Pop Biz, 1978: ABBA will stay in Sweden

It looks like ABBA’s fame will probably never be extended to America. A fantastic offer to move to the States permanently has been kindly declined by the Swedish quartet.
“ABBA’s music could very well make it big here, but they will have to come and live here,” a spokesperson of their American record company explains. “There’s so much competition over here, that ABBA would have to tour constantly. They have to be available for television shows as well. If you are not a guest on one or the other television show almost every week, you will never get enough publicity. That’s just how this business works here. I don’t know what they want to do there in Sweden but they will have to find out for themselves.”
ABBA, just returned from a short visit to the States, has a different opinion about the matter. “We are going to do this our way, just like we have always done. Didn’t we get extremely popular in Europe as well? And we don’t exactly rush from one television studio to the other here. That’s why we always make our own promotional films,” manager Stig Anderson says. “We are happy here in Sweden, and we don’t have to do it for the money. Indeed, I still see it as a challenge to try and conquer America in our own way. In a year or so we will see who is proven right...”