ABBA, the 1970s Swedish supergroup, had already started to fade away when Rod Stephen started his pseudo-tribute band Björn Again in 1988 in his native Australia.
What was supposed to be a weekend gig to break the doldrums of his laboratory research job quickly turned into a phenomenon: sold-out stage shows worldwide that have grossed roughly $60 million in the past 20 years.
"It was meant to be a little fun on the weekends in Melbourne," Stephen said in a phone interview from London last week.
"To go national and then to have promoters come to see us perform in Sweden from the UK and Europe, it was like a snowballing effect," he said, obviously still trying to wrap his mind around the whole thing.
"Björn Again: The ABBA Experience," which comes to Centennial Hall tonight, is much more than a tribute to the famed pop quartet. It's a nod to the delicious tackiness of the 1970s, starting with those flamboyant fashions — platform shoes and brightly colored plaid puffy shirts with striped bell-bottoms that flared out from midcalf.
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"ABBA's music was a platform to basically have a bit of a dig at the '70s and poke fun at it really," Stephen said. "It was meant to be a parody on all of the '70s."
The cast of "Björn Again" dresses like the real band — Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad — and sings the songs that are stuck in the heads of half the world's population, from "Dancing Queen" to "Waterloo" to "Take a Chance on Me" and on and on.
But the show also explores what was going on behind the scenes — the personal drama that eventually tore the band apart in 1982, about eight years after it was launched to fame by winning the prestigious 1974 Eurovision Song Contest.
"There's a lot of stuff going on on stage that is sending up how ABBA would have been in the mid-'70s. (The relationships) are the story we're going to tell," Stephen explained. "There will be bickering and arguing on stage. It's always on the surface. For me, presenting a show based on what ABBA was about, that was an important thing."
Stephen admits he wasn't a fan of the band's music growing up in the 1970s.
"But something clicked when I started sitting down and listening to the old ABBA LPs," said the 50-year-old bass player. "I was astounded by how good the music was. That's the strange irony of the whole thing. I still think their music's incredible."
His enterprise was propelled early on with the 1993 release of "ABBA Gold," a greatest-hits package that has sold more than 6 million copies to date and put the band back on the radar. A few years later, Stephen got another boost with "Mamma Mia!" (the stage musical, still running on Broadway, has toured worldwide). "Björn Again" gained still more momentum when the movie version — starring none other than Meryl Streep — became a summer hit.
"With ABBA, you've got this whole new generation of people who've gone to see the film . . . and it's connecting with them. Perhaps it's the innocence of the lyrics, which are written in Swenglish — half Swedish, half English.
"The writing was very clever. It was very catchy but not boring. The lyrical message: Even though there's quite a degree of melancholy there, somehow they can sing about a breakup in a major key and make it sound like it was OK," Stephen said.
If you go
• What: "Björn Again: The ABBA Experience."
• When: 7:30 tonight.
• Where: Centennial Hall, 1020 E. University Blvd.
• Tickets: $18-$42 with discounts available through Centennial Hall box office, 621-3341 or www.uapresents.org
