I met Toni Tenille when I was working at J.W. Robinson in Beverly Hills. She was very gracious. I told her about how “Love Will Keep Us Together” was the first album I ever spent my allowance on (ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” was the first single). I told her about how, when I was 9, I was riding in the car with my paternal grandparents, sitting on the front bench seat between Granny and Grandpa, with my hand on grandpa’s leg. I was singing, “The Way That I Want to Touch You” without even thinking about it when my grandmother suddenly asked, “Danny! What is that song you’re singing? That’s an awfully strange lyric for a boy to be singing!” And imagine how my grandfather felt with my hand on his leg while I sang it! Well, Toni laughed and said, “Ah, kids!” (politely skipping over the embarrasing issues that could be read into that story) and told me that she was really proud of that song because she wrote it.
I never realized it until just now, writing this, but I have had the supreme delight of meeting the artists who made the first music I ever bought! How many people can say that? Thank you, ABBA and Toni Tenille! 😀
Daniel Greene 