The Scottish Mail on Sunday - You
I do, I do, I do love Abba
It’s the Eurovision Song Contest next weekend – and 50 years since the band won in Brighton with ‘Waterloo’. JULIE BURCHILL, superfan and resident of the seaside city, takes a trip down memory lane
mazingly, I’ve never written about Abba; starting at this late stage, the phenomenon seems almost too great to comprehend – like trying to write about the sky. Who doesn’t adore Abba? If I met someone like that, I wouldn’t know how to react; it would be the same as meeting a weirdo who didn’t like Marilyn Monroe or sunshine.
But it wasn’t always so. My friend Holly says, ‘It’s hilarious that everyone seems to love Abba now, given how desperately uncool it was back in the day. I started an Abba fan club at school, which consisted of two members, including me. A gang of older boys cornered me in the corridor and threatened to give me Chinese burns unless I denounced the group.’
My own relationship with Abba has run from initial adoration (to be an adolescent glitter-kid, watching the girls in their sequins and satins and platform boots, was to see a mainstream representation of one’s own garish tastes) to rejection in my late teens (I was, by then, a scowling punk) to affection in adulthood (like them, I’ve been through the emotional mill but am still standing).
Walking past the Brighton Dome concert hall where it all began on 6 April 1974, I still get a shiver. Indeed, so monumental was the Abba Eurovision Song Contest win that even this notoriously hipster ’hood is going full fan mode with the exhibition Abba: One Week in Brighton at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery (until 4 August): ‘Walk, dance and sing through Abba’s visit to Brighton, through photographs, film, memories and memorabilia and discover the week that catapulted the band to fame.’
Britain did not cover itself in glory at the 1974 Eurovision competition. Mike Batt (creator
Aof The Wombles pop act) came on stage dressed as Orinoco carrying a sign that read ‘Vote for The Wombles’ – an odd urging given our contestant was Olivia Newton-john singing the insipid ditty ‘Long Live Love’. For some reason the UK did not give Sweden any points in 1974, but we’ve certainly made up for it since. Abba Voyage (a stage show in which avatars of the band perform in a purpose-built arena) is one of the biggest attractions in London, and fans of the Sex Pistols may know that the bassline to ‘Pretty Vacant’ was taken from Abba’s hit ‘SOS’.
Arguably the Abba women lost a good deal more than a bassline over their years of fame, running the gauntlet of sensational headlines dealing with everything from Agnetha’s fan/boyfriend/stalker to Anni-frid’s Nazi father. Not only did they have to go through very public sundering of their relationships with the Abba men (Agnetha and Björn got divorced in 1980; Anni-frid and Benny followed in 1981), but then they had to sing songs about the endings of their romances, too; is there a mainstream pop song more desolate than ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You?’ Even the jolly ‘Super Trouper’ (‘I was sick and tired of everything… all I do is eat and sleep and sing’) reflects a side of showbiz fame that no one anticipates when they join their first band.
Would Abba have sold as many records if their relationships had been strictly platonic? That the band consisted of two couples definitely added to the interest; there was something slightly dark-scandinavian-fairytale about them, with the girls so wholesome and pretty (‘If all the judges were men, this group would get a lot of votes!’ said the British commentator David Vine on the BBC at the time) and the men with their slightly troll-like appearance.
In fact it is these shimmering contradictions that give Abba their enduring appeal. The band are at once cheesy, complex and comforting. They’ve been everything from an embarrassment to an epiphany; like Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’, ‘Dancing Queen’ has become something more than a song, it’s a communal celebration, a way of acknowledging how far we’ve come since we were all (you, me, Agnetha, Anni-frid) young and sweet – only 17! Uncowed, unbowed and still wearing unsuitable shoes, ready to dance another day.
‘WHO DOESN’T ADORE THEM? IT’S THE SAME AS NOT LIKING SUNSHINE’