I was there at the beginning and I stayed there until the end, purchasing the not-widely-known The Visitors album in my early teens. Music had moved on, ABBA was no longer fahsionable. I put my albums away at the back of the cupboard. It was some time early in my 20s I pulled them out again to see me through a break up.
But then came the film Muriel’s wedding, and suddenly ABBA was fashionable again.
ABBA Gold was released in 1992 and has sold more than 30 million copies.
But with the band all now in their 70s, and their average fan age of at least 50, surely it was all over?
No.
In September 2021, when the world was just starting to peek out from under the heel of Covid restrictions, there came an announcement: ABBA have reformed, recorded a new album and are performing live again.
Sort of.
At the specially-built ABBA arena in East London, super high tech holograms of ABBA (ABBA-tars they have been described) would be performing with a live band. The ABBA-tars were created from the original four members, who spent three weeks in motion capture studios recording the songs that would make up the concert performance. A discussion amongst the band members ruled that they looked their best circa 1979, so the ABBA-tars were created to capture the band members as they looked then.
Now we are in December 2023, ABBA Voyage has been running for over a year and is still incredibly popular. All those fans who never got to see them live “back in the day” can now see them perform on stage (sort of) and travel back in time to their youth. That includes me.
The lights go down and the show begins. I didn’t know quite what to expect but I was excited. (The seven year old girl inside me was very excited.)
There’s a hum of music, cheers from the crowd, and I recognise the title track of “The Visitors”. An odd opening choice but I’m happy with it. Four familiar figures rise up onto the stage and Frida starts to sing. (Yes, there’s a buzz of excitement in my stomach.)
The four band members are on stage, playing and singing as if they were really here, but they’re not, but they sort of are.
The arena’s huge video screens project close up images and logic brain kicks in – has Agnetha had her looks improved? Did Frida really have such pencil-thin eyebrows? They guys, Benny and Bjorn, looked more like themselves, although Benny looked most like himself (maybe the beard helps).
But there’s no time to think too much, because The Visitors jumps straight into Hole In Your Soul, and the band throw off the heavily jewelled capes they wore for the opening number to reveal spangly jumpsuits. Except they don’t, because none of this is real. I’m confused.
By the third number, SOS, the line between this being a concert and being “an experience” blurs further as no one is using microphones and the video screens recreate the images from the video.
Knowing me, Knowing you also mimics the video with the couples hugging each other and walking away from each other, like they did in the video.
With Chiquitita, we are back to a band performing again. Fernando is performed with a solar eclipse behind the band. Frida* introduces the song by talking about her grandmother, her upbringing, and dedicating the song for all the women who lost everything and had to rebuild. (Not quite what I interpreted from this song but who I am to question?)
(*Anni-Fryd Lyngstad, to give her her full name or Princess Reuss and Countess of Plauen, to giver her her courtesy titles.)
Mamma Mia was done in performance style, but not in the face-forward/face-away style I remember from the video.
Bjorn introduces Does Your Mother Know, saying it’s a song he wrote about a girl who hit on him in a club. But it’s OK, he wasn’t married then. Or was he? It was a long time ago and probably doesn’t matter now… He also uses this song to introduce the live band, and leaves them to perform the song, the three backing singers taking the lead vocals and getting to step out and use the whole stage.
The band’s absence continues with Eagle, with a full screen animation of a young person (I’ll call her a girl but I guess she was meant to be non gender specific) on some kind of quest through an acid trip landscape. Annoyingly (for me), despite the song’s references to flying, at no point did this character fly.
The band come back and switch into what I think of as the Tron disco section. Tron for the costumes, and disco because… well… how else would you describe Lay All Your Love on Me, Summer Night City (with Saturn backdrop) and Gimme Gimme Gimme (A man after midnight) with the band disappearing for Voulez Vous and the animated character back to continue her/his quest.
The band come back on stage for Frida to sing When All is Said and Done, another relatively obscure song from The Visitors. It occurs to me that by the time The Visitors was released, the band were definitely not touring, and probably not doing many promos either, as public interest in the band had waned at this point, so they had performed these songs less and hence taken the chance to perform these songs live, giving them a chance to be heard and appreciated that they didn’t have previously.
Agnetha steps up to introduce the first of two new songs. “I’m standing in front of you, asking you to please Don’t Shut Me Down.” I Still Have Faith in You follows, a song that could have been written for and by all the happy people in this arena.
The band talk about where it all began, their Eurovision win in 1974. “I remember the UK judge gave us zero points,” remembers Bjorn. “I remember Bjorn had to stand the whole night because his outfit was too tight for him to sit down,” recalls Agnetha. We are treated to a montage of the band singing Waterloo through the ages. And what I notice most is that while Agnetha found a haircut she liked and stuck with it for a good ten years, Frida’s hair has gone through some remarkable changes in colour, length and shape over the years.
We know we are near the end now because here is Thank You For the Music, followed as it has to be by Dancing Queen. The atmosphere in the arena goes from happy to ecstatic. Everyone indeed is in the mood for a dance.
The band leave the stage, returning for a final song, The Winner Takes it All. They stand on the platform and end as they began, sinking down into the stage.
But it’s not quite over yet, because here come ABBA, real modern (elderly) ABBA, walking onto the stage to take a bow.
But of course these are not the real ABBA, they are holograms as well. But it was a nice touch to end with that, as if to say to us, we’ve all enjoyed our trip back in time, now it’s time to return to the present day.
I’ve given you the details, now for the helicopter view, the overall impression, the juicy summary.
And that is…
Sitting was a mistake.
Sitting for this show meant I was experiencing the show in my head and not my body and it was in my body I wanted to feel it. I was in the mood for a dance, but I wasn’t dancing. In talking about the Big Suit he wore for Stop Making Sense, David Byrne said something about it was because the body needs to be bigger, because the body is where you feel music. I should have been down there in the dance floor section.
Next time I go, that’s where I will be, on the dance floor, somewhere I can feel the beat from the tambourine.
Tales from Tobhamhor 