We have all sung their songs, danced to their musicals and cried with their lyrics. ABBA is one of the most important groups in the history of music and today they have to say goodbye to Lasse Wellander, their legendary guitarist.
The group has announced on their social networks the death of their longtime guitarist, Lasse Wellander. He was 70 years old and was one of the founding members of ABBA.
“We will miss him dearly and never forget him,” the pop stars wrote under a black-and-white photo of Wellander performing with the band.
A story linked to music and written forever
Born in the small Swedish town of Skrekarhyttan, Wellander took to music at a very young age, learning to play guitar after seeing the Beatles perform on television in 1963.
Wellander joined ABBA in 1974, after Björn and Benny asked him if he was interested in playing guitar in their band.
“I knew it would be something big from the beginning,” Wellander says of ABBA’s potential. “Strong songs all the way through. Even the simple pop songs were of great quality. One of the first songs I recorded with them was ‘Know Me, Knowing You.’ I think it’s still one of the best songs of all these years,” he told Guitar World last year.
“We were a core group of musicians. Working with ABBA wasn’t a full-time job, and sometimes I couldn’t play, so they’d call Janne Schaffer, and the other way around. And if Rutger [Gunnarsson] was on tour doing something else, Mike Watson would play bass. So it wasn’t a full-time job. If you were in the north of Sweden maybe you didn’t go down to Stockholm to do a single track. But I belonged to that core of musicians from ’74 on,” he said.
His most recent collaborations with ABBA include the soundtracks for the films “Mamma Mia!” and “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again,” as well as ABBA‘s Voyage album, released in November 2021.
When ABBA stopped recording new music and touring, Wellander sought work with other groups. He passed away last Friday at the age of 70 from cancer.
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