Stikkan "Stig" Anderson, former manager of Abba

[Tristanne McLaughlin]

Is it true he died on the 12th?????? This is what the UK Times said:

STIG ANDERSON

Stikkan "Stig" Anderson, former manager and producer of the Swedish pop
group Abba, died on September 12 of a heart attack aged 66. He was born on
January 25, 1931.

Stig Anderson was the Scandinavian Svengali who gave Sweden its biggest
export after Volvo cars. Agnetha Falkstog, Bjorn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson
and Anni-Frid Lyngstad were respected pop performers in their native region
but almost wholly unknown outside it, until Anderson launched them on the
world under the acronym Abba in 1973. The following year the quartet won
the Eurovision Song Contest with Waterloo, so beginning a meteoric career
that was to make them the biggest-selling pop act since the Beatles.

Stikkan Anderson was born in the small Swedish town of Hova, 200 miles
south of Stockholm. He left school at 13, but completed his studies at
night classes and went on to become a primary school teacher. In his spare
time he wrote songs, and performed with his own group, Stig Anderson and
his Mashed Creampuffs.

By the early 1960s Anderson was beginning to enjoy some success as a
songwriter, and he soon had his own publishing and management companies.
One of the acts discovered by him and his partner Bengt Bernhag was the
West Bay Singers, with Bjorn Ulvaeus as lead singer; renamed the Hootenanny
Singers in a nod to the British folk and skiffle boom, they made a Swedish
version of Tom Jones's The Green Green Grass of Home.

The nucleus of Abba was formed soon after when Ulvaeus teamed up with Benny
Andersson, keyboard player with the Hep Cats, Sweden's answer to the
Beatles. The two men then collaborated with Anderson on an album called
Lycka, in which the women who were to become their partners also
participated.

The quartet (Ulvaeus's marriage to Falkstog was followed by Andersson's to
Lyngstad) entered the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time,
unsuccessfully, with Ring Ring in 1973. The next year, when the contest was
held in Brighton, they entered again with Waterloo; this time, although
they started as 20-1 outsiders, they won.

Anderson had never been in any doubt that they would. His determination to
carry off the prize, and the shrewdness with which he set about it, were
evident in every aspect of the group's winning performance. They had
shortened their name now (from Bjorn, Benny, Anna and Frieda) to the more
memorable Abba, and even the title of their polished and catchy new song
was calculated to stick in the minds of as many listeners as possible.

"We chose the theme of Waterloo because we wanted something that would be
recognisable anywhere in the world. Names that people understood even in
Japan or Bulgaria," Anderson said. For the same reason, the song was sung
in the sort of cheerfully rudimentary English that Anderson had often
employed for his lyrics in the past: "To sing in Swedish would be suicide."

Presentation was no less calculated and slick, with the orchestral
conductor at the contest being persuaded to dress up in Napoleonic costume
when accompanying the group. And in preparation for the success that he
felt was assured, Anderson had had 100,000 copies of Waterloo distributed
to shops throughout Europe, so that the record was on sale everywhere on
the Monday straight after the contest; as a result, it quickly topped the
UK chart, and later even entered the American Top Ten.

The confident efficiency of Abba's Waterloo campaign was to characterise
the group's whole career. The blend of high-gloss presentation with
infectious rhythms, memorable tunes, and sublimely unchallenging English
lyrics brought the group a seemingly endless succession of Number 1 records
around the world. Abba's Greatest Hits was the bestselling British album of
1976, and it was estimated that in that year one in 20 Britons had bought a
record by the group. Their annual turnover reached £7 million. In 1978
Anderson co-produced Abba The Movie, in which he played himself.

Many successful performers have seen their vast earnings dissipated by an
army of intermediaries and hangers-on. Abba retained careful control over
everything they did, sharing ownership of their work 50-50 with Anderson.

Deciding to remain in Sweden despite the country's punitive rates of income
tax, they invested under Anderson's guidance in a wide range of non-musical
activities and schemes, from property to pleasure boats and a firm making
motorbikes and sewing machines. Anderson was particularly keen on doing
business behind the Iron Curtain, allowing himself to be drawn into an
elaborate and ultimately disastrous system of payment-in-kind which saw pop
records part-exchanged for Russian oil, Polish coal and sack upon sack of
potatoes.

Anderson's apparent reluctance to take professional advice in these matters
led to criticism from some Swedish observers, who accused him of wanting to
dominate the country's economy in the same way that he had dominated pop.
The critics were vindicated after Abba split up in 1982 (the two married
couples having split up already). The group's complex financial affairs
began to unravel, and they found themselves being investigated on suspicion
of tax evasion and threatened with jail. The share price of their publicly
quoted company slumped as Swedish investors lost confidence. Anderson bore
much of the blame, and was sued by the group over royalties.

In 1989, just as Abba's old hits began to win an only half-ironic cult
following among a new generation of pop fans, Anderson disposed of his
stake in the group's back catalogue to Polygram for an undisclosed amount.
With the proceeds, he set up the Polar Music Prize, named after the
publishing company he had sold, and awarded through the Royal Swedish
Academy of Music to one pop and one classical musician each year: Paul
McCartney and the Polish composer Lutoslawski have been among the winners.

Stig Anderson is survived by his wife Gudrun, two sons and a daughter.

Sorry if this a much too read.

This is sad :(

[Rodney Small]

Thanks very much for the informative obituary -- it beats the one I
posted from the Washington Post by a country mile.