Luke - on and in ABBA - The Movie

For no particular reason I watched ABBA -The Movie over the weekend. I hadn't watched it for a long time, a couple of years at least (which is a long time by my standards) and in some respects I viewed it in ways I never had before.

It struck me how intensely personal a film ABBA-The Movie is for me. It's truly a 90 minute document of my life as it was in 1976 and up to March 1977. Unbelievably this fact had never struck me so clearly before. I also paused to consider how incredibly lucky I am to have what is probably the most joyous memory I have from my childhood, being within feet of ABBA as a group at the Melbourne Town Hall, captured on film...heightened by the fact that I am seen in the movie at that event. The way they looked that day...could anything have been more perfect ? To have seen them together as a group in that moment of all moments...

During Dancing Queen I watched Agnetha...curiously it was the moment when she kneels down to touch the hand of an adoring fan...the superstar, possibly the biggest star on the planet at the time, she seems so full of happiness...but how could she have been when it was all such a traumatic experience for her? I couldn't reconcile the woman in the movie with the woman we know now. But somewhat bizarrely it was the security guard who glances up her skirt at that moment in the film that made the situation seem even more impossible. For a moment I became confused. There she was, impossibly beautiful, one quarter responsible for the most joyous pop song of all time, belting it out to thousands of adoring fans who loved her with all their hearts. She was untouchable, she was perfect, she was an angel on Earth...but in amongst all that this security guard was glancing up her skirt !!! LOL ! Superstars of that magnitude aren't meant to be that vulnerable and it created a bizarre juxtaposition of the superstar and the vulnerable human being. How could one BE the other ?

I'm sorry, I know that must sound very strange but it did my head in for a second. There were too many contradictions happening all at once. The perfect, beautiful superstar, the screaming adoring fans who loved her and wanted to be close to her, the security guard who just wanted to see what was under her skirt, the unhappy woman who just wanted to be home with her child. I know I know, the mind works in strange ways and mine certainly did as I watched it.

Bjorn looks up two times (at least) during the movie and I wondered if he was afraid something was going to fall on him. Once during Why Did It Have To Be Me and once in the footage of ABBA in the alley way behind the Melbourne Town Hall.

The girl who is frantically screaming "we want ABBA!" as they are walking through the airport...Benny stops and walks back to her and shakes her hand...she says "I love you". I was so moved by that and I started to cry very quietly...I was moved by her emotions, relieved that Benny validated them...and...she was me. She was the person I was when I saw them at the Town Hall, crying my eyes out, overwhelmed by the perfection I was witnessing.

The further time moves me away from that period of my life..."the ABBA years", the more difficult it is for me to connect TAFKAA of today with the entity they created "back then". Watching The Movie over the weekend helped me remember why they meant the world to me and why, all these years later, I still love who and what they were then and always will. It also helped me to understand and reminded me of the disassociation between the individuals they are today and what they created as a collective unit a long time ago...and why that is embedded in my heart so deeply. I guess it was a clarity of some kind for me.

As a friend of mine said some years ago, "we are so lucky to have that movie"...we truly are. At the very least it's a reminder of the impact ABBA the group had not only in Australia but on the world of popular music. But for me it's such an intensely personal experience. It's a part of my life, fortunately one of the happiest parts, and I can re-run it whenever I feel inclined.

The same would apply to any Australian fan who lived through that magical time...and who still cares about it. It's an excerpt from my diary between the age of 11 and 13 and I feel very lucky indeed.

Luke Rogers