ABBA The Complete Recording Sessions - A Review

In 1994, author Carl Magnus Palm published a book titled ABBA The Complete Recording Sessions, going into analytical detail on the creation of so many of ABBA's hits.  And in 2017, nearly two decades after the book's release, a new revised version of the book was released, and for many ABBA fans, this book was like a holy grail, for a lack of a better term.  I was 16 years old when the 2017 edition of the book came out, and I wanted that book more than anything. I knew the book held information on demos, early mixes, and recording sessions that I so badly wanted to have in my possession, but being 16 years old, I didn't have the funds or ability to just drop $100+ on the book, and by the time I did have some funds saved up to my name, the book was no longer in print. 

In July last year, almost 10 years later, after lots of requests and signs of interest from fans, myself included, a kickstarter campaign was launched for a second revised and expanded version of the book.  I was among one of the first to pledge, and the goal was thankfully reached, and a year later, the book was published, and my copy arrived!

I immediately got to reading it, which I spent the last 3 weeks doing, scouring every single page with a strong intensity.  And after finishing the book, I attest that this book is a holy grail, but you definitely have to be an ABBA and music nerd to fully enjoy the book.  There are a lot of music terms that are used throughout the book, types of music sequences and pieces, that I don't know as I have no music background at all other than being a lover and listener of music.  Like until I looked it up, I had no idea what Obbligato meant, for example.  However that's not necessarily an issue, as I still absorbed so much information and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

The book goes through ABBA's entire music career, from 1972-1982, featuring the band's entire catalog, but also includes information on music they made before the band was even formed, but in collaboration with another member.  Like Bjorn and Benny's songs they wrote together, or Benny providing keyboards for the Hootenanny Singer's song, Blomman.  And then once Agnetha and Frida entered the story, we have information on album sessions for Agnetha and Frida's solo albums from 1970 and beyond.

I loved reading insights about when certain pieces of music were written and then later developed into Bjorn & Benny's music and subsequently ABBA songs, as well as how a piece of music from early on would get tried out through different demo versions before landing as an ABBA song we are all familiar with.  For example, the author asserts a high plausibility that the melody for Santa Rosa was among the first couple of tunes Bjorn and Benny wrote on the night Bjorn's father allowed them to utilize his office rather than the Ulvaeus family's basement to write music together back in 1966/67.  Other insights that really fascinated me was how Benny subconsciously reused the first few bars of the intro to 1970's Inga Theme for I Am The City from 1982.  Also how a small portion of Dream World, the line "dream [world] you’ve been living in a…" ended up becoming the line "...lips, close your eyes and see with…" in Kisses of Fire. And another fascinating insight was the melody corresponding to the line "when you ask me to come over baby, you know I will" in the 1982 demo Givin' A Little Bit More was recycled into the verses of TLC by Gemini, also that an instrumental melody from Sang Till Gorel was eventually turned into Bed of Roses by BAO.  The way I had heard all of these songs so many times and have never noticed that is just so cool, and I really enjoyed coming to these realizations.

Another part of the book that I thoroughly enjoyed was descriptions of all the early attempts at ABBA songs we are familiar with, like an early version of Happy Hawaii that was more of an Agnetha solo rather than featuring both ladies singing and featured a transistor radio effect on portions of it, all the different attempts at writing Move On, featuring more of an American country feel sort of like how Bjorn's spoken verse ended up sounding in the finished version, an early campfire sing-along version of Eagle, and an early version of Hole In Your Soul that was titled High On Your Love where Frida and Agnetha would sing one verse and Bjorn would sing the other.

I also loved the mini-essays that would share histories and biographies on the different musicians and music studios ABBA would utilize throughout the 70s and 80s.  I really appreciate knowing more about the session musicians like Rutger Gunnarson, Lasse Wellander, Ola Brunkert, Per Lindvall, Janne Schaffer, Ulf Andersosn, and many many more, who all played very important roles in making ABBA's legendary music.  

While I do understand why the author chose to not include information on ABBA's 2021 comeback, as he included a Complete Recording Sessions style section featuring that information at the end of his ABBA on Record book, which was added before he knew he would be doing this revised version of the book, I personally think it would have been nice to have all the information in one complete book.  But that's my personal opinion.

I also appreciate that the book clears up a couple of misconceptions and questions, one being that Agnetha and Frida provided the backing vocals to Polar artist Rock Olga's songs, specifically her songs Still and What You've Done To Me, rather instead they're done by Annica Risberg-Malm, Kerstin Bagge, and Liza Öhman, as well as which songs on Agnetha's 1975 album featured any ABBA member on backing vocals, that being Frida on Var Det Med Dej? (although Bjorn is listed as a backing vocalist on the album, and either I missed or it wasn't included, but there wasn't any backing vocals listed for the Swedish version of SOS, so I'm assuming he is on that track but not Frida..? idk), and also that the demo of Every Good Man was in fact a demo for Chess that Agnetha happily came up to provide demo vocals for, not that the song was an early ABBA demo.

And there is so much more cool stuff documented in this book that I couldn't give all the details for even if I wanted to! 

I know in the past I have criticized Carl Magnus Palm's books, specifically the ones that are attempts at a complete history and biography on the band members, and I still hold by my opinions that those books have too much tabloid garbage mixed in and include too much of the author's personal opinion mixed in where the book claims to be fact and truth and not opinions... but those issues that I have are not present in this book.  (maybe there's a little bit of a bias against ABBA's manager Stig in some of the essays, but very minor.)  

This book definitely goes to show how much dedication ABBA put to their craft, and how at the slightest indication that they were not liking how a song was turning out, they would scrap it, even if the song was sounding promising. It further emphasizes that the chances of Bjorn and Benny ever agreeing to a Beatles-style Anthology compilation are pretty much null, which is such a shame because I don't think any of these early demos and mixes are a risk to ABBA's legacy or make them look bad....  Which again is such a shame because I want to hear them so bad, and that is part of the reason why I wanted this book in the first place because it's the closest thing I can have to actually hearing them...

Overall, I really really enjoyed this book, and I'm so glad to have had the opportunity to get my hands on this book.  Again, this book is definitely for a very niche audience, one that the casual ABBA fan probably wouldn't understand, but it's definitely the right book for me and plenty of people seem to agree with me!  And what a joy it is that my name is in the book too as one of the crowdfunders, found at page 504 in case you were interested haha.

I'm not entirely sure if this book is still available to purchase, but if it is, if you have the means, I wholeheartedly think this book is a must if you want to know all the thorough details on how ABBA's music was made.

If I had to rate this book, it's definitely a 9.5/10 from me!