Trivia

Michael B Tretow was a sound engineer at the legendary Metronome Studio in the 1960s.

During the pop era in the mid-1960s, Tretow was a member of several pop groups, including recording a single with Mikael Ramel as Mikael & Michael in 1966.

When SVT reorganized its two TV channels in the fall of 1987, Tretow was commissioned to create the new signature for Kanal 1. In the early years, it was played between almost all programs and later played at the beginning and end of broadcasts. This jingle remained well into the 1990s.

In the winter of 1975-1976, Tretow recorded his own album at Glennstudio, Stockholm, together with Abba and their surrounding group of musicians; the result was the humorous English-language album "Let's Boogie" with lyrics by Thomas H. Minor.

As part of the marketing of the theme park Tomteland in Mora municipality, Tretow was commissioned in 1985 to make a children's album. The result was the album Tomteland . One song was about the Professor, a Santa Claus who demonstrates a fantastic invention to the narrator. This song received some airtime on Sveriges Radio P3 , and Den makalösa manicken became a Swedish top hit and became one of the most popular songs of 1986.

In January 1968, Tretow ended up at Metronome Studio , where he recorded (and in some cases produced ) material with artists such as the Diddlers , Pugh Rogefeldt , Ted Gärdestad , Jojje Wadenius , Lill Lindfors , Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson , among others .

During 1980-1981, Tretow, together with Ted Gärdestad , recorded musical paraphrases with nonsense lyrics under the pseudonym Caramba , whose self-titled album was successful. The single " Hubba Hubba Zoot Zoot " became very popular, even though the audience did not know who was hiding behind the name Caramba.

He began working at Metronome Studios in Stockholm in 1967, and later worked at GLN (Glenmark) studios for two years before coming to ABBA's Polar Studios in 1978, where he eventually became studio manager.

During the late 1970s, Tretow had built a studio in his home in Bromma , Garage de Garbage , and started the record label Trash Records . On this he released a self-titled album in 1982, full of crazy humor, puns, musical caricatures and the autobiographical Åby Folkets Park -59 .

On June 22, 2001, Tretow was a summer talk show host on Swedish Radio P1.

Tretow experimented with different recording techniques, and played an essential part in creating the "ABBA sound".

Because Tretow had previously worked extensively with Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson , he was chosen to become Abba 's house sound engineer . He was then the engineer on all Abba recordings (except for the album Voyage 2021). Meanwhile, Tretow helped build Polar Studios on Kungsholmen in Stockholm .

In the Christmas calendar on radio in 2000, Snålla Py , Tretow was responsible for music and sound effects.

In 2016, the compilation album Kungsgatan 25 was released , which collected a number of recordings with pop bands from Norrköping that Tretow made in his boyhood room during the years 1964-1965. The album is named after the address where the family lived at the time.

In 1997, he recorded the Christmas album "En galen jul" with several Swedish artists, which was never officially released.

In the summer of 1986, Tretow did a Summer Program, something he repeated in 2001.

Tretow continued to work with the Abba members even during the group's hiatus, including being a sound engineer during the recordings of Chess and several of the members' solo albums.

Michael B. Tretow was a Swedish record producer and audio engineer, musician, and composer, best known for his work with the Swedish pop group ABBA (1970-1982), and with the musical Chess.

After interrupting his military service, he focused more seriously on working with music and sound.

His work continued on radio jingles, commercials and sketches for radio programs such as Metropol, Plattetyder, Eldorado, Putte Punsch Lyckoshow and Plattoteket . Tretow also provided sound for commercials, fairy tale recordings and TV programs.

Tretow also produced albums with his childhood idols Little Gerhard and Rock-Ragge.

After working on Agnetha Fältskog's album My Colouring Book, he ended his career in 2004, and his home studio Garage de Garbage in Bromma was closed down and sold.

Tretow suffered in 2001 a brain hemorrhage , which left him unable to speak for ten years, and all memories of the Abbey era disappeared.

In 1999, Mariann Grammofon AB, in collaboration with Anderson Records, released the collection "Greatest" "Hits" . The many quotation marks indicate that the collection did not only contain well-known songs.