| ABBA
- The Complete Recording Sessions: the creation of a book
Part
8 (of 12): INTERVIEWING FRIDA AND AGNETHA
Now
that I had gained the trust of Björn and Benny, the next step was to secure
interviews with Frida and Agnetha. At the time, both were largely inactive as
artists, so their motivation for doing interviews, whatever the media, was fairly
low. Indeed, Agnetha hadn't given any interviews whatsoever since her last few
promotional efforts for her I Stand Alone album in early 1988. The number of interviews
Frida had given since her last album - 1984's Shine - were easy to count, and
most of them had been on the subject of environmental issues rather than music.
Fortunately,
Frida said yes to an interview, and we met at the restaurant at Cirkus in Stockholm
on August 13, 1993. We talked for about an hour, and needless to say this was
hardly sufficent time for me to get through all the questions I needed to ask.
When I suggested that perhaps I could fax her the remainder of my questions, Frida
was gracious enough to agree to this. This correspondence took place a week or
two later.
With Agnetha the situation was a little more complicated. I
knew that she didn't enjoy interview situations very much, and in fact didn't
really give interviews at all at the time. So I gave her the opportunity to choose
between a face-to-face interview, a phone conversation or answering questions
in writing. Unfortunately, she chose the latter option. Needless to say it's easier
to have a conversation with someone so that you can establish some kind of personal
relationship and also be able to ask them follow-up questions.
However,
given that she didn't really want to answer any questions from any journalists
or writers at all at the time - and this apparently was when her interest in music
was at an all-time low - I graciously accepted what she wanted to give me. Notably,
it took a few months before I received her answers; I got the impression that
the written interview wasn't exactly at the top of her agenda. Nor were her replies
very extensive. But at least she did make a contribution when she could just as
easily have chosen to turn me down flat, and for this I was grateful.
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Agnetha
and Frida at the Polar Music Studios in 1979.
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