Thank You for the Music: How Melbourne greeted Swedish supergroup ABBA in 1977
No ABBA hit list would be complete without Mamma Mia, but a Melbourne icon played a key role in getting the pop track — and the supergroup behind it — onto a world stage. Here’s a look back at Melbourne’s love for the Swedish sensation.
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Melbourne was pivotal to ABBA’s success in Australia and around the world, and the Swedish superstars gave their all when they came to town in 1977.
The rest of the world was discovering what Australians already knew — that ABBA was a pop music phenomenon.
The supergroup visit to Melbourne in March 1977 in many ways exceeded the fever-pitch excitement of the Beatles’ visit to Melbourne in 1964.
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Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Bjorn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Agnetha Faltskog were wildly popular in Australia.
They even had an audience with then-prime minister Malcolm Fraser and his family backstage at one of their Melbourne shows. Robert Menzies did not bother to meet The Beatles 13 years earlier.
But early success in Australia was elusive for ABBA.
Its debut single, Ring Ring, initially only reached number 92 on the Aussie charts when it was released in 1973 and Waterloo, its breakthrough international hit, was well received here but the response to other singles was patchy.
Enter Molly Meldrum.
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Countdown launched on the ABC in 1974, the year Waterloo triumphed at Eurovision.
Beamed across Australia from the ABC’s Ripponlea studios in Melbourne every Sunday night, with Meldrum championing ABBA’s music.
He’s responsible for introducing ABBA’s Mamma Mia to Australian audiences — and the world.
In 1975, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do and SOS were already number one hits.
ABBA’s record company had sent a batch of promotional videos — then a groundbreaking marketing idea — to Countdown that included one for Mamma Mia, then nothing more than an album track
Meldrum, who was an unabashed fan and had already championed ABBA’s music, was so taken with the tune that he put it on high rotation on Countdown even though the band had no intention of releasing it as a single.
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“After they won Eurovision with Waterloo, I suggested they should release Mamma Mia as a single. They didn’t want to. But I convinced them to do it in Australia only, and see what happens,” Meldrum wrote for the Herald Sun in 2018.
ABBA fans stormed record shops for to buy that new song they’d seen on Countdown. Demand was insatiable.
“It went through the roof, so ABBA released it around the world, and the rest is history. Bjorn and Benny have always been very gracious, and they keep thanking me for helping break them here, and worldwide,” Meldrum said.
“But they don’t have to do that. The are so bloody good they would’ve broken through on their own.”
The single topped the charts in Australia for 10 weeks following its release in August 1975.
It went on to be a top 40 hit in 10 countries including 32 in the United States, number two in New Zealand, Norway and Austria and number one in the UK, Germany and Ireland.
ABBA was on the crest of a wave here and overseas.
By the end of 1976, each of ABBA’s four albums had charted in Australia including number one sellers ABBA and Arrival.
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Including the 1977 hit Money Money Money, ABBA also had 12 charting singles in Australia. Ten of those were top 20 hits and of those, six hit number one in 1975 and 1976 — I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, SOS, Mamma Mia, Fernando, Dancing Queen and Money, Money , Money. Rock Me peaked at number four.
In 1976, ABBA visited Australia briefly for a promotional tour and Meldrum travelled to Stockholm to film an interview with Anni-Frid, Bjorn, Benny and Agnetha, now friends with the Aussie impresario. Curiously, Meldrum was hired by Channel 7 for the interview, and ABBA was prevented from appearing on Countdown during the 1976 tour because Channel 9 had lined them up for exclusive appearances on A Current Affair, Celebrity Squares, The Don Lane Show and Bandstand, hosted by Daryl Somers.
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Promoter Paul Dainty, a friend of ABBA’s touring manager, convinced the quartet to tour in Australia in 1977.
The group was match fit after an extensive tour of Europe and the UK, and came to Australia with the latest sound system, a sophisticated stage set up that included an inflatable roof and an entourage of about 100 people flown in an Ansett jet emblazoned with the ABBA logo.
Brisbane was left off the tour, but Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth were included.
The band began the tour in rain-soaked Sydney, where Anni-Frid slipped on a wet outdoor stage at the Sydney Showgrounds.
They hit Melbourne on Saturday, March 5, during Moomba.
Thousands of fans gathered at the airport for a glimpse of the stars, and a member of the Carlton Football Club’s marketing team presented Agnetha and Anni-Frid with Blues guernseys at the airport.
The band was whisked into the city for a civic reception, where they were presented with the key to the City of Melbourne at Melbourne Town Hall in scenes reminiscent of The Beatles’ appearance on the balcony there in 1964.
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More than 20,000 people turned out to see the ‘70s version of the Fab Four, with Molly Meldrum by their sides.
“At that stage ABBA had become like a Beatlemania thing. I went to the Town Hall thing down here in Melbourne and this was unlike when The Beatles’ visit, where I was down on the street screaming out ‘John, I love you, Paul I love you’,” he told the Herald Sun in 2017.
“This time I was actually up standing next to them in the balcony of the Town Hall. So it was a real buzz.”
The public reception surprised everyone, including the band, Meldrum said.
“They couldn’t believe it, they were gobsmacked. Benny and Bjorn, they still talk about it today,” Meldrum said.
Dainty remembers: “It (the crowd shot from ABBA’s appearance on the town hall balcony) was one of those photos that went around the world. They were really good with connecting with fans. Even at airports, they’d walk over to fans, even if they were behind a fence, before they got in the car. They were a bit like the royal family like that! They’d go up and down talking to people where they could.”
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Luke Rogers, then 12, was among the throng outside the town hall.
“A camera crew was filming us, they got us to chant ‘We love ABBA’,” Rogers told the Herald Sun in 2017.
“I assumed I might be on the news, nine months later I saw myself in ABBA the Movie.”
ABBA played three shows at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl — one on the Saturday evening and an afternoon and evening show on Sunday, March 6.
Tickets were $9 — that’s $50 today. It was a lot of money for a concert in those days, but in the modern era seems like an incredible bargain.
The band stayed at the Old Melbourne Motor Inn, now student accommodation up by the Haymarket roundabout in North Melbourne.
With Moomba in full swing, 15,000 people packed the Sidney Myer Music Bowl, with at least as many again outside the fence listening for free, as ABBA reeled through all the hits.
The inclusion in the concert of a mini-musical, The Girl With the Golden Hair, was an added treat for fans.
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The mini musical was built around Thank You for the Music, which was months away from its release as a single around the world.
The Saturday show included Mr Fraser, his wife Tamie and their children.
They had a backstage meeting with the band, which slightly delayed the concert, before joining the audience for the show.
Rogers attended the Sunday afternoon show, which kicked off at 2.30pm ahead of a second performance at 8.30pm.
“I don’t remember a whole lot of the concert. I remember it being very loud. But I’m so glad I went to that concert. If I hadn’t gone to an ABBA concert I’d still be in therapy because they mean so much to me,” Rogers said.
It’s just as well he made it. ABBA never toured Australia again.
The group played three more shows in Adelaide and five at Perth’s Entertainment Centre — including one that was briefly disrupted by a bomb threat — before heading home.
ABBA had reached its peak. There were more hits, of course. Knowing Me, Knowing You reached number nine on the Australian charts, but the band never again had a number one hit in Australia.
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Rogers, an expert on the band’s history, believes ABBA became overexposed in Australia.
The dynamics of the band were changing radically, too.
Bjorn and Agnetha, who married in 1971, had separated by January 1979 and divorced in July 1980. By 1981, he had remarried.
The group endured this difficult period through Abba: The Tour, a gruelling series of concerts across North America, Europe and Asia from September 1979 to March 1980.
Benny and Anni-Frid had been engaged for nine years before they married in 1978, but they separated in November 1980 and divorced the following year.
The band’s last top 40 single in Australia was On and On and On, which peaked at number nine.
Its last number one album in Australia was Arrival, released five months before ABBA took Australia by storm.
In her later autobiography As I Am, reproduced on the ABBA Phenomenon website, Agnetha described the Australian tour as “the most incredible of all the things that I experienced with ABBA”.
“There was fever, there was hysteria, there were ovations, there were sweaty, obsessed crowds,” she said.
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“Sometimes it was awful. I felt as if they would get hold of me and I’d never get away again. It was as if I was going to be crushed. On occasions they would grab hold of us in the most unpleasant ways and there were times when we cried once we were inside the car.”
She said the “boiling, screaming, hysterical crowd” worried the group, and constant attention from fans, photographers and the band’s own film crew gave the group little respite.
Nonetheless I never felt that my life was in danger in Australia. Enthusiasm and warmth were always present too,” she said.
ABBA remains uncannily popular here and overseas thanks in part to Mamma Mia! : The Musical and two Mamma Mia! films.
Now, ABBA plans to release two new songs later this year.
Meldrum may have helped launch the Mamma Mia! phenomenon all those years ago, but he wrote in the Herald Sun in 2018: “The thing is, ABBA never really went away. Young people, old people, all people; everyone loves ABBA. They love the music, the band, the memories.
I also think the film and the play has kept the ABBA legacy alive.
“I’m sure the new songs will be amazing. They know how to make amazing pop music. I’m so excited they’re back together, making music.”
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