Udo Lindenberg celebrates 70th birthday |Stern.de

A colleague told me thatUdo Lindenberg was caught with a small-caliber revolver in the hand luggage at Hamburg Airport a year and a half ago..Admittedly: I'm not a big Lindenberg fan as Benjamin from Stuckrad-Barre or thousands of other Germans.Udo was a universe that I never entered into.It just didn't happen.

I knew thatUdo Lindenberg lives in the Hotel Atlantic on the Alster, drives Porsche, paints pictures with egg liqueur and is sure that you can repair a heart.I listened to a few songs.It was not clear to me how beautiful they are: "The philistines get upset and talk about crazy novels, but we giggle one and know that the true crazy, they are!"

Udo Lindenberg was born in 1946, post -war Germany.I in 1986, Kohl-Germany.Many of my friends find Lindenberg great.On the "MTV Unplugged" plate, his most successful album so far, he sings with Jan Delay and Max Herre.Where does this hype come from?And what can I actually learn fromUdo?

Udo Lindenberg is on the way to the echo

We meet in a suite in the Grand-Hyatt-Hotel in Berlin because the next day he will appear with his new song at the Echo Music Prize, where I will accompany him.I should only please do it.Udo so it has just come back from Dubai, the city of the high towers and the thick cars.At the moment he just can't go on vacation in Mallorca because there were so many Germans there.But again he doesn't have to go to Dubai.It was a strange city and it would be too annoying, saysUdo, that the people there simply stayed out of the refugee crisis.No solidarity, no tired marks for the refugees.I'm only there for five minutes and can already sufferUdo well.

The founder of the Hamburg cult record shop "Hanseplatte" recently said in an interview thatUdo Lindenberg looks more and more like Karl Lagerfeld.That's correct.Udo is thin, he wears a black suit in which he smashed cigars on the armchair.Other people his age wear orthopedic shoes.Udo wears ankle -high Reebok Classics in black, plus neon green socks.That can seem very embarrassing when you are old, but it doesn't do that with him.In front ofUdo on the table there is an energy drink.Hut and glasses as well as parts of the panic family, which promise in the suite, complete TheUdo-Way-of-Life.

He says he lost because he did a lot of sport.In the past few years, from 95 kilos to 72, he no longer wanted to be rock'n'roll mops and murderer suffer.In May,Udo goes on tour with his new record "stronger than the time".And he turns 70.He will float through the full halls of this country with self -made aircraft as a singing alien.The first single release of his new record is called "through the difficult times", and you can already imagine how people are in the arms in the sparks of this country, spurate life and the text.It's a very good song.

Across generations

Lindenberg always stood not only for his music, but for an attitude.For years he has been singing the colorful, open world in which tolerance rules and human rights are in the top priority.No limits, make love, need was.Against Nazis, for disarmament.Certainly also a reason whyUdo is found to be good across generations.Udo, what is it like if you have been fighting for the good cause for decades and then you have to see how the attacks on refugee homes almost tripled last year, the AfD moves into parliaments and the refugee crisis makes people concerned?

Sure, the relapse into nation -state, racist conditions is worried about him.He thinks to soon rap the German Basic Law.So that everyone remembered that human dignity is inviolable.How I would like the idea with the Basic Law Rap, he asks.Sowing.

He takes off the sunglasses.It feels like suddenly you stood naked with him in a room.His eyes are so sad.While outside the sun dives in the concrete of Berlin in golden light,Udo tells a story that is perhaps one of the key moments of his life.The story takes place in Gronau.Udo grows up there with his three siblings.His parents are traumatized by the experiences of the war, but they persistently remain silent.Father Gustav works as an installer.He secretly dreams of being a conductor.Udo inherits the slope to the suffering, which will almost kill him later.If the father was full, he stood on the kitchen table, swung the wooden spoon with waving hair and conducted the children who were supposed to mime an orchestra.The father grinned bliss, then stumbled into bed.Lindenberg says: "Back then I swore to never become like this.I didn't just want to be the conductor of my own life! "

Two versions of a person and yet one and the same

Udo left Gronau and thus the confines of the small town, the church bells, the bourgeois life into which he was born into.Nobody had asked him, he would much rather have landed from heaven on a D double grain field, but that is such a typical Lindenberg thing, poetry and truth.

The others thought he was a spinner, but it didn't care.HonestlyUdo, didn't you always care?You must never listen to the philistines, he says, otherwise you will get sick.If you look at old pictures, you have to say: Lindenberg has developed the role of the man with a hat and suit over the years.Even if he pretends to have always been this man.But: Can't you become a person of your thoughts too?Poetry and truth.Two versions of a person and yet one and the same.I think that works.

Udo initially made a name for himself as a drummer, came to Hamburg via detours.In 1971 the first album appeared to sang.Rock’n’roll.In English.A flop.After that,Udo only sang German, which he could do better anyway: "Everything clearly on Andrea Doria", "What are wars for?", "Special train to Pankow", "we just want to be together (girl from East Berlin) ".In large parts of a success story.Although:Udo only came to his last albums in the charts.So maybe: the long way to a success story.A calming knowledge: Apparently you don't have to go through your life at 27 to become legend.

No boss. OnlyUdo

The olderUdo, the more interesting not only his music, but also his appearance has become.His cheekbones are more striking, the lower lip has dared a little further towards the outside world.He looks like a mixture of Kid Rock, Goofy, Lucky Luke and Marlon Brando in "The Godfather".

A "SPIEGEL" reporter once formulated about Angela Merkel that she was "a woman who can be described more over time when she lived than about the things she did".I thinkUdo Lindenberg can best be described about the people who surround him.Around a dozen people belongs to the closer circle of the panic family.Government form: base democracy.No boss.ONLY UDO, who sits like a guru over everyone.The most prominent member of the family is the pop literate Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre.On tour, the family grows up to 300 people.

She needs 35 trucks to advance.With the echo you need five cars to chauffeurUdo's escort to the red carpet.Recently he wears a long black coat that makes him look like the hiker over the fog sea.While he gives television team interviews, the former "Germany’s Next Top Model" winner and current YouTube stars are sticking next to him.Udo acts like a painting in the middle of Snapchat videos.And even if his panic companions only stay in the background, he needs them.Most, he says, had ran to him.When I ask him how he knew that they were good, he knocks on his heart.He is the best man of his lawyer who has been putting on the contracts for years.If you ask the people around him how long they have known him, you hear: 40, 30, 20, 10 years.

You live what you love

At the echo I get to know the panic family better.Udo, it seems, really only gathered people around them who have the heart in the right place.Interesting guys who all unite one: they live what they love.Udo. Da ist zum Beispiel Schwessi, seine Social-Media-Managerin, die schon immerUdo-Fan war.Or Frank, also Ober-Nudo fan and formerly bank clerks, who now makes a little technology for Lindenberg, manages the archive and its real estate. Tine Acke, Fotografin und Freundin vonUdo.The Tsarin, his hair make-up woman.Or Arno, whom no one can say exactly what he is responsible for, but about whom everyone agrees: Arno is important.

Musiktipp der WocheUdo Lindenberg mit "Durch die schweren Zeiten"

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Wenn man in einem Hotel lebt, ist man dann eigentlich immer auf der Reise? Oh, hmmm, jajaha, machtUdo.That's exactly how it is, and it shouldn't be changed.It is not for nothing that his hat model "Open Road" is called.He was just a stray, Commissioner Spörnase.He must go to L.A., sniff in and then back into the old pubs on st st..Pauli. Sein einziges, wenn man so will, "Büro" hatteUdo im Salambo, einem legendären Live-Sex-Theater auf der Großen Freiheit.There was his fax machine in the basement.Nowadays he uses this from the Hotel Atlantic.He says he once lived in a house because he wanted to fulfill what his parents wanted, but it was simply not for him.Udo hat einen Sohn, der woanders lebt und nicht mit dem Stigma aufwachsen soll, ein "Sohn von" zu sein.

Je länger ich mit ihm rede, ihn beobachte, desto mehr verstehe ich, warum MenschenUdo genial finden.He is the last unicorn, the real version of Pippi Longstocking.He lives in a self-made Villa-Kunterbunt sphere, but he can also walk out and hang out a bit in the common world.No problem, but if it gets too boring for him, Widdewiddewitt, everything easy, he turns a round in space suit through space.And at night he paints the stars with egg liqueur.He dedicates his new album to friendship and life, and you can probably only do that really convincingly if you almost died of the more than four per thousand with which he was admitted to the hospital at the time.He would generally advise everyone: not so much to drink.It is not better to do it, "you just crap and behave shit".In any case, he doesn't want to be a modern Werther, no, no.Recently, he randomly met the Sensenmann.He showed him the middle finger.

He no longer drinks, he drinks

Certainly not everything is as easy in his life as he specifies.And certainly he was often as sad as his eyes look.Because if you had to drink two bottles of whiskey a day to endure yourself, you can't have been happy, it was on the ass.And that shows the eyes.

Lindenberg hasn't been drinking for a long time, he drinks.He practiced serenity and gathered a group of good people to whom he keeps loyalty. Er hat echte Freunde, und falls er doch mal ängstlich oder unsicher ist, was er mit Sicherheit mal ist, denn sonst trägt niemand so oft Hut und Sonnenbrille, dann jedenfalls findetUdo in der Panikfamilie Halt.

Neues Album des Altrockers Alle liebenUdo Lindenberg – aber warum eigentlich?

Lindenberg has experienced eight Chancellor and has already become the legend during his lifetime that he always wanted to be.He is a dreamer and drummer who moved into the world and has proven that you can live as you think it is good and right.He is the only person I look like when he says things like "let's rock" or "that drives".You can learn from him that you do not have to live the model "Mother, Father, Child, House with a fitted kitchen" if you are not made for it.And that dreams are worthwhile.Still, more and more.You can certainly lie on thick hotel room carpets, listen to music and invent worlds in which the spinners rule, where you can fly without aircraft and where there is peace. Obwohl, warte mal -Udo, was ist denn jetzt eigentlich mit dem Kleinkaliber in deiner Tasche am Flughafen gewesen? Wolltest du jemanden umlegen?

He smiles.Of course not.Guitars instead of creak.Belonged to his bodyguard, the pistol.Short break.One suspects what will come now.No panic.Hopefully he will be a hundred years old.