Joepie, December 1977: Barely two weeks after the birth of Anna’s baby... ABBA back on the job!

The life of a pop star has its advantages. Fame, popularity, money, how many young people aren’t dreaming about that? How many artists wouldn’t sell their souls for that? But still there are a couple of less attractive aspects of show business. ABBA’s blonde Anna has experienced this only recently. Barely two weeks after the birth of her son she had to get back to her job. There was no such thing as maternity leave.
“Yes, two weeks before the baby was born, I wasn’t allowed to do anything on doctor’s orders,” blonde Anna explains in between two recording sessions. “However, the problem was that I still had to do a couple of things for the new album, and I wasn’t even allowed to do that. That’s actually the reason why the album wasn’t available in the shops before the holidays. We were forced to postpone the release of the album...”
Our photographer returned with the accompanying pictures from Sweden, where he witnessed a couple of hours of recording sessions. Brand-new mama Anna looked radiant.
“I only have to get rid of that belly,” she said. “I’m doing special turn exercises for that. I can’t afford to have a belly. How the baby is doing? Excellent! It’s a very well-behaved child: sleeping, eating and sleeping again. Obviously, Linda is up in the clouds as well. Very often, she takes a chair and sits next to the cradle. For hours, she just sits there and stares at her little brother...”
Anna was always very attached to her little daughter and thought it was awful that she had to leave home so often. How will this work out with two kids, we asked her.
“I do not want to go through the hectic period that we’ve been experiencing the past two years again,” she says resolutely. “But leaving ABBA is out of the question! Because I realise that this would mean the end of the group immediately. Not that I think that highly of myself, but if I would quit, then Björn would leave the group as well. Probably, Benny and Frida wouldn’t be as successful as a duo. Neither would Björn and I, if we would continue as a duo. ABBA has very much the image of two couples. Replacing someone – like this happens with other groups regularly – is out of the question with us...”