Dancing Queens and Kings

30 July 2008 01:47pm

Rod Stephens thinks there is more to ABBA's songs than just cheesy, catchy tunes and lyrics. And he should know - as part of Bjorn Again he has been singing the Swedish quartet's songs on stage for the last 20 years.

"ABBA's music in the 70s was very, very popular but I remember it was throwaway pop music. Now when we look back on it, as I have had to do, they are incredibly well-performed songs," he said.

"Part of the appeal of ABBA music is the very accessible lyrics but if you look at some of the songs there's a lot of melancholy in there as well, bubbling under the surface," he says.

With ABBA mania sweeping the world once again on the back of the success of Mamma Mia! - the film adaptation of the stage musical which incorporates the pop group's tunes into the plot - Bjorn Again are more in demand than ever.

"I've got a web count tracker that suggests how many people have hit on the Bjorn Again website and it's more than doubled over the last week - so already there's a lot of people clicking on just the Bjorn Again website with this renewed interest in ABBA," says Rod - who is the band's Bjorn Ulvaeus.

But he clocked on to the universal appeal of ABBA in the 1990s when an unlikely gig went down a storm.

"In 1992 Kurt Cobain invited us to play at the Reading Festival - the kind of thing we shouldn't have been doing. So much mud around and so much white satin on. Halfway through I realised 50,000 angsty people were thinking 'You know what? This is cool. Beastie Boys played before but this is cool'."

Bjorn Again have already played a string of high-profile dates this year, including the F1 Grand Prix ball.

They play an ABBA extravaganza at Tatton Park this weekend and Rod promises a good show.

"I think it's probably part of the formula that makes Bjorn Again work - that there's a lot of interaction. Things crop up out of the blue when you're doing a live show. There'll be some kind of heckle from the audience or something will happen on stage that will spark us in a certain direction," he enthuses.

In particular the band pride themselves in emulating the personalities of the band as well as the music. For this they subtly weave in tensions between band members - such as Benny lusting after Frida, and personality nuances - such as Bjorn's aspirations to be a lead guitarist. Although they are keen to stress that they don't consider themselves a tribute act - but a band in their own right.

So after all this, do they have the blessing of the band themselves?

"We did a show in Sweden last November. Agnetha was there and I didn't know she was gonna be there until the night," he says.

"The next thing I knew she was standing right next to me and I was like 'my god it's Agnetha!' So we were just chatting away and she's a real Bjorn Again fan and I never knew that. She just had a ball, she was dancing away and just had great fun that night.

"It was just a remarkable thing that someone that you're portraying for 20 years all of a sudden is standing right next to you and having a chat to you, it was very strange," says Rod.

© The Press Association