ABBA as soon as sang about having wealth of their 1976 tune “Cash, Cash, Cash:” “All of the issues I might do if I had a bit of cash / It is a wealthy man’s world.”
In 2000, ABBA was provided some huge cash — $1 billion to be actual — in change for reuniting. It could have equated to roughly $250 million per member, however the group firmly turned it down.
ABBA had final carried out dwell in 1982. At that time, it felt clear to the band’s members that it was the top of the highway.
“We had a bit of firm, the 4 of us collectively,” Benny Andersson recalled to The Guardian in 2021. “All the pieces ABBA earned went into that firm and we break up it 4 methods, regardless of who did what. After which, once we stated, ‘Effectively, that is it, guys, let’s do one thing else for a bit after which we will return maybe in a few years and see if we’re nonetheless alive,’ that was that: we bought the corporate. We didn’t anticipate ABBA to proceed, I can promise you that.”
However that did not imply ABBA’s title was totally faraway from the general public consciousness. Cowl bands earned their success, motion pictures integrated their music and a compilation album referred to as ABBA Gold: Biggest Hits turned one of many best-selling albums of all time with some 30 million copies bought. Folks needed ABBA.
It has been broadly reported {that a} $1 billion supply was made to the band in 2000 to reunite, however nothing ever got here of it. For one factor, as Bjorn Ulvaeus identified to The Guardian, it wasn’t an actual supply.
“Somebody instructed us one thing a few sponsored tour, happening the highway, doing 100 gigs, but it surely was by no means placed on paper,” he defined. “However then, everybody knew we wouldn’t do it.”
Watch ABBA’s Music Video for ‘Cash, Cash, Cash’
That was probably as a result of performing dwell had by no means been ABBA’s favourite a part of the job. “Nobody who has skilled going through a hysterical viewers can keep away from feeling the shivers of their backbone,” Agnetha Faltskog would inform her biographer. “It’s a skinny line between celebration and menace.”
So far as ABBA was involved, they’d already checked relentlessly touring the world off their record of issues to do.
“We stated no as a result of they needed 250 reveals or one thing, it was unimaginable,” Faltskog instructed Radio Instances in 2013. “No likelihood. No likelihood. We had completed it.”
READ MORE: When ABBA Moved Into Making Motion pictures
In lots of circumstances, Ulvaeus emphasised to The Sunday Telegraph in 2008, it is merely greatest for a band to give up whereas they’re forward, no matter how a lot cash is on the desk.
“We are going to by no means seem on stage once more,” he stated. “There may be merely no motivation to re-group. Cash shouldn’t be an element and we wish individuals to recollect us as we have been. Younger, exuberant, filled with power and ambition. I keep in mind Robert Plant saying Led Zeppelin have been a canopy band now as a result of they cowl all their very own stuff. I believe that hit the nail on the pinnacle.”
ABBA’s Eventual Reunification
ABBA did ultimately reunite for a tour. Type of. After many months of improvement, they debuted Voyage in 2022, a digital recreation of themselves utilizing avatars. The digital live performance expertise has been placing on reveals ever since, grossing over $100 million in 2023 alone.
Not a billion, however price the entire onerous work.
“I dreamed of this for years,” Anni-Frid Lyngstad, aka Frida, stated to the BBC on the premiere of the present. “We love our music, we like to sing.”
Watch a Promotional Clip for ABBA’s ‘Voyage’ Live performance
Wanting again at the perfect songs from ’70s.
Gallery Credit score: UCR Workers
