Björn Kristian Ulvaeus was born in Gothenburg on 25th April 1945. When he was six years old, the family moved to the small town of Västervik, and this is where Björn grew up.
Music was not a central part of the Ulvaeus household, but in the mid-fifties Björn got bitten by the rock'n'roll and skiffle bug, and at the age of 12, he got his first guitar. A few years later he joined his cousin Jon's skiffle group. By the early 1960s, the group had transformed into a trad-jazz band, with Björn playing the banjo.
One of the other members of this group was bass player Tony Rooth. When a competing group called Mackie's Skiffle Group, led by Hansi Schwarz, needed a new bass player, he was invited to join them. By this time, Björn's cousin's group had disintergrated, and Tony said yes on the condition that his pal Björn could join the group as well. Somewhat begrudgingly, Hansi accepted Tony's terms.
By 1962, the line-up of the group was Björn, Hansi Schwarz, Tony Rooth and Johan Karlberg, and the forays into skiffle and jazz had been completely left behind in favour of folk music. After a few name changes the group decided to call themselves the West Bay Singers, and in September 1963 they entered a talent contest arranged by Swedish radio.
At the same time, record producer Bengt Bernhag at the Polar record company happened to see a newspaper report stating that a folk music group was to enter the talent contest. His partner Stig Anderson contacted the group, and soon afterwards they were signed to Polar as the Hootenanny Singers, a name given to them by Bengt and Stig.
Before the end of the year the group had released their first single and EP, where the lead track was their talent contest entry Jag väntar vid min mila ("I'm Waiting At The Charcoal Kiln"). The song soon became a big hit, eventually reaching Number Seven on the combined singles and albums sales chart.
The spring of 1964 saw the group members graduate from senior high school, and with further big hits such as Gabrielle, the Hootenanny Singers had become one of the most popular acts in Sweden by the end of the year. They also had several concert dates behind them - including the 150 gigs played during the first of several gruelling Folkpark tours - and had released two eponymous albums.
One of the Hootenanny Singers' main attractions seemed to be the fact that their well-mannered image was the complete opposite of the long-haired rebellious Beatles style, but almost immediately after their breakthrough Björn started dreaming of being a part of the pop scene instead.
After the group's first album of 1965 had been released - Hootenanny Singers sjunger Evert Taube ("The Hootenanny Singers Sing Evert Taube", a tribute to the Swedish composer) - the group started to change their direction ever so slightly.
Folk music songs from Sweden and abroad were joined by Björn's first folk/pop compositions, such as No Time (a Top Twenty hit) and Time To Move Along, both of which were included on the Hootenanny Singers' fourth album International. The album also featured the major hit Björkens visa ("Song Of The Birch").
1966 saw further concert dates and yet another album, Många ansikten/Many Faces, which featured one side of songs in Swedish and one in English, being the last serious attempt to present the group as a pop band. Hits of the year included Marianne and Björn's pop composition Baby Those Are The Rules, both of which were featured on the album.
The latter song was also one of many recordings to be released abroad: Between 1964 and 1966 the Hootenanny Singers released singles in the UK, the US, Finland, Norway, Denmark, West Germany, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy, and even an album in the United States. They did not have any commercial success with those releases, however.
By the time Många ansikten/Many Faces was released in the late autumn of 1966, three of the members were busy doing their military service (fourth member Hansi Schwarz was a German citizen, and was excused). The day before their service began in June 1966, they had had a farewell party to which they invited the members of Sweden's number one pop group of the time, the Hep Stars.
One of the members of this group was Benny Andersson, and at this party he and Björn forged the friendship that would eventually lead to ABBA. Later in the summer, the two friends composed their first co-written song, Isn't It Easy To Say, and Benny also contributed organ to the Många ansikten/Many Faces track Blomman ("The Flower").
In January 1967, the first Hootenanny Singers single of the year was released. En sång en gång för längesen was a version of the Tom Jones hit Green Green Grass Of Home and reached Number Two on the sales charts, the group's biggest hit thus far.
Consequently, over the next few years, many of the Hootenanny Singers' recordings would be Swedish versions of American middle-of-the-road folk/country hits such as Almost Persuaded (Början till slutet, a Number Four hit) and Five Hundred Miles Away From Home (Så länge du älskar är du ung, Number Seven).
This approach certainly put its mark on the group's first post-military service album, Civila ("Civilians"), which also included the novelty hit Mårten Gås ("Mårten The Goose"), featuring the somewhat dodgy lead vocals of the group's roadie Hans "Berka" Bergkvist.
When the album was released in the autumn of 1967, the group already had yet another 150 date Folkpark tour behind them.
From the outset, the members of the group had decided that their music career was only going to be a temporary occupation, and the autumn of 1967 saw all of them starting their university studies.
Björn was the only member of the group who still dreamed of continuing a full-time career in the music business. Since he was alone in being located in Stockholm, he became the group's representative in most of their dealings with their record company.
In the spring of 1968, Björn also released his first solo single, Raring, a Swedish version of the Bobby Goldsboro hit Honey. Up until the end of 1969, he recorded a further three singles as solo artist, while the Hootenanny Singers still issued albums and toured the Folkparks.
Björn's other solo singles were the Top Ten hit Fröken Fredriksson (a Swedish version of Harper Valley P.T.A., 1968), Saknar du något min kära (a version of Where Do You Go To My Lovely, 1969) and Partaj-aj-aj (an original Andersson/Ulvaeus composition, 1969).
The first group album of 1968 was Bellman på vårt sätt ("Bellman In Our Way"), which was a tribute to the Swedish 18th century composer. This marked the starting point of the series of albums of traditional or "older" Swedish song material that would be the Hootenanny Singers' sole album output from 1970 onwards.
Those albums were Skillingtryck ("Simple Folk Songs", 1970), Våra vackraste visor ("Our Most Beautiful Songs", 1971), Våra vackraste visor 2 (1972), Dan Andersson på vårt sätt ("Dan Andersson In Our Way", 1973) and Evert Taube på vårt sätt ("Evert Taube In Our Way", 1974)
The second album of 1968, Fem år ("Five Years"), and På tre man hand ("A Group Of Three") in 1969 were the last Hootenanny Singers albums of contemporary popular music material, although modern MOR songs continued to appear on the group's singles.
As the latter album title suggests, the group had lost a member in the spring of 1969. It was Johan Karlberg who had left the Hootenanny Singers to start working in his father's car firm. This did not stop the group from fulfilling the close to 100 dates of their 1969 Folkpark summer tour, but it was to be the last Hootenanny Singers tour for three years.
By this time, Björn had started working more closely with Benny Andersson, and the autumn of 1969 saw them recording their first tracks as Björn & Benny. The first songs to be released from these sessions was the spring 1970 She's My Kind Of Girl/Inga Theme single, taken from the soft-porn movie The Seduction Of Inga.
1970 saw further recordings, eventually resulting in the Lycka ("Happiness") album, which included Hej gamle man! ("Hey Old Man!"), the first recording to feature all four future ABBA members. By the time the album was released in late 1970, Björn was engaged to Agnetha Fältskog, and Benny to Anni-Frid Lyngstad. Late 1970 and early 1971 saw all four of them appear on stage with their failed cabaret show Festfolk.
Further Björn & Benny single releases during 1971 (including the major radio hit Tänk om jorden vore ung, later given the English title If We Only Had The Time) were followed by an increased amount of production and songwriting commitments for other artists, as the pair became house producers at Polar during the autumn.
In March 1972, the first ABBA single People Need Love was recorded, and as Björn and Benny gradually stepped back from their other commitments - the last Hootenanny Singers Folkpark tour took place in the summer of 1972 - ABBA grew to be one of the biggest popular music success stories of the 1970s.
ABBA's last recordings in 1982 were followed by Björn's and Benny's collaboration with lyricist Tim Rice on the musical Chess. A concept album was released in the autumn of 1984, and in May 1986 the musical opened in London's West End. The musical was a huge hit, both on record and on stage. In 1988 Chess opened on Broadway, but failed to repeat the success of the original production and had to close after a run of two months.
The musical project did not mean that Björn and Benny had completely abandoned the world of pop music, however, and 1985 and 1987 saw the Andersson/Ulvaues team write and produce most of the tracks on two albums by the Swedish pop duo Gemini.
By 1990, the pair had decided to write a new musical. This time they decided to write exclusively in Swedish, and they chose the Emigrants novel series by author Vilhelm Moberg as basis for their work.
After five years and a few breaks along the way - one of them consisting of songwriting for the 1993 album Shapes by Swedish singer Josefin Nilsson - the musical Kristina från Duvemåla ("Kristina From Duvemåla") had its première in October 1995.
The new musical was a huge success with both critics and audiences, and has at the time of writing been running for three years at various theatres in the Swedish cities of Malmö, Gothenburg and Stockholm. A 3-CD original cast box set was released in October 1996, and stayed on the Swedish charts for well over a year.
The autumn of 1996 also saw a few concert performances of Kristina från Duvemåla in the United States, and at the time of writing a translation into English is being prepared which will hopefully lead to a future Broadway production of the complete musical. Björn is also involved in the production of Mamma Mia, a musical based on ABBA songs which is due to open in England in April 1999.
The Kristina från Duvemåla project was the first time in Björn's and Benny's partnership that the former was credited exclusively for the lyrics and the latter for the music.With reviewer's accolades and awards following in the footsteps of the musical - and his interest in record producing being minimal these days - Björn seems to have settled comfortably in his role as one of Sweden's foremost lyricists.
