It is in the middle of winter, in deep snow/ it’s late night in the casino on the lake/ and the last player at table one in the large hall/ puts the last giant and does not know what number … “Jörg Fauser has” the player has “Written, but this unforgettable guitar reef, the percussion, the death beat comes from Achim Reichel. For the album “Blues in Blond”, the poet, who would have loved to be a rocker, wrote the lyrics. In 1986 he accompanied a tour through China, the terrible ending is known.
Achim Reichel had already had two careers at the time: the blonde Hamburger Jung played at the beginning of the sixties with the Rattles on the Reeperbahn, hung around with John Lennon and Paul McCartney and exchanged Licks. The German band later went on tour of England. The Bundeswehr ended the brilliant career; Reichel no longer took part in later comebacks.
“Because if you have nothing more, you are free”
In 1971 he was a pioneer of electronics and ambient music with the “Green Travel” as Ar & the Machines- only 25 years later the album was rediscovered. From 1976 he transformed Shantys into rock music until he wrote his best songs at the beginning of the eighties. In 1991 he still managed a sailor -song -like hit with “Aloha Heja He”, and Achim never suggested that he had lived on the large port staircase. That was his stories. His 40th anniversary of the stage and the 60th birthday were celebrated in Hamburg.
For the NDR, Reichel traveled in a television series through northern Germany, which the guitar case always with us, wrote music to German poetry and devoted himself to the folklore. Most recently, he played his songs Solo on stage and told the Döntjes from the past in his dry Hamburgisch. And he still sang this song: “Player, player, come over/ because if you have nothing more, you are free.”