Rod Stephen


Rod Stephen, married under the name Rod Leissle and born as Rod Woolley, is an Australian musician, show producer and singer-songwriter from Nunawading, Victoria, Australia. In a music career spanning 40 years, he came to be known in October 1988 as the creator of the Australian ABBA show Björn Again. The Björn Again show has widely acknowledged as the catalyst which brought about the 1990s ABBA revival as well as having paved the way for the global tribute band phenomena.

Early life

Rodney Stephen Woolley was born in Box Hill, Victoria, Australia to an English immigrant father William Woolley and Australian mother Joan Margaret Traynor The couple married in South Melbourne in 1955. Rod was raised in suburban Forest Hill, Nunanwading Melbourne Victoria.
Rod was schooled at Forest Hill Primary and Nunawading High from 1964 to 1977. Having enjoyed sports earlier on Rod focussed his last years of schooling on a new found a love of music including Slade, Alice Cooper, Mike Oldfield, Genesis, Yes, Gentle Giant along with some Australian music and most impotrtantly New Zealands Split Enz which Rod connected with affording him a masterclass in songwriting and arranging  and live theatrics. After schooling Rod drifted from job to job before joining CRC working in a metallurgical research centre whilst studying computer science at RMIT.
In 1986 Rod had taken up skiing throughout the winter. It was in this time it was decided he and his friends should adopt new weekend personas just for fun by becoming alter egos with comedy Scandic / European names Hans Danderblaus, Benny Theredonethat and Björn Again. Rod had been to see the newly released Blues brothers and Spinal Tap films which were inspirational and part of the driving force for him to develop a new musical concept. In 1988 ABBA's music had all but fallen into oblivion. Rarely seen on Television or in print media nor heard on Radio any more ABBA were deemed to be a bit "old Hat".

Starting up Björn Again

In 1988 at 29 years of age Rod was at something of a crossroads with his music. The Crows had disbanded only weeks before. Whilst enjoying his work at CRC he still wanted to be involved with something musical that would have an impact on the Australian music Industry. A great show with popular music combined with fun onstage antics and to be in demand to be offered a lucrative New Years Eve show. NYE had always been the show when you could double your fee.
The Beatles, Queen and ABBA and The Bay City Rollers were all initial considerations They all had many hits. ABBA had more intrigue as they were Scandinavians singing in English and were once married ABBA's music could be ocked up a bit.
ABBA's costumes were already genious works of art – so costumes based on ABBA white kimonos would clearly have the most appeal The last piece of this jigsaw puzzle was a name. Rod had no names for Beatles / Queen. He did have the name he used for skiing Björn Again. Along with 50 other names for an ABBA tribute band were written down including ABBA-solutely and ABBA-riginal and so on. By sunrise on the Saturday morning Rod had decided that Björn Again was the perfect name for his new rocked up satirical ABBA revival show.
Throughout the rest of the first weekend Rod spoke to musical colleague Andrew Cocks who thought the idea of Björn Again was too far fetched - also family and other friends as well as former Crows bandmate Peter Ryan about this concept. Peter agreed it sounded good and was convinced that the other Crow Gavin would want to be a part of too which was when Rod started drafting an advertsiment for two new female singers.

On tour