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They start their songs off in majors,

but they use quite a few minors in their chords' patterns,

and that takes you right down,

and the atmospheres they create are quite sad,

but however, they've got these two girls,

singing these glorious anthems over the top,

and Bjorn is a fantastic musician.

♪ The air that night

♪ The stars were bright

♪ Fernando

♪ They were shining there for you and me ♪

♪ For liberty

♪ Fernando

A lot of people are interested, what makes a hit record?

And ABBA really, really knew how to do it.

Make room for ABBA, and music of this day.

There is absolutely no chance for gloom

when they start to sing and play.

The journey begins

with Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson,

the founding members of the super group.

But I think the first music

that really meant something to me personally was

when I first heard the skiffle music,

which was when I was 11 or 12.

And in fact, I started playing in a skiffle group

at that time, too.

Bjorn was a member of a group.

What was the name of the group?

It was The Hootenanny Singers.

Bjorn, a member of The Hootenanny Singers,

which is a term, that is hootenanny,

which referred to a gathering of folk musicians.

♪ Never go playin' round

♪ Don't get out of line

♪ Never go runnin' round

By the 1960s, they were a household name

in Swedish popular music.

Bjorn's amateur competition performances

caught the attention of future ABBA manager, Stig Anderson.

I was an actor, guitar player,

and I wrote my own songs back in the '50s.

I was performing these in the,

what we call the Swedish folkparks, open air theaters,

and that's really how I started.

I had a big hit in Holland called "Rocking Billy".

Benny was probably the most advanced

as one of the Hep Stars, and they were big news.

I started working professionally

in '62, '63, I think, with a band called the Hep Stars.

The Hep Stars eventually became

the most successful Swedish pop rock group of the mid '60s.

Starting off with covers,

and then moving to original material.

I wrote a song called "Sunny Girl" for the Hep Stars.

I think we had a hit with that in Holland.

♪ She is property

♪ She's slim like reed

♪ She's divertin', she is faithful ♪

♪ Ain't that all you need

They were very, very big.

In Sweden, they were bigger than The Beatles.

Bigger than The Beatles?

Was that around about the '60s, was it?

Yes, the early '60s.

They hit massive success

with the Swedish version

of "Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream",

but being a folk song,

it caused confusion among the rock-oriented fans

and left the band divided.

Bjorn stepped in to help Benny and the band in 1969,

as the Hep Stars' success had started to diminish.

We were touring the folkparks,

places that you tour in Sweden, play during the summer,

and we just ran into each other.

And I knew that he wrote songs, and he knew that I wrote,

so we just, you know, we happened to meet

and we sat down and played a little.

I think we both thought

that the other guy was quite, quite nice, you know?

Maybe we could, someday in the future,

be able to work together.

Benny and Bjorn left the band in 1969,

but a friendship had blossomed

that would keep the duo working together for years to come.

I really find it interesting

that their coming together was natural, it wasn't forced.

They just would run into each other

in what was, after all, a small national market,

an artistic community.

They would occasionally make records together.

So Bjorn and Benny struck first together as writers,

and then they decided to be a quartet.

Agnetha was a teenage prodigy.

She was the youngest of the four,

and she had a lot of solo hits

in the Scandinavian area,

and she was a very pretty girl.

Well, Agnetha, Agnetha.

You want me to say it in Swedish?

Agnetha. - Yeah.

She was very popular as a,

she was singing romantic songs, songs about summer,

and she break through when she were an operator.

She worked as an operator

and break through suddenly via a TV program,

and she was popular for five or six years.

I wrote my own songs.

I did six Swedish solo LPs.

Bjorn met Agnetha by 1968.

The two fell in love and eventually tied the knot

on the 6th of July, 1971,

with Benny playing the church organ.

Around the same time, Benny had fallen in love

with Anni-Frid Lyngstad.

Already a successful artist,

she had won a Swedish national talent competition in 1967

and finished fourth in the 1969 Eurovision Song contest.

I was brought up by my grandmother,

and she was a good lady.

She took good care of me,

though she had to work hard

to get the money to survive,

but I started to sing in dance band when I was 13 years old,

and after two years, or one year, I changed to a big band,

and together with them, I sang for two years,

and after the split up with the big band,

I started my own band,

and the name of that band was Anni-Frid Four.

I met my husband in the big band,

he was playing the trombone,

and we fell in love, you know?

I was quite young, but I knew that I wanted

to be together with him,

so I got my son when I was 17 years only,

and we got married when I was 18,

and after four years, I got my daughter.

Frida came from a small town in Sweden.

She came originally from Norway,

then to Sweden, a small town,

started singing there and was popular with few songs.

Not as popular as Agnetha in the beginning, I think.

Her father was a Nazi

and impregnated some unfortunate young lady in Norway.

Then she moved later to Sweden,

so they really are all effectively, eventually Swedish,

but they didn't start that way.

Benny and Bjorn were recording an album on their own

with all the songs written by them,

and for one song, they needed a female choir,

so it was very natural to ask Agnetha and myself

if we wanted to do that part,

and so we did, and we thought it sounded very good.

And then we decided maybe to try something in English,

so Benny and Bjorn wrote a song with English lyrics,

and the title of that one is "People Need Love",

and that's how it started, actually.

Benny and Frida had met

at the equivalent of "A Song for Europe",

which was called Musicfestivalen,

which was where Swedish audiences

chose their Eurovision song.

So they met there, and gradually, they got together,

and finally, in what is of interest to ABBA fans,

at the instigation of Stig Anderson,

they wrote a song for Eurovision 1973,

and that was "Ring Ring".

♪ And I sit all alone impatiently ♪

The band came in third,

but wasn't disheartened by the loss.

Well, partly, it depended on

that I thought it was a new approach

to the Eurovision Song Contest.

It was a pop song, and I thought,

the Eurovision Song Contest needed something new.

It basically really incentivized them.

They had an English lyric worked out for that

with Neil Sedaka and Phil Cody,

because their English wasn't perfect yet.

Of course, then the big one was,

they thought, well, we came in third,

or whatever it was, in the local "Song for Europe" in '73,

why not try again?

They prepared to take a different approach

for the following year's contest.

Growing tired of the current name of the band,

Stig Anderson, their manager,

stumbled upon something distinctive

that would change the face of their brand.

Bjorn and Benny wanted to start

recording their own songs which they wrote together,

and then sometimes they needed the girls' help,

and it was natural for them to take Agnetha, or Anna,

and Frida in the studio,

and these records from the very beginning,

they were called Bjorn and Benny at that time,

but, gradually, the girls became more and more important,

and in fact, we had a very big hit in, for instance, Japan.

The record was called Bjorn and Benny

in spite of that the girls really were heard on the record,

and consequently, Bjorn and Benny came and said,

listen, we can't go on calling ourselves Bjorn and Benny

when the public hear the girls.

No doubt about it, the winning song

of the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest,

.

But then we had one of the biggest papers here in Sweden

who asked the youngsters,

what would you like to call this group?

And of course, they already had heard

about ABBA at that time,

so I think 90% of them said ABBA,

and the first time we really used it was in Brighton

when we won the Eurovision Song Contest there

in '74, it was,

but that was the very first time we used just ABBA.

He knew what Eurovision was all about,

and knew that if he could get them to win Eurovision,

it would be the passport to the world.

Eurovision is a competition set up

for all European countries

to compete to produce the best song.

Not performance, song.

Having failed in 1973,

they thought they'd try again in 1974,

and this time, they got it right.

They were the only one of their kind,

because we were just coming to the end

of the singer-songwriter period,

which was sensitive ballads

by people like Carole King, Don McLean,

Cat Stevens, Elton John, Joni Mitchell,

and here we had four people

having a good time with old fashioned pop music.

♪ My my

♪ At Waterloo, Napoleon did surrender ♪

♪ Oh yeah

♪ And I have met my destiny in quite a similar way ♪

Every country tends to have an idea

of what a Eurovision song should be.

For example, with Germans, and this is a generalization,

but let's just say frequently,

there was a kind of oom-pah element in the song,

and this is why Cliff Richard had a couple

of Eurovision songs with an oom-pah feeling,

"Power to All Our Friends" and "Congratulations".

♪ Congratulations

Boom, boom.

♪ Congratulations

♪ And celebrations

♪ When I tell everyone that

"Waterloo" was a pop record.

It wasn't a Eurovision record,

wasn't a Eurovision type song,

but it was a perfect pop song,

and the winners are often the songs that cut across.

If they get votes from everybody,

even if they're not the number one votes, they'll win,

and that was proof that "Waterloo" was a song

with international appeal.

♪ Waterloo

♪ I was defeated, you won the war ♪

♪ Waterloo

♪ Promise to love you forever more ♪

It was felt by Stig Anderson that this was a term

that would be universally understood

and could be a word that could be pronounced very easily.

It was a kind of marketing,

and, as you know, it was a good idea, I think.

And just to add to it,

the guy who was conducting the orchestra

wore a Napoleonic hat.

That's where it began, and they wrote that classic song

which shot up the charts,

and they became possibly the most amazingly successful group

next to The Beatles, in fact.

It gave us a lot of work

and a lot of traveling,

and a changing of my life

to be an official, if you say that, person,

a famous person.

When you are in a situation like that,

you have to change a lot in your life to be able

to take care of what's happening to you in the right way.

Going back to that, these early days,

we had a very big discussion if we should select "Waterloo"

or another song of ours called "Hasta Manana",

and then, the last day, we had to make a decision,

and I told Bjorn and Benny that, "Okay,

you'll kill me, but I take 'Waterloo',"

and I think we did right in spite of, of course,

still, "Hasta Manana", I think, is a good number as well.

I didn't even think about

we would win the Eurovision Song Contest.

At least, I didn't.

Yes.

I thought we had a good chance,

because we had, we had a different song from all the others.

Normally, it's very, not very many uptempo songs,

and, well, we had a good chance, I thought.

At that time, we had the "Hasta Manana".

- Yes. - Which would've been more

in line with the rest of the songs of the competition.

We choose between the two numbers.

- Yeah. - "Waterloo"

and "Hasta Manana". - We just choose "Waterloo"

because we felt that we could give it the most, you know?

It was ABBA.

We picked it from, I think we wrote 11 songs.

We had them and we said, let's take the best one,

the one we like most,

no matter if it's suitable for the purpose, which is,

I mean, it was, but it shouldn't have,

compared to all the other Eurovision festivals.

It was very outstanding.

♪ Honey honey, how you thrill me ♪

♪ A-hah, honey honey

♪ Honey honey, nearly kill me

♪ A-hah, honey honey

Does it surprise you that a group like ABBA,

a Swedish group, are so big

in a country that's so, so far away?

- Really. - Yeah?

I think it surprises everyone here,

but it shouldn't be that surprising,

because they work in an international way

and they've got an international sound,

which I don't think any other Swedish group has.

Now, before they became really big,

did they play a lot live in Sweden or in Stockholm?

Did they play in any live concerts around the country?

Not very much, and they haven't had the time to do it

after their breaking through, of course.

Yeah.

There have been some complaints of them

that they don't play live so much,

but they don't have the time.

They just didn't want to,

because they didn't need to.

I think it's very simple that they were all,

they just had so much money,

they didn't really need to tour at all.

What ABBA did was place themselves directly

in the mainstream of the history of popular music,

because they loved popular music,

they loved its development,

and as Bjorn said to me once,

"We knew we had to sing in English

if we were gonna make it outside of Sweden."

And then the big record is "Mamma Mia",

and that starts this incredible string

of number ones and top fives.

♪ Will I ever learn

♪ I don't know how

♪ But I suddenly lose control

♪ There's a fire within my soul ♪

♪ Just one look and I can hear a bell ring ♪

♪ One more look and I forget everything ♪

♪ Whoa, oh

♪ Mamma Mia

♪ Here I go again

♪ My my

We start off with the music.

We sit down with piano and guitar

and just, you know, play along

for hours and hours, for days and weeks and months,

and sooner or later, eventually,

there's a song there, and a melody.

'Cause at that stage,

the music, the sound of the whole thing tells you something,

suggests a story,

so that's where the lyrics come in, and then the vocals,

and then a few more overdubs if needed,

and then it's mixed down, and it's a record.

And you can see that Bjorn and Benny were

in their pop moment.

I mean, remember,

10 years before, they had not been in that moment.

Bjorn was a folk singer, Benny was a cover artist.

They were in the zone, and it was their zone.

It was said by Orson Welles in "Citizen Kane"

that not only was he often in the news, he was the news,

and ABBA were not only often in the charts,

they were the charts.

If they had a new record, it would be number one.

The album would be number one.

Okay, this only lasted for about five years,

but that's an eternity in pop music.

Songwriting is a very interesting thing.

You use certain letters that have power.

They're soft letters, and you use soft letters

in construction of songs.

A song develops, it's joyful and happy,

and then the middle eight comes in,

boy loses girl, girl loses boy,

and then all is joyous at the end.

Now, ABBA, I would say, are the epitome of getting it right.

They're better than The Beatles, you know?

Much better.

The Beatles just wrote songs with one long chorus.

That's what they were good at,

but every song was one chorus.

They were brilliant, just stuck them together.

ABBA origins, funny enough,

origins are more in Tamla Motown.

His origins are with a strong intro,

a very strong verse, a bridge that builds really well,

and, bang, your chorus.

Out of the chorus, into the verse,

then into your bridge section,

bang into your chorus,

and then, as I said, into your middle eight.

Using the right words, using the right letters,

ABBA, I think, were the greatest at this.

♪ Darling, can't you hear me

♪ SOS

♪ The love you gave me

♪ Nothing else can save me

♪ SOS

What do you think is the magic,

the pure magic of ABBA?

Well, there isn't one reason, there are several reasons.

I mentioned one- - Yeah.

Stig Anderson.

His name is always coming up, and so, you know,

I used to always kind of watch out for ABBA,

but Anderson's name was always there.

He was a bit more than a manager,

and, in a way, probably was a fifth member of the band,

and they were one of the richest people

in the whole of Sweden,

and I'm sure that was down to his acumen.

Another reason is that they represent a sort

of distinguished pop, nice pop,

like The Beatles did,

which I think is a reaction against heavy, dirty rock music,

which only the young kids like.

In Sweden and everywhere, the kids,

not only the kids can love ABBA, but also their parents.

- Yeah. - That's very important.

And, of course, it's also well they are nice

and good looking people, and it's the romantic story.

Two of them are married, two are engaged.

That's a good thing for the newspapers.

Yeah.

1976 proved to be a special year

for the members of ABBA.

The band was invited to perform at a very special event,

debuting their new single,

an aptly named track, "Dancing Queen".

Apparently, there's a story

that they wrote this song for the queen of Sweden,

it's for the marriage.

When was the marriage, a couple of months ago or something?

Yes, it was in June,

and the first performance of that song was the evening

before the wedding of the king and the queen, Silvia,

and they sang that song and played it at the opera house

at a big gala performance.

In front of the king and queen?

Yes, the king and queen were sitting and listening,

and ABBA had Rococo wigs, white wigs and old clothes.

Very charming.

Now make room for ABBA, and music of this day.

There is absolutely no chance for gloom

when they start to sing and play.

♪ You can dance

♪ You can jive

♪ Having the time of your life

♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh

♪ See that girl

♪ Watch that scene

♪ Diggin' the dancing queen

Well, it's about,

it's a girl, ordinary girl,

and she only lives, actually,

when she's in the disco dancing.

There is one funny thing about it, I can tell you.

I think it's the first song we wrote

when Bjorn played electric guitar while we were writing,

because he normally uses acoustic.

- Yes. - And I think that's one

of the reasons why it came up,

because it's a different sound.

When you sit down with only piano and the guitar,

nothing really happens, you have to think in your head

about drums and bass and all that,

and the electric guitar made lots

of feel from the beginning.

Works really well.

Is "Dancing Queen" one of your favorites?

No, actually not.

It's a new one called "That's Me".

"That's Me"?

It will come in our next album.

I think it's the flip side.

Yeah, it's the flip side

of "Dancing Queen" - Yes, it is, yeah.

Oh no, is it?

Don't you like it?

Oh, no, no, no, I'm not saying that.

I was just thinking of flip sides, you know?

She ought to be two, a double A.

And Frida, what's your favorite song?

Oh, I like "Dancing Queen" very much.

You know, I had the same feeling as Anna told you

about before, you know, when you freeze on a song.

That's how I felt for "Dancing Queen", but I like,

I think the best one now is "Money, Money, Money".

- Yeah? - Yeah.

What about "Fernando"?

Oh, yes.

All right?

I like, it's a very good tune, actually,

a very good melody.

Yeah.

- I think so, at least. - She's very kind.

No, but I like, I like the songs.

Honestly, I do.

That same year, ABBA secured three number ones

for their singles "Dancing Queen",

"Fernando" and "Money, Money, Money".

By now, they knew all about living in a rich man's world.

♪ Money, money, money

♪ Must be funny

♪ In the rich man's world

After earning vast amounts of money,

fans started to become as interested in their funds

as they were with their songs.

We have decided long ago to stay in this country.

As you know, Sweden is the most

high taxed country in the world,

and so we had to invest the money

instead of just giving it away as tax.

That's the way it started, the whole organization,

but mainly, other people are taking care of that for us,

so it's not really the group ABBA making business.

♪ It's a rich man's world

Could be real estate,

it could be bicycles,

it could be oil.

You mention it, anything.

Financing, leasing.

We have lots of interest in all these fields.

♪ It's the rich man's world

1977 saw ABBA take to the skies,

as they flew on tour around Europe and Australia.

The Australian leg of the tour

was the band's first major venture outside of Europe,

and was subsequently filmed for "ABBA: The Movie".

From the beginning, that was just meant

to be a documentary.

I mean, as we were on the road in Australia,

we thought maybe we should film it, you know,

for television, for ourselves, actually,

to have some documents from when we were in Australia,

but it just grew bigger and bigger,

and all of a sudden there was a television movie

for two hours.

With a little, little storyline to it.

We had a little part in this Australian tour,

and European tour in '77, I think,

where we wrote a little mini-musical within the show,

"The Girl With The Golden Hair",

the two girls playing two different sides of the same woman.

♪ You're so free

♪ That's what everybody's telling me ♪

♪ Yet I feel I'm like an outward-bound ♪

♪ Pushed around refugee

♪ Something's wrong

ABBA were the first artist

who realized you can't be everywhere at once.

Tour the video, let the video be your tour.

Sure, do some live dates, but the video can be everywhere,

and that's why they were early adapters to the video,

and that's why someone like French and Saunders

could send up the ABBA video style

and everybody would get it,

'cause everybody had seen the ABBA videos.

♪ I'm the first in line

♪ Honey, I'm still free

♪ Take a chance on me

♪ If you need me, let me know

♪ Gonna be around

♪ If you got no place to go

♪ When you're feeling down

♪ If you're all alone

I happened to be, at that time,

in Boston, Massachusetts when the album came out,

that is, "ABBA: The Album",

and I first heard "Take A Chance On Me",

and from the very beginning, that very catchy intro,

I just thought, oh my God, it's a smash.

And you want to yell out the window,

I have this new record by ABBA,

and it's going to be a number one.

Would you like to hear it?

Those were the days when it could be that exciting,

because everybody didn't get the records

or accessibility to music on the same day.

♪ One of us is lonely

♪ One of us is only

♪ Waiting for a call

So I don't know

if there is anything more to achieve.

I mean, how will that be?

Not by selling records, not by going on the road, I think.

Not by writing even better songs forever.

I don't know.

I think it's sort of never started, never ended, you know?

I would say that what I would like to achieve with ABBA

would be to make an even better album,

which, by our standards and by the audience's standards,

would be the best one.

In my spare time, when I don't work,

I like to journal a lot, I like to read books,

I like to, in the summertime, go out sailing

and water skiing.

And you, Bjorn?

- What I do in my spare time? - Yeah.

Play around with the kids, read,

prowl the streets,

boating in summer.

Lots of things, normal things that everybody does, you know?

Watching video, TV.

- Agnetha? - Mm, the same for me.

I play a lot with the kids

and take long walks

in the wood with my big dog.

What kind of dog?

I have a Leonberger.

- A what? - It's a very big one.

I take care of my little baby, and read a little,

listen a lot to music, talk too much.

♪ Under attack, I'm being taken ♪

The four Swedes embarked

on their invasion of America.

California-based Hollywood star-makers the Scotti Brothers

were involved in the project,

ultimately helping secure a guest appearance

on a nationally broadcast, large-budget TV special

involving Olivia Newton John and Andy Gibb.

The attempt to earn a number one

in the American charts fell short,

as they had only reached third.

Benny and Frida finally tied the knot in October, 1978,

but it was feared that the glitzy group would soon end,

as Bjorn's marriage with Agnetha had grown problematic.

By Christmas that year, the couple had sadly divorced.

ABBA pushed on and stuck together.

In a sense, probably, that's why they wrote so many hits.

The atmosphere must have been

emotionally charged all the time,

the fact that they were all kind of

with each other as couples,

so there must have been an incredible tension

going on there.

That tension produced some amazing songs

that all stand the test of time.

The music went from pure pop

to thoughtful pop,

to thoughtful music,

and the chart position started to sag towards the end,

and that's because it was a kind of music

that wasn't going to be bought by a 14-year-old.

The breakup led to a distinctive change

in the style of music,

acknowledging their heartache in 1980 hit,

"The Winner Takes It All".

Well, I think it's a very good song,

very good melody and very good lyrics,

and I think it's a whole song,

if you can understand what I mean.

It goes in a roll, it never stops in a way.

It goes together.

♪ The winner takes it all

♪ The loser standing small

♪ Beside the victory

The lyrics are usually pretty personal nowadays,

and they are the combined experiences of the four of us

with certain changes.

And we have been working together for 10 years.

You can't avoid things happening in your life,

and as they do, you change your personality as well.

And it's very natural, isn't it?

That happens to everybody.

And just because you are a group,

that doesn't mean that we can be outside a normal life.

But of course, there are a lot

of things around it, you know,

that can feel a bit heavy.

♪ Super trouper beams are gonna blind me ♪

♪ But I won't feel blue

♪ Like I always do

♪ 'Cause somewhere in the crowd ♪

It was about someone who had grown tired of fame.

Not that they disliked fame, but it wasn't novel anymore,

it wasn't enough to sustain,

and what was going to sustain was knowing

that you, the loved one, was in the audience.

♪ The super trouper beams are gonna blind me ♪

♪ But I won't feel blue ♪ Super-per, trouper-per

♪ Like I always do ♪ Super-per, trouper-per

♪ 'Cause somewhere in the crowd there's you ♪

Now, that's the kind of song that could only come

from the perspective of having lived something like that.

I saw the end of ABBA as the generator

of a string of number ones,

not because they were divorcing,

but because they were growing,

and particularly Bjorn and Benny as writers.

With their increased command of English,

they weren't doing songs

that had a lot of repeated syllables.

Think for a moment of "Ring Ring", "Honey Honey",

"I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do", "Mamma Mia",

and then suddenly you get to "The Day Before You Came",

and they talk about Marilyn French, the author,

and they're writing

about abstruse thoughts, complicated thoughts,

a interior epic like "The Winner Takes It All",

and this is mature music,

and this is about as mature as pop music goes.

I mean, you can get into art song,

but when you're doing something like the kind of material

that was on "The Visitors" album,

that's about as far as it can go.

And then, of course, on the last album,

the last American hit single, not released in Britain,

"When All is Said and Done",

well, what a perfect title anyway,

and that line, "Not too old for sex,"

which suggests that you're not that young anymore.

♪ In our lives, we have walked

♪ Some strange and lonely treks ♪

♪ Slightly worn, but dignified

♪ And not too old for sex

Not too old for sex, but not teeny boppers.

We have, in fact, had some discussions

with Tim Rice in London

about a possible collaboration.

We don't know yet, but I hope we'll be able

to write a musical soon together with him.

I remember being in a dining club

at a reception for Bjorn and Benny,

and I was with Tim Rice,

so I just said to Tim while we were waiting

for Bjorn and Benny to turn up,

and I said, "Well, what are you gonna do next?"

And he said, "Well, strangely enough, there's some talk

of writing a musical with Bjorn and Benny."

So Bjorn and Benny walk in,

and all the press crowd in around them

and say, "What are you gonna do next?

What are you gonna do next?"

And they said, "We're going to write a musical

with Tim Rice."

And Tim said to me, "Well, I guess I'm committed."

And of course, that turned out to be "Chess",

which made logical sense

in the progression of them as writers,

because since they were now writing adult material,

why not write a musical?

Benny and Bjorn went on

to produce their musical with Tim Rice,

premiering "Chess" in 1984,

based on the Cold War era chess tournament

between an American and Soviet grandmaster.

You know, it's 30 years

since we released the "Chess" album.

Is it?

In November.

It's gonna be 30 years. - I think it was, yes, I know.

There's lots of anniversaries this year.

Congratulations to you on yours.

Yeah, yeah, like, it's 40 years.

- 40 years. - And it's 30 years,

and it's 15 years for "Mamma Mia!".

And it's 50 for me.

At that time, the mid '80s,

Tim and Michael Parkinson owned a building

on Shaftesbury Avenue,

and all of their businesses had offices in that building.

We had our office in there,

and "Chess", the production company of the musical,

with Judy Craymer running the office,

was in the same building,

so we'd all run into each other.

Judy got to know Bjorn and Benny very well,

and when "Chess" was finished,

she said, "You should have a musical of your own songs."

And they said, "No, there's no plot."

And she said, "Well, what if I can convince you?"

And they said, "Yeah, well, fine."

Anyway, she gets a woman to write a book

that would unite their songs and shows it to them,

and they said, "Well, if you want to."

I mean, they were never arrogant.

They never thought, oh yeah,

our songs would make a great musical,

but they trusted Judy, and she had this vision,

which she pulled off,

and "Mamma Mia!" became one

of the biggest show business properties of all time,

in the same sense as "Phantom of the Opera"

or "The Lion King".

They cross genres and they just make oodles.

ABBA made more money off of "Mamma Mia!"

than from being ABBA.

When you consider all of the stage shows,

the movies, the whole thing,

"Mamma Mia!" made more money than ABBA,

and, of course, ABBA was the second most profitable company

in Sweden when they were at their peak.

So Judy's vision turned

into this inconceivable moneymaking machine,

tapping on the love

that people all over the world had for ABBA.

The success of "Mamma Mia!" the musical led

to a movie franchise of the same name being created in 2008,

starring the likes of Pierce Brosnan, Meryl Streep,

Colin Firth and Julie Walters.

Unbelievable, really.

I mean, whoever thought of that is a genius,

and it'll go on making tons of money for a long, long time.

I thought it was beautifully done.

I mean, the singing wasn't that good,

especially by Pierce Brosnan, he can't sing a note,

but the songs were so strong, they'd carry anyone.

That's the beauty of their songwriting.

44 years since forming their supergroup,

ABBA's sound crossed generations,

proving their music can stand the test of time.

Success requires three factors.

Sufficient talent,

not necessarily genius like Stevie Wonder,

but sufficient talent,

hard work, and favorable circumstances.

Well, ABBA brought to the table at least sufficient talent,

definitely hard work,

and they did have favorable circumstances.

Part of that was what they brought about themselves.

They wisely delegated their costumes,

which they thought were ridiculous but wore anyway

because they knew it was of the time,

to someone who knew costumes.

They gave over the making of the videos to Lasse Hallstrom,

who became a leading Hollywood director.

Let the person who knows what he's doing do it.

And Stig Anderson,

the man who founded Polar Music Publishing

and who believed in them

and who made them write together

and made them submit a song for Eurovision,

I say made them, but persuaded them,

and he had a clear view of how good they were

when they themselves could not believe in themselves

to the extent that he could,

'cause he was older, he'd seen more, he knew what it took.

They didn't know they had what it takes.

200 years from now, people will still rush

to whatever a dance floor is

the minute that the opening glissando

on "Dancing Queen" comes on.

Hello, London!

♪ Summer night city

♪ Voulez-vous

Four decades after their split,

ABBA breaks new ground

with the release of their new concert, "Voyage",

a virtual reality concert experience

offering fans an immersive reunion like never before.

Someone came to say that,

you know, you can go on the road as holograms on tour,

and you don't even have to be there,

and we said, yeah.

The idea came, and we thought it was irresistible,

because it's something that is pushing boundaries

and something nobody has ever seen before.

- Best hair. - Yeah.

And they said '79, so we said, okay, let's do '79.

And we were 29.

Yeah.

You know, it's a bit odd,

because you can recognize yourself in the avatar,

and at the same time, you're sitting there

as the person you are, watching it,

and it's a bit,

what would you say?

What expression would be good for it?

It's a bit.

- It's weird and wonderful. - It's weird and wonderful

at the same time. - Yeah.

Absolutely.

♪ New spirit has arrived

♪ So when you're near me

♪ Darling, can't you hear me

♪ SOS

♪ When you're gone

♪ How can I even try to go on

I mean, there are life size avatars of us

alongside the musicians,

and I get the illusion,

fuck, there must be someone up there,

they're there, you know?

Sometimes I get that illusion completely.

Guys, it's not very often we see all four of you

all together as you are today.

What is it like being back, working together on a project?

Well, it's quite wonderful.

We love it.

You know, it's like going back in time

at the same time we are here right now in the present,

and we never lost touch with each other,

so just to be able to go into the studio

and be creative again together, it's a gift.

And, final question, when people speak to you

and interview you on the street,

are they always dropping in lines from your songs?

Do people often do that?

Sometimes they do.

A lot of people say thank you for the music,

and it never bores me.

Does it bore you? No. - No, it doesn't,

it doesn't bore me.

Well, I won't say thank you for the interview,

I'll say thank you for the music.