Bright Lights, Dark Shadows: The Real Story of "Abba" [Hardcover]

Part I is gripping from the start of Chapter 1. I was impressed for several reasons. First, the personal and industry backgrounds on the four members and Stig are usually glossed over in other books. Here, the sketchy details are fully filled in, and it's fascinating reading.

Second, Carl Magnus Palm puts everything in its cultural and historical context with information about the regions where each member grew up, the origin of the various Swedish charts etc. He expresses an authentic feel for the times and for his country and its people.

Third, the narrative flows beautifully. Although it's largely chronological, it feels fresh - the first four chapters don't just go through each member one by one, the book has been better planned. It seems perfectly natural that we don't arrive at the childhood of the youngest member, Agnetha, until we've learnt about Stig's background and followed the others into their teenage years.

There isn't as much public information available about each member's childhood, which must have made it difficult to piece a lot of these facts together. The book really begins to hit its stride with the early chapters of Part II. In Chapter 12, Palm begins to weave the various stories together. There's such a lot that isn't known about ABBA's formative years, there's a real joy of discovery in these chapters. Palm's tone is also more assured at this point - he slips in some reasoned criticism of each member's early recordings - and he injects some satirical, but affectionate, humour into the reportage. I loved the style on pages 177 and 178, for example, when Agnetha
recounts her "baking accidents" and the bemused tone when Frida decides to throw it all in and "become a clothes designer".

An impressive feature of the book is its succinctness. That may sound funny, since BRIGHT LIGHTS DARK SHADOWS is over 500 pages, but it's a fair assessment. The Habari Safari movie takes up about a page; the progg movement is concisely charted and explained in a few pages. He sums up the sound and limitations of Gemini in one pithy phrase - "studio product, shoulder-pad music sorely lacking in soul" - and is equally spot-on with Agnetha and Frida's 80s solo efforts. Although I didn't accept his criticism of Djupa Andetag, it is a rational critique, and I admittedly suffer the disadvantage of not being able to understand the album's lyrics in their natural language.

Part III - The Time is Right - covers Waterloo through to 1982. The material is generally more familiar here; for instance, I could usually be sure of what incidents would be included in each chapter (other fans, as opposed to the general public for whom this book is also written, may be as acquainted with this part of the ABBA story to feel the same).

Fortunately, although a large part of this slab of the book is taken up with recounting events, Palm is not writing a mere overview of the ABBA years. He's writing a biography, and the significance of events on ABBA as people is analysed; he keeps
sight of the biographer's purpose in representing the big picture. Occasionally, this is of necessity a little strained - the psychoanalysis of Frida (p. 508) didn't entirely convince me, for example.

After reading BRIGHT LIGHTS DARK SHADOWS, I've learnt as much as I think I'll ever know about the people that make up ABBA. Ultimately, it's eye-opening and - towards the end - dispiriting reading. But you get a real sense of the demands and pressures that they were going through - the chapter on 1978, supposedly a quiet year for ABBA, makes this plain. As the business side of Polar consumed Stig, and the marriages collapsed, I think it's clear that the ABBA "magic" was a relatively short-lived alchemy of personality, managerial drive, talent and determination in a specific historical and cultural setting. But it wasn't a fluke - it wouldn't have lasted as long,
over as many unambiguously great albums, if it was.

You'll understand a lot more about ABBA, and I think you may even better appreciate the music, after reading BRIGHT LIGHTS DARK SHADOWS. It's the first real biography of ABBA but, more than that, it's the definitive biography. And it's the standard against which all future attempts at retelling the ABBA story will be judged.