Sunday 14 February 2010

Pop Foto, January 1977: ABBA didn’t want to see a living soul anymore…

Here’s another silly story from Dutch magazine Pop Foto, 1977. Oh well, the pictures are (very) nice...
For a while, it seemed that things would all go wrong with ABBA. The once so tight bond that kept the members of the group together seemed to be broken... Anni-Frid and Agnetha had a huge argument in public and it seemed as if the boys couldn’t stand each other either. ABBA was sliding towards their downfall at full speed, but Björn fixed it...

“Oh,” ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus sighed, while he plumped down in a chair. “I wish I had never got started in this business. Why was it necessary for me to become an artist? And not simply a car mechanic? Or a window-cleaner? An artist, yuck, what a dreadful job!”
Agnetha and Anni-Frid, who had been standing face to face as quarrellers only one second before that, stopped their bickering and looked at him. “Girls, do you know what we need?” Two pairs of flickering eyes looked his way. Björn spread his arms with a wide gesture and said: “Calmness! Absolute calmness. Not seeing a living soul anymore. Not hearing a word about music or ABBA anymore. Simply lock ourselves away and put a couple of landmines around our house, so that no one can reach us anymore. Because otherwise, things will go horribly wrong with us. Just take a look at yourselves. Anna, Frida: you are arguing! One year ago, you wouldn’t even dare to dream about that. And take a look at Benny and me, we can’t stand each other anymore, when we’ve always been the best of friends. We will just take one week of absolute silence, talk about our personal problems and look at the snow, deal?”

And this is how it happened that the four members of ABBA withdrew, more or less disappeared off the face of the earth and took a week-long winter holiday in the Swedish snow. Hidden away from everyone, they prepared themselves for their big European tour and recovered from all the previous tours. Whether a week of relaxation will be enough? You will be able to see that with your own eyes when they will perform their gigantic concert at the Jaap Eden hall in Amsterdam on February 4!

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