Giorgio Moroder on the opening day of the film festival Munich
It is the 30 film festival they celebrate in Munich - and for the anniversary have they Giorgio Moroder invited the Italian musician, whose Karriere began as a producer and composer forty years ago in Munich; the man who invented the genre of music called disco. And, when he then after America went that became one of the most successful film composers. He has won for "Top Gun", "Flashdance" and "Midnight Express", three Academy Awards. And for the soundtrack to "Scarface", "American Gigolo" and "Cat People" the goers worship him. Hansjörg Moroder, born in 1940 in Ortisei in Val Gardena, speaks with South Tyrolean dialect and a great enthusiasm for everything is music.
Has the city of Munich is ever thanks to you, it lent an order you or the honorary citizenship?
No.
Where but the whole myth of Munich in the 1970s, has its origin in Giorgio Moroder's Musicland Studio with the rolling stones, Queen, and disco. The musicians came to Munich, to include in your Studio records.
I had actually set up the Studio for myself. Hardly I had finished, someone by the record company called and said: Marc Bolan of t. Rex urgently needs a Studio. Two months. I've rented it because it was good money, and when Bolan was done, I could work one or two weeks. Then phoned Ian Stewart, who at that time was the pianist for the rolling stones. Whether he once could look at the Studio. I said: it is still a bit funky...
What does funky here?
The mixer was small and not up to date, the whole Studio was still very simple. "I don't think that Mick Jagger here wants to take," I said. But Stewart said: the stones, the simple want exactly that. Everything has started. After the stones came Queen then Elton John came, so it went off.
What was so special?
It was only a very small Studio, then have I to rented rooms. I knew many studios throughout Europe, and almost all were uncomfortable, square. I wanted a studio where the musicians feel comfortable. There was a couch, a table where you could eat. And because a hotel was up, the musicians with the elevator could go home.
The times in which it itself was to smash hotel rooms, were over?
The hotel room has decomposed none. Rather the Studio.
Who?
"Presence" recorded in the fall of 1975 in Munich led Zeppelin, I was not there, but when I came back, it was said that bad things are happening there, one of my employees had to race because someone followed him with a knife. They were crazy, these people.
All?
No, most were like there. Freddie Mercury has the most loved it; He had his friend in Munich, he has recorded during the day, at night they are drawn by the discos.
Mick Jagger in the "sugar shack", Freddie Mercury in the bars around the Gärtnerplatz: How to be the seventy in Munich. Were you there?
No, if a band has hired the Studio, I did prefer to Italy. In the clubs I went only for a reason. I worked always on very rhythmic music, and sometimes I went with the demo tapes in the "Eastside", where I knew the DJ. And then I've observed whether the people to my things dance or whether they go away from the dance floor. You can get a very good feel for since, whether a song is running or not.
This was before the breakthrough with Donna Summer and "Love to Love You, Baby"?
I had previously recorded a song with her, who was called "the hostage" and had run aground somewhat. But "Love to Love You, Baby", that was it. The harsh, electronic rhythm, "four on the floor" called that in English. And to the voice of Donna, melodic, not hard. This was a hit even in America.
Even Brian Eno, who would rather be had to have been beside himself.
This was a little later, with "I feel Love". ENO was in Berlin and has worked with David Bowie. And one day he enters the Studio and says: "David, we can stop to search for the music of the future, I have found it, they already exist." So it told later David Bowie me.
A popular legend says you had invented disco only because the Studio was just free. And because electronic music was cheaper to produce much.
I had time with Donna talked that one would have to make a song that would be further as "je t'aime, moi non plus". And when she then came up with the line "Love to Love You Baby" and the moaning, there were out there just the stones out of the Studio. I have taken my guitar and so a Click Clack, a small loop produces. She has sung and gestöhnt. And a few days later we recorded right there, with musicians. It was not the cost actually.
So was so disco in the world.
I went to the music industry to Cannes, to introduce the song, and in between the fear that one since would kick me, with this music, this moaning came over me. But even there, it was a huge hit.
And then they are very classic, went to the United States.
To Los Angeles. I would never moved to Chicago, after New York.
Because you absolutely wanted for the film?
No, I never wanted to film. The people who compose music, are almost always from classical music, they have studied this. I had nothing more than two hits.
The Director Alan Parker liked well enough.
It was the bass in "I feel love", he was found so mysterious. Alan Parker moved to Munich and said, so he also wanted something quite dramatic. I have sent him later a demo of "The Chase", and he said, Yes, that's it. And suddenly, I was the pop-man, a composer...
.. .the equal an Oscar... got
...Dabei I have never learned that: music to write and to read.
What have you learned really?
Nothing, with 15, 16, I began to play guitar. I was not particularly good. With a small group, I had a commitment in the Switzerland, and the pianist said that as a guitarist, I was not good enough: try times with bass!
Why go from South Tyrol to Munich? And not to Milan, but just as closely located?
I have asked myself occasionally that. There was the possibility of times, but then it was: no, the Italian artist write their stuff themselves. And I thought to myself: maybe is not as an international city. I wanted to be a composer, and I wanted the international success. It does not interest me, to have a hit in Italy.
So you moved the city Munich.
Previously, I was in Berlin, where an aunt lived. I turned to the producer Peter Meisel, who wanted but not to me as a composer. Already as a sound engineer. Michael Holms "Mendocino" was the biggest hit I've produced there. You remember?
"Mendocino, Mendocino, I go every day after Mendocino".
I am really once went there, it lies north of San Francisco, on the Pacific coast.
A man driving the Pacific Coast Highway. Blondie sings in the background "Color me your color, baby, color me your car!" Their best film music: "American Gigolo"!
I would personally prefer "Midnight Express". A few years ago I've looked at again him. And thought: my God, I've had that courage. When I today give the job to write the music for this movie, I would not trust me, to come with such sounds.
Can it be that music has become barren? Either there is symphonic, in empty, pompous major. Or someone like Tarantino plays his favorite pieces on the soundtrack.
Great films, it has become monotonous. Everything has to sound big, there is a bit too much of everything. A two hour movie there is music today eighty to ninety minutes. "Midnight Express" were thirty, in "American Gigolo" perhaps not.
And where are the film songs, which then become hits in its own right. "Call Me", "putting out fire", "Flashdance"?
The times have changed. 1980 you could go to Blondie and ask: we have an original song - you want him sing? When I go to a big star today, my song can be so good: he will say beautiful, but I have my own song. You want all the recognition as a composer.
In an obituary on Donna Summer was to read, Giorgio Moroder was important and influential as a power station for the development of electronic music. What I find so interesting: that the machine music is always attributed to Teutonic sources. Munich, Düsseldorf...
Probably power plant, just like I have this album by Walter Carlos heard at that time, "switched-on Bach", where the possibilities of the Moog synthesizer for the first time seemed to. The difference is, I think the, that power station have used the synthesizer as a computer. He was an instrument for me. Nile Rodgers of the Group chic has me times tells how long he pursued until it the intro of "I feel love", this Didldidldidldadl on the guitar could play. He was very disappointed when they told him: this is a computer, not a musician.
It was but you who used the computer.
The computer is the only instrument I really master. I was not a good guitarist, I was certainly not a good pianist. That is why I focused on the synthesizer. Because that was what I even could not.
Interview by Claudius Seidl.
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/giorgio-moroder-im-gespraech-sie-waren-verrueckt-diese-leute-11813301.html
