| I was born on the 13th of april on a rainy day's night in castrop-rauxel, which is a coal-miner city in an industrial region like pittsburgh. life was hard for everybody, but hearts were of gold. my grandfather and my father used to work as coal-miners and I grew up in a common people world. hard working people are not that interested in arts and music, rather football and beer. my only escape from this world was playing my guitar and listening to music, which took me out of reality. I started playing guitar at the age of 13. I had some lessons in classical guitar, but Bach broke my fingers. I stopped after 4 years, because my interest was getting into the field of free music - improvised and expressive like jazz and blues. Playing an electric guitar is also every teenage-boy's dream. I started collecting a lot of old blues-records and tried to learn from the old masters. Rock'n'roll was getting into my life. the stones were electrifying, but more and more I tried to find my own way of playing guitar and discovering music, that came out of me. |
