The ABBA Corner at the Music Museum in Stockholm
The ABBA corner at the Music Museum is part of the permanent exhibition
"Ensembler i Sverige" (Ensembles in Sweden). It was opened in February 1996
and will probably stay there until 2007.
Everthing began in 1993 when our German member Klaus-Peter Berg had the idea to organise an ABBA exhibition in the museum with the help of
. On his first visit to Stockholm he had been looking for an
ABBA exhibition and was surprised that the fantastic achievements of the
most successful pop group were not valued at all. So he decided to do
something. At that time, he already had definite plans I liked so much
that I wanted to help him on the spot. After explaining his plans to me,
we wrote a letter to the Music Museum. They were very interested but
didn't want to have a big ABBA exhibition as the museum mainly shows
instruments.The museum already had Benny's Yamaha GS-1 synthesizer. Benny told us on February 9th, 1996, that he had mainly used this synthesizer in the seventies to copy songs in the studio. It was one of the first polyphonic synthesizers using magnetic cards to store sound parameters.
One of Björn's guitars is also shown in the museum. It is a Washburn Eagle
guitar which was given to him during the Japan tour in March 1980 while
ABBA did their last concerts.Owe Sandström, who designed most of the famous ABBA costumes, provided Frida's blue satin jacket which she wore in 1975/76 (to be seen in the German Musikladen TV show and in the Australian special). Part of it is a little bow tie made of tiny pearls which was typical for the 70s as well as the top. I was very surprised when Owe brought it to me. The colour of the jacket is not a pure blue but more pink now. Owe explained to me that the colours had faded because of the powerful spotlights. Being asked how many costumes he made, he answered that there were at least three of each costume. One had to be there for the performance, the second one was cleaned while the third was already waiting at the next venue.
We put the cover of the '16 ABBA Hits' LP next to the jacket as Frida is wearing the costume on the cover.
In the showcase we have two frames with pictures, the ABBA stamp from 1983 and some single covers from different countries. Klaus-Peter built a smaller copy of the famous ABBA light sign known from the concert tours.
Polygram gave us three golden LPs:
- The Visitors, Austria
- The Singles, Germany
- Super Trouper, Japan
Mono Music provided three big pictures of ABBA in the Polar Studios from 1979 as well as a Scandecor poster from 1977 called 'Limelight'.
In the ABBA Information Computer you will find a huge database with more
than 1000 ABBA, solo and related records, tapes and CDs, a list of videos
and books, lyrics and a short history of the group's success.You can have a look at most of the record, video and book covers and the computer even includes a free ABBA Jukebox with all the ABBA, solo and related music published on CD - more than 970 selections. New records, books and videos will be added to the database every year. Illegal recordings are neither included nor mentioned in the system. A keyword search will find all entries matching one or more words and if you pick a song from the track list, you will get a list of all records and videos with that song. The computer is operated by a touch screen and you can select Swedish, English or German language.
We want to thank the former director Krister Malm and his team Eva, Anne-Marie, Ulli, Pär, Oskar, Anne-Louise, Bertil and everyone else at the museum for making this ABBA corner possible and helping us to get everything ready for the opening.
Special thanks to Görel Hanser, Jocke Norling and Olle Rönnbäck for their support and for donating most of the CDs in the ABBA Jukebox.
The Music Museum (Musikmuseet) is located at Nybroplan behind the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Sibyllegatan 2.
Open 12 - 5 PM, closed on Mondays.
Phone: +46 8 519 554 90
Music Museum Website