Nino de Angelo has experienced everything. The rise, the deep fall. After serious illnesses, drugs and alcohol, he made a comeback in 2021. His new album is out now.
Many people to whom his name means something, and especially Nino de Angelo himself, no longer expected that things would go really smoothly for him professionally. The man who achieved meteoric rise in the German chart sky in the early 1980s with the song “Jenseits von Eden” has repeatedly attempted a comeback. It failed again and again.
“I’ve thought that so many times,” says de Angelo (59) in an interview with the German Press Agency, “Man, Nino, your time is over.” His name still popped up regularly in the celebrity news. It wasn’t so much about music, but about drugs, alcohol or far too much debt.
De Angelo’s love life also offered plenty of material: he was married four times and divorced four times. When the teen heartthrob from 2015 at the age of 51 was seen on the Sat.1 show “Promi Big Brother”, crying and completely drunk, the absolute low point seemed to have been reached.
Nino del Angelo’s comeback came in 2021
But then the album “Gesegnet und Ver cursed” came out in 2021. For this, de Angelo had worked with Chris Harms. Harms is the frontman of the dark rock band Lord Of The Lost, who represent Germany in the Eurovision Song Contest on May 13th.
De Angelo, who was otherwise associated with Schlager, suddenly sounded mystical and gloomy and was compared to the sound of the band “Unheilig” (“Born to live”). The album, in which he sings about his inner life, reached number two in the German charts. Nino de Angelo was back, around 40 years after the start of his career.
De Angelo, whose real name is Domenico Gerhard Gorgoglione, traveled to Berlin to talk to journalists about his new album “From Eternity to Eternity”. He has been living with his girlfriend Simone Lux (48) on a horse farm in the Allgäu for several years. The two appear together to meet in a hotel suite with a view of the Victory Column.
De Angelo’s handshake is firm, he’s in a good mood. Before the interview he went for a stroll with Simone on Kurfürstendamm. There he saw posters for his tour of Germany, which starts in autumn. “It’s my first tour with a band. I’m very proud of that,” he says.
It’s about the search for authenticity
If someone had told him that five years ago, he probably wouldn’t have believed it. In 2018 he stopped playing music. Because he “simply didn’t feel like it anymore”. Shortly before that, another album by him, for which he was supposed to deliver “commercial German music”, flopped. “Because the Nino de Angelo guy, who you’ve read so much about, who’s experienced so much, just isn’t authentic with this kind of music,” he says.
The search for authenticity – that’s what it’s all about when de Angelo talks about his time in the music business. And what can happen if you do something over the long term that you don’t stand behind. “It will take revenge at some point. It took revenge on me.”
After the mega hit “Jenseits von Eden” he was put in the hit drawer, although the song wasn’t a hit at all – and he himself wanted to go in the direction of rock music. “Instead it became a hit, more and more hits.” The success with it was moderate.
In the hope of getting back to the top, he “sold himself again” in 1989. In order to be able to take part in the Grand Prix (ESC), he works with Dieter Bohlen, sings two tracks for his album “Rivalen der Rennbahn” for the then successful TV series and the ESC competition song “Flieger”, which only ends up in the middle.
Alcohol, drugs and bad health
“I thought: fuck it, do it, you can sing this shit drunk too,” says de Angelo. “These were all mistakes that cost me a lot of time and got me to where I was.” The alcohol, the cocaine. “I just wasn’t worth myself enough anymore.”
He also has to contend with health blows: cancer, an immune deficiency disease, heart bypasses, vocal cord paralysis. Finally, the lung disease COPD, which makes breathing difficult.
His girlfriend Simone encouraged him to try music again. “It was very funny. When we first met a few years ago, she said: Nino de Angelo? I thought you weren’t alive anymore. Besides, I only listen to rock.” He played her songs with rock attempts that he had been in the drawer for years. “Then she said: You’re a rocker and you sing hits. Why don’t you make rock music?”
He didn’t expect that he would end up with such a success with “Blessed and Cursed”. “I was convinced, but I wasn’t under any pressure at all. I was really happy. But the actual success for me was that I did something that nobody would talk to me about.”
A completely different feeling on stage
This is also noticeable on stage. “I suddenly have a completely different feeling on stage, as if I’ve arrived,” says de Angelo. “I notice that there is such magic, down to the audience. I just didn’t have that when I sang hits. Then I thought: Well, now I have to rape myself again.” When he leaves the stage today, he feels happy.
The new album, for which he has worked with a new team, is now less dark than the previous one and a little more rocking with more guitars. It’s about his past with all its abysses, but also looks hopefully to a bright future. “It’s like a manual on how to get up again when you’re on the ground,” says Nino de Angelo.
Musically, it can’t be compared to anything else in Germany. “I think I invented my own brand. And that’s exactly where I always wanted to go.”
Source: Stern
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
