When Swedish pop icons ABBA took to the stage for their appearance at the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest in Brighton, England, to perform Waterloo, guitarist Björn Ulvaeus was sporting a silver, 13-pointed, star-shaped guitar.
That instrument – along with the group’s dazzling satin attire and none-more-70s’ platform boots – gave them a visual impact that has become synonymous with the aesthetic of the decade. ABBA would go on to win with their performance, beginning their ascent to the pop stratosphere shortly afterwards. Ulvaeus used this guitar on subsequent promotional TV appearances and on their first European tour in late 1974, before retiring it.
While we don’t know where the inspiration for this uniquely shaped guitar came from, we can speculate that it lay with the English glam-rock group the Glitter Band, who were riding high in the charts around the time of ABBA’s Eurovision performance.
Article continues belowThey eventually scored major hits in the U.K. with Goodbye My Love and The Tears I Cried, with the group’s lead guitarist, Gerry Shephard, wielding a similarly shaped instrument. Although his axe was a more traditional five-pointed star, Glitter Band bassist and vocalist John Springate believes Ulvaeus may well have been inspired by it.
“The Glitter Band did a tour of Sweden, and this band came to see us play; they told us they really liked our music and that it was really good,” Springate told me in 2021. “Then, three weeks later, we saw them on Eurovision, dressed like us, with a star guitar, and that was ABBA!”
Regardless of his inspiration, it proved to be a clever decision on Ulvaeus’ part to have an instrument made that fit so perfectly with his group’s image, and his choice of luthier was equally inspired.
For many years, the star guitar was mistakenly reported to have been built by Hagström, a Swedish company whose guitars Ulvaeus often played. However, this one-off instrument was actually built by Göran Malmberg, a long-time guitar and sports car enthusiast, who first began building guitars in 1964 in his hometown of Stockholm.
Over the years, several internationally renowned artists began using his guitars and speakers during their tours of Sweden. Led Zeppelin used Malmberg 4x12 cabs in Sweden in 1969, and guitarists such as Eric Clapton engaged Malmberg for his services.
In preparation for ABBA’s 1974 Eurovision performance, Malmberg was hired by Ulvaeus to build him a truly attention-grabbing guitar.
“Björn and I met and discussed what it could look like,” Malmberg says today. “It had to be shiny and sparkling, so a star shape was suggested. We decided I would draw some drafts of the guitar and then show them to him. Björn approved one of them, but there was only six weeks left until Eurovision!”
Fortunately, the instrument’s spec was quickly agreed. “The neck of a Stratocaster was determined to be used,” Malmberg says, “and the body had to have the correct weight balance so that the guitar would remain in position, even if Björn released his grip on the neck. Furthermore, the tips of the star shape could not be in the way when he was using it.”
As players of extravagantly shaped guitars already know, a major challenge was to make the points strong enough for practical use, recalls the luthier: “The guitar’s body was made of several layers of plywood glued together so that the tips of the horns wouldn’t break. The outermost layers were 1mm birch plywood, so-called ‘airplane plywood,’ so that the varnish wouldn’t suffer any surface cracks.”
To ensure the correct balance, Malmberg experimented with the pickups’ position.
“I mounted the humbuckers, especially the treble pickup, further from the bridge to get a slightly darker sound, suitable for rhythm guitar playing, and the placement of the control knobs and the cutaway horns helped to counter the weight, too,” he says.
“The extra-long horn provided the balance for the attachment of the shoulder strap, and there were two horns on each side of the guitar’s body. The guitar was lacquered with metal stain on a silver base, and 20 layers of clear lacquer were used.”
At some point after Ulvaeus retired the guitar from the road and placed it into storage, it went missing; its whereabouts were unknown for decades. When the ABBA museum in Stockholm was established in 2013, Malmberg was hired to build a second star guitar for display purposes.
The guitar was lacquered with metal stain on a silver base, and 20 layers of clear lacquer were used
However, a few days before the museum opened, a German guitar collector came forward with the original instrument; both the original and the replica were subsequently exhibited.
In 2014, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of ABBA’s win at Eurovision, Malmberg was asked to build a high-quality limited-edition run of 50 star guitars, individually numbered and signed by him and Ulvaeus.
In January 2017, at their show in Stockholm, Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong borrowed the original guitar from the ABBA museum after he had visited it earlier in the day, and he used it during Green Day’s performance later that evening. Evidence, if any were needed, of the instrument’s star status.
- This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.
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