Peter Maffay started his career as a pop star and became one of Germany’s biggest rock stars. He is now 75 years old.
It is a rare case that artists who have involuntarily ended up in the pop music business pull the ripcord and return to their original musical preferences. Especially when they are celebrating great success as a pop star and could simply carry on as before. Rock legend Peter Maffay (75) was brave enough to take this risky step.
Career start as a schmaltzy singer
After he had a brilliant career start in 1969 as a crooner (“Du”), which made him a regular guest on the “ZDF Hit Parade” and “Bravo”, he split from his first producer Michael Kunze (80) in 1973 in order to strike a rockier tone in a leather jacket and skin-tight jeans. By the time of his album “Steppenwolf” (1979) he had completely emancipated himself musically from pop music, even if it still resonates in his lyrics today.
Metamorphosis into the rocking “Steppenwolf”
The resounding success of this album, which immediately climbed to the top of the German album charts and sold record numbers, impressively demonstrated that the singer, who was born in Romania on August 30, 1949, had succeeded in his drastic image change. And he was now able to use his distinctive rolling R even more dramatically in the rock’n’roll business. For example, in his 1980 super hit “Über sieben Brücken muss du geh’n”, a cover version of a song by the GDR rock band Karat.
In one of his comments a few years ago about this period of change, he said: “This metamorphosis was enormously important. It made me rebellious. Close your eyes and get through it: it had to be done.”
Rolling Stones disaster 1982
Maffay had to learn the hard way in 1982 that the former pop singer’s change of image to a hard rocker in the early 1980s had not yet been widely accepted, when he was booked as the opening act for several Rolling Stones concerts in Germany.
In 2024, Maffay looked back with horror on the worst concert experiences of his life in “Rolling Stone”. “Everything flew onto the stage – including eggs. It was a shock. It was humiliating,” said the singer. “At the end I still felt like guillotining us.”
Heavy metal debut in Wacken
55 years after the release of “Steppenwolf”, Peter Maffay can look back on a breathtaking career as a German rocker. With 20 number one albums and over 50 million records sold, he is one of the most successful German-speaking musicians ever.
This year he even appeared on stage at the Wacken Open Air for the first time – albeit only as a guest star of the rocking comedian Bülent Ceylan (48, “I love people”). There he was not booed by the assembled heavy metal fans, but received with respect and applause – even if some Wacken fans were outraged on social media afterwards and joked about whether Helene Fischer (40) might come next year.
A rock star with his feet on the ground
Even though Maffay started out as a rocker, he was always unfamiliar with any rock’n’roll attitude. He told the “Berliner Morgenpost”: “I never really wanted glitz and glamour. And I never understood these strange clichés about smashed guitars in hotel rooms anyway.” He added: “That’s not my idea of rock’n’roll. For me, rock’n’roll means freedom of thought and action. And a platform to be in good contact with other people, in community.”
In a recent interview with “Stern” he answered the question about what role the classic mixture of “sex, drugs and rock’n’roll” played in his life: “I have never taken drugs. And I have enjoyed rock’n’roll as much as I could – and will continue to do so in the future.”
“We Love Rock’n’Roll – Farewell Tour 2024”
Under the motto “We Love Rock’n’Roll”, Peter Maffay, who has now matured into a crumpled rock dinosaur, completed his “Farewell Tour 2024” in June and July of this year, with which he officially ended his stage career – at least as far as the arena mega shows he was used to up to now are concerned.
As the musician told “Stern”, he wants to focus primarily on his family in the coming years. After all, in 2018 he became the father of a daughter, Anouk (5), with his new partner Hendrikje Balsmeyer (37) in his old age.
“I think that the right time comes for most things in my life,” he told the magazine. “There are just slightly different priorities in my life: the family, my son, our little daughter, Hendrikje, my wife… I just want to pay a little more attention to that in the time window that I still have available.” However, this does not mean that he will no longer make music or play concerts in the future. But there will no longer be tours on the scale of those he has just completed.
Son Yaris follows in Maffay’s footsteps
On his big “farewell tour”, the legendary German rock star also sent the next Maffay generation into the race in the form of his son Yaris (20). In the opening act of his shows, the musically ambitious junior was able to present some of his first songs, which he released a few weeks ago on his debut EP “Yaris”.
Even if Yaris may be visually reminiscent of the scandal bard Gil Ofarim (42), musically he clearly follows in the footsteps of his famous father and delivers a similar mixture in songs such as “Abenteuer” or “Nur mit Dir” with which he also had great success: genuine rock’n’roll – with a very small pinch of pop music.
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.
