"How do the other ABBA people feel about touring?

 Muziek Parade, January 1978: The ABBA Story, part 8

"How do the other ABBA people feel about touring? Agnetha: “To be honest, I don’t like to perform outside Sweden. I have a very good reason for that. I can’t miss my children for such a long time. They are still young now. I want to be with them in this period of their life. Whenever we have to work abroad and I really can’t get out of it, I’m regularly crying in my hotel room when I think about the children. I’m a real mother, when it comes to that.” It is known that Agnetha and Björn’s phone bills are sky high whenever they are on tour. Several times every day, they are calling Stockholm. It doesn’t matter if they are in Brisbane or Singapore, these calls will be made and they don’t care about the costs. Björn may come across as being insensitive, but he is homesick just as much as Agnetha. To suppress this homesickness, Agnetha and Björn have the same flaw: they start eating, as much as they can. They stuff themselves with the most delicious food and when they get back to Sweden, they realize that they’ve become too fat. But eating is their reaction on being away from home.

It is known that Anni-Frid and Benny love delicious food as well. Especially fish, with a fruity wine. Agnetha says: “Anni-Frid and Benny can eat whatever they like. French fries with mayonnaise and other greasy food like that. But they don’t get fat. And that’s not fair.”

Whenever ABBA is on tour, they always stay at the Hilton hotel. In Germany, this was cause for the following occurance. The organizer asked “and where will the technicians and road managers stay?” Benny replied: “With us at the hotel, of course. These guys are at least as important as we are. They deserve the best treatment.” And they think that’s weird, in our adjacent country. An entertainer is an ‘artist’ over there, someone who lives far from his servants. Benny: “It surprised me that they still think like that in Germany. There is no difference in social position with us. We are working in a team and we are staying together as a team. If you don’t do that, you can’t perform to the best of your ability.”

In Australia, ABBA bought clothes for a TV show, amounting to 50.000 Dutch guilders. Very pretty exotic dresses and suits. All very exquisite. When the show had been filmed, and on top of that had been a great success, ABBA gave the clothes to their employees, who had been in charge of light and sound."

***"The production is fine, but the technical side makes it sound cold.” Muziek Parade can’t understand why ABBA still wants to live and work in Sweden. The country is clearly anti-ABBA. Stikkan Anderson: “We love Sweden and perhaps all this resistance is an extra incentive to keep on producing good music. The more people are writing negative things about ABBA, the harder the boys get to work. The amazing thing is that these people from the press are not at all the voice of their readers. Their readers bought 500.000 copies of the ‘Arrival’ album within three weeks. That has never happened before in Sweden. That’s why we let these reporters do their talking. They won’t be able to destroy us.”

***

Stig Anderson mingles in the conversation again: “When we did our tour in England, people in the music industry thought we were crazy because we didn’t do any TV shows or commercials to announce where we would perform. We didn’t do that on purpose. This strategy of ‘we are doing it differently than others’ is working out really well. It has been proven. The tour was an enormous success. A lot of artists let themselves be used by television. It has to be the other way around. The artist has to use television. Television is a big monster that consumes creativity. An artist has to last longer than a couple of television shows that may or may not be directed badly. A lot of artists forget that. An artist is allowed to be picky. For instance, we have decided to appear on television in England twice a year at the most. Twice on Top Of The Pops, that’s more than enough. Apart from that, you shouldn’t forget about the danger of being overexposed. An artist has to be careful that he doesn’t appear on the television screen too much. People tend to get enough.” And then, Stig tells about a problem he encountered in Australia: “After the Eurovision Song Contest, we did a fair amount of television shows in several countries. And what happened? The Australian broadcasting company sent a special employee all over the world to buy the tapes of these ABBA shows. All of a sudden, we were on television every week in Australia, without our approval. Something like that can destroy an artist. Now we’ve taken care of that. Whenever we perform for television, we make sure that there is an agreement in writing that our performance can only be broadcast once and that it can’t be used for export.”

And Stig about America: “Personally, I would love to go to America. It’s a fantastic country, with a big audience with great purchasing power. But we are not ready for it yet. And we are not happy with the terms under which we would have to work. I am sure that there are people in America that laugh at our attitude. They can’t understand that we don’t accept these offers. Apparently they don’t believe in an ABBA that can still be big in years to come or even bigger than they are now.”

And he continues: “Maybe we are wrong. It’s possible. In America they are saying that you can only get bigger if you do long tours. We have a different opinion. First, we want to get even bigger and stronger in America and when we have acquired our position, we will fly over there and then the reception will be as huge as the Beatles had in their heyday.”

That the Anderson strategy is the right one has been proven in Europe. ABBA’s record sales had first reached astronomic heights before ABBA – after a lot of begging and pleading – came to Holland, France, England and so on. And ABBA can afford to wait until this begging and pleading will come from America as well.

complete here. http://abbaarticles.blogspot.com/.../muziek-parade...

--------------------

notes - old articles - magazines and posters - stig andersson

https://www.facebook.com/groups/abbaregistro/posts/1341290119930841

Abba were paralysed by nerves and critics loathed their ‘garbage’ songs at start of pop career

SUPER TROUPERS

Abba were paralysed by nerves and critics loathed their ‘garbage’ songs at start of pop career
Gareth Pearce
21 Jun 2020, 23:37
Updated: 21 Jun 2020, 23:37

IT’S time to say Thank You For The Music again – as Abba plan to release new songs more than 38 years since they were last in the studio together.
But it could all have been very different, because nerves nearly ended the band’s first major tour before it even began.

One music journalist was with members Bjorn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, Agnetha Faltskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad backstage before that historic first live tour in 1977.
Here, he tells of the tension and torment as the pop legends took their first tentative steps towards conquering the world.
Abba walked out to their opening night of their first big tour as if to their own execution.
With nerves in the dressing room so shredded before the show, they almost called the whole thing off.

I was behind the scenes on that night in Oslo, Norway, on January 28, 1977, while writing about the Swedish band that had so surprised cynical music critics in Britain with their success.
But this was the first time all their hits — released after they won Eurovision with Waterloo in 1974 — were to be played live.
And the prospect filled the band with fear.
The venue, an exhibition hall called Ekeberghallen on the outskirts of the Norwegian capital, was packed to its 5,300 capacity.

Many of the crowd were strikingly good-looking girls dressed like blonde singer Agnetha — and there was real excitement in the air.
Norway’s Crown Prince Harald and Princess Sonja had been last to arrive, as if to give the show a stamp of royal approval.
A 12-strong team of backing vocalists and instrumentalists were already on stage.
But in the dressing room the atmosphere was one of sheer terror.

Both Bjorn and Benny — the two Bs in Abba and co-writers of their hit songs — were so nervous they were having difficulty holding their guitars.
I had been with the band beforehand in their hotel and travelled to the gig with them. I had witnessed the nerves.
But nothing had prepared me for the total silence in the dressing room and the faces which were close to tears.
It was minus nine degrees outside but it seemed colder in that room. There was a frozen atmosphere of dry mouths and utter dread.


Only their manager and mastermind, Stig Anderson, who had written the lyrics for their first hit, Waterloo — recently voted the greatest Eurovision song of all time — was looking calm.
I left them to take my seat six rows back in the hall, filled with the rumbling sounds of anticipation.
There was a long delay before the lights went out. Then came a rolling drum beat thundering like a locomotive gathering speed in the darkness.
Abba took their places on a pitch-black stage.


CLOAKS, LEATHER BOOTS & MICRO SKIRTS
Suddenly, there were dazzling lights and instant sound — everything in glistening white.
Full-length cloaks, long leather boots, micro skirts for the two girls and skin-tight clothing.
The first song was Tiger, with Agnetha and Anni-Frid (the As in Abba) clawing their hands towards the audience.
Then That’s Me, followed by Waterloo. Benny had told me he would reject any song they had written if it did not give him shivers down the back of his spine.


I got shivers with the fourth song, SOS, with the haunting introduction by Agnetha singing under a single spotlight.
The entire show seemed to move up a gear, the audience was transfixed and the band relaxed — all that preparation had paid off.
The girls, so much a visual part of Abba’s success on television, played out their stage roles superbly.
They were excitable girls for When I Kissed The Teacher. And cynical women about town for Knowing Me, Knowing You, which was to be released as a single the following month.

It sounded a winner at the first time of hearing.
Mamma Mia had already topped the charts in 11 countries, without being performed live on stage.
The same was true of Fernando, released months earlier and sung superbly by Anni-Frid with a star-lit sky effect behind the band.
Their biggest number ones at that point — such as Dancing Queen and Money, Money, Money — had been written in private, plotted and arranged in a studio, and never put to the test before a live audience.

So was the whole show fabulous? After an incredibly tense start, yes, it was.
There was also a 25-minute show within a show called The Girl With The Golden Hair, which included Thank You For The Music and I’m A Marionette.
Contact with the audience came mostly from Bjorn, who according to manager Stig had transformed himself in recent times.
“He was a bohemian and wastrel when we first met,” he’d told me bluntly. “He could not keep track of anything, including himself.”
'LET'S PULL OUT'
Bjorn was certainly having difficulty keeping track after the show, telling me: “Such were our nerves, I said, ‘If this is what touring means, let’s pull out and forget the whole thing’.
“Fortunately, the girls held it together enough for us to start enjoying appearing in front of a live audience.
“I realised then that we have become cut off by working only in the studios, writing and recording.”
At that point Bjorn was 31 and was married to Agnetha, 26, and they had three-year-old daughter Linda.

They travelled separately by plane so there would be a surviving parent in the event of a crash.
Benny and Anni-Frid, known as Frida, lived together.
And the band had already sold 40million records in three years, driven by the shrewd Stig, then aged 45.
So why was I there at all?
It seems incredible now after 45 years of hits, endless tribute acts, the stage show Mamma Mia! and two hugely successful films, but at the time Abba were regarded scornfully by most entertainment journalists.
The fact that they had won Eurovision was treated as no big deal.
According to the critics, their music was middle of the road, the lyrics naive.
But I was a genuine fan, writing glowingly of their feel-good factor and memorable songs.
SOVIET UNION PAID IN BARRELS OF OIL
I had travelled with them the previous October to Warsaw in Poland — then a communist country — where they recorded a TV show, and I watched just how slickly they dealt with business. Stig would not accept payment from any communist country in anything other than American dollars.
Only three refused — China, North Korea and Vietnam — and he ruled out having anything to do with them.
The Soviet Union, however, was allowed to pay in barrels of oil, which were stored in Stockholm.
It was Stig, who died in 1997 aged 66, who first pushed the reluctant band into touring.

He was a calming influence, with four rules for success: “Work very hard, do your best, don’t forget anything . . . and don’t take life too seriously.”
The band members had preferred to record, avoiding the spotlight, which fitted in with the quiet, low-profile lifestyle they enjoyed.
Touring was also expensive in those days. Ticket prices were reasonable (between £10 and £15) and the concerts were used to promote hugely profitable records.
It was the opposite of today. Now, touring can earn fortunes — and records do not.

So on their first big night in a live show, Abba knew they had everything to lose.
Even in their native Sweden, one newspaper headline that very week read: “They write garbage.”
But that first major tour played to packed audiences in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, West Germany, Holland and Belgium before ending on Valentine’s Day in London’s Royal Albert Hall.
They could have sold it out ten times over — and a legend was born.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/11920244/abbas-first-tour-nerves-critics-garbage-songs/

Those were the days - 1979: Abba hit the road again and delight their Glasgow fans

Those were the days - 1979: Abba hit the road again and delight their Glasgow fans

By Russell Leadbetter

Abba in Glasgow, 1979

ABBA - Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus, Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid “Frida” Lyngstad - hadn’t toured for some two-and-a-half years by the time they embarked on a long list of dates in North America, Europe and Asia, in September 1979.

There was no disputing their status, however, as the biggest-selling group in the history of recorded music, as their label described them. Tickets for all the concerts were at a premium, including the show at the Glasgow Apollo on November 13 (pictured).

The concert was of special interest to a group of pupils from the city’s Hillhead High School. Abba had decided that, this being the International Year of the Child, they would like to have children sing with them on stage. Thus did 25 Hillhead pupils rehearse for four weeks, at lunchtimes and after school, in order to sing a song with the Swedish supergroup.

Herald Diary

The concert itself, in front of 3,500 fans, got off to a slow start because of problems with the acoustic, but once the problems had been ironed out, the band really hit their stride.

Backed by a nine-piece band, they ran through all of their hits and introduced a sprinkling of newer songs. The song Super Trouper, with its lines, ‘I was sick and tired of everything/When I called you last night from Glasgow’, had, however, yet to be recorded; it would be the title track of their forthcoming album.

The Evening Times’s pop writer observed that one of the loudest cheers of the evening was when Frida wore a Scotland football top. Another highlight the Hillhead pupils joined the group on stage to sing I Have a Dream.

“It was three years since Abba’s last show,” he wrote, “but the group seem to have lost none of their appeal.”

https://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/17826181.days---1979-abba-hit-road-delight-glasgow-fans/

https://www.facebook.com/legacy/notes/544544172938777/

ABBA on board MV Kangaroo

ABBA on board MV Kangaroo








video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jp_ASiEfZU

Take a chance on this
Hop around the Hawkesbury, north of Sydney, on a piece of sailing history with pop star appeal....


ABBA on board MV Kangaroo
video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jp_ASiEfZU

Take a chance on this
Hop around the Hawkesbury, north of Sydney, on a piece of sailing history with pop star appeal.

By STEPHEN CORBY

November 15, 2019

On the one hand, it is the most perfect place to sleep — ever-so-gently rocked, floating, accompanied by the slightest creaking of wood. It’s like being a baby again, back in a cot. But I am woken by a nightmare Nemo scenario; a hugely animated seagull screaming what sounds like “Mine! Mine” slams full-pelt into the porthole next to my head, bolting me awake.

To be fair, this is partly due to my dawn-loving daughter climbing around the gleaming, golden deck of our stunning Halvorsen timber cruiser and feeding the gulls her breakfast. And really, this is the only bum note during a weekend on MV Kangaroo, the only classic Halvorsen boat, a 36ft standard cruiser, available for hire in Australia.

Incredibly, you don’t need a boat licence to experience the joy of skippering this stripling of boating history around Pittwater, Cowan and the Hawkesbury River, north of Sydney. It’s like handing the keys to one of Karl Benz’s first, and also largely wooden, cars to someone who’s not qualified to drive. It’s possible thanks to a law that says you don’t need a licence to skipper a vessel not capable of exceeding 10 knots (18km/h). Built in 1958, the Halvorsen dates back to a different, more analogue age of travel, so it has a chip’s chance in a seagull storm of reaching that speed. Frankly, going that fast on Kangaroo would seem gauche; this is a holiday that moves at a slower pace.

The sense of history that seeps out of this beautiful craft — all sparkling old-school chrome in a sea of toffee-coloured timber — is only added to by its sheen of showbiz cred. Kangaroo has been a regular star on soap opera Home and Away, playing Alf Stewart’s boat, The Blaxland. It has also featured in a Bundaberg Rum advertisement, complete with giant polar bear. Most excitingly, however, this boat hosted ABBA back in 1976. The Swedish super group not only took time out from turning Australians into Dancing Queens to cruise up Cowan Creek, they also filmed some unintentionally hilarious footage for the music video of one of their lesser-known songs, Tropical Loveland. My wife almost expires from excitement when I show her, via YouTube, that she’s sitting right where Agnetha Faltskog once did, on one of the rear deck’s two day beds.

The Halvorsen name carries its own celebrity, and Scandinavian style, in boating circles. It dates back to 1887, when Halvor Andersen, a farmer, launched his first wooden craft near Arendal in the south of Norway. His son, Lars, carried the family business all the way to Sydney in 1925, where the brand became a byword for floating quality and style. From Lars’s arrival through to 1976, the family enterprise built 1299 boats in shipyards in Sydney’s Neutral Bay and Ryde.

After World War II, the company had a lease at the marina at Bobbin Head in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, from where it operated a substantial boat hire business. Halvorsen also built media magnate Frank Packer’s 12m racing yacht Gretel in 1962; it became Australia’s first challenger for the America’s Cup. The company stopped bareboat chartering in 2002.

Knowing all this history, I climb aboard with a sense of disbelief — and fear. I have my boat licence and have been lucky to steer some giant pleasure palaces on Sydney Harbour, yet I feel far more intimidated by Kangaroo. Surely it should be on display in a giant glass case in the National Maritime Museum, not being crawled over by my children. After an extensive safety and instruction session, I’m delighted to learn I won’t have to extract Kangaroo from its mooring. Niels Storaker, the salty sea dog giving the briefing, announces he will drive us into the middle of Pittwater before I have to take over (I’m pretty sure he guffawed at the idea of me attempting it myself).

Once we’re out in open water, Niels leaps into the second dinghy he’s towed behind us, reminds us again that self-drive charter vessels are prohibited by law from travelling between sunset and sunrise, and we are on our own. Skippering a boat as spick and span as this is a joy, and it’s easy. Because Kangaroo is essentially a water-going wombat when it comes to speed, nothing happens quickly. Turning the old-school wooden wheel makes you feel like Popeye, or Captain Jack Sparrow if you prefer. All I have to do is sit back and resist the urge to take up chewing tobacco.

Navigating the sea lanes is as simple as pretending you’re driving in Europe by keeping to the right and giving way to everything bigger than you, that is, just about everything on the water that’s not a duck. We find a spot to moor before sunset and settle in for a languorous evening.

Kangaroo has two smallish staterooms downstairs, one with a double bunk on the starboard side, quickly snapped up by the kids, and another in the nose with a bunk and a single. The dining table can be converted into a double berth, but by the time we consider this option we are too relaxed and comfortable to bother. The number of overnight passengers is limited to seven “in the interest of overall comfort and wear and tear on the old girl”. There are a couple of fridges and some unexpected mod-cons such as USB charging points and an iPhone cable, which connects you to a multimedia unit should you want to sing sea shanties together. We cook a meal of elegant simplicity on the double-burner gas stove, and find the whole experience like a far classier version of caravaning, with Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park as a stunning backdrop.

After that wondrous night of sleep and sharp awakening, we row to the nearest beach in our dinghy. It’s a spot unspoiled by humans, with a nearby waterfall tumbling into a ravine. There’s time for a bracing swim and some sun lounging before setting sail slowly around Scotland Island, heading to the Princes Street Marina at Newport, where I have no intention of berthing the boat. Fortunately, part of the service involves Niels zipping out to meet us then putting on an exhibition of boat berthing that should be on YouTube. Once we are parked we are overcome by a powerful desire for the weekend not to end and, with Niels’s blessing, we lie on the deck of Kangaroo for a farewell nap in the sun. It’s a sleep that turns out to be blissfully free of seagulls.

Stephen Corby was a guest of MV Kangaroo

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.989975424684275

ABBA in USA

The White House Amy Carter
October 6th, 1979
source abbafanusa

ABBA: 40 AÑOS DE SU UNICA GIRA EN AMERICA

ABBA: 40 AÑOS DE SU UNICA GIRA EN AMERICA
NOTICIAS MUSICA
Por Julian Ruiz ÚLTIMA ACTUALIZACIÓN 13 SEP 2019



ABBA: 40 AÑOS DE SU UNICA GIRA EN AMERICATal día como hoy, en el 1979, hace 40 años, ABBA comienzan su primera y única gira por Norteamérica con un show en el Edmonton Sports Arena, en Canada .


El Tour había llegado a América del Norte dos días antes e iniciaron su itinerario con espectáculos canadienses en Edmonton y Vancouver.

Pero cuando salieron al escenario del Seattle Center Arena de 5,000 asientos, fue la primera vez que tocaron para una audiencia estadounidense, cinco años después de su gran éxito internacional con ‘Waterloo’.

ABBA hicieron 14 actuaciones en los Estados Unidos. seguidos de dos más en Canadá, antes de que el cuarteto y su séquito de gira se dirigieran a Europa.

ABBA: 40 AÑOS DE SU UNICA GIRA EN AMERICA


Fue el tramo de la gira que incluiría su carrera de seis noches en el Wembley Arena que se conmemora con el lanzamiento en 2015 de un CD, un digibook de edición limitada y un set de vinilo triple de 180 gramos, llamado ABBA live 2.

Comprar en Amazon
Con su sexto álbum de estudio Voulez-Vous ABBA experimentaban un gran impulso promocional en los Estados Unidos en el momento de la fecha de debut.

ABBA: 40 AÑOS DE SU UNICA GIRA EN AMERICA

La revista Billboard había publicado un especial de 50 páginas sobre el grupo a principios de mes, y después de un éxito estadounidense relativo , Atlantic lanzó los ‘Angeleyes’ y ‘Voulez-Vous’ como doble cara A como single. ahí. Pero fue un fracaso, solo subió al número 64. El álbum alcanzó sólo el número 19 .

El set para el show de Seattle, y toda la gira, contó con casi todos los muchos éxitos que ABBA había acumulado en 1979, así como canciones clave del álbum como ‘As Good As New’, ‘Rock Me’ y ‘Eagle‘. Los shows terminaban con un bis de ‘The Way Old Friends Do’, ‘Dancing Queen’ y ‘Waterloo’. Después de Seattle, llegó a la Ópera de Portland,. Quizá su mayor éxito de la gira.

https://www.plasticosydecibelios.com/abba-40-anos-de-su-unica-gira-en-america/

Ingmarie Halling: Touring the world with ABBA

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05rspkq

Touring the world with ABBA
In the 1970s the Swedish group ABBA dominated the charts around the world. They're still one of the best selling artists of all time. The band were famous for their over the top costumes - featuring huge flared trousers, teetering platform shoes and tonnes of sequins. An exhibition called Super Troupers featuring some of those costumes is currently running at London's Southbank Centre, and more are on show at the ABBA Museum in Stockholm, where the Creative Director and Curator is Ingmarie Halling. She's a great choice for the job because she used to help the band get dressed when they were on the road. But how do you get a job like that?

Image: Abba
Credit: BBC
Ingmarie Halling: Touring the world with ABBA
Release date: 28 December 2017
Duration:
5 minutes