40 years ago a rogue bomb threat nearly derailed ABBA’s Aussie tour
Cameron Adams, National music writer, News Corp Australia Network
March 10, 2017 8:24pm
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FORTY years ago this week ABBA’s one and only Australian tour was almost derailed by a bomb threat in Perth.
Michael Chugg, now one of Australia’s top promoters, was a freelance tour manager in 1977.
Paul Dainty, then an up and coming promoter, had secured ABBA for their first Australian tour, starting in March 1977.
Chugg, who worked on most Dainty shows in the ’70s, vividly recalls the Perth drama.
It was around 7pm on Thursday March 10, and took place during their first of two shows that evening at the Perth Entertainment Centre.
“A policeman came up to be backstage and said ‘We’ve got a problem, someone’s called and said they’ve put a bomb in the arena’,” Chugg recalls.
Arrival: a loved-up ABBA land in Melbourne in March 1977.
“I said to him ‘Come on man, that’s bullsh*t, you know someone’s just made that up’ but he said it didn’t matter and the show had to stop and the arena had to be cleared.”
It was up to Chugg to break the news to ABBA — mid show.
“I had to walk on stage and tap Benny (Andersson) on the shoulder and say ‘Excuse me, there’s a bomb scare and you’re going to have to stop playing and leave the stage’. And they did.”
Chugg was the next voice fans heard, telling them to leave the venue in sections.
“Everyone was out in three minutes. Of course 45 minutes later the copper comes back and said there was no bomb, so everyone came back in and the show went on. But ABBA were just wonderful, professional people. It was an amazing tour.”
The 1977 tour was the result of some serious groundwork by Dainty, who’d go on to tour everyone from Michael Jackson to George Michael, David Bowie to Prince, the Rolling Stones to Oprah Winfrey.
Dainty was friends with Thomas Johansson, then in charge of ABBA’s touring, now running the Nordic arm of touring goliath Live Nation.
“I went to Stockholm, met Stig Anderson, ABBA’s manager, and a few of the band members,” Dainty recalls. “I was very young, it was all very new. It took a bit of time, but we got the tour. And they were big outdoor shows. Looking back now, 40 years later, you realise what a coup it really was.”
ABBA were one of the many acts championed by Countdown and Molly Meldrum. It’s Countdown folklore how Meldrum saw a handful videos that the band had made to send around the world in lieu of travelling to promote their music — they were still seen as a novelty act after their Eurovision victory hit Waterloo.
Meldrum aired the Mamma Mia video on Countdown despite the band’s Australian record label not planning to release it as a single.
Gone South: Agnetha Faltskog at Adelaide Airport, wearing a Carlton Football Club jumper.
Countdown kept playing it, forcing Stig Anderson to intervene.
“The Australian label didn’t want us to play it, but every time we played it on Countdown the reaction was incredible,” Meldrum said. “Eventually they decided it’d only be released as a single in Australia. In Brashs and Myers people kept asking for this song Mamma Mia. So they released it and it was an instant No.1. ABBA and Stig were shocked, but they decided to release it in the rest of the world and the rest is history. And obviously it’d go on to be the name of their musical and film.”
In 1976 Meldrum went to Sweden to interview the band, not for Countdown, but Channel 7.
“I’d done a children’s show for Channel 7 before Countdown, and they agreed we could use some of the interview on Countdown,” Meldrum says. “I couldn’t quite understand their Swedish accents, but likewise they found it hard to understand me! I told them they had to come to Australia. I kept pressuring them.”
The band did come to Australia in 1976, but only as part of a deal sewn up by Reg Grundy for the Nine Network. They’d perform on a Bandstand ABBA special plus The Don Lane Show, Celebrity Squares and A Current Affair. Proving that network rivalries are nothing new, Channel 9 refused to let them appear on Countdown; the show that had broken them in Australia.
1977 Australian tour locked in, the band blocked out just over two weeks in their hectic schedule, flying into Australia on February 27 for promotion in Sydney ahead of the first show on March 3 at Sydney Showground.
Swede dreams: Molly Meldrum interviews ABBA in Stockholm in 1976, planting seeds for an Australian tour.
Dainty said the financial deal wasn’t astronomical, despite them being arguably one of the biggest bands in the world at the time.
“The cost was pretty fair, it wasn’t life threatening. You were living in the age when it wasn’t all about touring, because bands were making tons of money from their records. In that era all those legendary acts were getting $5 or $8 for every album they sold, and they were selling 20 million — you do the math. That was probably more important than how much they’d make from touring.”
However unlike some international acts, ABBA did not bring a stripped-down version of their show to Australia to save on costs.
So long: ABBA take a curtain call after the encore of Dancing Queen and Thank You For the Music.
“It was mammoth,” Chugg said. “It was really the first of the big stadium tours that would follow. They had the latest sound system with them, all this amazing lighting, this incredible inflatable roof that went over the stage, they had hydraulics on the stage so everything could go up and down. It was the beginning of what concerts have become now. And they were so organised. They got off the plane in Sydney and the whole crew were all in white suits with the Ansett logo on them. They had doctors, masseurs, hairdressers. All the stuff you have in tours now, but it was brand new back then. They also had a lot of merchandise, which wasn’t such a big thing back then, but they had all kinds of stuff for sale.”
That all came at a price — $9.
ABBA’s special Ansett plane, which transported them around Australia.
“That was quite expensive at the time,” Chugg says. “I remember we did an AC/DC tour in 1975 and people were bitching because the tickets were $3.50. So $9 for a concert in 1977 was a lot of money.”
Once the old-school paper tickets were snapped up Dainty couldn’t add more days to the schedule, so the band agreed to play two shows in one day in Melbourne and (twice) in Perth.
“Can you imagine a big band now doing two full shows in one day?” Dainty said.
The week leading up to the first Sydney show saw the state drenched in torrential rain. A major problem at an outdoor show.
“When you’re setting up chairs in the rain it’s not great,” Chugg said.
The rain kept coming. And coming.
“We debated whether to call the show off,” Dainty recalled. “It was pouring with rain but it actually made for a magical night. It adds a bit of drama. It wasn’t ideal but we got through it.”
One casualty — Frida Lyngstad slipped over on the wet stage.
“We’d used 100 white towels from the Sebel Town House to keep the stage dry, they never forgave me,” Chugg said. “Frida tripped over but they kept going.”
S. O. S: Frida stacks on a wet stage in Sydney; this picture would appear on the front of newspapers.
By the time the band got to their next stop, Melbourne’s Sidney Myer Music Bowl on March 5, there were as many people outside listening as inside with tickets.
That afternoon, a Saturday on the Moomba weekend, ABBA had agreed to a public appearance on the balcony at Melbourne Town Hall. Crowd estimates sit at over 20,000.
“That came up after we’d sold out all the tickets in Melbourne and we got a call saying they wanted to give ABBA the keys to the city of Melbourne,” Dainty said.
“It was one of those photos that went around the world. They were really good with connecting with fans. Even at airports, they’d walk over to fans, even if they were behind a fence, before they got in the car. They were a bit like the royal family like that! They’d go up and down talking to people where they could.”
A decade before the Town Hall appearance a young Ian Meldrum had been at the venue when the Beatles also met the masses via the balcony.
“With the Beatles I’d been down in the crowd screaming ‘I love you Paul! I love you John’,” Meldrum said. “With ABBA I was on the balcony with them, that was a real thrill. I remember the crowd singing Mamma Mia to them.”
The Visitors: ABBA wave to fans from the balcony of Melbourne Town Hall in March 1977.
Chugg said the Town Hall appearance involved a police escort to get the band from Melbourne’s Old Motor Inn in North Melbourne — the fancy hotel of the era.
“It was like a military operation,” Chugg said. “Our security guys were terrified it was all going to go wrong. But people were just happy to see them. It was actually much bigger than when the Beatles did it. The whole tour was bigger than the Beatles, they were playing much bigger venues. And we’d seen nothing like it since Beatlemania. It really was insane everywhere they went. It was the first time a pop/rock act had really captured everyone’s imagination, in every age and every demographic.”
Luke Rogers was 12 when ABBA toured Melbourne, and went to the Town Hall with two school friends.
“A camera crew was filming us, they got us to chant ‘We love ABBA’,” Rogers said. “I assumed I might be on the news, nine months later I saw myself in ABBA the Movie.”
Indeed, part of the 100 plus entourage on the Australian tour was a film crew making ABBA the Movie, featuring live footage, mostly filmed in Perth, the only indoor leg of the tour which also took in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, but not Brisbane.
Summer night city: ABBA arriving at Melbourne Town Hall.
Director Lasse Hallström would later admit he wrote the storyline on the plane to Australia, based around a journalist trying to interview the band on the Australian tour.
Unfortunately that journalist was played by the now disgraced Robert Hughes, who’d later find fame in Hey Dad and infamy and jail time for sexual offences against children.
“That means you don’t see the movie on TV in Australia anymore,” Rogers said.
Then Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser requested an audience with ABBA, which required him coming to Melbourne.
“I took him backstage to introduce him to the band,” Dainty recalled. “There was no political angle, it was just that tour was on such a big level that that kind of thing happened.”
“I had to throw Malcolm Fraser and his family out of the dressing room,” Chugg added. “We were trying to get the band on stage.”
Rogers went to the second Melbourne show, which took place at 2.30pm on Sunday March 6 (with another at 8.30pm that night).
“It was the only afternoon show ABBA ever played,” Rogers said.
“I don’t remember a whole lot of the concert. I remember it being very loud. But I’m so glad I went to that concert. If I hadn’t gone to an ABBA concert I’d still be in therapy because they mean so much to me.”
I’ve been waiting for you: Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and wife Tamie meet ABBA in Melbourne.
1977 was a pivotal year for ABBA, with both couples still loved up on their Australian tour.
“The timeline suggests Bjorn (Ulvaeus) and Agnetha (Faltskog)’s second child was conceived some time during the Australian tour,” Rogers said.
“It was a real peak of their career. They were incredibly happy. By 1977 they were already incredibly successful but the fame aspect really exploded on that tour. I don’t think they realised just how huge they were until that tour. But they had to squeeze a lot into a short amount of time in Australia as Agnetha didn’t want to be away from her daughter Linda, who was four at the time.”
The set-list for most of the Australian concerts was identical, although Bjorn’s lead vocal on Rock Me was dropped at some Melbourne shows after he came down with food poisoning.
The band played most of their biggest hits — Waterloo, SOS, Money Money Money, I Do I Do I Do I Do I Do, Knowing Me Knowing You, Mamma Mia, Fernando, So Long and Dancing Queen.
There were key tracks from the album Arrival (which had sold over a million copies in Australia the year before) When I Kissed the Teacher, Dum Dum Diddle, That’s Me and Why Did It Have to Be Me.
However the band also included a mini-musical, The Girl With the Golden Hair, based around Thank You For The Music — an ABBA classic now but unknown at the time and still months away from being released when aired on the Australian tour.
Frida on stage in Australia
Agnetha during the ‘mini-musical’ in Australia.
“It was a bold thing to do,” Rogers said. “When they did the songs Frida and Agnetha (Faltskog) dressed in wigs. They included a song called Get on the Carousel which was used in ABBA the Movie but never got released. They used a part of that song in Hole In Your Soul which would be on the next album, ABBA the Album.”
That album arrived at the end of 1977, at the same time as ABBA the Movie.
However despite being filmed in Australia, the movie wasn’t a blockbuster, the album also struggled to match previous glories, peaking at No.4.
“By the time of those 1977 concerts Australia had been immersed in ABBA to such an extraordinary proportion it had totally reached saturation point,” Rogers said. “They were over exposed, they were absolutely everywhere. People were fed up with them. After they left that 1977 tour it was like the country collectively sighed with relief. Australia had had enough of them. Arrival sold 1.2 million here, I think ABBA the Album sold 250,000. There was no comparison. Abba the Movie barely made a ripple in Australia, but through Europe and the UK the album and the film were enormous.”
There was talk of a possible 1979 tour of Australia, after a Japanese tour, but it never happened.
“There was no way they could have filled the same kind of venues they did in 1977,” Rogers said. “By that time Agnetha and Bjorn were divorced and Benny and Frida were having problems. Things had changed.”
Some of the 20,000 fans trying to see and hear ABBA from *outside* the Music Bowl in Melbourne.
It was a mammoth tour, with around 150,000 tickets sold, but ironically the band never particularly liked touring.
“They were happier in the studio,” Meldrum said. “It was almost like they did those tours just to keep the public happy.”
The band famously knocked back what would have been a billion dollar offer for a select number of live shows.
“They don’t need to tour, there isn’t the desire and they probably feel they’ve got the memories and it wouldn’t quite be the same,” Dainty said.
Dainty still keeps in touch with the band — he was one of the producers of the Mamma Mia stage show and worked with Ulvaeus on bringing the Abbaworld exhibition to Australia.
For Melbourne, he’s seen the vindication of ABBA being belatedly hailed genius pop songwriters.
“Even now people come up to me and admit they never thought it was cool to say they liked ABBA,” Meldrum said. “For some people they were almost a guilty pleasure. But those songs will last forever. They truly are some of the best pop songs in the world.”
"We have just started to explore a new technological world, with virtual reality and artificial intelligence at the forefront," Lyngstad says. "Our fans are always asking us to reform and so I hope this new ABBA creation will excite them as much as it excites us."
FEBRUARY 18 2017
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ABBA tight-lipped over name of their comeback game
Neil McMahon
Forty years on from the legendary visit that stands as ABBA's biggest and Australia's craziest concert tour, band legend Frida Lyngstad says the Swedish icons will be back. But is it a reunion? She calls it "a new ABBA creation" – but if history is any guide, we'll lap it up whatever it is.
In a rare interview with Good Weekend to mark the anniversary of the 1977 tour, Lyngstad confirms she and bandmates Agnetha Faltskog, Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson are busy with … something.
ABBA arrive at Tullamarine Airport in Melbourne in 1977, when fans regularly crowded to get a glimpse of the band.
"We have just started to explore a new technological world, with virtual reality and artificial intelligence at the forefront," Lyngstad says. "Our fans are always asking us to reform and so I hope this new ABBA creation will excite them as much as it excites us."
Lyngstad reveals nothing else about the new project, but it's safe to say nothing in the virtual realm will ever match the flesh-and-blood fervour of that 1977 tour, in which the band played 11 concerts in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth across two weeks remembered for fan and media hysteria wherever they went.
Lyngstad remembers the fortnight in fond detail, including the first concert in Sydney that was nearly abandoned due to torrential rain. Lyngstad famously panicked fans and promoters when she fell over on the wet stage, which was also invaded by bugs.
An "unforgettable" concert, says Lyngstad, while also recalling quiet moments away from the tour spotlight.
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"We had a few days off, and were taken to a beautiful national park outside Sydney, and enjoyed a boat trip on the waters outside Melbourne, even swimming together with seals in a bay I do not remember the name of. A very special experience, to say the least."
The Melbourne leg of the tour is remembered for fan crushes on the streets at their hotel, the Old Melbourne Motor Inn in Flemington Road, and in Swanston Street where they greeted fans from the Town Hall balcony.
Alan Johnson, manager of the hotel at the time, remembers the constant crush of fans. "There was literally thousands of people at the Old Melbourne to welcome them when they arrived. We had the mounted police out the front to stop the crowd. We had additional security because there were so many people trying to get access to their suites. They were captive … because there was so many people outside."
Promoter Michael Chugg, then a tour manager for Paul Dainty, remembers the chaos of the Sydney show. "The Sebel Townhouse got the shits with us because we took every white towel they had to keep drying the stage. But they played in the rain, the audience turned up in the rain, they just absolutely loved it. It affected everybody from toddlers to grandma and grandpa. It was incredible to look into the audience and see the spread of the demographic."
That generation-crossing devotion is confirmed by musician Kate Miller-Heidke, who wasn't even born during ABBA's heyday but who is working on a keenly awaited ABBA-related project – writing a stage musical production of the ABBA-laden movie Muriel's Wedding, which premieres for the Sydney Theatre Company in November.
"They have basically formed part of the soundtrack to my life, their music is everywhere," Miller-Heidke says. "The songs are undeniable. As a songwriter I would never say that they were of no lasting value … just the way they put lyrics and melody together in a way that burns into people's minds."
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EBRUARY 17 2017
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LICENSE ARTICLE
What made Australians the world's most feverish Abba fans?
In 1976, more of us watched an Abba-in-Australia TV special than had viewed the moon landing. A year later, the band's tour sparked a nationwide fan frenzy. What exactly fuelled our unparalleled infatuation with four Swedish songsters?
Neil McMahon
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"THEY'RE HERE TODAY" HEADLINE, THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
Forty years ago – on a Sunday night, February 27, 1977, just after 9pm – a Qantas plane landed at Sydney airport. And 40 years on, one of its celebrated passengers can effortlessly summon the moment.
"I remember being quite tired after a 20-plus-hours-long flight," says Anni-Frid Lyngstad, better known to the nation simply as Frida – or in the popular shorthand, "the darkhaired one". Neither Lyngstad nor her Abba band mates – Agnetha Fältskog, aka "the blonde one", and their respective partners at the time in life and in music, Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus – had any idea what awaited them once they disembarked.
"We could never have imagined it … overwhelming," Lyngstad tells Good Weekend in a rare interview to mark the 40th anniversary of the Swedish band's extraordinary 1977 concert tour. Inside, thousands had been waiting for hours, most of them youngsters brought by parents who had learnt that it was easier to indulge their offspring's Abba obsession than to fight it.
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Among the crowd was a nine-year-old Nicole Kidman, who would later recall the moment as a defining introduction to the relationship between celebrity and fan. "Being recognised is part of the territory," she said of accepting her own fame in an interview 30 years later, explaining: "I was a kid who waited to see Abba."
A kid who waited to see Abba. Whether you were at the airport that night or not, the sentiment was the same. Further afield from Mascot, fans awaited news of their idols' arrival with the same fevered expectation that had greeted the band's records and video clips over the previous 18 months of Abba-mania – a spree of success so pervasive that music industry folk still shake their heads in wonder. "We've never seen anything like it," says the tour's manager, Michael Chugg, who went on to become a major concert promoter.
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Few households were spared. The daughter of the prime minister was 11 at the time. That places Phoebe Fraser bang in the sweet spot of that generation whose first musical memories were delivered and affirmed by Ian "Molly" Meldrum on Countdown, the ABC's Sunday-night church of pop worship. It was there that the Abba phenomenon was born, and where the listing of the top 10 songs made the group a weekly presence in homes nationwide.
That included The Lodge, and the Fraser family farm in western Victoria. Phoebe's father, Malcolm, was preparing for a visit from the Queen, but it was pop royalty that consumed the daydreams of his daughter: "Totally beside myself with excitement," she remembers.
Bjorn Ulvaeus and Agnetha Faltskog, then a married couple, with their trainer/bodyguard Richard Norton. Photo: Supplied
You could find the same enthusiasm in Melbourne's eastern suburbs, where two sisters had taken their first lessons in stagecraft watching Abba clips. "Singing into a hairbrush, pretending to be them," recalls Dannii Minogue of the devotion she and sister Kylie had for the band.
In Oatley, in Sydney's south, the seeds of Deborah Cheetham's career as an opera singer were planted in her first – and lasting – musical obsession. "I was heartbroken," Cheetham says of that 1977 moment – knowing her heroes were mere miles away, yet she would not be able to see them in the flesh.
Tanya Plibersek, then eight years old, remembers the anticipation – and a similar frustration. "I never dreamed that I'd be allowed to go," says the deputy leader of the Labor Party, who remains a devoted fan.
Across the parliament, Christopher Pyne – also pure Gen-Abba, born in 1967 – says people wonder at his notorious fandom, but states what many of his vintage will recognise as the obvious: "Why wouldn't I be? I was a child when Abba were at their height."
http://www.smh.com.au/good-weekend/what-made-australians-the-worlds-most-feverish-abba-fans-20170215-gue00r.html
Richard Norton with Bjorn and Agnetha during the 1977 tour.
Richard Norton with Bjorn and Agnetha during the 1977 tour. Photo: Supplied
Pyne is right. It would be more unusual if he were not a fan. In February 1977, Australia was a nation obsessed, under a spell cast by these unlikely musical invaders from the other end of the earth. Why was it so? No one pretends to completely understand what happened – and for a long time after, it seemed we were embarrassed by it. But today there is universal agreement on this at least: that something magical and unprecedented did happen during the two weeks of that tour.
The band felt it, too. "We love you," Lyngstad says today, referring to the band's devoted Australian fans. And my, my, did we love them back. Let us count the ways.
http://www.smh.com.au/good-weekend/what-made-australians-the-worlds-most-feverish-abba-fans-20170215-gue00r.html
Richard Norton practising yoga with Agnetha Faltskog during the 1977 tour.
Richard Norton practising yoga with Agnetha Faltskog during the 1977 tour. Photo: Supplied
CAN YOU HEAR THE DRUMS, FERNANDO?
Could we hear the drums? How could we not? You couldn't avoid them. It is a landmark in our pop music history that in 1976, one song sat at the top of the national music charts for 14 straight weeks, an achievement that, then and now, elevates Abba above all musical comers for the longest run at the top. (Fernando pipped the Beatles' 1968 run of 13 weeks with Hey Jude, and the Swedes' record stands to this day.)
Fernando summons memories of Sunday nights, and family times, and the soundtrack to young lives. Christopher Pyne recalls: "It was a Sunday night tradition in our family, because I've got four brothers and sisters who are all older than me, and we all used to watch Countdown together. Watching Abba on TV sitting around the campfire for the Fernando clip … which was every single week, I'd think, 'When is this going to end?' As it turned out, it went for 14 weeks."
Growing up in Melbourne, the comedian and broadcaster Libbi Gorr shared that experience. "Fernando, on top of the charts forever, forever, forever, forever. I can hear the opening pan flute of Fernando still and I get a little shiver."
In Tanya Plibersek's household, Sunday evening was sacrosanct. "I had two older brothers … we all went to church on Sunday morning, the three of us, and my parents would go to church Sunday night so we could stay home and watch Countdown."
Two years before, in 1975, the year Abba conquered Australia, the country was in a rather anxious mood. This was post-Vietnam, an Australia adjusting to the political, social and cultural upheavals of the previous decade, and in the midst of the late-term turmoil of the Whitlam government.
In such times, a band singing the often cheesy lyrics that marked Abba's early hits – "Bang a boom-a-boomerang, love is a tune you hum-dehum-hum" – was going to be either madly out of place or strangely perfect for a population in need of uncomplicated musical smiles.
Abba, whose kooky costumes alone could drive the nation to distraction, delivered the latter in spades – we were happy to embrace them. A mid-1976 advertisement from the band's local record company, RCA, bellowed the sales figures: The Best of Abba album – 400,000 copies sold in 10 weeks; the eponymous Abba album – 360,000 sold in 20 weeks; the single Fernando – 200,000 copies in nine weeks.
When TV producer Reg Grundy brought them out for a promotional visit in 1976, the resulting TV special drew higher ratings than the 1969 moon landing and was repeated multiple times for an insatiable public.
Annie Wright, doing publicity for RCA at the time, had initially found resistance at radio stations, where musical taste-makers couldn't see the potential. "They were a hard sell. The major rock stations did not want to play them," Wright says. "And then it became this runaway train, you couldn't stop it. Molly was the key because of Countdown. Anything that appeared on Countdown, you knew it was going to be a hit." The numbers tell part of the story. The political calendar adds another layer to the legend.
Set Abba's chart success side-by-side with the momentous news events of the period and you'll note a certain synchronicity. The band's unprecedented chart run began with its first No. 1, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, which dawdled in the charts for three months before hitting the top on October 13, 1975 – the same week Liberal leader Malcolm Fraser cut off Gough Whitlam's money supply in the Senate. It stayed on top for three weeks, to be replaced by Mamma Mia, which kicked off its 10-week run in the No. 1 spot in early November.
The nation was roiled by the dismissal of the Whitlam government on November 11 – and the inexplicable soundtrack to that turbulent time was the chirpy, irresistible tune with the now iconic film clip, featuring the indelible image of the two female singers posing and pivoting at right angles in tight close-up. As Meldrum recalls: "I realised that people were mimicking the video – it became almost a cult thing. And then came Fernando, and I thought that would be a hit, too. Beautiful melody."
Meldrum was right, again. From October 1975 until late December 1976, spanning the difficult first year of the Fraser government, Australia seemed intent on doing little else but buying Abba records. Across a 63-week stretch, the Swedes topped the charts for an astounding 42 weeks: I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do for three weeks; Mamma Mia for 10; SOS for one; Fernando for 14; Dancing Queen for eight; and Money, Money, Money for six. In April 1976, they had five singles in the top 10.
Then came February and March of 1977, and that tour, and the fortnight the country went more than a little bit mad.
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The madness started at Sydney airport, and it never let up. Frida Lyngstad remembers her realisation on that Sunday night that Abba were stepping into something the group had never experienced in its four years on the world stage: total devotion, sometimes scary devotion. "Stepping out of the aircraft to the cheering and applause, and all the boards with messages of love from the people, it was like an energy injection which literally never stopped during the whole tour," she says.
The arrival was marked by delirium and controversy. The airport crowd was so big and boisterous, authorities abandoned a planned meet-the-fans moment. The band posed for news photographers and then were gone. "It was surreal, really surreal," says Wright. "It was a mob scene, the hysteria of it all."
Ingmarie Halling, brought out from Sweden to be in charge of the band's wardrobe, saw the scene from behind. "It was crazy … it was like royalty or the Pope or something." The Sydney Morning Herald's front page the next day declared: "Pop Group's Fans Waited in Vain."
The moment stuck in Nicole Kidman's mind. Talking about the pros and cons of fame in a 2001 interview with the Baltimore Sun, she said: "I was at an airport as a kid when Abba came, and they just walked right past. It's nice to get out and shake people's hands and sign a few autographs. It doesn't cost you much."
(Kidman apparently bore no real grudge: when the movie Mamma Mia! won Best Musical at Britain's National Movie Awards in 2008, she presented the award to Björn Ulvaeus, who had considered Kidman for the lead role in the film before giving the gig to Meryl Streep.)
Of the four band members, Lyngstad loved touring and performing the most. In contrast, Agnetha Fältskog mostly hated it. At an overflowing press conference at Sydney's Sebel Townhouse the morning after Abba's arrival, Fältskog spoke of being on tour and waking up and not knowing what country she was in.
Years later, she said of the Australian tour: "There was fever, there was hysteria, there were ovations, there were sweaty, obsessed crowds. Sometimes it was awful. I felt as if they would get hold of me and I'd never get away again.
Fältskog even good-humouredly endured questions about her bottom, which the European media had christened the sexiest derrière in pop. Melbourne radio star Greg Evans, on the Abba trail for 3XY, raised the topic on behalf of the Australian media. "That was my contribution to the press conference," Evans recalls, along with Fältskog's sharp response: "How do I know?" she quipped. "I haven't seen it."
But it was Frida Lyngstad who sparked the biggest fuss of the Sydney visit, when the band's first concert at the Sydney Showgrounds on March 3 was almost abandoned in the face of a relentless storm. The arena turned to mud.
Michael Chugg, the tour manager running the show for promoter Paul Dainty, had to clear the Sebel Townhouse out of towels to wipe down the flooded stage. "It was very close to being cancelled," he says. "But they played in the rain, and the audience turned up in the rain, they just absolutely loved it."
The show must go on, and go on it did – even after Lyngstad took a dramatic tumble on the wet stage. "I was very lucky not to hurt myself," she recalls. "I think the unexpected fall worried the crew more – running out on stage trying to wipe the floor with masses of towels. Even our manager, Stikkan Anderson, was on his knees helping out."
You didn't need to be present to hear of Frida's fall. Julia Zemiro, now Australia's chief interpreter of the Eurovision Song Contest, was going to the second Sydney concert the next night. "Frida was in all the papers the next morning – all the black-and-white photos – having slipped over," she recalls. Zemiro says her favourite memory of her experience, as a nine-year-old, was "just the excitement of everybody loving them".
Director Stephan Elliott was 12 as he absorbed the event, primarily through the papers: "I remember the front page of the concert with all the rain … that was big news." Fast-forward 17 years and he'd tap into those memories when he created The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert which, along with the soundtrack of Muriel's Wedding, fuelled an Abba revival.
That opening Sydney concert was the most famous of Abba's entire career, immortalised in Abba: The Movie. In Lyngstad's memory, "The rain eventually came to a stop, and from having fought a wet floor and beetles, and performing to a lot of umbrellas, we now connected with the people holding them, and the energy exchange between us on stage and the audience was absolutely amazing."
THE WINNER TAKES IT ALL
There Is at least one Australian who claims to have no memory of Abba's 1977 tour. William Heseltine, the Australian-born private secretary to Queen Elizabeth II, was in charge of Her Majesty's Silver Jubilee celebrations, and the anniversary of her 25th year on the throne included a coast-to-coast royal tour of Australia in March of that year. What Heseltine remembers is the warnings, 16 months after the governor-general, John Kerr, sacked the Whitlam government, that the Queen could expect a raucous reception. "Quite sensible people were writing to me saying we must prepare for demonstrations," says Heseltine, now retired and living in Western Australia.
The demonstrations didn't happen. Perhaps we were too distracted by the Abba tour, though Heseltine says the coincidence of the royal tour and the Swedish invasion doesn't ring any bells all these years later. "No memory of that at all," he says, which is perhaps as it should be. He, and the Queen, had enough on their plates.
But the archives tell us that the timing of the monarch's visit and the Abba tour weren't far from the minds of political leaders, the media and the public. Amid media chatter that the band might be persuaded to add a Canberra stop to its calendar to meet the Queen and Prince Philip, one cartoon of the day has the Duke of Edinburgh asking prime minister Fraser: "The wife wants to know if you can fix it for a couple of tickets to Abba."
In Queensland, the Bjelke-Petersen government had sent the group a telegram pleading with them to add a Brisbane concert to the itinerary. Abba didn't make it to Brisbane, or to Canberra. Instead, Canberra – in the form of the PM and his family – went to Abba.
The band's arrival in Melbourne was celebrated with a civic reception on the balcony of Melbourne Town Hall. In the crowd on Swanston Street was Julie Craik, who had never seen anything like the hysteria of that Saturday afternoon. "It was just a mass of people everywhere. The crowd – everybody – was trying to get closer, and people started screaming."
Richard Norton, travelling with the band as a bodyguard and personal trainer, was on the portico. "It was just like the Beatles," he says. "Nobody who was up there could look out and not be just blown away by the response."
Frida Lyngstad places this among the tour's most stunning moments. "The streets were totally jammed with people and our limousine was having difficulties getting through the crowds," she says. "The moment on the town hall balcony was very heartfelt and I was moved to tears by the fantastic welcome from all the people in the street looking up on us where we stood. We felt like royalty at that moment, waving to them all down there."
To come was a series of shows at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl, where Malcolm Fraser managed to squeeze in a moment for the ages. The Queen was arriving in Canberra the next day, but this was a photo opportunity not to be missed. Fraser's wife, Tamie, says, "It was a nice show and we met them all afterwards, as prime ministers do. And as we walked into the concert, the kids said, 'Oh, Dad, not as many boos as usual.' "
For Phoebe Fraser, the evening "was probably the first really fun thing we'd done with Dad, with all the politics stuff, so it was massively exciting. Then, when we got to meet them, it was like, 'Oh my god.' It was a dream come true. I didn't know it was going to happen, and of course I was 11, so I just stood there thinking, 'Wow,' and not really knowing what to say. I felt quite awkward that they'd just done this huge concert and the last thing they'd be wanting to do is talk to us and be nice to us, and wondering what were we doing there. And they were all so charming."
Lyngstad can put the Fraser family's minds at rest: a meeting with the leader of the nation and his clan was not a chore. "I remember them to be a very sweet family," she says. "And, of course, we were very honoured by them taking the trouble to come to our concert, and telling us they loved our music and the show."
And looking back, it seems only fitting. To that point, Abba had unwittingly provided the soundtrack to Malcolm Fraser's permanently contentious prime ministership. It was perhaps only right that he took the time to say thank you for the music.
SO LONG, SEE YOU HONEY
After Melbourne, the circus moved west. There was one big football-stadium show in Adelaide, and five gigs in Perth, where the tour ended on a dramatic note – a bomb scare forced the band from the stage at one show – and then on a melancholy one. After 11 concerts, across four cities, crammed into 13 crazy days, Abba left Australia – never to return.
The moment of its greatest triumph marked the beginning of the end for our blazing love affair with a band whose music had commanded unprecedented national affection. The signal that it was over came towards the end of 1977.
There was an election campaign: Fraser versus Whitlam once more. And where were the Swedes? Limping into the top 10 with their new single, The Name of the Game. It didn't even crack the top five – unheard for Abba. Fraser won; Whitlam retired; the country moved on.
It would be nearly 20 years before we made our peace with the breakup. Appropriately, it was two Australian movies – Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Muriel's Wedding – that returned Abba to the national consciousness in the mid- 1990s. By then, we were ready to admit what we'd known all along – that we bloody well loved them, and it didn't need to make sense.
Forty years on, Lyngstad speaks for all the band when she says, "I've always had a soft spot for our fans in Australia and their wonderful support … It obviously does not matter from where you are in the world, if people love your music, it travels borders and captures hearts. It has a life of its own. We are immensely grateful."
Now we're old and grey, we can safely say that the feeling is mutual.
HOW WE LOVED THEM: FAMOUS AUSTRALIANS REMINISCE
TANYA PLIBERSEK, FEDERAL LABOR MP "I had an Abba poster on my bedroom door. Agnetha was my favourite, along with every other girl I knew."
CHRISTOPHER PYNE, FEDERAL LIBERAL MP "To be a political figure you have to pretend your favourite band is AC/DC or INXS … but when people want to dance at a wedding, they put on Waterloo or Dancing Queen."
DANNII MINOGUE, SINGER, ACTOR "It feels like their music has played a big role in shaping what we love about pop and what inspires us musically."
JOHN PAUL YOUNG, SINGER "If anything, it was flattering to be No. 2 behind them. They owned three-quarters of the charts."
JULIA ZEMIRO, TV HOST "When you see footage and photos of the era and you see everyone go crazy, I'm struck by how innocent Australia was: an innocent, kind of wide-eyed lot."
LIBBI GORR, COMEDIAN "Even now when friends come over, the other women and I are still prone to do the Mamma Mia clip. We'll face each other and turn around and give ourselves whiplash."
IAN "MOLLY" MELDRUM, COUNTDOWN HOST "When it was No. 1 for the 12th week I said, 'We're not going to show Fernando this week.' The switchboard exploded! Needless to say, the next week we played Fernando."
http://www.smh.com.au/good-weekend/what-made-australians-the-worlds-most-feverish-abba-fans-20170215-gue00r.html
FEBRUARY 18 2017
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ABBA mania Down Under: bomb scares, a coup for the Blues and the $800 school lunchbox
Neil McMahon
There are countless memorable, magic and mad ABBA moments from a wild run of Australian success that peaked with nationwide mania during their 1977 concert tour.
From the up-close encounters of Molly Meldrum to the lucrative passion for ABBA memorabilia, here is a collection of ABBA memories shared with Fairfax Media to mark the 40th anniversary of the tour that stopped the nation.
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http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/abba-mania-down-under-bomb-scares-a-coup-for-the-blues-and-the-800-school-lunchbox-20170218-gug3je.html
Malcolm Fraser and his family meet ABBA before the concert backstage at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl.
Malcolm Fraser and his family meet ABBA before the concert backstage at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl. Photo: The Age
Keys to the city
Melbourne Town Hall - where ABBA appeared on the balcony as The Beatles had done in 1964 - is still home to a piano played by members of both bands.
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"People all around the world know what Melbourne Town Hall looks like thanks to widespread vision of The Beatles waving from the balcony in 1964 and ABBA on the same balcony in 1977," says Lord Mayor Robert Doyle. "Iconic moments for both super groups and our town hall."
Show stopper
During one of their Perth shows, ABBA were forced to flee the stage after a bomb threat. Tour manager Michael Chugg approached pianist Benny Andersson mid-song.
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"I said, 'Excuse me, but there's a bomb scare, you need to leave the stage'. He looked at me, they finished the song and they left the stage. I got on the microphone, we emptied the hall out, nice and orderly. And then of course the copper comes up and says, 'There's no bomb, you can bring them all back and finish the show'."
Frontpages of Perth newspapers covering ABBA's appearances in the city.
Frontpages of Perth newspapers covering ABBA's appearances in the city.
Money, money, money
Australian producer Reg Grundy owned exclusive rights to ABBA merchandise, creating a worldwide collectors market that can be lucrative for anyone who held on to that ABBA schoolbag or lunchbox.
Says Australian fan and keen collector Roxanne Dickson: "It depends on condition and what colour it is because certain colours are more rare … but they can range from $250 to $800 per lunch box."
A selection of licensed ABBA merchandise Down Under.
A selection of licensed ABBA merchandise Down Under.
Blue coup
During their Melbourne visit, Carlton Football Club pulled off one of the great PR coups thanks to club GM Keith McKenzie.
"When we knew they were about to land at Tullamarine I told our marketing bloke Michael Whitewood, 'Grab a couple of guernseys, get up to the airport and take them out to ABBA'", McKenzie says.
ABBA singers Agnetha and Frida even wore the jumpers years later in a film clip.
ABBA's Agnetha and Frida wearing Carlton's jumpers.
ABBA's Agnetha and Frida wearing Carlton's jumpers.
The bodyguard
Martial arts expert Richard Norton was hired as a tour bodyguard - but ended up the band's personal trainer as well.
"I suggested to Anna and Frida that maybe they would want to do a little workout .. and it snowballed from there. They ended up working out just about every day at their hotel. We'd either be down by the swimming pool or on a beach. They thoroughly enjoyed the whole idea of that."
Richard Norton practising yoga with Agnetha Faltskog during the 1977 tour.
Richard Norton practising yoga with Agnetha Faltskog during the 1977 tour. Photo: Supplied
A long way to the top
Where Ian "Molly" Meldrum flew to Sweden tor ABBA's Australian tour announcement in 1976, he found an Australian band on the rise were busy conquering Sweden.
"ABBA were just wonderful to me," says Meldrum. "Really, really lovely. During the day they'd be showing me around shops and that sort of thing and I was amazed because in a lot off the record shops were posters of AC/DC."
Faking it
Lasse Hallstrom, creator of the band's famous film clips and later an Oscar nominated director, shot ABBA: The Movie during the 1977 Australian tour - but many scenes passed off as Australia in the film were shot in Sweden because during the tour there was no proper script.
"We made it up as we went along," says future Neighbours star Tom Oliver, who played their bodyguard. "It wasn't till we went to Stockholm that he put some semblance of a script together."
Stop the presses
When the album Arrival was released four months before the 1977 tour, record company RCA went to extraordinary lengths to meet massive demand for a band that had sold nearly 3 million records in Australia in a year.
"Every record plant in Australia was pressing Arrival - never happened in history - so it could be dropped simultaneously in all the stores," says then RCA publicist Annie Wright.
High notes
Australia is home to one of the world's only ABBA choirs, the Canberra-based Andante Andante choir who once sang for the King and Queen of Sweden.
ABBA keeps other performers busy too: the stage show Mamma Mia is being revived for a national tour starting in November, and a star of the original Australian production, stage legend Rhonda Burchmore, has her own ABBA-themed show in the works.
And the NSW town of Trundle is holding its annual ABBA festival in May.
Thank you for the music
After Priscilla, Queen of the Desert helped spark an ABBA revival in the 1990s, director Stephan Elliott received belated thanks.
"One day this box arrived in the post and it was the full collection of everything they ever recorded. It was signed by all four of them and somebody had written, 'Dear Stephan - Thank you for the money'."
