Bravo, 1981: Agnetha: during her first performance, her pants fell down

Since her divorce from Björn, Agnetha Fältskog is living a lonely life with her children in her mansion in Lidingö. The new man in her life is called – or rather: was called – Dick Håkansson. They met each other in the spring, but in the meantime they have ended their relationship.
These days, Dick is still a welcome guest at Agnetha’s home. “We are friends and see each other every now and then,” Dick commented. There’s no doubt about it: Agnetha has known happier times in her life...
She was born in Jönköping, on April 5, 1950. Her father’s name is Ingvar, her mother’s Birgit. Ingvar Fältskog was the man who came up with most of the ideas for the local New Year’s revue, for which he wrote the dialogues. Meanwhile, he also performed himself in several parts.
Mother Birgit loved to sing, and often as well, but not in front of an audience. That’s how little Agnetha grew up in a very musical home. At the age of six, she made her debut in a scene of a Christmas entertainment show, that had been organised by her father.
Agnetha performed the well-known and popular ‘Billy Boy’. A performance that’s still the talk of the town in Jönköping today. But not because of Agnetha’s voice, but because of something that happened during the second chorus of the song: The zipper of Agnetha’s pants broke and her pants fell down.
However, this incident didn’t prevent Agnetha from carrying on with her blossoming career. In that same year, she started taking piano lessons. In the beginning, she practised on the neighbour’s piano, until she got one of her own at the age of seven.
At the age of fifteen, she started singing; she performed with the dance band ‘Bernt Enghardts’. During the day she worked as a telephone operator at a car firm and in the evening she sang with the band. In the long run, she wasn’t able to combine her singing with her job – she quit her job and concentrated on her career as a singer.

The band sent a demo to the then very well-known ‘Little Gerhard’, who was a singer and a producer at a record company. The company thought that the band was mediocre, but they thought that Agnetha’s voice was wonderful. Even more so because she sang melodies that she had composed herself.
Agnetha was called to Stockholm for some test recordings and she recorded two singles. The first one was called ‘I Was So In Love’. On January 23, 1968, this song entered the Swedish charts at number three. After that, further records kept on coming, like for instance ‘Without You’ and ‘Everything Has Changed’ and ‘Once We Were Together’.
These three were the most successful ones and they were composed by Agnetha herself. In less than a year Agnetha Fältskog had established herself and she became one of Sweden’s most popular artists. Already then, the media were starting to take an interest in everything she did. Large headlines appeared in the summer of 1968, when she got engaged to the German record producer Dieter Zimmermann.
For six months, Agnetha lived in Germany; she recorded several songs in German, but her international career didn’t take off and the engagement was broken off.
Back in Sweden, in the summer of 1969, Agnetha was a star in the big TV shows and she sang songs by Jules Sylvain. Among the other participants were the Hootenanny Singers.
One of their members was called Björn Ulvaeus. He had already met Agnetha earlier, during a folk park tour. But it wasn’t until the summer of 1969 that they discovered their love for each other. In April 1970, they got engaged during their holiday on Cyprus, and they got married in July 1971. Among the guests at the wedding were Benny and Anni-Frid. The four of them would work together intensely in the future...