Kurt Maloo

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Kurt Maloo (2009)

Kurt Maloo (born April 16, 1953 in Zurich ; real name Kurt Meier ) is a Swiss singer , composer and music producer . He became internationally known in the 1980s as the front man of the band Double , which landed a world hit in 1986 with The Captain of Her Heart . The song, which Maloo co-composed, is his greatest success to date. Since the dissolution of Double in 1989 he has been active as a solo artist.

Family background

Maloo was born in Zurich. His parents were Arnold and Babette Meier. The father was a director of a bank. Music played an important role in the family. Maloo learned to play the guitar at the age of 11. He completed his training as a businessman at the Swiss Business School in Zurich, but did not work in this profession.

Maloo is married to the former mannequin Anja Müller. The couple lived in Paris for a few years from 1986 . Their daughter was born there in 1991. They later moved to Hamburg , where their son was born in 1994 and the family is still alive.

plant

In the early 1970s, his professional training was followed by assignments as an extra at the Schauspielhaus Zurich , which served to cover his living expenses. There were also first attempts as a concept artist and painter . As a «young wilder» he appeared several times at vernissages with an electric guitar.

It was at this time that the artist name Kurt Maloo was chosen, which allegedly had "purely phonetic reasons". Dieter Meier's suggestion to call himself “Rudi Buenos Aires” he did not take up.

MAEZ

Together with Marc Gubler, Hans Bosshard and Rene Ruegg, with whom he was living in a shared apartment in Zurich at the time, Maloo formed the artist group MAEZ (Modern Art Ensemble Zurich) in 1975. She hosted happenings and conceptual art. Maloo combined some performances with music.

Troppo

Over the course of the year, MAEZ developed into the band Troppo , which initially had nine members. The band made their debut in December 1976 with a concert in the Rote Fabrik in Zurich. Troppo played art punk music, which Maloo described in retrospect as "loud, chaotic and different". Their program was based on the New York Dolls and Funkadelic . Little by little, some musicians separated from the band, which at times performed with six or four members, mainly in Switzerland, until Troppo was just a trio at the end. In 1978 the band broke up.

Ping pong

After an interlude as a solo artist, Maloo founded the new wave trio Ping Pong in 1980 together with Felix Haug and Hazel Pazzi . Haug was the drummer for the Swiss electronics band Yello . Maloo took on vocals and guitar, and Pazzi was the bass player. Stylistically, ping pong was based on The Police . Initially, the band made a number of live performances in Switzerland. In 1982 Ping Pong released the single Rhythm Walk , which was a local hit. Later the band played with producer Phil Manzanera in the studio of the British band Roxy Music a few recordings of songs that Maloo had written. However, these versions were not published. Shortly afterwards, Ping Pong received a contract with a Teldec subsidiary, who had the songs produced again, this time in Frankfurt , together with other material . The recordings appeared in 1982 on the album From Exile . On July 14, 1982 the band played at the Montreux Jazz Festival . In the fall of 1982 Pazzi left the band.

Double

Ping pong and double: Kurt Maloo (right) and Felix Haug (1986 in San Remo)

After Pazzi's exit, Maloo and Haug continued on their own. They changed the band's name to Double. In 1983 the duo's first single, Naningo , was released, 44 of which were sold according to Maloo. In 1984 the Maxisingles Rangoon Moon and Woman of the World followed , which found 4,000 and 25,000 buyers respectively. A self-produced black and white video for Rangoon Moon ran temporarily in heavy rotation on VH1 .

In autumn 1985, Double finally released the first album, Blue . It includes new recordings of Rangoon Moon and Woman of the World and six new songs, including The Captain of Her Heart . The recordings for this were made in Stein am Rhein in the Picar Studio of the Swiss producer Herbert Hofmann, who himself was a successful singer under the stage name Phil Carmen , and in the studio of the Cologne band Can . Outstanding was The Captain of Her Heart , which with a striking piano - reef begins. One critic said that Maloo, whose singing seemed “out of his sleeve”, appeared “even cooler than Bryan Ferry ” in this song , and that Christian Ostermeier had played “the best saxophone solo this side of Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street ”. The Captain of Her Heart became a world hit. The single was released in the top 10 in Germany and England , and top 20 in Austria , Switzerland and the USA . The release of the album in 1986 was accompanied by an extensive promotional tour lasting more than a year; there was, however, no tour with live concerts.

In 1986 work began on the follow-up album, Dou3le . The recordings were made in Zurich at the beginning of 1987. Guest musicians included Herb Alpert and the Polish multi-instrumentalist Michał Urbaniak , who, against Maloo's will, played a "long wild solo" on an electric violin at Devils Ball and, in Maloo's opinion, destroyed the song's potential for hits. Dou3le was released in the late summer of 1987. The album could not build on the success of Blue . It was only commercially successful in Switzerland. An elaborate video was created for the single Devils Ball , which took up the imagery of Jean Cocteau's experimental film The Blood of a Poet (1930). Regardless of this effort, Devils Ball only made it into the charts in Great Britain and did not go beyond number 71.

The first work on a third album began at the end of 1988. At that time, Maloo and Haug had different ideas about the band's further development: while Maloo wanted to stick to the conventional pop song format, Haug was more experimental and, according to Maloo, imagined “cinematographic soundscapes”. In February 1989, Maloo and Haug separated before the third album was completed. In the mid-1990s, they recorded some songs together again, but they were not published. At the beginning of the 2000s, there were considerations to produce a new double album with this material. Before it came to that, Haug died. The work from this time eventually flowed into Maloo's 2006 album Loopy Avenue .

Solo artist

Already after the end of the band Troppo, Maloo had recorded their first solo single with Giant Lady in 1979. The following year the EP album Luna followed, Luna + 7 Notorious Maloo Homeworks , most of the songs of which were recorded in Maloo's apartment. The A-side with the title song Luna Luna ran at 45, the B-side with seven other songs, on the other hand, at 33 1 ⁄ 3  revolutions per minute. The EP was pressed 5000 times.

Maloo's first album after Double broke up is called Single . It was first published by Polygram in 1990 and remained without chart placement. The next solo album was originally supposed to be a Polygram production as well. However, the management did not consider Maloo's demo recordings to be promising, and because no agreement could be reached, Polygram paid Maloo a "relatively high compensation so that they did not have to release the record." Maloo ultimately produced the album without a label. The recordings were made again in the Can studio in Weilerswist . After the recordings were completed, Maloo received a contract from Mambo Music , a sub-label of Sony Entertainment , which they released as an album in 1995 under the title Soul & Echo . Also Soul & Echo was out of the charts. Only in Greece was the single Young King a minor hit. After a ten-year break and two years after Haug's death, Maloo released the album Loopy Avenue on the Hamburg label Edel Records in 2006 , which contains well-known double hits in a newly arranged form as well as previously unreleased recordings by Maloo and Haug from the 1990s. Maloo wanted to "bring the double issue to a conciliatory conclusion." In 2009, Maloo released the album Summer of Better Times on Verve Records' label Verve Forecast , which contained new material and was almost completely recorded in his Hamburg apartment. Guest musicians, including a Sicilian violinist and the Greek choir Putokazi, recorded their contributions on site and transmitted them electronically to Maloo. With the songs from Summer of Better Times and old double pieces, Maloo went on tour again for the first time in two decades. His last album so far is What About , which he released in November 2014 under his own label CafeSwizz Productions. Maloo also works nationally with other artists, including the Norwegian DJ Rune Lindbæk .

Kurt Maloo and The Captain of Her Heart

The Captain of Her Heart was a world hit, and Maloo was unable to build on its success with either a double or a single. It is therefore commonly described as a one hit wonder . In contrast to other authors and performers of such titles, Maloo has not publicly distanced itself from its greatest success. For Maloo, the song, which he calls "The Captain" for short, meant financial independence. According to a newspaper report from 2017, as a co-author of the management company SUISA , he receives "a five-digit amount every quarter for the song." In an interview with SRF in October 2014, Maloo stated: "The captain pays me the rent."

Discography

With ping pong

album

  • 1982: From Exile

single

  • 1982: Rhythm Walk

With double

Albums

  • 1985: Blue
  • 1987: DOU3LE
  • 2006: Loopy Avenue (Kurt Maloo vs. Double)

Singles

  • 1983: Double (including Naningo , El Dorado and Es )
  • 1984: Rangoon Moon
  • 1984: Woman of the World
  • 1985: Your Prayer Takes Me Off
  • 1985: The Captain of Her Heart
  • 1986: Tomorrow
  • 1987: Devils Ball
  • 1987: Gliding
  • 2010: Handle (with FDH) (Japan only)

As a solo artist

Albums

  • 1980: Luna, Luna + 7 Notorious Maloo Homeworks (mini album, limited)
  • 1990: single
  • 1995: Soul & Echo
  • 2006: Loopy Avenue (Kurt Maloo vs. Double)
  • 2010: Summer of Better Times
  • 2014: What About

Singles

  • 1979: Giant Lady
  • 1990: Lovegrow
  • 1991: End of the Season
  • 1995: The Captain of Her Heart
  • 1995: Young King
  • 1996: Jealousy
  • 2010: Afterglow
  • 2012: Wonder (Rune Lindbæk feat. Kurt Maloo)
  • 2016: City of Rain

literature

  • Kurt Maloo: The Captain of Her Heart's Log , BookBaby, 2013, ISBN 9781483511931 .
  • Kurt Maloo: Training to become a captain , CafeSwizz Productions, 2013.

Web links

Commons : Kurt Maloo  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kurt Maloo: Training as a Captain , CafeSwizz Productions, 2013, p. 15.
  2. ↑ a b c d Back To the 80s: Interview with Kurt Maloo (June 21, 2013) at http://oldschool.tblog.com (archived version) (accessed April 3, 2020).
  3. ↑ Kurt Maloo: Training as a Captain , CafeSwizz Productions, 2013, pp. 30, 32.
  4. ↑ Linus Schöpfer: The one great melody . Tages-Anzeiger from August 20, 2014.
  5. ↑ Kurt Maloo: Training as a Captain , CafeSwizz Productions, 2013, p. 70.
  6. ↑ a b Jürg Zbinden: The captain of hearts. www.nzz.ch, February 8, 2016, accessed April 4, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Kurt Maloo: Training as a Captain , CafeSwizz Productions, 2013, p. 56.
  8. ↑ Kurt Maloo: Training as a captain , CafeSwizz Productions, 2013, p. 74 f.
  9. ↑ Hazel Pazzi on the website www.discogs.com (accessed April 2, 2020).
  10. ↑ Kurt Maloo: Training as a Captain , CafeSwizz Productions, 2013, pp. 87–91.
  11. ↑ Setlist of the Montreux Jazz Festival 1982 on www.setlist.fm (accessed on April 3, 2020).
  12. ↑ a b history of the band Double on the website www.doublecity.com (accessed on April 3, 2020).
  13. ↑ a b Blue on the website www.allmusic.com (accessed on April 3, 2020).
  14. ↑ Stewart Mason: Double: The Captain of Her Heart. www.allmusic.com, accessed April 3, 2020 .
  15. ↑ a b i: vibes interview with Kurt Maloo from July 26, 2011 (accessed on April 3, 2020).
  16. ↑ Kurt Maloo: Training as a Captain , CafeSwizz Productions, 2013, p. 114.
  17. ↑ Kurt Maloo: Training as a Captain , CafeSwizz Productions, 2013, p. 116.
  18. ↑ Kurt Maloo: Training as a captain , CafeSwizz Productions, 2013, p. 81 f.
  19. ↑ Kurt Maloo: Training as a Captain, CafeSwizz Productions , 2013, p. 129.
  20. ↑ Soul & Echo at www.discogs.com (accessed April 4, 2020).
  21. ↑ Kurt Maloo: Training to become a captain, CafeSwizz Productions , 2013, p. 132 f.
  22. ↑ Loopy Avenue at www.discogs.com (accessed April 4, 2020).
  23. ↑ Kurt Maloo: Training as a Captain, CafeSwizz Productions , 2013, p. 136.
  24. ↑ Kurt Maloo: Training as a Captain, CafeSwizz Productions , 2013, p. 136.
  25. ↑ Kurt Maloo: Training as a Captain , CafeSwizz Productions, 2013, p. 117.
  26. ^ Philipp Albrecht, Marc Kowalsky: How Swiss Artists Earn Good Money Today. www.handelszeitung.ch, January 24, 2017, accessed April 4, 2020 .
  27. ↑ Kurt Maloo: The captain pays me the rent - Interview by Franziska von Grünigen from October 28, 2014 (accessed on April 4, 2020).
personal data
SURNAME Maloo, Kurt
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Meier, Kurt (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss musician
DATE OF BIRTH April 16, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Zurich , Switzerland