At the latest with his appearance at the Eurovision Song Contest, Guildo Horn burned himself into the collective memory. But the singer with the thinning hair from Trier still has a fan base that is enough for him for "second division, upper third". Now he is 60.
Guildo Horn has an incredibly good story ready when you ask him when and where his love for German hits began. He then reminds of a great aunt who had no children - but a so-called cocktail room. Two chairs, a kidney-shaped table. And "The Laughing Vagabond" by the cheerful hit bard Fred Bertelmann ran for what felt like the whole day. "With this great aunt I was allowed to eat eggnog for the first time, on a pretzel stick," says Horn. "Fred Bertelmann ran to it. I assume that I was orally imprinted."
You can say that the sweet drink did a great job, because pop music made Horn really big. On Wednesday (February 15) the musician will be 60 years old. Again, you have to be precise. The man who was born as Horst Köhler is turning 60. Guildo Horn - his pop singer self, which grew out of Horst Köhler at some point - is already 70, he explains. "As a pop singer, you just age faster." Horn likes gags like that.
What Horst Köhler is and what Guildo Horn is, it's not so easy to unravel when you stand in front of him. It is clear that Guildo - of course you address him that way - is an imposing figure. The handshake is firm, the glasses are tinted, the midnight blue outfit is appropriate for the occasion - a conversation about his life and career. Horn is currently busy in Cologne, on television and radio.
Living here is not for him, he says. It likes to be quiet. "I moved to Cologne in 1997. After two years, however, I realized that I somehow need nature," he says. Since then he has lived in the Bergisches Land, in the Cologne area. "Maybe 150 people live in my village," he says. "No shop, no pub. The cigarette machine was also dismantled at some point." At times he even kept horses. The last one is now dead, albeit ancient. "In the end it was really just held together by our love and medication."
Both - the one with the Cologne area and the tendency to rest - can surprise you when you hear it for the first time. Because Horn became known as the big son of his native city of Trier - and as a musician who left no stone unturned in his stage shows. Burning energy like there's no tomorrow. Not calm at all.
That was also the case in 1998 when he sang "Guildo hat dich lieb!" at the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) in Birmingham. competed for Germany. Horn took a good seventh place with the song written by Stefan Raab - not yet at the zenith of his fame. But it was much more important that he broke through the German grumbling attitude towards the ESC, which had brewed up from many failures.
With Horn, who played the guitar at the age of nine and eventually discovered hits for himself, everything was different back then. He sweated, he danced in the audience, he did gymnastics on a pole. He and his people just had a knack for getting noticed. It all started with the optics. "May this man sing for Germany," asked the "Bild" newspaper at the time, next to a photo of the singer with the light shaggy hairstyle. It wasn't bad for him.
What did it take? Certainly freedom from fear. Horn is a trained music teacher, he made music with the mentally handicapped. "Without dealing with the mentally handicapped, Guildo Horn would not have existed," he says today. "I used to play the drums quite well - but I wasn't a stage pig. When I started making music for the mentally handicapped, I first noticed how little they were ashamed of and how much they went forward," says he. "I copied that. They totally inspired me."
The Guildo hype that raged around the ESC eventually died down. But Horn stayed, played musicals, theater and continued to play music with his band Orthopedic Stockings. This year he wants to release a new CD for 25 years "Guildo hat dich lieb!". He is simply "totally convinced of the product", as he calls it. "I used to expect to fill the so-called cloth factory in Trier. 500 people fit in there," he says. Everything else came on top. Today he plays in front of 2000 to 2500 people, as he says.
"I really don't want to be at the top," says Horn. It sounds like a conclusion. People like Lena or Raab, they couldn't go out on the street anymore. "My motto professionally is: second division, top third," he says. "You can make a good living there. And at the same time you can do whatever you want."
You can even dip a pretzel stick in eggnog with relish.
