Björn Ulvaeus was born on the 25th April 1945 in the small town of Västervik, Sweden, just off the Baltic. He lived with his father Gunnar and his mother Aina. Just after Björn was born the small family moved to Hunnebostrand, a small fishing village north of Gothenburg, Sweden's second largest city. Here his father started a shipyard for small boats. In 1948 another child was born, Eva. As a child Björn would spend time at his father's shipyard, working and helping out. In 1949 the shipyard went bankrupt and the family was forced to move on again. In 1951 they moved back to Västervik.
In school Björn was an average student although his favourite subject was English. His interest in languages developed a skill in poetry encouraged by his teacher. At home music didn't play a big part in general life, they didn't even own a record player, but Björn listened to music on his own radio which provided his only source for popular music at the time, He got his first practical music experience playing the recorder at school although this didn't push him with any interest, that came from his older cousin who would play the trumpet and piano, he was attracted to both the playing of the instruments and actually performing. For his 13th birthday he got an acoustic guitar and started learning to play. He and his cousin formed a small band, they covered English hits of the time such as, Elvis and Buddy Holly.
By the late fifties Björn was good enough on guitar to perform songs alone. In 1959 he went over to London for work experience at a paper mill. His ambition career wise was to become a successful ship builder, although this was practical it wasn't really what he wanted. In 1961 his cousin left the town but Björn joined another band with friends, they quickly became a local attraction under the name, The Partners but discovered another group also went by this name so they settled for The West Bay Singers. They went on a six week trip around Europe and performed some of their songs with success, although no serious talk of making music a full time occupation but in 1963 they entered a talent contest on Swedish radio. Among the contestants was a young girl named Anni-Frid Lyngstad, she meant nothing to any of The West Bay Singers but she would especially to one in particular. An article was printed in a Swedish newspaper about the contest and a head at a new Swedish record company, Polar Music spotted the article and met the band. They met with the head of Polar Music Stig Anderson. He persuaded the group to change their name to, The Hootenany Singers. In 1967 the group scored their first major hit in Sweden "Green, Green Grass of Home" a Tom Jones cover.
Björn started writing music and lyrics for other Polar acts which soon became hits. In 1966 when touring Björn got very friendly with Benny Andersson of another popular group in Sweden The Hep Stars. 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.
