Roy Black between family and alcohol: This is how his son commemorates him today

It is one of his few, modest sources of income-so Torsten Höllerich recently described the “Bild” newspaper: Roy Black’s son has been commemorating his father who died in 1991 for several months. Höllerich has uploaded 29 videos there since February.

He wanted to tell how it is when you had a famous father like him. “I think that brings his very own problems,” said the 48-year-old in one of the clips. After all, Roy Black, with a bourgeois name Gerhard Höllerich, was one of the most successful pop singers of the 60s and 70s. As an actor, he also made a name for himself in home films and stupid comedies. His early death at the age of only 48 caused dismay, he died of heart failure.

Höllerich, who has lived in Colombia for 20 years, looks back on his father’s career on his channel. Like this from appearance to appearance, often for little money. And he tells private anecdotes, also from his childhood. For example, that Roy Black only drank tea in the morning, no coffee and liked to put on classical music. He also reveals that the urn burial took place secretly early in the morning so that the press did not get any photos. But Höllerich also says that his father was little at home and appeals to Roy Black’s alcohol addiction.

“He could probably have lived for many more years if the alcohol hadn’t been,” he says in one of the clips, which also shows recordings of his father’s appearance, in which he was too drunk to pass on. As a child, he was afraid for him and around himself when the singer had drunk. “Not that he was violent, but of course he was a completely different person.”

As an adult later, Torsten Höllerich himself had problems with alcohol, so he was able to understand his father better. It was only last year that he voluntarily went to a withdrawal clinic after he had gone through difficult times. Among other things, he lived on the street for a short time.

Today there is nothing left of his father’s legacy – DM 400,000. “I’m going through. There are months, I don’t know how to pay the 200 euro rent for our apartment,” he told the “picture”. And that he deserves about 150 euros a month with the YouTube films about himself and his father. There are also occasional jobs as an interpreter and translator and around 2000 euros a year on royalties from songs by Roy Black.

But privately there was a small happy ending for Höllerich: after a miscarriage in 2023, he and his son’s mother had actually separated. The custody of the five-year-old son was awarded to the divorce of his ex-wife Maria Fernanda. Now the two have found each other again, like Höllerich

“I am very happy about it, also for our son. I am a divorce child myself and know how difficult it is if you have to choose a parent as a child, even though you both love,” he says. Also as far as the financial situation is concerned, he stays relaxed: “For me, happiness does not mean the volume in the account.”