Abba on fat tracks:My my, how can I resist you?

Some years ago, in a somewhat refreshed state, I made an exhibition of myself in the Thames Tandoori near (appropriately enough) Waterloo station when I drunkenly decided to regale my unfortunate fellow diners with a far from note perfect rendition of Abba's pop-disco classic 'Mamma Mia'. Between "yes, I've been broken hearted" and "blue since the day we parted" I'd break off to inform my mortified friends (who remarkably didn't disown me immediately) that Abba were the best band ever and Mamma Mia was the best song ever.

It's not a story I enjoy hearing repeated (although now I've taken 'ownership' of it that may change) but not because of my grandiose claims of Abba's greatness. More because it's really not big and clever to be that drunk. Of course, Mamma Mia isn't the best song ever written or recorded and Abba aren't the greatest, or even my favourite, musical act ever. I don't think I could narrow things down to one song or act. But I stand by the assertion that Abba are certainly ONE of the best musical acts ever and Mamma Mia, along with SOS, The Day Before You Came, and Dancing Queen, is ONE of the best songs ever. Possibly even in my all time top thousand. I like A LOT OF SONGS!

Not that I was always out as an Abba fan. One Sunday evening in November 1980 I was listening to the Top 40 on the radio with my mum (it was bath night, school the next day, but if I was 'good' I was allowed back downstairs to watch That's Life - what a treat). Blondie's cover of 'The Tide is High' had been knocked off the top spot and as Debbie Harry sang "I'm gonna be your number one" my mum, a proud Abba fan (she'd taken me to the Cinema Royal in Tadley just three years earlier to see Lasse Hallstrom's Abba:The Movie), responded, with no little disdain, 'not any more'. Positions were taken. I was on the side of Blondie (for obvious musical reasons as well, possibly, for hormonal ones that I was yet to fully understand) and my mum, representing the old brigade, the squares, stood firmly behind Abba. The establishment.

It stayed this way for a good decade. As Madness, The Jam, Dexy's Midnight Runners, The Smiths, New Order, The Fall, My Bloody Valentine, Public Enemy, The Jesus And Mary Chain, The Pixies, and The Stone Roses took turns demanding my attention Abba, and even Blondie, became yesterday's women (and men).

Towards the late eighties and the early nineties there was a trend of holding seventies discos where people would dress in 'hilarious' clothes from the times and 'pretend' to like songs from Grease, The Osmonds, and Abba. I saw indie bands perform acoustic versions of Abba's songs to 'prove' that once you'd got rid of all that pop nonsense these were actually good songs.

But nobody was pretending to like Abba, they really did like them, and the songs weren't good despite of the 'pop nonsense' but because of it. My position hardened and I had to admit my mother had had a point all along. My mother may not've known that I was out as an Abba fan but I most definitely was and I've never felt the need to get back in to that particular closet ever again. Friends remain divided but, to me, Abba's greatest hits, as the album had it, are gold.

So when I saw that the Royal Festival Hall was hosting a show, Abba:Super Troupers, about the life and times of Benny, Bjorn, Agnetha, and Anna-Frid there was no way I was missing out even if, at £20 a ticket (funny in a rich man's world but not in mine), the prices were a touch steep. I wasn't even able to get a reduction with my Art card because, as the cashier told me, "it's not an exhibition. More of an experience"! Eek!

What had I let myself in for? I'd assumed something like last year's Pink Floyd show at the V&A that you travel round at your own pace, reading wall mounted signs and perusing paraphernalia relating to the band and the times they operated in. Instead I was told to turn my phone off and be prepared for dark rooms and strobe lighting before being handed over to a young, enthusiastic, Finnish lady called Tila who introduced herself to our group in Swedish.

There were Swedes in our group, as well as some Aussies (always big Abba fans it seems), and a few Brits. Only about twelve of us in total and once Tila had, luckily for me, reverted to English we were taken to a darkened room in the bowels of the Royal Festival Hall and played a game of guess the intro with many of Abba's most famous songs. Eventually the lights came up to reveal a Super Trouper (a big spotlight) and a glitterball while the pre-recorded voice of Jarvis Cocker gave a suitably droll introduction to the tour.

Jarvis would crop up from time to time throughout the tour but it was Tila who the credit really needs to go to. She managed to keep the interactivity fun without making it too cringe inducing. She tapped her feet and shook her bum to Abba's disco classics, asked who'd seen Abba live (one guy had seen them play Wembley), and regularly challenged us to questions about the history of Abba. She gave the impression of being quite a megafan but the inclusion of an Abba live ticket stub for a gig that cost £7.50 had her recounting a (considerably more expensive) personal experience of seeing Kendrick Lamar at the O2 recently. Which, bearing in mind her age, seems much more likely.

The tour, and it was one, lead us through a selection of lovingly recreated rooms that each told us a little bit about Abba's journey to superstardom and towards their eventual split. From an East Midlands front room of 1974 (a copy of the Derby Evening Telegraph the clue) to a mock-up of Abba's clearly very comfortable private jet via the Napoleon Suite at the Brighton Grand Hotel, a Swedish folk festival, the backstage caravans at a rainy Sydney concert, the cloakroom of a seventies nightclub, the toilets of a seventies nightclub (!), the flat from the One Of Us video, and a mock up of their Stockholm recording studio. The constant moving on, often through hidden doors, kept the tour interesting but did mean that you got roughly an hour on it. No more, no less.

That was fine though. It was, after all, an experience and not an exhibition. I see enough exhibitions. This made a refreshing change. In the Derby front room I pulled up a pouffe and watched Abba performing Waterloo on television but was also able to see what else had been on TV that night. Jon Pertwee as Dr Who, it turns out, and a black'n'white Match of the Day with Jimmy Hill. It was interesting that football was seen as such a minority concern in 1974 that, unlike Eurovision and Who, it wasn't yet being broadcasted in colour. Clearly times do change.

Eurovision was held in Brighton in 1974 not because the UK had won the year before. They hadn't won outright since Sandie Shaw with Puppet on a String in 1967 but Lulu's Boom Bang-a-Bang shared the honours with Spain, France, and the Netherlands in '69. Brighton was playing host because Luxembourg had just won two years in a row and the tiny principality was concerned about the cost of hosting the event twice in succession.

It wasn't to be a hattrick of victories for the plucky Luxembourgers in '74 though as Ireen Sheer's 'Bye Bye I Love You' could only manage fourteenth place. Also in the competition that year Greece made their debut with Marinella's 'Krasi, Thalassa, Ke T'Agori Mou' (which, fantastically, translates as 'Wine, Sea, And My Boyfriend' and finished a respectable seventh) and France pulled out as a mark of respect following the sudden death of President Georges Pompidou. It left Abba free to romp to victory in front of second place Italy ('Si' by Gigliola Cinquetti) and Netherlandish bronze medal duo Mouth & MacNeal with 'I See A Star'. Spain were represented by the highly credible Catalan rumba artist Peret but could only manage ninth and the UK came fourth in their home event with the Cambridge born, but Melbourne raised, Olivia Newton-John (in pre Grease days) singing Long Live Love, not the same song that Sandie Shaw had had a  hit with nine years earlier.

If that wasn't enough musical entertainment for one evening, interval entertainment was provided by The Wombles. I almost wanted to watch the whole thing live. Maybe I did at the time. I can't remember. I was five. If I did I'd have no doubt loved the fact that the papers came with a Eurovision guide in which you had to fill in the scores yourself as they were announced. Electronic scoreboards seemingly far too advanced for 1974.

In other rooms we saw the fire hydrant marked out with the legend Waterloo from the Napoleon Suite in the Brighton Grand where Abba stayed that victorious night, a star shaped guitar, some lyrics in Swedish, a coconut that legend has it the band insisted upon having in their recording studio at all times (though not even the band members remember why), and some very very sparkly outfits indeed. Part of the reason they wore these were because, in Sweden at that time, they were heavily tax deductible. That - and the fact they looked cool. Alas, no photos were allowed so I've improvised - badly.

We learnt how rarely Abba toured (they did three tours in their ten year lifespan) and how irked Mick Jagger was to hear they'd been so workshy. We heard the story of how four already reasonably successful musicians pooled their resources to achieve global stardom, how Dancing Queen even cracked the American charts, and how the initial idea that Benny and Bjorn would sing and the girls provide the backing vocals was jettisoned as soon as all involved realised that Anni-Frid and Agnetha were much much better singers than the boys.

Personal highlights for me came in being the only person on the tour to recognise the flat we were standing in was a mock-up of the apartment from the One of Us video (from the end of Abba's career when almost every song seemed to be about divorce, ennui, or living monotonous solitary lonely lives, I genuinely think seeing that video and hearing the song was the first time I was fully aware that sometimes adults fell out of love and were sad, it was two whole years before Mike Baldwin had an affair with Deirdre Barlow) and being allowed to have a go on a mixing desk to 'remix' Dancing Queen. My drum'n'bass take on the 70s pop-disco classic met with such approval that a fellow member of our touring group shook my hand. It also meant I had a get out of jail free card when a chance to stand behind the microphone and sing the damned song was offered. Two of our group gave it a game go, I was happy to remain behind the desk.



I went away singing SOS and Mamma Mia to myself (rather than the patrons of the Thames Tandoori). The experience was a bit of cheeky fun but had also been surprisingly educational, I certainly learnt things about Abba and the 1970s that I hadn't previously known, and, whilst for the most parts I'll stick to exhibitions over 'experiences', I'll not regret taking a trip into the world of Abba as much as I'll regret getting drunk and singing in an Indian restaurant in front of Adam, Teresa, Isaac, and Joe. Thankyou for the music.