ABBA’s Benny Andersson on music and growing old

ABBA’s Benny Andersson on music and growing old






ABBA's Benny Andersson, by Tom Jellett.
The Australian12:00AM November 18, 2017

I picked up melodies very quickly.My father and grandfather introduced me to the accordion when I was six, and I was a quick learner. The piano arrived when I was 10. I would come home after school and hammer away at the keys, probably making an awful sound for hours. My mother never told me to stop. It was always OK for me to be at that piano.

Bjorn is like a brother to me. We met more than 50 years ago. I went to a party he had before starting military service, and we began playing Beatles songs. We talked about maybe working together one day, and that was what happened.

By the early 1970s, Bjorn and I knew that we were quite good at writing songs, but no one was interested. The four of us — Bjorn, Agnetha, Frida and me — performed as Festfolk. We would do some cabaret gigs just to put food on the table, playing terribly corny songs.

After a while we decided we couldn’t do this any longer and that Frida and Agnetha should be the singers because they were so good. And we should sing in English.

So we did a song called People Need Love, which was a small hit. The fact that we were two married couples playing together in a band was nothing to do with what we did, as far as I am concerned. What we did was write songs and record them with two fabulous voices.

ABBA’s success didn’t happen overnight. After Waterloo in 1974, they still sent Volkswagens to take us to the airport. Then Lasse Hallstrom made some videos of SOS, Mamma Mia and I Do, I Do, I Do, which were shown in Australia, and things went crazy there. The UK picked us up and we were suddenly in the charts.

If you can’t live together you can’t live together. You don’t have to be a musician to realise that. My marriage to Frida ended, but I think being in ABBA helped us to stay together for longer than otherwise. It was more like that than the other way around.

I think if you ask any of us now, we are all happy about what we have achieved. We had a big party last year to celebrate my and Bjorn’s long collaboration and friendship, and the girls surprised us by getting up on stage and singing The Way Old Friends Do.

I am a lucky bloke, definitely. If you were to ask, would you prefer to be 30 again in the middle of the ABBA stuff or now, I would say now, because now is better.

How cool is it to be on stage with U2 playing Dancing Queen? They were in Stockholm in 1992 and we went on stage, me with a tiny keyboard and Bjorn grabbed a guitar.

It was very flattering they were playing one of our songs.

Stopping drinking was the best decision I’ve ever taken. It was a problem, absolutely. So 15 years ago I thought, I have to give this up. I wouldn’t be here now if I hadn’t.

It triggered a lot of my friends to quit drinking, too, and they are equally happy. I have learned step by step to become a businessperson. I have learned step by step to become a better piano player.

If you spend time on something you enjoy, you become good at it. It is more a matter of that than talent. I am not sure I have learned much in life.

Getting old is not so bad. The problem is that you are going to die soon. The trick is not to think about that too much.

It is the same for all of us; death is very democratic.

Benny Andersson’s new album, Piano, is available now on Deutsche Grammophon

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/abbas-benny-andersson-on-music-and-growing-old/news-story/5856377010e0bfacadf9dcbfa7026194