Karin and Anders Glenmark, as
GEMINI
While Agnetha may not be as reclusive as Garbo, the flow of information about the personal lives of the members of ABBA has been very controlled. One tends to hear the same tidbits and anecdotes from their lives over and over. From this data, we at least have an outline, if not the details, of how Björn began working with Benny, how Benny and Frida met, how Björn met and married Agnetha, how Stig formalized the name ABBA.
I wish I knew even that much about the gestation and birth of the short lived pop group Gemini. The group was comprised of siblings Karin and Anders Glenmark, who are part of the larger, very musical Glenmark family. Karin and Anders performed with The Glenmarks prior to the Gemini period, and members of the extended family owned Glen studio. ABBA recorded there in 1974, including Ring Ring, the wonderful Hey Hey Helen, and other cuts that made it onto the album ABBA.
(Few traces of the Glenmarks can be readily found in the retail racks of CD's that I visited in Göteborg or Stockholm. I saw one cut, on one compilation album, in an Ahlens.)
Did B&B start to work with the two talented Glenmarks (circa. 1985), encourage them as a duo, with the result that a new name simply became necessary? Had they been performing as Gemini prior to the studio work that would result in their eponymous first album? Was there already a musical group named "Pisces?"
My efforts to find data on the Glenmarks and on the origins of Gemini had progressed very little when Gerard Hesen, an ABBAmailer from The Netherlands, posted the following anecdote, informed by a conversation he had directly with Karin Glenmark. This posting was a response and supplement to comments which had earlier been made about Karin's remarkable moment during a Chess in Concert performance, when she, as a member of the chorus, had spontaneously filled in to sing Endgame for a missing Barbara Dickson. Mr. Hesen writes:
In the history of ABBA this was truly a significant moment, even though maybe not many may have recognized it as such at the time, as this occasion meant the birth of Gemini in a way. This scene from the Chess in Concert tour never fails to give me the goose bumps.
Björn and Benny, but especially Benny, were so impressed by Karin because of this performance (and Anders contributions to Chess) that as a sort of 'thank you' he proposed to record an album with the Glenmark siblings as soon as B & B were finished with their active involvement with Chess.
Karin told me this in Augsburg, Germany in 1984, during the recording of the German tv show 'Na Sowas Extra.' She and Anders had been invited to this show as guests of B&B, and also to perform in the choir for Murray Head's 'One Night In Bangkok.' Frida was also on this show to promote her single 'Come To Me (I Am Woman)'.
Needless to say, Karin was really excited about the prospect of recording with Björn and Benny. As we all know now, this finally resulted in Gemini's first album: 'Gemini' in 1985. A truly beautiful and heartfelt album that picked up ABBA's history where it had ended four years earlier with The Visitors...
If there ever was an Opus 10, in my opinion this is it!
If the public comments of Björn (and somewhat less so, Benny) are to be believed, by 1982, B & B had fairly exhausted their musical ideas for utilization of the unique power harmonies of Agnetha and Frida. By The Visitors, the doubled voices in the verses are completely gone, and each song is a solo with backing harmonies. The material is more theatrical, the lyrics more esoteric, sophisticated and at times vapid.
Three years later, B & B had obviously rejuvenated from their exhaustion (and pessimism) with pop, and were ready to return to that genre. Likely, ideas for pop melodies had continued to swirl through Benny's head. This sequence suggests that musical theater was an excursion for B & B, rather than a firm departure. And so, in 1985, they utilize the Glenmarks, qua Gemini, to explore some of the possibilities of a different pair of voices, and produce several strong and pure pop songs, including
Related Links:
About the first album, GEMINI
About the second album, GEMINISM
Visit the beautifully produced Swedish Gemini Web site
Probable Discography
Neo-Gemini