ABBA News

From Svenska Dagbladet - an article listing the rich people in Sweden:

Name / Income / Fortune:

Benny Andersson 1,173,100   13,020,404 (SEK)
Agnetha Fältskog 178,700 (SEK)  45,494,395 (SEK)
Björn Ulvaeus 1,155,300 (SEK)   14, 953,391 (SEK)

Thanks to ABBAMAILers Cathy Olds in Australia and Claes Davidsson in Florida, USA

Advertising for tickets has begun in Svensaka Dagbladet and a in Dagens Nyheter. Anders Eljas is directing the Göteborgs Symfoniker, members or ABBA's original band will participate as well as The Ultimate Dance Company (?).

The ad doesn't use the official ABBA logo and there is no other information given about other participants as was previously reported, though it still says there will be other performers.

------------------

Tickets for ABBA the tribute are for sale now. There are 3 concerts, taking place 22-24:th of August at Globen in Stockholm.

The add for the concert talks about "Swedish and international artists" without mentioning any names, so I guess it's not clear yet. But I wouldn't be surpriced if we got for example Helene Sjöholm, Anders and/or Karin Glenmark, Tommy Körberg and stars like that.

But we're getting the Göteborgs Symfoniker (Göteborg Symphonic orchestra) direkted by Anders Eljas, A rock band and dancers from "The Ultimate Dance Company" whoever they are.

Tickets can be booked at http://www.ticnet.se/Ticnet.html  I just got mine, and I'm going on Friday 23rd.

Thanks to ABBAMAILers Jeffrey de Hart and Linda Grnaqvist in Stockholm, Sweden

Thanks to Carl Magnus Palm and ABBAMAILer Grant Whittingham Sydney, Australia

The days it plays and start times appear to be the same as the Melbourne production, with A-Reserve prices ranging from AU$86 for the Wednesday matinee, AU$88 for Tuesday to Thursday evening shows, and AU$98 for all shows Friday to Sunday (A-Reserve is the only option this site gives it seems). Booking fees appear to be included in these prices.

Thanks to ABBAMAILer Cathy Olds Newcastle, Australia

Thanks to ABBAMAIL's Ian Cole, Sydney, Australia

Thanks to ABBAMAILers Paul Carter in London and Cathy Olds in Newcastle, Australia

ABBA-Agnetha in the party crowd!

If one was to rank the rarest crowd people amongst Stockholm's celebrities, there is one person that is far and above in first place. It is (a question of) the former ABBA member Agnetha Fältskog. She seldom or never stirs from her home on Ekerö outside Stockholm and this shy person would never dream of attending a single celebrity party.

Therefore the owners of restaurant Blue Moon Bar probably thought that last Sunday was a real jackpot. At around seven in the evening namely Agnetha arrived, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and sat at one of the tables. She ate well and then listened to the appearances/performances. Staff and connoisseurs stood amazed and looked on.

http://www.expressen.se/article.asp?id=104320

Björn & Benny are Kings on Broadway

LOS ANGELES. Now Björn & Benny are number 1 in USA. 14 years after the fiasco with "Chess", "Mamma Mia" is number one on Broadway. At the same time two other touring versions play for full houses around North America.

The list of Broadway's hottest musical tickets is great reading for Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson this week. "Lion King" is third, "Producers" second and "Mamma Mia" first.

- It's a lot of fun, says Björn & Benny's co-worker Görel Hanser.

Two touring versions

The ABBA-musical brought in 10.4 million kronor in one week, and is more than full each performance.

The big touring version of the musical which is touring North America has been complemented with a smaller production which plays for a few weeks in each city. A big success, of course.

In London "Mamma Mia" is an institution after three years and two million tickets sold.

In Melbourne, Australia, it's a big success. On July 3 the musical comes to Brisbane, and on September 26 "Mamma Mia!" is put on in Sydney.

The German translation of "Mamma Mia" (yes, they sing the songs in German) premieres in Hamburg on November 3.

Sing in Japanese

And the Japanese edition (yes, they sing in Japanese) is put on in Tokyo on December 1.

-All songs are translated, except a few that the girls sing as a group. But all songs that bring the story forward are translated, Björn Ulvaeus said when Expressen in January revealed the plans.

He also said that there will be a Spanish translation of "Mamma Mia".

-The only thing I can say is that there really will be a version in Spanish, but we don't know when. And not where. It could be in South America.

By Lars Lindström

Thanks to ABBAMAILer Claes Davidsson Orlando, Florida, USA

http://www.expressen.se/article.asp?id=105549

Thanks to ABBAMAILer Cathy Olds Newcastle, Australia

KÖRBERG PROSECUTED FOR DRINK-DRIVING
Story by Tina Frennstedt, Expressen

After the "Chess" performance at Cirkus in Stockholm the cast had a party. Tommy Körberg slept then in his dressing-room before he drove home. Yesterday he was prosecuted in Stockholm's district/municipal court for serious (high range) drink-driving.

Last Sunday he drank champagne and white wine with the others in the cast. - I drank 35cl of champagne and anout 70cl of wine, then I went to my dressing-room, he says in the police inquiry/hearing. He took it easy in the dressing-room and slept for two hours. - When I woke around two I wanted to go home. I took the car that stood parked at Cirkus and set off homeward.

Puncture

At a traffic light he detected that he had a puncture in the left front tyre. - I thought at first of stopping the car there but changed my mind when I realised how close it was to home. The police caught sight of his car that was driving with a puncture. Tommy Körberg had to blow and had 2,18 (parts) per mille in his blood. - It was thoughtless and stupid of me to drive in that condition.

"Easily becomes a bit too much" Tommy Körberg says in the hearing that he does not have an alcohol problem. - But when I drink it often is a bit too much. The penalty for serious (high range) drink-driving is often a month's gaol, but it can even be a conditional / suspended sentence with community service or probation. Tommy Körberg acknowledges serious (high range) drink-driving, but yesterday didn't want to comment on the prosecution.

http://www.aftonbladet.se/vss/story/0,2789,156696,00.html

Thanks to ABBAMAILer Cathy Olds Newcastle, Australia

TOMMY RISKS TWO YEARS' JAIL
Story by Lennart Håård, Aftonbladet

Tommy Körberg is being prosecuted for serious (high range) drink-driving after he drove (his car) with over two (parts) per mille in his blood.

- It equates/corresponds to at least ten large strong beers, says Hans Laurell, Vägverkets (the Road Works/Department) expert on alcohol, drugs and traffic.

The international artist risks two years' gaol.

Hans Laurell has studied what drink-driving can cause in the traffic. - 25 out of 100 fatal accidents are caused by alcohol-affected drivers, says Laurell.

The night of 8 April Tommy Körberg was driving a car on Bäckavägen (Road) in Stockholm, despite that according to chamber prosecutor Harriet Roswall he had drank so much that the alcohol in his breath ('the air he exhaled') amounted to 1.09 milligrams per litre.

Was stopped with puncture

That equates to just over 2 (parts) per mille alcohol in his blood. Tommy Körberg chose 11 April to come forward in Aftonbladet. - I don't want anyone near me to feel accused/singled out because of me.

He was on his way home and just before the Liljeholmsbron (Bridge) he got a puncture. It was detected by the police, who stopped him. - I have no-one else to blame than myself, he said in the interview.

The prosecutor is now prosecuting Tommy Körberg for serious (high range) drink-driving, a crime that can give up to two years' jail.

Tommy Körberg: "Wine and car keys do not go well together "

Tommy Körberg, 53, is threatened by a prison penalty.

After a party he drove drunk on his way home. The police stopped him with 2.18 per mille of alcohol in his blood.

- When I'm drinking it often becomes a little bit too much, says Körberg during police questioning.

Tommy Körberg plays one of the main characters in the successful musical "Chess" wich is running for full houses at Cirkus in Stockholm. And this Sunday, after the performance it was a "corporate party" in the restaurant at Circus with the ensemble consisting of 100 persons.

One of the participants was Görel Hanser, president of the "Chess"-production. She says: - This was a private party and the participants payed for what they wanted. I can't answer what everyone was buying in the bar. It was a nice and normal party.

Twenty minutes past two in the night a police patrol discovered a Volvo driving on three wheels at the street Bäckvägen in Hägersten south west of Stockholm. The left front wheel had no tyre and was running on the rim. In the hearing Tommy Körberg tells that he discovered that he had a flat tyre on the left front wheel. But since he did not have to go far, he decided to drive on.

The driver, Tommy Körberg, was taken to the police station in Västberga where the amount of alcohol in his breath was meassured to 1.16 per mille, wich corresponds to 2.32 per mille in the blood. After a so-called security subtraction it was stated that Körberg had 1.09 per mille alcohol in his breath, (2.18 in his blood), which is classed as a hard case of drunk driving. (I can't translate the correct word - it's a legal term meaning that you are driving with a lot of alcohol in the blood)

In the hearing Tommy Körberg confessed that he had comitted the crime. He told that he had drunk aproximately 35 centilitres of champagne and 70 centilitres of white wine. Tommy Körberg will stand accused for a hard case of drunk driving. The normal penalty for a crime like that is a month in prison.

The major judge Runar Wiksten at the city court of Stockholms spoke about common practice in the case of hard drunk driving. - The normal penalty is prison for one month. But these days you might get assigned a legal guardian for a while. Or you might have to do social services. (More legal terms I cannot translate)

In the Wednesday issue of Expressen Tommy Körberg said: - Wine and car keys do not go well together. This was a damn stupid thing I did. It was a fucking idiot thing. I've got no excuse. I'm ready to take the penalty the law demands of me. This is the last time I take my car to a party.

Sentenced for drug crime: Tommy Körberg, 53, is one of Sweden's biggest and most multi talented artists. He had his break through in the 60:is with the group Maniacs. Tommy Körberg has also been an actor in both movies and theater. In 1982 Körberg was sentenced to three months of prison for drug related crime.

Three times bought cocaine: The amount all together was 21 grams, which he used himself. In an interview the same year he said : "I drank a lot of booze and I choose cocaine as a replacement for that. That was stupid."

By Ingvar Hedlund / Thanks to ABBAMAILer Linda Granqvist

~*~*~*~*~*~

More - and more positive Expressen News at http://expressen.se/article.asp?id=104651

A-Teens - soon they are as big as Britney Spears

Pepsi have Britney Spears. Coca Cola strikes back with - A-teens. The Swedish pop group has also got a dream contract with Disney, reports the business magasine Dagens Industri.

The story of success for the four teens Marie Serneholt, Sara Lumholdt, Dhani Lennevald and Amit Paul continues. Disney and Coca Cola are investing big money into A-teens. According to Dagens Industri A*Teens are going to do the lead theme to the new Disney movie "Lilo & Stitch", about the girl Lilo who beleives she is adopting a dog. But Stitch turns out to be a creature from another planet. The movie is Disney's largest investment since The Lion King and has a budget of 1.3 billion SEK.

Earlier A*Teens recorded the lead theme to "Heartbreak lullaby" and to another Disney movie "Princess Diaries" which premiered in Sweden last year. The group will also be on a planned record with Disney-favourites, together with among others Britney Spears and N´Sync.

But that is not enough. The four teenager will also be on the labels for three millions of Coke cans. While Pepsi pays Britney Spears more than a billion to advertise their soda Coca Cola is betting on the Swedes.

A*Teens is one of the most popular teen bands in the USA. Also McDonald´s are interested in the group. According to Dagens Industri the hamburger gigant wants to hand out ten billions of singles together with Happy Meal-boxes, but the record company has turned that thing down.

A*Teens was formed in 1998 that time by the name of Abba Teens. 1999 their big break trough came and at the same time the group changed their name to A*Teens. The debute album "THE ABBA GENERATION" was sold in 3.5 million and the second album "Teen Spirit" has sold 1.2 million. A*Teens have been touring together with Britney Spears, 'N Sync and Aaron Carter.

In June A*Teens' third album arrives. This time the record company is hoping for sales figures around four million.

By Sofia Stridsman / Thanks to ABBAMAILer Linda Granqvist, Stockhol, Sweden

Quite a few tracks on it were produced in Sweden. Some were partly recorded at Polar Studios, two were even mixed at Mono Music, and a couple of string arrangements are credited to ex-Abba bassist and occasional string arranger Rutger Gunnarsson who also got to conduct the orchestra. No trace of any ABBA members though.

As for the diva herself, she seems to have not bothered travelling all the way to Scandinavia : for all the "Swedish" tracks, vocals were always recorded separately in America, mainly in Montreal.

Thanks to Marc Moulin, Switzerland

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/
20020408/stage_nm/broadway _toppers_12

Broadway's hottest tickets Mon Apr 8, 1:14 AM ET

NEW YORK (Variety) - Broadway's hottest tickets in Week 44 of the season (March 25-31)

Columns should read: play (theatre) / attendance per performance / week's net receipts (potential net receipts) / change in receipts from previous week / weekend top ticket price / weekday top ticket price:

1. Mamma Mia! (Winter Garden) / 101.5% / $1,018,596 ($991,618) / +$796 / $98/$99
2. The Producers (St. James) / 100.4% / $1,160,084 ($1,042,163) / +$6,080 / $99/$99
3. The Lion King (New Amsterdam) / 101.3% / $1,063,521 ($1,144,000) / -$180 / $95/$95
4. Oklahoma! (Gershwin) / 99.6% / $965,912 ($1,013,585) / +$330.745 / $90/$80
5. The Phantom of the Opera (Majestic) / 99.5% / $778,368 ($878,123) / +$174,483 / $85/$85
6. Beauty and the Beast (Lunt-Fontanne) / 97.6% / $795,492 ($837,408) / +$121,130 / $90/$85
7. Les Miserables (Imperial) / 96.7% / $570,611 ($753,761) / +$119,882 / $85/$85
8. Cabaret (Studio 54) / 96.0% / $429,273 ($560,680) / +$14,159 / $95/$90
9. 42nd Street (Ford Center) / 94.1% / $930,406 ($1,069,078) / +$108,930 / $90/$95
10. Aida (Palace) / 92.7 % / $866,374 ($955,275) /+$124,111 / $90/$90

Reuters/Variety

There's also an article in Expressen about this ("Björn & Benny are kings on Broadway"):

http://www.expressen.se/article.asp?id=104320
 

Thanks to ABBAMAILer Claes Davidsson Orlando, Florida, USA

http://www.playbill.com/cgi-bin/plb/
news?cmd=show&code=109343

Bjorn Again on stage perform at New York's Beacon Theatre on April 23.

Thanks to ABBAMAILer Claes Davidsson Orlando, Florida, USA

http://www.aftonbladet.se/vss/noje/story/
0,2789,152649,00.html

The original story appears in DN at:

http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/Crosslink.jsp
?d=21&a=255968

Thanks to ABBAMAILer Cathy Olds Newcastle, Australia

ABBA HAVE FANS - EVEN IN USA'S GOVERNMENT
Story by Björn Solfors, Aftonbladet

USA's foreign minister Colin Powell loves ABBA. So much that he couldn't stop from singing along when the tour version of "Mamma mia!" had its Washington première last Tuesday. Powell, with his wife, son and son's wife, sat exactly behind Björn Ulvaeus - and the two had a chat in the break.

- He was very pleasant/nice, says Ulvaeus to DN.

In the closing singalong the foreign minister showed that he has total control of his ABBA lyrics.

COLIN POWEL SANG ALONG IN ABBA'S "MAMMA MIA!" Story by Mats Carlbom, DN

WASHINGTON. When the tour version of the ABBA musical "Mamma Mia!" had its Washington première last Tuesday evening USA's foreign minister sat with his wife in the stalls, directly behind Björn Ulvaeus.

It was not entirely surprising. When Powell wants to relax on his travels he likes to do it with ABBA in his headphones. Yet the Swedish Washington ambassador Jan Eliasson was astonished at how quickly the answer came from the American foreign office when he sent his invitation there.

Not only did the foreign minister want to come, communicated/notified his secretary, but he also wanted take along his wife, son, son's wife and the assistant foreign minister Richard Armitage with his wife.

Powell had namely seen "Mamma Mia!" on Broadway and became so enamoured that he thought his family and friends also must see it.

In the interval Colin Powell sat with his family together with Björn Ulvaeus and the ambassador in the VIP room and discussed ABBA rather than the Middle East.

- He was very pleasant, said Björn Ulvaeus who also gave a good report/mark to the performance: There is an extra pressure in the tour version, he thought.

The tour with "Mamma Mia!" began in Toronto in May 2000 and has thereafter visited a long line of American cities. No reviews had been published when this was written, but Washington Post devoted a whole page to the ABBA phenomenon in the days before the première. Even if the group was not as big in USA as in Europe it had nevertheless 14 songs on the USA chart.

And Colin Powell knows the lyrics to every one of them, judging by how he participated in the closing singalong.

Thanks to ABBAMAIL's Ian Cole in Sydney Australia

www.washingtonpost.com

Abba's Sweet Hereafter Having Inspired Devotion -- and Derision -- in the '70s, The Band Lives On in the Red-Hot 'Mamma Mia!'

By Alona Wartofsky Special to The Washington Post

NEW YORK

"Mamma Mia!," which is built around songs by Swedish supergroup Abba, opened here last October to a rapturous response. Since then, audiences have been flocking to the Winter Garden Theatre, clapping and singing along to the musical's fizzy and faithfully rendered pop hits, which include "Dancing Queen," "Take a Chance on Me" and "SOS."

The most jubilant theatergoers dance in the aisles.

Abba -- an acronym of the members' first names -- churned out a remarkable run of international hits during the late '70s and has sold more than 350 million records worldwide. So maybe it's not surprising that since its April 1999 premiere in London, "Mamma Mia!" has enjoyed great success everywhere it has gone. The London production has grossed more than $85 million. The show is enjoying seemingly endless runs in Melbourne, Toronto and New York, and one of two U.S. touring companies is now in previews at the National Theatre, where it will open Tuesday.

But "Mamma Mia!" is just one aspect of Abba's extraordinary afterlife. The group, which consisted of songwriters Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson and their respective wives, Agnetha Faltskog (the blond one) and Anni-Frid Lyngstad (the brunette), split up in late 1981. (The marriages foundered before that: Ulvaeus and Faltskog in '78; Andersson and Lyngstad three years later.) But their music continues to sell: Ten years after the 1992 release of "Abba Gold -- Greatest Hits," the compilation is still on the charts with sales of 20 million and counting.

The Abba revival gained momentum during the '90s. "ABBA GOLD" was followed by two 1994 Australian films, "Muriel's Wedding," in which a fat, lonely young woman daydreams to Abba, and the drag queen comedy "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert," which contained both Abba music and Abba jokes.

Two years ago, with "Mamma Mia!" a major hit in London, the four members of Abba turned down a reported $1 billion offer for a year-long reunion tour. But others are more than willing to step in. Filling the void are a plethora of imaginatively named tribute bands, which include Abbacadabra, ABBALanche, Abbasolutely and the best known of them all, Bjorn Again, which performs at Washington's 9:30 club on April 22.

The group's renewed popularity has been accompanied by a generous reappraisal. For a time, Abba represented the Seventies' most embarrassing sartorial silliness, and the quartet's music, with its slick production, insidiously catchy melodies and chirpy harmonies, repulsed many serious music fans. And yet during the past decade, Abba has somehow been redeemed. Highly regarded rock musicians, including Bono and Elvis Costello, have publicly praised the group. "I think Abba have a pure joy to their music," Bono has said, "and that's what makes them extraordinary."

All of this can be mystifying, but Abba's resurgence can be traced to several cultural forces, including that precious pop music commodity, imaginative marketing.

"Why Abba? It's simple: unbelievable songs, with different hooks over the years to re-promote the songs," says John Kennedy, president and CEO of Universal Music International, which released "Abba Gold." "Either it's them appearing in films, or appearing in soap operas in Japan, or adverts, or the biggest one of all, in this new musical."

Stockholm-based writer Carl Magnus Palm, the author of several books on the group, including "Bright Lights, Dark Shadows: The Real Story of Abba,"says the revival is an inevitable outgrowth of the group's enormous original success. While Abba sold respectably in the United States, the group was hugely popular in Europe. "When something is that big, that popular, it never really goes away. It always comes back sooner or later," he says. "They had five or 10 years when they were not very cool and people weren't interested. Then they came back with a vengeance."

During the past decade, Ulvaeus, now 56, has marveled at Abba's inexhaustible afterlife. "It was completely unexpected," he says. "It's amazing."

One explanation, he thinks, could be the reassuring pull of nostalgia. "We had a lot of hits in a very short time during the second half of the '70s," Ulvaeus says. "So when you go back to the '70s for nostalgic reasons and you want to describe it musically, there's the chance that you would pick an Abba song."

But you can't discount the innate appeal of Abba's well-crafted bubble-gum pop. "There must have been the ingredient to begin with, which is that people remember the songs, and the songs have a certain quality," Ulvaeus says. "That's what I like to believe. I think it would be impossible if that wasn't the case, because you can't build on sand."

Take a Chance on Me After Abba disintegrated in 1981 (the breakup was formally announced the following year), Ulvaeus and Andersson continued to collaborate. They worked with Tim Rice on the 1986 "Chess -- The Musical," which was hardly a smash, though it spawned the hit single "One Night in Bangkok." In 1995 in Stockholm, the pair opened "Kristina Fan Duvemala," an epic about immigrants journeying to America, which became the most successful Swedish musical to date.

But "Mamma Mia!" wasn't their idea. The musical is the brainchild of British producer Judy Craymer, 44, who served as executive producer of "Chess" and had long harbored the notion that there is something theatrical about Abba's songs.

"It's almost as if they were written for a musical," says Craymer. "For instance, 'The Winner Takes It All.' That was the inspiration, really. Besides feeling there was a story behind that song, I thought it was kind of the 'Don't Cry for Me, Argentina' of a possible musical. It's such a great torch song."

Craymer first pitched an Abba musical to Ulvaeus and Andersson at the end of the '80s, but they were underwhelmed.

"At that time, Abba was something in the past to me, something I thought would be completely finished and not remembered at all," says Ulvaeus. "Just because she was an old friend, Benny and I said she could have a go at it."

What changed his mind was a production of "Grease" he saw in London.

"It wasn't very good, but from it I could see the potential in an Abba musical: something fun, uplifting and above all, a lot of songs that people know," Ulvaeus says.

His enthusiasm for the project grew once he met British playwright Catherine Johnson, who conceived the musical as a story involving two generations of women. Set on a small Greek island, "Mamma Mia!" opens on the eve of a young woman's wedding. Bride-to-be Sophie doesn't know who her father is, but she is determined to find out. After reading her mother's old diary, Sophie invites three of Mum's former paramours to the ceremony. Also attending are her mother's former partners in an Abba-like group, Donna & the Dynamos. High jinks ensue along with opportunities for the cast to sing 22 of Abba's most beloved hits.

"We wanted to make it very universal," says Johnson, 44. "Abba songs cover two phases of relationships. There's upbeat, happy songs like 'Honey, Honey' and 'Lay All Your Love on Me.' Those are very much about falling in love, what we call the young songs. Then we've got the songs about disillusionment and the end of romance, songs like 'The Winner Takes It All' and 'Knowing Me, Knowing You.' Rather than telling a linear story from 'Honey, Honey' to 'The Winner Takes It All,' we thought it would be more interesting to have an older generation and a younger generation. And, of course, you also hope then to be able to get a younger audience and an older audience."

The success of "Mamma Mia!" has surprised everyone, even its creators. "One of our ad slogans in London is 'Not one seat has gone unsold,' and I'm pleased to say that continues," boasts Craymer.

A Toronto production that opened in the spring of 2000 was meant to be the start of the U.S. tour, but it did so well that the producers left it there, where it continues to do capacity business. A new U.S. touring company -- the one opening this week in Washington -- was formed, and then another, which performs two-week stints in smaller markets. The Broadway production isn't quite selling out, but it's taking in a more-than-respectable million dollars a week.

Everywhere, audiences are singing along. "When we first opened in London, we found that the audience was singing the songs before the cast on the stage, so in the programs we put the song in alphabetical order, rather than the traditional format, which is scene order," says Craymer. "And the musical director conducting in the pit -- we had to black out the titles on the musical score, because the first few rows of the audience could see his score and again they would start to hum along too early."

Ulvaeus and Andersson took an active role in creating the musical's orchestrations, and this, notes Craymer, legitimizes "Mamma Mia!" and sets it apart from the many tribute bands that make their living off Abba's remains. "The tribute bands are obviously an endorsement of one's success, but they're not part of the family," she says.

The Super Troupers No one knows how many Abba tribute bands are in existence, not even Abba expert Palm. "I really couldn't say how many there are," he says. "At least 20 or 30. It's a really, really big business."

When Australian guitarist Rod Leissle came up with the concept of starting Bjorn Again in 1988, he put on an Abba record and listened. "The quality of the songs was incredible," he says. "I actually thought the songs were better than I remembered them being in the '70s. . . . Many of the their songs are actually timeless. I feel the same way about some Abba songs as I feel about some Beatles songs. I'd put them in the same league. . . .

"I just knew that at some point there would be a revival of the music. That someone was going to do this -- if not Abba themselves, then somebody else."

Leissle, 43, no longer performs in Bjorn Again -- he's one of the company's managing directors, overseeing two Bjorn Again groups, one that performs in the United Kingdom and a second company that tours the rest of the world. Together, they play 300 shows a year. Bjorn Again was listed in Australia's Business Review Weekly as one of the top 10 music exports from that country. The group has opened for the Spice Girls, played Britain's Reading and Glastonbury festivals and recorded several albums, including "Live at the Royal Albert Hall," and a karaoke video. Since "Mamma Mia!" arrived, says Leissle, bookings have substantially increased.

Bjorn Again's performers are stage-named Agnetha Falstart, Frida Longstokin, Benny Anderwear and Bjorn Volvo-us. "We've introduced an element of parody to the show by sheer virtue of the fact that we're wearing flared trousers and platform shoes, but also speaking odd Swenglish, which is half English and half Swedish," says Leissle. "At the same time we're honoring their music, we're setting our own benchmark as an Abba tribute band."

Competition between the tribute bands can be intense. "There are a lot of ridiculous ones out there," says Andy Skelton, who impersonates Ulvaeus in Fabba, which is based in a London suburb. Fabba plays 150 gigs each year, including corporate shows and an annual Abba weekend in the Norfolk town of Hemsby, where, he says, the audience ranges from little girls in Abba dresses to transvestites in blond wigs.

The Great Divide People in the Abba business like to say that there are two kinds of people: those who like Abba and those who like Abba but would never admit it. Perhaps it is this presumeduniversality, and the way songs like "Waterloo" worm their way into your consciousness, that irks yet a third kind of people: those who hate Abba.

There's plenty to hate -- the cloying cutesiness of the two married couples making music together; the dorky, unflattering outfits; the bland pop, the imbecilic lyrics, songs that are so . . . perky. Perky is not always appealing. The '70s were an era of what Ulvaeus characterizes as "dark music" -- from ponderous Led Zeppelin to stripped-down, furious punk rock. "To be as lighthearted as we were, it was just not accepted," he says.

Back in their heyday, Abba seemed to epitomize all that was wrong with mass-market culture. In the 1999 Craymer-produced documentary "The Winner Takes It All: The Abba Story," Seventies punk impresario Malcolm McLaren, the man who brought us the Sex Pistols, explains: "You realized that Abba represented everything you were going to hate. It seemed something that seemed to deny your purpose as a new generation, deny your point of view, and the thought that Mum and Dad might be whistling that tune in the bathroom of your suburban home made you want to immediately commit arson of any sort."

During Abba's reign, critics were merciless. The Village Voice's Robert Christgau sneered, "The band's real tradition is the advertising jingle," and greeted the 1979 release of Abba's "Greatest Hits Vol. 2" with the line, "We have met the enemy and they are them."

Washington-based music writer Mark Jenkins remembers hearing "Waterloo" for the first time and thinking it was "pretty good." But he was -- and still is -- ambivalent about Abba. "If you are one of those people that believe that pop music can express profound thoughts, they don't have any," he says. "The lyrics are pure formula, and sometimes English-as-a-second-language formula."

Has all the derision bothered Ulvaeus? "It was slightly irritating," he says. "But knowing how many records we sold and getting jobs all over the world helped us forget that."

The growing respectability of Abba has coincided with the increasing interest in the group, which started in the late '80s. "It began as an underground thing in gay clubs," says Palm. "It turned out that a lot of boys who were Abba fans in their teenage years grew up to be gay men."

Drag queens are often drawn to larger-than-life female stars with bad fashion sense. So perhaps it was inevitable that the 1994 comedy "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert," in which three female impersonators drive a bus through the Australian outback, includes homages to Agnetha and Anni-Frid as well as what is surely the bitchiest Abba humor on record. Then there was "Muriel's Wedding," in which Muriel, a sad sack from a tiny Australian town, celebrates her new life in Sydney: "Now my life is as good as an Abba song," she gushes. "It's as good as 'Dancing Queen.' "

While both films simultaneously celebrated and mocked Abba, they also contributed to the group's incremental rise to respectability, says Palm. So did the British duo Erasure's 1992 collection of Abba covers. That same year, when Irish rockers U2 performed in Stockholm, Ulvaeus and Andersson joined them onstage for a rendition of "Dancing Queen." Several years later at the Brit Awards, the U.K.'s version of the Grammys, top teen stars performed an Abba medley.

Admirers are convinced that now, finally, Abba's time has come -- again. "Rock music is 50 years old. We've seen everything and heard everything, and this whole idea that rock music could change the world -- I think people have sort of given up on that thought," says Palm. "Of course they were regarded as sort of square and bland by critics and rock fans back in the '70s. . . . But today you can just appreciate the music, and I think that's been very beneficial for Abba's reputation."

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

Thanks to ABBAMAIL's Ian Cole in Sydney Australia

Musical spawned by ABBA hits from the '70s

April 4 2002

There are two kinds of people: those who love ABBA and those who hide it.

Resistance is futile. "See that girl. Watch that scene. Dig in the dancing queen."

Admit it: You just started singing along; the candy-coated melody as familiar as your name.

Don't be embarrassed, though. Something wholly unexpected has happened over the last decade: it became hip to like ABBA - 20 years after the Swedish foursome called it quits.

Mamma Mia, the stage musical built around 22 ABBA classics, opened in London three years ago and was a smash hit. It set a box office record in Toronto and played as far afield as Melbourne.

The production is big bucks on Broadway, too, where it continues to play to more than 95 per cent capacity. Even ornery New York critics are giving ABBA's music kudos: "The only musical in history in which you walk IN humming the tunes," one reviewer said.

How hot is ABBA? Well, the four members were offered $US1 billion ($A1.88 billion) just to reunite for a tour. But ABBA's Bjorn Ulvaeus says emphatically it will never happen. "That was amazing to have that offer," he says in a phone interview. "We talked about it and we said 'No."'

The reasons are personal, he says. Something about how the memories of the past are stronger than the reality of watching the members - Ulvaeus, 56; Benny Andersson, 55; Anni-Frid Lyngstad, 56; Agnetha Faltskog, 52 in April - singing on stage again in those spacey bell-bottom pantsuits they once favoured. "It wouldn't work at all," Ulvaeus says.

That's what he thinks.

Pro-ABBA testimonials pour in from superstars like Elvis Costello, Pete Townshend, Jimmy Page and the Bee Gees. U2 covered ABBA's Dancing Queen in concert and lead singer Bono pronounced ABBA "One of the best pop groups that ever was."

Such wasn't exactly the case during ABBA's lifespan. At the height of ABBA-mania in the '70s - when they had hits like Waterloo, Take a Chance on Me, SOS and, of course, Dancing Queen - they had overtaken the Beatles in terms of worldwide record sales. But in America they were just another critically despised pop group. Domestically, ABBA enjoyed only one No 1 pop single (Dancing Queen in April 1977), four Top 10 singles and none of their eight studio albums climbed higher than No 14 on the Billboad 200.

"(We were) too European," Ulvaeus theorises. "What we would have had to do to conquer America was tour there half a year, every year. We said, 'No.' We had kids. And everyone in those days toured and toured."

So they split. And then we decided we loved them.

In 1992, British synth-pop duo Erasure released ABBA-Esque, a CD of ABBA covers. Tribute bands, like the A-Teens ('A' for ABBA, get it?), Bjorn Again and ABBAlanche, still crop up regularly. The 1994 Australian movies, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Muriel's Wedding, owe much of their charm to their prominent use of old ABBA tunes. The ABBA catalogue, meanwhile, has been remastered and reissued at least three times.

During ABBA's decade-long run Ulvaeus was married to singer Faltskog, the blond woman who sang lead on the moving The Winner Takes It All in 1980. Ulvaeus wrote it about their divorce. (ABBA's other married couple, Andersson and Lyngstad, divorced in 1981). And it was that track's theatrical nature that sparked the idea for the fictional Mamma Mia musical.

"To get to where we were with the story, The Winner Takes It All (was) the inspiration," says Londoner Judy Craymer, Mamma Mia's producer. "We had to reflect the infectiousness and sentimentality of the songs and we knew we had to have a contemporary story. We split it into two generations, the younger ABBA songs and the more mature ones that they wrote when they were going through their emotional crises."

The Winner Takes It All remains the composer's favourite ABBA song. "That one lyric took me the least time to write," Ulvaeus says. "It only took me an hour, which is very unusual."

Today, Ulvaeus and Faltskog have two grown children who think mom and dad's ABBA music is "quaint," Ulvaeus says from his London home that he shares with Lena, his wife of 21 years. She likes American R&. Ulvaeus can't figure out why everyone else is going ga-ga over his former group now.

"I'm amazed, I'm flabbergasted," he says. The night before the interview, Ulvaeus took in a London showing of Mamma Mia.

"I love it," he says. "It's still so vivid and so vigorous and vibrant. I was actually taken aback by the fact these singers and actors could do it so well."

Craymer finds the whole thing amusing.

"It was very funny. Bjorn was in London last night and these 12 to 14-year-old girls recognised him and they were so excited (about) getting his autograph. They were with their mothers. It passed through the generations."

Ulvaeus may not be able to figure out why ABBA, why now, but there is a reason: The songs were exceptionally well-crafted and enduring.

"People that really know music know that ABBA is great," adds Craymer, who also produced the recent DVD documentary, The Winner Takes It All: The ABBA Story. "They've become classics now and reach every generation."

But count Craymer, who gives her age as somewhere in the 40s, as one of the converted.

"In my teens growing up, the records I bought were more punk and rock. Then I started working with (Bjorn and Benny) and became besotted, having met the men that wrote Dancing Queen," she says, laughing. "And that's when I started sitting on my apartment floor listening to ABBA songs day in and day out."

Pop stars aren't above getting as giddy as an ABBA ditty when talk turns toward ABBA's appeal. Take the Bee Gees, for example.

In 1978, ABBA released the single Summer Night City, consciously echoing the disco-era sound of the Bee Gees. A year earlier, unbeknownst to a thrilled Ulvaeus, the Bee Gees composed the Saturday Night Fever hit If I Can't Have You with ABBA in mind.

"What we used to do as kids is write songs for artists that we adored and idolised and we'd imagine, 'What would their next record be?' And then we'd sing it and it would be a Bee Gees record," the Bee Gees' Maurice Gibb says. "The first song we wrote for Saturday Night Fever was If I Can't Have You and we imagined ABBA doing it.

"They had the knack of writing songs that everybody loved to listen to," he continues. "Warm songs and a certain production sound that made it all the more enjoyable. Something no one has repeated yet. It's the melodies. They work in any country. You didn't have to know the words (because) their music was the best. It translated everywhere."

Everywhere, that is, but to the printed page, which made Mamma Mia a difficult birth.

"One of Bjorn and Benny's stipulations for Mamma Mia was that the songs must sound like ABBA. But they had never written down their orchestrations and arrangements," Craymer says. "To achieve this, for six months we asked an accomplished musician to sit with the multitracks and notate everything."

The painstakingly transcribed musical notes were then tweaked a bit to make them work theatrically.

"You don't have to be an ABBA fan to like the show," Craymer insists.

Just try finding someone who isn't.

KRT

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/04/03/
1017206222434.html