Konstantin Wecker: Liedermacher can hardly play the piano

Konstantin Wecker (78) has been known as a musician and songwriter for decades, but today he can hardly play the piano. He has that. There is no precise diagnosis, presumably it is damage to several nerves.

“The left hand in particular always had failures,” says Wecker. “I didn’t take it seriously at first, thought, maybe you just have a bad day, it goes away again.” He speaks of a creeping process in which nothing had passed and “it got worse from week to week”.

The fact that “the constant consumption of the nerve poison only led alcohol to my illness”, Konstantin Wecker was firmly convinced. He could hardly play, only simple melodies are possible: “Like a little child. Like a beginner. There is nothing more in it. And it will probably not be anymore. There is no view of healing.”

For him it is “an extremely hard challenge” to accept that he can no longer play big privately. Sitting on his piano was “pure meditation” for him. “I never practiced, I just played, completely lost in music. Often three hours at a time.”

Among other things, his new book “Love”, which will be released on September 1 – at the Imprint Bene! The Droemer Knaur publishing group. According to the description, alarm clock in the book. He clinging in it “also not the dark times: depression, melancholy, alcohol addiction, drug rush, numerous crashes, delusions, anger, sadness. He writes for decades of searching and a turn on the abyss.”

He also described a kind of turn in conversation with the magazine “Time Crime” around 2021. An earlier detention for possession of cocaine had called Wecker a “blessing”. “In my case, the arrest was my only last chance to get rid of my addiction,” he said. “I was so incredible that I wanted a heart attack at the time just so that I was to be instructed to a clinic. I knew that I couldn’t get out of misery alone.”