BEFORE: It's about that time in the Doc Block when the Beatles start to take over - I don't have any films ABOUT the Beatles, I must have watched all of them, but they appear in archive footage in nearly every doc about pop and rock music, there's no getting around it. It's almost required, it all goes back to that Ed Sullivan show, and there's a doc about Ed Sullivan coming up, so we'll see them again. Maybe I should have moved that doc here, but I'm inclined to keep my chain just the way it is because I'm 99% sure the links are solid right now. So last night there was a mention that when the Beatles came to America, they wanted to meet the Supremes - I can only imagine why, we know what the Beatles were like when they were in Berlin. Anyway, the Beatles carry over to today's film about ABBA.
It's very hard to find a U.S. state that lines up with a Swedish pop group - I'm going to have a worse problem when I get to the doc about Led Zeppelin, and by then there won't be many states left to profile. Zep's going to have to just get whatever random state is left at that point, sorry. Now for ABBA I could go with Minnesota, it's the U.S. state with the most people of Swedish descent. They also did one big North American tour, back in 1979, I could pick any city from the tour. But I'm going to punt here and pick IOWA, because there is a city named Waterloo there. It's a tenuous link, sure, but it crosses a tricky state off the list. There should be an annual ABBA-themed festival in Waterloo, Iowa, but I think they're busy hosting the National Cattle Congress and being the home to John Deere and Tyson Foods.
Date admitted to the U.S.: December 28, 1846 (29th state)
Claim to fame: I think I already mentioned it, John Deere and Tyson Foods
Nickname: Hawkeye State (no connection to M*A*S*H or the Avengers, sadly)
State Motto: Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain. Umm, sure. You do you, Iowa.
State Flower: Corn
State Fruit: Corn
State Fruit: Corn
State Bird: Eastern cornfinch
State Tree: Corn
State Beverage: Corn juice probably
Notable Sports Teams: None, unless you count those ghosts of baseball players that come out of the corn somehow.
Notable people from Iowa: Johnny Carson, and Adam Devine from Waterloo!
Fun Fact: Iowa was claimed by the French and was a French territory until 1763, at which point ownership was transferred to Spain, who didn't really care for it either and allowed British and French traders in, then Napoleon got it back for the French in 1800, so he could sell the whole Louisiana Purchase territory to the U.S. in 1803, but we didn't do anything with it until at least 1809. Which makes it kind of the red-headed stepchild of U.S. states, and you wonder why it needs to have the first caucus in every election? It needs to feel important somehow - but come on, CORN! We all love and need CORN! We wouldn't have popcorn without it, I think.
I've never been there, so now I'm 5-2 on visiting these profiled states. There seem to be a bunch of museums there, art centers, botanical gardens and then there's those covered bridges in Madison County. There's also an annual Great Bicycle Ride across the state. Not really my thing - but I do love state fairs and there are casinos there, so never say never, I guess.
THE PLOT: Bursting on to the scene at the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest, ABBA took the world by storm, going on to sell over 300 million albums and singles and giving birth to the billion-dollar franchise "Mamma Mia".
AFTER: A riddle - how do you know when a band has won the Eurovision Song Contest? Don't worry, they'll tell you. This is the starting point of today's doc and really, the starting point of their career in the 1970's. Bjorn and Benny struggled for about a decade to write pop hits under the not-very-well-thought-out name "Bjorn and Benny", the special sauce turned out to be adding their girlfriends to the mix, singing back-up at first, and then their manager getting tired of using all four names in the band's name, and coming up with the idea to just use their initials to spell "ABBA". Just think, the band could have been named BABA or BAAB or ABAB, and then, where would we be? Worse, Anni-Frid could have gone by "Frida" and then they'd have been FABA or BAFA or AFAB, and that would have been just terrible.
Instead, they went with ABBA and became the most successful Eurotrash pop group of all time, maybe even a little TOO successful, because Sweden has one of the highest tax rates in the world, so making all that money selling records and going on tour meant they owed a lot to the government, so they did what a lot of bands do, they had to create a corporation centered on the band, one that would pay the expenses of going on tour and buying costumes and studio time to make more records, but still, that wasn't enough, they were making money faster than the company could spend it. At one point I think their corporation was responsible for 50% of Sweden's GDP, and really, that's a lot for four people and a manager. So the company had to invest the excess money, into real estate or oil or pickled herring, it didn't really matter, the money had to be laid out and invested into something or it would be taxed.
Later on, after the group had broken up, and both couples had divorced, Benny and Bjorn were working on making a Broadway musical, "Chess", which was quite successful. Great, more money coming in that needs to be invested somewhere else. Shortly after that, they were approached to turn the ABBA catalog of songs into a jukebox musical, which became "Mamma Mia", an enormously successful Broadway hit. And then THAT became a film and a sequel film, which were also enormously successful, in fact when you combine the Mamma Mia musical and film revenues, they are greater than the total that the band made while they were active and touring and selling records. This is like some weird wacko version of "The Producers", where these composers couldn't fail even if they wanted to, everything they do just led to more income and more income. I mean, it's a nice problem to have, but also, mo' money, mo' problems, right?
Let me back up just a bit before I call it a night - I just got back from working at Barclays, there was a WNBA game, and I'm exhausted so I'll try to keep this short. Like the Beatles, ABBA started as a skiffle group, called the Hootenanny Singers, with songs composed by Bjorn. They kept crossing paths on the fair circuit with Benny Andersson's Hep stars, and jeez, that moment when Benny and Bjorn tried to write a song together is probably up there with Lennon meeting McCartney at that church social back in 1957. Stig Anderson, who managed the Hep Stars, encouraged them to write more songs together, they played in each other's bands when somebody couldn't make it to a concert, and the Hep Stars submitted a song to the Eurovision Song Contest in 1969, representing Sweden - and it came in second place.
Benny met Anni-Frid, he produced a single for her, and Bjorn met Agnetha filming a TV special in 1969, and they got married in July 1971. Meanwhile Benny and Bjorn collaborated on an album together in 1970, the couples would go on vacation together and sing on the beach - hey, maybe there's something there, right? They'd all done so many solo albums that together they basically had enough material for a cabaret act, and more recording sessions just brought them all closer together - musically, at least. You know, Sweden was very liberal so who knows how close they all really were, right? The foursome put out a single, "People Need Love", and then debuted the next one, "Ring Ring" at the 1973 Eurovision thing. However, it didn't even qualify as the Swedish entry.
Ah, but they learned and tried again, and "Waterloo" won the whole damn thing a year later - suddenly the international spotlight was on them, and it only took five years to become an overnight success. The next single, "Honey, Honey" was a minor hit in several countries, then came a European tour, more singles like "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do" and "Money, Money, Money" (have you spotted the formula yet?). Then, of course, the super mega-hits "Fernando", "Knowing Me, Knowing You" and "Dancing Queen". They maybe released their "Greatest Hits" album a bit early in 1976, but since that album had the new single "Fernando" on it, nobody really minded all that much.
More major tours in 1977 of Europe and Australia, but by the time they announced a North American tour in 1979, they were also announcing the divorce of Bjorn and Agnetha - don't worry, they'll all still work together as a band (Hey, it worked for Fleetwood Mac) and they still managed to stay together long enough to get "Chiquitita" and "Does Your Mother Know" out into the world. They were supposed to release a new album in 1982, but instead they changed plans and released a Christmas album that year - really, it's a common sign that a band is over, when they put out a Christmas album. A lot of the stuff that the band WOULD have recorded, if they had stayed together, instead ended up in that Broadway musical, "Chess". So the band really died sometime in 1982, but the obituary didn't make it to print until about 1984. Fans would have to settle for more live albums from the archives and greatest hits compilations.
Movies like "Muriel's Wedding" and "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert", kept their music alive, in addition to "ABBA Gold" and those live albums - but after that it was the 1999 Broadway debut of "Mamma Mia" and the 2008 film version that made the band members not just superstars, but legendary. It's amazing how nostalgia can kind of snowball and grow and grow, with ABBA, Elvis and The Beatles probably making more money now from their song catalogs than they did while they performers were actively touring. ABBA was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010, and the band did come together again to announce new music in 2018, however it didn't get released until 2021, only part of that delay can be attributed to the pandemic, I think.
Directed by Piers Garland (director of "Frank Sinatra: One More for the Road")
Also starring Dave Ambrose, Stig Anderson, Benny Andersson (last seen in "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again"), Ulf Elfving, Agnetha Faltskog (last seen in "27: Gone Too Soon"), Anni-Frid Lyngstad (ditto), Paul Gambaccini (last seen in "David Bowie: Out of This World"), Elaine Paige, John Tobler, Bjorn Ulvaeus (last seen in "Tom Hanks: The Nomad"),
with archive footage of Christine Baranski (last seen in "The Night We Never Met"), Pierce Brosnan (last seen in "The Love Punch"), Cher (last seen in "Music by John Williams"), Dominic Cooper (last seen in "The Lady in the Van"), Colin Firth (last seen in "Austenland"), Bobby Fischer (last seen in "Pawn Sacrifice"), Boris Spassky (ditto), Andy Garcia (last seen in "Wrath of Man"), Lily James (last seen in "The Iron Claw"), Colin Powell (last seen in "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything"), Cliff Richard (last seen in "If These Walls Could Sing"), Amanda Seyfried (last seen in "Love the Coopers"), Stellan Skarsgard (last seen in "Boogie Woogie"), Meryl Streep (also last seen in "Tom Hanks: The Nomad") and narration by Gerry Conway (last heard in "Frank Sinatra; One More for the Road").
RATING: 5 out of 10 touring companies of "Mamma Mia!"
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