Star Power

When Björn Ulvaeus of ABBA walked on the Eurovision stage in 1974, all eyes were on his legendary star-shaped guitar. Meet the maker of the ultimate glam-rock ax

- JOE MATERA

WHEN THE 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-Seventies 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. They 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 ax 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!”