Smash hit

“When we split up, I thought that’s it. Our records might get played now and then on the radio, but nothing much else would happen,” he says. “After all, pop music is a here-today-and-gone-tomorrow thing. So nobody is more astonished by what has happened than us.”

Abba’s return was, he explains, rather a spontaneous, grassroots revivalism. Their music was introduced to a new generation by two Australian films, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Muriel’s Wedding. About the same time artists such as Erasure began covering Abba hits. Slowly but certainly, the band became cool.

Bjorn admits he has little idea why this happened. “I don’t have a good answer. I guess the songs and the recording must be good. I mean the production is done with so much care and craftsmanship. And by chance we had the unique sound that the two girls created. It’s that special sound that makes Abba so distinct.”

The big problem facing the ex-Abba members is that they can never really find a future that lives up to their past. Both Agnetha and Frida have released albums, but have found only a modest success.

And the theatrical collaboration of Benny and Bjorn hasn’t really set the theatre world on fire either, beyond the Abba-based musical. True, they had a few hits with the Tim Rice musical Chess back in 1983 but since then their new music has failed to make its mark. Bjorn admits that life after Abba has its problems: “Yes it has been difficult for us.”

One of the reasons that so many critics hated Abba when they first appeared is that they were seen as a manufactured group put together for Eurovision. Today, thanks to programmes such as Pop Idol and Fame Academy, manufactured groups and stars are the norm.

To an old-school musician like Bjorn — who cut his pop teeth playing in a Swedish folk group — “it’s a pity. I don’t like these manufactured groups. People said that about us, but it wasn’t true. We were thrown together by fate”.

But were Abba as squeaky-clean as people imagined? Did they have a dark side? Bjorn says: “We were two married couples. That’s different from what all-male groups in the 1970s went through. We would just argue, like married people do.”

But that doesn’t mean they weren’t a touch rock’n’roll. There must have been pot-smoking on the way? “Yes, absolutely. It happened,” Bjorn says.

Since the end of Abba it seems that that the two men have come out of it slightly better than Agnetha and Frida. It’s said that Agnetha has become a recluse since a series of disastrous affairs and that Frida has never recovered from the death of her husband Prince Ruzzo Reuss in 1999.

But Bjorn denies this. “Agnetha is not a recluse — she just doesn’t like to travel. When I saw her about two months ago she looked perfectly happy and perky — to me she gets on with her life. She has a grandchild and they’re living on the same property. And I still see Frida quite often and she’s in great shape.”

So if they’re all so friendly how come Abba refuse to reform or play live? “We’ve said what we wanted to say. There’s no musical motivation for us any more and we don’t need the money,” says Bjorn.

“But for me the most important thing is that I don’t want people to be disappointed. We’re all close to 60. People are used to seeing the Rolling Stones get older,” he adds, a touch dolefully. “But not us.” Eternal, jaunty youth — perhaps after all that is the secret of their continuing appeal.