FALC

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J OH

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(19 February 1957 – 6 February 1998)

WHO IS FALCO?• Austrian

• Rap and Pop

• He is the first and only artist to date whose principal language was German to score a number-one hit in the United States with "Rock Me Amadeus".

• His estate claims he has sold 20 million albums and 15 million singles to date, which makes him the best selling Austrian singer of all time.

GENESIS OF AWESOME• Showed signs of musical talent at a

young age• As a toddler, he was able to keep time with the drumbeat in songs he heard on the radio•He was given a baby grand piano for his fourth birthday; a year later, his birthday gift was a record player•He listened to Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard, and the Beatles.

GENESIS OF AWESOME

At age five, he auditioned for the Vienna Music Academy, where it was confirmed that he had perfect pitch.

perfect pitch: the ability of a person to identify a given musical note without the benefit of an external reference.

EDUCATION• In 1963, Hölzel began his schooling at a

Roman Catholic private school

• Four years later, at age ten, he switched to the Rainer Gymnasium in Vienna

• He left school at sixteen in 1973 due to absenteeism

• At seventeen, he volunteered for eight months of military service with the Austrian army

EDUCATIONHe entered the Vienna Music

Conservatory in 1977, but left after one semester to "become a real musician"

…

--REAL M

USCIAN

From his music video“Rock Me Amadeus

MUSIC SCENE• For a short time, he lived in West Berlin

while singing in a jazz-rock band

• Explored the club scene

• Played in the Austrian bands Spinning Wheel and Hallucination Company

• He was bass player in the Austrian hard rock-punk rock band Drahdiwaberl

FLYING SOLO• With Drahdiwaberl he wrote and

performed the song "Ganz Wien" ("All Vienna"), which he would also include on his debut solo album

• Falco's first hit was "Der Kommissar" ("The Commissioner") from the 1982 album Einzelhaft.• "Der Kommissar" was a German language song about drug consumption that combines rap verses with a sung chorus

FLYING SOLO• After a second album, Junge Roemer

(Young Romans) failed to provide a repeat to his debut single's success, Falco began to experiment with English lyrics

• Falco recorded "Rock Me Amadeus" • inspired in part by the Oscar-winning film Amadeus

• The song became a worldwide hit in 1986

CONTROVERSY"Jeanny", the third release from the

album Falco 3, brought the performer back to the top of the charts across Europe. Highly controversial when it was released in Germany and the Netherlands, the story of "Jeanny" was told from the point of view of a possible rapist and murderer.

CONTROVERSY• Several DJs and radio stations refused

to play the ballad

• It was ignored in the US

• It became a huge hit in many European countries, and inspired two sequels on later albums.

LATE CARRER

• In 1987 he went on "Emotional" world tour ending in Japan.

• In the same year he sang a duet with Brigitte Nielsen, "Body Next to Body"; the single was a Top 10 hit in the Germanic countries.

• The album Wiener Blut (Viennese Blood) was released in 1988 but it did not get much publicity outside Germany and Austria.

TOT• 6 February 1998, just two weeks before

his 41st birthday

• Falco died of severe injuries received from a collision with a bus in his Mitsubishi Pajero on the road linking the towns of Villa Montellano and Puerto Plata, in the Dominican Republic

TRIBUTES• The Bloodhound Gang's song "Mope"

mentions Falco and samples 'Rock me Amadeus'.

• Falco's good friend Niki Lauda named one of the Boeing airplanes in his Lauda Air fleet "Falco" after the singer.[4]

• More recently, "Rock Me Amadeus" has been interpolated for comedic effect. In 1986, "Weird Al" Yankovic parodied the song in his song "Polka Party