Das Freizeit-Magazin, 1977: ABBA, now they are taking a break

Their efforts were enormous – therefore their success was overwhelming. Now the successful quartet has returned home.

After 22 days of touring in Europe and Australia, Agnetha, Björn, Anni-Frid and Benny have returned to Stockholm. Completely exhausted, but happy and satisfied.
“Up until the end, I have been anxious about this long tour. Of course we knew that the fans would have very high expectations. But the overwhelming success has taken away my last doubts as well: we didn’t disappoint our audience!” Just like the other three, Anni-Frid has burned herself out completely and now she is enjoying the quiet hours at home.
“Of course, Björn and I have been longing for our little daughter Linda. Although we were back in Stockholm in February to pay her a visit, we are very happy to be at home regularly again!” Agnetha tells the Magazin.
And what about the two men? Did they long for this breathing pause as well?
Benny admits: “Obviously, it has been very demanding. But the enthusiasm of the audience has taken away all the strains!” Benny already has plans for the coming period. But Björn is putting him off. “’Money, Money, Money’ is still doing very well in several countries. We don’t have to worry about a new hit for the time being, because the next single will be taken from the album ‘Arrival’. Now, ABBA is taking a break!”
Although both couples mostly spend their days off separately, every now and then they see each other to have a nice cup of coffee together. And the girls are already having a big problem then: “What are we going to wear at our next performances?”

Story, 1978: ABBA Anna too skinny?

Anna (or Agnetha) – the one with the long blonde hair – is beautiful, although she would be the last one to admit it. “I don’t think I’m beautiful at all. When I was a little girl I had a huge gap between my teeth. The dentist has done some work on that; for four years I had to wear braces. I didn’t dare to smile anymore, because then you would see those iron wires. Thankfully, it all worked out fine in the end.”
Anna has long blonde hair, beautiful but laborious. “I have to wash my hair every other day, it’s not very convenient. I’d love to cut my hair short, but I’m not allowed to.”
Whenever she doesn’t have to perform, she hardly uses make-up. “On stage, I wear fake lashes and blue or brown eye shadow. Most of the time, we wear glittery clothes, real show stuff, because that fits our music. I decide myself what I wear during performances. I like red and blue. I wear everything, including Björn’s pants. But I’m not that crazy about clothes that I need to have something new all the time. For me to buy something, I really need to find something at random. But first I want to put on some weight. Yes, I think I’m too skinny! Nobody thinks that, but I do. Ever since the baby was born, I’m getting skinnier every day. I really don’t know what’s the cause of that, maybe it will pass.”

Hitkrant, 1978: What does ABBA’s future look like? – Making hits is getting ever more difficult

It all started in November 1973: Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Stig Anderson came together on their little island and wrote ‘Waterloo’. On April 6, 1974, ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest with that song and then the fences were down. A supergroup was born and at this moment ABBA is an institute for millions of people.

But how long will Agnetha, Anni-Frid, Björn and Benny be able to last? Can you keep on scoring hit after hit? Apparently not, we’ve been able to see that in our own charts: ‘The Name Of The Game’ didn’t get to number one, because Father Abraham with ‘The Smurf Song’ and Queen with ‘We Are The Champions’ prevented it from getting there.
At the time of writing, ‘Take A Chance On Me’ is kept off the number one spot as well. Again by a Dutch artist (although she is actually singing in English): Yvonne Keeley. Are these the first signs? Is ABBA’s popularity diminishing?

Becoming a star isn’t easy. Being a star is equally difficult. But remaining a star is even more difficult. Especially if you want to have a private life as well, apart from your life as an artist.
Agnetha is having problems with that the most. Her little daughter Linda – who has just turned five years old – and her son Christian who was born in December demand more of her attention every day. In the end, she and Björn are not only pop stars, but first and foremost parents as well!

The question about ABBA’s future has been asked many times before. What are they going to do then? Agnetha and Björn already have plans: “We want to buy a farm somewhere in the countryside and then have a lot of animals. Maybe we will become farmers!”
Either way, Agnetha wants to get out of the show business then. Björn isn’t very keen on that: “I’d like to keep on producing and writing music and that goes for Benny too. That is to say: if I can make enough money with that!”

That doesn’t seem to be problem according to us: most probably, the ABBA members have made enough money already to be able to live without worries for the rest of their lives.
But meanwhile the problem remains: how do we stay on top? They are working very hard on that. The musical masterminds of ABBA – Björn and Benny – are feeling more and more pressure. Composing, always looking for a sound that’s different than other people’s music. Working very hard and keeping in shape, that’s the only way to last in the pop scene. Doing business is part of the package as well, something that especially Björn is very good at. Managing the enormous ABBA fortune is something that’s not only looked after by manager Stig.

ABBA is still a supergroup. But not all ABBA singles are becoming number one hits anymore. In 1976, the four Swedes won the Hitkrant trophy with a convincing lead, but our readers clearly went for Queen in the popularity poll of 1977. ABBA will have to think hard about following new paths in their career, if they want to maintain their gigantic success!

Popcorn, September 1983: Strong words from Agnetha – Sensational, what Agnetha Fältskog has to say about herself and ABBA...

She came fresh from her three-week-long holiday on a Swedish island, she was tanned and eager to talk: Popcorn correspondent Mathias Danneels met Agnetha Fältskog – who will introduce her new single ‘Wrap Your Arms Around Me’ in the TV show Wetten Daß on September 3 – in Brussels and heard astonishing things...

After Frida, you have now established yourself as a solo singer as well. Will the two of you have any desire at all to keep on working as ABBA’s ‘choir singers’?
Agnetha: “Well, for the time being it will definitely remain that way, but it certainly can’t last forever. In the meantime, each one of us is having so many own ideas and interests. For instance, I’ve ventured out in the acting business – the movie Raskenstam, in which I’m playing the lover of a Swedish Casanova, can actually be seen in Swedish cinemas right now. This movie making was enormously exciting and it was much more fun than filling up the empty spaces in the ABBA sound.”
Does this mean that you’ve had enough of singing with ABBA?
Agnetha: “That’s probably a little exaggerated. But I want to be able to breathe within the group as well. I experience every break from ABBA as very pleasant.”
What is bothering you about ABBA?
Agnetha: “Everyone knows how things are with us. The boys are writing the songs, they are doing all the work in the studio and they only call us when we have to sing. In the long run that’s not satisfying. Because I have a lot of good ideas as well that I can’t execute with ABBA. That’s why working on my solo album was so much fun for me, because I’ve been creatively involved from the first note to the last one.”
Do you believe that Frida thinks the same way?
Agnetha: “I can’t speak on behalf of Frida, we don’t see enough of each other for that. But either way, more than ever Frida is doing her own things too. She is working on her second album and just now she has started filming for a movie in Stockholm. It’s going to be a comedy and Frida is playing the secretary of an industrial executive. Frida as a secretary – you couldn’t even imagine a thing like that...”
No one believes that there will be live performances or a tour anymore. Can we still speak of ABBA as a group?
Agnetha: “Concerts and tours are not the trademark of a group. I have always considered ABBA more as some kind of studio band. Sure, being on stage for two hours and seeing how happy you are making the audience is wonderful. But the travelling and the separation of my children Linda and Christian, the whole stress of a tour is simply too much for me. We have worked so hard in the past ten years that you only realize afterwards that there are so many things that you have had to pass on.”
You are talking about the last ten years as if this period is over permanently...
Agnetha: “In a way, it is. I have tons of wonderful memories but I wouldn’t have the energy to do it all again. I am 33 years old now, I want to concentrate on things that are far more valuable than success.”
In hindsight, what was the most important thing for you in these ten years?
Agnetha: “Definitely the success. And that we have proved for ten years that we are creative, that we are not a one-hit-wonder. After our victory at the Eurovision Song Contest, we were not sure if we would make it. I wasn’t even confident about my voice. Actually, it’s only now – by working on my solo album – that I’m convinced that I’m able to reach a wider range than with my ABBA voice.”
What are your next goals?
Agnetha: “For me, my solo album is the first step on which many others will follow. I want to compose more myself, I don’t want to exist in the heads of the ABBA fans as just a singer. In the near future, I will work a lot in the studio. For me, that’s some kind of toy that the ABBA boys have denied me up till now...”
Will you go on tour at some point?
Agnetha: “There are no such plans. I want to be there for my children Linda and Christian permanently, I think that’s very important. In Sweden there are so many sad stories about young people who are addicted to drugs, alcohol or trying to commit suicide. When I was young, I didn’t even know what suicide was. I will do everything to raise my children with a positive attitude.”

Das Freizeit-Magazin, 1978: Non stop hits

In show business, everyone is playing hardball. Anyone who rests on his laurels will find that he will be rushed off his feet very soon. One swallow does not make a summer, one hit does not make an international pop group. After their triumph with ‘Waterloo’, ABBA was looking desperately for a new hit record. Or rather: first they tried their luck with an ‘oldie’: ‘Ring Ring’.
One year earlier, the song indeed became successful in continental Europe, but not in the UK. But now ABBA gave it another try. ‘Ring Ring’ was revamped, it was made poppier. The signs were good. ABBA was going to perform the song on the BBC’s most popular entertainment show Top Of The Pops. You couldn’t wish for a better promotional opportunity than that. When the four Swedes arrived in London, it turned out that the BBC technicians were on strike.
The next string on their bow would be ‘Honey, Honey’. The song appeared on the same album on which ‘Waterloo’ had been included as well.
‘Honey, Honey’ made it to number two on the German charts, in Belgium it even shot to number one. In the UK, the song reached number six in the charts – but it was the cover version of the British group Sweet Dreams. Despite their victory in the international Song Contest, Merry Old England didn’t seem to like the four Swedes very much.
“We really had to fight for it in England,” Björn remembers. And he continues: “In the beginning, the British newspapers wrote very little about us.” However, when they did write something, it was in the vein of: ‘Poor old ABBA’. For instance, Melody Maker wrote about the ABBA song ‘I Do’: “It’s so bad, it hurts...”.
Not only the newspapers – so it seemed – had turned their backs on the four Swedes. The music industry was doing everything to cut the ground from under foreign artists’ feet as well. Björn: “Whenever we performed on Top Of The Pops, we were not allowed to use playback, because no British musicians had been involved in the recording. Of course, British groups did use playback.”
It wasn’t until ‘Mamma Mia’ hit number one on the British charts in January 1976 that things were starting to look up for ABBA.
On the other hand, things were quite different in the USA. Although they only performed on the Mike Douglas Show during their first visit in September 1974 and they only shook hands with strangers at press gatherings. But during their second outing in November 1975 they performed on seven television shows in two weeks time.

Everything was going ABBA’s way at this point. Their records were selling like hot cakes, their concerts were sold out. But there were still a couple of thousand miles between them and the location of their biggest triumph: the distance between Sweden and Australia.
The fifth continent was namely the scene of something that ABBA could not have imagined in their wildest dreams. What the Australian newspapers were writing was definitely not a hoax, but reality. They said: “ABBA is the most exciting thing that has hit Australia since the hurricane Tracy.”
Just like everywhere else, the big success in Australia had started with ‘Waterloo’. After that it was blow upon blow. In six months time, the four Swedes sold 1 million records – half of them were albums. When they appeared on television with their song ‘Mamma Mia’, the telephone lines of the broadcasting company broke down, and in the stores the records were literally snatched out of the shop assistants’ hands.
At the invitation of the commercial TV station Channel 9, Agnetha, Anni-Frid, Björn and Benny paid a visit to Australia for the first time in March 1976.
“When we got off the plane in Melbourne, I was looking at Anni-Frid,” Agnetha remembers. “She had tears in her eyes. Just like me. The people in Australia were fantastic. It was a pleasure to be there.”
The highlight of ABBA’s visit was a 45-minute television show. 58 percent of Australian television viewers were fixed to their screens when it was broadcast. More people than had watched the moon landing.
In April 1975, exactly one year after their Brighton triumph, ABBA’s third album was released. Meanwhile, they had been established as an international pop group. Four unknown Swedish musicians had turned into stars, one hit had turned into many hits.
Things were looking up for ABBA in England too. ‘Mamma Mia’ reached the top of the charts, but its successor ‘Fernando’ came as a real bombshell. The British music magazines were starting to realize that ABBA was a force to be reckoned with. There was no talk anymore about ‘poor old ABBA’.

Privé, 1979: ABBA’s Anni-Frid, moviestar

Although the mutual tensions in the group ABBA have reached boiling point lately and the divorce between Agnetha and Björn has left its mark on the relationship between her and her husband Benny as well, there’s still no reason for Anni-Frid to sit down in despair.
It even seems as if she is on the threshold of a new career. Recently, her talent as an actress has been discovered and now they want to explore that.
A few weeks ago, under the burning Spanish sun of Seville, Anni-Frid made her debut as a leading actress in the movie ‘Try To Walk On The Water If You Can’.
The director of the movie is Anni-Frid’s compatriot Stig Björkman. The Swedish mother and multi-millionaire did very well during the first days of filming.
Her colleagues are ecstatic about her. “She is such an enormously kind-hearted woman and she has such a strong character that you can’t help but be astonished by her almost every day,” one of them said. Luckily, Anni-Frid has been able to gather some experience in making movies a couple of years ago, because the feature film ‘ABBA – The Movie’ – that was made about the group ABBA – demanded a fair share of her effort too.

Panorama, 1979: ABBA had dinner with the Swedish royal couple

Every year, King Carl Gustaf and Queen Silvia from Sweden invite about 150 distinguished guests to a dinner party at their palace in Stockholm.
This year, ABBA was present as well. And although Björn and Agnetha are going their separate ways these days, it could not be noticed on this festive evening. They acted like a perfect married couple.
“And that’s how it should be,” Agnetha said. “Because Björn and I are still good friends.”