The Sunday Mail (Australia), June 10, 2001

AB FAB

It made Beatlemania look tame and remains a poignant memory for all who witnessed it. But Abba's visit to Australia in 1977 wasn't all smooth sailing, as this extract from a new book on the band shows.

WHEN the plane carrying Abba and their entourage touched down at Sydney's Kingsford Smith Airport on Sunday, February 27, 1977, it was the start of two of the most intense weeks in the group's history. The day after the arrival, Sydney's Daily Mirror trumpeted They're Here! above a photo of the four Swedes.

No further explanation was required. All Australia knew exactly who They were. The headline proved beyond any doubt just how completely Abba had been adopted by the nation.

Endless reminders of the group's now almost incomprehensible popularity were visible on every street corner in every major city.

"There was Abba everywhere," says Michael Tretow, who accompanied the tour to record the group's concerts. "There were pictures of them on every corner, wherever you went. I got really tired of their photo faces. The overload was so great it just went into the red."

The tour would leave its mark on both the nation and the group. Agnetha Faltskog, later recalled it as the "most incredible of all the things I experienced with Abba".

The group's arrival in Australia was almost on a par with a state visit. The Australian ambassador in Stockholm, Lance Barnard, personally bade them farewell. Queen Elizabeth, visiting at the same time, found herself playing second fiddle to the group as far as media coverage was concerned.

Controversially, Queensland and Tasmania were not included in the tour. Nor did Abba plan any Canberra concerts, which prompted then-prime minister Malcolm Fraser to try to convince the group to at least pay a short visit.

Upon being turned down, in a last, desperate measure Fraser offered a free trip on a private jet, provoking a storm of protest. The offer was especially galling considering Fraser had recently lectured Australians on the virtues of financial prudence.

The demand for Abba's presence was so high that it seemed the group could have toured forever. The European leg of the tour had been huge, but the Australian trek surpassed all. Indeed, the 106-strong entourage, which included a film crew making a movie of the event, made it the biggest tour ever attempted in Australia.

The tourists had to pull off 11 concerts in two weeks, deal with the media and manic fans, and make themselves available for the shooting of the movie. The clearer heads among them must have realised it would require a herculean effort.

When the group finally arrived in Sydney, Abba-mania was already on the boil. Despite radio announcements that for security reasons the group would not be able to greet fans at the airport, 1500 devotees turned up, hoping for a glimpse of their idols.

The pandemonium began as soon as Abba stepped on Australian soil. One 12-year-old fan was trampled outside the airport's immigration reception room where, as luck would have it, Abba were due for a short photo session.

Disappointment turned to euphoria for the young fan and the shock of being trampled was soon forgotten. "I still think it was worth it, especially now that I have seen Abba in person," the girl beamed.

There seemed no limit to how far some would go to get close to the group. A mother seeking an autograph put a baby down on the highway so that the caravan of cars would stop, recalls a member of the Abba entourage, Thomas Johansson.

The day after Abba's arrival, the group held a press conference attended by 250 invited media representatives, additional gate-crashing journalists and curious fans who had managed to evade security.

Perhaps because of the tense atmosphere, the conference was stilted and the group faced a series of dull, often banal questions. As usual, Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson offered more lengthy responses while Agnetha and Anni-Frid (Frida) Lyngstad did the best they could with what they were given.

When Agnetha was asked if it was true that she had the sexiest bottom in pop music, she replied: "How can I answer that? I don't know, I haven't seen it."

The anticipation reached a climax on Thursday, March 3 – Abba's first live performance on Australian soil. But the gods were against them and the first concert at the Sydney Showground, in front of more than 20,000 people, was engulfed in heavy rain which reduced the grounds to a quagmire.

The insistent rain also left Abba no opportunity to rehearse. "We hardly had time for a sound check, so we were just praying to God that everything would work," said Benny.

The seats weren't numbered and fans had queued for 24 hours. Despite the constant rain, the atmosphere was electric. The gates opened at 4.30pm and there was a rush for the best seats, followed by another soggy four-hour wait.

Abba were astonished that a crowd could wait so patiently in the conditions.

"Can you believe that?" an agitated Stig Anderson (Abba's manager) asked a reporter. "We never saw that in our lives! How can people love them that madly?"

Backstage, Anderson had other weighty matters on his mind. The stage was drenched, the floor exceptionally slippery, and there was a danger of electrocution. But the itinerary was too cramped to allow rescheduling – the show had to go on.

When Abba rushed on to the stage shortly after the scheduled start time of 8.30pm, the 20,000-strong audience went wild. "We have probably never received such a rapturous reception anywhere," Agnetha recalled. It seemed the ovation would never end.

The only major mishap occurred during Waterloo when Frida slipped and fell, bruising her hip and injuring two fingers. She was in pain but all she could do was pick herself up, smile and continue singing. "We were terrified," said Bjorn afterwards. "We could have been electrocuted."

The rain poured into the sound system, playing havoc with amplification equipment and blowing out speakers. Reportedly, the sound was dreadful during the first hour. A few thousand rain-soaked fans left before the show ended, and several complaints were lodged with Consumer Affairs.

Several journalists and show promoter Paul Dainty pointed out the real problem was that Sydney did not have an indoor venue that could hold an audience on that scale. The concerts had already been split from the originally planned single performance for 40,000 into two 20,000-people shows.

Reviewers also had a few issues with the concert, jumping on Agnetha's tendency to sing off-key, a problem that would dog her throughout Abba's live career. One headline after the first show read "Agnetha's Bottom Tops Dull Show" referring to Agnetha's habit of repeatedly turning her back to the audience, displaying her famous rear.

However, no one could fault the musical tightness of Abba's performance. There had been much speculation about the group being manufactured: They were not a real rock group and therefore wouldn't be able to cut it live. But faced with the actual show, even the most sceptical reviewers had to acknowledge the group's talent.

Their live sound was vividly energetic with many extra, half-improvised piano riffs from Benny and on-the-spot vocal ad-libs courtesy of Frida.

The weather improved considerably for the following night's concert but that created another problem: Abba's white costumes and white-on-white stage, illuminated by 120,000 watts of overhead lighting, attracted thousands of flying bugs. "It was pretty nasty," recalls Agnetha. "We were doing SOS when suddenly I saw this swarm coming towards us – black, huge things. They hit our faces and legs and were all over us."

One of the bugs crawled into Agnetha's decolletage."I thought, 'I have to get rid of this creature'. I actually panicked a little. I turned my back to the audience, put my hand inside, got it out, and finished the song. "After SOS there was a break to allow the bugs to be swept off the stage."

On Saturday, March 5, Abba boarded their chartered Boeing 727 and went to Melbourne. The airport reception was somewhat quieter – only about 100 fans this time but it was the calm before the storm.

At 12.30pm Abba were to attend a Lord Mayor's reception in the Melbourne Town Hall. The event had been announced well in advance, which explained the absence of fans at the airport. When Abba arrived in their Rolls-Royces, an estimated 6000 people stood cheering and screaming.

"First, when you drive out from the airport and you see the street actually lined up all the way from the airport to the city, you don't even believe your eyes," recalled Frida. "And then you understand, this is actually a reception for us, nobody else. It's not the president coming."

The Abba entourage stepped out of their cars and entered the building, excited radio reporters covering their every move live to air.

The scenes outside the town hall provided proof that Abba's popularity had exploded beyond ordinary fame. In Australia, if not quite elsewhere in the world, it was akin to the Beatles' 1964 visit when they, too, had appeared on the balcony of the same town hall to greet streets full of frenzied fans.

That evening, 14,500 people watched Abba at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl while a further 16,000 tried to listen outside the fenced-off concert area. Malcolm Fraser attended the concert with his wife, two daughters and one of his sons. The political kudos of being photographed with such a popular act was too good to miss.

After a week the insanity began to get to the group. They had two bodyguards on call, but there was only so much they could do.

There was fever, there was hysteria, there were sweaty, obsessed crowds, Agnetha told author Brita Ahman in the authorised biography As I Am: Abba Before and Beyond. "Sometimes it was awful. I felt as if they would get hold of me and I'd never get away again. It was as if I was going to be crushed. On occasions they would grab hold of us in the most unpleasant ways, and there were times when we burst into tears once we were inside the cars."

As a desperate measure to escape the choice between incessant crowds and confinement in their hotel suites, the group went on boat trips. "Because nobody's at sea, right?" Benny said. But he was wrong: TV news teams not only sniffed out their whereabouts in the harbour, but followed them to sea.

In the end the four Swedes were forced to remain cramped in hotel rooms most of the time, with all the added stress to relationships this entailed.

Some outlet from the pressure occurred at the parties thrown throughout the trip, everything from barbecues to more private, hotel-based get-togethers. Some of the Australian crew were told that all was not well between Agnetha and Bjorn, and that they stayed apart more than would be expected.

The two-week drama of the Australian tour seemed to have an especially fundamental impact on Agnetha. "I don't think anyone could stay the same after such an encounter. It affects your personality. Something changes within you and it can be the source of phobias," she said.

Bjorn and Benny were displeased at being uprooted from their song-writing cottage and beloved recording studio. Hysterical adulation and maniacal fans had been fun in the '60s but they had grown older and seldom looked back on that part of their career with affection.

It was as if their entire outlook on live performances had changed. In Australia Bjorn complained that it was an asocial life on tour. "You just eat, sleep and go on stage, and nothing more. It kills creativity in a way that I don't like."

Only Frida, who hadn't been even close to true stardom before Abba's breakthrough, thrived on their enormous success and developed a genuine love affair with the audience. Although she later singled out the 1977 Australian tour as her most treasured memory of the Abba years, even she was a little overwhelmed, recalling the surrounding hysteria as nasty.

Edited extract from Bright Lights, Dark Shadows: The Real Story of Abba by Carl Magnus Palm (Omnibus Press). Released worldwide in September.