Abba drummer killed in freak fall

Published on Monday 17 March 2008 22:28

A FORMER drummer with Abba died in a freak accident when he bled to death after falling into a glass door at his Mallorca home, police said yesterday.

Ola Brunkert played on the Swedish super-group's first single, People Need Love, and became one of just two musicians to appear on all Abba's albums.

Benny Anderson, the Abba singer-songwriter, said yesterday he was sad to hear of the drummer's death. "It is tragic," he said.

Fellow founding member Bjorn Ulvaeus added that Brunkert had been "one of the best."

"I remember him as a good friend when we worked together in the mid-1970s. He was a very creative musician who contributed a lot when we toured together and worked in the studio," Mr Ulvaeus said.

Mr Brunkert toured with the band in 1977, 1979, and 1980, at the height of Abba's fame. Until details of his strange and sad death were reported, however, the 62-year-old musician remained virtually unknown.

On the reference website Wikipedia, he was limited to a single line entry, against many pages for Abba. The Abba tribute group Bjorn Again, however, acknowledged him by having an Ola Drumkitt in the line-up.

Bronkert was found dead with cuts to his neck in the garden of his house on the Mediterranean island. A neighbour found the body on Sunday evening. Yesterday, a police autopsy concluded it was an accident.

Brunkert hit his head against a glass door in his dining room, shattering the glass and cutting himself in the neck, a spokesman for the Civil Guard said. He managed to wrap a towel round his neck and left the house to seek help, but collapsed in the garden.

He lived in the coastal apartment complex of Betlem in Arta, in eastern Mallorca, his home for 20 years. His wife Inger died less than a year ago, an Arta municipal official said.

The stars of Abba, who scored a string of international hits between 1972 and 1982, were Andersson and Ulvaeus and their sometime wives, the singers Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Fltskog. The group, with megahits like Waterloo, Mamma Mia, and Dancing Queen, took their title from the acronym of their first names.

Behind the scenes, Brunkert and bass player Rutger Gunnarsson were said to be the only musicians to appear on all Abba albums, according to the group's official website.

Brunkert had been a jazz drummer and a member of the blues band Slim's Blues Gang, before joining pop group Science Poption in the mid-1960s.

Abba notched up album sales of more than 370 million. They have not played together since 1982, but still sell nearly 3 million records a year.

TRAGEDY AT THE FINAL CURTAIN

FRENCH pop singer and song writer Claude Franois – who wrote Comme d'habitude, the original version of My Way – was a famous victim of a tragic accident. In 1978, aged only 39, he was accidentally electrocuted as he tried to fix a broken light bulb while standing in a filled bathtub. And Sonny Bono the American record producer, singer, politician and former husband of Cher, died of massive head injuries after hitting a tree while skiing on the Heavenly Ski Resort near South Lake Tahoe, California, in 1998, aged 62.