Background and career
Göran Bror Benny Andersson (Swedish: [ˈbɛ̌nːʏ ˈânːdɛˌʂɔn] ; born 16 December 1946) is a Swedish musician, composer and producer best known as a member of the pop group ABBA and co-composer of the musicals Chess, Kristina från Duvemåla, and Mamma Mia! For the 2008 film version of Mamma Mia! and its 2018 sequel, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, he also worked as an executive producer. Since 2001, he has been active with his own band Benny Anderssons orkester.
Göran Bror Benny Andersson was born 16 December 1946 in the Vasastan district of Stockholm to civil engineer Gösta Andersson (1912–1973) and his wife Laila (1920–1971). His sister Eva-Lis Andersson followed in 1948. Andersson's musical interest was spurred by his father and grandfather (Efraim), who played the accordion. At the age of six, they bought him one, too, and introduced him to Swedish folk music, traditional music, and schlager. The first records he owned were "Du Bist Musik" by Italian schlager singer Caterina Valente and Elvis Presley's "Jailhouse Rock". He was especially impressed by the flip side, "Treat Me Nice", as this featured a piano. This variety of different kinds of music influenced him through the years. At ten, Andersson got his own piano and taught himself to play. He was influenced by Elmore James and Brian Jones, left school at 15 and began to perform at youth clubs. This is when he met his first girlfriend Christina Grönvall, with whom he had two children: Peter (born 1963) and Heléne (born 1965). In early 1964, Benny and Christina joined "Elverkets Spelmanslag" ("The Electricity Board Folk Music Group"); the name was a punning reference to their electric instruments. Their repertoire consisted mainly of instrumentals, including "Baby Elephant Walk"; he also wrote his first songs.
In October 1964 he joined the Hep Stars as keyboardist and they made a breakthrough in March 1965 with their hit "Cadillac", eventually becoming the most celebrated of the Swedish 1960s pop bands. Andersson secured his place as the band's keyboardist and musical driving force as well as a teen idol. The band performed mostly covers of international hits, but Andersson soon started writing his own material, and gave the band the classic hits "No Response", "Sunny Girl", "Wedding", "Consolation", "It's Nice To Be Back" and "She Will Love You", among others.
Andersson met Björn Ulvaeus in June 1966, and the two men started writing songs together, their first being "Isn't It Easy To Say", eventually recorded by the Hep Stars. He also had a fruitful songwriting collaboration with Lasse Berghagen, with whom he wrote several songs and submitted "Hej, Clown" for the 1969 Melodifestivalen – the Swedish Eurovision Song Festival finals. The song finished in second place. During this contest, he met vocalist Anni-Frid Lyngstad, and they soon became a couple. Around the same time, his songwriting companion Ulvaeus met vocalist Agnetha Fältskog. The personal relationships and Andersson and Ulvaeus' songwriting collaboration led quite naturally to the very close cooperation which the four friends had during the following years. Benny and Björn scored their first hits as songwriters in the spring of 1969: "Ljuva sextital" (a hit with Brita Borg) and "Speleman" (a hit for the Hep Stars). As the two couples began supporting each other during recording sessions, the sound of the women's voices convinced the songwriters to model their 'group' on various MOR acts such as Blue Mink, Middle of the Road and Sweet.
The group's breakthrough came with winning the Eurovision Song Contest for Sweden with "Waterloo" on 6 April 1974. During the next eight years, Andersson (together with Ulvaeus) wrote music for and produced eight studio albums with ABBA. The group achieved great success globally and scored a chain of No. 1 hits. With ABBA, Benny sang lead vocal on only one song – "Suzy-Hang-Around", from the Waterloo album.
After ABBA, Andersson continued writing music with Ulvaeus. Their first project was the stage musical Chess, written with Tim Rice. The Chess concept album – with vocals by Elaine Paige, Barbara Dickson, Murray Head and Swedes Tommy Körberg and Björn Skifs – was released in October 1984, selling two million copies worldwide. The Paige/Dickson duet "I Know Him So Well" became a major UK No. 1 hit, and Murray Head's "One Night in Bangkok" gave Andersson/Ulvaeus a US No. 3 hit. Chess was staged in London's West End Prince Edward Theatre in May 1986 and received mixed to positive reviews, running for about three years. A revised staging on Broadway in April 1988 received poor reviews, running for two months. In 1985, Andersson produced and released an album with brother and sister Anders and Karin Glenmark, featuring new songs by Andersson/Ulvaeus. The duo named themselves Gemini, and a second album with more music by Björn and Benny was released in April 1987, containing the big hit "Mio My Mio"; also to be found on the soundtrack to the film Mio in the Land of Faraway, for which Andersson co-produced the music. In 1987, Andersson released his first solo album Klinga Mina Klockor ("Chime, My Bells"). All the music was written by and performed by himself on accordion, backed by the Orsa Spelmän (Orsa Folk Musicians) on fiddles. A second solo album followed: November 1989. In 1990, Andersson scored a Swedish No. 1 hit with "Lassie", sung by female cabaret group Ainbusk, for whom he also wrote the Svensktoppen hits "Älska Mig" and "Drömmarnas Golv". He decided to produce an album with Josefin Nilsson from this quartet, resulting in the 1993 English-language album Shapes, featuring ten new Andersson/Ulvaeus compositions. In 1992, he wrote the introduction melody for the European football championship, which was organised by Sweden that year. From the late 1980s, Andersson had worked on an idea for an epic Swedish language musical based on his affection for traditional folk music, and in October 1995, Kristina från Duvemåla premiered in Sweden. The musical was based on The Emigrants novels by Swedish writer Vilhelm Moberg. The musical ran successfully for almost five years, before closing in June 1999. An English-language version, simply titled Kristina, was staged in concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City for two nights in September 2009, yielding a live recording, and at the Royal Albert Hall for one night in April 2010. Andersson's next project was Mamma Mia!, a musical built around 24 of ABBA's songs, which has become a worldwide box-office blockbuster, with versions in several languages being played in many countries, including the UK (West End premiere in April 1999), Canada (Toronto premiere in 2000), the USA (Broadway premiere in 2001), and Sweden (Swedish language premiere in 2005). For the 2004 semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest, staged in Istanbul thirty years after ABBA had won the contest in Brighton, Benny appeared briefly in a special comedy video made for the interval act, entitled "Our Last Video". Each of the four members of the group appeared briefly in cameo roles, as did others such as Cher and Rik Mayall. The video was not included in the official DVD release of the Eurovision Contest, but was issued as a separate DVD release. It was billed as the first time the four had worked together since the group split; however, Frida's appearance was filmed separately. A film version of Mamma Mia! premiered on 18 July 2008. In April/May 2007, Andersson worked on the film soundtrack, re-recording the ABBA songs with musicians from the original ABBA recording sessions. Mamma Mia! The Movie has become the most successful film musical of all time, and the biggest-selling DVD ever in the UK.
