ABBA blog

When writing and researching my book ABBA On Record, I had so much fun tracking down and interviewing people who appeared on the cover of ABBA's Super Trouper album. Most of them had never been interviewed about their memories from that eventful photo session, and really helped the story come alive, letting us know so many things we'd never known before. However, I remember how I had almost given up hope on identifying the gymnastics troupe when a former Sweden Music employee sent me on the right track. I ended up spending an hour in the company of this group of lovely ladies as they shared their memories from the photo session. This is from the book:

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Among the performers were also a group of 12 girls from a gymnastics club named GK Hermes. They had been brought along because Ninnie Jansson, an employee at Sweden Music, had a background in that club, and contacted the girls to see whether they wanted to appear. They responded enthusiastically. The Hermes girls had been told that they were to show gymnastic tricks and acrobatics, doing somersaults, at the front of the picture, where the circus performers were doing their tricks.

But when the photo shoot started it turned out that this wouldn’t work, primarily because the troupe’s look clashed with the ABBA members. “We were dressed in white, like ABBA were, so we had to be moved to the back,” explains troupe member Monica Nyberg. “I remember that we thought, ‘damn it, if we’d known that we would have chosen other costumes!’.” With the girls moved to the back, the whole point of doing gymnastic tricks was nullified, so they needed something else to do, as Monica’s sister Marie remembers. “François Bronett was asked to organise us and come up with an idea. He taught us how to climb on top of each other’s shoulders. It’s called a tableaux. We had never done that before or even tried to do it, but we were like, ‘Well, of course we’ll learn how to do that’.”

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This and many, many never-before told stories about ABBA, their record sleeves and other aspects of their career are available in ABBA On Record. Learn more and order your copy at abbaonrecord.com.