Funny Footnotes: Information gained while letting a Swedish flicka practice her English

Yes, it feels very weird to see some one, who you knew as a “regular” person, in a movie or a sophisticated music video! . . . especially my French soulmate, Vivi, who was in several comedy movies in the mid-to-late 1980s that can be seen on YouTube.

I dropped my ice tea glass in shock, when I saw Agnetha singing “SOS” on the stage of Saturday Night Live (above) . . . however, Vivi literally had a nervous breakdown in 2020. when she saw me featured on a PBS documentary with French subtitles!

I remembered Katie Couric as the short, spunky reporter at Channel 4 – Washington, DC . . . with an oversized head . . . who would come out to our farm in the Shenandoah Valley, wearing tom-boy clothes and a baseball cap! Suddenly, when I was back in Georgia, she had become the “It Gal” Her face was constantly on the covers of the magazines at the supermarket check out counter. No one even believed that I knew her.

by Richard L. Thornton, Architect & City Planner

(Image Above) Note Agnetha’s pronounced cheek bones and other Asiatic facial – body proportion features, back when I knew her. She definitely had substantial Sami heritage. So did I . . . but I would not know it until 2015, when a took a more sophisticated DNA test.

Because she was 1/4th Latin American, actually Tamulte Maya, Vivi (upper right) was usually typecast in supporting roles as a foreign college student, who was simultaneously naive and over-sexed. What made it double-weird was that she strongly resembled my mother, who was part Creek Indian, when she was in her 20s. Everyone thought that Vivi’s little daughter was my daughter!.

Getting back to funny things learned at a Swedish Restaurant

The band and my local Swedish friends did not leave the Midnight Sun dinner at the waterfront restaurant in Malmö until around 3 AM. That meant that we must have chatted for about 2 1/2 hours. However, I remember very little specific topics discussed that night. I had been in Sweden for a little less than two weeks and it has been a long time since that night. Besides, I had no clue that the two ladies in the band, would become international icons in three years.

I do remember one thing very vividly. When we stood up to move to another table, Agnetha remarked, “Åh! Du är lång! Det är väldigt bra!” (Oh! You are tall! That is very good.) She hesitated to think how to say this in English. “My former boyfriend, Bjorn, is short. He always wore special tall shoes, when we went places together.”

Actually, Bjorn would have been her estranged husband, not boyfriend. Neither Ani-frid nor Agnetha were wearing wedding rings that night. I didn’t know that they were married back then until 2022, during the publicity around the opening of the ABBA museum in London. Britt would not have introduced me (in a match-making sort of way) to Agnetha and Ani-frid, had she known they were married. That’s their business.

ABBA photo for a record album cover

The Dirty Little Secret

Agnetha is 5′-8″. I am 6′-3″. Bjorn is a hobbit with bad eyesight!

If you look at the Saturday Night Live screen shot, Bjorn (pretending to play the guitar) seems the same height as Agnetha. He is actually standing on a wooden platform, concealed by two persons. posing as diners at a restaurant.

During the five years that ABBA ruled the pop music world, Björn Ulvaeus always carefully positioned himself to appear at least as tall as Agnetha. On larger stages, Bjorn would conceal his props with large speakers or signs. On the few occasions, when he actually had to stand up front on the stage, he wore ridiculously tall (6″ – 8″) platform shoes.

Björn Ulvaeus is wearing 6″ (15 cm) platform shoes in this album photo.

Benny Andersson was the only real musician of the bunch

Benny wrote and produced most of their hit songs. At least in the early hits, it is him playing the organ. However, most of the instrumental background was by contract musicians. In live concerts, the stage bands and back up singers were usually hidden from the view of most of the audience. As far as performances go, ABBA was basically Ani-frid and Agnetha.

Neither Benny nor Bjorn had sufficient quality voices to solo. In fact, I can’t think of an ABBA hit in which you can discern their voices. While I was in Sweden, Bjorn sang in a quartet that was part of a music variety show on TV each week. The reason I remember him is that he had a mousy tenor voice. I speculated that he had a wealthy daddy, who made it possible for him to be on national TV.

The number one pop song in Sweden in June 1972 was “Secret Playground In My Mind” by British singer, Clint Holmes. The Midsommarsfest band brought the house down, when they sang it in Swedish. The 1,000+ college students there were tired of hearing songs in English or French.

My only other vivid memory of a 2 1/2 hour conversation that evening, so long ago, was after Agnetha had consumed several strong drinks and me, three glasses of wine. We sang “Secret Playground in My Mind” acappella, with me keeping beat on the restaurant table. I had been a drummer in a rock band in high school.

So, if you were alive in June 1972 and at a disco in Scandinavia that month, this is the song that you would have heard, over and over again, ad nauseum. The future band, ABBA. would be entering a music market in Europe, which was ripe for change.