Agnetha Fältskog: "This time I'm in control"
Agnetha Fältskog
The singer Agnetha Fältskog, 63, returns to the limelight through a side door after 25 years hiding from a world she admired with unbearable excessiveness. In the Suite 490 of the Stockholm "Grand Hôtel", the photographer has built his light, a journalist is waiting, two PR women from the record company give her quickly some information, her stylist tugs at her blouse. It's the whole setting of her old life, hotel, promotion, interviews. Agnetha smiles. The eyes, water-blue as before, surrounded by wrinkles, do not smile with. She made a decision, she pulls this through. This time she retains control.
She has to do it, she has no choice. She did a record again. 31 years after Abba, a quarter of a century after the end of her solo career. Since then, she has lived on a remote island west of Stockholm, in a high-fity estate she bought in 1984 to "secure herself" and her two children, she said. She wanted rest, and then she could not find her way out of this peace.
And now, in Suite 490, a few weeks before her new album releases, Agnetha sits down on the gray sofa, and through the window the first rays of the spring sun are falling. You're sitting opposite an older, restrained woman, carefully trimmed for the day, black high-heeled boots, tight black trousers, white blouse, leather jacket, a bit too chic, too opportune, certainly not her style. You look into a face into which life has inscribed a variety of emotional states, not just the good times, and in fact, there is only one question, because all other questions are derived from it: Why?
Why does a woman return who distrusts the public? who can not fly because of her anxiety attacks, do not travel; which still has nightmares of crowds, fans who want to crush them on their foreign tours; who did not sing 13 years after Abba, did not even hear music, did not listen to music because she was not reading; So why does Agnetha Fältskog return? It's not about money, she says, "I can live well on the records and on the royalties." She smiles. Thirteen years ago, she was the one who refused the offer of a businessman who wanted to pay a billion dollar for a Abba Reunion. She says, "I really just make the CD out of fun."
She wanted to sing, that was her motivation, only that, it should not be a comeback, she did not plan it. "Singing is my life," she says, sometimes she says sentences that sound very simple and that pushes them like a buffer between their response and the deeper truth behind it. She wanted to sing, it's her job, she's the only one, she left school at the age of fifteen. And there were these two producers, Jörgen Elofsson and Peter Nordahl - Elofsson worked with Britney Spears and Kelly Clarkson - and they let them know about a mutual acquaintance that they had written two songs for them. "I was not looking for someone who wanted to make a record with me," says Agnetha. "I was convinced by these two men who came in. I said: Oh, okay, I have not closed any doors, I can listen to them, they came and played the songs to me, and it felt like: You have to do that. "
I did not look for someone who wanted to make a record with me
She has asked her daughter Linda, she is an actress and also a singer, they live together on the island. Linda said: Think about it, if you want it all again. "Of course, I know all about the merry-go-round I go to," says Agnetha. And then, very briskly: "But I can get a grip on it." As? "By doing it like that, I'm not going to get too tired."
Only once did she make a musical appearance after the end of her solo career, 2004, with a nostalgic album for which she recorded the songs of her youth: Petula Clark, Connie Francis. 54 she was there. At that time, she canceled all interviews at short notice, and it was not until after pressure from the record company, a month after the release of "My Coloring Book" that she gave a few in which she said nothing. The record was a small success in Sweden, "I thought at the time that it would be my last, but then," she says, "this opportunity came".
They worked on the new album for 18 months, from January to October 2012 they were in the studio, that was the most beautiful part. But she had not sung for years, "I had problems at first," she says, pointing to her diaphragm, "I know exactly how to sing, but it took me some time to remember how to breathe and where to get them from Strength takes from the belly.I took a couple of singing lessons, three or four, then it was back, all I had to do was clear my throat and start singing. "" A "is the name of the record, like the A of Abba, as if it wants to break loose from the legend There are good songs, pop and ballads, two, three pieces remain in the head, some sounds like Abba - the sound, Agnetha's still bright, surprisingly young voice.
Her daughter warned: Do you really want the hype again?
Sometimes albums from previous stars are embarrassing, this is not it, but it's not very personal either. You do not learn about Agnetha except that she is still a good singer. The piece that sounds the most like Abba is her first single; although other songs are better, but that's what the record company decides. It was important for her to sound grown-up, "it would be silly if I tried to be something I am no longer".
But Pop is young, this contradiction remains, even in the duet with Take-act singer Gary Barlow, which the technicians have put together in the studio. She was on vacation, Agnetha says when Gary was in the studio, they have missed each other, and that they are performing together is not planned, just as it is not planned for Agnetha to even sing live. "I know that's all part of it, you can not just go to the studio and then think the rest will happen by itself, but I'll get in trouble if it gets too much, too many trips, gigs, I can not do that anymore. I lack the strength. "
Much has been circumscribed about the reasons for Agnetha's retreat; what the public at the end of the 80s saw as the legitimate timeout of a superstar was at some point considered cranky. Alcohol, depression, the media conjectured, called her the "Garbo," a faint diva who smugly nourishes her own legend with her descent. Agnetha remained silent on all of this, but disappeared, even as the Abba songs were revived in the '90s and Benny and Björn, her ex-husband, set off on hit musicals like "Mamma Mia". In one of the best films about Abba, the BBCD documentary "The Winner Takes It All", all four have their say once again, only Agnetha answers without picture of her lonely island.
Much has been said about the men in their lives too. She was in 1978 after the separation from Björn Ulvaeus with a hockey star, a designer, a detective, who should protect their children from abduction. In 1990 she married a doctor, the marriage lasted only three years. In 1997, her strange liaison began with a Dutchman who stalked her for years and even bought a house on her island. Agnetha finally got into a relationship with him, after two years she broke up, he ignored the separation. She had to show him, he was expelled from the country for two years, then he returned, got back. The newspapers reported that Agnetha had built an even better secured house even deeper in the forest. You can not ask questions afterwards, that's the condition for this interview. Is she currently living with someone? "Oh no," says Agnetha, raising her index finger, "that's a secret."
The new record is not meant to spoil their privacy, "I still want to live secluded, but in tune with this record, I try to do the work at my pace." Her pace, that is her life, which she calls "down to earth", "rooted". It's the daily walks with her two-year-old pug lady and the little Pinscher Bruno. She then goes to the stables, her daughter Linda breeds horses. She has no charity projects, no large circle of friends, she calls herself a loner, her grandchildren are at the center. Sometimes she sings with them, "I also try to teach them to play the piano, but they are still so small, they prefer the horses."
I still often dream about it, about us.
At the age of five, Agnetha sang to the public for the first time, at the Christmas party of a fishing club, her father, managing director of a department store, writing small reviews in his spare time, and she came up with him. At seven she learned to play the piano, at 14 she was so good that her piano teacher quit the job. At 15, she worked at the switchboard of a car company, at 16 she toured with a well-known band in Sweden, at 17 she recorded her first self-composed songs, at 18 she had her first number one hit. At 19, she fell in love with the musician Björn Ulvaeus, at a birthday party, the two Frida and Benny met, they made music together. 1974 then: "Waterloo".
The career overturned, nearly 400 million records sold. The end of the marriage with Björn; her shyness, she preferred to leave the concert halls by the back door; the growing suffering from tour stress, flying; the longing for a healing, quiet environment for their children, security. Is there a day today when she does not think about Abba? "There are a few," she says, "but I carry that in me, around me, always, and I still often dream about it, about ourselves.I often do not understand what I'm dreaming about and why, but it's still there. "She's proud of what they've achieved, she says," that we had so much influence on people, "and tells of one little girl, "she could not speak yet, but the first thing she said was, r 'ring, ring'."
But on the other hand: "I was part of this group - that was so great, I will never forget how we were in Australia, in England and other countries - it was huge and then you are suffering a bit, it takes you a lot of strength, too if you get a lot at the same time. "
It is a possible answer to the question of why: the feeling that it is not over because Abba never stops. Officially, the group has never split up, still appearing new best-of albums that sell millions of copies, run the songs on the radio, the Abba sound is considered uncopiable. If all this never ends, then one wants to counter something at some point, with his own voice. Show that there is someone else, with their own musical life.
She wanted to write at least one song for the new record, "I was not sure I could do it, but I knew I had it in. I took days, stopped, changed my mind, I got the song in one Writing a fantasy language, a bit French, but not correct When I played it to the producers, I said: Do not pay attention to the words, just the melody ". It's the last song on the album, titled "I Keep Them On The Floor Beside My Bed", it breaks out of the album's tune because it sounds a bit like folk, melancholic, after the songs Agnetha wrote earlier ,
"I carry Abba in me, I can not strip it off"
The melancholy belongs to her family. Her mother, a housewife, was very introverted, suffering from her father's later alcoholic addiction. Agnetha never talked about her parents' death in the early 90s, even Abba biographer Carl Magnus Palm did not tell her that her mother had killed herself. Nevertheless, it came out in 2000. She jumped from the sixth floor and her father died two years later. The sadness that Agnetha has always struggled with has much to do with it.
"There have been years when I did not feel so good," she says, "that was after my parents' death, so I felt very bad, I do not want to talk much about it, you have to go through it, it affects you "You miss her, you are so much a part of your life." After her death, I was very, very sad and wanted a quiet life and try to handle it. " Has she completed that? "It's like Abba, you carry it with you, it's not something you could strip off." She is happier now than she was 20 years ago, although "getting older is not very funny, but you have to accept it, I try to make the most of it, I take care of myself, I'm glad I'm well, that I'm well I'm grateful for a lot, my children, my grandchildren ".
There were years when I did not feel so good
Maybe when you're a superstar, you can never quite go back. This record is Agnetha's last chance to add her own to her official picture. They played Benny the songs when the vocal recordings were done, "he liked it a lot," she says. "Björn has not heard it yet, Frida either, but I know they know about it."
After Abba, Agnetha said, "I like being a little star, but I do not want to be a big star." It's still true, she says. "I am grateful that I can sing, that it means a lot to people." A simple sentence. No more. Just sing.
Meike Dinklage, 47, Agnetha did not mention that even as a teenager she was a big Abba fan: she had more than 100 Abba posters plus "Bravo" cuts on her room walls - but then Frida was her favorite singer.
