Sagan om ABBA

Do you have any stories of what was happening?

Wait a minute, though, erm...

Before that, there was something else.

There was an international award. What was that?

Erm... the Eurovision Song Contest?

Is that what you mean? In '74?

Tell... Tell me that story.

It's, erm... Is the tape running now, or...

- Yeah? - Yeah.

Welcome to the 19th Eurovision Song Contest,

being transmitted to no less than 32 countries.

Here we have those two guys

who have this burning ambition to write songs.

- I'm Björn. - I'm Frida.

- Benny. - I'm Agnetha.

And then one of them falls in love with a beautiful blonde

who happens to be the most fantastic singer,

and then the other one falls in love with a redhead,

beautiful as well and a fantastic singer.

We just dream a little together sometimes.

Eurovision, we were mainly in it to show ourselves,

to show people that there is a band up in Sweden, Stockholm,

that can write pop music.

Eurovision Song Contest,

it has a very, very big audience,

probably between 500 and 600 million viewers.

We had, er, funny costumes.

They were tight. They were really tight.

And we had a song that wasn't the usual Eurovision stuff.

Oh, and it's Napoleon.

No wonder their song is called "Waterloo".

I don't think any one of us thought

that we would win the competition.

Benny might have had a feeling.

Well, I bet 100 quid on it.

Good odds. Forty to one.

Really entered into the spirit of it all, dressed as Napoleon.

For me, that was really, really scary.

Waiting for "Waterloo" by ABBA, for Sweden.

Watch this one.

Here are the results of the Finnish jury.

Sweden, five votes.

Cinq votes.

Oslo.

Sweden, two votes.

Sweden, three votes.

Sweden, five votes. Sweden's way in the lead.

Sweden, they've never won it,

but they've surely got to be up amongst the reckoning with that one.

There's no doubt about it.

The winning song of the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest,

"Waterloo," chante par ABBA.

That was a great moment, really.

But it was a strange feeling.

I didn't expect to win.

Wow. Okay. We've achieved this.

Now we need to start working.

Waterloo, the song that won last Saturday's

Eurovision Song Contest by a mile.

Sung by the Swedish group ABBA,

"Waterloo" looks like being a really big seller

and making a chart entry from nowhere next week.

What plans have you got ahead of you now?

What about conquering foreign markets?

The dream is the United States, of course,

if we conquer the British market, because that's the first thing, really.

A little-known fact, perhaps, is that the two of you are married.

Yes, we are.

Do the fans get jealous?

- I don't think so. - No.

You don't feel that you're literally living in each other's pockets?

- No. - Sometimes.

- I don't. - Disagreement in the ranks.

The first time I met them,

I was just struck by how genuine and normal they were.

They were a close-knit team, you know?

And Björn and Agnetha, they were like one.

Hello, my name is Stikkan Anderson,

I represent a record company called Polar.

The only Swedish record company that reaches outside of Sweden's borders.

Stikkan believed in us from the beginning,

he always said one day you'll write a world hit.

That has meant a lot.

Stig had, before Brighton,

he had thought ahead about what should happen, if we should win.

When we won it was just like pressing a button

and everything worked all over Europe.

Take it away, ABBA.

They are now at the top

of almost all the European charts,

making the hit Waterloo the biggest

commercial success since the Grand Prix began.

In other words, ABBA!

Four Swedes have

won the Eurovision Grand Prix with Waterloo.

Since then, they have become stars.

Waterloo, in England,

they thought it was quite beige,

even if the song was number one in England.

If you're a part of Eurovision, you're dead afterwards.

It was like an agreement among all DJs, amongst everyone.

So it was a damn uphill climb.

ABBA were seen as total outsiders.

And, er, you know, the UK press could be mercenary.

A lot of them seemed to turn on the band.

You know, "It's a damp squib. It's going to end. Tacky, plastic."

On first seeing ABBA, you know, I must admit,

I wasn't sold on the fashion at the time.

I found it a little bit cringey, seeing the outfits that they all wore,

and I think the outfits were the contributor

that made them look a little bit cheesy.

We weren't taken seriously, I think,

because we were wearing such strange clothes.

We thought we had to be more outrageous than anyone else to be seen.

And then we thought it was great fun too.

It was never any plan that, this is going to be our image.

The kitsch...

we've really suffered for that.

Anni-Frid Lyngstad, was this unexpected?

Yeah, I think so,

I couldn't dare hope otherwise.

The first Swedish reporter

who came to us with a mic, he said...

Last year you did a hit on how you ring one another.

This year you made a song

about how forty thousand people were killed...

That is a very cynical expression

because that isn't the meaning at all.

It is about something that has happened in history.

It was kind of a different mass media climate

in Sweden at that time.

We were not popular.

In the beginning of my life in Sweden,

when I was working at the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation,

my co-workers, they felt ABBA was too commercial,

not talking about what was happening in the world.

We were "the upset generation".

We were upset about the apartheid system.

We were upset about the military coups in Latin America.

Chile today joined the list

of South American countries to fall under military rule.

20,000 people disappeared in Argentina.

We were upset about the wars in Southeast Asia.

And we were upset that ABBA weren't upset.

There was a kind of progressive movement

that looked upon ABBA as anti-Christ.

I first heard an ABBA record

because my boyfriend at that time was playing guitar with ABBA.

You know, he was sitting home in our apartment,

trying out some new riffs,

so I heard the songs in many ways.

I didn't particularly listen to ABBA

because I was listening to Frank Zappa and Pink Floyd

and the Stones and bands like that.

Do you like ABBA?

ABBA? They are anchovies.

They're too commercial.

Shit.

- It's not your music? - Nope. Shit.

- They only sing pop. - No.

Everyone thought ABBA was just a manager who decides,

"Let's take two good-looking women, two skilled musicians,

put them together, and make a group that will make hits."

You know, just doing this for the money.

A tax question, what has Brighton meant financially?

It's difficult to answer still.

Royalties and such from different countries

comes in the long term, right?

So we still haven't seen much of it.

What happens to you when you win that contest is,

if you win it, you're a contest winner and that's what you are.

I mean, everybody whoever wins it, they're kind of a one-shot.

It took us some time in Europe to get rid of that mark.

After "Waterloo", we were trying to find our identity.

Were we a rock group or a pop group

or something in between?

Here is ABBA's music workshop.

Don't you need at least a pen and paper when you write music?

No it's not necessary. Not in our case.

How do you do it then?

What we do here is more like we create a melody

that can stick in your head.

And if it doesn't stay in your head then it's not really that good.

Hep!

How did you meet Björn?

We met on the road, actually.

I was in the Hep Stars and he was playing in a folk group.

- The Hootenanny Singers? - The Hootenanny Singers, yes.

And we, just by coincidence,

met the day before he was going to do his military services.

Did you do your military service?

Certainly, I did.

Well, I shall stand up and salute, sir.

Do you like ABBA's music?

Oh, yeah and I have a lot of damn fun when we're playing it.