ABBB A to be Bjorn again
also split. One of the band’s most ous hits, Knowing Me, Knowing You portedly known within the group as r “divorce song” – is about the ples’ splits. And Bjorn has said he nd writing another divorce-inspired The Winner Takes It All, as “a kind of apy”.
Agnetha, who fell in love with Bjorn when she was just 19, reportedly did have therapy following their split. Saying she felt ngled” by the experience, she later ed psychiatrist Hakan Lonnback – reportedly tried to save their mare – as well as a detective hired after was subjected to kidnap threats. 1990, reclusive Agnetha married eon Tomas Sonnenfeld in secrecy. The marriage ended around the time the singer’s mother died after throwing herself from their sixth-floor flat. Her father died the following year.
Then, in 1997, Agnetha started a relationship with her stalker – Dutch forklift driver Gert van der Graaf.
She had complained to police about him but has admitted: “It was a very intense attention from him and after a while I felt I could not resist any more. I wanted to know him.”
They split in 2000 and she later took out a restraining order against him.
Other ABBA tracks, including When All is Said and Done, reference Frida and Benny’s split. Frida has said: “There was a lot of emotion behind it and it was not always easy to continue recording.”
Benny, 71, remarried and divorced again and has been teetotal since 2011 after years of boozing. Frida, 72, became a princess after marrying German Prince Heinrich Ruzzo Reuss von Plauen, who died of lymphoma in 1999. She is now dating Henry Smith, the 5th Viscount Hambleden.
The band’s final album was 1981’s The Visitors. A year later, they made their final recordings together, for the compilation album The Singles.
Bjorn said in 2015: “We took a break in ’82. It’s still a break and will remain so. You’ll never see us on stage again.”
Despite all four attending the 2008 Mamma Mia! film premiere, they declined to pose together. Agnetha failed to join her former bandmates for the opening of Stockholm’s ABBA museum in 2013.
In 2016, they appeared on stage together for the first time in 34 years, at a restaurant launch in Sweden.
Last week, Bjorn said: “On the whole, we toured very little. We had, like, 10 years together and maybe we toured, like, seven months. So to go on tour as a geriatric... I don’t know.”
Yesterday’s announcement sparked huge excitement at a possible reunion, but Ms Hanser cautioned: “No, you cannot expect them to join forces on stage again. They will not do that.”
Since disbanding, the group still rakes in a fortune. The film adaptation of
ON GOING BACK TO THE RECORDING STUDIO
Mamma Mia! has made €540million to date. A sequel – Here We Go Again! – will be released in July. Royalties and rights for the stage show and film net Bjorn and Benny more than €2million each a year.
Last year, Bjorn reiterated the group’s reluctance to perform, saying they don’t need the money.
“It would be such hassle, it would be enormous,” he explained. “It would be like robbing yourself of perhaps two or three years out of your life, when I could be paddling on my surf ski.”
And, with their “Abba-tars” alone expected to generate “hundreds of millions” of euro for the one-time supergroup, it looks like Bjorn won’t be in deep water any time soon.
It was like time stood still and we had only been on a short holiday ABBA