ABBA was dismissed by many (especially in America) as Swedish cheese, but the group's best songs ("Dancing Queen," "Take a Chance On Me," "Lay All Your Love On Me," "SOS") have aged well and stand alongside the Beach Boys and Phil Spector's girl groups at the pinnacle of pop rock.

Born December 16, 1946, in Stockholm, Benny came from an accordion-slinging family and he picked up the squeeze box at age six. Piano and Elvis followed soon thereafter and by 13, Benny was in a rock 'n' roll band, the Hep Stars, which by the early '60s was Sweden's most popular, playing the latest hits from America, sung in English.

The group grew weary of covers, and out of desperation Benny wrote "No Response," which rose to No. 2 and launched a songwriting career. Benny produced hits for the Fabulous Four and the DJs on the side. "I always enjoyed being in the studio once I found out the possibilities," says Benny. "It's a nice environment to be in."

Bjorn, born April 25, 1945, in Gothenburg, played in a folk group, the Hootenanny Singers. Pop music circles being small in Sweden, Benny and Bjorn met and began writing and producing together by the late '60s. On one project, they enlisted their girlfriends, Agnetha and Frida, Swedish singing stars in their own right, to help out on background vocals on what turned out to be a hit single "People Need Love."

Benny admits that "the girls sounded 600 hundred percent better than we did," and the seed of ABBA was planted. In 1974, the quartet (named "Bjorn, Benny, Anna and Frida" to capitalize on the their individual popularity in Scandinavia) entered the Eurovision Song Contest with the rousing "Waterloo," and became the first Swedish group to win. Spurred by the show's massive television audience, the song became an instant international hit. Having hit through Eurovision also carried a stigma, and it took the band about a year, and a name change, to be accepted as the real thing.

That acceptance came hardest in America. "We didn't do well in America, did we?" says Benny. "Not compared to people who actually go there and do their interview stuff and work their asses off. We've done OK, a couple of platinum albums, but only one No. 1 single, 'Dancing Queen.'" Success is relative, of course. ABBA did score 10 top 20 singles in America between 1974 and their breakup in 1982.

Benny took his production cues from America. "The biggest inspiration for me as a producer was definitely Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys," he says. "There has always been a lot of vocals in American music. This is a tradition you had long before the Beach Boys. Wilson used vocals in a rhythmic way and added layer upon layer. Also Phil Spector, he's another guy who makes as much sound as possible come out of the smallest speaker. We tried to do that with ABBA. The human voice is the finest instrument."