Summer 1984: Germany’s emotional music… Herbert Grönemeyer sings about “Bochum”
He had released four albums since 1979 with “the Intercord,” as he still called them – almost affectionately – many years later. The sales figures remained modest, the criticism was taken care of by the Neue Deutsche Welle. Songwriters didn’t flourish. After “Mixed Feelings”, his best record to date, the contract with Herbert Grönemeyer was terminated. EMI Electrola in Cologne helped the 28-year-old theater musician and actor get another chance.
The single “Männer” was released in the spring of 1984, and Grönemeyer went on a tour of German music programs and television shows, jumping on the keyboard in front of candy-colored backdrops in the regional program and shaking his head. “Men” was played on the radio in an endless loop, and suddenly everyone wanted an interview with Herbert. Then, in August, “4630 Bochum” was released, reached the top of the charts and stayed on the list for 78 weeks. Later, in the 90s, a new edition was also listed in the top places. Grönemeyer recorded the album in the EMI recording studio II in Maarweg in Cologne from January to March 1984. He was supported by his “boys” – Norbert Hamm (bass) and Alfred Kritzer (keyboards), Gaggy Mrotzek (guitar) and Jakob Hansonis (Guitar). Charly Mariano contributed a strange-sounding saxophone.
“There are also a few wrong notes in the solo in ‘Bochum’,” remembers Grönemeyer. Of course, that fits so well with the homage to the grey, dilapidated mining town with its heart in the right place. “Alcohol” and the ballad “Airplanes in the Belly” gave the album additional inspiration, and the critical homage to “America” that was typical of the time also found a grateful audience that was unsettled by the retrofitting plans. The panic of that time and diffuse fears of horrors like the census are captured in “Now or Never”: “They will photograph you/They will register you/You are ruining your whole life/Time is running away/We have to deal with it.”
Songs about jealousy, relationship squabbles and the new dawn of love have never been mumbled in German – with the exception of Lindenberg – as emotionally as Grönemeyer. “Mambo” even ends a humorous song “4630 Bochum”. It took until 2002 for this work to be surpassed by the German spirit – by Herbert Grönemeyer’s “Mensch”.