ABBA: The Book

Rating:
Summary: A celebratory tribute
Review: Abba remain hugely popular in Britain and many other countries more than twenty years after they disbanded. This book is not an in-depth study of the different personalities and their difficulties, but it gives plenty of information about the members of Abba and their manager, including their lives before and after Abba. And (at least in my hardcover edition) there are pictures - plenty of them.

Regarding the four members of Abba, three of them (Benny, Bjorn and Agnetha) were born and raised in Sweden, all apparently having fairly normal childhoods, only their musical talent setting them apart from others. All three became hugely successful in the Swedish pop charts, Agnetha as a solo singer, Benny and Bjorn as members of separate groups.

The odd one out was Anni-Frid, better known as Frida. She was born in Norway as the illegitimate child of a German father and Norwegian mother. Frida was mainly raised by her grandmother, who took her to Sweden, where her mother joined them but died of illness a few months later, aged just 21. Frida also found it much harder than the others to achieve success in music, but she did eventually have some big Swedish hits of her own.

The author presents the main years (1969 to 1982) on a year-by-year basis, explaining the different events that occurred in each year - records, tours, TV, their personal lives - in a semi-diary format.

As far as the music is concerned, the story is quite complicated and not always easy to follow, but that is no fault of the author. Before they became Abba, they were four separate acts, each with their own careers and signed to different record companies. Once they came together as Abba, different things were happening in Japan, Australia, Germany, Sweden and elsewhere with different records - even before 1974. That was the year that Abba won Eurovision and charted for the first time in Britain and America.

There have been many books on Abba and will surely be many more. Despite being a huge Abba fan, this is the first I've read. If you're only going to have one book on Abba, it might as well be this one.

Rating:
Summary: THEY CAME, THEY SANG...AND THEY CONQUERED!
Review: Did you ever come across a favourite song and say, "I wonder whatever happened to....? Abba took the world by storm back in the 60's when a quarter bought you an afternoon matinee at the movies, and minimum wage in my home town was $1.00 per hour. If you earned $1.25 or more, you had it made!

Abba possessed a unique blend of charisma, talent, and originality. Who can forget the sentimental lyrics of ,"I Had A Dream", the gentle flow of "The Rivers of Babylon", the melancholy strains of "Fernando" or the upbeat dance-hit, "Dancing Queen"? The list of hits went on and on.

What I particularly liked about this book was the numerous photographs all depicting Abba at their finest. Many photographs are ones not often, if ever, published before, at least not on this continent. In addition, the book reveals a lot of factual, personal information about the individuals themselves. The road to fame and fortune is not an easy one as readers will discover through the pages of this book. Some facts have been printed before, but other aspects of their career are presented here in a more complete, in-depth light. Fans of Abba, will no longer need to wonder, "what ever happened to..." because the epilogue tells you just that. Of all the books on the group, this is one of the best in print.

Rating:
Summary: Well done coverage of the early years
Review: This book covers mainly the early years of ABBA's career. Most of the pictures we have seen before, but never in one place and packaged so nicely. The pictures here are different than the ones you will find in "From ABBA to Mamma Mia", so if you want to have a collection of pictures spanning ABBA's entire career, you really need to own both.