Photo: David Bloom
Thank you for the music “If someone had told me in 1980, that in 40 years’ time, there would be an ABBA Museum in Stockholm and a huge exhibition in London about this group, you’d have blown my mind, but that’s how it is.” By Paula Hammond
We’re in the O2 – London’s vast domeshaped entertainment venue – for the launch of the ABBA: Super Troupers exhibition. Outside, the Greenwich Peninsula is stony grey, but inside things have a distinctly Swedish colour scheme, right down to the yellow and blue complementary croissants. Ingmarie Halling is the creative director of ABBA The Museum, and her connection to the band goes back to its early days. “In the ‘70s, I worked making wigs and costumes for ballet and theatrical companies in Sweden, and my boyfriend 114 | Issue 133 | February 2020
at the time played guitar with ABBA. So, when they were doing a concert in Sweden in 1975, I got to meet them and Frida and I became friends,” Halling explains. “Then, when ABBA were going to Australia in ‘77, she called me and asked if I wanted to come along and help in the dressing room with the costumes, and I said yes. So that was the start of it.” For Halling, the job was a crash course in life on the road. One day, she was washing costumes in the sink in her hotel room, and the other, she was touring London in style. “This was London in
‘77,” she laughs, “and I had my per diem but hadn’t touched it. So I decided to go shopping and asked Benny if I could borrow one of the runners’ cars. Well, there was a party that night, and I was late to bed and had only had about four hours of sleep when the receptionist called to say my car was waiting outside. I jumped into my pants and T-shirt, as you can when you’re 25, and stepped out of this grand hotel, with these long, imposing stairs – my hair a total mess – to find a white Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow with a driver in white outfit waiting outside! When I got back, Benny asked mischievously if everything had been alright, and all I could say was ‘Yes, yes, keep on doing that!’” It’s that sense of fun that, for many, epitomises the ABBA sound. This is music