Tom Dunne's Music & Me: Knowing me, knowing the genius of Abba
Abba in 1976: Benny Andersson, Agnetha Faltskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstadand, Bjorn Ulvaeus.
Wexford 1974, a school trip to the Wexford Slobs. It is, without question, the highlight of my young life. My class are all agreed, there are Special Protection Areas and there are Special Protection areas, but this is the SPA other SPAs call 'The Boss'.
Not for the boys of James’s Street CBS anything as common as a gap year building houses in Haiti, or a family swap with a child from Peru. No, give us the Wexford Slobs. Start as you mean to continue. Not so much to manage expectations as to bury them under 2,500 acres of mud flats.
We did not see many birds, but on the bus home, as I wondered how I could go back to the humdrum after all this, I spotted a boy reading the Sunday World. It had a four-page feature on Abba winning the Eurovision song contest.
I eyed Agnetha and Anni-Frid and, as Jarvis Cocker would later say, “Something Changed.” Back home, despite the pitying looks of my sisters I became enthralled by Abba. I pestered my mum to buy me each new single. She suspected my motives but I assured her my heart was pure. “Just make sure it’s the picture sleeve, Ma,” I told her.
When punk hit, our new heroes were The Jam and The Boomtown Rats. In the schoolyard it was hard, having just raved about In the City or Mary Of The 4th Form, to then throw in a good word for The Winner Takes it All, but I knew where I stood.
However, in a record shop in the Dandelion Market in 1982, as I mulled over buying Costello’s Imperial Bedroom, Under Attack, their last single, came on. I still thought it was great, but glancing around the racks of records by Grandmaster Flash, The Clash and Robert Wyatt, their departure made sense. It wasn’t their world anymore.
I kept quiet faith with Abba over the years but it took a brave or a foolish man to argue their merits in music circles. I kept my feelings to myself until in 2012 I got to interview John Grant in the era after his Queen of Denmark album. I noticed he had covered Angel Eyes, so I enquired as to why.
I expected the usual ‘ironic cover’ type of answer so was more than pleasantly surprised to discover his simple, honest love of their music. A master songwriter himself he was fulsome in his praise of the craftmanship in their songs, the simple lyrical elegance, the blend of the voices and the incredible harmonies, the Beatles-level, godlike melodies.
I was essentially ‘out’ of the Abba closet. I could finally look people in the face and say “No, I really, genuinely rate them.” The vocal hooks in Knowing Me, Knowing You, the little ‘ah-ha-ha’ in Angel Eyes, the staccato hook of Take a Chance, the emotion of The Day Before You Came.
When Mama Mia was released my children were a bit young so it wasn’t until Mamma Mia 2 that I found myself in the cinema with them and the music of ABBA. I was crying within minutes. Thank god it was dark. The film is good, but the music, even the ‘lesser’ Abba songs, was joy made flesh.
I had no expectations around the new album, or maybe, more correctly, I had preposterous ones. That a band that started making music in the era of Clackers, Chopper Bikes and Brian Clough’s Leeds could return to the fold seemed more fantasy than reality. To put it mildly, so, so much has changed.
Except it would seem ABBA. The album is a triumph. Benny and Bjorn’s old melodic tricks are still all present and correct. But it is that gift they have, of putting simple but powerful words into the mouths of Agnetha and Anna-Frid, and their gift to bring them so wonderfully to life, that remains as mesmerising as ever.
This is 2021 Abba. There is frailty, there is even some strong language. But there is, as always, as there has been since day one, those voices, and that wonderful, heart felt humanity.
Listening to this, I was put in mind of John Prine’s ‘Hello, In There.’ It’s as if the couple in that song come to the window and sing once again, of Christmas’s past, their children and their lives today. They are still in there, and more engaged and alive than you could ever have expected.
I really hope this isn’t the last.
