Popzien = Pop Scene

Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid (not quite ABBA yet) performed Ring Ring to playback on this contemporary pop programme which ran from 3 June 1972 - 28 September 1973 for 19 episodes.

This clip has been erased from the archive and so is not available any more. The archive contains only 10 episodes from the series, and the ABBA episode (Episode 14) is not one of those. However, a Dutch TV documentary called Pop op TV 1960-1975, broadcast on 16 December 2009 included the two colour pictures above for the first time. The photos have now also been released in the book Pop op TV 1960-1975.

This was part of a promotional tour including Germany (Disco), Austria (Spotlight) and Belgium (Ziet u er wat in?) and Denmark (Sommerlørdag and Television City) in the first few months of 1973.

This was ABBA's debut in The Netherlands.

Other guests on the show were:

• Shaking Stevens & the Sunsets - Honey Honey (Yes! THE Shakin' Stevens in his early career)
• Shocking Blue - Oh Lord
• Paul Simon - Loves Me like a Rock
• Long Tall Ernie & the Shakers - Turn your Radio on
• Lynsey de Paul - All Night
• Smyle - Tandem
• The Buffoons - Arizona
• Barry Blue - Dancing on a Saturday Night
• Harvey Andrews & Graham Cooper - Friends of Mine
• Agnetha, Björn, Benny & Anni-Frid - Ring Ring
• Neil Christian - That's Nice
• The Cats - Let's Go Together
• Rudy Bennet - Wheel of Life
• Sutherland Brothers & Quivver - You Got me Anyway
  
   

Singer songwriter Harvey Andrews wrote about meeting ABBA in his online blog on 24 November 2009:

Extract from my diary for July 6 1973

"To Amsterdam for the Dutch equivalent of Top of the Pops, called Popzein. We sang two songs.

Also on were a bizarrely dressed group from Scandinavia, who, just as recording began realised they had no guitar to mime with! We were singing live, so it was arranged that as soon as the cameras were off us I would dash across the studio and hand over my guitar to one of the two men backing the female vocalists.

We had seconds to do this, so when the cameras came to the group, he hadn’t got the strap over his shoulder, so he had to cling to my Gibson and pretend to play it with a dangly strap and a very restricted right hand! It was hilarious.

Later, we saw the group sitting outside a cafe by the side of a canal and they asked us to join them for a glass of wine. We noticed the two women were only allowed mineral water. The two men were very interesting, telling us they had their own studio, wrote their own songs, and expected to be millionaires within the year. They were so confident!

So I’m putting their name down in the diary tonight and we’ll see if we ever hear of them again – ABBA."


Listen to Harvey Andrews talk about his experience on a BBC Radio 2 show called Back on the Road broadcast 8 May 1996.  It looks like Björn has a guitar strapped round his neck, not hanging loose by his knees as Harvey remembers.
(with huge thanks to David Calverley).

Click here for a TV listing from de Stem from 8 Jun 1973, page 21.

Frida, Benny and Björn are wearing the same outfits that they did for Television City, while Agnetha is wearing her pink heart outfit

Lyrics available on the Official ABBA site

 

Popzien (site is in Dutch); 

Huge thanks to Henk, Dirk Bracaval, Monique Hoevens, Steve Layton, Mohammed, Carl Magnus Palm, David Calverley and especially Jozsef.