Bjorn Ulvaeus: The Bench Where ABBA Actually Began

Bjorn Ulvaeus led a real, working folk group for a decade before ABBA ever existed.

This site's own ABBA coverage mentions that group in a single unnamed sentence.

It never says what the group actually was, or how Bjorn Ulvaeus found his real songwriting partner.

Both stories start years before Waterloo, in a completely different band.

One of them starts on a park bench.

The Hootenanny Singers photographed in 1967, Bjorn Ulvaeus seated at center, the real Swedish folk group he led for a decade before ABBA existed

The Hootenanny Singers, 1967. Björn Ulvaeus seated at center.

Image credit: Polar Music Production, public domain (published in Sweden before 1969), via Wikimedia Commons.

Bjorn Ulvaeus Was a Folk Star Years Before ABBA

The Hootenanny Singers' Real Chart History

Bjorn Ulvaeus was born April 25, 1945, in Gothenburg, Sweden.

He joined a folk group called the West Bay Singers as a teenager.

The group had formed in 1961 in Västervik, a small coastal town.

Its founder, a tall German-born singer named Hansi Schwarz, led it before Ulvaeus ever joined.

A 1963 talent contest put the group in front of Stig Anderson and his business partner, Bengt Bernhag.

The pair had just started a record company called Polar Music.

They signed the group and renamed it the Hootenanny Singers.

Ulvaeus became its real frontman and leader.

The band scored genuine hits across the following decade.

"Gabrielle" reached number five on Sweden's Kvällstoppen chart in 1964.

It later charted in Finland, Norway, and beyond, recorded in five different languages.

"Omkring tiggarn från Luossa" became their biggest hit of all, spending 52 weeks on the Svensktoppen chart between late 1972 and late 1973.

That's real chart longevity most bands never come close to matching.

The group mostly stuck to Swedish-language folk material, along with real covers of American and British songs translated into Swedish.

None of that prepared audiences for the electric, English-language pop act Ulvaeus would help build next.

Nobody actually watching those early small folk shows could have predicted where the next decade would truly take him.

The Park Bench Where He Met Benny Andersson

The Hootenanny Singers and a different band happened to tour the same city on the same night.

On June 5, 1966, both groups were in Linköping, Sweden.

Benny Andersson played keyboards in the other band, the Hep Stars, Sweden's biggest pop group of the era.

Ulvaeus and Andersson met on a park bench in Slottsparken that night.

They talked, and eventually started writing together.

Their first real song as a pair was called "Isn't It Easy to Say."

That real partnership became the songwriting engine behind everything ABBA ever recorded.

A bench now sits on that same spot in Linköping, engraved with a back-to-back "B" on either end.

It plays music through built-in speakers.

Local officials installed it in 2016, fifty years after that first conversation.

Four Names on a Single Record

The bench conversation took six real years to become an actual record with all four future ABBA members on it.

Ulvaeus and Andersson recorded "People Need Love" on March 29, 1972, at Metronome Studios in Stockholm.

Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad sang on it too.

The single credited all four by their real names: Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Anni-Frid.

Nobody involved planned a permanent group around it.

All four still had their own separate careers and commitments at the time.

It reached number 17 on Sweden's Kvällstoppen chart that August.

The real band name wouldn't exist for another year.

He Didn't Always Write the English Words Himself

Bjorn Ulvaeus eventually became known as ABBA's main English lyricist.

That wasn't true from the very start.

"Waterloo," the song that won Eurovision in 1974, carried English lyrics credited to Stig Anderson himself.

"Ring Ring," the group's earlier single, went even further outside the band.

American songwriters Neil Sedaka and Phil Cody wrote that song's English words.

Ulvaeus grew into the role over those same few years.

By 1976, he was writing full English lyrics himself, including a rewritten version of "Fernando."

Neither he nor Andersson learned English as a first language.

They built that skill the same way they built everything else in ABBA, through real trial and steady practice.

Within a few years, that same self-taught ear made him one of pop music's most reliable English lyricists.

The Real Story This Site Left Out

This site's own ABBA post tells the band's name-origin story in real detail.

It names Polar Music, Stig Anderson, and the fish cannery that already owned the name ABBA.

One line inside that story mentions Bjorn Ulvaeus was "already signed to that label with an earlier group before ABBA existed."

The group is never named there.

Neither is Benny Andersson's own real introduction to him.

Both stories belong here instead, in the years before either man had ever heard of the other three future bandmates.

Bjorn Ulvaeus's songwriting career didn't end when ABBA did, either.

He went on to co-write the stage musicals Chess and Mamma Mia!, decades after this decade closed.

This site's own Mamma Mia Song post tells the story of the original 1975 single those later stage lyrics grew out of.

Curious which other 70s act matches your own mood today?

Try the Random Artist Picker and see who comes up.

Frequently Asked Questions

Was Bjorn Ulvaeus famous before ABBA?

He was, as the real leader of a popular Swedish folk group called the Hootenanny Singers.

They scored real hits between 1963 and 1974, including "Gabrielle" in 1964 and "Omkring tiggarn från Luossa," which spent 52 weeks on the Svensktoppen chart in 1972 and 1973.

ABBA didn't form until 1972.

How did Bjorn Ulvaeus meet Benny Andersson?

They met on June 5, 1966, on a park bench in Linköping, Sweden.

Both of their bands, the Hootenanny Singers and the Hep Stars, were on tour in the same city that night.

They wrote their first song together, "Isn't It Easy to Say," not long after.

What was the Hootenanny Singers?

The Hootenanny Singers were a Swedish folk group formed in 1961 in Västervik, originally called the West Bay Singers.

Bjorn Ulvaeus joined and became the group's real frontman after a 1963 talent contest brought them to the attention of Stig Anderson and Bengt Bernhag at Polar Music.

When did Bjorn Ulvaeus actually join ABBA?

He didn't join a pre-existing group.

ABBA formed gradually after 1966, once Ulvaeus, Andersson, Agnetha Fältskog, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad began performing and recording together.

The band took its final name in 1973, and Ulvaeus kept working with the Hootenanny Singers, in a reduced capacity, until 1974.