Published January 16, 2012
Update January 27, 2012:
After a little research I've found out that the lyricist for 'I Lost My Heart On The 5.42' was one Bill Owen. I'm assuming that this is him. According to his Wikipedia entry, he was most famous for his role in the long-running television series Last Of The Summer Wine, but he also dabbled in song writing, even co-authoring an entire musical. He also wrote the UK Top 30 hit 'Marianne' for Cliff Richard. Who knew that his cv included a contribution to an Andersson/Ulvaeus composition?
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In those dark post-teen-idol-years when Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson busied themselves with corny cabaret shows and dodgy soft-porn soundtracks, they also wrote a number of songs that became notable hits for other Swedish artists. Among them was the 1971 recording 'Välkommen till världen' ("Welcome To The World") by singer Lill-Babs (featuring all four future ABBA members on backing vocals). It reached number 2 on the vote-based radio chart Svensktoppen, and number 12 on the sales chart.
ABBA manager Stig Anderson was a music publisher at heart and, with his network of international contacts, he never wasted an opportunity to promote the songs of Andersson & Ulvaeus to whomever was interested. I don't know exactly how the following happened but in 1973 a recording of 'Välkommen till världen' was made by British skiffle pioneer Lonnie Donegan. The story was reported in a Swedish newspaper in December 1973, where the reader also learned that Donegan's version was entitled 'I Lost My Heart On The 5.42'. Ever since I read the original newspaper report, when I was researching ABBA - The Complete Recording Sessions back in 1993, I've wondered how his version sounded: in the days before ABBA's international fame it was one of the few Andersson/Ulvaeus compositions to be recorded by anything even resembling an international top act (admittedly, by this time Donegan's glory days were well behind him).
In the late Nineties I was in touch with a British Donegan expert who shared the following information regarding 'I Lost My Heart On The 5.42': "Donegan recorded the song for his own music publishing company Tyler Music but it was only issued on his own TYLER RECORDS LP, catalogue number LDNH 123, for sale at his own concerts. The performance date for the song on the LP is 1975 but the sleeve gives no details about any of the recordings or personnel. It is probable that the LP was pressed in 1975 but the song may well have been recorded in 1973 per the newspaper article." Unfortunately, he was unable to help me with a recording of the track, and since the album was so obscure I've only made half-hearted attempts to locate it myself.
A few days ago I was going through some old files when I came across the song title again. I decided to google it to see if anything came up, and voilà! Some enterprising individual had actually posted it on Youtube (it's been available on CD and as a download since 2008; try the links to the right). It was really interesting to finally get to hear it. The original song, about welcoming a new-born baby into the world, has been transformed into some kind of saucy knees-up music-hall number. I guess it shows that you can make whatever you want out of a catchy tune. Anyway, I'm glad I finally got to hear it - it only took 19 years after I first learned about its existence!
Published January 13, 2012
I've just watched the U2 documentary From The Sky Down, ostensibly telling the story of the creation of their 1991 album Achtung Baby. According to U2 lore, this album was when they broke free from their full-of-themselves arena-rock existence and reinvented themselves as ironic and whatever blah blah blah. And certainly, Achtung Baby does contain some excellent tracks and was a breath of fresh air upon its release (it's the only U2 album I own). But this documentary... I almost laughed out loud. Although we get some insight into the band's creative process, and that's always interesting, I can't see that the film does anything than build on the mythology of the band - and I'm talking about clichéd old arena rock band mythology. The only thing missing was the hand of God reaching down from the sky and touching the shoulders of the four U2 members to guide them on the path leading to their preordained destiny.
I guess there's just something so humour-less and so unambiguous about U2, that if you're a documentary-maker and this band is your subject, this is where you end up. For all the archive shots of the band dressing up in drag - wow, they're so, like, alternative - there were tons more of The Edge in that horrible bandana-and-long-hair look, and Bono in mullets, mullets and more mullets. Even his re-invented 1991-1992 hair-style looked like mullet-lite to me. The presumably unintended message of the documentary seems to be that the reinvention was mainly cosmetic.
Another thought: In Sweden, this was broadcast by our public service company, SVT. The production bears a copyright of Mercury Records, U2's record company. Now, I'm wondering: Where are all those TV reviewers who threw a hissy-fit when Agnetha Fältskog's self-produced and -financed 2004 documentary was aired on SVT, because they felt it was "promotion"? Come to think of it, where have they been when SVT has broadcast other programmes produced and financed by the record companies and/or artists involved? Oh, I forgot. Agnetha's documentary was about a sad old member of that ultra-commercial pop group ABBA ("pop", not "rock"), a member so crassly commercial and self-promoting that she had done everything in her power to stay out of the limelight for 17 years, so of course that had to be pounced upon.
One more thought: The U2 documentary used an interesting device to discuss the dangers of a band falling apart, by showing several examples of other famous bands losing one or more members. It would have been an excellent segment if there hadn't been something seriously lacking in the research department. Guys, it wasn't Carl Wilson who left The Beach Boys - it was his brother Brian, the original driving-force behind the band.
Published January 10, 2012
When you're spending most of your time working on various ABBA projects, as I do, after a long day's hard work you tend not to think, "gee, let's relax by listening to ABBA or watching an ABBA DVD or reading an ABBA book or magazine." As a result, I often end up with a backlog of ABBA-related releases to catch up with.
Recently I devoted some time to catching up with my ABBA reading, among them the book ABBA by Micke, by long-time fan Micke Bayart. The core of the book is the many articles Micke wrote for the German fanzine ABBA Fan-Blatt between 1984 and 1988. These mostly consisted of meetings with various ABBA members at airports, television studios and the Polar Music offices. The book gives a good view of the diligence with which some fans have tracked down and then met their idols - there is no shortage of photos of Björn and Benny carrying shoulder bags at airports, outside hotels and at other venues.
Most interesting for me are the interviews with the ABBA members, originally printed in German in the fan magazine. These have now been transcribed in English in the book, and you do get some fascinating fact nuggets here and there. These were something of "wilderness" years for Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Frida, where they certainly achieved media attention for their various projects, but the coverage was less intense. And with many fan clubs closing down shortly after the group stopped working together, not to mention the official ABBA magazine, only loyal fans such as Micke bothered to keep track of the four Swedes. For instance, this book was the first time I read a public comment from Benny on the controversial ABBA Live album. Not of earth-shattering importance, perhaps, but truly interesting for those of us interested in "ABBA details".
I'm hoping the people behind other ABBA fanzines will follow in Micke's footsteps and compile their material in books. I'm sure there are many other long-lost stories out there that deserve to be made available to a larger audience. And in English, please!
Published December 01, 2011
November 2011 saw the 10th Anniversary of a fantastic website that currently hosts almost 20,000 articles and reviews from the rich history of rock journalism. Rock’s Backpages was launched a decade ago by veteran music journalist and author, Barney Hoskyns, who is also the author of two of my favourite books on the Los Angeles music scene, Waiting For The Sun and Hotel California.
Today, Rock’s Backpages is a thriving, constantly growing archive, covering every aspect of the history of rock and pop. “Any band or genre/movement that proves to have legs or impact/influence is grist to RBP’s mill,” Hoskyns says. “We don’t jump on every Next Big Thing or new trend but wait to see whether it has some staying power. We believe it’s as important to include pieces on the X-Factor as it is to feature stuff on John Cage.”
Rock’s Backpages was born in 2000, when Hoskyns was asked to recommend someone who could write the liner notes for a CD by British musician Roy Harper. This then led to another idea. “[I thought] it would be great to aggregate online at least 10 great Harper pieces – from all walks of the music press – that would span his career. A little over a decade later, that vision has come true. Maybe in another decade we’ll have twenty Roy Harper pieces.” It certainly doesn’t sound like an impossible achievement – with 10 pieces available for a non-household name such as Harper, you can just imagine the multitude of stories relating to big names such as The Beatles, Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones, Madonna, Michael Jackson, and so on. Many who read this particular blog will be interested to learn that there are, at the time of writing, 23 articles and reviews about ABBA, including the previously unpublished full transcript of the Björn Ulvaeus interview that formed the basis of Jim Irvin’s insightful ABBA story, published in Mojo in 1999.
Rock’s Backpages does not simply represent the writings of a select few rock journalists, but does include pieces by almost every well-known and lesser-known British and American writer you can think of. According to Barney Hoskyns, the archive boasts contributions from “over 500 writers from all eras and on all genres of popular music”, with 30 or 40 new pieces being added every week. The archive also features over 300 audio interviews with icons from Hendrix to Cobain. “Almost all the writers have embraced RBP from the get-go,” says Hoskyns. “One or two American curmudgeons demurred. Now it’s a club that most rock writers want to join. We never like to turn anyone away but it’s difficult to manage the sheer amount of content flooding in.”
With so many articles and reviews covering so many different aspects now collected in one database, Hoskyns is in a perfect place to make an informed observation about how rock journalism has evolved over the years. “Broadly speaking,” he says, “rock writing has turned from freeform countercultural commentary – passionate and often iconoclastic – to service-industry compliance: blandly deferential profiles and soundbite consumer-guide reviewing. With most outbreaks of rebellion now instantly commodified by the marketplace, rock and roll has been subsumed into the general entertainment culture and lost its tribal, lightning-rod shock value.”
The mere existence of an “archive” of rock writing does indeed seem to suggest that rock and pop as a subversive force, capable of truly surprising its audience and having the function as a life-or-death cultural identifier for young people, is now a thing of the past. Barney Hoskyns would agree. “Without wishing to be an Old Fart for the sake of it, I do think rock culture has reached the end of its first major cycle – and that it will never impact on society in the way it did with Elvis or Dylan or Hendrix or the Pistols or hip hop or even Cobain (arguably the last rock star who really ‘meant it, man’). People will say, ‘It’s still new and radical to a 14-year-old’ but I think even 14-year-olds are aware of the weight of history (of Elvis and Dylan and the Beatles and the Clash) bearing down on contemporary pop. Rock and roll will survive and mutate but I’m not sure it can ever ‘change the world’ again.”
Whether this prognosis proves to be true or not, the fact remains that rock and roll turned 60 this very year (if you’re willing to accept the 1951 recording ‘Rocket 88’ by Jackie Brenston as the first rock record, as many historians do), and a lot of great writing has been done on the subject over the decades. Much of that writing is now available at Rock’s Backpages and I urge you to become a subscriber. You will be lost for hours reading story upon interesting story reflecting the rich history of modern pop and rock music. As far as I’m concerned, that could never be a bad thing.
Published November 23, 2011
Broadway Cares, an organization founded to "mobilize the unique abilities within the entertainment industry to mitigate the suffering of individuals affected by HIV/AIDS", have just released their 13th annual collection of Christmas recordings as performed by the casts of various Broadway shows, entitled Carols For A Cure - Volume 13. Naturally, the cast of Mamma Mia! has chipped in, this year with a performance of 'Hark! The Herald Angels Sing'.
What's of particular interest to the ABBA fan, however, is that the Mamma Mia! cast performance is preceded by ABBA's brief rendition of the Swedish Christmas song 'Nu är det jul igen', as originally broadcast on the West German radio show Mal Sondock's Hitparade in 1981.
This marks the first legal CD release of this ABBA recording, so why not buy a copy of the CD and satisfy your ABBA-cravings while at the same time supporting a good cause. You know you want to!