Untold stories: JMJM & ABBA

NOTE (8/29/08): THE FOLLOWING IS NOT TRUE!

As we are eleven days away from the very sobering release of the film version of Mamma Mia!, it is hard for me to restrain myself from revealing the truth and telling the little-known story behind why Mamma Mia! has such little plot.

It all started in early 1970, when Mike Klein and I had begun to write songs for our local friends Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus who were working on an album called Lycka, for which they wanted some original songs. At the time both Benny and Björn were going through a lull period of their songwriting careers, and they called upon Mike and me to write them a few songs that would fit their style. Mike and I each wrote a few songs and presented them to Benny and Björn, who fell in love with our songs. At the time it had not crossed either of our minds of that Mike and I should claim the copyrights to these songs, so we told Benny and Björn just to take these songs and consider them their own.

As neither Mike nor I were employed at the time, we just kept on writing more and more songs: all in a style that appealed to Benny and Björn specifically. As the songs piled up and we kept on giving them and their copyrights away to Benny and Björn, Mike and I had a realization: if we wanted to make it big in Sweden, we needed to be in a pop band with two female singers and two male singers whose first names’ first letters could form an acronym, and we needed more songs in English.

Acting upon our impulses, Mike and I hired Michal Mechlovitz and Jessie Winkler to sing our songs while Mike and I played guitar and piano respectively while singing very quietly in the background. In a burst of excitement, I knew I had to tell Benny and Björn the news of the potential success Mike and I were about to attain with Sweden’s biggest pop band with songs in English: JMJM! I wrote Benny and Björn a very lengthy and detailed letter explaining our theoretical formula for success. However, I did not hear back from either Benny or Björn for some time.

By the end of 1970, I knew that things would never be the same again between Benny and Björn, and Mike and me. I realized this one day when listening to a song of Benny and Björn’s on the radio, and I heard two female singers in the background. “Drat!” I thought. “They stole my idea of having two female singers in addition to two male singers!” However, I was contented that they had not stolen the ideas of having an acronym for a band name or having very many songs in English. Both of those were still trademarks of JMJM.

However, by 1973, I began to hear of Anni-Frid, Benny, Björn, and Agnetha being referred to as “ABBA”, and I noticed that more and more of the songs that they were singing were not only very familiar, but they also were in English. I knew that I should have stopped sending Benny and Björn the songs Mike and I were writing in English, but it was already too late. By September that year, Mike and I had already written and sent Benny and Björn every song that they were to record (and would claim to have written) over the next 34 years.

On the seventh day of October of 1973, I received a letter from Björn rejecting the final song I had sent him and Benny. This song was called “Genetic Test”, and it was the story of a young girl who wants her father to give her away at her wedding, but she needs a genetic test in order to find out who exactly her father is. (Although it is still unclear to me as to why this song was rejected, Björn’s letter regarding “The Missing Abba Song” has actually been reproduced in the last blog post on this website.)

Decades went by, ABBA nearly broke up, and neither Mike nor I had heard a word from Björn or Benny since the rejection letter from 1973. The first piece of news to come out that would interest me for a long time was the creation of Mamma Mia!, a musical with ABBA songs narrating a story about a young girl who, though she wants her father to give her away at her wedding, does not know who her father is. This query certainly could have been resolved with a genetic test, but as ABBA had rejected their one opportunity to include my song about a genetic test (namely, “Genetic Test”), there was no chance that the musical would have been able to resolve thusly the question of who the girl’s father was. For approximately a decade, I have remained silent and not offered my solution or the true story: that Mamma Mia! could have had a better resolution to the conflict in the story.

Yesterday, Michal, Jessie, Mike, and I reunited after a long hiatus of inactivity. The four of us recorded “Genetic Test” with newer technology than we did so many years ago (but we certainly gave it a bit of an older sound yesterday just for the fans!).

If you thought that there could have been so much more to the story of Mamma Mia!, then you are not alone. This international hit has been misunderstood and misrepresented throughout the world. However, the world need not wait any longer. The world can now appreciate JMJM’s gem: the missing ABBA song, “Genetic Test.”