Chess (musical) - Development

Development

Lyricist Tim Rice had been fascinated by the political machinations of the 1972 "Match of the Century" between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, and had long wanted to create a musical about the Cold War. During the mid-'70s, he had discussed writing a musical about the Cuban Missile Crisis with his usual collaborator, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber but that idea never came to fruition in its original incarnation. In the late `70s, Rice got the idea to tell his Cold War story through the prism of the long-standing U.S.-Soviet chess rivalry, but when Rice wanted to start working on the new musical in early `79, Lloyd Webber was already well underway with his own independent musical Cats. Premiering two seasons later in the West End, the show become one of the most successful musicals of all time and was also the first musical to employ a huge engineering staff to supervise its many technical elements, a paradigm which would be adopted for Chess in numerous capacities during its development.

Subsequently, American producer Richard Vos suggested to Rice to work with Andersson and Ulvaeus instead, knowing that they were looking to develop and produce projects outside of ABBA. An ardent fan of the group, Rice agreed. He later wrote that he felt no reservations because "there is a sense of theatre in the ABBA style". With Vos also in attendance, Rice met with the two in Stockholm for the first time in 15 December 1981 in order to discuss the concept, and they quickly signed on to the project.

ABBA stopped performing in early 1983, due to tensions between the two couples as well as their recent divorces.

All through 1983, the three men worked on the music and lyrics. Rice would describe the mood of particular songs he wanted, then Andersson and Ulvaeus would write and record the music and send the tapes to Rice, who would then write lyrics to fit the music, and send the resulting tapes back to Andersson and Ulvaeus ad infinitum.

Some of the songs on the resulting album contained elements of music Andersson and Ulvaeus had previously written for ABBA. For example, the chorus of "I Know Him So Well" was based on the chorus of "I Am An A," a song from their 1977 tour, while the chorus of "Anthem" used the chord structures from the guitar solo from their 1980 ABBA song "Our Last Summer".

Ulvaeus would also provide dummy lyrics to emphasize the rhythmic patterns of the music, and since Rice found a number of these "embarrassingly good" as they were, incorporated a few in the final version. The most well known example is "One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble". One song, which became "Heaven Help My Heart," was recorded with an entire set of lyrics, sung by ABBA's Agnetha Fältskog, with the title "Every Good Man", though none of the original lyrics from this song were used.

Partly to raise money in order to produce the show in the West End and partly to see how the material would fare with the public, it was decided to release the music as an album before any stage productions were undertaken, a strategy that had proven successful with Rice's two previous musicals, Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita.

Owing in part to the different countries in which the lyricist and composers resided, recording on the album musical of Chess began in Stockholm in early November 1983, with Andersson recording the many layered keyboard parts himself along with other basic work at their usual Polar Studios. Choral and orchestral work was then recorded in London by The Ambrosian Singers along with the London Symphony Orchestra and the album was sound-engineered and mixed back at Polar by longtime ABBA sound engineer Michael B. Tretow.