For his 90th birthday: Unpublished song by Udo Jürgens discovered in the archive

The song “Als ich fortging” by Udo Jürgens had been forgotten. Now the old demo recording has been arranged with a new string sound. The discovery turns out to be a classic Jürgens song.

Almost 40 years late, a previously unreleased song by Udo Jürgens is being released. The romantic piano ballad “Als ich fortging” was discovered during work in the archives of a record label. The single will be released on Friday.

On September 30th, Udo Jürgens would have turned 90 years old. The title of the song is a reminder that the star collapsed while taking a walk in his adopted home of Switzerland at the end of 2014 and died shortly afterwards.

“We were always searching inside and hoping to find something else that Udo had written,” said Udo Jürgens’ daughter Jenny Jürgens. The rediscovered song tells of a wistful farewell and at the same time seems like a late, perhaps too late, request for reconciliation.

Demo recording rearranged

The lyrics were written by Michael Kunze, who also contributed the words to Jürgens hits such as “Griechischer Wein” and “Ich war noch niemals in New York”. Jürgens wrote the melody and recorded a demo version, as his children John and Jenny and the Sony Music label announced. The song was written in 1985 for the album “Treibjagd”, but ultimately did not fit into the concept of the record and was archived.

Now drummer and producer Curt Cress has extracted Jürgens’ vocals from the demo tape and added a thoughtful piano part. He placed a broad cloud of strings on top.

Whether you find the violin melody storming towards the sky kitschy, retro or authentic depends on the listener’s age. In any case, it has become a classic Jürgens song. The new old single will also be released on September 27th as part of a best-of collection entitled “Udo 90”.