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The last time I counted the recordings in my collection was when I was also counting the days until the summer holidays. Since then, my priority has been the many stories that music tells me. However, it is not uncommon for people to… Villa Hansa records visit and, in a casual aside, find out how many LPs they have in their archive. That’s usually significantly more than I have in my vinyl shop – at least that’s my guess, because I don’t count.
A few weeks ago a gentleman stood in my shop who announced a particularly impressive number: he has 50,000 autographs! I thought I had misheard, too much loud music growing up. But he repeated the gigantic number: 50,000! Are there even that many stars? On the other hand: Aren’t we all stars in some way? Sly & The Family Stone already knew the answer in 1969: “Everybody is a star who can rain and chase the dust away.” Numerous cover versions, from The Jackson 5 to Madonna, underline the correctness of this statement.
Tricks to get autographs
Even as a teenager, autograph hunter Felix, who comes from a village near Weiden in the Upper Palatinate, had his tricks for getting coveted signatures: When Michael Jackson was staying at the Bayerischer Hof in Munich at the end of the 1990s and of course everything was cordoned off, Felix headed for the back entrance for the staff. He grabbed a crate of drinks that was lying around to look like a busy intern, because anyone who works isn’t suspected.
He actually got into the hotel building and waited in the toilet until MJ and his entourage showed up in the lobby. “I just went to him, even though his bodyguards tried to prevent it, held him a vinyl single, he signed it and said: ‘Thank you, my boy!’ Then he got into the elevator and was gone again.”
Felix has met 1,000 celebrities in almost 30 years and is currently working on a book about all the special encounters. And then I find out that he is also extremely rich: “In addition to autographs, I also collect fossils and minerals,” he says, “I have around 100,000 of them. I even have my own quarry!” Felix’s quarry is located in the Altmühltal and is rare because the limestone there is about a million years older than the normal one, which is only 150 million years old. “There are all the precursors of the fish that were later found in the famous deposits.”
At least now I knew: This is a story for my Plattenkalk column in “Rollenden Stein”! In the Swedish province of Dalarna, a former quarry was transformed into the Dalhalla open-air stage due to its phenomenal acoustics. Massive Attack, José González, Morrissey, ZZ Top and Alice Cooper will perform there this summer.
A milestone in Felix’s autograph hunter biography was the purchase of his so-called security equipment: you can get through (almost) anywhere in this country with a security jacket and a button in your ear. When the crowd at an autograph session was too crowded towards the signing table, Fake Security Felix quickly ensured order and was the only person to receive a photo with the famous actor as a thank you.
Sabrina and Ingo are standing at the checkout with a Kettcar LP, but are in no hurry to pay because they would rather continue listening to Felix’s anecdotes. Moments like that in the record store are priceless.