Falco - Vienna calling

"There is a night before each day"
(Falco)

Austria, land of music. If by chance you're born around these parts and from the cradle start showing a clear gift for the seven notes, and by age four you can already play the piano, and on top of that you're diagnosed with perfect pitch, and as if that weren't enough you even end up attending the Conservatory… Well, if you check all these boxes, then there's a good chance that one day you might carve out a small place for yourself among the noble élite of classical composers, perhaps alongside fellow countrymen Mozart, Haydn, Schubert and Strauss. Or, alternatively, if you happen to be born in the wrong century, you could try putting all these gifts to work in pop music instead — a less aristocratic pastime, but certainly a more lucrative one — and maybe end up selling some seventy million records, settling for a little spot in history anyway, as the most successful Austrian musician of the modern era.

Miracle in Vienna

Margareten is the fifth of the twenty-three districts into which Vienna is divided, located just southwest of the historic center. It's a rather noisy and busy residential area, bordering the Gürtel, the city's main red-light thoroughfare, which is why, over the years, the neighborhood has gradually deteriorated, with the settlement of a sizeable immigrant community, mostly Turks and Slavs. This is where Johann "Hans" Hölzel — known to everyone as Falco, but evidently not to his mother, who would always call him "Hansi" from the day of his complicated arrival in the world — spent his childhood, the sole survivor of a high-risk triplet pregnancy. Mrs. Maria Hölzel, three months pregnant, was admitted to Gersthof Hospital for a sudden hemorrhage and lost two of her babies, but tests carried out the following day surprisingly revealed a third pregnancy still underway, though doctors were rather skeptical about its chances of a successful outcome. The news caught the woman completely off guard, and despite the doctors' objections she decided to go through with the difficult labor anyway. And she would be proven right, because on February 19, 1957, at exactly 1:15 pm, a strong, perfectly healthy baby boy was born, weighing 4.95 kilos and measuring 54 centimeters, who made himself known from the very first moments of life. His cries and constant whimpering caught the attention of the midwife on duty, who then handed him over to his mother's care, announcing, half-jokingly but prophetically: "Here he is! We've got ourselves a little singer!"

Prologue

"er war ein Virtuose, war ein Rockidol"

Falco, to tell the truth, would turn out to be not just "a singer," as prophesied in the delivery room on the day he was born, but something more. An icon of his time, a mask, a man who knew no rules. He was often mistaken for one of the many disposable acts of the Eighties, especially since his golden era arrived in a time when jukebox hits and number-one singles seemed to be the order of the day and within anyone's reach. His climb to the top, however, carries even more weight when you consider that it started out from a country, Austria, that was musically on the margins, at least as far as this kind of stage was concerned. He had creative talent and rare gifts as a writer, even if his albums didn't always live up to the quality of his abilities. He came up with an oddball formula that would nonetheless hit the mark again and again, an original blend of rap, dance and pop free of any label — some, not without reason, came close to calling Falco "the first white rapper." His lyrics are sarcastic, biting, provocative, often brought to the stage through fun videos and eye-catching stunts. His cocky, brazen, arrogant manner, and an attitude that was always over the top, made him a thoroughly sui generis figure and one of the true stars of his era.

But genius and excess, as we know, go hand in hand, and the inspired, imaginative musician was counterbalanced by a man with no sense of restraint whatsoever, a follower of a reckless, self-destructive creed and a lifestyle dangerously beyond the limits. A moment after reaching the top, Falco suffered an artistic and personal collapse just as sudden. "'Rock Me Amadeus' was the worst thing that could have happened to me," he would say some time later. "I had so much money I didn't know how to spend it." From there came a swift descent into a hell where alcohol, drugs and pills became the daily rule, never the exception. A mocking fate, always lurking, betrayed him just as he had decided enough was enough, in one last, futile attempt to change his life away from the spotlight. He left us young, leaving behind more than one regret for what might have been. But in the end it's only right that things went this way, and Falco would surely have been pleased by it — otherwise, today, we might be here telling the story of a mere "singer."

Childhood, music and…

His father Alois had lost both of his parents practically right away, and so, left without much chance of an education, had gone to work hard, still very young, in a machine factory until he became its foreman; his mother, meanwhile, ran a laundry and, to supplement the family income, took over a small grocery shop in 1959 as well. Little Hansi grew up in a middle-class setting, raised and educated mainly by his mother, his maternal grandmother and a neighbor affectionately known as "Schlintzi," with whom he would maintain a lasting and very close relationship, not least because he refused to go to nursery school, so he spent a great deal of time at home, lovingly looked after by the three women, who would remain the main point of reference in his life.
That he had an innate talent for music was clear from the cradle: at just two years old he could already keep time with his little hands to songs playing on the radio, and a few months later he started whistling and singing. For his fourth birthday he wanted an accordion, but a music teacher advised his parents to get him a piano instead, so he could take lessons and then, eventually, move on to the accordion later. So they gave him a small grand piano; Hansi still couldn't read music and couldn't even reach the stool, but in no time at all he was already able to play some thirty popular tunes with both hands. Whenever he heard something he liked, he would sit down and play it back by ear; he seemed to be especially fond of Beethoven, and so he was taken to auditions for "Musik kennt keine Grenzen" ("Music Knows No Borders"), a TV program in which children of every nationality competed against each other through music. The auditions were held at the city's Music Academy, the prestigious Wiener Musikakademie. There, an elderly, experienced professor turned enthusiastically to Hansi's mother and said: "Mrs. Hölzel, this is a little Mozart! In my long career I've never come across anyone with perfect pitch before!" Perfect pitch is the ability to identify any note flawlessly after hearing it just once, without using any reference sound such as a tuning fork. It's a rather rare auditory phenomenon, a privilege enjoyed on average by only one person in fifty thousand; among the select few are, among classical composers, Mozart himself, Beethoven, Bach and Paganini, while nowadays it's shared by Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Keith Jarrett, Ray Charles and Frank Sinatra, as well as Prince and Donna Summer. And Falco too, of course, who delighted in showing off his superior gifts everywhere and on the most varied occasions, like the time during Christmas 1963 when the school held a party for the children and each one in turn performed with a musical instrument. His rendition of "The Blue Danube" drew thunderous applause and left the audience so amazed that he was asked for an encore, so he played that same "Wiener Blut" (or "Viennese Blood," also by Strauss Jr.) which, many years later, would be reinterpreted in a completely different key on one of his albums.
Word spread of a child prodigy; a former schoolmate recalls: "When you asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he'd answer 'a popstar!' He was really something, he didn't say 'a musician' but exactly 'a popstar!'" In the days that followed, Mrs. Maria's shop was besieged, with everyone asking to hear Hansi play, but the constant pestering only grew into a certain annoyance and resentment in the boy, which from then on would turn into a kind of veiled rejection of the piano.

… no more school

He began devoting himself to more serious listening; after all, Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Cliff Richard were in constant rotation on the brand-new record player his parents bought him for his fifth birthday. In 1967 he enrolled at the Reiner-Gymnasium in Vienna, where his dislike of math and the sciences was offset by excellent results in German and languages in general, which would come in handy later on when he started writing songs. The following year, in 1968, his life suffered its first jolt: his father Alois asked his wife for a divorce and left the family, since he was expecting a child with another woman. Hansi would give the impression of not being too bothered by his parents' separation, when in fact he missed his father dearly, and would constantly be searching for a father figure, used as he was, from early childhood, to being surrounded only by women. An even harder blow, if possible, came in 1971, with the death of his beloved grandmother, to whom he had been deeply attached: it would take him a long time to fully recover, and on top of that, right around those days, the crushing competition from supermarkets was closing in, forcing his mother to shut down the small family shop and take a job as a travel agent at Columbia, work that would keep her away from home practically from Monday morning to Friday evening.

In short, in no time at all Hansi found himself completely alone, left to fend for himself. His discipline suffered as a result, and so did his schoolwork; the only one still keeping an eye on him was Schlinzi, so, to keep up appearances, every morning he would leave right on time with his school bag in hand, only to hide it carefully behind the garbage bins and then usually head off to the Prater or to play football, while other times he'd go instead to some record shop or musical instrument store, where, with the 1,200 schillings his father had left him, he bought a guitar — his new passion of the moment, which replaced the piano. In fifth grade he racked up four hundred hours of unexcused absences; school was nothing but a pointless torture to him, as he would later make clear in "Nie Mehr Schule" ("No More School," featured on his 1982 debut album Einzelhaft), where he spells out in exemplary fashion his view on the usefulness of memorizing poems and mathematical formulas, which in his opinion made no sense at all. His mother then gave him a stark choice: repeat the year or go to work. He didn't think twice, and started an apprenticeship at the Austrian Institute of Pension Insurance, a company with which his mother had already made some contacts that could pave the way for a more than promising career. Hans, however, saw things differently, and after a short while he left the job to spend eight months volunteering in military service.

It's 1974, and on the international scene the importance of electric guitar and bass is gradually growing; bands like Queen, Deep Purple or artists like Frank Zappa completely revolutionize the way Hans thinks about music, and he now becomes firmly convinced of the need to sell his old guitar and replace it with what would from then on, and forever, be "his" instrument: the bass.

Beginnings, Berlin and back. Enter Falco

In order to refine his technique, in 1977 he enrolled at the Wiener Jazz-Konservatorium, but he attended without much enthusiasm, mostly to please his mother and pick up the bare minimum of theory he needed. After six months he dropped out of the Conservatory too, feeling he had no further need of it and was already ready for the big leap into becoming a professional musician. He started out playing bass in his first band, Umspannwerk (or "Substation"), with whom he rehearsed in the basement of a friend's old house just outside Vienna. In the late Seventies the European musical landscape shifted abruptly, and Hans found himself first drawn to punk, then to the German scene, especially Kraftwerk and Can. But it was Bowie's Berlin trilogy — "Low", "Heroes" and "Lodger" — that truly struck him like lightning, so much so that he moved to West Berlin for a while, "following in the footsteps of my idol", as he would later say. "It was really the album 'Heroes' that lit the spark — Bowie did enormous things for German-language pop music."
He stayed in Berlin for about a year, starting to explore the local scene by performing with a few jazz bands, earning a thousand schillings a night, which was never enough: he was permanently broke and already indulging in his first vices, and much of his later lyrics would reflect the excesses of that period. Back in Vienna, he joined the traveling musical-theatrical troupe Hallucination Company, led by Ludwig "Wickerl" Adam, with whom he set off on tour towards Munich. The show was a huge hit, and on the third day Hans showed up in a black-and-silver striped suit, hair slicked with gel, and addressed Wickerl decisively, declaring: "Wickerl, from today you will no longer announce Hans Hölzel on bass, but Falco Gottehrer! Got it? Never again Hans, that name no longer exists — it's Falco Gottehrer." Two days later he dropped the "Gottehrer" ("he who honours God") and simply remained "Falco", the stage name that would carve him into his country's history, chosen in honour of Falko Weisspflog, a ski-jumping champion from the former GDR whom he had become a fan of during his time in Berlin. The K was changed to a C to give the spelling a more European look, just as later his original surname "Hölzel" would lose its umlaut in favour of the more legible "Hoelzel".

Falco immediately tried to stand out — after all, he was different, and he always wanted to be the lead. The other members of Hallucination Company, in fact, were scruffy, long-haired types who wore tracksuits; he, on the other hand, was someone who wanted to oppose and compete with them, who liked to dress well, with short hair, gel, and sunglasses. It was Wickerl Adam himself who, around that time, came up with the most fitting description: "Falco was sex, drugs and rock'n'roll in Versace clothes."
He also caught the attention of Stefan Weber, an avant-garde artist who invited him to play bass in his band Drahdiwaberl, a notorious outfit mixing chaos, rock and politics that enjoyed a certain following in Austria; Falco played with them between 1978 and 1983, though he never fully identified with that kind of ideology. At the same time he joined Spinning Wheel, this time as a singer as well as bassist. They performed covers of Bee Gees and Rod Stewart, and their shows were a huge success in the hotel bars and nightclubs of Vienna.

His tendency toward self-promotion and his individualist style were already clearly emerging, and Falco began to exert a strong hold on the Viennese audience, who up to then had been used to small-scale stages and had never before faced a pop phenomenon of such magnitude. With Spinning Wheel he also recorded two studio tracks, "Chance To Dance" and "Summer", but he still wasn't satisfied and soon distanced himself from the band: this was the precise moment when the idea took shape of leaving any band behind to follow the path that suited him best — that of a solo artist and absolute protagonist.

Alles klar

We're in 1980, and Falco meets Markus Spiegel, owner of the small Viennese label GIG Records, who signs him to a three-album deal as a solo artist. Together with producer Robert Ponger he gets to work on "Der Kommissar", his debut single, released in autumn 1981, and it is an instant triumph. The track showcases pretty much all the hallmarks of Falco's early productions: rapped verses over funky, repetitive backing tracks, catchy choruses, and an original slang blending German, broad Viennese dialect and English exclamations. In short, a new artificial language, understandable practically only to him and a chosen few, but evidently enough to top the charts almost everywhere, reaching number one on the German-language single charts, as well as in France, Spain and Italy, besides climbing to the very top positions in Scandinavia, Japan and Australia. The song had originally been written by Robert Ponger himself for Reinhold Bilgeri, another Austrian singer, who turned it down as too soft for his taste, so Ponger suggested it to Falco, who reworked the lyrics and quickly put together a single that catapulted him onto the international stage right at the start of his career. "Der Kommissar" got a cooler reception in the United States, but DJ Afrika Bambaataa championed it in New York clubs, helping it become a minor hit; despite only reaching number 72, it still remains the second entirely German-language song ever to chart in the US, after Kraftwerk's "Autobahn", which reached No. 25 in 1975. An even better fate awaited the cover by After The Fire, the London rock band who completely overhauled the lyrics, rewrote them in English, and in 1982 brought it back to the American market, this time pushing it all the way to number five. Laura Branigan also recorded an English-language version titled "Deep In The Dark" (included on her album "Branigan 2").
In total, "Der Kommissar" alone sold seven million copies worldwide. Also famous is the music video immortalising Falco in his trademark leather suit/dark sunglasses look, as he's chased by a fleet of police cars with sirens blaring.

On the wave of this resounding success came, in March 1982, his debut album Einzelhaft (translated as "Incarcerated!"), marking his official entry into the music world. It too is a debut with all the trimmings: the album reaches number one in Austria and gains considerable recognition across the rest of Europe, where the inevitable language barrier isn't enough to curb curiosity about a performer so unique in style and with fast-growing appeal; what's more, the original blend of new wave/white rap, combined with his eccentric manner, makes Einzelhaft a fun and innovative record. Depending on the country of release, four different promo singles were pulled from it: "Zuviel Hitze" ("Too Much Heat"), "Hinter Uns Die Sintflut" ("Behind Us, The Flood"), "Maschine Brennt" ("The Machine Is Burning") and "Auf Der Flucht" ("On The Run"), the latter notable for its use of the talkbox, a device hugely in vogue throughout the Eighties (that typical wah-wah effect used, for instance, by Bon Jovi on "Livin' On A Prayer", to give an idea).
For those who can appreciate the lyrics, they are all brilliant and laced with black humour, and the constant allusions to drug use shouldn't come as a surprise — a sadly autobiographical subject that Falco touches on often and explicitly in his songs, mocking Austrian society as a whole, which at the time was heavily given to the habit. One example above all is "Ganz Wien" ("All Of Vienna"), which quickly ends up blacklisted by radio stations because of an all-too-eloquent chorus:

Ganz Wien                                           All of Vienna
Ist heut’ auf Heroin                            is on heroin today
Ganz Wien                                           All of Vienna
Träumt mit Mozambin                      dreams with Mozambin
Ganz Wien, ganz Wien                      All of Vienna, all of Vienna
Greift auch zu Kokain                        is reaching for cocaine, too

In fact, this would be the very first song credited to Falco, not "Der Kommissar" — only it dates back a few years earlier, when it was already being performed live with Drahdiwaberl, always to great audience response, which is why, despite the radio boycott, it remains a cult track at home, and can rightly be considered the song that paved Falco's way towards a singing career.
Einzelhaft also features two tracks heavily indebted to Bowie's Berlin trilogy: "Helden von Heute" ("Heroes of Today") is in fact nothing more than a personal reworking-tribute to "Heroes" (it had come out as the b-side of "Der Kommissar"), while the already-mentioned "Nie Mehr Schule" ("No More School") borrows the instrumental theme of "Speed Of Life" (found on the other Thin White Duke milestone, "Low").
Rounding things off are the more romantic "Siebzehn Jahr" ("Seventeen Years") and the title track "Einzelhaft".

Popularity and success smile on Falco, but his life, far from improving, is dangerously heading towards a dead end from which he will never again find a way out. The expectations placed on him and the pressure that had grown out of all proportion would prove a lethal cocktail, every bit as dangerous as the one made of alcohol and drugs with which he would repeatedly try to face them. He goes through a first deep crisis in 1984, when his second album Junge Römer fails to achieve the hoped-for results, and the fear of being unable to confirm himself at the top suddenly becomes a bitter reality.
To be fair, the album opens with the splendid title track "Junge Römer" ("Young Romans"), one of his most representative songs and perhaps the finest example of the Falco sound overall, here enriched by a memorable performance in German, English and, for long stretches, curiously (and a little clumsily) in Italian too. The lyrics poke fun at the "Young Romans", a disparaging nickname given in Germany during the Eighties to the new generation of yuppies, whom Falco addresses with heavy irony, inviting them to abandon any sense of responsibility or higher ethical value and devote themselves to the wildest pleasure until the first hours of dawn.

⟦Q1⟧

Equally successful is the music video, a true gem of his repertoire, in which Falco, this time in an elegant dark suit, seems to have the time of his life looking down on these young Romans partying away until the first light of morning.
Critics seem to be quite taken with it too; the real problem is that the rest of the tracklist is too refined, which means the choruses come across as less catchy, losing that very factor that, on the previous Einzelhaft, had been decisive in overcoming language barriers and winning over the masses. Worth noting are only "Hoch Wie Nie" ("Higher Than Ever") and "Ihre Tochter" ("Your Daughter"), but overall the album is a commercial flop in many European countries, and Falco is certainly not the type to settle for a modest, predictable number one in his native Austria alone. So he sinks into a deep depression, which he decides to deal with in his own way, through alcohol and drugs, numbing himself to the point of exhaustion, to the extent that he's forced to cancel a European tour that had already been planned for some time. He pulls out of it partly thanks to a holiday, a month of total relaxation spent with some friends in Thailand, where he begins to think about how to turn his career around. The bitter disappointment caused by Junge Römer does nothing to dent his artistic credibility, but his nature drives him to demand ever more from a commercial standpoint, and so he decides to part ways with Robert Ponger and put his fortunes in the hands of the experienced Dutch production duo Bolland&Bolland. And no choice could have proved more spot-on.

3

3 as in the title of his new album, 3 as in the number of singles pulled from it that catapult Falco back to the top in dramatic fashion, 3 as in the number of consecutive weeks "Rock Me Amadeus" spends at number one on the US charts, crowning him a world-class pop star, exactly as he had dreamed of as a child.
But let's take it step by step. Back from his Asian stay, Falco returns to the scene in the summer of 1984 with the single "Kann Es Liebe Sein?", a charming duet with Luxembourgish TV presenter/actress Desirée Nosbusch, after which he decides it's time to give his career a new direction, making a clean break in sound and perhaps strengthening the English-language component of his lyrics, so as to give his next album broader international appeal. For this reason, his longtime manager Horst Bork puts him in touch with brothers Rob and Ferdi Bolland, Dutch producers who also worked with Samantha Fox and Amii Stewart. The duo, known under the name "Bolland&Bolland", had among other things been the original writers (and performers) of that very "In The Army Now" which would later become a worldwide hit in the version by Status Quo. Right around that time, "Amadeus" hits cinemas, Miloš Forman's masterpiece about the life of Mozart. The film is a box-office smash and goes on to win no fewer than eight Oscars, along with a string of awards at other prestigious film festivals. Inevitably, this reignites debate about the Austrian composer's life, not least because, riding the film's wave, several critical texts are published shedding light on the actual causes of his death, never fully clarified, and above all on Salieri's role in the affair, accused of having poisoned him out of professional jealousy. Meanwhile, a multi-part TV series covering the same subject is also broadcast in several European countries.

In short, the name "Amadeus" is now on everyone's lips, and it's at this point that the Bollands come up with the idea of turning the Austrian composer's life into a pop song, riding the wave and crafting a product whose success is all but guaranteed. Falco then sets to work at their Bullet Sound Studio in Hilversum, in the Netherlands: the result is "Rock Me Amadeus", a song that would shatter the previous boundaries of German-language pop music and set new standards. The track takes off everywhere, powered by a fashionable sound and a chorus that leaves no escape. It's released as a single in June 1985 and follows the winning formula of the earlier "Der Kommissar" — an original blend of rap and wave elements — only this time the new team stitches them together cleverly over even more accessible sounds, steering the track towards an easy but undeniably effective synth-pop. The result is a spectacular success on both sides of the Atlantic: "Rock Me Amadeus" climbs all the way to number one on the UK singles chart (he's the first Austrian to achieve such a result, whereas "Der Kommissar", for example, hadn't even cracked the top 40) and a few months later rises to the top of the US charts, where it stays for three consecutive weeks, knocking Prince's "Kiss" off the summit. It's March 29, 1986, and Falco is the first (and to this day only) German-language artist to pull off this feat in the United States (Bert Kaempfert had managed something similar back in 1961, but with a purely instrumental track, "Wonderland By Night", while in 1983 Nena's "99 Luftballons" had stalled at number two on the Billboard Hot 100).

Besides the English-language charts and, of course, the German-language ones, the track dominates the charts in all the major European countries and beyond, boosted by an equally memorable music video. It's shot in the lavish setting of Palais Schwarzenberg in Vienna and directed by the expert hands of Dolezal/Rossacher, a pair of Austrian filmmakers who in those years, under the "DoRo Productions" banner, put their stamp on numerous music clips (for example for David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen and the Rolling Stones), and above all the most important Queen videos from 1985 onward ("One Vision", "Scandal", "The Miracle" and "Innuendo", to name just a few). So the set of "Rock Me Amadeus" also boasts a grand nineteenth-century setting, that perfect mix of grandeur and eighties aesthetics that was always Falco's ideal habitat, captured here in one of his most exuberant performances, playing the double role of narrator catapulted into the wrong century (once again in an elegant tuxedo) and the more unlikely part of a modern-day Mozart, complete with dyed hair and a thick escort of biker-rockers accompanying his entrance. In short, the video is a feast for the eyes: Falco is at the peak of his career, and now he really can say he's fulfilled his childhood dream of "becoming a pop star".
The promotion of the song is pretty massive and the result a smash hit, so much so that a hot-line is even set up where fans can talk directly to their idol: "For a good time call Falco: 1-800-841-122", reads the giant lettering on posters plastered across many US cities. Between radio, newspapers, television and billboards, the Austrian singer is practically everywhere, all to the benefit of his new album, Falco 3, which had actually come out a few months earlier (September 1985), but only gets the attention it deserves from fans and critics after the massive boom of "Rock Me Amadeus". It's an album that departs sharply from its predecessors: working with the two Dutchmen produces a more mainstream sound, in step with the times, resulting in a record of international reach that achieves unexpectedly strong sales (number three on the US charts, and an outright triumph in Europe). "Vienna Calling", another of his signature tracks, comes out as the second single and once again hits the mark, thanks to a catchy jingle and a dance-oriented rhythm, the same strengths underpinning "Macho Macho" and "Männer Des Westens" ("Any Kind Of Land"), while "Tango The Night" offers the Argentine dance in an enjoyable synth-pop variant.
Also worth appreciating are the two covers, "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" (the original is by Bob Dylan, from 1965) and "Munich Girls", an enjoyable German version of "Lookin' For Love" by Cars (found on their "Heartbeat City", released just a year earlier, in 1984). "Nothing Sweeter Than Arabia", meanwhile, is yet another Bowie-inspired piece, written as a response to the Thin White Duke's "The Secret Life Of Arabia" ("Heroes", 1977), while "America", with its telling title, celebrates Falco's landing on the new continent with a carefree harmonica riff. Rounding things off is "Jeanny", the album's other true masterpiece, released as the third and final single.

“Jeanny, life is not what it seems”

It's a poignant, melancholy ballad, made even more powerful by a final crescendo of extraordinary emotional intensity. In the video that accompanies the track, Falco plays a stalker trailing his victim, delivering what is by far his most intense performance, but also his most controversial one, since the meaning of both the video and the song would never be fully clarified. Some saw in it a glorification of rape and sexual abuse, which is why "Jeanny" became a scandal and sparked outrage from many quarters, particularly from feminist groups who called for a boycott. As a result, the track was initially pulled from radio playlists in many countries; in East Germany it was even banned from being played in clubs, while in West Germany it drew the outrage of Dieter Kronzucker, at the time a well-known public TV anchorman whose two teenage daughters had been kidnapped some time earlier during a trip to Italy (they were rescued safely after several weeks). Elsewhere, the footage was overlaid with a "Warning" caption. As often happens, though, all the talk and word of mouth produced exactly the opposite effect: sales of the single soared, and "Jeanny" gave Falco what would turn out to be, in the end, the last great hit of his career. From this point on, the Austrian singer's trajectory would only go downhill, overwhelmed by a host of personal problems.

His conquest of America, in fact, turns into a boomerang. While his entire staff is busy celebrating the excellent results achieved, Falco himself seems anything but cheerful. "The news of being number 1 in the United States can't make me happy, if only because it's a milestone I'll never be able to reach again. It'll take years for me to shake off this weight, and knowing myself, I already know what's in store..." Namely, rivers of alcohol and drugs. Pressured by his record label, he embarks on a promotional tour of the United States, ten days between New York and Los Angeles for talk-show appearances, meetings with journalists and interviews, but the mini-tour would take a different turn. "I was drinking a bottle of whiskey a day — the best thing about the American flag is the white stripes...", he would later confide upon returning home, where he was instead officially elevated to the status of national hero when the mayor of Vienna, Helmut Zilk, invited him to perform in front of the Rathaus, the Austrian capital's city hall. It's a great honor, not least because, by established tradition, that setting had previously been reserved solely for classical musicians. But the Viennese mayor's decision proves to be spot on. The concert is broadcast live on TV, and it's an unforgettable night: Falco is carried in triumph by an ecstatic crowd, 40,000 people who poured into the square to catch a close-up glimpse of their idol and most illustrious fellow citizen.

Isabella

In the summer of 1985 he's booked for a live performance on the stage of the Graz stadium alongside Opus, another Austrian pop band who enjoyed a certain fame in the Eighties (mostly thanks to the success of "Live Is Life", their best-known song). On the eve of the show, they all head together, for a couple of beers, to a bar in the Austrian town: it's here that Falco meets Isabella Vitkovic, the great love of his life. And the woman who would ultimately ruin him. "She was my ideal type: tall, blonde, and with tuberculosis": that's how the singer would jokingly describe her. At the time Isabella is Miss Styria, but she's still married to a man 19 years her senior. Either way, Falco falls head over heels for her right away and manages to win her heart, so the two move in together and on March 13, 1986, Katharina Bianca is born. Becoming a father marks an important step and a turning point in Falco's life, and he welcomes the news positively. The singer hopes that taking on responsibility for a daughter might help him rein in his personal excesses, and perhaps even settle the score with his own past and with that father figure he had always longed for but never actually had, given that his own father had abandoned him at a young age. His good intentions, however, would prove futile, not least because his marriage to Vitkovic, held in 1988, collapses in less than a year. What follows is a complicated, costly legal battle and divorce, which Falco would once again choose to face with alcohol, coke and psychotropic drugs.

On the other hand, the encounter-turned-clash with Isabella provided the inspiration for Emotional, his fourth studio album, written and released in 1986, when the Austrian singer was still at the start of his troubled relationship with his ex-wife. Production was once again handled by the Bolland brothers, so the album picks up where Falco 3 left off, with easy jingles and catchy melodies, but this time the songs come across as somewhat more predictable and less explosive than on the previous record. Still, the tracklist does produce some solid moments, such as the first single "The Sound Of Musik", which nails its chorus and achieves a certain amount of visibility in Europe, helped along by an entertaining video steeped in his usual theatrical grandeur. Worth mentioning too are "Kamikaze Capa" (a tribute to Hungarian photojournalist Robert Capa) and "The Kiss Of Kathleen Turner", while "Coming Home (Jeanny Part II, One Year Later)" is a first attempt — as shrewd as it is clumsy — to give a sequel to his last genuine hit, "Jeanny": more would follow on later albums, with mixed results, but none ever matching the original.
The album cover pays homage to the famous backdrop set up by NBC for "The '68 Comeback Special", the TV special broadcast on December 3, 1968 that marked Elvis Presley's return to the music scene (the same backdrop later referenced by Texas in "Inner Smile" or by Robbie Williams in his 2002 DVD "The Robbie Williams Show"). In Falco's case specifically, though, it's actually a freeze-frame lifted from the video for the title track "Emotional", an autobiographical song whose lyrics spell out, clearly and precisely, Falco's view of his disastrous relationship with the opposite sex: “So che la donna che mi sopporta non è ancora nata/ però ti prego/ nasci!”. In reality it's a desperate appeal to his ex-wife, at the time still his muse, written after one of their furious fights, when the singer was starting to feel their relationship slipping out of his hands, never to be brought back under control. Closing out the album, on a lower note, are "Cowboyz And Indianz" and "Crime Time".

Emotional was followed by a long world tour, kicking off in the autumn of the same year and wrapping up in Japan, where Falco notches up a string of sold-out shows and is besieged by hordes of girls, who greet him as befits a global star, throwing teddy bears, underwear and all sorts of things onto the stage.
These are the last flickers of glory, not least because the tour's other legs, scheduled for January, February and March 1987, are cancelled by the organizers due to Falco's usual "personal problems". They were supposed to take place in the States, where, however, just a year after the breakthrough of "Rock Me Amadeus", the singer already seems to have lost his appeal. Not so in Europe, where he instead stays afloat thanks to "Body Next To Body", a duet with Brigitte Nielsen. The single benefits from some extra buzz thanks to the Danish actress/model, herself hugely popular in the Eighties, so the track (produced and co-written by Giorgio Moroder) is released in 1987 and achieves solid sales, especially in Germany and the Scandinavian countries.

Viennese Blood

1988 brings Wiener Blut, his fifth studio album and the first step in a gradual (and controversial) retreat from the show-biz spotlight in favor of a more "niche" dimension. The album is dedicated to his daughter Katharina Bianca and marks his last collaboration with the Bolland brothers, since the singer, in the grip of one of his alcoholic rages, is literally thrown out of the recording studio after a violent clash with the two producers. It's his lowest point: by now Falco is completely a slave to himself and his own abuses, not least because this is the very same period in which he begins divorce proceedings from his wife. Inevitably, his career suffers as a result, and he's once again forced to cancel another already-scheduled world tour.
Amid few highs and many lows, Wiener Blut still manages to offer some interesting moments, such as the tried-and-tested synth-pop of a title track still fully in Falco style, or the more refined "Do It Again", with its jazzy cadences (it's a cover of Steely Dan). Also worth saving are the punchy "Untouchable" and "Sand Am Himalaya" (whose last three letters, "Aya", had initially been planned as the album's title, later changed at Falco's request), while "Garbo" (a tribute to the Swedish diva) works less well, despite good intentions and orchestral arrangements.
Overall, the album betrays a certain lack of clarity and a songwriting streak that seems to be fading, so "Falco Rides Again", the second track on the album, is a title to be taken only as wishful thinking for a future — professional and otherwise — that was anything but certain.

Data De Groove came out in 1990, his sixth album, and marks a further step backward. With the Bolland partnership over, Falco decides to put himself back in the hands of his old producer/mentor Robert Ponger, who tries to turn things around by dusting off his original sound. This time, though, their pairing has little luck in terms of sales: the album is in fact a disastrous flop, so much so that its distribution is even halted and it would soon become collector's-item-only material. It's a dark, introverted project, its lyrics decked out in an artificial language borrowed straight from the computer age. Two singles are released but neither hits the mark: the title track "Data De Groove" and "Charisma Commando", while "Bar Minor 7/11 (Jeanny Dry)" is the third chapter in the "Jeanny" saga, here dragging along wearily and devoid of pathos. The rest of the tracklist gets bogged down in an anonymous, mannered rock-dance hybrid that would soon be forgotten.
"It's not my fault, people should first study for at least one semester at my private university to understand true art!", a Falco growing ever more bombastic and adrift would say later — and for the first (and only) time he fails to crack the Top Ten even in Austria, where all his albums of new material had always reached number one on the charts, with the sole exception of Wiener Blut, which had stalled at a still quite respectable second place. Data De Groove, however, doesn't climb past eleventh place back home, so his longtime label, Gig Records, decides not to renew his expiring contract, given the disappointing results of his latest releases and well aware of his increasingly precarious mental state.

Just when all seems lost, though, comes the twist. US label A&M Records, owned by the Universal group, still believes in the Austrian's abilities, so it offers him a new contract and, in a surprise move, pairs him once again in the studio with the Bolland brothers. And it turns out to be the right call: Falco and the Dutch duo, past their old friction, get to work on Nachtflug, released in autumn 1992 to unexpected success. It's his seventh album, it immediately goes platinum, and Falco even manages to relaunch himself on the American market, breaking through thanks to the single "Titanic", a pop/rap track in his own signature style that's also well received in Europe. He's back near the top of the charts (number 1 again in Austria), helped along too by the compelling title track "Nachtflug" ("Night Flight") and by the other single "Dance Mephisto".
So, in spring '93, about six years after his last one, he decides to embark on a live tour, planned with great caution given his chronic unreliability. The organizers opt for small and medium-sized towns across Austria, Switzerland, Germany and Russia, with Vienna as the sole, necessary exception. The warm response from audiences testifies once again to Falco's pull as a live performer, reaching its peak at the memorable homecoming date on June 27, 1993. That day Falco takes part in the Danube Island Festival, the largest open-air event in Europe, held every year in the Austrian capital: there, a crowd of a hundred thousand people give Falco a well-deserved standing ovation, handing him the finest snapshot of his career, and probably of his life. Watching footage of that historic performance, the singer looks happy and fulfilled, as he rarely had before — for one evening, at least, he seems to shake off the heavy burden of a life spiraling out of control, perhaps setting out on the road to a slow, long-desired return to "normality". In those very same days, in fact, he decides to make another attempt at getting clean, with some early encouraging signs.
But fate can sometimes be cruel and merciless, and it comes down especially hard on Falco. Right at the moment when he glimpses a small ray of light and seems to finally regain a measure of stability, life deals him the most brutal humiliation of all.

He Was My Father

In the autumn of 1993, Falco discovers that Katharina Bianca, the almost eight-year-old girl he had with Vitkovic, is not actually his daughter. Accusations and suspicions had already been a daily occurrence back when he was with his ex-wife, so he decides to undergo a paternity test, and the result is unequivocal: he is not the father. It's the final blow for Falco, who had also tied his own personal hopes of renewal to the little girl. Grief and sorrow take over and leave him even more fragile and insecure. Even though he outwardly tries not to let it show, the Austrian singer plunges back into a tunnel with no way out. He insists that the child's surname be changed, but still leaves a savings account in her name with a notary in Vienna, to be handed over to her on her eighteenth birthday. Katharina-Bianca, however, would always continue to regard him as her true father, bound to Falco by a genuine, not superficial, affection — proof of which is the fact that, after that small initial bequest, the girl was excluded from the list of his heirs. Today she's a tattoo artist, and proudly displays, inked behind her ear, the singer's initials. In 2008 she would also publish the book "Falco war mein Vater" ("Falco Was My Father"), in which she describes him as an attentive, caring father, who taught her to play piano, play chess and speak English, and loved drawing pictures in which the little girl always appeared. After the bitter discovery, though, their relationship wears thin and would never be the same again.

Falco, then, tries to distract himself with a brief foray into techno music, and in 1995 releases the single "Mutter, Der Mann Mit Dem Koks Ist Da", which reworks a popular tune from the Thirties. It's a largely unsuccessful experiment, and very few even notice it, not least because, for the occasion, the singer hides behind the pseudonym T >>MA (short for "Thema"). The title plays on the multiple meanings of the word "Koks", which in German has a triple meaning and can be used to refer to "coal", "cocaine" or even "money".

The following year, 1996, brings a final attempt to close the door on the past. He decides to move to the Dominican Republic, to Puerto Plata, into a luxurious villa by the sea, where he hopes to cut ties with a daily life that has by now become unbearable, and take advantage of a more isolated, freer environment, perhaps in order to try to relaunch himself professionally too (on top of reaping considerable tax benefits). Amid the sun and palm trees of the Caribbean island, Falco starts writing songs again, and in the meantime begins a relationship with Canadian model Caroline Perron, whose repeated attempts to pull him away from his demons would, however, prove unsuccessful — much like "Naked", his very last single, released in 1996 but a disappointment (it only does well back home, where it reaches number four).
At this point he sets to work on a new album with a provocative title, "Egoisten", which, however, would never see the light of day.

Curse

“Out of the dark, into the light”

On February 6, 1998, along the road connecting the towns of Puerto Plata and Villa Mantellano, Falco crashed his Mitsubishi Pajero into a bus travelling at high speed. The exact dynamics of the accident would never be fully clarified: the singer died of his injuries, but the autopsy revealed huge quantities of alcohol, marijuana and cocaine in his blood, leading some to suggest the possibility of suicide. This theory was bolstered by the fact that his SUV was struck right as it pulled out of a parking spot and onto the road at reckless speed, almost as if it were a deliberate act. In any case, his body was flown home on a private Lauda Air jet, the airline founded by former Formula One driver Niki Lauda, a longtime friend of the singer – so much so that the Boeing was renamed "Falco" in his honour. More than ten thousand people attended his funeral, and his coffin was carried on the shoulders of the very same biker-rockers who, thirteen years earlier, had appeared alongside him in the video for "Rock Me Amadeus".
Falco is buried at the Zentralfriedhof, Vienna's Central Cemetery: legend has it that his grave lies right next to Beethoven's (though in reality it doesn't). Years later, his hometown would name a street after him, "Falcogasse", located in the very neighbourhood where he grew up. A small curiosity: the Marchfelderhof restaurant, where he was a regular, still keeps a table reserved for him to this day.

Musically speaking, Falco bowed out in the best possible way. Just weeks after his death, what can effectively be considered his eighth studio album was released posthumously. It was the project he had been working on in the Dominican Republic, which he had initially wanted to call "Egoisten". His label, however, preferred to change the title to Out Of The Dark (Into The Light), releasing it worldwide on March 2, 1998. The album was a major success, and not simply thanks to the predictable spike in post-mortem sales. The elegant title track "Out Of The Dark", released as the second single, is without doubt one of his finest songs, carrying a touching pathos and a heart-pounding chorus worthy of his very best work. The line "muss ich denn sterben, um zu leben?", meaning "must I die, in order to live?", suggests that at the time of writing, Falco himself may have sensed the signs of an approaching end closing in around him. The rest of the tracklist is a mix of unreleased material (such as the other single, "Egoist") and material dug up from the past (once again, "Mutter, Der Mann Mit Dem Koks Ist Da").

Verdammt, Wir Leben Noch! ("Damn, We're Still Alive!") came out in 1999 and is a collection of tracks originally shelved but revived specifically for the occasion by the Bollands, with special mention going to "Krise", chronologically the very last lyric Falco ever wrote. Aside from that, Verdammt Wir Leben Noch! offers an overall forgettable tracklist, and lent its title to a film (directed by Thomas Roth) presented in Vienna in 2008 about the singer's reckless life. From here on, it would be a long string of best of compilations or unreleased tracks of dubious authenticity that, predictably, sought to cash in on the singer's name – with one small but necessary clarification needed regarding The Spirit Never Dies, from 2009. The album features the near-identically titled "The Spirit Never Dies (Jeanny Final)", credited as the official third part of a supposed "Jeanny trilogy", though considerable doubt remains over whether Falco ever actually had such a project in mind (something never confirmed). It is said that the demo tape of the track surfaced from the archives of one of his old collaborators, Gunther Mende, discovered after burst water pipes flooded his recording studios in 1987. The subsequent repair work supposedly brought to light some originally discarded material of uncertain origin, which would later take shape thanks to digital remastering.

In 2000, a track titled "Where Are You Now (Jeanny Part 3)" also surfaced, offered as a free download on a website that was later taken down, claiming to give users access to a tape received from an anonymous sender. In that case, it was a re-edit of genuine material: some cuts made during the Bolland era that can be found as b-sides on certain original pressings of the respective single "Jeanny", though only in certain editions and release countries. In any case, between fact, fiction and legend, the Austrian pop star exited the stage in grand fashion, and in the only way possible for him: as the star of the show.

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