ABBA guitarist Lasse Wellander dead at 70

Swedish pop group ABBA is mourning the death of one of their own.

The group announced to their social media that longtime guitarist Lasse Wellander had passed away. He was 70 years old.

“Lasse was a dear friend, a fun guy and a superb guitarist. The importance of his creative input in the recording studio, as well as his rock solid guitar work on stage, was immense,” members Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Anni-Frid (Frida) Lyngstad and Benny Andersson wrote.

“We mourn his tragic and premature death and remember the kind words, the sense of humor, the smiling face, the musical brilliance of the man who played such an integral role in the ABBA story.”

“He will be deeply missed and never forgotten,” the pop stars wrote beneath a black and white photo of Wellander performing with the band.

Born in the small Swedish village of Skrekarhyttan, Wellander took to music at a young age, learning to play guitar after watching The Beatles perform on television in 1963.

Wellander joined ABBA in 1974, after Björn and Benny inquired if he would be interested in playing guitar for their group.

“I thought it would be big, quite early on,” Wellander said of ABBA’s potential. “Strong songs all the way. Even the simple pop numbers were very high quality. One of the first tracks I recorded with them was ‘Know Me, Knowing You.’ I think that’s still one of the better songs throughout the years,” he told Guitar World last year.

“We were a core of musicians. It wasn’t a full-time job to work with ABBA – and sometimes I couldn’t play, so Janne Schaffer was called in, and the reverse. 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 you maybe didn’t go down to Stockholm to do one just track. But I belonged to that core of musicians from ’74 on,” he said.

Wellander enjoyed playing all of ABBA’s music, but said, “I liked ‘Eagle’ because I had a long guitar solo in that song … I looked forward a bit more to that number. It was amazing being out on the road. We played six days at Wembley Arena, full house.”

His most recent collaborations with ABBA included the soundtrack to the “Mamma Mia!” and “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” films, as well as ABBA’s album Voyage, released in November 2021.

When ABBA stopped recording new music and going out on tour, Wellander says he sought work with other groups.

“I was working with a lot of other bands and sessions, TV jobs, nightclubs and theaters, so I just went back to work. I played with four different groups during the 80s,” he explained.

Wellander also worked on and released his own music.