Everybody listen to the music, yeah: Review of Deluxe Edition of ABBA’s Waterloo album

It was 1975, and just a year after ABBA had won the Eurovision Song Contest on 6 April 1974 in spectacularly convincing fashion, opening the way for their now legendary international career as pop superstars, I had discovered the music of Björn & Benny, Agnetha and Anni-Frid as they were known for the first few years of their life as a foursome.

With “Mamma Mia” (released in Australia in August 1975) riding high in the charts – it spent 10 weeks at number 1 in total – following the earlier #1 chart placing of “I Do I Do I Do I Do”, ABBA were well on their way to the mania that would engulf the country during their 1977 tour, taking me very happily along with him.

(For a full rundown of ABBA releases in Australia, go to ABBA Phenomenon.)

But while the ABBA album contained a treasure trove of pop gems, for a 9 year old boy falling in love with the band that would come to dominate his life in the best possible way in succeeding years, 11 songs were simply not enough.

So I set out to see what else this amazing group from Sweden had released, and in 1976 came across the Waterloo album in the small record store in the country town I called home at the time.

Granted it was only a cassette copy but I couldn’t contain my excitement and spent the months following playing each side to death (how it lasted with any semblance of playable sound I will never know), glorying in the perfect pop songs that it contained, marvelling at the tight harmonies, the rock flavourings and the sheer sense of fun that pervaded it.

Here was a band that was enjoying seeing what they were musically capable of, both as songwriters and as singers, and while it may not be as sophisticated as their later work – their real breakthrough as a band came with the ABBA album, thwarting any ideas that ABBA may have been a one hit Eurovision wonder – I loved it, and all these many years later still fervently play it as much as possible.

So naturally the release of the Deluxe Edition of the Waterloo album (the final release to get this treatment), timed like a great many books, videos and CDs this years to commemorate the 40th anniversary of ABBA’s historic Eurovision, was greeted with a tremendous amount of excitement.

And it was most definitely worth the wait.

Containing the original 11 tracks, including my unorthodox favourites “King Kong Song”, “My Mama Said” and “Sitting in a Palmtree”, it has also been released with the now customary bonus tracks, a grab bag of remixes (two 1974 vintage versions of “Ring Ring”) and foreign language versions of songs like “Waterloo”, “Honey Honey” and the woulda coulda been entry for Eurovision (kicked to the curb in favour of “Waterloo”), “Hasta Mañana”.

In his always excellent detailed liner notes, Carl Magnus Palm has this to say, in part, about the stories behind these particular bonus tracks, giving you some idea of the level of research and quest for a complete picture of ABBA at the time that went into the Waterloo Deluxe Edition release (in common with all the deluxe editions):

“The original Waterloo album has been expanded to include every studio-recorded version of “Waterloo”. There is the familiar English version, but also an alternate early mix – featuring more echo on the lead vocals, vocal interjections in the verses, and less saxophone – briefly available in Sweden before being withdrawn. The Swedish version of “Waterloo” was featured on the original domestic release of the LP, and the French and German versions of the song were released in an effort to facilitate breakthroughs in France and West Germany.”

While it’s unlikely that the extra tracks will be played everyday, they give you an idea of the scope of ABBA’s ambition and the willingness of Björn and Benny to experiment with the tracks till they finally reached a form with which they were happy.

Palm goes to an enormous amount of trouble to paint a picture of an emerging band, their search for an instantly recognisable name – ABBA was not the first pick with Björn professing he’d wanted a more exotic name but no one could better the one formed by the amalgamation of their first name initials – the recording of all the tracks and the musical influences that went into them, and the impact that their second album had on consolidating the success generated by their Eurovision win.

It’s a fascinating, richly detailed snapshot of a band at a critical time in their then still nascent career.

And one that is supplemented well by a treasure trove of video footage that fills the other disc on the Waterloo Deluxe Edition release.

Beginning with footage of ABBA performing at the Swedish selection contest for Eurovision called Melodifestivalen, and later at the contest itself, we’re also treated to an interview given by Anni-Frid and ABBA’s manager Stig Anderson in the immediate aftermath of their victory.

It’s a revealing, insightful interview, not least because of one journalist’s controversial line of enquiry that somewhat foolishly focused on, in the words of Palm, “why ABBA sang about a battle in which 40,000 people were killed”.

Stig responds in a very restrained, measured manner, at least on camera, but understandably exploded later wondering why anyone would think to ask such a question so soon after ABBA’s career-changing moment of triumph.

Thankfully, it was but a mere blip on a rather ecstatic ride that saw ABBA, now in great demand, appear on a number of TV shows including Britain’s much revered Top of the Pops, the footage of which appearance is included on the DVD as well.

All in all, we are given access to a slew of amazing footage, all digitally restored and in immaculate condition, that gives every fan and pop aficionado hitherto unseen insight into the iconic moment of their Eurovision triumph and the whirlwind of life changing events that followed.

The DVD alone is reason enough to buy the impressively curated Waterloo Deluxe Edition, which reminds us once again why ABBA, even right at the beginning, with their sound and song artistry not yet fully formed, had all the makings of the mega-successful globe-striding band they would become in successive years.