I can’t believe it’s not ABBA

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the world’s most popular ABBA tribute act, Bjorn Again – and with ABBA’s original members sticking steadfastly to their no-reunions pact, the public’s appetite for the next best thing shows no signs of abating.

“If anything, the reaction is better than ever. I know I started this band, but I still can’t work it out- it’s just something about the ABBA music that people connect to,” Bjorn Again founder John Tyrrell told the Star Observer ahead of the group’s Sydney concerts in October.

While it may be a slickly oiled enterprise nowadays (Tyrell handles the Australian operations, while another line-up tour the Northern hemisphere), Bjorn Again started life as a lovably daggy parody act, touring the sticky carpeted pubs of Australia in the late ‘80s.

“I didn’t really like ABBA growing up; I was a Deep Purple/Led Zeppelin sort of kid. But Rod [Stephen, co-founder] and I wanted to come up with a fun act in the ‘80s, and we were huge fans of the film Spinal Tap – we originally based Bjorn Again on that. It started as more of a parody than a tribute, but pretty soon it became a mix of both,” he said.

“Once we started to work out how to recreate the music and we realised how complex it was, our love of ABBA soon grew.”

The band’s popularity exploded in the early ‘90s, as films like Muriel’s Wedding and Priscilla – and the release of the ABBA Gold greatest hits – suddenly made everyone’s favourite Swedes cool again.

“We did big rock festivals with bands like Nirvana on the bill – all the rock heads used to turn up and watch us play. Dave Grohl became almost a bit of a stalker – he just loved the band.”

Since then, Bjorn Again have opened for the Spice Girls, performed at both the Royal Albert Hall and Sydney Opera House, and played for ABBA fans in just about every country in the world.

“We’ve been to Korea, South America, South Africa…within the first five years we’d touched base in most continents, and by now we feel like we could do a show in Mars and someone there would like ABBA,” said Tyrrell.

They tweak the Bjorn Again act around the world – they soon learned that in most Asian countries, the love of ABBA is entirely earnest, so tone down the tongue-in-cheek aspects of the act. In places like Australia and the UK, playful jokes about the daggy outfits and the inter-band marriages are warmly received.

“It’s interesting to see how each country reacts. The first time we went to Malaysia, we had a largely Chinese audience and they’d sit there in stony silence during each song. Then when we’d finish, two minutes of wild applause. Then back to silence. That took a bit of getting used to!”

 

info: Bjorn Again play the Enmore Theatre on October 4 and The Concourse, Chatswood on October 5.www.bjornagain.com.au