Here we go again?
ABBA interviewer seeks another side of Swedish superstars.
By Victoria Segal.
A tale of woe: ABBA’s melancholy is exposed.
Melancholy Undercover: The Book Of ABBA ★★★★
Jan Gradvall
FABER. £20
AFTER ABBA GOLD, Mamma Mia! and the “ABBAtars”of ABBA Voyage, you might be forgiven for thinking that the band has always been universally adored. After all, even Sid Vicious was a fan, chasing after them through an airport in his vomit-stained leather jacket to declare his love (he did not get close). Yet as Swedish music journalist Jan Gradvall stresses in Melancholy Undercover, the quartet were by no means championed by all in their homeland. In 1975, the year after the band won The Eurovision Song Contest in Brighton with Waterloo, Swedish broadcaster TV2 screened an “alternative” Eurovision. As well as Kevin Coyne playing with future Police guitarist Andy Summers, there was an appearance from a character called Sillstryparen, or “the Herring Strangler”, who sang a song attacking Agnetha, Benny, Björn and Anni-Frid: “Here comes ABBA in plastic clothes/ As dead as a can of pickled herring.”