On ABBA.
35 years after their last record, ABBA announced a Live Tour in 2019, starring... their holograms.
Time to review their past glories?
"Democratic freedom needs solidarity among people. To live and survive, a society must have widespread solidarity, the ability to recognize the condition of other people, a sense of joint responsibility and participation. Otherwise, sooner or later, society will fall apart into many parts of selfish and petty interests. There is never an "us" and "them." There is only "all of us.""
Olof Palme at Kenyon College, 1970
"I don't get that. Do we look like transvestites or something?"
Benny Andersson, on "Gay-ABBA" fashion
Four slightly tacky Swedes in the Elysian Fields of pop. Of pop? Let me re-phrase it! On top of the Swedish industry, since it occurred that they exported more than Volvo. Or, actually: ABBA stars of global entertainment, as proved by their sheer numbers: 400 million records sold. A number that pushes ABBA way up the ladder, close to the 600 million of the Beatles and besting Michael Jackson's 350 million mark.
ABBA really lasted only a dozen years (from the first concert of the four together, in March 1970) until '83, when they decided to go on "pause." But during their "on pause" mode they carried on publishing the "ABBA Gold" LP ('92) and a full feature film "Mamma Mia." Their first Greatest Hits LP with its "cheerful white pop" in the spring of '18 is still among the best-selling albums: #4 in Sri Lanka, #12 in Cyprus, #16 in Hungary, #17 in Bulgaria, #19 in Peru & Kenya and #20 in Lebanon. To date the "Mamma Mia!" movie has grossed - since its launch in 2008 - over $760M in theaters and DVD. Main markets? UK, Germany, South Korea, Japan and Sweden).
And let's not talk about the theater show of the same name: on Broadway, NY, it lasted 14 years; and at the Novello Theater in London it continues undaunted every night (despite the "premiere" in '99.) And elsewhere it was a huge success too: 54 million spectators; 49 productions; over 400 cities; translations into 15 languages; and a sweet turnover of over two billion dollars!
Why?
ABBA starts as a story of precocious minors with a tenacious desire for success. It is an acronym for a group with a predominant patriarchal element. In fact, it is the two (male) Bs who take care of the serious stuff, like music, lyrics and musical direction: Benny (Andersson, born in '46), keyboard player and (main) composer; and Björn (Ulvaeus, born in '45), guitarist and (main) author.
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I remember Olof (also) because he took part in the events known in Sweden as "Norrmalmstorgsdramat", the "drama" of the robbery of the Kreditbanken branch in Norrmalstorg, in the center of Stockholm, in which - between August 23 and 28, 1973 - Janne Ollson took three employees hostage, demanding 3 million kroner from the police and the release of a convict. When he arrived, the (now) ex-convict finds a fourth hostage in his hiding, and helps to relax the situation.
At the end, the hostages took side more with the robber and the ex-convict (they could have escaped through the toilet window if the wished so) than for the entire "power apparatus" that was besieging them outside the bank. Welcome to the birth of the "Stockholm syndrome"!
When Olof Palme spoke to one of the girls/hostages, he didn't expect to be begged to let Ollson leave with the money, and allegedly replied to the young lady: "So you prefer to risk dying instead of him?" The exact conversation is unknown, because it is classified, but she, annoyed, allegedly replied something like "Then come her and get in my shoes."
Take the story down to wiki-level and it seems as if it all boiled down (I'm quoting from Wikipedia in Italian) to "an automatic emotional reaction, developed at an unconscious level, to the trauma created by being a 'victim'". That is, by some psychological spell, the prisoner masochistically offers himself to the jailer and empathizes. In reality this alleged 'syndrome' is not the daily reality in prisons and no serious psychologist has ever taken the time or thought to catalogue it.
In reality, as Ollson recalls today, in those few days all of them, prisoners and jailers, shared without planning the path towards the epilogue: "we sat there, through the shit, day after day." So much so that of the three female hostages, Birgitta Rudstrand, a year later asked her husband, while they were going on vacation, to accompany her to the prison, to say goodbye to Ollson.
Another hostage, Kristin Enmark, became friend of the convict that Ollson had released from prison. While Elisabeth Oldgren still feels guilty today because she did not hate her kidnapper and did not conform to what society told her to do. For Oldgren, Janne was a person who treated them well, fired just one shot on the celing (screaming: "Let the party begin!") and ended up in prison.
Ultimately Janne married an admirer of his. And - having paid his debt to society - started running a supermarket in Bangkok.
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This article was published on BlowUp magazine Jul/Aug'18 issue. Here an excerpt, clearly in Italian.