By Shane Rodgers
For anyone growing up in Australia in the 1970s and 1980s, Swedish musical group ABBA was an enduring part of the pop culture fabric.
Looking back, the link between a land down under and a group from far-off Sweden, a country better known at the time for folk music, was a curious cultural aberration.
In many respects, it was an accident of history. Molly Meldrum’s Countdown program on ABC television every Sunday night had become the spiritual meeting place for Aussie teenagers hungry to be part of the emerging music conversation.
As a visual medium, the music was not enough. There needed to be “clips”. And ABBA had them.
Fresh from international attention winning the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest, ABBA songs became a prominent feature of Countdown, with numerous tracks in the Top Ten and growing fan support across generations.
Hits like Fernando (which topped the Australia charts for 14 weeks), Dancing Queen, Mama Mia, I Do I Do I Do and The Winner Takes It All seemingly blasted from every TV, radio and record player from inner city apartments to remote towns.
In retrospect ABBAmania was quite extraordinary, with parallels to the Beatlemania that had gripped Australia a decade earlier.
When ABBA arrived here for a tour in 1977, an estimated 2000 people greeted them at the airport.
Concerts were all sold out and the then Queensland Deputy Premier Bill Knox officially (and unsuccessfully) wrote to the group urging them to include a Queensland concert in their schedule (parallels to now when big acts are again bypassing Brisbane).
Official ABBA histories all acknowledge the role of Australia in helping to launch the global ABBA phenomena, which resulted in more than 150 million record sales in the 1970s and various large-scale revivals in the years since.
It is against this background that I recently visited the ABBA Museum in Stockholm Sweden. The museum’s official book describes the ABBA reception in Australia in the 1970s as “legendary”.
When they first visited on a promotion tour in 1976 singers Agnetha Faltskog and Frida Lyngstad were “moved to tears” when they saw the screaming fans at the airport.
“When ABBA returned for a concert tour a year later there was nothing but complete hysteria,” the book says.
“In Melbourne, fans who wanted to welcome them lined the entire road from the airport to the central parts of the city.”
As someone who was a passing fan of ABBA music as a kid in the 1970s, I found the ABBA – The Museum experience quite moving and challenging.
The facility is different to anything I have seen around the world. It dutifully recreates the 1970s vibe and iconic ABBA spaces like the studio on the island of Viggso where Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson wrote most of the big hits and the Polar Music studios where the “pop perfection” sound was layered and refined.
The park across the road has a familiarity because so many famous ABBA photographs (including for album covers) were taken there.
It is apparently a common reaction for people to leave the museum with a nostalgia-induced lump in their throats. A visit engulfs you with a stark sense of the passing of time and a profound realisation of how quickly the years from childhood to middle age pass.
There was also something about ABBA that reflected the simple joy of music and a decade where everything seemed more laid back and uncomplicated. It can be unhelpful to dwell too much in the past, but reminders of gentler times (pre technology overload) can also be therapeutic.
As an Aussie, there is also something quite powerful about visiting an attraction so far away and seeing the Australian connections so tangibly acknowledged and celebrated.
The museum, opened in 2013, has attracted more than two million visitors.
In his forward to the official museum book, Bjorn says that he wanted the facility to reflect that ABBA took their music, but not necessarily themselves, seriously.
“The music we made came from deep within, and I hope that is what we will be remember for,” he writes.
“That it has reached and is reaching so many millions worldwide remains a mystery, and I’m perfectly fine with that.”
Sigh. Excuse me while I dig out some dusty vinyl.
Shane Rodgers visited ABBA – The Museum as a tourist.
