Always a very tricky subject to talk about with a lot of people, especially those in the business. Those of you wondering when Laura ever had blond hair will have to take a closer look at the pictures in the background, and may or may not recognise that they’re actually pictures of ABBA. Why? Well, as this page is about bootlegs I thought I’d include, and compare, some that I know about. All good artists have their share of bootlegging whether it’s by the fans themselves or some market seller making them just to make some money out of the fans concerned. You just have to log onto eBay and if you know what to look out for you can spot a hundred bootleg ABBA cd’s. Back in the 70’s and 80’s when I was collecting ABBA with other fans all over the world we used to swap recordings (never studio albums though - on vinyl in those days!) of tv shows, interviews and concerts etc that we had, and in those days everything was on cassette so you can imagine some of the quality! In 1982, when ABBA called it a day, some tapes were stolen from a Bjorn Ulvaeus’s car in Holland and on those tapes were demo’s for a supposedley new album (and some from way back as 1974) which they didn’t release but ended up being turned into the CHESS musical. Those tapes of ABBA actually singing the CHESS songs did the rounds with fans very quickly. Today, to buy those recording’s on CD would cost you a fortune, especially for a good quality copy. LP’s (yes, LP’s remember those)? were actually made of them and I remember another Dutch fan actually asking Benny Andersson (the pianist) to autograph one, which he did after asking the fan if he knew this recording was illegal to which the fan replied, “Yes, but you can’t be losing any money because you haven’t officially released it yet!” We had to wait another 12 years  before some of them were officially released (and put an end to some of the illegal copying) as part of a limited edition box set in 1994. I still have all my own ‘unreleased’ recordings but I also bought the box set so that I could hear them the way they were supposed to be, and of course for the top quality recording. There are still a lot of tracks we have that ABBA haven’t released yet and that will probably never happen as Benny and Bjorn took a lot of persuading to release the tracks they did saying if they weren’t good enough to release back then why should we now? But, it was the fans who, after finding and knowing about all these recordings, manged to get the release of the “Thank You For The Music” 4- CD box set.

Now of course we have CD’s and computers with CD Writers so there’s no stopping some people , there’s nothng that can’t be put on disc now, even video soundtrack, and of course the quality is a lot better than it was with the old cassettes and scratchy vinyl. Both ABBA and Laura have released the same amount of studio albums and Laura sort of started when ABBA finished, and a lot of fans turned to her music when they realised ABBA would be no more. It took me until 1984 though, I hung on a little longer!! As with ABBA, Laura has her share of bootlegging too but I‘ve yet to see someone actually try and sell copies of her studio albums.  Most of the CD’s, and what most of the fans seem to be looking for, contain the old demos of “Looking Out For Number One”, “Fool’s Affair” and “Tell Him”, all unreleased officially except on promotional 7”/12” vinyl but I’ve found quite easy to pick up on the Internet and not that expensive in $US. The other stuff consists of the 12” promo mixes and 12” remixes and concert stuff. I got a lot of these myself a bit back mainly because I never knew they existed so wanted to hear them, as any fan would, but lately I’ve been able to find the original recordings myself on Atlantic so now I have the excellent quality, and legal copies. The film soundtracks seem to be in demand a lot too but again, if you look hard enough you can still find them. Wouldn’t it be good if Laura got together with the fans and put together a definitive box set collection for us? Maybe a bit of remastering too as all her CD albums were copied straight from the original analogue masters which show a lot of flaws, especially on the HOLD ME  album. Actually, some of Laura’s vinyl sound much better than the CD! No matter what, it’s still the artists name that is used to sell whatever it is they have and therefore doing them out of any future royalties whether they officially released it or not. But, at the same time the fans can’t get enough and will keep on buying them just to hear something different from their favourite artist. It’s just a pity Atlantic couldn’t release something special for us Laura fans! Even if it’s through the Internet only. It hasn’t done David Bowie any harm!