The following interview with Stikkan Anderson was found by ABBAMAILer Michael Kealy in a Swedish- American magazine. I suspect the name of the magazine to be "Swedish Press". The article is from the magazine's February 1998 issue and the interview was done in Stockholm in June 1997. Anyway, parts of the article is in English and parts in Swedish so Michael asked me if I would translate the Swedish part and I said "Sure, why not?". So here it is.

Claes Davidsson, Florida, USA

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Stikkan Andersson, the man behind the Polar Prize:

"Those who work with music make almost everybody in the world happy."

In 1989 Stikkan Andersson donated SEK 42 million to the Royal Swedish Academy of Music for the purpose of awarding, annually if possible, the Polar Music Prize to one or more persons. Stikkan Andersson had a burning desire to make the world realize that good music is not only "good music"
in the conventional sense. He wanted "the establishment" to understand that also first rate pop music as well as other forms of musical expression are to be taken seriously and should be the object of distinguished awards.

The Polar Music Prize, the world's biggest music prize, was awarded for the first time in 1992 and the prize-winners were ex-Beatle Paul McCartney who shared the prize with three Baltic States, who received their millions to establish performing rights organizations corresponding to STIM in Sweden.

This year's prizewinners, the legendary sitar player, composer and teacher Ravi Shankar and composer Ray Charles, were announced on January 20. The prize ceremony will take place on May 12 at the Berwaldhallen in Stockholm. Ravi Shankar and Ray Charles will each receive 1 million kronor and the prize will be presented by the King of Sweden.

Sadly Stikkan Anderson will not be present. He passed away on September 12, 1997 from a heart attack at the age of 66. The funeral services were sent live on Swedish television.

There was a time when Stig Anderson was "Mr Branch", a hub around which a large part of musical Sweden rotated. He was Mr Trendsetter, a man who understood what people wanted even before they knew it themselves. He was a legend. He was probably the most written up Swede of all categories.

Stikkan Anderson was a school teacher who worked as a composer and lyric writer on the side and had his first song published in Sweden 1950, when he was 19 years old. Altogether he wrote 3 000 Swedish lyrics for his own compositions and for translations of foreign songs.

His first very big success, in 1959 was Klas-Göran, sung by Lill-Babs which gave him golden records not only in all the Nordic countries, but also for instance in Holland. At the end of the 60s Sweden Music, Anderson's company, was the biggest pop music publisher in Scandinavia.

Anderson understood very early that he also needed a record label as a complement to his publishing activity, so he formed Polar Records International AB and had successes with local artists during the 60s.

The big international break came with a Swedish group he came to call ABBA. He was manager and lyric writer and they won the Eurovision Song contest in Brighton, England in 1974 with a song called Waterloo. With his marketing savvy, Anderson produced a video version of the song long before MTV was conceived. The rest is history.

In 1989 Anderson sold his companies to Polygram. He made a fortune in music which he very smartly invested in other areas, making him one of the richest men in Sweden.

Stikkan Anderson received many Swedish and international awards during his years. He was an honorary member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music which was founded in 1771. However the international award he was most proud of was Billboard Magazine's Trendsetter Award. Such a distinction had only been presented to one European before Stikkan Anderson, and that was
Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager.

This interview was done in Stockholm in June 1997.

Swedish Press (SP): When you look back at your life, is there anything you would have done different?

Stikkan Anderson (SA): No. My life has mostly been completely fantastic. But if there was something that wasn't, it was because I sometimes was too unsuspecting and nice in relation to some advisers. It led to some unnecessary financial losses.

SP: Howcome Swedish popgroups have been so successfull abroad?

SA: I think it's because of ABBA's success. It's a Björn Borg-effect. When I made it with ABBA, young people saw that it was possible to conquer the world with music.

SP: How do you identify a potentially successful artist?

SA: The way it is behind each act, no matter if it's four girls or four boys or a male artist, there must be talent. A talent for writing, singing, playing and that's what professionals, which I might be, must find. There must be something special and that's what I felt about ABBA. The foundation is always the song and the songwriter. I think it's less important if five or six people perform it. But when it comes to ABBA it was Frida and Agnetha who were important because they were the one's who sang and they had sex appeal! Sometimes it's just a coincidence that you succeed. Björn Skifs was an example of a one hit wonder. Often that's the way things happen. That's the way it was for Roxette. There was somebody at a radio station in the Twin Cities who thought it sounded good and he received a good response and after that it all spread out. But if the material isn't right you can keep on playing but you'll never succeed.

SP: Was the ABBA-period the highest point?

SA: The ABBA-period was fun and restless. For a while we were flying all over the world. The Swedes were almost the last ones to realize how big we were everywhere. But Sweden is a bit like a duck-pond. We're not used to think big and that's probably why it took so long for us to get accepted.
My contribution was very important. A long time before ABBA I had a successful company making millions in profits. I had been working with music for 20-25 years when ABBA came along so I knew the music industry and I had a respect for it. I think that if you talk about international acts it makes no difference if they're from Vancouver or Stockholm or Berlin because if you take care of the marketing the right way anything is possible for that act. Thanks to my connections around the world, ABBA became a global thing. I would have been fine without ABBA. But they hardly would have been as successfull without me. It was a fun period of time but also confusing and extremely lot of work. Half the year I was flying. For a while I almost had clip coupons with the Australian airlines.

(I don't know how to translate the word "klippkort". Clip coupons is the closest thing I could think of. Anyway, what Stig meant is that he spent a lot of time flying.)

SP: Why was it so difficult to make it in the US?

SA: People's taste are different. And it can depend on which record label you're on. We were on the Atlantic-label which mainly was a black label. But we stayed with them because it was Atlantic who were the first ones who invested in us and because of that we wanted to be loyal towards them. But
we noticed that while we were on tour in the US and Canada, people were fighting over the tickets in Canada and then when we went from Vancouver to Seattle you could notice the difference right away and that was very strange. Canada is more like Scandinavia. We were the biggest in Canada and Australia. We sold 8 million albums in the US but if you compare the size of Canada, Japan, Australia, England to USA you come to the conclusion that if we had been just as big in the US we wouldn't have sold 8 but 25 million albums instead. From the beginning the US was dominating and the American music industry never listened to anything but American music. But then The Beatles came along and the US wrinkled the nose and thought - What's this, can something really come out of England? And after The Beatles made it you had all these English groups being promoted in the US. Outside England it was all stone-dead. Then ABBA came along and there was an outcry in the music industry. Howcome an act like ABBA comes from Sweden, in from the cold.

SP: Why did Björn and Benny sue you?

SA: That was completely wrong. Because they received every penny they were supposed to get. The world's reward is ingratitude. We resolved everything peacefully but of course the vibrations between us haven't been the best ever since. So we don't keep in touch with each other as often. I've had a good relation with Frida but she lives in Switzerland. But ABBA have been able to keep their money which can't be said about other groups because I took care of the money. It should be remembered that the big artists many times have disappeared because their management didn't do a good job.

SP: How do you explain your success doing business?

SA: Through the music so much money was generated that we couldn't just place it into the music, we had to do business with everything that didn't have anything to do with the music at all. I employed a managing director who knew a lot about the real estate business. There were skillful people around so I learned how to estimate the value of properties and so on. I thought that we should invest in different areas. Real estate was one of them. Also bicycles, Monark because it was timely. It had to do with the environment. We also formed Infina which was a leasing company. Of course we made some bad investments. Most of them were good, some of them were bad. That's the way it is. Some people succeed perfectly, some don't. Most of all I believed in my own ideas and I worked very hard for it. Common sense combined with adjustment. I've also been very careful to treat women and men equally. I was one of the first in the economic life in the 1970's to make my secretary a managing director. That was because often she was treated as a pretty young thing especially by international business colleagues. Even though she was very knowledgeable. So when those malechauvinist pigs called she could put them in place. My background is simple and early on I learned how to make money off small investments and so on. But I've learned not to be stingy, because that's something I'm not. But it's important to be economical in a right way. Not to throw away things that can be used. I hate to throw away food.

SP: If you had to choose between doing business and music, which one would you choose?

SA: Music. I think it's exciting even though it's difficult because it's about a trend. Music comes and goes and then something new comes along. Right now I find Tina Stenberg exciting. She plays the guitar very good, she sings good, she creates good music, good lyrics and she looks very good. Those are the qualifications you need. She's interesting, she's attractive.

SP: Why did you donate a music prize?

SA: There was no great international music prize. And I think that the people who work with music bring joy to almost every human being all around the world. Music is something we must have. Because of that I always thought that when I could afford it I would like to give such a prize.