ABBA ROBBED!
NEW RECORDING SESSIONS DELAYED BY SECRET AUDIO TAPES
"One and a half year ago, when a few audio tapes were stolen from my car, we hardly worried about that", says Björn. "The tapes only contained few songs from recording sessions from that time. However, time has shown us that those numbers have been very usful later". Since the tapes were stolen, a serious trade in secret tapes started among the fans.
"I admit that it has been my fault", says Björn. "In 1983, we had the plan to put a new album together with some songs we had recorded during 'The Visitors' sessions. I left my car only a few minutes unguarded, but when I returned back, someone had managed to take the tapes away. At first, we thought that it wasn't such a big deal as the elpee would be released only a few months later. We just ran the risk that songs would be played on the radio before their release date. That was not convenient, but surely not a disaster. It changed as we decided not to release that album. The sales of 'The Day Before You Came' and 'Under Attack' singles were very bad and besides that, the girls were working on their solo projects and Benny and I worked on the Chess-musical. That meant that the stolen tapes with unreleased material would be floating around without our approval".
What Björn and Benny feared happened. "In the course of last year, tapes with songs like 'Opus 10', 'I Am The City' and 'Just Like That' appeared on the market", says Benny. "In England, fans even payed incredible prices for them. The tapes were exported from Germany, so it could be plausible that the thief was a German fan".
Björn and Benny are obviously not very comfortable with all this, especially as it concerns unfinished songs. Some of the songs were used for the Chess-musical. The classical 'Opus 10' became 'Anthem', now performed by Tommy Korberg, and 'Every Man Needs A Helping Hand', that was originally sung by Agnetha, ended up being 'Heaven Help My Heart'.
Despite all this Björn and Benny stay optimistic. "It is indeed a very unpleasant situation", they say. "We had planned to return back to the studio with Agnetha and Frida, to record songs we had left from Chess. We would like to record them with ABBA. As soon as the rush about the stolen tapes has blown over we will strike back like never before". ABBA aren't finished yet!
Translation from a Dutch article (1985)
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