ABBA is Bjorn Again

Young Chang

Rod Leissle and his friend John Tyrrell were sitting around in

1988 -- they were co-workers at a research laboratory in Melbourne,

Australia, at the time -- thinking of ways to start up a successful

band.

They knew they needed the following ingredients: Fantastic songs,

a cool image and 20 hits.

“But you can’t just write 20 hit songs,” said Leissle, who founded

the ABBA tribute band Bjorn Again with Tyrrell. “It takes 10 years

for that to evolve, if you’re any good at writing songs ... That’s

when I realized that we had to be ABBA.”

Literally.

“Everything pointed toward ABBA,” Leissle said of his thought

process at the time. “Somehow we gotta just be like ABBA. But rather

than be just like ABBA, let’s just basically be ABBA. So that’s what

we did.”

Today, Bjorn Again has surpassed the status of a tribute band.

Having developed almost a cult following in the last 14 years, the

group, which is scheduled to perform at Orange Coast College on

Saturday, has put on shows around the world, including at such

high-profile venues as the Royal Albert Hall in London, the Cannes

Film Festival and at The Forum in London.

They have a telegram from ABBA member Bjorn Ulvaeus under their

belts -- it read, “It was always my belief that anyone who looks like

me ought to have a successful career” -- and the memory of being

invited to Benny Andersson and Ulvaeus’ studio in 1992 is one to

cherish.

“It’s just gone a million miles above and beyond what was expected

it would do,” Leissle said. “We just thought it would be a fun thing

to do on the weekend ....We thought it’d last six months or a year.”

With the huge success of the band, Leissle and Tyrrell have

assumed a management role at the group’s headquarters in London for

the last five years. Leissle, on bass, and Tyrrell, on drums, perform

occasionally nowadays.

The four regular Bjorn Again musicians have stage names that play

off the names of the original band. Instead of Ulvaeus, Andersson,

Agnetha Faltskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Bjorn Again consists of

Bjorn Volvo-us, Benny Anderwear, Agnetha Falstart and Frida

Longstokin.

Bjorn Again’s Web site claims the group’s genesis involved a crash

between a helicopter and an extraterrestrial platform shoe. The

current four are said to have been on that helicopter, suffered

almost complete amnesia and been left with only cool songs in their

heads.

“We’ve always tried to maintain an element of mystery about what

the band’s all about,” Leissle said. “If we said, ‘Yes, we love

ABBA’s songs and we’re getting on stage and singing them,’ it could

be a little sycophantic. We just wanted to come up with a story that

shows a humorous side of what we’re about. We’re a tribute to ABBA

but we also are a bit of a parody on the whole ‘70s thing as well.”

Leissle was not a huge fan of ABBA when the Swedish group was

topping charts in the mid-’70s, especially in Australia. He and

Tyrrell were more into Black Sabbath and Deep Purple.

“But because ABBA was so popular in the ‘70s, a lot of it rubbed

off on us. And I must say there were bits of it that I secretly

confessed I like,” Leissle, 43, said. “It’s not the sort of thing you

admitted to your mates.”

In an e-mail interview, Tyrrell also admitted that despite his

preference for harder music as a teen, he’d find himself humming to

the ABBA songs that his sister, “mum” and dad would play.

His first reaction to Leissle’s ABBA-revival idea was shaky.

“I thought he was crazy,” the co-founder wrote. “But when we

discussed how we would actually go about it, especially with talented

performers and a good sense of humor in the show, the idea came

alive.”

Leissle said he isn’t quite sure why ABBA continues to have such a

wide appeal in Australia, with everything from ABBA revival music to

films such as “Muriel’s Wedding” and “The Adventures of Priscilla,

Queen of the Desert.”

“I think it’s ‘cause they represented something that seemed quite

different,” Leissle said. “The fact that they wrote such simple,

honest, catchy songs, I think was appreciated. But then again that

was the base of a lot of their criticism. People saw it as being a

sort of cheesy throwaway pop. Australians really embraced it for some

reason or other.”

Their best known song today is, of course, the track Leissle calls

the “Rolls Royce of ABBA songs” -- “Dancing Queen.” The group used to

receive the most attention in Australia and Europe, but the Broadway

musical “Mamma Mia!” which features ABBA hits, has acquainted more

Americans with the Swedish sensation.