Finally a ME column with Freddy Quinn in it. Do you think that’s great? Then you are right here. The fibrillation column by Josef Winkler from the ME issue 06/2023.
Did you hear? Freddy Quinn is now married at 91. Exactly, THE Freddy Quinn, of whom you are now asking yourself “Who is Freddy Quinn?”, “Oh, he’s still alive?” or “When is there a new disc coming out?” No offense, Freddy Quinn, if you do read, please don’t misunderstand: we are all happy here that you are still alive, getting married and reading ME, I’m just fascinated by the age-spanning phenomena such as a 91-year-old pop star.
And such was or is Freddy Quinn, even if he is no longer as active as his colleague Willie Nelson, who is a year and a half his junior, who continues to tour, puts out a record every year and could certainly be much more productive if he weren’t always so busy would smoke weed, this silt!
One of the most popular Hamburgers alongside Udo Lindenberg, Uwe Seeler and the Royal TS
The question of when Freddy Quinn will release a new record in 2023 is just as justified as asking who the man is (you shouldn’t assume anything anymore, I recently heard about an experiment where young people were shown a VHS Cassette with the question what it could be, and the most common assumption was: a DVD?), only briefly: Freddy Quinn, a native of Austria and yet one of the most popular Hamburgers alongside Udo Lindenberg, Uwe Seeler and the Royal TS, was at his the most successful German-speaking singer for a long time in the 50s and 60s.
He was 4 when Elvis was born and 31 when the first Beatles album was released, on the first German edition of which – I have to digress for a moment because I only discovered it recently – the record company had printed the fabulous sentence: “The central one Dance performances by the world famous four from Liverpool.”
A cool name is important if it’s going to be a real central creation
Freddy Quinn was old enough to think of what we now identify as totally weirdly old-fashioned Gaga youth slang. Of course his name wasn’t Freddy Quinn from birth, but Franz Eugen Helmuth Manfred Nidl, but a cool name is important if it’s going to be a real central talent. Would Elvis Presley have had such success with an average name like John Smith, Paul Jones or Michael Jackson? Hm.
Speaking of. Michael Jackson was the first “megastar”. In times of inflation, everything is now considered “mega!”, which isn’t exactly official cheese, but in the late 80s the word was quite new as a pop term – until then it was mainly known in connection with the many megatons of nuclear power, of which one was/is so surrounded in Europe.
And then a new word was needed for Michael Jackson, who no longer fit into the hitherto highest category “superstar”. My father, not too involved in the pop discourse, at some point expressed his dismay that the radio and television always referred to this Jackson as a “n****star”. ahem. I’m proud of my dad, because in 1988 he found such a “wording” impossible. Even some pop magazines still used the N-word.
This column first appeared in the Musikexpress issue 06/2023.