Bjorn to be ABBA: The Aussie cover band that took Swedish kitsch to Stockholm. By Michael Idato

Three years ago the managers of the cult cover band Bjorn Again, John Tyrrell and Rod Woolley, said it wouldn’t last.

The flares and glitter, they said, would do their thing and the public would move on to another, more current, music fad.

With two international tours under their belts and the hysteria and furore showing no signs of abating, Bjorn Again have become as recognisably Australian as Vegemite.

“Things are certainly still going very well,” Tyrrell said. “There’s no end in sight.”

Bjorn Again have just returned from their second international tour, which took in the UK and most of Europe – Including ABBA’s home territory, Sweden.

ABBA’s association with Australia has always been strong.

The Best Of ABBA is still the top selling LP by a non-Australian artist, their Channel 9 television appearance was watched by more Australians than the moon landing and ABBA-The Movie was made here.

But trying to sell all that glitter, the cat-suits and hot-pants back to the Swedes? Surely not.

“They were definitely our most critical audience,” Tyrrell said.

“They knew ABBA so well and they were familiar with every movement and every costume.

“It would have been suicide to let the act slip.”

So that meant many long hours checking dance steps (oh, those dance steps!) and making sure those blonde and burgundy tresses were complemented by just the right amount of blue eye-shadow.

The band even had to learn new songs – in Australia the favourites are songs like Waterloo and Ring, Ring, while overseas audiences favor The Name Of The Game, Voulez-Vous and Summer Night City.

But the hard work paid off.

“The Swedes loved it,” Tyrrell said. “After the shock wore off, they really got into the whole show.”

The reception in Europe and the UK was pure nostalgia for anyone who lived through the hysteria following ABBA’s victory with Waterloo in the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest.

The exclusive Stockholm nightclub Café Opera (a venue the original ABBA was never even considered for) was packed to the hilt for Bjorn Again’s debut.

They packed 15,000 people into London’s outdoor Kennington Park, the biggest outdoor single band gig in the UK this year, and discovered a feeling of idol-worship alien to this Aussie pub band which we Australians, it seems, have come to take for granted.

“The reception was amazing – these crowds were just going wild and hundreds of people were being turned away, “Tyrrell said.

Bjorn Again’s gig at London’s Town and Country Club saw scalpers selling tickets, which had all sold out two weeks before, for up to $230.

And during an appearance on the Swedish chat show Fredagexter, where the band, in two Swedish tours, have almost become semi-regulars, former ABBA manager Stig Anderson made a surprise appearance.

“While they’re certainly not ABBA, they’re the best imitations I’ve ever seen,” Stig said, assuring the Audience ABBA would never reform.

But while the tour was met favorably by the critics (everything from “abbasolutely brilliant” to a “bjorn -again smash hit”) there is at least one person familiar with the “old” ABBA who wasn’t so keen.

London’s New Musical Express reported former ABBA member Agnetha Faltskog was stopped by a fan on a Paris street and asked if she was “the girl from Bjorn Again”.

“Certainly not,” she replied.

“This has gone quite far enough,” she said, turning on her heel and storming off.

But by and large the audiences loved them.

Described as the “cult music hit of the Summer” in London, they packed out gigs night after night and even outlasted other Australian bands including Crowded House, on the UK trail.

“The sparklers we held during Fernando may now be only so much burnt copper and carbon but the flame of Bjorn Again will burn forever,” Irish music critic George Byrne said.

Bjorn Again burst on the scene two years ago when the 1970s flare revival was getting into full swing.

Bagged and banned by some musicians, promoters and venues for being a cover band, Bjorn Again stood their ground and brought a loyal following out of the closet.

As the first real cover band to find some measure of success on the Australian pub circuit, they have an air of respectability some more recent covers have lost.

“At our first show I thought we were going to be pelted with tomatoes and eggs but the crowd ended up singing all the words and drowning us out,” Tyrrell said.

“In the end we had thugs and wimps side by side waving sparklers and singing Fernando with tears in their eyes.

“There’s something quite unique about any music that can do that.”

With a goldmine of genuine Swedish kitsch at their fingertips, Bjorn Again draw on the charm of songs like Dancing Queen, Waterloo, Ring, Ring, Mamma Mia and Money, Money ,Money to win their audiences over.

And next year Polar Music, ABBA’s Swedish record company, is planning a global re-release of their albums with the possibility of previously unpublished work being revealed.

Just five years since it was grossly unfashionable to admit to ever owning ABBA records, the satin hot-pants, skyscraper platforms and dazzling flares have become respectable, even trendy.

“What we are doing is looking back on the 1970s and having a good old laugh at it – the look is satirical but the music is very serious,” Tyrrell said. Transcribed for ABBA World

The Daily Telegraph Mirror (Sydney, Australia) · Wednesday, 13 November 1991 (Page 51)

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