Tuesday 4 September 2012

Pop Foto, 1978: Agnetha will not be singing for the time being: "Everything has to make way for my little son!"

Quietly, she's gazing into the distance, the tiny bundle pressed against her. On the white hospital night table beside her, there's an empty bottle of champagne with a couple of half full glasses... The visiting hour at Stockholm's Danderyd Sjukhus is over and Agnetha Ulvaeus is exhausted, just like her one day old little son. She is not as joyful as the other women in the hospital's large maternity ward, but then again, Agnetha has a lot to think about...

She has to make a decision now. Not only about her own future, but about the future of four other people as well. Whatever she decides, the life of her husband Björn, who has just been babbling blissfully to his little son, is going to change radically. And the life of Anni-Frid and Benny, her colleagues and best friends, won't stay the same either... The small human being on her chest, so perfect and yet so helpless, makes such a decision inevitable... But it's difficult to decide if you're going to be a housewife from now on who lives for her children first and only then for herself or... pursuing your own and three other people's career, no matter what! The pink miniature fingers of the baby move against her body for a while. The voices and the relaxed laughter of only moments ago still seem to hang around the room, just like Anni-Frid's perfume and the scent of the flowers she brought along... A nurse enters the room quietly and takes along Agnetha's baby. She should get some sleep herself, just like her little baby, that doesn't even have a name yet. But when Agnetha finally shuts her eyes, it's late in the evening of 6 December 1977...

In the night of 4 to 5 December the new little human being was born, that's going to change everything radically that has to do with the group ABBA. It weighed 3.750 gram, it measured 54 centimetres from head to toe and it had a couple of great lungs.
Still a normal child, like thousands are being born in the world. But this youngest member of the Ulvaeus family is still different from other babies, because his parents make up one half of the world famous group ABBA, and then there's also his sister Linda. As long as Agnetha toured around the world with ABBA she has occupied herself with one thing: the fact that little Linda became a stranger to her. An unpleasant experience with a nanny, whom Linda mistaked for her mother, was a wake-up call for Agnetha. But still Agnetha continued with a brave face, working extra hard, to be able to be with Linda at least a couple of months per year. And then her little son announced himself...
"Actually," Björn told us right after our visit at the hospital that sixth of December, "we haven't dared to think about our future yet. You know that we kept working very hard, despite Agnetha's pregnancy, to complete the ABBA movie and our new album before the delivery. Now the job is done, our baby has been born and... now we don't know what to do. Sorry, guys, but I can't tell you anything about ABBA's future because we just don't know anything yet! Anni-Frid, Benny and I have decided to leave everything up to Agnetha...!"

That was almost a month ago. All this time, the editors of Pop Foto have been waiting anxiously for that one relieving phone call from Sweden, wherein we would finally be told what Agnetha had decided. Just before this issue went to the printing office, the message came through: Agnetha has decided not to do anything at least until the end of February or the beginning of March. Maybe shoot a promotional film for the single that's going to be the follow-up to 'The Name Of The Game' and that's going to be titled 'Take A Chance On Me', but apart from that... There won't be any album recordings, nor any promotional trips to far off countries... Agnetha is going to take it easy for the time being and only in March she is going to decide what ABBA's future will look like. Together with tens of thousands of ABBA fans, Pop Foto is waiting, almost in unbearable tension...

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