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Knowing me, knowing you
Blackmore’s admiration for ABBA is well documented. Now it turns out that the feeling was sort of mutual. Total Guitar has a curious interview with Swedish session man Janne Schaffer, who recorded on 50 of the 98 tracks released by the band in their heyday.
What were the most guitar-heavy tracks you recorded with ABBA?
There are three that come to mind. Rock’n Roll Band, Watch Out and King Kong Song, which are from the first and second albums. If you listen to them, you can hear a lot of heavy rock guitars in there. We’d been listening to Deep Purple and similar things.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
I clearly remember that Ritchie was taken by Agneta in ABBA, it was a story going in swedish music press in the mid to late seventies. But at the same time.. everyone was taken by Agneta.
December 11th, 2021 at 22:39A busy man he is. Thanks for the link, interesting times indeed. So much music to be involved with, a special place in music history. So many wonderful ‘session’ musicians that many of us may never hear about or more to the point, never know about. We do hear them on certain music & it is nice to see who they are. Cheers.
December 11th, 2021 at 23:43Pete Townsend of The Who is a big Abba fan, too.
December 12th, 2021 at 05:20And let us not forget that Jon Lord & Frida recorded the wonderful song “The sun will shine again”
December 12th, 2021 at 08:11Napoleon looks as though he’s using the urinal!
It reminded me of the Waterloo parody penned by a schoolfriend back in the day – Public Loo – extolling the virtues of the public lavatory with lines like,
‘How can I ever refuse,
I can #### whenever I choose.’
I’ll understand if you think this is inappropriate.
December 12th, 2021 at 10:47In the seventies I have been to a number of Janne Shaffer concerts (featuring the late Bjørn J:son Lindh) in Copenhagen and could well hear Blackmore’s influence in Shaffer’s playing. Great times.
December 12th, 2021 at 12:46I have been a “Die hard “ Deep Purple fan for almost 40 years but before I heard Deep Purple for the first time in the mid 80’s I was listening to any kind of music without really paying much attention to it, one day my parents bought ABBA’S Chiquitita single, this was in the late 70’s early 80’s (in Northern Mexico) everybody at home played Chiquita over and over until one day I looked at the single record and noticed there was a B side to it (I was only seven years old) called Love Light y played it and boom!💥 I heard this great series of heavy,aggressive guitar notes but yet so melodic, that was my introduction to Rock music,thanks to ABBA
December 12th, 2021 at 16:40I think it’s only one of Ritchie’s jokes.
December 13th, 2021 at 00:36Musicians rate Deep Purple is what I’m hearing here. 😀
December 13th, 2021 at 00:40Does anyone else hear some similarities of Abba’s ‘Voulez-Vous” in parts of “Gates of Babylon” ? Hmmm.
December 13th, 2021 at 12:32@ 10….. And Stargazer has hints of Waterloo 😯
December 13th, 2021 at 13:14Very well observed, Rick
December 14th, 2021 at 11:48@11 There’s always one in every crowd.
@12 Thanks
December 14th, 2021 at 14:10I like ABBA for much the same reason I like Deep Purple, the classical music structure that permeates the songs of both. While both bands adapted American music, they retained something very European in their interpretation. If ABBA und DP were cars, you’d say they are both “exquisitely engineered”, good craftsmanship.
And it is true, anybody who knows a little about music theory automatically gets drawn into ABBA’s music because it is such a good example of well-applied classical composition rules.
Also, Scandinavia as a cultural region has always had a special affinity to DP, their music reigned supreme there in the early to mid-70ies und inspired countless musicians, Lars U. and Yngwie M. among them, the Nightwish and Opeth guys (& girls) too, that wasn’t/isn’t a coincidence.
Finally, Ritchie’s love for ABBA is not a put-on at all, he really likes them and was vocal about that already in the 70ies (eg in interviews re the promotion of the Down To Earth album und why the intro to Eyes Of The World sounded like ABBA – it actually does, neo-classical Benny Andersson piano-style flourishes courtesy of Don Airey and all!).
Lest we forget, in many an ABBA song a hard rock tune lies unsalvaged …
https://youtu.be/5Te3TSCzSmE
December 14th, 2021 at 14:24And the announcement of the new record launch was done on the same date for Abba and DP…with alot more media coverage for the Abba one this time.
December 14th, 2021 at 16:47@8 – Nope, Ritchie has always spoken highly of Abba because of their sense of melody.
December 26th, 2021 at 12:30