Fifty years on, the footage of Abba performing Waterloo at the 1974 Eurovision song contest is very familiar indeed: the conductor dressed as Napoleon, Agnetha’s blue satin knickerbockers, Björn’s star-shaped guitar. It’s been endlessly repeated on TV shows and documentaries: the moment that unexpectedly launched the career of one of the biggest bands of all time, pop history in the making. But it’s rarely, if ever, shown in context. Perhaps Abba’s success is so sui generis – Sweden had never produced an internationally successful pop artist before, and it’s never produced one anything like as successful since – that context seems besides the point. But this weekend, BBC Four is screening the entire 1974 grand final in full.
Immediately, the setting plunges you back into what feels like a very distant past indeed. Here is Eurovision from a time before anyone watched it for camp value – you can’t imagine any gay bar in 1974 clearing its schedules to screen this; a Eurovision that takes itself rather seriously, a brief appearance by the Wombles notwithstanding. It’s Eurovision that predates even Terry Wogan’s presence: in 1974, his famously sardonic remarks were still confined to radio coverage of the event. Viewers had to make do with sports commentator David Vine, ever-ready with a useful pen-portrait of the competing nations – “Norway! The place where they drink aquavit and do marvellous ski-jumping!” – and blessed with the ability to talk up the various artists in a way that makes you lose the will to live before they’ve even taken the stage: “Made his debut in his parents’ circus … used to do impressions of Maurice Chevalier,” he offers of Monaco’s Romuald.
