Claw tie

Kralle Krawinkel (left) with trio bandmates (1982)

Gert Franz Alexander "Kralle" Krawinkel (born April 21, 1947 in Wilhelmshaven ; † February 16, 2014 in Cuxhaven ) was a German musician who became known as the guitarist of the band Trio .

Life

Beginnings

Krawinkel was the son of a Wilhelmshaven sailor. He grew up in Cuxhaven and went to school there. In 1963 he founded his first school band The Vampyrs in Cuxhaven and played lead guitar there . After that, Krawinkel played in the band MacBeats, in which Stephan Remmler was the singer. A short time later, the band was renamed Just Us. With Just Us, Krawinkel achieved his first respectable successes in northern Germany. Among other things, the band played as part of a two-week engagement at the Hamburg Star Club . Around 1969 the band broke up.

Krawinkel then founded the band Cravinkel , which also included musicians from Just Us. The folk and progressive rock band released two studio albums that were not commercially successful. In 1972 Cravinkel broke up. Kralle Krawinkel then took up a position as a teacher, but continued to play guitar in various bands, including the band Emsland Hillbillies .

Worldwide success with trio

With his former bandmate Stephan Remmler and the drummer Peter Behrens , he founded the band Trio in 1979, which was one of the best-known representatives of the Neue Deutsche Welle in 1982 after the hit Da Da Da . While Stephan Remmler contributed most of the lyrics to Trio , most of the music came from Krawinkel. He always had a conspicuous sticker on his guitar that showed the city coat of arms of Wiesmoor . As early as 1982, Krawinkel built up a second musical mainstay alongside Trio and joined the band around Marius Müller-Westernhagen , with whom he released the album Das Herz eines Boxers in autumn 1982 .

At the beginning of 1983, Krawinkel was involved in the Greens' election campaign for the 1983 federal election . Together with his befriended band Egal 88 , he appeared several times at the political event Grüne Raupe, which Fritz Rau had organized.

In 1984 Trio withdrew from the public for about a year. During this time Kralle played again in the band of Marius Müller-Westernhagen as lead guitarist, released the album Die Sonne so rot with him and went on tour with Westernhagen in Germany.

In 1985, Krawinkel took on a double role in the trio feature film Three Against Three . Since his voice sounded too North German, it was dubbed by Arne Elsholtz . During the filming, he met the television producer Monika Kölling, who was responsible for the extra series for the feature film. The couple were in a relationship until Krawinkel's death and married in late 2013.

Solo career

In 1988, Krawinkel played a supporting role in the German film Killing Blue, shot in Berlin, alongside Armin Mueller-Stahl .

After Trio broke up in 1986, it was very quiet around Krawinkel for a long time. In 1989 he moved from Großenkneten to Berlin and worked with his musician friend Wilfried Szyslo on a solo album Kralle, which was released in 1993. Krawinkel wrote the lyrics for the album entirely in English, but had his friend Rio Reiser translate them into German. On the single 'n Centimeter Love', Nena worked as a duet partner. The album was commercially unsuccessful. The production of a second planned album did not even begin.

Krawinkel had his own music studio in his adopted country of Spain near Seville . He also lived in an apartment in Berlin. He had largely withdrawn from the music scene and only made music with his long-time friend Wilfried Szyslo. Instead, Krawinkel pursued his hobbies, western riding and olive growing. In 1998, Krawinkel secured an entry in the Guinness Book of Records when he undertook the world's longest equestrian hike from Seville to Hamburg on his horse Estrellita .

A comeback of his former band Trio failed around the turn of the millennium due to different musical ideas from Stephan Remmler and Krawinkel.

death

In autumn 2013 Kralle Krawinkel was diagnosed with bronchial carcinoma , of which he died on February 16, 2014 at the age of 66 in Cuxhaven. He left a son from a previous relationship before Monika Kölling.

In 2019, the limited album @ The Hoodoos was released posthumously , on which Wilfried Szyslo self-published a series of demo recordings that had been made during the years of his collaboration with Kralle.

Discography

Albums

• 1970 LP Cravinkel : Cravinkel (1997 re-release on CD)
• 1971 LP Cravinkel: Garden of Loneliness
• 1993 CD Claw
• 2019 CD @ The Hoodoos

Singles

• 1971 Cravinkel: Keep on Running
• 1993 Cadillac
• 1993 'n centimeter love feat. Nena

Web links

• Works by and about Kralle Krawinkel in the catalog of the German National Library
• www.krallekrawinkel.com
• Booklet CD "Cravinkel"
• Gert, claw 'Krawinkel in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Wilhelmshavener Zeitung , September 11, 2010, p. 44
2. ↑ No new beginning for “Trio”. (No longer available online.) Cuxhavener Nachrichten , December 28, 2002, archived from the original on February 22, 2014 ; Retrieved February 18, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ Vampyrs. Mikiwiki, November 17, 2011, accessed June 24, 2015 . 
4. ↑ ^{a b} Edo Reents: The Dadaist from Großenkneten , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , February 18, 2014
5. ↑ Kinga Rustler: At the age of 66: Ex-trio guitarist Krawinkel died of lung cancer. In: Focus Online . February 18, 2014, accessed October 14, 2018 . 
6. ↑ NDW band Trio: Kralle Krawinkel is dead , Der Spiegel , February 18, 2014
7. ↑ Former trio guitarist Krawinkel died of lung cancer , Focus , February 18, 2014
8. ↑ Marschall, Klaus-Jürgen: The clown with the drum: my years with a trio - but not only . Hand-signed and numbered special edition, 1st edition Schwarzkopf et Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2013, ISBN 3-86265-282-3 , p. 252 .