Falco (musician)
Johann "Hans" Hölzel (German: [ˈjoːhan hans ˈhœltsl̩]; 19 February 1957 – 6 February 1998), better known by his stage name Falco, was an Austrian singer and musician. He had several international hits, including "Der Kommissar" (1981), "Rock Me Amadeus",[1] "Vienna Calling",[1] "Jeanny", "The Sound of Musik", "Coming Home (Jeanny Part II, One Year Later)", and posthumously "Out of the Dark".
For the post-hardcore musician also known as Falco, see Andrew Falkous.
Falco
Johann Hölzel
19 February 1957
Vienna, Austria
6 February 1998 (aged 40)
between Villa Montellano and Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic
- Musician
- singer
- composer
- Vocals
- bass
- piano
1975–1998
"Rock Me Amadeus" reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts in 1986, making Falco the only artist in history to score a number-one hit with a German language song in the United States.[a] According to his estate, he has sold 20 million albums and 40 million singles, which makes him the best-selling Austrian singer of all time.
Also notable was his very early creation of a successful non-English language rap music song ("Der Kommissar"), recorded in December 1981.[b]
Early years[edit]
Johann Hölzel was born on 19 February 1957 to Alois Hölzel and Maria Hölzel in a working class district of Vienna. Maria would later recall that she had been pregnant with triplets. As it was a dizygotic pregnancy, she miscarried the identical twins during the third month and Falco, who was conceived via a separate ovum, survived. Falco mused that "three souls in one breast sounds a little over-dramatic, but I do sense them sometimes. In my moodiness. I'll be really up and then right after I'll be really down."[2][3]
In 1963, Hölzel began his schooling at a Roman Catholic private school; four years later, at age ten, he switched to the Rainergymnasium in Margareten. Hölzel's father left the family while he was still a child, and he was raised by his mother.[2]
Hölzel began to show signs of unusual musical talent very early. As a toddler, he was able to keep time with the drumbeat in songs he heard on the radio. He was given a child's grand piano for his fourth birthday; a year later, his birthday gift was a record player which he used to play music by Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard, and the Beatles.
Hölzel wanted to be a pop star from a very early age.[2] At age 16, he attended the Vienna Conservatoire, but he became frustrated and soon left.[4] His mother insisted he begin an apprenticeship with the Austrian employee pension insurance institute. This too only lasted a short time. At seventeen, he entered military service in the Austrian army for eight months.[5]
In late 1970s Vienna, he became part of the Viennese nightlife, which included not just music but also striptease, performance art and a general atmosphere of satirizing politics and celebrating chaos. He played bass guitar in a number of bands under various pseudonyms, including "John Hudson" and "John DiFalco". One such band with whom he appeared was Drahdiwaberl, an Austrian group that employed shock tactics and stage antics. It was around this time he began performing under the stage name of Falco. Despite being closely tied with the Viennese underground club scene, Falco looked uncharacteristically clean-cut. In contrast to shabbier fashions, he had short hair (due to his military service) and wore Ray-Ban sunglasses and suits. His distinct style, coupled with his singing performance of the song "Ganz Wien" ("All of Vienna") led to manager Markus Spiegel offering to sign Falco in 1981. Ironically, it was at a concert for drug prevention and "Ganz Wien" has a line proclaiming "All Vienna is on heroin today."[2][4]
Personal life[edit]
Falco has been described by those who knew him as having a complex personality. He has been called ambitious, eccentric, caring, egotistical and deeply insecure. Thomas Rabitsch, a keyboardist who met Falco when the aspiring pop star was only 17 years old, said he was a quiet young man and precise bass player, but also arrogant and with a "very high opinion of himself". Markus Spiegel, the manager who discovered Falco, admitted that the pop star was "an extremely difficult artist" and known womanizer. Peter Vieweger, a guitarist who knew Falco before his success and continued to play in Falco's touring band and on his albums, remembers Falco as being "scared he would fail or be unmasked and not be as good as people thought he was".[2][10]
Through the 1980s and into the '90s, he became dependent on alcohol and cocaine. When under the influence he was unreliable at best and abusive at worst. Ferdi Bolland recalls that Falco was often so severely intoxicated that the writing process revolved around his "inability to be coherent, to even stand for a long time". Despite pleas from his manager and collaborators to get help, Falco stubbornly refused.[2][10]
While Falco was in a relationship with Isabella Vitkovic, she gave birth to a baby girl, Katharina, in 1986. The couple married in 1988, but it was a "love–hate" relationship, as Katharina describes it, and the marriage was short-lived. He believed that Katharina was his own daughter until a paternity test proved otherwise when she was seven years old. After this, Katharina's relationship with him became strained. Though they kept in contact, she took her mother's surname and claimed that she was written out of his will. She was 12 years old when he died. She did not reconcile with Falco's mother, Maria Hölzel, until a few years before Hölzel's death at the age of 87 in April 2014. Katharina subsequently published a memoir in 2008 called Falco war mein Vater (Falco Was My Father).[2][3][11][12]
Studio albums