people applied for tickets by mail, enough to fill the venue 580
times over.
The reception at home didn’t quite live up to that. “They did
one tour in Sweden in 1975 after
Waterloo
,”
says Halling. “But it
wasn’t completely sold out. On the world tours, they did a couple
of shows in Gothenberg and Stockholm, but not too many. It was
a bit of an uphill struggle. We have a problem in Sweden with
being generous and applauding our own. I don’t know why.”
Ironically, perhaps, Sweden seemed to start embracing Abba
at the time the band members themselves were at their lowest.
By the time of their last album, 1981’s
The Visitors
,
both Abba’s
couples had divorced and they seemed burnt out by the constant
touring. “When I talk about, say, being in Osaka, Japan – they
can’t remember it because they didn’t do anything, it was just
another hotel room,” says Halling. “Only the days off stand out,
for instance when the Australian promoter took us out on an old
fishing boat.”
Meanwhile, Swedes were starting to accept Abba. “It’s hard to
pinpoint an exact time when it became acceptable to like Abba in
Sweden; it was more of a gradual process I think,” says Carl Palm
Davis, author of their biography
Bright Lights, Dark Shadows
.
“
The demise of the progressive movement helped. The climate
had thawed quite a bit by the early 1980s, although the real
acceptance of the band probably didn’t manifest itself until
into the ’90s.”
He says a good barometer of a turnaround was
Abba Gold
,
the
1992
greatest hits album. “It was at number one for four weeks,
stayed in the charts for 41 weeks and sold hundreds of thousands
of copies.” Twenty-one years later, it remains the third biggest
selling album in the UK after Queen’s
Greatest Hits
and The
Beatles’
Sgt Pepper
.
The 1999 stage musical
Mamma Mia!
,
made
with Björn and Benny’s cooperation, has been seen by more than
42
million people, grossing US$2 billion worldwide (NOK11.65bn).
It’s all helped change the view of Abba, especially with younger
generations. Karl Batterbee, who runs the Scandipop website, says:
“
Today a lot of Swedish songwriters write for One Direction, Britney
Spears and Nicki Minaj. They were inspired by the melody-driven
sounds they grew up with in the 1960s and ’70s, such as Abba.”
He says the popularity of the Melodifestivalen is in some senses
about Abba. “Swedish bands like Alcazar and Linda Bengtzing are
how you’d imagine Abba would sound these days. That’s a big part
of why it’s such a cultural phenomenon.”
Mattias Hansson, managing director of the newmuseum, argues
Abba’s sheer number of hits made Sweden come around. “No other
Swedish band of that genre came close to Abba’s success back then,”
he asserts. “You could see that at the time. It’s ironic that the progg
bands have moved into obscurity, while Abba’s well-produced and
slick, highly international approach is still alive. Now there is huge
respect for Abba here as everybody can see what they achieved.”
Turn the page to find out what to expect at the Abba museum
» » »
“
The greatest hits album stayed in
the charts for 41 weeks and sold
hundreds of thousands of copies”
n
/ 0 7 5
