Peter Maffay: “As boys we smoked everything”

“The scent of the big wide world” – for rock musician Peter Maffay (71) as a child in Romania these were empty cigarette packets that he and his friends begged from foreign hotel guests. This is what Maffay, who will publish his new album “So Weit” on September 17th, describes in an interview with the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung”. This is how he got in touch with western culture. “We sniffed at it,” says the musician. “As boys we smoked everything – from grated nut leaves, because they didn’t cost anything, to cigarettes that foreigners gave us.”

He also tells us in an interview how he got into music. His mother had “ordered him to take violin lessons” when he was seven years old. She made it his job to play the Toselli Serenade for her at some point. When he was 14 years old, he played the serenade for her and said, “Well, that’s it,” he looks back. “She then liberally dismissed me and I was able to start playing the guitar.”

Peter Maffay corrects Armin Laschet: “Didn’t give him a leather jacket”

In the NOZ interview, Peter Maffay also corrects a statement by the CDU chancellor candidate Armin Laschet (60), with whom he has been friends for several years. The politician recently shared an anecdote that the musician was said to have given him one of his leather jackets on his 50th birthday. Maffay makes it clear: The leather jacket was only borrowed. “We were in Israel together and supported an exchange between Israeli-Palestinian and German students,” he recalls. At a press conference, the two of them swapped jackets “just for fun”, but he got his jacket back afterwards. “I won’t give my leather jackets.”