Wolfgang Niedecken: "Music is my drug"

40 years of great success: Wolfgang Niedecken, the charismatic singer of the Cologne rock band BAP, is on an anniversary tour. With three Swiss concerts in November, nature fan Niedecken is also thanking his Swiss fans.

blog.ticketcorner.ch was able to meet Wolfgang Niedecken in Zurich's Kreis 5 for an interview.

40 years of BAP - you are giving three concerts in Switzerland on your anniversary tour. You seem to have a particularly close connection with us?

Wolfgang Niedecken: That's right, I have a special relationship with the Swiss fans; I even know many of them by name. We won our only gold record abroad here: in 1988 for the album "Da Capo". A huge surprise and still unforgotten today.

How did this success come about?

Südwestfunk (SWF 3) certainly helped to bring our music to the people at the beginning. The radio station broadcast far into Switzerland. We played our first concerts here in 1982 and they were packed everywhere. In the Olma Hall in St. Gallen, for example, 4,000 people sang along in Kölsch. That was unbelievable for us. Since then, a great bond has grown between us and the Swiss.

What makes the Swiss different from other fans?

They never asked us the question that we hear all the time elsewhere: Why do you actually sing Kölsch? There are an enormous number of bands in Switzerland who work with their mother tongue, i.e. their dialects, as a matter of course.

What can we expect at your anniversary shows?

A journey through time. We'll be playing the new songs from my album "Lebenslänglich" and our greatest hits.

In the new song "Absurdistan", you talk about a global ghost train, about collective megalomania. Are we on the brink of the abyss?

Yes, I really can't give others any hope. The world is at a point where everything could change to our clear disadvantage, and if we and the Americans are unlucky, the most powerful man in the world will be a populist. With this song, I want to make people think.

What are the most important things in your life?

The most important thing: my family. I am a family man, without my family I would be lost. Then comes music: for me, music is food and a drug. If I don't know how the day is going to go on, I put on the Rolling Stones song "Tumbling Dice" and then I know how the day is going to go on again.

And what happens next?

Then Cologne and FC Köln are very important to me and to nature. Neil Young once said: "The forest is my church." That's exactly how I feel. Nature focuses me.

NIEDECKEN'S BAP ANNIVERSARY TOUR 1976-2016
06./07.11.16, various venues
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