Fristorp was born in Örebro in 1948 and studied music at a folk high school in Piteå and guitar at the Academy of Music in Gothenburg. He played and sang in several bands, including dance bands, before forming the group Malta with Claes af Geijerstam.
Criticized Text
The group competed in Melodifestivalen in 1973 and was declared the winner by an expert jury. The entry "Sommarn som aldrig säger nej", with lyrics by poet Lars Forssell, was criticized for the verse "your breasts are like swallows that nest". Malta came fifth in the European Championship in Luxembourg the same year. By then, they had had to change their name to Nova to avoid being confused with the country Malta.
After the European Championship, Göran Fristorp left the project.
With that, I also turned down a lot of money. Not that I thought about it then, but the thought can come up today. But I know I did the right thing, I wouldn't have been able to handle it, he said in an interview with Aftonbladet in 2023.
He participated in Melodifestivalen four more times – in 1974, both as a solo artist and together with Sylvia Vrethammar in the duet "En dröm är en dröm". The last time was in 1978, when he came third with "Längtan om livet med dig".
Interpreted Taube
His career continued, and Göran Fristorp released records at a steady pace during the 1980s and 1990s. Among other things, a psalm album in 1989 and an album with interpretations of Nils Ferlin and Evert Taube. In Norway, he was particularly popular, but he also toured in Germany and the Soviet Union, together with Vrethammar.
In 2018, the last album was released, where he interpreted poet Johannes Edfelt's poems.
In 2020, Fristorp was diagnosed with liver cancer and had been suffering from the disease for a longer period without knowing it. He had lived alternately in Thailand for several years, but after the diagnosis, he moved back to Sweden.
The people around me probably thought it was a harder message to receive than I did, I was quite calm. I got some kind of inner peace, he said in an interview on P4 Extra in 2022.
Göran Fristorp became 76 years old.
