ABBA has been on stage every evening since May 2022 – at least that’s how it seems from a distance. In the arena in London, which was specially built for the “immersive live experience”, the so-called “Voyage” abbots perform the band’s biggest hits, while the actual musicians do not have to be there. Agnetha Fältskog now revealed that it was a dream come true for her not to have to perform and still be able to deliver shows.
The Swedish pop group has been pushed for a reunion for decades. They politely declined numerous offers – including a particularly generous proposal in 2000 that would have reportedly paid them $1 billion for a tour – but the musicians weren’t big fans of live performances. Benny Andersson estimated to the Guardian that the group played a maximum of 100 concerts in their first ten years together.
The live shows are said to have been torture, especially for Agnetha Fältskog. The singer suffered from severe stage fright. “No one who has ever stood in front of a hysterical audience can avoid a shiver running down their spine,” Fältskog wrote years later in her biography “As I Am: ABBA Before & Beyond.” “There’s a fine line between celebration and threat,” she explains. And their fear of flying, which was triggered when the band’s private jet was hit by a tornado during their US tour in 1979, made any planning of a major trip difficult. In this sense, ABBA’s “Voyage” shows are a dream come true for her: “I’m at home in my bed and in London at the same time. “That’s very cleverly done, isn’t it?” says the singer.
But as simple as it may sound, the preparations for the shows were anything but easy. After discussing the possibility of holograms and discarding the idea of a TV show, ABBA eventually teamed up with George Lucas, founder of Industrial Light & Magic – a visual effects company. A tour would have been too complex with the technology, so a separate hall was needed.
The construction of an entire arena with a capacity of 3,000 seats began. Planning the shows also required the involvement of film director Baillie Walsh and British Royal Ballet choreographer Wayne McGregor, a ten-piece live band, and the work of “800 animators from around the world.” The band members spent five weeks in the “Ealing Studios” in London to help create realistic abbatars. The “Voyage” show finally celebrated on May 26, 2022. premiere
The ladies of the band Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad stayed out of the associated promotion – this was the only way Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus received their approval. In the aforementioned interview with The Guardian, Andersson revealed: “It didn’t take much persuasion, but we had to tell both of them that they didn’t have to talk to you, Alexis,” he once told journalist Alexis Petridis. “Not with you personally – but with the media.”
Nevertheless, Fältskog wasn’t a fan of the work from the start, as she revealed in a recent interview about the release of her record “A+”. “I was a bit suspicious, I have to say. We have the whole of February [2020] worked to prepare – it doesn’t sound like that much, but it was like that, we performed the songs with all these technicians and all the things on your body. We worked really hard and I’ll be honest, I didn’t feel very good about it,” admits the artist. “But after maybe four or five days you get used to it: OK, I’ll go again. The music also helps because it gives us a very special feeling, and at some point I could just be proud – they really want to see us again.”
This is what their fans really want. The performance in London is going so well that a world tour has already been announced for the special live experience. How exactly this will be implemented is not yet known. For now, however, Fältskog is limiting himself to working on “A+”.