Ted Gärdestad

ABOUT TED GäRDESTAD

Remembered for such 1970s and 1980s albums as Undrigar, Blue Virgin Isles, and Caramba, this vocalist, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist left behind his music career in his mid-twenties, but was posthumously recognized as one of the most accomplished Swedish musicians of his generation.

At the age of fifteen, he signed a contract with the Polar Music production company in his native Sweden. His debut single, "All Over the World," was released in the early 1970s.

An occasional actor as well as a musician, he appeared at age ten in a Swedish television production titled A Small Town at the Turn of the Century and went on to act in the American film Story of a Woman.

He and his brothers Kjell and Kenneth were raised in Stockholm County, Sweden. Suffering from a combination of anxiety, depression, and potentially paranoid schizophrenia, he committed suicide in his early forties.

His Swedish musical contemporary and collaborator, Agnetha Faltskog , attended his 1997 funeral.