Abba explain the sequinned jumpsuits

So it turns out Abba wore those godawful stage clothes as a tax dodge:

According to Abba: The Official Photo Book, published to mark 40 years since they won Eurovision with Waterloo, the band's style was influenced in part by laws that allowed the cost of outfits to be deducted against tax – so long as the costumes were so outrageous they could not possibly be worn on the street.

So if you have a bunch of clothes that nobody in their right minds would be seen wearing under normal circumstances, you save a bunch on tax? Finally, Liam Gallagher's Pretty Green range is explained.

Bookmarks: Abba

There's a great post on Richard Williams' blog about his role in Abba's rise to world domination. It even has a walk-on part for The Human League, in the Melody Maker offices:

“Sorry, Ian,” I said, “but I really have to listen to this — it’s the new Abba single.” A look of horror crossed his face. The two people with him swung round in amazement. They were Phil Oakey and Joanne Catherall from the Human League, then at the very beginning of their journey to pop stardom.

The Times: Teaching Abba about gay icons

Enjoy Pete "R" Paphides column while you don't have to stick a quid in a slot, for today he meets Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus. While mainly noteworthy for how the reunion question is answered, the exchange about how gays love Abba is priceless:

[Björn says "]For instance, we never thought in our wildest dreams that we would be gay icons.”

I put it to him that Fältskog might have had something to do with the whole gay icons thing. “But why?” Ulvaeus counters. “She’s a very heterosexual woman. I know.”

That’s not how it works, I tell him. “How does it work, then?” he asks. Well, it all goes back to her not looking happy. You could tell that she was suffering inside, but she carried on in the name of showbiz. Ulvaeus remains unsure: “Hmm. It could be the outfits and the Eurovision.”

And the reunion questions? After thirty years of instant rejection, when Pete raises the idea, he doesn't get hit straight in the face with cold water:

Andersson, by contrast, seems deeper in thought. “Yeah, why not?” he nods. As if working through the logistics, he adds: “I don’t know if the girls sing anything any more. I know Frida [Anni-Frid Lyngstad] was [recently] in the studio.”

If they are hoofing about the stage in white jump suits - waistbands now elasticated - in a year or two, it might well be down to Pete. I'm not sure if he'll be hailed as a hero or treated like the guy who opened Pandora's Box.

Hall Of Fame shortlist announced

Who'll be given the increasingly-watered-down honour of an induction into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame? Some of this lot:
Abba
LL Cool J
The Red Hot Chili Peppers
Kiss
Darlene Love
Jimmy Cliff
Donna Summer
Laura Nyro
The Chantels
The Stooges
Genesis
The Hollies

It's hard to believe that Kiss - precisely the sort of dreadful good-idea-turned-into-grim-cash-machine that the Hall Of Fame trades in - aren't already in there.

YouTube vs the PRS: PRS summons a mob

The YouTube - PRS dispute is, let's be clear, about the level of royalty paid by the video host to the royalties agency. That is all it as about. YouTube place one value on a play of a video; PRS believe it's something different.

You might not guess that from watching the PRS "Fair Play For Creators" site, where songwriters are given the chance to put their case directly, and have a bit of a moan about Google:

Just remove advertising from the 'offending' pages. These pages would earn no money...Google ARE becoming evil.

Roy Williams (Nervous Records), PRS for Music publisher - 24 March 2009

Roy seems to be referring to Google AdWords appearing on sites which allegedly host unlicensed music - a talking point that seems to have bubbled up from nowhere in the last couple of days. And, yes, although he might have completely oversimplified the idea (you can tell an offending page, presumably, by the tiny Skull and Crossbones in the address bar) it's not a bad demand. And one that Google complies with, when sites breaching its AdWrods terms and conditions are reported.

And, much more importantly, one which has nothing to do with the YouTube-PRS skirmish.

PRS for Music exists to ensure songwriters and composers are paid their rightful reward for the music they create. It is not a commercial organisation, but a not-for-profit collective of songwriters, composers and publishers. Google is a big commercial entity which must properly pay the very people who make the YouTube service a success.

Jools Holland, (Broadcaster - Squeeze), PRS for Music songwriter - 24 March 2009

Well, yes, Google is a big commercial entity. That's hardly relevant, though, is it? If someone was booked to go on the Late Show's Later With Jools Holland and demanded a fee based on the number of hits the BBC News website gets worldwide, rather than the audience the specific programme on BBC 2 gets, you might wonder if your guest had lost control of their faculties.

YouTube, financially, isn't a success; it's doing alright, but not printing cash when you take into account its scale. And the company does want to pay, the dispute is over what a fair rate is.

And why is it significant that PRS is "not for profit"? Sure, it makes it sound a little like a charity, which it isn't, and it's lovely that PRS only creams off a little over one pound out of every ten to pay for its administration, and luxury central London offices, and expensive rebranding operations, and campaigning websites. But "PRS is not for profit and Google makes a profit" is hardly a convincing argument, and until PRS starts to campaign for EMI to be nationalised, we're chalking that one up to attempts to disguise the row as being about 'how much money'?

Abba are angry, too:

I get cross when internet companies paint the picture of a faceless and immensely powerful 'intellectual property industry' as their main enemy just because it suits them. Those under attack are people of flesh and blood, who are passionate about their profession. When I speak with younger colleagues about their current situation I feel a strong sense of compassion for them and I understand their anxiety about the future. Some of them feel that their work is being degraded. There are those crusaders for the right to share files who say: 'Why don't they go on tour and sing for their supper'. This argument shows a staggering ignorance of the fact that so many of the people who write the songs have more often than not never been in contact with artist life. They are producers and songwriters, full stop.

Björn Ulvaeus (Abba), songwriter - 24 March 2009

Well, yes... when, exactly did Google or YouTube characterise the PRS as part of the "intellectual property industry" (even although, of course, that's exactly the industry that PRS is in, even if Abba aren't.)

Bjorn is right, of course: there's less money about for songwriters. But isn't that a structural thing, a side-effect of music going from being scarce and distributed through very limited, tightly controlled channels to being not-scarce, and distributed through an unlimited range of outlets beyond anyone's control? Yes, it's terrible that that makes music - in a strict financial sense - less valuable than it was. But why would you conclude that YouTube has a moral duty to recompense on the basis of the 1989 music industry model instead of the 2009 one?

It becomes increasingly obvious that this is the problem facing YouTube: songwriters and musicians are selling a product whose financial price has tanked, and need someone to blame. It's unfortunate they're blaming one of the few companies which seems to genuinely be interested in trying to help them extract as much value as possible from their songs.

Pete Waterman, at least, does put some figures into his argument:

YouTube is not alone in the online hall of shame where the worthy notion of greater consumer choice is used as a cloak to disguise the fact that copyright infringement happens on a grand scale.

I co-wrote 'Never Gonna Give You Up', which Rick Astley performed in the eighties, and which must have been played more than 100 million times on YouTube - owner Google. My PRS for Music income in the year ended September 2008 was £11.

Music videos and music generally is at the very heart of User Generated Content sites. It is the hard work and creative endeavour of songwriters and musicians everywhere that has been the bedrock upon which many of these websites have been built, creating along the way huge value for their owners. As well as arguing with them over royalty rates, we should be fighting them to get proper recognition for the part we've played in building their businesses.

Pete Waterman, (co-writer 'Never Gonna Give You Up'), PRS for Music songwriter - 24 March 2009

Ignore the first paragraph, which has nothing whatsoever to do with trying to agree a royalty rate with a specific company - it's like BAT insisting that Tesco pay more, wholesale, for fags, to make good its losses when people flog knock-off tabs - and instead, let's look at his figures.

He's done a lot of smudging, of course - he doesn't quite say what period the payment actually covers (was it before Rickrolling really took off?), and his claim of "more than 100 million times" seems a bit unlikely - as of now, the two most popular versions of the video on YouTube have hit about 35 million between them, so "more than 100 million" by the end of September might be a bit of an inflation.

Let's also remember that YouTube counts starts of the play, not full play, and given that Rickrolling was a gotcha moment, it's probably that most of those plays were by people who didn't really want to see the song and would have only heard the first few seconds before pulling a wry grin and clicking elsewhere.

And there's three songwriters for the track. So that does treble the amount to £33, plus ten per cent which went to PRS to pay for its staplers and staff, so that's £36. Not a massive amount.

To be fair, Waterman does concede that the use of Astley on YouTube in this way generated massive mainstream media coverage, and lots of events using the tune as well, bringing with it much more substantial PRS earnings that, but for YouTube, he would never have seen. Oh... hang on, he doesn't, does he?

Still, £36 for millions of views. Is that much?

Consider this: Radio One pays £18 per minute for music paid on its most popular programmes. So, two plays of a three minute song on Chris Moyles show, with an audience of 7.5 million, equates to £108 for the equivalent of 15 million single plays; ten per cent off for PRS comes to about £98; between three people, that's a little over £33 for Pete from 15 million "views". Three times as much as he earned from YouTube, perhaps. But again: not an enormous sum of money.

Also: didn't the payment of which Waterman is complaining come through an agreement negotiated by the PRS in the first place?

It's great that songwriters are joining the debate. But all the while they're blaming Google for the world having changed, it's not really going to get us very much further, is it?

Abba don't fight - Abba

The perpetual myth that Abba - especially the women - fought like a stoats in a stovepipe hat refuses to die; Agnetha and Anni-Frid have had another go at killing it off:

"A lot has been written about how Agnetha and I fought and quarreled with each other. There is absolutely no truth in that," Lyngstad was quoted as saying by tabloid Aftonbladet. "Of course we competed, but to good effect."
[...]
"No, we didn't fight. But we have to live [with] a whole lot of such misinterpretations," Faltskog said.

The pair were accepting a lifetime achievement award; it's probably they used the prize as some sort of weapon to hit each other with as soon as nobody was looking.

Gennaro Castaldo Watch: The silver linings

With Woolworths crashing down and screwing up Zavvi's distribution, it's no surprise that Gennaro Castaldo, comment-priest of HMV, is looking for the joy amongst the gloom:

Gennaro Castaldo, of HMV, said: “All things Mamma Mia! were going to be huge this Christmas anyway — especially the DVD — but, with all the doom and gloom around right now, you get half a feeling that a lot more of us may turn to the sunny optimism of Abba’s music.”

Oh, yes, who wouldn't want to try and cheer themselves up with the optimism of One Of Us, or Knowing Me Knowing You or even The Winner Takes It All. It's dancealongadivorcetastic, Gennaro.

Abba Museum arrival pushed back

The world must wait a little longer for the opening of the first ever official Abba Museum, with those in charge of the project blaming building problems:

[P]roject co-founder Ulf Westman said Thursday the renovation of the building will take longer than expected because it is "more complicated than what was predicted earlier."

They could have done with Sarah Beeney on the project, really - she'd have told them that trying to cram four separate jump suit galleries into the space would cause unnecessary delays and lead to problems with local planners.

Gennaro Castaldo Watch: The quotes they whistle as they leave the cinema

Abba have had their first ever US top ten album - although, actually, they haven't, as it's the Mamma Mia soundtrack and thus, more accurately, Meryl Streep's first top ten album.

Still, Gennaro Castaldo has something to say about it:

"The music featured in a film is increasingly a key component of its success, so it's no surprise that more and more people are buying soundtrack albums for the great songs they often feature."

Searing insight. The music featured in a film is a key component of its success. Erm, especially with Mamma Mia being a musical. That might well make the music incredibly important.

Gennaro Castaldo Watch: Abba are popular

Mama Mia! It's the summer hit of the summer, and trailing in the wake of My Big Fat Muriel's Wedding come Abba songs, trickling into the lower reaches of the charts. And if something not-especially-unusual happens - even down the bottom of the single charts - Gennaro Castaldo has an opinion to share:

"Abba are one of HMV's consistent best-selling artists, up there with the likes of the Beatles and Elvis, and it doesn't take much to spark a bit of an Abba revival - let's face it, most of us would pick them as our 'guilty pleasure'.

"Right now, their sales are rocketing again thanks to the huge exposure being given to their music by the success of the Mamma Mia film.

"Amazingly, Abba Gold is back in our top 10, while the cast recording soundtrack to Mamma Mia itself could easily end up as our biggest-selling album this week.

"Further evidence of the band's enduring appeal comes in the form of the singles charts, which show the likes of Dancing Queen, The Winner Takes It All, Gimme, Gimme, Gimme and Mamma Mia all threatening to re-enter the official UK top 100 on the strength of downloads alone."

We're struggling to understand how a consistent selling act's best-of collection selling strongly during a period of attention on them is then described as "amazing". And if "most" people would chose them as a guilty pleasure, what is there to be guilty about, exactly?

Can't we all be a little more like Abba?

In an age when the only reason bands don't reunite is either because they're all dead, or haven't yet split up, let's salute Abba for staying down:

Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson told The Sunday Telegraph there was "simply no motivation to regroup".

"We would like people to remember us as we were, young, exuberant and full of ambition," Ulvaeus told the newspaper.

Of course, there's always the Lydon option, of pretending to still be young, exuberant and full of ambition.

My, my, how could we forget you?

Taking a role in the money-in-the-bank Mamma Mia might have seemed like a shrewd move for an ageing bloke low on work and in need of a pension scheme. But you'd be wrong. Why, for Pierce Brosnan, it was nothing short of bravery:

"All of us put our neck out on the line for this," he told BBC Breakfast. [...]
"It was the last thing I expected to be offered," said the actor, who played secret agent 007 in four Bond films.

"To see an ex-MI6 thespian singing and dancing in the world of Mamma Mia... people are going to howl."

We've just checked, and, yes, he did just inflate 'pretending to be a spy' into being 'an MI6 thespian'. Fancy going from a multiplex pantomime piece of fluff into another multiplex pantomime piece of fluff. However will we contain ourselves?

It's as unlikely as, say, that bloke from Remmington Steele signing on to appear in Vanilla Gorilla. IMDB explains the plot of that forthcoming treat:

An albino gorilla in captivity uses sign language to communicate his plight to a little girl who befriends him, setting in motion an international escape plan.

We might not have done howling yet.

Abbaobit: Ola Brunkert

Spanish police have discovered the body of Ola Brunkert, Abba's session drummer.

Born in Örebro, Sweden, in 1946, Brunkert was the only person outside the four regular members of the group to appear on every Abba recording. His background, though, was not pop, but jazz - he'd been a member of Opus III (not to be confused with the British Techno act of the same name)in the 1960s before starting work as a session man.

He went on to provide the drums on some of the biggest-selling hits of the 1970s, and joined Abba on tour on several occasions.

His death was macabre, but - according to Spanish Police - nothing more than a terrible accident; he appears to have bled to death after cutting himself on a broken plate glass door.

War On Terror meets Waterloo

We're not entirely sure it's the sort of revelation that really justifies the Mail On Sunday's excitement - possibly, Sir Alan West, Gordon Brown's anti-terrorist chief, is having an affair. And if he is, it isn't with one of Abba. But he does know Anni-Frid Lyngstad, which is enough for the paper to insist she's been "dragged into" a sex-scandal. Or, as the paper puts it:

The anti-terror chief, the girl from Abba, and his secret love affair

Quite why it's such a scandal that a grown-up is having sex with someone who isn't their wife - regardless of what job he does - is a bit of a mystery. If he was in charge of a sexual probity for the government, maybe. Or if he was having sex with Osama Bin Laden, maybe then.

Beyond the non-story in itself, though, we're not sure how simply being friends with someone constitutes being "dragged in" to a scandal that isn't actually scandalous.

"This is a jumpsuit... this is another jumpsuit"

Coming attractions: Opening in Stockholm in 2009, an Abba Museum:

"We're going to open the ABBA museum from June 3 to 7 (2009), it will be an inaugural week," said Ulf Westman, who mastermind the world's first ABBA museum along with his wife, Ewa Wigenheim-Westman.

"It will be an international museum with a lot of technological and multimedia aspects," he said, with visitors invited to take part in various activities related to the group's heyday in the 1970s.

It's not known if this will include divorcing.