Frid came into the studio to provide backing voices for Björn and Benny's recordings. Stikkan Anderson remembers: "The girls came along strictly to help out their boyfriends. It was nothing more than that. They felt their records needed that something extra, and they hoped the voices of the girls would help them along. And it was natural that they should use Agnetha and Anni-Frid for this, rather than bring in other girl singers. Then, one day, they came up with some tapes where you could not hear the voices of Björn and Benny. Just the girls. They came to me and said: "We don't think we can credit the records to just Björn and Benny. The voices are the girls', and they'll have to get recognition for it. We've got to do something, because you can't hear us." Their previous record had been marketed under the name of Björn and Benny, with both scoring from their previous publicity with the Hootenanny Singers and the Hep Stars. We planned to build them as a duo, and here they were making incredible suggestions like this. I said: "You are not saying, for heaven's sake, that you are suggesting that we should call you Björn, Benny, Agnetha and Anni-Frid, or something stupid like that are you?" They said: "That is exactly what we have in mind." I couldn't believe it. I said: "Never. It makes no sense. No sense at all."

Stikkan pointed out to them that they had not taken the public by storm in their cabaret appearances together, so why should it be any different on the record market? Björn and Benny answered, very realistically, that they didn't like the idea of having their names on a record when it was obvious that the vocals on the record were the voices of two girls. It was an unanswerable case, and Stikkan had to give way. He recalls: "I had to admit it was silly to call the act Björn and Benny when it was obvious the girls were the dominant part of the group. I still didn't like it, but we started calling the act Björn, Benny, Agnetha and Anni-Frid."

Their first record together was "People Need Love" with "Marry-Go-Round" as the b-side. It went to #2 in the Swedish charts, and was a hit in the rest of Scandinavia. Elsewhere, the success was more qualified, but it was a beginning they could build on later. On the American charts, it crawled up to #115, but that was still the best effort by Swedish artistes till they returned to the American charts as ABBA.

Says Benny: "We were still just four individuals getting together to make some music. But "People Need Love" was a song sung and made in exactly the way we wanted. The girls had come into the studio strictly to help out. Nothing more. And out of that relaxed co-operation came this record. I'll never forget the day we played that tape back, and the only voices noticeable were the girls. And those girls together made a tremendous combination sound. It was exactly the vocal sound which has made ABBA what it is today. There was a natural fusion which makes it very hard to tell which of them is singing which part of a song. They were just like one voice, and a very beautiful voice at that. It would just have been daft to go on with just Björn and Benny on the record label."

Björn and Benny bounced from this success-to make another record of their own. "As you may have gathered, ABBA did not just happen overnight," said Björn. Their new record, "She's My Kind Of Girl," was a hit for the boys, but only in Japan. "Which shows just how strange the record business is. There is nothing predictable about it."

Agnetha and Anni-Frid went back on tour, and the boys got their heads down in the studios. The formula for the future was there, in front of their eyes. They were to pause before they grabbed it.

Next time, the story of "Ring Ring".....

Hope you enjoyed it.

Special Thanks to ABBAMAILer Chris Aulbach, Hanover, Pennsylvania, USA