ABBA blog

I've never been very good at networking and making contacts, but networking and contacts were the reasons I ended up on my first-ever cruise last week. When I was writing my book ABBA On Record, former Atlantic Records president Jerry Greenberg put me in touch with so many people that I never knew had any connection to the ABBA story. One of them was Marvin Katz, the lawyer who represented Atlantic in the negotiations between the American record label and ABBA's Polar Music when the group was first signed to the label in 1974. I interviewed Marvin and his counterpart Bob Epstein for ABBA On Record, and to my delight Mr Katz kept in touch after the publication of the book.

One of his present-day clients is Alan Rubens, who runs StarVista Live, a company that arranges music-themed cruises. Marvin suggested to Alan that they should engage me on one of their cruises and, to cut to the chase, that's exactly what happened. I was asked to do four ABBA presentations on last week's '70s Rock & Romance cruise, and I gladly accepted – who wouldn't? Leaving chilly Stockholm for a week in the Caribbean was a bit of a no-brainer, plus it was great to get the chance to do my ABBA presentation abroad, which I've only rarely done before (one of the few times was at Missouri Southern State University in Joplin, Missouri, if you can believe that).

I wasn't quite sure how my presentations would be received, but I'm very pleased to report that I performed to almost-full rooms and got a warm and enthusiastic reception from the audience. I guess there were about 90% United States residents on the cruise, and since most Americans won't know their Agnetha from their Frida, I had no way of knowing how attractive this presentation would be in competition with actual bands playing live somewhere else on the ship. But they were really interested and clearly eager to learn more about the group's history. Gratifying, to put it mildly.

The cruise itself was also fab, of course, with plenty of great music being performed everywhere you went, plus you kept running into these stars of the 1970s in corridors, restaurants and so on. I chatted briefly with Nick Gilder, who was startled to learn that I was going to mention his name in one of my ABBA presentations. The reason for his name-check was that I refer to Mike Chapman producing Agnetha's Wrap Your Arms Around Me album, and so, to connect my presentation to the cruise, I thought I should also make reference to any Chapman-produced artists onboard. I remembered that Mr Gilder's 1978 U.S. number one Hot Child In The City was a Chapman production, and although I was 99% certain that Gilder was pronounced with a hard "G", you can never be quite certain, so I asked him about it, and he confirmed that I was right. Very handy to have access to the man himself!

I attended quite a number of concerts – for instance, Don Felder, America and Alan Parsons Project – which were all very good indeed. The cover and tribute bands were also great; there certainly is no shortage of excellent musicians out there and they did a very good job of performing the songs made famous by other artists. The cruise was particularly interesting for me, as many of the acts were very popular in the United States in the 1970s but had limited impact in Europe, certainly in Sweden. I mean, I don't recall ever hearing a song by The Marshall Tucker Band, but they had eight Top 40 albums on the Billboard chart, and one Top 20 hit. To some extent, then, being on the cruise was like experiencing a parallel 1970s music universe. And I don't think I've heard so many guitar solos in one week!

On the subject of guitars, I very much enjoyed the guitar master class conducted by Jeff "Skunk" Baxter (Steely Dan, The Doobie Brothers, the guitar solo on Donna Summer's Hot Stuff). He had a lot of insightful things to say about the importance of listening to commercial jingles and approaching your guitar solos as if they were sax solos: if I recall correctly, his solos on Steely Dan's My Old School are supposedly examples of the latter.

During the cruise we also visited the islands of Sint Maarten/Saint Martin and Antigua. I went on a guided tour of Sint Maarten/Saint Martin, which was quite interesting – and I even spotted some real live iguanas. On Antigua I went swimming and had a drink in the beach bar: I'm usually too restless and generally sun-averse to spend much time at a beach, but I have to admit hanging out at that particular beach is something I could get used to.

It was a fun, just slightly surreal week, and now that I'm back in Stockholm, facing a somewhat grey and chilly spring, it all feels a little like, "did that really happen?" But I certainly wouldn't mind if it happened again.