Speaking from his waterfront office
and recording complex in Stockholm,
Ulvaeus’s co-songwriter, Benny Anders-
son, 75, is acutely aware of what a
game-changer Abba Voyage
could prove to be — and
how closely other bands
will be watching to see if it
is worth imitating (par-
ticularly those of a certain
vintage or those who
can no longer bearCOVER STORY
Why play live gigs
when you’re in
your seventies
and gorgeous
‘Abbatar’ stand-ins
can dance and jive
instead? Dan
Cairns talks to the
band trying to
change pop for
ever... again
to be in the same room as each other).
“Lots of artists are going to be study-
ing us, definitely,” Ulvaeus says. “I won’t
name names, but I can think of a few. I
wonder who’s going to be first.” The
Stones, Led Zeppelin, surely, I say.
Ulvaeus’s look is pure “I couldn’t
possibly comment”. What
about those bands known for
their tempestuous relation-
ships? “Oasis,” Andersson
and Ulvaeus say.THE UNREAL RETURN
I wake up at
four in themorning
and think,‘What the
hell have wedone?’
A
t Abba’s central London HQ,
Bjorn Ulvaeus, 77, sits on
a sofa, dressed head to
alligator-skin, cowboy-
booted toe in black. He is a
picture of health, wealth
and contentment. On the surface. In
reality, he says, he wakes regularly in
the wee small hours. Why? Oh, just
the small matter of the opening of
Abba Voyage, in four weeks’ time. It is
an immersive, “360-degree concert
experience” where the band’s biggest,
most popular hits will be staged in a
custom-built, 3,000-seat venue at the
Olympic Park in London. “Abbatars”
— avatars of the band’s younger selves
created with George Lucas’s visual
effects company — will stand in for
the septuagenarian original mem-
bers and the 100-minute concert
is booking until December 4,
with multiple shows a week.
At an estimated cost of £15
million, the production is a sig-
nificant risk, even for an act as
commercially colossal — 385
million records sold, almost £4
billion in gross revenue for the
musical Mamma Mia! and the two
subsequent films — as Abba.
“No, it’s an immense risk,”
Ulvaeus corrects me, “and most peo-
ple I talk to don’t appreciate that.
They say, ‘Oh, it’ll be fine.’ Sometimes
I wake up at four in the morning and
think, ‘What the hell have we done?’”
What they have done is devise a
way of reinventing “live” music that
could provide a template for heritage
bands whose record sales have long
since dried up, but who still haul
themselves round the world, playing
to crowds who only want to hear the
hits they made in their twenties, in
the Sixties, Seventies or Eighties.Abba are known to have hated life
out on the road. Anni-Frid (Frida)
Lyngstad, 76, speaking from her home
in the Swiss Alps, sees the Abba Voy-
age concert as a chance for them
all to get some perspective on
what they achieved at their
height — without the
tedium and fatigue that
made touring an often
miserable experience.
“Our situation was so4 1 May 2022