Benny's Road to ABBA

Excerpt from the book »Benny’s Road To ABBA« © Premium Publishing 2004

Meeting Björn IN THE MID-SIXTIES there must have been few contrasts greater than that between working in a bank and touring with a rock band. Working days starting and ending at normal office hours, the sound of clattering calculators, discreet financial transactions, low-key conversations – as opposed to »days« that started in the afternoon and ended in the early hours of the morning, shouting and screaming, loud rock’n’roll, long car rides, con- stantly new hotels. But that was the contrast that young Thomas Nordlund had to face when he quit his secure job at the bank in Uppsala to take care of The Hep Stars’ brand new production company, Hep House. For the first thing he did was to throw himself right into events and spend 10 days with the band on their second folkpark tour. A year had passed since Thomas helped The Hep Stars with the Tio i topp »coup«, which resulted in three songs on the chart. Later in 1965, through his friendship with Lennart Hegland, Thomas had got a job at Europa-Produktion for a couple of months. Although his time with the company was brief, he learned a lot about showbusiness from Åke Gerhard and his associates. His task was to book gigs for the acts signed to the production company, and his own contribution to that procedure was not insignificant. At the time, the folkpark arrangers implemented an extremely severe rule, which stipulated that if an act arrived late, the arrangers could make a deduction on the fee. If

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the gig started 10 minutes late, they’d deduct 10 per cent, 20 minutes meant a reduc- tion of 20 per cent, and so on. If the act was really tardy they might not be paid at all, but still have to go through with their show. Artists with tight booking schedules would sometimes get off stage at practically the same time as their next show was due to start – at a venue several miles away. It also happened that the concerts couldn’t start because there were too many people trying to get in – the audience simply didn’t make it to the stage on time – and even then there would be a deduction on the fee. This absurd practice was still in use in the mid-Sixties. But Thomas had other ideas. »I brought with me a ›banker’s philosophy‹ and thought, ›We shouldn’t sign these contracts‹. One problem for an act like The Hep Stars was the difficulties in getting in and out of the parks: there were too many people, too much excitement surrounding them. If they were due to play at 9 pm in one place and then at 11 pm on the next, I felt that you should use an »approximate starting time« for the second gig. I had to fight with the folkparks for this principle, because it happened that two arrangers would make a package deal and book one gig each. The first arranger might then have been instructed to ensure that the 9 pm gig didn’t start on time, so that the second could make a deduction for the late start on his 11 pm gig. Whether they split the profits, I don’t know, but we sniffed those arrangers out pretty quickly and after that we were very careful before we signed a contract with them.« Thomas also introduced what was probably Sweden’s first rider: the long list of spec- ifications which stipulates what the stage must look like, what must be available back- stage in terms of food and drink, and so on. These days, such a document is usually several pages long, but as early as 1965 Thomas implemented what he calls a mini-rider. »The arrangers were usually very generous with coffee and sandwiches, but there wouldn’t be things like towels in the dressing rooms. So I put together a specification in which all these details were listed: starting times and a request for towels in the dressing room, things like that.« For a group like The Hep Stars, with fully booked tour schedules and a generally hectic existence, Thomas’ contribution was invaluable. However, Thomas left Europa-Produktion after only two and a half months, when he had to finish his military service. Although his appetite for showbusiness had been whetted, after that he went back to the bank. But just a month or so into his employ- ment at the bank, in the spring of 1966, he started getting phone calls from The Hep Stars. They had founded a production company, they told him, and now they wanted Thomas to run this business for them. He hesitated a long while – after all, he was still only 21 years old – but finally, he received a very convincing message. »They wrote that they would offer twice as much as I earned at the bank if only I wanted to come to them instead.« The guys got their way. Thomas accompanied the band on tour to get to

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ME AND MY CAR. The Hep Stars loved their American cars. Naturally, Benny had one of his own. know them a little better, but also to thoroughly talk through the ideas for the company. After this overwhelming 10-day experience of hysteria and chaos he could finally install himself behind his desk. On July 11, 1966, the offices for the Hep House production company was opened in a converted apartment in central Stockholm. The five Hep Stars members, Felle Fernholm and Åke Gerhard had equal shares in the company. A firm by the name of Hep Stars AB already administered the group’s own finances, so the idea behind Hep House was to use the large income to start a publishing company and, most importantly, a production company and record label for other artists. If this activity turned out to be profitable, the firm would expand further. While The Hep Stars continued their rampage through the Swedish summer roads,

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Thomas Nordlund dived head ﬁrst into the many tasks at hand. It was a time of grandiose plans and high-ﬂying lifestyles within the band. The guys were at the top of their game and everything seemed possible. For the 1966 folkpark tour they had over 150 bookings, more than any other act that summer – on certain dates they had as many as three gigs in one day. The fee for a weekday concert was 2,500 kronor (£175) and on Saturdays the price was 3,500 kronor (£244). The group was touring all over the country in six brand new Ford Thunderbirds and Ford Mustangs – their camper van attracted far too much attention from the fans, and had been retired the previous year – making a great impression wherever they appeared. The guys were rolling in money, they almost had more than they could spend, and life was one long row of gigs, partying, girls and general mayhem. Firm evidence of extravagant lifestyles was easy to come by. Benny, for example, had a habit of forgetting where he’d put his things. »He was something of a scatterbrain,« says Svenne Hedlund. »A lot of his clothes were left behind at hotel rooms. ›Damn it, where did I leave that one?‹« There was seldom any talk of trying to locate the stuff that had been misplaced. Instead, Benny would pull out a few bills from his wallet and buy new things.

THE ›SUNNY GIRL‹ SUCCESS HAD whetted Benny’s appetite for further songwriting. While ›Sunny Girl‹ was still at the top of the charts he was already working on his next tune. The helpful Valter Pettersson in Falkenberg had given The Hep Stars use of his house, where they spent 10 days rehearsing their summer folkpark tour. Valter also helped Benny get access to the nearby Skrea church where the keyboard-hungry young man could sit and play the organ at nights. His interest in the fugues by the clas- sical music masters had deepened since Valter first introduced him to them. This inspi- ration was now combined with the sacred sounds from the church organ and trans- formed into an idea for a song. Together with Svenne, the rest of the tune was then developed in Valter’s house. »The parts that are perhaps the most important in the song – the introduction, the middle part and the finish – he wrote himself,« Svenne says, »but the rest of the melody was pretty much 50-50, and the lyrics as well.« An intimate musical friendship had developed between Benny and Svenne, as The Hep Stars’ singer supported the budding composer, offering constructive criticism of his first efforts. It was obvious that they shared the same ideas of what constituted a good song; this was partly why Benny sought a songwriting partner. Naturally, he also wanted help with the troublesome task of writing lyrics, something that he was never very fond of. »We had a lot of fun when we wrote that song,« Svenne recalls. »We sat one night at the bar at the Hotel Opalen in

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Gothenburg and wrote the lyrics, which took quite some time. I remember that we were very pleased with ourselves.« When all the work had been completed, Andersson and Hedlund had created one of the very best Hep Stars songs: ›Wedding‹. Again, as in the case of ›Sunny Girl‹, there was a certain hesitation before the song was accepted by the entire band. »It was only Svenne and I who wanted to record ›Wedding‹,« Benny told a reporter. »The others thought it was too complicated.« But in the end a disc was made. The recording session was yet another example of the fruitful creative relation- ship that was developing between The Hep Stars and Gert Palmcrantz. The ›Sunny Girl‹ session had entailed testing different arrangement ideas before the idea came up that Benny should play the spinet on the song. In the case of ›Wedding‹, the group and the producer wanted to achieve a big church organ sound and dragged the studio’s Hammond B3 organ into the echo chamber. This was a major difference from just a few months earlier, when the session work was still mostly a matter of reproducing the sound and the repertoire from the group’s live shows. ›Wedding‹ was something else. The tightness and the energy of the band’s early records provided a solid basis for a recording which, within its genre, was both modern and melodically advanced. And the entire band contributed – not least Chrille Pettersson, whose lively drumming pushes the song along. ›Wedding‹ was released as a single in May 1966 and turned out to be a new triumph for the band: three weeks at number one on Tio i topp and four weeks at the summit on Kvällstoppen. This success must have strengthened 19-year-old Benny’s feeling of knowing what he was doing as a composer. He realised that he had the ability to come up with tunes that struck a chord with large parts of the population, and his broad musical inﬂuences were always subordinate to the need of reaching out with the songs – making hits, in other words. In an interview one year earlier, where he praised several well-known Swedish songwriters – some of whom had their heyday several decades back – he expressed his views on the subject. »You can’t be an idealist when it comes to music. Just look at all the people who take singing lessons all their lives, but almost have to pay to sing in front of an audience. And then look at us! No, I can go home and play [the songs of those older composers] on my accordion after our pop concert…« To this day, many think of ›Wedding‹ as a celebration of marriage, but then they haven’t payed very close attention to the lyrics. Lines like »listen to the preacher pray- ing / all the words he’s saying / make me feel very cold inside« do not indicate any great enthusiasm for the prospect of joining in the bonds of marriage. Indeed, at the time the thought of stable relationships was something that felt rather uninteresting for both songwriters, considering the wealth of available girls all over the country. »We were all young anyway and didn’t have a thought of getting married,« as Svenne puts it. In Sweden no one made any detailed analysis of the ›Wedding‹ lyrics, but there was

113 Excerpt from the book »Benny’s Road To ABBA« © Premium Publishing 2004 Excerpt from the book »Benny’s Road To ABBA« © Premium Publishing 2004 some trouble when the song was released in the UK a couple of years later. Svenne believes that the lyrics were one of the factors that stopped it from being played on the radio. Accordingly, it failed to reach out to a wider audience. »›You mustn’t sing things like that about the holy matrimony!‹ But we were stubborn and didn’t want to change the lyrics.« When the record was first released in Sweden, ›Wedding‹ was the subject of controversy of a completely different kind. One night, Svenne was listening to Radio Luxembourg as usual when suddenly his attention was caught by a very familiar intro: they were going to play ›Wedding‹! But to his great astonishment, after the intro the song turned into a completely different melody. How on earth had this happened – and what was the song? The American producer and songwriter Kim Fowley was and is an eccentric character. In the early Sixties he had masterminded a couple of major hits, among them the US number one ›Alley Oop‹ by The Hollywood Argyles, and ›Nut Rocker‹ by B. Bumble And The Stingers, which was a UK charttopper. A couple of years later he spent some time in England, and recorded a few singles under his own name. One of them was enti- tled ›Lights‹, and that was the song Svenne heard that night on Radio Luxembourg. Benny and Svenne were upset, but also young and uncertain of copyright issues. However, Åke Gerhard explained to them that it was illegal to do what Fowley had done – Benny’s intro melody was an integrated part of the song. »You will have to go there and check this out,« the young songwriters were advised. Svenne and Benny brought along their friend Buzz Nelson from The Deejays to guide them through the London music business jungle. After some detective work they finally caught up with Kim Fowley. »And what a character he turned out to be,« says Svenne. »It was really difficult to talk to him. He almost seemed hysterical or something when we were speaking to him, he was sort of talking with his whole body. Finally he admitted that he had heard ›Wedding‹, but he still tried to worm his way out of it. ›After all, I didn’t borrow the verses and the chorus, I only took that instrumental bit!‹« However, the record company which issued Fowley’s song was surprisingly co- operative, and promised that the record would be withdrawn immediately. »We were really happy and thought that it was obviously because he had stolen it from us. In hindsight, I’m not so sure. I think he must have had some other problems with the company as well.« This sounds like a reasonable theory, since Fowley simply took the recording to another label, which released it again. In the end this was neither here nor there, for ›Lights‹ never became a hit. In hindsight, the most important part of the story is perhaps that an internationally successful songwriter and producer like Kim Fowley had picked up on the hit potential in Benny’s tune.

H IT MAKERS. The sheet music for The Hep Stars’ mega-hit, Wedding. Benny and Svenne wrote the song.

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›SUNNY GIRL‹ WAS STILL AT THE TOP of the charts in Sweden when The Hep Stars began their folkpark tour that summer. ›Wedding‹ was released soon afterwards, storming up the charts and making the tour an even more triumphant trek through the nation. In many ways, The Hep Stars’ summer show of 1966 was different to the previous year. Instead of plugging all the records they had released so far, their programme featured plenty of material from other artists. For example, the show included two Beach Boys numbers: ›You’re So Good To Me‹, which was the opening song, and ›Help Me Rhonda‹ – none of which were ever recorded by The Hep Stars. The same was true of another featured tune, ›Do You Wanna Dance‹; in all likelihood, it was The Beach Boys’ version that inspired its inclusion in the set list. Last year’s breakthrough hits were formed a medley at the close of the performance. The 1966 stage show was also much more toned-down than what The Hep Stars usually offered their audience. This was mainly because Svenne had broken his foot when he was being chased by fans earlier in the spring. During the ﬁrst month of the tour he was still in plaster and had to use crutches. Slower songs such as ›Sunny Girl‹ were per- fect for the show, since they didn’t rely on wild onstage antics. Meanwhile, numbers such as ›Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On‹, that summed up the essence of The Hep Stars’ exciting stage show, had to be ditched. This strengthened the impression that the group’s career was entering a new phase. »It was sheer coincidence,« Svenne claims today. »If I hadn’t hurt my foot, our style would probably have been the same as before.« The show itself may have been toned-down and performed in a slower tempo, but The Hep Stars’ folkpark visits mirrored the scenes from the 1965 tour. The dramatic entrances and exits were kept alive, and the fans were just as hysterical and anxious to get close to their idols. As usual, Felle was the one who had to ﬁnd the best way of maneuvering the situation so that the guys escaped unharmed from the intense attention from the fans. After the summer tour, he elaborated on his problems in the fan club magazine Hepnickus:

Please, all you fans, try to understand me now as I attempt to explain why I have to be so harsh towards you. I really want to help everyone who stands quietly and calmly, and waits until Janne, Svenne, Benny, Lelle and Chrille get the time to write their autographs. But many of you go insane when the boys appear, and start pulling and grabbing at them. That kind of behaviour is a form of assault and it’s something I have to prevent. And it’s not so easy for me to know who’s going to remain calm or not. If several hundred fans come rushing all at the same time, then I simply have to be rough with the ﬁrst one I grab so that I »frighten« the

others. […] And another thing: did you ever stop to think that you’re endangering our lives when you steal souvenirs from our cars? Wind- screen wipers, for instance. If we don’t have any wipers and the rain is pouring down, our view is so bad that we might drive off the road. About a week ago someone found it amusing to empty the air out of one of my front tyres. We could have had an accident and been killed!

AS THE HEP STARS’ CARAVAN of Thunderbirds and Mustangs drove from folkpark to folkpark, it was inevitable that they sometimes ran into some of the many other artists that were on the road for the same reason. On Sunday, June 5, The Hep Stars had an afternoon gig at the Ålleberg hill, three miles southeast of the town of Falköping. It was the third and last day of an event called the Ålleberg festival. The arrangers could be satisfied in the knowledge that they had booked two of the summer’s very biggest attractions: the wild pop band from Stockholm, but also the slightly more well-man- nered boys in a folk music band called the Hootenanny Singers, hailing from the town of Västervik. The Hep Stars had just finished their 3 pm gig on this sunny afternoon. They were driving down the gravel road in their caravan of cars when they encountered the Hootenanny Singers’ vehicle, which was headed towards the festival area on the plateau atop the hill. The road was fairly narrow, so the cars all had to stop to let each other through. Cheerful greetings were exchanged: it was the first time that the groups had encountered each other on the road. Three of the Hootenanny Singers members were due to begin their military service the day after and were planning a farewell party in the town of Linköping. »You must join us when you’re through with your gigs for the day!« The Hep Stars would only reluctantly turn down the opportunity to go to a party, so the answer was yes. A couple of hours later they were on their way. The only problem was that they had got the location wrong: they heard Lidköping instead of Linköping. But after a few phone calls the matter had been straightened out, and although it was already late at night, The Hep Stars started their cars again to drive the 95 miles from Lidköping to Linköping. It was a very successful gathering, and the two groups hit it off immediately. The Hootenanny Singers’ polished exterior and the mild sounds of their music, which had rendered them a great number of hits on Svensktoppen the past two years, effectively concealed the fact that these guys were just as good at partying as the rock’n’roll fiends in The Hep Stars. Benny noticed that he got along especially well with the front figure in the Hootenanny Singers, a young man who had recently started writing his own songs, just like Benny. Only the day before the party, the band had experienced their

first entry on Tio i topp with this aspiring tunesmith’s début pop composition, ›No Time‹. His name was Björn Ulvaeus. The party was so noisy that the two groups were ordered to get out of the hotel where they were staying. Benny and Björn ended up in a park where they sat talking and playing Beatles songs on an acoustic guitar. There was a true connection between the two young men, and they agreed that they should try to write a song together at some point. The party drew to a close and after hardly any sleep at all, the three Hootenanny Singers guys reported for their military service in Linköping. Just a few weeks later the two bands met up again. It was the day before Mid- summer’s Eve, the location was Västervik – the Hootenanny Singers’ home turf – and yet again it was time for a party. Glasses were raised, everybody cheered everybody and the mood only got more festive as the night wore on. Björn and Benny again found themselves engaged in stimulating conversation. In the early hours of the new day they suddenly got the urge to write the song they had been talking about in Linköping. They headed off for the apartment building where the Ulvaeus family lived and started setting up instruments and amplifiers in the basement. But the noise resounded throughout the building and Björn’s father, Gunnar, rushed down the stairs and told them that they had to stop immediately. However, in a wondrous gesture of benevolence he also found a solution to the music hungry youngsters’ problem: he simply let them borrow the keys to his office at the local paper mill, where he was employed. With the help of the Hootenanny Singers’ roadie, Berka Bergkvist, they dragged the equipment up the narrow staircase to Gunnar Ulvaeus’ room. With all the instruments set up, they started writing what was to become the very first Andersson / Ulvaeus composition, the waltzy ballad ›Isn’t It Easy To Say‹. The song wasn’t completed until some time later, and since it was a pop song it was decided that it was most suitable for The Hep Stars. »It actually wasn’t very good,« Benny recalled, »but at least it was an attempt. A first attempt at working together.« With ›Isn’t It Easy To Say‹, great song or not, the opening chapter of a success story of incredible magnitude had just been written.

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