Ola Brunkert, a former drummer for the Swedish pop group ABBA, has been found dead at his home on the Spanish island of Mallorca.
Police said that Brunkert was found dead in his garden by a neighbour Sunday night, with cuts to his neck.
An autopsy Monday showed his death was an accident, likely caused by falling through plate glass.
A Civil Guard spokesman said Brunkert appeared to have hit his head and cut his neck on a glass door in the dining room. He had wrapped a towel around his neck and appeared to have been going for help when he collapsed in the garden.
Brunkert, 62, first played with members of ABBA on the group's first single, People Need Love, created in 1972 before the group was known as ABBA — an acronym based on the first letters of the singers' given names.
ABBA members Agnetha Faltskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson toured with Brunkert in 1977, 1979 and 1980, after achieving international recognition at the Eurovision song contest and with the hit song S.O.S.
Brunkert was drummer and Rutger Gunnarsson played bass on all of ABBA's albums, which continue to sell close to three million records a year.
The band split in 1982, but their success continued with the hit musical Mamma Mia and U2's rendition of their Dancing Queen.
Brunkert was "one of the best," said band member Ulvaeus.
"I remember him as a good friend when we worked together in the mid-1970s. He was a very creative musician who contributed a lot when we toured together and worked in the studio," Ulvaeus told Swedish daily Expressen.
Jazz drummer
Andersson called his death "tragic."
Brunkert, born Sept. 15, 1946, in Orebro, Sweden, was a jazz drummer who moved into rock and pop in the 1960s.
He had been a member of the blues band Slim's Blues Gang and pop group Science Poption before working with guitarist Janne Schaffer in the jazz-pop group Opus III.
In the 1970s, he started getting work as a session musician before joining ABBA.
Brunkert, who lost his wife Inger less than a year ago, lived in a coastal apartment complex in Arta, in the eastern part of Mallorca, for the last 20 years.
Source: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/music/story/2008 ... ml?ref=rss
