Brighton celebration of ABBA's remarkable legacy - with original ABBA musicians

Among those performing is bass-player Mike Watson who went out to Sweden in 1964 as part of the Hi-Grades, American singer Larry Finnegan’s backing group – and stayed. It was there that he got to know the members of ABBA, the Swedish supergroup which was formed in Stockholm in 1972 by Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad.

“I'm not sure why I ended up staying,” Mike says. “The band I was in was based in London and we were doing all the usual pub gigs. I met all the Stones and everyone else but I got offered the chance to go to Sweden and it sounded very exotic. I stayed because I got work here and when the band split up, I joined a Swedish band and we had some hits in the top 20. When that split up I got into recording in 1969 as a so-called studio musician. By then I had already met Björn and Benny. They were both in bands and in the charts. And Benny was in the biggest Swedish pop group of the 60s and then he started as a producer around 1970. My first record with them was with Freda and then they started what became ABBA. At first when they played together they were in a band with a name which translates as Party People and then that became ABBA taking their initials and putting them together as the name. Agnetha and Frida were also stars in their own right. They were well known as well but when we recorded in the studio I never got to see the girls. It was just Benny and Björn in the studio and we never heard the finished products until the LP came home. Björn would sit on acoustic guitar and Benny would play the piano. I think at first they were better known abroad than in Sweden. In Sweden they were thought to be bubblegum pop and that they wouldn't last the next year. They were certainly bigger in England. I went to do Top Of The Pops with them when they released Fernando and they were met with two Rolls Royces at Heathrow. In Australia they were enormous and in the States Dancing Queen was number one.

“I've been travelling with this tribute band for ten years now and it doesn't matter where you go: ABBA are just enormous. People love ABBA and I love playing the ABBA songs. The great thing is that the songs are all unique. They are never the same. You've got everything from music hall to rock in there. They are challenging songs to sing and challenging songs to play, certainly the instruments, especially the keyboard. I worked with ABBA all through the 70s and into the 80s when they stopped. Agnetha was very private since then, but you see Benny still doing things with the Benny Andersson Orchestra and Björn is into different things with things like Chess. They are still working.” ABBA remain Sweden’s biggest music export ever – a legacy celebrated in Brighton with the 11-piece live band plus the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra.