Stefan Kleinkrieg: “Nothing beats live”

Stefan Kleinkrieg: “Nothing beats live”

Stefan Kleinkrieg releases a new solo album. He has “great hope” that he will finally be able to play concerts again in 2022.

Stefan Kleinkrieg (66) is back with a new solo album. After his comeback with the band Extrabreit, the rocker has music in his luggage again – this time with the hopeful title “The sun is shining for everyone”. The new long player will be released on February 25th. The guitarist was anything but idle during the corona lockdowns. Despite this productivity, he “can’t see anything positive about the pandemic,” as he says in an interview with spot on news. For example, the return of Extrabreit 2020 could not take place as planned.

“The extra wide album ‘AUF EX!’ we recorded at the very beginning of the pandemic and at the time we still firmly believed that we could tour with the material at the end of 2020. Think so, doll!” It quickly became clear: “This tour will not take place!” Stefan Kleinkrieg spent the “ever-longer days” making music – and that’s how the album “The sun shines for everyone” came about. Nevertheless, he emphasizes: “I would have liked to have done without everything and then gone on our annual Christmas blitz tour at the end of 2021. We would have played at some great festivals, in small clubs or anywhere else. Nothing beats live!”

“For me, life begins anew with every breath, every day”

Stefan Kleinkrieg is known for his melancholic songs, but he still gave the album the encouraging title “The sun is shining for everyone”. “I can do both. Deeply sad and hopeless, then again the purest cheerfulness. That gets me down sometimes,” jokes the 66-year-old. At his age, he doesn’t stick with Udo Jürgens’ song “At 66, that’s when life begins”. He would find that “more than sad, almost terrible”. “I also had a really nice couple of hours before I turned 66,” he laughs. “In the period from 25 to 40 you could have built in several ’66s! For me, life begins anew with every breath I take.”

In one of his songs he sings “I’ll never pretend I’m young again”. “I have a deep dislike for people who want to move outside their age group, be it in fashion, in language or in exaggeratedly displaying taste in music,” explains Kleinkrieg. “I was a child of my time and I will remain so.” The guitarist also thinks about death. He deals with the topic “trembling and trembling,” he says. “I’m dealing with it, especially since I’m constantly losing friends as I get older and it doesn’t go in sequence.”

Udo Lindenberg has “a large phone book”

If you pay close attention, you can hear Udo Lindenberg (75) in one of the songs on the album. Because “Claw”, which Kleinkrieg wrote with the panic rocker many years ago, can also be found on it. Lindenberg “made the phone man at the end,” says Kleinkrieg. Last year he “of course hoped” that the hit would also make it onto Lindenberg’s best-of album “Udopium” – none. With that, “a few very welcome crumbs would have fallen from the richly laid table of the upper class,” says the guitarist.

The two have “hardly any contact at all,” the 66-year-old continues. “Udo has a large phone book with probably 60,000 entries. Under K he finds small wars.”

Stefan Kleinkrieg: In the pandemic you have to “stay cool”

Stefan Kleinkrieg is not only back solo, but also with Extrabreit. After more than twelve years, the German rockers released a new album in 2020. The guitarist now has “great hope that this year it will finally be possible to give concerts again”. He not only has these plans with Extrabreit, but also with his young band The Marooned Party Boys, with whom he would like to play the songs from his solo album live.

Nevertheless, he is “prepared for the unthinkable”: “Politics, which cannot even change summer time, although they have been declared pointless for umpteen years, are hardly able to declare a pandemic over. Especially out of fear and that horror of the crowd, a nice little soup can be cooked.” Kleinkrieg’s conclusion: “We have to stay cool!”

Source: Stern

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