ABBA’s Benny Andersson reveals unforgettable memory with KISS’s Ace Frehley: “HE WAS ONE….”

When Benny Andersson of ABBA spoke about Ace Frehley, few expected his words to carry such weight, emotion, and surprise.

It was during a recent interview in Stockholm that Benny, usually reserved and calm, was asked about the wildest encounter of his legendary career.

He paused, smiled faintly, and said one name that no one in the room expected.

“Ace Frehley,” he said softly.

The revelation sent a ripple of curiosity through the audience.

The Swedish pop genius and the American rock rebel—two icons from completely different worlds—had shared a night that Benny said he would never forget.

“It was sometime in the late seventies,” Benny began, his voice carrying that nostalgic tone of someone reaching back into the haze of time.

“ABBA had just finished a performance in New York. We were exhausted, but someone told us there was an afterparty where the guys from KISS were going to be. Out of curiosity, I decided to go.”

The room he described was unlike anything he had ever seen.

Smoke hung heavy in the air, music blared from every corner, and the crowd was an electric mix of musicians, actors, and fans.

Then, in the middle of it all, stood Ace Frehley—loud, laughing, and unmistakably himself.

Benny remembered the exact moment their eyes met.

“He looked at me and said, ‘Hey, you’re the dancing guy!’” Benny recalled with a laugh. “I had no idea whether he was teasing or just being friendly, but he grabbed me by the arm and said, ‘Come on, let’s play something!’”

There was a dusty electric guitar leaning against a speaker, and before Benny could protest, Ace plugged it in, turned the volume to maximum, and started playing one of the most chaotic, yet brilliant, improvised riffs Benny had ever heard.

“It wasn’t polished or perfect,” Benny said. “It was pure energy, like lightning in human form.”

Soon, a small crowd gathered.

Someone handed Benny a keyboard that had been sitting near the bar, and, without a plan, the two of them began to jam—disco meeting hard rock in a thunderous, spontaneous collision.

“It was madness,” Benny laughed. “But it worked. For about ten minutes, it felt like two worlds that were never supposed to meet somehow understood each other completely.”

After the impromptu performance, the two sat together for hours, drinking, laughing, and sharing stories about fame, pressure, and the strange loneliness that comes with being loved by millions.

Ace, according to Benny, was charming but restless, like a man always looking for something beyond the stage lights.

“He had this mix of brilliance and chaos,” Benny said, his voice softening. “You could tell he carried both inspiration and pain inside him.”

The conversation drifted from music to life, from success to regret.

Ace talked about the madness of touring with KISS, the exhaustion, and the weight of always being “the Spaceman.”

Benny, in turn, spoke about the discipline behind ABBA—the constant striving for perfection, the rehearsals, the responsibility of keeping the band’s image spotless.

“‘You live like astronauts,’ Ace told me,” Benny said with a faint smile. “‘I live like a meteor.’ And he was right.”

Their paths only crossed once more, years later, at a charity event in Los Angeles.

By then, time had aged them both, but the spark of that wild New York night still lingered.

They shared a quiet drink, laughed about how they once “almost destroyed a party with music,” and promised to meet again someday.

They never did.

When Benny learned of Ace Frehley’s passing, he said the news hit him harder than he expected.

“I sat at my piano and thought about that night,” he admitted. “I remembered how alive he was, how unstoppable. And I thought—how fragile that energy really is.”

He said that in a strange way, Ace had reminded him of why he loved music in the first place—not for the fame or the money, but for the raw, unfiltered joy of creating something that makes people feel alive.

“It didn’t matter that he was a rock god and I was a pop composer,” Benny said. “For that one night, we were just two musicians speaking the same language.”

As he reflected on the memory, Benny’s tone shifted from nostalgia to melancholy.

“I think that’s what makes life beautiful and cruel,” he said quietly. “You meet someone for a moment, and that moment stays with you forever. But the person doesn’t.”

He looked away for a long time before adding, almost in a whisper, “He was one of a kind. A meteor—brilliant, burning, and gone too soon.”

The interview ended in silence, but the image Benny painted lingered like an echo—two legends from different worlds, sharing a fleeting night of music, laughter, and truth.

It was a reminder that even among the greats, there are moments that exist beyond fame and beyond time—moments that define not just who they were, but why they ever picked up an instrument in the first place.