Abba BBC Radio 1 - 1976

First broadcast: Tue 28th Dec 1976, 12:45 on BBC Radio 1 England Tom Browne interviews Sweden's top pop group, Abba. in a specially recorded programme featuring all their hit records. Producer PAUL WILLIAMS 

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source full program: https://www.mixcloud.com/noeltyrrel/tom-browne-abba-special-december-1976/

 https://www.mixcloud.com/noeltyrrel/tom-browne-abba-special-december-1976

When Abba stayed in Bournemouth for an industry party

When Abba stayed in Bournemouth for an industry party

Superstar music chart toppers left HUGE tip for hotel staff

ABBA landing at Hurn Airport 12th Sept 1981.

More than 40 years ago the Echo received a tip that a top musical group were coming to town, but this was nowhere near as impressive as the tip the singing quartet left for the hotel they stayed in.

Out of nowhere, like a bolt from the sky, four of the music industry's most renowned icons graced Bournemouth with their presence - Abba.

  The band flew in from Stockholm on a private jet to Hurn Airport, en route to a party at the end of CBS Records’ conference at the Carlton Hotel in 1981.  

On the following day, as they bid their farewell, the hotel manager was astounded by the generous tip left behind - a staggering £500, equivalent to approximately £2,000 in today's currency.

Upon receiving advanced notice of their arrival, The Daily Echo eagerly awaited the band's presence at the airport.

Agnetha Faltskog said it was unlikely the group would tour Britain, but said: “I love your country.”

Band members Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad had divorced that year, two years after Faltskog and Bjorn Ulvaeus did the same.

Andersson told the Echo: “We find that we are working better together now that there is no pressure of marriage.”

Instead of performing at the Carlton, the group decided to attend a lively gathering alongside approximately 300 delegates. Among the attendees were also the Nolans, who added to the celebratory atmosphere.

The next day, as they departed, they left an incredibly generous tip to mark their departure.

The hotel’s executive director, John Furlong, said: “I have been in the hotel business for a long time, and I have never known anyone to be so generous as this. They can come back any time.”

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article

https://abbaregistro.blogspot.com/2017/09/flashback-day-abba-came-to-bournemouth.html

ABBA Voyage, review: surrender to this poptastic retrofuturism

 REVIEW

Abba Voyage, review: surrender to this poptastic retrofuturism – and have the time of your life

    

Fifty years since the band conquered Eurovision, this digital concert residency with life-sized ‘Abbatars’ is still a time-travel triumph

Marianka Swain

9 April 2024 • 12:04pm

ABBA, Pop music

Abba Voyage at the astonishing Abba Arena CREDIT: Abba Voyage

It was a double anniversary celebration for Abba this past weekend: 50 years since they conquered Eurovision, and 25 years in the West End for musical Mamma Mia!. Attending the latter on Saturday, Björn Ulvaeus quipped that although he might not be there for the show’s next big anniversary, “my avatar will” – referring to the Swedish band’s latest smash-hit project, and addition to their peerless legacy, Abba Voyage.

This digital concert residency, which began in 2022, is mind-bending time travel to rival Doctor Who: somehow both richly nostalgic and an extraordinary glimpse of the future. The purpose-built Abba Voyage arena alone is a wonder – a Scandi spaceship landed in Stratford, boasting 291 speakers, 500 moving lights, and 65-million-pixel screens. 

As for those life-sized and eerily lifelike “Abbatars”, George Lucas’s Industrial Light & Magic company used 160 motion-capture cameras to record the briefly reunited Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad – and then, via CGI, restore them to their youthful 1979 selves. When those four oh-so-familiar figures come rising up onto the stage in their sequinned glam-rock jumpsuits, it really does feel like witchcraft.

But this Abba Voyage London experience wouldn’t be nearly so popular if it was just techie heaven. After all, these richly emotional songs have become embedded in our lives. Director Baillie Walsh makes some canny choices, such as employing a charismatic live band, so we still get that immediate human connection. He also understands, as Ulvaeus puts it, that Abba essentially has a fifth member: the audience. This has to feel like a communal event – and it does.

Although the Abba Voyage setlist begins, oddly, with a deep-cut, it’s not long before you get that collective bliss of 3,000 people thrusting their arms in the air when the Fernando chorus kicks in, or adding a group “a-ha” to Knowing Me, Knowing You. Chiquitita is backed by a gradual solar eclipse, and its ravishing lighting effect makes it look as though the audience in the front dance-floor area is at a music festival during sunset. That section is boogieing throughout, but everyone is on their feet by Dancing Queen.

There’s chat from the band too, adding to the sense of a real gig, like Lyngstad dedicating a song to her grandmother. But there’s no mistaking the pioneering creative ambition. The awe-inspiring, immersive lighting display incorporates everything from shooting-star bolts and alien pyramids to huge strings of coloured beads and a painterly rendering of the Northern Lights.

Wayne McGregor gives a slight upgrade to the 70s moves (Lyngstad is particularly sinuous and athletically high-kicking), but even just Fältskog swaying side to side, her white dress fluttering around her, is a visual marvel. Yes, the eyes are sometimes uncannily blank, but when Fältskog is projected onto the big screens for The Winner Takes It All, she rips our hearts out. Particularly endearing are the moments where the band members exchange smiles or wrap their arms around each other. 

It may be a facsimile, but it’s an irresistibly inviting one. The Abba Voyage running time is a crisp 90 minutes, the arena is unusually well marshalled (and has a surprisingly good food offering), and a wide-ranging audience of all ages is unified in giving a heartfelt thank you for the music. Surrender to this pop-tastic retrofuturism and you’ll have the time of your life.

Currently booking until Jan 5 2025

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/concerts/abba-voyage-abba-arena-review/