Benny Andersson appears on ‘Året var 1962’
Benny appeared on the Swedish TV programme Året var 1962 (The year was 1962) which was broadcast on 1 January, 2012. It’s a review of the year 1962 with excerpts from the SVT archives and newly filmed comments from those who were there at the time.
The first segment that features Benny references the song Sånt är livet which was a Swedish version of the 1961 American recording You Can Have Her by Roy Hamilton. The song was written by Bill Cook and the Swedish lyrics by Stig Anderson under the name Stig Grossner. The song was in the Norwegian charts for 22 weeks in 1962 and a number one for seven weeks.
The Swedish recording by Anita Lindbolm was made with the Sven-Olof Walldoff Orchestra. Sven-Olof went on to conduct the orchestra during ABBA’s historic Eurovision Song Contest win in Brighton in 1974. Sadly, he died on 7 June last year.
Benny’s other contribution to the programme about 1962 was in a short piece about chess player Bobby Fischer in which he plays a segment of Pity The Child from the musical CHESS on the piano. The part of ‘The American’ in CHESS was of course touted by Sir Tim Rice as being loosely based on Fischer.
Related links:
- SVT Player – ‘Året var 1962’ (available until 31 January) – Benny appears at approximately 10m 50s and 44m 45s.
Great! Also heard a snippet of Benny playing ‘Chess’ 🙂
Please, Mr. Andersson, give us a whole Piano CD !!
Cheers
Stefan
I do hope there are moves behind the scenes to bring a new version of CHESS to the west end .
Im chomping at the bit to see it on the Strand.
from watching the current BBC4 documentary about the British domination of the stage musical. differences of opinion between north America and Europe are the norm for most musicals .it also looks like in the next episod Benny and Bjorn will be talking about Mamma mia.