As one of ABBA’s core session musicians, he’s helped sell millions of records around the world. His guitar playing can be heard on some of the Swedish ’70s pop superstars’ classic hits, including “Waterloo,” “Mamma Mia” and the group’s U.S. number one, “Dancing Queen.”
But Janne Schaffer’s resume extends well beyond his work with that famous quartet. In Sweden alone, he’s a studio supremo, on par with America’s own session meister Steve Lukather. To date, Schaffer has performed guitar on more than 5,000 recordings.
“And that includes my own 488 compositions,” he tells Guitar Player. “I played on a lot of records in the ’70s, ranging from Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra’s ‘Indian Summer’ to recordings by Andreas Vollenweider and Johnny Nash, among so many others. I still do recordings with other artists today.”
Schaffer grew up with musical parents, although much of the music in their house was classical, which wasn't his preference. He started out on acoustic guitar but turned to electric guitar after hearing Elvis Presley's “Heartbreak Hotel” on the radio.
His early years were spent developing his six-string craft with a series of local bands in his native Sweden. At one TV show appearance, his group was slated to appear with the Byrds and Jimi Hendrix.
Another memorable date saw one of his band's headline a show in Stockholm with support from a young English group who had just released their debut album.
“It was September of 1967, and I was playing with a group called the Sleepstones,” he remembers. “And this band from England were a support act. And that band was Pink Floyd, who also had to borrow all our instruments so they could play the show!”
While performing with Nash in Stockholm, the singer and Schaffer offered a Jamaican musician a place to crash while he performed on the soundtrack to Want So Much to Believe, a 1971 film starring Nash. That turned out to be Bob Marley, who went on to write much of Catch a Fire, his 1973 breakthrough album, while staying with them.
Later on, a career as a studio session guitarist beckoned when Schaffer was hired by two Swedish musicians working as house producers for a local recording studio.
“The first session I ever did was with a Swedish singer called Björn J:son Lindh," he says. "Then suddenly from that gig, I was playing on all the records that were being recorded in Stockholm at that time.”
That included the earliest work to come from the pop group ABBA: guitarist Björn Ulvaeus, keyboardist Benny Andersson and singers Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Fältskog.
“I was recording with a young singer-songwriter Ted Gärdestad, and the producers of that session were Björn and Benny,” Schaffer explains. “And from that, I came to play on ‘People Need Love,’ the first real ABBA song, in 1972, which then led me on to recording with ABBA as well.”
Around the same time, Schaffer embarked on a solo career in parallel with his studio work. His self-titled debut album — an instrumental guitar record that showcased some impressive shredding — went Gold and topped the Swedish charts in 1973 for six weeks, outselling ABBA’s debut, Ring Rng. Schaffer’s second album, Janne Schaffer's Andra LP, also went to number one in that country.
Soon, his reputation as a hot-shot jazz-fusion guitar player came to the attention of Columbia Records in the U.S., resulting in a three-album deal.
“I signed with CBS to record my third album, Katharsis in 1975,” Schaffer explains. “The album was first released in Sweden and, later, in the States where it received a fantastic review in Rolling Stone magazine. The American record label people then came to Stockholm to see me in concert.
“After the concert they called me and said, ‘We liked the concert, do you want to record in Hollywood?’ And I replied, ‘Of course!’ They knew that I played with ABBA as a session musician, but at the time in 1975, ABBA was not well known in the States, so CBS wanted to do something to make some people know my name.
“So they got me to do a concert in Montreux, Switzerland, together with the CBS Jazz All-Stars in front of 3,000 people for a TV show, which was also recorded.” It was a history-making event featuring jazz greats like drummer Billy Cobham and saxophonist Stan Getz.
Landing in Hollywood to record his next album, 1979’s Earmeal, Schaffer hooked up with several members of the newly formed group Toto. The album is noteworthy for being one of the rare occasions when the entire Porcaro family of professional musicians — brothers Jeff, Steve and Mike and their father, Joe — appeared together on a recording.
The album’s lineup came about through some choice recommendations.
“CBS suggested bringing producer Bruce Botnick onboard, a fantastic producer who had worked with the Doors,” Schaffer recalls. Guitarist Les Dudek, who had made a name for himself with the Allman Brothers Band, Steve Miller Band and Boz Scaggs, put forth drummer Jeff Porcaro's name.
“Jeff then suggested I get his bass playing brother Mike to join us too,” Schaffer says. “And because we needed a percussionist too, they suggested their father, Joe.
“During a recording session one day, Jeff told me they had started a group and had just recorded a tune and invited me to listen to it. So, we went to their rehearsal studio and he played me the song which had no vocals at that time.”
That song was “Hold the Line,” Toto’s debut single and, as it would turn out, an international hit
Following the sessions for Earmeal, Schaffer returned home to Stockholm, but soon after received a call from management.
“They said I had made a very good record, but it needed something that was a hit single included on it,” he says. “So I wrote a tune called ‘Happy Feet,’ which features the Porcaro family as well as Steve Porcaro playing keyboard on it too.”
Almost 45 years later. the song has been included in the new film Bad Apples, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in February.
The final album in Schaffer’s trilogy of American jazz-fusion outings was 1980’s Presens, which was more commercial sounding in its musicality and approach. But with new wave and synth pop beginning to proliferate the musical climate, the album wasn’t able to build upon the success of it’s predecessor. CBS released it only in Europe.
Soon after, Schaffer left the label, but continued to release a consistent flow of solo albums. In 1989 he earned a Swedish Grammy Award for Instrumental Production of the Year for his album Electric Graffiti.
Today, Schaffer remains as busy as ever through touring and by contributing his unique guitar style to recordings, including those of this writer.
For gear, Schaffer mainly used a 1959 Gibson Les Paul ‘Burst for his ‘trilogy’ albums, alternating between a Mesa/Boogie and an Ampeg for amplification. His basic set-up today comprises a custom-made Larrivée guitar and a Peavey Stereo Chorus combo amp.
“After the Les Paul, and before I got the Larrivée, I used a Fender Stratocaster for a while,” he says. “But with the change in my playing style which had evolved, I needed to change guitar too, so that’s why I got a Larrivée. It is much more an all-around guitar, and I have the vibrato arm on it as well, which I use a lot of as it’s part of my playing style.”
In recent years, Schaffer’s work has been rediscovered by a new generation of artists such as Christina Aguilera who sampled Schaffer’s track “No Registration” that originally appeared on his debut album, for her song “Sick of Sittin,’” which appears on her 2018 album, Liberation. He also reunited with his former ABBA cohort Agnetha Fältskog by contributing guitar to “Past Forever” a song from her A+ album, released in 2023.
Looking back over his his 50-plus-year career as a guitar player, Schaffer is pleased to see his musical evolution, something he attributes to his desire to always look forward.
"If you go back and listen to my first solo album and then listen to my most current music I’ve released, you will hear a big difference in the way my playing and music has developed and in the way I also write music,” he offers. “I never wanted to get stuck in a special formula, I want to always experiment and do new things. I have a passion for playing music and will try to do it as long as I can."
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