Björn Ulvaeus: 'My favourite word? Love, despite its drawbacks in the rhyming department'

What is your favourite word?
"I suspect it could be “love”, despite its drawbacks in the rhyming department"

Where would you most like to be right now?
In a recording studio, mixing a particular song.


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Sat 20 Jun 2020 09.30 BST

Björn Ulvaeus: 'My favourite word? Love, despite its drawbacks in the rhyming department'

Rosanna Greenstreet

The singer on his pre-Abba cabaret act, dressing in a bathrobe while self-isolating, and the problem with his surname

Bjorn Ulvaeus from Abba

‘My earliest memory? Racing lobsters on the living room floor.’ Photograph: Jeff Spicer/Getty Images

Published onSat 20 Jun 2020 09.30 BST

Born in Gothenburg, Björn Ulvaeus, 75, formed Abba with his first wife, Agnetha Fältskog, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad. In 1974, Abba won Eurovision with Waterloo, and went on to sell 380m records. In 1999, they helped bring Mamma Mia!, a musical comprised of their back catalogue, to the West End, where it has run for 21 years. The film Mamma Mia! was released in 2008. Ulvaeus is married, for the second time, and lives in Sweden.

When were you happiest?
If it wasn’t for coronavirus, it would be right now. All my life I’ve felt a pressure to achieve. It’s gone now, and that gives me a sense of freedom. Whenever I, for short moments, forget about corona and climate change, I’m happy.

What is your greatest fear?
Parts of the world becoming uninhabitable due to climate change, resulting in huge migrations and unavoidable violence and wars.

What is your earliest memory?
My dad owned a wharf on the coast of Sweden, and local fishermen used to give us all kinds of fish, but mostly lobsters. I was about four and my dad arranged a lobster race on the living room floor.

Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Bill Gates. Not only did he build Microsoft, he went on with his wife to create the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. They support the, in my view, single most important factor in making the world a better place – empowerment of women and girls.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
That I still have a shred of bad self-confidence and slightly cynical pessimism. It’s irrational and goes against my intellect. A constant struggle.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
The dishonesty and contempt for truth and science that populist leaders use to please their followers.

What is your most treasured possession?
That would be my little island in Stockholm, where I live with my wife, Lena, two dogs and a cat.

What do you most dislike about your appearance?
When I look at myself in the mirror, it’s more a matter of, what’s there to like? I bear it with stoicism.

If you could bring something extinct back to life, what would you choose?
I think about my mother quite often, that I would like to see her again. But mothers are not extinct as such, so I guess that doesn’t count.

What is your most unappealing habit?
If you ask my wife, it would probably be my habit of walking around in a bathrobe all day long during our corona self-isolation.

What is your favourite word?
I suspect it could be “love”, despite its drawbacks in the rhyming department.

What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Successful like my two uncles, who were paper industry magnates.

What does love feel like?
It’s a calm and secure feeling of deep loyalty.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
I’ve always been very careful to avoid cliches. Something in me rebels against saying things like, “Knock on wood”.

What is the worst job you’ve done?
A cabaret act with Agnetha, Frida and Benny. It was in a nightclub in Gothenburg and one night we had seven in the audience. It was before we found out that we were a pop group.

What has been your biggest disappointment?
In my professional life, the musical Chess on Broadway. It was a resounding fiasco and played for two months. The butcher of Broadway, Frank Rich of the New York Times, was probably very pleased: I’ve never seen such a bad review in my life. (related article: https://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/29/theater/review-theater-in-trevor-nunn-s-musical-chess-east-faces-west-across-a-board.html )

If you could edit your past, what would you change?
My surname. You have no idea how many versions I’ve read and heard. It was especially irritating during my Abba years. You can imagine someone calling our hotel and saying: “I’d like to speak to one of the guys in Abba.” Who do you think the receptionist called, Andersson or Ulvaeus?

How often do you have sex?
I’m 75 and I can’t manage more than four times a week.

What keeps you awake at night?
Nothing, really. But without little sleeping pills, I’d go crazy.

Where would you most like to be right now?
In a recording studio, mixing a particular song.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/jun/20/bjorn-ulvaeus-my-favourite-word-love-despite-its-drawbacks-in-the-rhyming-department

related article: https://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/29/theater/review-theater-in-trevor-nunn-s-musical-chess-east-faces-west-across-a-board.html


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REVIEW/THEATER

REVIEW/THEATER; In Trevor Nunn's Musical 'Chess,' East Faces WEst Across a Board
By Frank Rich
April 29, 1988


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Anyone who associates the game of chess with quiet contemplation is in for a jolt at ''Chess,'' the new musical that does for board games what another Trevor Nunn production, ''Starlight Express,'' did for the roller derby. For over three hours, the characters onstage at the Imperial yell at one another to rock music. The show is a suite of temper tantrums, all amplified to a piercing pitch that would not be out of place in a musical about one of chess's somewhat noisier fellow sports, like stock-car racing.

Many of the fights pertain to the evening's ostensible story, an extended struggle between a Soviet chess master, Anatoly (David Carroll), and an American challenger, Freddie (Philip Casnoff), for the world championship. Freddie is an ugly American, John McEnroe-style, who will throw a drink in a reporter's face or upend a chess board if he doesn't get his way. When Freddie is tired of fighting with Anatoly, he brawls with his chess second and former lover, Florence (Judy Kuhn), or with his C.I.A. keeper (Dennis Parlato), who then argues with his K.G.B. counterpart (Harry Goz). As the action moves from Bangkok to Budapest at the start of Act II, even the neutral arbiter of the chess match (Paul Harman) jumps fully into the fray. In an unintelligible but ineffably loony solo, the official starts barking indiscriminately at anyone who will listen, including one poor lady who wishes only to collect her luggage at the airport.

If contentiousness were drama, ''Chess'' would be at least as riveting as ''The Bickersons.'' That the evening has the theatrical consistency of quicksand - and the drab color scheme to match - can be attributed to the fact that the show's book, by the American playwright Richard Nelson, and lyrics, by Andrew Lloyd Webber's former and cleverest collaborator, Tim Rice, are about nothing except the authors' own pompous pretensions. ''Chess'' tells us over and over again that all the world is a chess game, that all the men and women are merely pawns, that everything from global conflicts to love to detente is subject to the same strategies and moves. ''They see chess as a war/playing with pawns just like Poland,'' sings Freddie of the Russians. So what else is new?

The metaphor could grab an audience only if Mr. Nelson and Mr. Rice dramatized it in specific, compelling terms. They haven't. Their tale of international intrigue, with its nefarious spies and headline-making defection, is incoherent and jerry-built, John le Carre boiled down to a sketchy paragraph. Even more ridiculous (and windier) is the parallel love story - which sends Florence, a Hungarian refugee to the United States, ricocheting arbitrarily between the American and the Soviet players as if she had no self-respect or political convictions. By the time the love triangle turns into a rectangle, with the sudden addition of Anatoly's estranged but impossibly noble wife (Marcia Mitzman), ''Chess'' starts to resemble Chinese checkers.


https://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/29/theater/review-theater-in-trevor-nunn-s-musical-chess-east-faces-west-across-a-board.html