Benny Andersson was born in a Stockholm suburb on 16th of December 1946. Unlike Björn's upbringing, Benny experienced a very musical background, both his father and grandfather enjoyed making music. At the age of six he got his first accordion and started playing together with his father Gösta and his grandfather Efraim.

Benny also learned how to play the piano. He became a member of The Hep Stars in October 1964. The following year the band achieved their breakthrough and quickly became Sweden 's number one pop group of the 1960s and where known as Sweden's answer to The Beatles. Benny had helped write some of the group's own material but they mostly covered English hits in Swedish. In 1965 Benny wrote the song "Sunny Girl" with English lyrics, this was a big hit on the charts and when Benny realised that if he could write one hit single maybe he could write another, then another, the future would prove him right.

In 1966 when Benny was touring with his group The Hep Stars, another group, The Hootenanny Singers were also touring the folk parts. Benny was familiar with The Hootenany Singers as they were also enjoying success in the Swedish charts but the two groups had never met. At this particular time though the groups did meet and got on well together. The Hep stars were attending a party nearby and invited the other band to come and join them. At the party is where Benny and Björn first got a chance to have a proper talk and get to know one another, they soon discovered they had a lot in common, writing and performing music. They talked of working together but nothing came of it until they later met and wrote their first song together, "Isn't It Easy To Say."

In 1969 Benny left the Hep Stars after the group faced financial trouble, through the entire existence of the group they had paid no taxes on their success and were given a huge bill. Benny swore to pay the money back and he did.

After The Hep Stars he and Björn were developing their relationship and their careers, both now employees at Polar music writing for other acts and recording as a duo, they enjoyed success in Sweden and even in Japan .

Around the same time Benny met Anni-Frid "Frida" Lyngstad and got engaged to her - they were eventually married in 1978. In November 1970, Benny, Frida and Björn staged a cabaret show together with Björn's fiancée, Agnetha Fältskog who he had met on a television special they were recording together in 1969, she was already a big music star in Sweden and had numerous hits to her credit.

Björn & Benny - After ABBA

In 1982 the group split, both Agnetha and Frida embarked on solo careers whereas Björn and Benny went on to write the successful musical Chess. They teamed up with English Lyricist, Tim Rice.

The concept of a musical had always appealed to Björn and Benny, they had several attempts, for their 1977 tour with ABBA they wrote a "mini-musical", "The Girl With The Golden Hair" it was later planned to expand this into a full size musical but after mixed reviews and ABBA's growing success it was postponed. Again in 1980 during recording sessions for the Super trouper album, the duo were on holiday in the Canary Islands and met up with English comedian, John Cleese and proposed the idea for a new musical about a New Years Eve party and asked him if he was interested in writing it, unfortunately he declined but a resulting song, "Happy New Year" was recorded and released on the Super Trouper album.

This time they were taking a "break" from ABBA and were looking to do a musical at the same time Tim Rice had developed a concept of a Chess musical based on the game of chess with a love story. He had already proposed the idea to Andrew Lloyd Webber who he had previously teamed up with on the musicals, Evita and Jesus Christ Super Star although he declined as he was busy on his own musical, Cats. When he heard Björn and Benny were interested in writing a musical he contacted them and they started work. Before presenting the musical they recorded an album first with such artists as Elaine Paige and Murray Head. Four singles were released from the album, "I Know Him So Well" a duet between Elaine Paige and Barbara Dixon was a huge success scoring number 1 in the UK . Other singles such as "Nobody's Side" (Elaine Paige) and "One Night In Bangkok" were also UK successes, the later scoring the number 3 position in the US , it is also said to be Björn and Benny's biggest selling single worldwide (including all ABBA's singles).

Also in 1983 another musical, ABBACadabra was put together based on ABBA songs re-written. Although Björn and Benny weren't directly involved they contributed two songs, "Time" and "I Am The Seeker."

Chess was a huge success and ran for four years. After Chess in 1985 Björn and Benny started work on a new album with Anders and Karin Glenmark, brother/sister act "Gemini", they wrote songs for the album but it had little success even in Scandinavia . The album included a re-attempt at the unreleased ABBA recording "Just Like That". A later Gemini album, Geminism was released two years later again with little success although a single from the album, "Mio my Mio" the theme song to a Swedish film of the same name hit number 1 in Sweden.

By 1990, Björn and Benny had decided to write a new musical. This time they wanted to write exclusively in Swedish, and they chose the Emigrants novel series by author Vilhelm Moberg as basis for their work. The musical Kristina från Duvemåla (Kristina From Duvemåla) opened in October 1995. The show ran for three and a half years at various theatres in the Swedish cities of Malmö, Gothenburg and Stockholm . They also wrote and produced the album Shapes for Jossefin Nilsson a Swedish singing star, the album even was released in the UK but due to no publicity or promotion failed.

The 1990's were also a good time for ABBA. In 1992 "Dancing Queen" was re-released as a single reaching an impressive number 16 but this was just a taster of what was to come. In October 1992 the compilation album ABBA Gold was released reaching the number one position and staying in the charts for over 200 weeks. The follow up album More ABBA Gold also was successful reaching the UK top 20. ABBA Gold holds the record for longest time between number 1 status when it reached number 1 again in 1999 and stayed there for 5 weeks and remaining another 100+ weeks in the chart.

In 1999 Johan Englung head of production company, Nordic Artist decided to arrange a series of concerts commemorating the work of Sweden's finest musicians, Björn and Benny. The concerts would include lots of Björn and Benny materials right from their early Swedish workings together up to present. Four artists, Anders and Karin Glenmark (of Gemini), Tommy Körberg and Helen Sjöholm would present the songs. They came known as the B&B concerts and toured Sweden and later went over to China , they are yet to come to any other part of the world.

Recently, Björn has involved himself heavily in the staging of Mamma Mia!, a musical based on ABBA songs. The show opened in London, England in April 1999 and has since then been staged in Toronto in Canada, and Melbourne, Australia. A tour of the United States culminated in a Broadway opening in October 2001. At the end of 2002 Mamma Mia! will open in Hamburg, Germany and Tokyo, Japan and more recently helped re-work lyrics to the song "Another You, Another Me" produced for Gemini for British duo H & Claire of Steps fame, it was released on the album of the same title but a single release is yet to be seen. The musical Chess was re-worked in 2002 and is now showing to Swedish audiences, it has been reported work has started on an English version of Kristina. Even more recently "The Definitive Collection" DVD was released worldwide which included all of ABBA's music videos (pioneers in the field) with extra footage, it charted at a massive number 2 on the UK DVD charts, showing that even 20 years after their international success with ABBA the music of Björn and Benny remains well loved and popular among the world's general public.