Author: Sue Young

Celebrating The Life Of…Falco

Falco casual

If anyone remembers Falco, it will usually be for the wrong reasons, either for being known as a one hit wonder, or for dying relatively young and tragically.

Some people must have found the one hit wonder, ‘Rock Me Amadeus‘ annoying, as it made its way into a Top Ten Readers Poll of The Worst Songs Of The 80’s but it also got into VH1’s Top One Hundred Songs Of All Time, so, in complete contrast, others loved it and still do. Me included. I found it annoying at times, only for the fact that it stayed at number one for ages in the pop charts and I’ve never been one for the pop charts, or for songs staying at number one for too long. Both the pop charts and stubborn No.1’s are incredibly annoying. I found it even more irritating as a teenager, just like nails down a blackboard. Thankfully, now that I’m old, I don’t have to partake in any way, even passively.

‘Rock Me Amadeus’ was a number one hit in 1985 both the U.K and the United States and later in Canada in 86. It was originally recorded in German. He was the only artist, whose main language is German, to have a vocal number one in America. He is the biggest selling Austrian musician of all time, selling more than 20 million albums and 40 million singles.

‘Rock Me Amadeus’ was just a tiny slice of Falco’s life. And, he wasn’t even Falco really. His name was Johann Holzel and he was born in Vienna and rather pampered as a child. This was not surprising, as when his mother was pregnant with triplets, he was the only one that survived. He was given a baby grand for his fourth birthday and was something of a musical prodigy, auditioning for the Vienna Music Academy at the tender age of five and attending the Vienna Conservatoire at sixteen. He dropped out of that university through sheer frustration. Perhaps he felt he’d already outgrown them musically.

After a short stint in the Austrian army, he played bass in nightclubs where he was spotted and signed as Falco, the solo artist. His first release was Ganz Wein, then Der Kommissar, a catchy, quite disco-y, new wave but not corny tune. It did well in Europe and German speaking countries but hardly left a mark in the U.S and the U.K at the time. It looked like Falco was destined to spend his music career on the sidelines, until a group called ‘After The Fire’ covered it and American singer Laura Brannigan put out a tweaked version for her second album. These both ended up bringing a renewed interest in Falco’s original ditty and kick started his career all over again.

Falco formal wear

Some of his most prominent single releases include,  The Sound Of Musik, Jeanny and Out Of The Dark. Ten studio albums were released, two, posthumously.

My personal favourite is Push!Push! released not long before he died. It’s such a powerful, passionate and chaotic sounding track and great to dance to. Although, his music was very varied and he released many strong ballads, it hints at where he might have been going musically, before he left us.

There are accounts of his life in those last years, where he could hardly stand up during rehearsals, couldn’t even speak coherently, preferring instead the blissful blur that self medicating can often bring. He died in a traffic accident at age 40, his car colliding head on with a bus, in February 1998. Alcohol and cocaine were in his system at the time of the crash.

So what led him down that path? What leads anyone down there? I’ve been down there myself on some level, maybe still am. I’m always interested in that kind of thing. I’m saddened but interested or interested but saddened and I like to chew over the possible whys and wherefores of a situation. It probably won’t make it better but to understand and rationalise, even on a basic level , usually brings some sense of closure in my book.

He was reputed to be unlucky in love. This would seem to pan out, in the long run, as he discovered, through a paternity test, that his seven year old daughter wasn’t his daughter after all. The relationship with her became strained after that and he allegedly cut her out of his will. She even wrote a book about it called Falco War Mein Vater. (Falco Was My Father)

This may have been a breaking point, driving him deeper into the false sense of security that drink and drugs can bring.

He may have also had survivors guilt, being the only survivor out of triplets. It has been suggested that his earlier depressions were through wondering about the siblings he survived and that age old question, ‘Why Me?’

So, the perfectionism, the touch of genius and I don’t like to use that word lightly but I think there was a touch there. The discovery that his seven year old daughter wasn’t his and the whole survivors guilt issue. It was all a cocktail of issues, that took him to that other cocktail, of alcohol and cocaine. In his lyrical tribute to Mozart he writes,

‘He was a punk

And he lived in a huge city

It was Vienna, was Vienna

Where he did everything

He has debts because he drank

But all women loved him

He was a superstar

He was popular

He was so exalted

Because he had that certain appearance

He was a virtuoso

Was a rock idol

And everyone called:

Come on and rock me Amadeus’

from ‘Rock Me Amadeus’ by Falco & Rob & Ferdi Bollard

Falco Mozart

Perfectionism always brings its own particular problems. His fear of failure and of not livng up to his own expectations, as a former child progidy, would have been stressful enough, but he also knew he was extremely musically talented, just like that other troubled Austrian musician before him.

 

Quote Of The Week

‘Reading makes me feel I’ve accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievable way my attention deficiency disorder medicates itself.’

I Feel Bad About My Neck– Nora Ephron

Quote Of The Week

‘The entire planet has become a whispering gallery, with a large portion of mankind engaged in making its living by keeping the rest of mankind under surveillance.’

–Marshall McLuhan from Strange Days Indeed by Francis Wheen.

A look back at international politics in the 1970’s.

PENPALS OF THE WORLD UNITE!

Does anyone remember pen pals? If you’re over forty you may. Pen pals (for those of you under the age of 40) are people who would write to each other, with actual pens, biro or fountain. We had to buy proper bonded writng paper from proper shops in those days because there were no pound shops. We would put a stamp on the envelope, in the top right hand corner, and then we would post it, into a red pillar box, and perhaps, wait two, maybe three weeks for an answer. We didn’t have computers then. I know, unthinkable, but we were in the ancient times.

Pen pals saved me from certain destruction. They helped me to deal with teenage angst. There was nothing quite like waiting for that fat juicy envelope to land on the mat on a Saturday morning. It always seemed to be a Saturday morning when it landed. Thank you God. I think my pen pals probably stopped me from committing suicide or from going crazy. Either way, I think psychologists have a lot to learn from them, not from fat envelopes landing on the mat…but from pen pals.

Between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, I had an amazing pen pal, who I will call Alice, because her name begins with the same letter, and sounds very similar. She was nineteen when I was fourteen, and taught me much. We were both heavily into Barry Manilow. I still think he’s the most underrated singer/songwriter of all time. That will never change for me. People can only ever offer up the titles Copacabana, Mandy,  Could It Magic and Bermuda Triangle, and if they really think they know it all, they add, I Made It Through The Rain, but Barry has written and recorded hundreds of songs. It’s so surprising to me, when people can only ever think of three or four songs when referring to him.

Alice would write regularly and sometimes the content of the letters would border on the erotic. She was as innocent as I. We fantasized, as frustrated teenagers do. We let off steam in our letters. In the end, it probably had nothing to do with Barry. He was just the conduit. She would cover entire outer envelopes, and leave no white bits, with scribblings, like ‘I Wanna Do It With You Barry.’ and other double entendre which related to his song titles. Interestingly enough, now I think of it, he did have a lot of song titles that could be interpreted as double entrendre. To exacerbate the issue, she would write provocative messages to the postman, on the outside of the envelope, like, ‘Whip It Out Postie!’ and other salubrious invitations, which titillated both my fourteen year old self and particularly my forty year old mother, who was also a Barry fan.

But oh, the joy, the joy of her letters. She kept me going when all else failed. She was the buoy in my turbulent sea. It was all innocent fun, in our time of innocence.

I copied her antics and wrote ‘Whip It Out Postie!’ on my envelopes too. She was a bad influence. Of course, it got out among the postmen. ‘Oh, these sad, sexually frustrated teenagers, in love with Barry Manilow, what are we going to do?’ Well, thankfully, they didn’t do anything, except blush.

But, well, the crux of the matter is…pen pals, a dying art? A died art, a dead art? Are pen pals dead?

I had several pen pals after that, over the years, but what I realised was, male pen pals brought their own troubles. Many of them wanted a relationship, they weren’t writing for writing sake, for pen pal sake. Lines were blurred, communications obscured. It was less complicated writing to female pen pals and more fun. I think modern social media has cleared that up. Things are more cut and dried now. There’s no elusiveness, no ambiguity, no doubt as to people’s motivations and there’s certainly no time. You might be waiting for a letter for weeks back in the day. Nowadays, on social media, if people don’t get back to you in twenty four hours, you write them off. They’re history.

There’s no time to think any more, no time to chew the cud. It’s now or never.

I will say though, I have experienced a different ambience on line.  It’s not so much about male and female any more. It’s just about people getting on. I’m probably being naive here, but I’m finding there is less predatory action in some environs, obviously more, in others. It’s all about environment. I have been pleasantly surprised at how males and females can get on in modern social media without gender coming into it. Oh, I think I mean sex.

Still, I think old school Pen pals would make a refreshing change. I might just look up these guys.

Old Fashioned Pen Pal 

Quote Of The Week

‘Sometimes I think that my brain cannot hold together, it is filled with too much horror- too great a despair.’

The Doll – Daphne Du Maurier

Daphne Du Maurier’s short stories in this above collection are very memorable. She is so much more than Rebecca and The Birds, even though they are awesome tales in their own right. The Birds scared the crap out of me and gave me nightmares for years when I was a child! I would like to thank Cabrogal for introducing me to the amazing works of Daphne Du Maurier.

The James Dean Of Punk – Kirk Brandon

Tonight, I went to see Kirk Brandon in concert with Sam Sansbury (cello) AKoustik Live 2017 at Thornton Little Theatre. Kirk Brandon was lead singer and songwriter with eighties band Spear Of Destiny and Theatre Of Hate and, later, toured with the super group, Dead Men Walking, a group always in transit, always evolving, and has in the past included Glen Matlock from the Sex Pistols and Mike Peters from The Alarm, among others.

I got it in my head the other day, that Kirk Brandon is the James Dean of Punk. That’s just my opinion. I can’t call him the Godfather of Punk because that’s Iggy Pop and I can’t call him the Father of punk, because apparently that’s John Lydon. Some people say Malcom McClaren is the Father of punk, but if they do, they are seriously deluded. Actually, I have no idea who the Father of punk is.

I approached Kirk Brandon after the concert and presented him with the first page of a new blank book, announcing him as the James Dean of Punk and he laughed hard and said “Really?” and I said ‘Seriously.’ He signed his signature under the declaration and then I left without saying goodbye or thank you, or in fact, without saying anything, or even looking at him, which I regret, simply because it was rude.  In comparison, he was very sweet and friendly and open. I find it difficult to talk to strangers, but I can exchange papers with them. Those environments when the singer or band hangs backstage with the fans are stressful, false, uncomfortable and unnatural. I suppose it’s just the nature of the beast.

Kirk Brandon is always up for signing autographs, is not precious in the least and doesn’t mind if people take hundreds of photo’s/videos during the gigs. He is also a very talented singer/songwriter into the bargain and is now, literally in my book, the James Dean Of Punk Rock.

kirk brandon james dean