My dear friend Staffan Eriksson reminded me yesterday of the fact that ABBA Frida (Anni-Frid Lyngstad) had worked with Jon Lord on his wonderful 2004 solo album “Beyond The Notes”. True. They were friends and Frida had asked Jon if he could write a song for her (this is all explained by Jon in the inner notes of this album). In February 2004 he has the idea and he presents it to Frida in Switzerland. She likes it, and the title, and Sam Brown puts down lyrics to this little masterpiece called “The Sun Will Shine Again”. Later, as “Beyond The Notes” sees release by EMI Frida and Jon performs the song live together on television shows in the UK and Germany (there are videos of at least two out of five that we are aware of on YouTube) to great acclaim. As far as collaborations between the Deep Purple & ABBA spheres, this is the big one. We know that Ritchie Blackmore is a big fan of ABBA (he has talked about them in several interviews) and if memory serves me right he may have met people from ABBA around the time of the “Down To Earth” album in Stockholm. Nothing came out of that though. Staffan Eriksson saw Jon Lord perform a show on the “Beyond The Notes” tour in the 900+ old Nidarosdomen Cathedral in Trondheim (Norway) and it was a magical moment. He wrote a piece about Jon Lord and his career outside of Purple in my publication SLICE 2005 and the musical meeting between him and Frida is highlighted as it had all gone down in recent times back then. You can see that spread here, to the left an article about Tommy Bolin, to the right the story about Jon and his music. I checked the stats for the new ABBA video for “I Still Have Faith In You” a few moments ago on YouTube (of course there are other platforms as well), and in 48 hours it has notched up 8,824,033 views. The magic of ABBA is still very much alive. “The Sun Will Shine Again” was about personal loss. “I Still Have Faith In You” is about hope carrying on. Somehow they intertwine wonderfully in some ways.
(My shot of said spread in SLICE 2005 – Thank you Staffan for your wonderful words of wisdom)
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