ABBA single by single thread

Early ABBA and the Playboy years, Part 2:

All the major labels, and those indie labels with pretentions, used what was known as the "flypaper method" of finding hits: Throw everything against a wall and see if something sticks. Majors could do this and not struggle, because they had a small group of artists they could count on to subsidize the labels' failures. To use Columbia as an example, by 1973, artists such as Barbra Streisand, Johnny Mathis, Andy Williams and Chicago were all but guaranteed to sell enough albums that the label could take chances on up-and-comers such as Bruce Springsteen, who eventually succeeded, or Andy Pratt, who didn't, and not have to worry about them making back their advances.

New labels didn't have that luxury.

I still haven't figured out how Björn & Benny et al. ended up on Playboy. I can't imagine there was a huge bidding war. Someone at the label probably heard "People Need Love" while on a trip to Europe and thought it was worth taking a chance on.

Playboy Records was so excited that 51 radio stations added the Björn & Benny single "People Need Love" that it took out full-page ads in all three U.S. trade magazines (Billboard, Cash Box, Record World) in the same week of October 1972 to celebrate. But it didn't help; the record peaked at #114 in Cash Box and #117 in Record World in late November 1972. In the first full year of Playboy's existence, I think that was as close to a hit that the label had.

(I wonder if the song had become a big U.S. if the history of the group might have changed. The artist credit on that 45 was, in part, "Svenska Flicka," which is Swedish for "Swedish Girl.")

Now, to 1973.

How bad were things at Playboy? In its 45 discography for 1973, there are two stretches of numbers (50020-50024, 50033-50047) where only mono/stereo promos are known to exist, and in that latter set, several numbers were assigned and never even pressed as promos. A couple other labels, Bell most notably, started doing this around the same time. Probably to save money, they decided to wait and see if radio picked up any of these songs, and only if they garnered airplay would stock copies be pressed and released. Obviously, none of these caught on.

To its credit, sort of, Playboy finally had a charted single in Billboard, Sam Russell's "It's So Nice" (50031), which peaked at #70 on the Hot Soul Singles chart late in '73. The label also signed a production deal with Sam Phillips, the Sun Records legend, which ended up in court when Playboy reneged on its end of the deal.

Amidst this chaos, two more proto-ABBA singles came out on Playboy.

Polar Music seemed to give its distributing labels outside Sweden wide latitude when it came to singles. Even when ABBA was on Atlantic in the U.S., several singles different than what came out in Sweden and the UK were issued. Playboy evidently passed on "Ring Ring," but Polar probably sent the label a tape of the entire Ring Ring album and said that Playboy could choose whatever song(s) it thought would work best in the U.S. market. There's no evidence that the whole album was ever on Playboy's release schedule, but had something from it become a hit, the label could have chosen to issue it after all.

Playboy's first choice was "Another Town Another Train," which was released on P 50018.



The date of release is usually given as March 1973, because three records around it (50016, 50017, and 50019) were reviewed in the March 17, 1973 Billboard. It's possible that it wasn't released until May 1973; Polar Music took out an ad in the international sections of both Billboard and Cash Box in the May 19 issue to celebrate the Swedish success of the "Ring Ring" single and album, and that ad mentioned that both the U.S. and Japan had "Another Town, Another Train" as the "next release in these territories." The most likely date is April 1973, based on a mention in the new singles listings of the April 28 issue of Record World.

In the U.S., "Another Town Another Train" (the label has the title with no comma) was paired with "I Am Just a Girl" on stock copies. Promo copies have white labels and "Another Town Another Train" on both sides, mono/stereo. (I own a copy of this promo, the only U.S. pre-"Waterloo" single I've found.) The credit on the labels is "BJÖRN & BENNY with Anna & Frieda"; the first two names are in bold, the latter two are in smaller regular type.

The single didn't even match the modest status of "People Need Love" on the charts. It didn't chart in any of the three U.S. trade magazines. As is true of "People Need Love," stock copies are harder to find than promos.

 

Playboy also seem to have released Rock 'N' Roll Band as an A side later in 1973 Bjorn & Benny with Anna & Frieda* - Rock'n Roll Band

 

Early ABBA and the Playboy years, Part 3:

After the failure of "Another Town, Another Train," it was back to the drawing board for Playboy. Someone at the label must have heard something in the music; the problem was convincing America.

Once again, Playboy decided that "Ring, Ring" wasn't the right song to break the group in the United States. I wonder if the name of the group was part of the reason for not issuing it, because the two female members dominated the vocals. "Bjorn & Benny with Anna & Frieda" makes it sound as if the women should have been an afterthought rather than the stars.

Instead, Playboy chose a song that was an A-side in only one country in the world, and that was the United States -- "Rock'n Roll Band" (P 50025).



Of the three B&B w/A&F singles on Playboy that certainly exist, "Rock'n Roll Band" is the rarest. Released probably in July 1973, I can't find any evidence that this 45 was reviewed in any of the three U.S. trade magazines. It didn't chart, either. Promo copies, mono/stereo with full-color labels, are much more common than stock copies. Rather than choose something else, Playboy decided to re-use the failed "Another Town Another Train" as the B-side of stock copies; it also appears to have re-used stock labels from P 50018 on this 45.

This would mark the end of Polar Music's deal with the Playboy label.

 

Early ABBA and the Playboy years, epilogue:

As far as I always knew, Playboy released three 45s of Bjorn & Benny music. That's how many I listed in my 45 rpm price guides and the Standard Catalog of American Records. Yet there are sources that claim there was a fourth single before the end of the Polar-Playboy relationship.

This purported single was given the catalog number P 50037 and consisted of the songs "He Is Your Brother" and "I Saw It in the Mirror." Promo copies had the former song on both sides, mono/stereo. Based on the number, this would have come out in October or November 1973.

I wanted to find photos of these two singles on the Internet. After an exhaustive search, I found exactly one photo of each, and only of one side of each record. Both are on Discogs, and both are digitally manipulated labels of other Playboy singles.

How do I know they are fakes? Several reasons:
-- The type faces for the artists, song titles and catalog numbers on both the pictured stock and promo copies don't match any other Playboy 45s. They look like an attempt to match the type, but they don't.
-- The purported promo has a white label. Playboy had stopped using white-label promos before P 50037 and didn't use them again, even in the CBS years. Indeed, the promo for the earlier "Rock'n Roll Band" had a multi-colored label.
-- Playboy P 50037 was used for another 45, "The Day My Ship Came Sailing In" by Smith Vinson. That 45 is verified to exist as a mono/stereo promo. Sometimes, labels, accidentally or otherwise, use the same number for two different releases, but Playboy didn't do so anywhere else in its discography.

All that said, if someone can produce un-altered photos of both sides of a fourth Bjorn & Benny with Anna & Frieda 45 on Playboy, or if documentation from the record label or trade-magazine sources exists, I'll reconsider. Of course, it's possible that Playboy had planned a fourth single, gave it a number, and never released it; after all, the label did cancel some 45s in 1973. But until any of this shows up, I'll remain skeptical.

 

I agree. This is where the ABBA sound as we know it begins to come into focus.

 

Concerning the first ABBA singles in the USA.
I found this (book) as I browsed the Internet. The Music Lover's Guide To Record Collecting by Dave Thompson.

"People Need Love" was also issued in the USA by the tiny Playboy label (P50014- Playboy issued two more singles during 1972-73, through promo mono/stereo issues are only known:
"Another Town Another Train" - P50018; and "Rock And Roll Band" - P50025).

Edit: This seems to agree with Tim's above post on this subject. Thank you Tim!

 

It's definitely the first ABBA single to have that "big" production. Definitely inspired by the 60's Wall of Sound. A fun pop song that sounds ions ahead of the first singles released in the USA. "Ring Ring" was released as the 3rd Atlantic single, after Waterloo and Honey Honey here. It made little impact here as a single by 1974.

 

I'm a long-time ABBA fan and the U. S. version of the Greatest Hits album (the one that didn't have the "heavy metal" cover) on cassette was my first experience with the group. It was only later that I found out that many of the songs weren't big hits in the U. S. For me, ABBA has been more of a songs group rather than an album group or a hits group. I tend to take the songs individually and I am likely to like the "album" tracks as much as if not more than the hits.

I like "The Wall Of Sound" sound of "Ring Ring." Although "People Need Love" isn't one of my favorites, I do like the clunky sound of the song. Of the early ABBA song, "Honey Honey" is probably my favorite song.

On the later albums, Bjorn tended to only sing the songs that were appropriate for a male singer, such as "Two For The Price Of One."

 

It would be interesting to know how this came about. They seem to have had a record deal in the U.S. (albeit one which wouldn't stick for the long haul) about a year earlier than they did in the U.K., which is the opposite of what you'd expect. A Swedish pop group couldn't have been a hot commodity with U.S. record labels in 1972.

Beatles fans sometimes wonder what would've happened if Vee-Jay Records had been able to hold onto the Beatles' rights in the U.S. (or better yet, break them in the first place). I guess you can ask the same question about ABBA and Playboy Records, with the added twist that they weren't even called ABBA yet when Playboy had them.

Very interesting - I had encountered that Discogs listing when I was poking around the other day but had no inkling that it might be a fake. I guess you've officially arrived as a seriously collected artist when people start inventing supposedly rare releases and putting fake pictures of them on the internet....

When I was looking at Discogs the other day, one thing that caught my eye is that North American cassette and 8-track tapes of Greatest Hits apparently used a cropped version of the photo that appeared on the inner gatefold of the LP as their cover, rather than the "park bench" photo that appeared on the front cover of the LP. For example:

ABBA - Greatest Hits
ABBA - Greatest Hits

I'm guessing this was done so the tapes could have artwork which showed all four members of the group. Cassettes and 8-tracks in that era usually had a "snapshot" of the front cover of the LP, and no other artwork. Doing so in this case would have resulted in artwork which only depicted Bjorn and Agnetha, since Benny and Frida were on the back cover of the LP. When Atlantic issued the album on CD, they used the same front cover as the LP.

 

On Agnetha and Frida's Discogs pages, the first picture looks like it was taken at the same photo shoot - the photos, which are in color, are individually of them (not the whole group), but the lighting and background is similar, and they look like they're wearing the same clothes. Agnetha looks a lot more innocent there, however....

 

I personally think this is the ideal cover for this set of songs. It's fun and quirky. The "normal" album cover is kind of plain and generic, which is a far cry from the music within.

 

The "park bench" cover is an absolute classic which manages to express all the facets of ABBA in one sleeve - the love, the joy, the fun but also the melancholy that exists in much of their work.

 

What I found striking about the cover is how sad Agentha looks (it looks like it would be appropriate for her to sing Olivia Newton-John's "Nothing Better To Do").

 

It’s a great sleeve. An enormously popular LP in the UK in the mid-70s. It’s never been given an official release on CD here, so I went to the trouble of tracking down the US version. This omits a track (Hasta Manana) from the UK edition I know and love, but does feature the correct ‘park bench’ artwork. Having owned all these songs times over on CD, I realise I bought the US CD just for the artwork.

 

It’s “Something Better To Do”.

Though, thanks for remembering it. I always class it as one of Olivia’s ‘lost’ hits.

 

Sorry about the error. It's a song I like and I slipped up.

 

We need a picture here:

 

Love Isn't Easy (But It Sure Is Hard Enough) (1973)


B-side: I Am Just a Girl
Released: June 1973

 

God, I’ll be glad when we get to the good stuff.

Love Isn’t Easy and I Am Just A Girl are both Eurovision-y to me. The latter sounds quite 60s too. Both are pleasant enough and I wouldn’t skip them if I were playing the albums, but they totally upped their game in 1974.5. It was like another band.

 

Again, this song, "Love Isn't Easy" sounds so much cleaner and airier on the THANK YOU FOR THE MUSIC box set. Everywhere else I have it, it sounds muddy and gritty.

 

This is a catchy song that I really didn't like when I first heard it (which was a good decade after it was first released). My views on it have softened a bit over the years, but it's still, for lack of a better word, dorky. It's like Benny and Björn threw a bunch of hooks together and this was what resulted.

With more sophisticated lyrics, it might not be quite so bad, but the clunky attempts to rhyme English words were part of ABBA's charm, weren't they?

 

I never heard this song until about 10 years ago maybe. Never a favourite although I guess it has its charms. Harmless enough B side but that’s it.

 

I guess it's time for me to climb aboard, seeing as I have a picture of the Swedes as my avatar and all.

"Ring Ring" shows how well you can recreate The Wall of Sound with a budget and multitracking.

 

Dorky, nothing more than album filler, but pure fun. Every musician, songwriter, artist has to start somewhere. This is a period of that start.

 

I met someone here in Baltimore and he was from Leeds England, his name was Keith Gelley...as a parting gift when he went back to the UK I gave him this album. ....beginning of 1978....