Abba's golden legacy

Benny Andersson (left) and Bjorn Ulvaeus are the masterminds behind Abba and Mamma Mia!. Photo / AP

The day I meet half of Swedish supergroup Abba, it's 35 years to the day since they won the Eurovision Song Contest in the UK with Waterloo, and changed the face of pop music forever.

It's also 10 years to the day since Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus launched Mamma Mia! in London's West End. The pair got involved with the musical largely as an experiment to see if a show could be written backwards - ie, to construct a story around already existing songs. "At any time during that process had we thought it was bad for the catalogue, or bad for the legacy of the group we would have pulled the plug, but that never happened. It's easy to say we didn't care much but we really do," says Andersson.

Expectations for Mamma Mia! were low as critics and audiences prepared to be underwhelmed by another cheesy Abba tribute act. "The first preview was very strange, because the audience had no idea what to expect and we had no idea what to expect from the audience," recalls Ulvaeus. But Mamma Mia! quickly became one of the most successful productions in musical history, playing in theatres around the world. "I thought it would be a small thing happening in London, that's as far as my plans went, so this comes as a complete surprise," Ulvaeus says.

A decade on, the show has been seen by about 40 million people, taking two billion dollars at the box office and the music of Abba to a new generation. "I find more and more people ask for autographs for their 7-year-old daughter or son and that hasn't happened for a long time," says Ulvaeus.

Adds Andersson with a laugh, "I find people still mostly ask for autographs for their mothers!" Abba remains one of the most successful musical acts of all time. The band still sells about four million albums a year - over their career, they've sold more than 370 million. But even now, Ulaveus and Andersson, the musical masterminds behind the group, seem unsure of what the secret to their success is.

"We were asking ourselves the same question during Abba's heyday. It seemed everyone was wanting to hear the same music we did at the same time. There is no other explanation because we did exactly what we wanted to do, exactly the way we wanted to do it and it was just pure luck that all those people out there thought the same," Ulvaeus says.

And when it all came to an end in the early 80s, Ulvaeus assumed the music, like them, would just fade into obscurity. "I thought it would just trickle away, and in a way it did. It didn't really start to come back until [the film] Muriel's Wedding came out, then Erasure recorded some songs and then Abba Gold was released at same time all over the world," says Andersson.

Ulaveus adds, "I remember for some time, five years or so it was distinctly uncool to like Abba."

"No ... never," objects Andersson.

Abba's resurgence reached new levels with last year's release of the film version of Mamma Mia!, starring Meryl Streep. Both Andersson and Ulvaeus say they had no concerns about taking it to the big screen, "as long as we did not let the rights go to someone else, and we were staying in control", says Ulvaeus. And then there's the Mamma Mia! international tour. The show is now in its fifth year of touring, during which it's been seen by over three million people in 190 cities including Cape Town, Dublin, Beijing, Tel Aviv and Budapest. At the end of this year, for three months, it will make New Zealand its home.

Ulvaeus and Andersson are undecided if they'll accompany the tour to New Zealand. The closest they've come was for Abba's 1977 tour of Australia, which sparked mass hysteria throughout the country. The group achieved cult-like status Downunder, and when they finally arrived, "I think we didn't do ourselves a favour," reports Andersson. "It had been going on for such a long time with Abba all over the place on pillows and soaps and dolls that when we came there it felt like pulling the plug." But he does offer some explanation for the Antipodean affinity with their music. "Australians and New Zealanders feel a bit like outsiders and maybe they thought Swedes feel the same way, us being way up there in the north and you being way down there ," Andersson laughs.

Australia and New Zealand were two of the first countries to jump onto the Abba bandwagon, well before they had any success in the US or England. "We are grateful to you guys down there," Ulvaeus says. But for die-hard Abba fans, the ultimate is still the much talked about and hoped for reunion tour. It's not for a lack of offers - one promoter put a billion dollars on the table. But Ulvaeus and Andersson say there's no chance. "It was good what we did in 70s and 80s and we could not reproduce that today, however much we tried. To just go out there and play old songs, what would be the reason?" Andersson says.

Adds Ulvaeus, "The terrifying thought I had was of leaving stage every night, knowing the audience was slightly disappointed or even very disappointed. They would have expected something more lively and that was intolerable." With no chance of seeing Abba back on stage, the closest New Zealand or any audience will get is with Mamma Mia!. And having seen the show for the second time, in London last week, I can assure you, it's a pretty good substitute.

* Mamma Mia! will open in Christchurch on September 10 before moving on to Auckland (September 23) and Wellington (October 22). Tickets are on sale now.