Udo Lindenberg

Udo Lindenberg (born 17 May 1946) is a German singer, composer, and painter.

Career

Lindenberg started his musical career as a drummer. In 1969, he founded his first band Free Orbit, and also appeared as a studio and guest musician (with Michael Naura, Knut Kiesewetter). In 1970, he collaborated as a drummer with jazz saxophonist Klaus Doldinger in Munich. In 1971 Passport, a band founded by Doldinger, released its first album, with Lindenberg on drums. He also played drums for the theme music for the German TV series Tatort. The first LP by the jazz rock group Emergency was released in 1971, but met with little commercial success.

The LP Lindenberg (also 1971, sung in English, with Steffi Stephan on bass) was likewise unsuccessful. In the following year, the first LP in German was released: Daumen im Wind (produced by Lindenberg and Thomas Kukuck, who also co-produced Lindenberg's next five albums), featuring the single "Hoch im Norden", which became a radio hit in northern Germany. The year 1973 brought a breakthrough with the album Andrea Doria and the singles "Alles klar auf der Andrea Doria" and "Cello". With over 100,000 copies sold, Lindenberg quickly received the largest record deal of any German-language musician up to that time. Lindenberg was earning a special place in the new German-language music of the 1970s, finding a niche between internationally oriented Krautrock and mainstream pop music of the Schlager variety. German-language rock had previously been confined to predominantly political message bands whose music was directed at a narrow audience.