Reaching Out: The making of Waterloo

THE DATE IS April 6, 1974, and the scene is backstage at the Dome in Brighton, England, the spectacular building hosting the BBC's production of that year's Eurovision Song Contest. ABBA, who less than an hour earlier have performed their entry, 'Waterloo', are now following the voting on the monitors. The atmosphere is tense: to this day, Björn Ulvaeus recalls how he hardly had the stomach for watching the process. "I remember pacing the corridors up and down, and I can vaguely remember Benny shouting out every new top score we got," he says. Benny Andersson himself also vividly remembers the tension, but even more the elation towards the end of the voting. "I counted the votes as they came in, and at a certain point I realised that even if every country that hadn't cast its votes yet would give us no points at all, and the runners-up got top scores, we would have won anyway."