1975…
The year after ABBA won. The first contest hosted in Sweden. And the DRAMA that ensued.
The voting/points system, which was in place until 2015 was introduced: So the 1-12 scoring that a lot of us are still familiar with started right here in Sweden. (Though at the time the points were revealed by running order rather than ascending from 1 to 12.) With such a new system it is not surprising that the hostess Kari Falck was a bit confused.
From a German point of view, the drama of the contest started aleady at the national selection. Appareantly a fan of Jürgen Marcus (who only came in 9th in the national selection) made death threats to Joy Fleming, resulting in her having a bodyguard with her in Sweden.
But Fleming was not the only one in need of a hightened security. Rumor had it that the Red Army Faction had planned an attack on the delegation from Israel.
Security probably had also be increased for general Eurovision protests within Sweden. A huge part of the Swedes were not happy with the funding used for this commericalized event “lacking moral integrity”. For this purpose an alternative festival was organised at the some in another part of Stockholm. As a result, SR did not even broadcast the Eurovision the following year.
The most political drama was caused by the then ongoing “Cyprus dispute”: After Turkey announced there debut in 1975, Greece decided not to paticipate due to said conflict. In the end, Turkey ended up in last place with only 3 points – maybe it was not the best debut to ESC.
But talking about politics, Portugal having had the Carnation Revolutuion a year prior had multiple heavily political songs in their national selection and some songs were censored. However, the song they sent (Madrugada) was a celebration of that revolution; the artist apparently tempted to perform with his gun and uniform – glad that did not happen.
Ending on a positive note: Winning the event in 1975 was the Netherlands with “Ding-A-Dong” - the last Dutch win until 2019.