at
Djurgården in Stockholm The studio was created in 1978 at a disused cinema theatre on the street floor (not ground floor, due to a bridge and streets separated by four floors) of a building known as
Sportpalatset (Palace of Sports) in central Stockholm. The massive edifice, built around 1930, owed its name to a large indoor public bath (closed in the mid-1950s) and several other sports facilities which had been housed upstairs over the years. ABBA had been looking for a modern studio with a good, spacious live sound where they would be able to work at their own leisure and decided that the best solution was to build their own. The first song recorded at the studio was "
Chiquitita", and the band would record their next three studio albums:
Voulez-Vous,
Super Trouper, and
The Visitors at Polar Studios. The
music video for ABBA's 1979 song "
Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" was filmed in the studio; it depicted the group recording the track, although in reality the audio recording was already complete. On the same day, the group also filmed the Spanish language video for "
Estoy Soñando" there.
Ownership history and closure The studio's original location was a former cinema theatre, in an early 1930s building at Sankt Eriksgatan 58-60 on
Kungsholmen. Construction began on the studio in 1977, and it opened for production on May 18, 1978. In 1984, Stig Anderson bought out his partners in the company. Shortly afterward, he sold the studio to his daughter Marie Ledin, her husband
Tomas Ledin, and their business partner Lennart Östlund. As a result, the studio vacated its original location on May 1 of that year. The studio moved several more times; the last address was in Hammarby Sjöstad in Stockholm. In the fall of 2015 business was scaled down and equipment was moved to a warehouse.
Legacy In 2010,
ABBA The Museum premiered an exhibit that attempted to recreate the band's Polar Studios setup. ==Equipment==