WE WANT ABBA! WE WANT ABBA! WE WANT ABBA!Where is Abba in Stockholm? Much to our absolute amazement and disgust, there is no clear, obvious outward sign that Abba ever existed in Stockholm. There are no tours, no special museums, no cheezey Hollywood style tours of where they lived, worked or played, no anything! Instead, we had to extract details from online websites from Australia and Holland (No 1 and 2 fan countries). Why is Sweden ashamed of their biggest economic export ever? The top photo is the only public display of Abba in the city and it is pathetic! It is a small room inside the Swedish Music Musuem but it does display one of Benny´s original pianos (which we touched and licked!!!). The second photo is our major discovery! It is the archipelago island of Viggso, 90min boat ride from Stockholm, where Benny and Bjorn wrote the majority of all Abba songs in a little cabin (we have video footage of the cabin)! It is also the place where Bjorn still lives! John was ready to swim to the island when the 12deg water stood between him and a heart attack! The third photo shows the "Abbey Road" of Abba - it is the original Polar Music recording studio where Abba recorded most of their songs (it is now a legal office). The fourth photo is the former house of Stig Anderson, Abba´s manager and inventor of the word "ABBA". The fifth photo shows Stig´s grave, roughly 2km from his house and both are on the island of Djurgarden (he died in 1997, aged 66 of smoking and drinking). The last photo shows us having coffee at Benny Anderssen´s! It is the cafe and hotel that Benny owns and opened in 2003. According to our investigations, Bjorn and Benny still live in Stockholm, Agnetha married her stalker and lives on a lake in southern Sweden and Frida in Switzerland. Why does Sweden and indeed Stockholm not put on a more "public" display of the world´s most favourite group since the Beatles???
STOP PRESS: the last photo (just added 26JUL) is the former admin headquaters and factory of Polar Music International, the record company that Stig used to actually press vinyl for ABBA's records in Europe.
Did the Swedes think that you were nuts being in search of ABBA stuff?
ReplyDeletePity that they did not have much to show - maybe when they are all dead they will see what ABBA did to place Sweden on the map!
Talk about collective national "guilt". Has the Swedish nation officially proclaimed "SORRY" for unleashing ABBA on the unsuspecting world in the 70's.
ReplyDeleteYou would think so, based on your account.