Sussex musician makes Abba his own

The album, featuring six tracks, comes out on June 5 under the title The Way Old Friends Do.

Alongside the title track, the other songs are The Day Before You Came, Chiquitita, Cassandra, Slipping Through My Fingers and Like An Angel Passing Through My Room.

Ahead of the album release, Alan is also releasing The Day Before You Came and Chiquitita as a double A side single on April 24.

Inevitably, it all comes at a difficult time for musicians everywhere.

Alan was due to present the music at the Brighton Fringe this year – and hopes he might still get the chance if the fringe is able to go ahead with its plans to stage something this autumn.

“I live in Brighton and there is quite a big art and music scene down there.

“I was thinking what I could do for the fringe, and I decided the Christmas before last that I was going to try to think of something new.

“I have been an Abba fan since I was a child. They were the first music that I ever really liked. They are what got me hooked on pop music, and me and my friend were talking, and we came up with the idea of doing a show that is my take on Abba. And the idea was to do a record alongside it.”

The concert might not be happening for the moment, but the single and the album certainly are.

“I think I had just got sick of myself as a songwriter.

“You get to the point when you have done a few albums where you can run out of ideas and you get to the point where what you are doing is just a variation on what you have already done. Doing this was almost like a palate cleanser.

“It was a way of taking a break from my own material. I am not going to slag off my own material.

“But I felt that if I had tried to put out an album of original material now, I would have been scraping the barrel, and I didn’t want to do that.

“But I still wanted to do something that I was still very invested in and also something that was still new and exciting.

“It has been a real labour of love.

“What has come out of it I am really proud of.

“Structurally the songs are the same.

“In order to release a cover version, you can’t change it around too much. You can’t mess with the words or the melody because then it becomes a different composition.

“So the structure hasn’t changed, but I think with any interpretation of a song, if you do a good interpretation, then that song becomes your own… or at least the interpretation does because you are seeing the song through your own lens, through your own eyes.

“And I have done songs that I feel a real emotional connection with.

“I have got quite a gravelly voice so obviously it is quite different, and I harmonise with a friend of mine, Paul Diello, and he has got a very different voice to mine, but our voices blend… in the way that the voices of the two Abba girls blended.

“Also, Abba were very technical in the studio and they were very pristine in their recordings.

“My album has got quite a live feel to it.

“You can hear the breath on the microphone. You can hear the piano creaking.

“I really like to be able to hear those room noises.”

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