Original subtitles

-And the number one new artist is... -And the award goes to...

And the number one single of the year...

Ace of Base!

We'd release in Germany, go to number 1. Holland, number 1.

France, number one.

-Cheers! -Unbelievable!

Ulf Ekberg holds right wing extremist views.

The weirdest stories happened.

A German woman went into my house and attacked me and my family.

This doesn't quite fit together.

My interest for everything was lost there.

The whole thing erupted. None of us were ready for it.

It's like a snowball getting bigger. I have no clue how big it is.

Yes!

Early 1993 Ace of Base returned to the country

where it all began, as celebrated super stars,

something that was reflected at the Danish Grammy Awards.

Good evening and welcome to the Danish Grammy Awards 1993.

But there were more important things happening that evening.

One night, it was the Grammy Awards in Denmark

and there was this big dinner.

There were two seats missing at the table.

which was Ulf and Kjeld.

None of us really knew what had happened.

Ulf had called Kjeld and said, "Can we meet at your house?

I have to cancel the Grammys.

I have something important you need to know

before you read it in the papers tomorrow."

I knew that now it was becoming so big

I had to own this question, I had to tell the people I work with

everybody had to know about my background.

Because it's just a matter of time before it's all over the place.

So I went to Kjeld Wennick, the record boss,

who was Jewish, and told him my background.

And after hearing my story

his first reaction was he started to cry.

It hit me very hard, let's say that.

And I was very upset.

And he gave me the longest hugs I've had in my life.

And he said, "I'm very grateful you're being honest with me."

And then he said, "We're gonna fight this together."

We didn't know how to handle it.

That is in the way past.

And how could we talk about us, like four persons?

I didn't know how to handle it.

But Ulf said, "I will handle this.

You have nothing to do with this."

LIVED FOR DRUGS

One member of Ace of Base, Ulf Ekberg,

was once a member of a gang.

Ulf Ekberg holds right wing extremist views.

Ekberg grew up in the Swedish port of Gothenburg.

The product of a broken home,

he was in a skinhead gang from the time he was 12.

You say you've committed frightfully violent crimes. Like what?

If somebody looked at you the wrong way you kicked their face out,

or hit them on the head with a stone.

That was life, how I asserted myself.

I thought fighting was cool.

I was part of the anonymous crowd that ruins other people's lives.

We can't pretend that this is trivial

since it affects large groups of people

and the welfare of society in general.

I'm very sorry about it.

I really regret everything I've done.

I can't forget that I've been a stupid and naive fool.

I can't forget that, but I'm trying to live now.

I'm trying to live in the future and trying to see what I...

What I can do for people.

The question partly becomes,

is it a makeover, just a superficial thing in order to sell yourself?

Or is it a true change?

At one time, Ekberg fought to keep Sweden as white as the winter snow.

So imagine Sadie Percell's surprise

when she was hired to be a dancer for the band's videos and concerts.

I was a little suspicious, you know.

But I got to know him and listened to myself and what he told me.

I liked him. So I couldn't hold that against him.

-"We are no Nazis." -What about the other members?

They have nothing to do with my life.

I did several stupid things when I was a teenager

and I have to stand for that today.

I was an idiot and...

What I did in the mid 1980s I can't redo, I can't rewind the tape.

And hopefully I can inspire other people who are also lost,

that you can always change your life and do something good about it.

And leave that completely destructive world

that I was a part of.

My wife said, very cleverly

and which I agree one hundred percent with,

"If a person turns over to the positive side,

then we should support him."

When the news about Ulf Ekberg's background broke on Swedish radio,

no one could have anticipated that

the news would become politics in Israel.

One of the first countries to embrace Ace of Base.

This story with Ulf Ekberg broke in Israel

very shortly after the success of All That She Wants.

There were only two pop stations in Israel.

One was the military station

and the other one was the station I worked at,

The Public Service Broadcasting Authority.

The army station decided to do a listeners poll,

asking them, "Should we keep on playing Ace of Base, or ban them?"

And 65 percent came in saying,

"No, we shouldn't play them. We should boycott them."

They took the result and applied it.

They stopped playing Ace of Base because of Ulf's background.

And I was so furious. I was mad.

He was a stupid kid when he was younger and he did this mistake.

I opened the mike and said, "This is crap! Take it with proportion.

What was was. It's not the present.

I know the band, I interviewed them. They're good people

and we're going to keep playing Ace of Base to death!"

We're not going to boycott them

because of one action of one of them in his youth.

We're going to love them even more.

And instead of making them less successful,

or to see a decline in their career,

the other process happened.

They became bigger.

I think it would be much tougher today for someone like Ulf

to survive this in the social media age.

I think Ulf would have had a much harder time

if that news had come out five to ten years later.

Going via Israel to London, I mean, that's weird.

But that is what happened.

That was a massive market, huge. It was the biggest in the world.

If you hit there, you hit everywhere.

We were in a low budget hotel. We had small rooms.

We had to pay for our own mini bar drinks, our own meals.

They didn't have that kind of budget for a new Swedish band in the UK.

They've been so successful all over Europe.

Next from Sweden, Ace of Base. All That She Wants is Another Baby.

In the meantime, she's just practising.

The only way to find out the position in the UK charts

was listening to BBC Radio 1.

I had to get my grandmother, who was 70 odd years old at the time,

to tune into Radio 1 and listen to the charts.

...full countdown with a brand new number one...

We were waiting to hear the position of All That She Wants.

This was a Sunday night.

I remember getting to the top 20, going up from 40 to 20.

Then getting to number two, still nothing.

So I thought they didn't make it into the charts.

We had good mid-week positions, I didn't understand it.

And the next thing she says...

Congratulations to Ace of Base at number one.

"Excuse me, what they're number one?" "Yeah, they're number one."

All That She Wants.

They were invited back to Top of the Pops,

which never usually happens, a week later.

When we went back, we were all in suites with the mini bar paid for.

So the treatment changed a lot.

And of course by the time it went up the charts in the UK especially,

a lot of the American companies became very interested.

We followed a strategy where we broke country by country.

On purpose, we waited with America.

They said that we were number 97, just by import for Europe,

because the music was good.

We were on rap stations.

Why? Because it's reggae.

Back then it was all about grunge. Pop was something very made up.

Actually, alternative radio thought

All That She Wants was so cool that they playlisted it.

A handful of Nordic rockers are trying

to break into the American market.

Their band name is Ace of Base.

Hello, America. I'm Joker from Ace of Base.

Hello, everybody. I am Linn.

Hi, I'm Buddha.

And I'm the fourth member of Ace of Base, Jenny. Hi.

It's like a movie for me, the US. Just a big movie.

I'm very interested to go there and see how it works and work there.

-Toodeloo! -Toodeloo?

-What do you say then? -Hello, America. We love you.

The American music climate in the early 1990s was grunge and gangsta.

Bands like Pearl Jam, Green Day,

Dr. Dre's The Chronic, N.W.A, Tupac Shakur.

We had Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey at the time.

The great irony of Ace of Base's American success

is how this very shiny pop did so remarkably well.

It's kind of like it united everybody.

The soul scene was huge.

So huge you lost the melodies.

And there was a lot of rap.

And there we came with the melodies. And it was like... "Oh, melodies!"

It's pop. You can't stop it.

Can you explain your role at Arista Records in the early 1990s?

I was the head of pop A&R for Arista.

So we had a very small staff and we were reporting to Clive Davis,

who was the head of the company.

He was the chairman of Arista Records.

He signed people like Janis Joplin and Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan.

When you were present at one of Clive's repertoire meetings,

he was sitting at the end of the table with a microphone

and he more or less courted himself and he said something.

"What does Clive think about this?" And so on.

Arista was also not a subtle label. Arista made Whitney Houston famous.

Arista wanted big, centre-of-the-bull's-eye hits.

And that was Clive Davis's expertise.

Everybody, from Barry Manilow to Whitney Houston,

had become chart toppers because of Clive Davis.

-Are you ready? -Yeah, are you ready?

What an honour to be here. Thank you.

We're here to talk about Ace of Base.

When I say Ace of Base, what comes to your mind?

An A&R man working for Arista, Richard Sweret,

had brought to my attention the record of All That She Wants.

And I was really on vacation, I was on a yacht.

The reception was never good on the phone.

But what was clear was the record of All That She Wants.

The fact that they were connected with Denniz Pop

made me take notice.

And it was a time, honestly, within Arista,

that there weren't as many hit records.

They were looking for pop records to bring to the charts.

I believe the head of Mega Records was a Kjeld Wennick.

And he had wanted to speak to me.

I expressed my enthusiasm,

and so we agreed that Arista would be a home for

I think, North America, South America and Japan.

But I did have one request.

1993, JULY, Ace of Base signs with Arista Records

"This is a good album, guys. But we don't have enough singles.

We need two more singles. The US is a different market."

As a label, as a company, we don't try to sell an album off one hit.

There was no social media, no internet.

The only way to break was through the radio.

And the radio stations played hits.

Now, completely unaware, I'm sitting next to Jonas in a minibus.

We're going back to the studio, or maybe to have dinner somewhere.

He pulls out a cassette, "Do you want to hear something?"

And he gives me these old-fashioned headphones.

It was just, immediately in hearing it, it sounded like a single.

"Why don't we put this on the album, putting it out now?"

And he said, "No, it's not possible, because it's for the next album."

So he gave me a copy of the song, fortunately.

And I played it for my colleagues in an A&R meeting with Clive Davis.

Jonas came up with a great song, The Sign.

And when I heard that song, I said, "Wow!"

Even to the point that, "Look, for our territory,

I want to call the album The Sign.

We, the group, came up with a greater riff of Don't Turn Around."

So there we were, we had three potential singles.

Going to Hit Factory.

Is it possible to see the rest of the studio?

Bloody good.

That song is...

Clive Davis is kind of a genius at promotion.

It was he who had them cover Don't Turn Around and work up The Sign.

Jonas and Denniz Pop, basically spun it into this perfect pop confection.

It's just when you can find the perfect fusion in something.

That was one of the first records I heard

with that pop, reggae, like backgrounds in.

Later a lot of records followed it, but that was one of the first.

And I think that Ace of Base captured that, for sure.

I think they needed that super mega hit.

When I heard The Sign before it was released,

I was like, this is a given number one.

And the album exploded.

It spent six weeks on top of the Hot 100,

exited number one for a month, and then came back for two weeks.

It shows you how persistent a hit it was.

Americans couldn't get enough of it.

They are four individuals with blond hair,

achieving big success on the music charts.

This is not an ABBA reunion. It's Ace of Base.

We had the pleasure of meeting the band in New York.

How do you feel about being compared to ABBA?

The classic question! You don't say, you don't say...

It's because two girls and two boys from Sweden have brought the music.

And we're not a studio constellation,

like two guys sitting in a studio and two girls on stage.

And that's the only thing you see.

We rock with the music on the same level as the band you see on stage.

So it's a group that people can identify themselves with.

And it was the same with ABBA. So that's the only thing that's alike.

Once the deal was set, then the process came of,

we have to image the band, pull everything together with the group.

We had to learn the crash course of American culture very fast.

I remember I had to learn how to work the room.

How do you work a room?

Not only did we go from day to night,

we also went from small cars to limousines.

That was the first limousine experience.

We were like, "Wow, what's going on?"

As for the recording industry, it was starting to do very well,

because the compact disc was taking over.

It was a very profitable medium.

In a way, Ace of Base caught the first wave of this CD popularity.

The Swedish group Ace of Base is riding a popularity wave in the US.

The band has two hit songs,

including the title track of their new album The Sign.

It was almost serendipity.

Everything came together in such a way that

if we tried to do it again it's almost impossible to do.

because it was the moment, it was the time, the people, the place.

Everything going in your favour

with that tail wind that just pulled it all along.

It was a wonderful period.

Each single became a big, big hit.

It's the biggest pop debut album in American history.

I don't think anyone could expect that it would blow up in that way.

We woke up every morning and tried to find a way for things to fit.

This is your wake up call!

They were bring pulled from every side.

The European record company wanted them to promote in Europe.

The Americans wanted... Everybody wanted a piece of them.

The business took over our little thing that we had

and we had to keep to that core,

really be there and be strong together.

Because everybody else would rip us apart.

It was an erosion going on for money, and like, let's no go there.

How do we manage the time?

How can we be everywhere at the same time?

It was impossible.

A little like being in a room with a huge vacuum cleaner and just...

Everything started to spin, like, 2,000 times faster than before.

...Ace of Base!

They went from zero to a hundred in no time.

They are shopping a demo and then they sell 25 million records.

And it happened over a very short amount of time.

It's going down this freeway of mega success.

A prophet is never accepted in his own home.

So it's easier for someone outside of Sweden to get it,

because in Sweden, that's not what they're playing at the time.

It's like it's weird. You know what I'm saying? It's like...

What are they doing, reggae?

You guys, you're not supposed to be playing this kind of music.

And then everybody else gravitates to it outside of Sweden.

You know, Sweden turns around and goes, "Hey..."

I remember seeing their travel plans.

It was all over the place for the next,

I don't know how many years or months.

These things happen with these bands that don't tour to play concerts,

but appear in television programmes, do PAs and interviews and stuff.

It's very hard on them.

How does it feel, having this big success now?

Well, it's weird.

You act the same and feel the same, but people around you are very...

You have very much to talk about because of Ace of Base.

It's a bit weird.

It's much to do also. You're never at home.

A lot of people say that you change when you have success.

I would say that people, the way other people treat you changed.

You have to be grateful for success, always.

You get what you get. You have to be happy, even if it's a lot

or not so much.

But I really don't follow that, I would like to be big in Europe.

That's enough for me personally. It's...That's huge.

To be big in the States and all over the world, is a bit too much.

Me and Linn were always very close.

We were an extremely strong union.

We're like pseudo twins. We were very strong together.

And I think that we thought that the whole Ace of Base thing

was just in the way for us.

Many times when I was afraid of sleeping alone,

I could call my sister.

Being both sisters and workmates at the same time,

sometimes work came between and we had to figure that one out.

And when she wanted to quit, it was because it was too intense.

She saw it first.

We will be devastated if we just go on in this tempo.

So if we had the chance to pull out, we would have,

but contracts made us stay.

When you have pressure from the outside,

it either pushes you together,

or it tears you apart.

Creating a focal point for a group is always paramount.

They wanted the guy and they wanted the brain.

And they wanted the beautiful blonde.

And then they wanted the clerk girl.

The thing is that they wanted us girls in the front

and the guys in the back.

Obviously, Clive was onto something there.

They're all good looking, but Malin had an aura.

She kind of really had what I would call a star aura.

When you look at the videos, you can really see. We put Malin in focus.

There must have been tension in Ace of Base

when they were pushed forward as the focal point of the group.

I said, "Okay, since we're the main singers, we can do that.

And of course Linn sings a lot.

So if I can be there, well, yeah. Take us.

If that is how you want to promote it."

Because it was like they split us up a bit.

Lift you face up a bit, Ulf.

Just a bit more, Ulf. Great.

We shot that on 35 millimetre film.

You know, proper cameras, proper crew.

So it was a great experience.

As far as working with the band was concerned,

that never really changed for me.

But you watch as she goes. She comes past you.

And you don't need to wait for her. She goes past you.

-Like that. -Just follow her

-as she goes through the door. -Okay.

There was greater pressure from the record company.

The expectations obviously.

The sales were in the millions by then already,

so everybody felt that everything had to go up a gear.

I felt that pressure.

Everything around it was crazy, you know.

They couldn't walk around anymore

without people knowing who they were.

Suddenly their personal lives became public property.

People who don't know them think that they do.

People push into your space and want a piece of you

and think they know who you are

because they've listened to a couple of records.

The whole thing is bizarre.

I mean watching that happen

to these kids from the pizzeria

turning into these world artists.

It's a frightening roller-coaster ride for anybody.

They dealt with it in different ways.

Jonas was prepared for it.

Ulf seemed to adjust quite well, I have to say.

I don't think the girls were prepared for it.

I mean, who can?

I mean, you kind of lose control of your own life.

12 March, 1994, Ace of Base reaches the first place

on the Billboard Chart with The Sign.

Ace of Base are big now. Best in the States.

As they put it themselves, "It doesn't get any better."

First it was Björn Skifs, next ABBA and then Roxette.

And now Ace of Base.

-It just arrived. -"Dear Swedes of the west coast,

welcome to the club. Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson."

So nice of them to do this.

We just sent a fax in response.

-Where are the girls? -Out shopping, I think.

They didn't know about this, or being number one yesterday.

We found them eventually.

I had a look around. They were at choir rehearsal.

You really want from that type of super star sales

an act that was "equal".

I just didn't see

that kind of determined, dedicated effort.

Jenny and Linn perhaps didn't take the group seriously enough.

They were really four different personalities,

and they didn't all think alike.

So that was a problem.

It's a bit more difficult

if not everybody really wants to do what they're doing.

One of the problems might have been

that the girls and Jonas were a family

and they didn't have the same cut on the records.

At the time, the split among the band was very unfair.

You are trying to explain how income arises for artists.

You have one part coming from composers and songwriters,

which are entitled to a certain royalty,

depending on how big part they have written on the special composition.

And then you have another part, which is record sales.

And when I met them the first time, they had agreed that

they should divide the split from the record sales

with the bigger cut to Ulf and Jonas.

There probably was some anger after our big success from the girls,

who didn't get the same revenues that we had.

Because we wrote the first album.

That might have been the main reason why the girls weren't on board.

Marker on Jenny.

This summer I was out. First I was working a lot.

I was working in three different cities.

I had a fabulous summer.

Now I'm really relaxed and ready to go out working again.

This summer I've been travelling a lot.

To Saint Tropez for ten days.

We've been out partying. We went to parties.

Different parties. Houses, homes and discos.

So one week in Saint Tropez is normally not enough.

Normally we always stay for two weeks. Unfortunately...

It was those small things that grow.

All small things that are uneven. They grow. They grow a lot.

Fantastic. Good weather. Shiny.

Been out with the boat a few days. I had a great summer, actually.

Nice to start work again.

When for instance we were going home...

Jonas and Ulf were taking their boats for vacation.

Me and my sister were like, "Okay...Good.

That's fun for you."

Just small things that started to change.

And it wasn't always fun.

Now we're starting to see the girls not wanting to cooperate

to go anywhere or do anything.

Why?

Because they would have seen millions upon millions

coming in to the boys' accounts.

This summer I've been with the boat on the west coast of Sweden.

Very nice. And done some serious partying.

What do you do when you become bitter?

What do you do when you start to compare?

What happens inside of you?

It wouldn't change anything for the better

to be chasing money, anything like that.

What I did, I was going five weeks to find my resort.

And that was becoming a Christian youth leader.

That was something completely different.

I didn't care about boats.

I didn't care about furs, jewellery, clocks.

I didn't care at all. I had mine.

And it was bigger than theirs.

Speak.

We had never tried success before,

without being brothers and sisters in one band.

It's very good to be brothers and sisters

because if you start to fight, you are friends five minutes after it.

If you're just friends, you can hurt feelings in another way than now.

We're all a family, in a way.

2023 Jenny Berggren on tour

Coming out in this world, I've always been a misfit.

Hello.

I never fit the role of being a pop star.

I would never, ever be something that anyone would put money in,

because I don't have it.

Being all alone, it felt like being super naked.

Where is Ulf, where is Jonas... Where is my team?

We're born with longings.

And I had a huge desire to talk to people and sing to people.

But I realised it would not happen, because I'm not that good-looking,

I'm not that tall and I'm not that thin.

I'm not that good a singer, I'm not that musician, I'm not that cool

that you need to be.

I'm just me.

From that moment, from that day, everything changed for us.

Yeah...

-Hello. -Hi.

-Welcome. -Thank you.

First of all huge thanks for coming here.

Because I know something quite scary happened last night.

For me there was a life before.

And there was a life after.

The fear factor was high in their minds,

thinking, "If that happened once, it could happen again."

I remember I was going home to my parents and I took the bus.

When I stepped off the bus,

I'm passing someone at the bus stop.

There was something that wasn't right.

But I couldn't put my finger on it.

That's why I felt the gut feeling, don't go into this normal door.

I went in the backside.

And then I went to sleep.

"The time is around 11:30 pm and the TV is on.

Why have Mum and Dad not gone to bed?

Something's bothering me.

Something intangible.

This warm spring evening the birch tree sways gracefully by my window.

I fall asleep while saying my evening prayer.

Then I wake up.

Something is not right.

There was somebody in the house

who put a knife to my throat."

Subtitles: Anna Townend plint.com