Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / ABBA Uncovered: The 1975 Album Photo [Highlight From Episode 349]

Transcript

ABBA Uncovered: The 1975 Album Photo [Highlight From Episode 349] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Here's a highlight from a recent episode of Booked on Rock.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Joe Matteria is the author of the Making of Aba,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: the story behind the band's nineteen seventy five breakthrough album,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: The story behind the album's front and back. Those photos
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: tell us where these are taken, and one member had
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: to sit on a stack of phone directories.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: That's right, Yes, that's Bjorn. If you look at the
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: front cover, they're inside is Rolls Royce and Bjorn is
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: just sitting there next to Agnita and he actually had
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: to sit, yeah, on top of in order to make
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: himself look tall because he actually he's actually quite short.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: But yeah, the cover just represents it's not there's many
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: views on this, but at the time when Abba were
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: making this album, they weren't again, they weren't big stars.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: They were still on their way to sort of trying
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: to become commercial successful, so they didn't have much money.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: So this album is sort of a bit of a
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: take on the glamorous Locks lifestyle that could be expected.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: But also at the same time, in Sweden there was
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: a leftist movement called prob as in ero doubg where
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: anything that was considered commercial was considered the enemy. So
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: they had to be a political sort of a movement
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: and ab but we're never into that. They went into
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: that making great music for mass audience. So that was
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: sort of like public enemy number one at that time.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: So they sort of their play on you know, what's
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: wrong with being a successful and being in a limousine
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: and living this high life. But they were nothing like that.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: I mean at the time again they were on their
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: road to doing that. But it's a great cover. Really
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: captures the glamorous look of the band and at the
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: back again they're in the hotel lobby which I actually
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: visited when I was researching my book in Stockholm. Still
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: there but changed a lot, but yeah, it's just a
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: great image really.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: So some statistics here on the album and its success.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: It was released April twenty first, eighteen seventy five. That
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: was released in the UK six weeks later on June seven,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: and in the US almost four months later on August
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: twenty eight. It climbed all the way to number one
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: in Australia, Sweden and Norway, number three New Zealand and
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: the Netherlands, number nine in Italy, number thirteen in the UK,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: number fifty five in Canada, and After having debuted on
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: the US bill War two hundred Albums chart at one
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: eighty nine on November fifteenth of nineteen seventy five, Would
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: only managed to reach number one seventy four in the US,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: which is kind of surprising, or maybe not surprise.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Is absolutely because they became.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Huge here in the second half of the decade.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, I mean they went off. The thing about
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: that was they during their whole life span that didn't
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: really do many tools, only did a few tools, you know,
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: so and when I came to America, they were doing
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: like two two week prim national tools and then I
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: go back and keep working on the album and stuff.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: So but yeah, look, I think it changed from when
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: I did Dancing Queen and the following year that's when
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: it all changed and sort of re reignited the interest
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: in the album. But yeah, it's surprising that only went
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: that far in the US.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Really, and fifty years later, how do you you the
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: album in terms of ABBA history and it's placed in
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: music history.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: I view it as one of the most important albums
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: of their career. It set the stage for them to
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: become the superstars of the seventies as they as they did,
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: especially for the next album that really took them to
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: the next level. It's the album that solified the sound.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: It's the album that really represents Abbat as Abbat did
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: become the sound, the signature sound. So I think anybody
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: listens to that album can hear so much of ABBA's future,
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: where they were heading, and really solify their their sort
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: of standing as as as real musicians.