'Can we do this?'

 We took a chance, and could have lost a pile of... money, money, money! ABBA's Bjorn Ulvaeus reveals how the £140m gamble the band took to create their breathtaking avatar concert almost backfired spectacularly

ABBA have sold more than 150m records since they won the 1974 Eurovision
They made a stunning comeback last year with their number one album Voyage

Band will never sing together again, but perform as digital 3D avatars in London
By COLE MORETON FOR WEEKEND MAGAZINE

PUBLISHED: 22:31 GMT, 11 November 2022 | UPDATED: 22:31 GMT, 11 November 2022

'This is it,' says Bjorn Ulvaeus from ABBA with a sigh, admitting there'll never be any more new music from the greatest pop band of all time.

'We did an album – and we never thought we would achieve that – but that's it. We're not going to do anything more.'

ABBA have sold more than 150 million records since they won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974 with Waterloo, and they made a stunning comeback last year with the album Voyage, which went to No 1 nearly three decades after they last topped the charts.

But while Bjorn is adamant that he, Benny Andersson, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Faltskog will never sing together in a studio or live on stage again, they came up with an extraordinary, groundbreaking way to put on a show to accompany the album: digital 3D avatars of themselves – known as 'Abbatars' – performing in a purpose-built arena in the former Olympic Park in London.

'We took such a risk doing this,' says Bjorn with a half-smile. 'It could have been that people felt they were watching a video. That would have been terrible.'

He's not wrong. The ABBA Voyage concept took five years and £140 million to develop, so Bjorn was well aware they were gambling with a fortune. But more than that, their reputation as one of the best-loved bands in the world was also at stake.

'I felt it all in a very personal way,' he admits. 'I would have been so sad if it hadn't worked.

'I felt we were taking the risk that people would say, 'We had an image of them in our hearts, why did they have to ruin it?'

They made a stunning comeback last year with their No 1 album Voyage. While the band will never sing together again they came up the groundbreaking way to put on a show to accompany the album: digital 3D avatars of themselves

Demand for tickets to the opening night in May was huge, with resale sites flogging them for four times the face value at £475, but there were also dangerous early signs of a backlash, with comments on social media like, 'Why are the tickets so expensive? They're not even there!'

The four members of ABBA appeared in public together for the first time in 36 years at the premiere, which attracted the likes of Kylie Minogue and the king and queen of Sweden, but Bjorn confesses to having been very nervous beforehand.

'Would it work? Would the audience connect with what they were seeing? They did – and it was such a relief.'

There were gasps and tears of joy as the stars appeared to rise up into on stage, lifelike and convincing.

'This is not a museumpiece re-creation of ABBA in 1979,' says Ludvig Andersson, Benny's son and one of the technical brains behind the show. 'The moves, costumes and music are as if the younger ABBA were performing now, in the present day.'

People get very emotional when they see the show, there's something so moving about those four figures
They had to build their own 3,000-capacity arena to pull off this overwhelming spectacle. They're not holograms but images projected on a super-high resolution screen and surrounded by a live band, wraparound screens and state-of-the-art synchronised lighting so your senses really do believe it's the real ABBA, here and now.

'Some people get very emotional when they see it, because there's something so moving in those four figures coming up and looking as though they're there,' says Bjorn, 77, with pride. 'I get pulled into that emotion, even I think, 'I'm there!' when clearly I'm not.'

What was it like to see himself for the first time? 'Weird. But if I look at myself as a historical figure from the 70s and I tell his story, it's not so weird.

'So that's how I see my avatar now.' What would he say to his 70s self if he could? 'Don't worry so much. Try to see what's important and don't worry about the less important stuff.'

Do people still stop him in the street? 'You'd be surprised,' says Bjorn, who seems shyer than you might imagine.

'Even Paul McCartney can walk around the streets as people don't expect him to be there, so they just see an old man. It's the same thing with me,' he says. 'I'm an ordinary guy.

'In certain environments there's a certain respect, for which I'm humbled and grateful.'

The night before we meet he was at the O2 Arena to check up on the singalong dining experience Mamma Mia! The Party.

'People have such fun, it's amazing. They only realised near the end that I was sitting there,' he says, smiling at the love they showed him.

'It's a young audience. Two-thirds of them weren't born when we wrote those songs.'

Bjorn himself had two children, Linda and Peter, during his nine-year first marriage to Agnetha, and is now a grandfather. The pain of their divorce in 1980 was documented in several ABBA songs and there were rumours of acrimony between them in the years after the band split in 1982.

So is the reunion evidence that some kind of love endured? 'Absolutely. Benny and I worked on many projects together. Frida lives in Switzerland and New York but when she used to come to Stockholm we'd meet.

'Agnetha? Birthdays, Christmas. We'd meet and so we stayed friends. Our divorce was amicable, if a divorce can ever be amicable.

Two people who decide at the same time, 'Yeah, we should go our separate ways, you're right.' The fact we could work together again after so long was testimony to that.'

Bjorn married music journalist Lena Kallersjo in 1981 and they also have grandchildren together, but separated in February after 41 years. He made his first public appearance with a new partner, record company product manager Christina Sas who's 28 years his junior, just a few months later.

'We met after my wife and I decided to go our separate ways. Very quickly after that. It was unexpected but great, and I'm very happy.'

Bjorn, who's worth £260 million, has a house in Stockholm and another on an island outside the city, but no others. Is that because Sweden is the place that loves ABBA most? 'No, England loves us more than Sweden loves us, more than Germany and Australia and Canada and other places.

'So it's not that, but Stockholm is a very nice city to live in,' he says.

'It's not as big as London. It's not as crowded. There is not such a huge divide between poor and rich. And I was born there. It keeps my feet on the ground.'

Strange as it seems now, there was a time when ABBA were seen as totally uncool. 'I'd anticipated the dark 80s,' he says.

'When we took our pause from ABBA, I thought that was the end. I thought people would play the songs every now and then on the radio and would find reason to refer to us if they told something from the 70s, but we'd be irrelevant and forgotten. That's what happened.'

Then the band Blancmange had a hit with The Day Before You Came in 1984 and people remembered what great songwriters he and Benny were. ABBA also emerged as unlikely gay icons.

'It was very much the gay community who brought us out of the dark 80s. For some reason they found ABBA to be symbols.

'Maybe it was that we're Swedish and the outfits, but most of all it was that the music seems to be very joyous, very uplifting and made for celebration. A song like Knowing Me, Knowing You is desperately sad, but the ladies' voices make it a happy sad.'

Then there was Mamma Mia!, the stage show set on a Greek holiday island and based on their songs that opened in the West End in 1999 and is still going to this day. The movie starring Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan was a massive hit in 2008 and Cher stole the screen in the follow-up in 2018.

'Mamma Mia! was an experiment like ABBA Voyage,' says Bjorn. 'It paid off.

'The movie more than anything else has brought in a new generation. Mums play it and let their children watch, and the children get used to it and dance and so it goes on.'

Will there ever be a third Mamma Mia! movie? 'If you ask me, no. There are not enough songs left. We don't want to rehash Dancing Queen again. No!'

He's certainly the man to ask: nothing involving ABBA happens without Bjorn's approval. 'If someone comes up with a brilliant idea that's never happened before, I'm completely open-minded,' he says.

The idea for ABBA Voyage was born when former Spice Girls manager Simon Fuller approached ABBA about putting on a show combining live music with holograms.

'We discovered the technology was not enough for us,' says Bjorn. 'It was old-fashioned, a circus trick. So nothing came of that.'

So instead they turned to Industrial Light & Magic, the geniuses behind Star Wars special effects. 'They are the most forward-looking in that field in the world.'

The four members of ABBA spent five weeks in a studio in Stockholm performing the moves, gestures and comments for the concert, their every motion captured in 3D by specialist cameras.

'Of course we had not performed together like that for 40 years. It was very emotional, but not as emotional as when we went back into the studio to sing.'

That was at Benny's place in Stockholm in 2019. 'That day was so strange and wonderful. We were standing there looking at each other and we were like, 'What the f***?'

'But it all came rushing back. It was like time didn't exist.' Was there a part of him that wondered if Frida and Agnetha could still sing?

'Yes, and I'm sure with them as well there was the thought, 'Can we do this?' But when the moment came, they put on their headphones, stood there face to face and started to sing. And it was ABBA. Maybe a tone lower, but still ABBA.'

With crowds flocking to the show, how long do they intend to keep it going? 'I hope it will become one of the attractions in London for many years,' he says.

'We chose London because there's such a wonderful infrastructure for this kind of thing, the best in the world: talent, technology, everything. And I love working here as well.'

ABBA Voyage is booking until May 2023 at the ABBA Arena, London. Best availability from January 2023, see abbavoyage.com

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-11403815/ABBAs-Bjorn-Ulvaeus-gamble-band-took-create-avatar-concert-backfired.html

ABBA Voyage Premiere - Frida and Björn

 Frida and Björn

photo Kirsty Ryan

May 26th, 2022 ABBA Arena

ABBA at the tik tok livestream July 6th, 2022

ABBA at the tik tok livestream July 6th, 2022

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ABBAS XXi

ABBA VOYAGE PREMIERE - Unforgettable Moments

 unforgettable moments

source: ABBAVoyage

ABBA VOYAGE AFTER PARTY PHOTOGRAPHS!!!

Thank you Mr. Andy Wetson for sharing with ABBA fans

  

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ref: Abba The New songs on facebook - ATNS1

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Ingmarie Halling, talks about the ABBA Voyage concert

The Ray D'Arcy Show

Ingmarie Halling, Curator/ Director of the ABBA Museum in Stockholm joins Ray to talk about the ABBA Voyage concert

May 27th, 2022

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPCuBZ34Dbs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73ymJsbwE88

Abba Returns to the Stage in London. Sort Of.

Abba Returns to the Stage in London. Sort Of.

The Swedish superstars — or digital versions of them, at least — performed on Thursday to 3,000 enthusiastic fans with the help of 140 animators, four body doubles and $175 million.

By Alex Marshall

May 27, 2022

LONDON — Ecstatic cheers bounced around a specially built 3,000-capacity hexagonal arena Thursday night as the members of Abba — one of pop music’s behemoths — slowly emerged from beneath the stage, their classic ’70s hairstyles leading the way, to play their first concert in over 40 years.

As a synthesizer blared and lights pulsed, the singer Anni-Frid Lyngstad twirled her arms skyward, unveiling a huge cape decorated with gold and fire red feathers, while she sang the slow-burn disco of “The Visitors.” Benny Andersson, poised at his synth, grinned like he couldn’t believe he was onstage again. Bjorn Ulvaeus, the band’s guitarist, focused on his instrument. Agnetha Faltskog swirled her arms as if in a hippie trance, adding her voice to the chorus.

Soon, Andersson took the mic. “I’m really Benny,” he said. “I just look very good for my age.”

The specially built Abba Arena holds the technology required to bring the Abbatars to life.

The specially built Abba Arena holds the technology required to bring the Abbatars to life.Credit...Lauren Fleishman for The New York Times

The audience — some already out of their seats dancing, glasses of rosé prosecco in hand — laughed because the comment went straight to the heart of the event. The members of Abba onstage weren’t real; they were meticulous digital re-creations made to look like the group in its 1979 heyday. The real Abba — whose members are all at least 72 years old — was watching from the stands.

Thursday’s concert was the world premiere of Abba Voyage, a 90-minute spectacular that runs in London seven times a week until at least December, with potential to extend until April 2026, when the permission for the Abba Arena expires, with the land being designated for housing.

During the show, the digital avatars — known as Abbatars — performed a set of hits with the help of a 10-piece live band and an array of lights, lasers and special effects. For the Spanish-tinged “Chiquitita,” the group sang in front of a solar eclipse. For the stadium disco of “Summer Night City,” it appeared in pyramids made of dazzling light, with the rings of Saturn twirling in the background. The avatars also appeared as 30-foot-tall figures on huge screens at the sides of the stage, as if being filmed at a real concert. At points, they started appearing in dozens of places onstage as if in a manic music video.

The project, which Walsh said pushed digital concerts beyond the hologram performances that have made headlines in the past, is the result of years of secretive work, protected by hundreds of nondisclosure agreements. That included five weeks filming the real Abba in motion capture suits in Sweden; four body doubles; endless debates over the set list; and 140 animators from Industrial Light & Magic (known as I.L.M.), a visual effects firm founded by George Lucas that normally works on Hollywood blockbusters.

Svana Gisla and Andersson’s son Ludvig Andersson, the event’s producers, said in an interview last Friday that they had to deal with a host of problems during the eight years they worked to develop the show, including fund-raising challenges and malfunctioning toilets.

“It’s been stressful,” Andersson said, looking exhausted and sucking a mango-flavored vape pen. “But, make no mistake,” he added, “nothing has been more enjoyable than this.”

The idea started around 2014, Gisla said, when she was brought in to help make music videos for the band involving digital avatars, a process that was “a total nightmare,” she said. Around 2016, Simon Fuller, the producer behind the “Idol” franchise and the Spice Girls, suggested a show starring a 3-D version of the group “singing” while backed by a live band. (Fuller is no longer involved.)

The group needed to get creative because Faltskog and Lyngstad had made it clear that they didn’t “want to go on the road,” Andersson told The New York Times in 2021. But the quartet did want to include fresh music in the show, so it reunited in secret to work up a few songs, which became something more: “Voyage,” Abba’s first new album in four decades, released last year.

The team quickly realized that holograms were not up to scratch; nor were a host of other technologies. “We kissed a lot of frogs,” Gisla said. It was only when they met representatives of Industrial Light & Magic that she felt they had found a company capable of making “really convincing digital humans,” who could be “running, spinning, performing in floodlights.” The key, Ulvaeus said in a video interview, is “for them to emotionally connect with an audience.”

During test shoots in fall 2019, the group’s male members “leapt in with no qualms,” Ben Morris, I.L.M.’s creative director, said. (The musicians’ biggest concern? Shaving off their beards. “I was scared what I would find underneath,” Ulvaeus said.) Lyngstad had just had hip surgery and was using a cane. “But we started playing some songs and she slowly slid off the stool, stood up and said, ‘Take my stick away,’” Morris recalled.

The following spring, the band was filmed for five weeks by about 200 cameras in Sweden, as it repeatedly played its hits. The British ballet choreographer Wayne McGregor and four body doubles selected from hundreds of hopefuls looked on, with the intention of learning the band’s every movement, stance and expression so they could mimic its members, then extend their movements to develop the show’s final choreography.

Steve Aplin, I.L.M.’s motion director for the event, said they went through “literally hundreds” of iterations of each avatar to get them right, and also modeled clothes designed by the stylist B. Akerlund. The hardest to achieve was Andersson, he added, since “his personality is the twinkle in his eye.”

While the Abbatars were being developed, the 10-piece band was being formed and Gisla was fund-raising (the final budget was 140 million pounds, or about $175 million, she said), developing an arena capable of handling all the technology and trying to keep the massive project under wraps. A moment of potential jeopardy came in December 2019, when the team submitted a planning application to the London authorities that had the word “Logo” on technical drawings of the building instead of “Abba,” in the hope no one would investigate further.

When the coronavirus pandemic hit, a project that “already seemed ludicrous before Covid” became “doubly ludicrous” Gisla said, since she was asking backers to trust the idea that 3,000 people would want to dance next to each other in the near future. Materials for the arena’s sound insulation almost got stuck outside Britain when a ship jammed in the Suez Canal; the wood for the building’s facade was meant to come from Russia, but was sourced from Germany at increased expense after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Asked what he had gone through while making the project, Walsh replied, “A nervous breakdown,” then laughed.

Abba Voyage is not the only Abba-themed event in London; the long-running “Mamma Mia!” musical in the West End also regularly attracts boozy bachelorette and birthday parties. Gisla said that like a West End show, Abba Voyage would have to sell about 80 percent of its seats to make a profit. Tickets start at £31, or $38, although few of those cheap seats appear available for the initial run. Attendees pay more — starting at $67 — for a spot on a dance floor in front of the stage.

Andersson, the producer, said he obviously hoped Abba Voyage would be a commercial success — as do the members of Abba, who are investors — but he insisted he was happy the team had simply “created something beautiful” after so much toil. Ulvaeus said he wouldn’t be surprised if some of the group’s contemporaries consider a similar undertaking: “If they ask me for advice, of course, I would say, ‘It takes a long time and it’s very expensive.’”

At Thursday’s premiere, the audience was split between invited celebrities in the stands (including Sweden’s king and queen) and members of Abba’s fan club on the dance floor, yet in both sections people hugged in joy at the sound of beloved songs, and danced and sang along. The fact that the band onstage wasn’t the flesh-and-blood originals didn’t seem to matter. For “Waterloo,” the Abbatars simply introduced a huge video of their 1974 Eurovision performance and danced their way off stage as the crowd cheered wildly.

Jarvis Cocker of the band Pulp said he had been left in “a state of confusion” by the show. “I felt very emotional at certain times during that performance, which I’m calling a performance but it wasn’t — it was a projection,” he said. He added, “But I don’t know what it means for the future of mankind.” He suggested avatar shows featuring the Beatles and Elvis Presley wouldn’t be far behind.

The fans outside were too overwhelmed to worry about the show’s implications for the live music industry. Teresa Harle, 55, a postal worker who attended with a friend and ran to the front of the arena to get the best view, said she found the avatars so convincing, she even waved at Faltskog when the show ended.

“It was a once in a lifetime experience,” Harle said, “even though we’re coming again tomorrow, and Saturday.”

Alex Marshall is a European culture reporter, based in London. @alexmarshall81

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/27/arts/music/abba-voyage-london.html

ABBA entering to the red carpet

From ABBA The New Songs

 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=On_-z5_HVrA

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Today Svana Gisla at the Breakfast Show BBC

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u0giAu37jI

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