On this day fifty years ago the first ABBA record was released in Australia – the single ‘Ring Ring’ (RCA 102359). As an Australian fan and collector, this is of particular significance to me.
The group was billed on the label as Bjorn [sic] & Benny Anna & Frida. The name ABBA had not yet been formally adopted, though it had been informally used by ABBA manager Stig Anderson and the Swedish media for much of 1973. The name would first appear a month later on the British and Italian issues of the ‘Ring Ring’ single (12 and 22 October respectively), and also on session sheets on 16 October during recordings for what would be the Waterloo album in 1974. Perhaps in September Björn, Benny, Agnetha, and Frida weren’t ready to accept the name ABBA when the Australian single was released. Or perhaps the four names were left intact, though modified for Anglo audiences, because RCA planned to release the Ring Ring album two months later with its original sleeve (RCA MSL-102323).
The React newsletter, an internal RCA Records document, first appeared on Discogs about ten months ago. It reveals for the first time the actual release date – previously the single was assumed to have been released in October or November, just before the album. Curiously, this bills the band as Bjorn [sic] and Benny, Agnetha and Frieda [sic], a spelling that had been used on some European issues of ‘Ring Ring’.
The single was not a success in Australia in 1973 – it entered the chart at number 92 on 12 November, where it stayed for one more week before dropping out. The album, released in November, did not even enter the chart at the time.
For years the 1973 single and album issues of ‘Ring Ring’ were unknown to most Australian fans. Neither were listed in ABBA discographies issued by RCA in the heyday of Australian ABBA mania in 1976 and beyond, though the 1974 release of the remixed single and 1975 reissue of the album were. I first saw and bought this single at a record fair in Sydney somewhere around 1990 – the very single posted above. At that stage I already had the album, which I’d found in a second-hand record bin in 1981, though in 1976 school friends had told me they had seen the album with the original sleeve in local record stores – I didn’t believe them at the time.
‘Ring Ring’ wasn’t the first ABBA-related record to be released in Australia. ‘Better To Have Loved’, by Polar artist Lena Andersson, had been released in 1972 (RCA 102088). That song was written by Benny, Stig, and Björn, with English lyric contributions by British songwriters and producers Wayne Bickerton and Tony Waddington.
ABBA Omnibus blog 
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