Reinhard Mey only needs two things to captivate thousands of people: his voice and his guitar. Behind him lies a 60-year career that is second to none and in which he became a kind of singer-songwriter for the nation. Now he is celebrating his 80th birthday.
There are probably not that many people who know of a runway other than the “zero three”. Reinhard Mey has set a musical monument to the runway – whose associated airfield remains unclear. In his much-covered song “Über den Wolken” the wind always blows from the north/east. And, yes, there seems to be a coffee drinker working in the air traffic control barracks. This Wednesday, the passionate hobby pilot and singer-songwriter Reinhard Mey will be 80 years old.
Age does not automatically mean retirement for Mey either. He has just played concerts that were postponed due to the corona – alone and with guitar in front of up to 7000 fans. With “Above the Clouds” the whole hall sings along. He calls it “tour of my life” on his homepage.
Born in Berlin, he has largely remained loyal to the city. Here, after piano and trumpet, he finally learns the guitar. The instrument will accompany him through his life. He plays early with the Rotten Radish Skiffle Guys and in the trio Les Trois Affamés (The Three Hungry Guys).
The parents are friends with a French couple. So that something like war between the two countries doesn’t happen again, they send Reinhard to the French high school in Berlin. After graduating from high school in Germany and baccalauréat in France, Mey trained as an industrial clerk, but dropped out of the business studies he had started to calm his parents. He wants to devote himself entirely to music.
The career begins as a “bard with the guitar” (“I wanted to sing like Orpheus”) in France in the 1960s as Frédérik Mey. He sets ballads by François Villon and poems by the poet Georg von der Vring to music. In Germany he dings through pubs, plays concerts with Hannes Wader – the meager own program of the young bards is not enough for complete concert evenings.
Success sets in at the beginning of the 1970s, and Mey becomes a loner among German singer-songwriters. Albums go gold, he plays long tours. Song titles such as “The murderer is always the gardener” have found their place over the years as proverbs in common parlance. Mey tells curiosities like “I’m a plumber by trade” or “Arriving on Friday the 13th”, pretends to be hopelessly in love with “Annabelle, oh Annabelle”, he becomes sarcastic in “The Hot Battle at the Cold Buffet” or even angry as in ” diplomatic hunt”.
He wrote the sensitive chanson “Gute Nacht,Freunde” for the duo Inga and Wolf, and he also sings the piece himself. His collection includes more than 500 songs. The long career has so far included 28 studio albums. The songs on the most recent recording “Das Haus an der Ampel” take a melancholic look back at my parents’ house.
Reinhard Mey founds his own family with his second wife Hella. Life with the children Frederik, Maximilian and Victoria-Luise also makes the song repertoire more private. Maximilian died in 2014 after five years in a coma. Frederik becomes a pilot. Victoria-Luise sometimes accompanies her father as a singer or photographer.
“All the mistakes I made had to be made,” he reveals to his daughter in an interview on his website. “Doubts are always with me, I believe they are an indispensable tool that helps to keep a critical distance from oneself.” He also checks his lines for the songs from a distance “like a painter who steps back from his picture to see it more clearly”.
