Hitkrant, 1979: Behind the scenes with ABBA

And there we were, in Gothenburg, Sweden, ready for the first European concert of ABBA's world tour. When you enter the concert hall in the evening and the show starts, you don't always realize the amount of preparations that preceded it. Indeed, the whole afternoon and sometimes even the entire day has been spent in the hall for the so called 'sound check', testing the sound the way it should be heard by the audience in the evening. Not dressed in their stage clothes yet, without make-up, without glitter and glamour, a lot of hard work is being put in to achieve the best results. And they are very serious about that with ABBA, because Björn, Benny, Agnetha and Anni-Frid are only satisfied with top notch quality. A look behind the scenes. Hitkrant was there.

Pictures from left to right:

Benny is putting the finishing touches to one of his synthesizers, assisted by a technician from the extensive road crew that accompanies ABBA on their world tour.

Agnetha in full concentration in front of the microphone: sometimes hours are being spent on achieving the right sound equalisation.

Björn is tuning one of his guitars, because that has to be perfect as well.

In the aisles behind the stage, Björn shows that the Hitkrant pin that he got from us some time ago, is still in his possession.

Apparently, Anni-Frid had some difficulties during this sound check: she hardly appeared on stage and she looked tense. Later on - at the party after the concert - it all went better, as this photograph proves.

At that same party, Björn, Agnetha, Frida and Benny were presented with a platinum album for the sales of more than 100.000 copies of the 'Voulez-Vous' album in Norway by the president of Polydor Norway. At that very same party, Hitkrant dream wish winner Yvonne van der Meulen from Apeldoorn was going to meet ABBA. More about that in the next Hitkrant!