The lady with the Dieter Bohlen memorial hairstyle is waiting in front of the toilet before the concert because she forgot something in it: a black canvas bag full of her idol’s merchandise products. Among other things, you will find a car air freshener with the likeness of the blonde bard. And a kind of bobblehead in plank format.
If you visit the self-proclaimed pop titan at his birthday concert on Wednesday evening in the well-filled Theater am Potsdamer Platz, and he comes on stage with somewhat stiff shoulders and his typically slightly nagging speaking voice, then you can’t help but get the impression that this product is completely is well chosen to represent the man who turned 70 on February 7th and is celebrating this big birthday evening with his fans in Berlin.
The real bobblehead dachshund has been an indispensable gem among the older generation of Germans for decades and to this day still has its followers among young people who revere it as a cult. In addition, Bohlen doesn’t move more than necessary on stage, constantly sticks his head forward and has this strangely faithful look into the audience. Dieter Bohlen, the nation’s bobblehead?
This man should not be underestimated. Even if non-fans make fun of him, no one can hide the fact that Dieter Bohlen has made a career that is unparalleled from a voice that is surprisingly underdeveloped for a singer thanks to a rather overdeveloped self-confidence. Born in East Frisia in 1954 and raised on a farm, the composer, singer and TV presenter has long been one of the richest Germans. In 2019, Manager Magazine estimated his fortune at 250 million euros. Above all, he is one of the most successful pop producers in the country. According to his own statements, he is “the only artist who has 25 number 1 hits and has been awarded over 100 gold records”.
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Modern Talking forever
Anyone who looks at videos from his beginnings in the early 80s, after he had studied business administration and entered the music business, will see a man with little vocal talent, but a lot of drive. But it wasn’t until he met his better half, the darkly curly, then 18-year-old Thomas Anders, who together call themselves Modern Talking and sing in English, that the breakthrough came. It was so strong that in just three years, from 1984 until the band’s dissolution in 1987, with the worldwide known songs “You’re my heart, you’re my soul”, “Cheri, Cheri Lady” and “Brother Louie “The unshakeable foundation for Bohlen’s life’s work was laid.
He continues to sing these songs to this day, including again on Wednesday in the capital. And every time the audience goes crazy. There’s not just a nostalgic magic in it, the songs quickly became cult when they were still new. Maybe it’s just Bohlen’s chutzpah to bring together such outrageously simple chords and lines, call them world-class songs, and deliver them with such conviction that the audience can’t help but like them. Almost forced.
Bohlen himself, the 70-year-old, blonde as always, in a black glittering suit – and the longer the performance lasts, the better he appears to be – shows his best side in Berlin. Forget the times when, for “Deutschland sucht den Superstar” on RTL, he beat up scores of young people who, if in doubt, sang no worse than he did. At the beginning of the millennium, Heidi Klum was also a strict model governess at ProSieben mocked every ounce of fat on her “girls”. Nowadays, when dealing with TV candidates on so-called talent shows, appreciation or at least tolerance is more popular, and Bohlen is now announcing in Berlin that the age threshold will “finally” be abolished in the next DSDS season; The candidates will soon be over 30 or 40, perhaps even 60 years old. And if this season isn’t a success, he’ll give a free concert in Berlin.
Pietro Lombardi and Evelyn Burdecki celebrate with us
He’ll be there, promises Pietro Lombardi, his singing pupil from the eighth season. Since the cap-wearing pizza baker from Karlsruhe became the winner of DSDS in 2011 at the age of 18, he hasn’t left Dieter Bohlen’s side – or is it the other way around? In any case, it is only natural that Lombardi is there that evening too, together with other “friends” who Bohlen introduces as such and places on a large couch as: the TV stars Evelyn Burdecki and Sylvie Meis, RTL Presenter Frauke Ludowig, DSDS first winner Alexander Klaws and model Bruce Darnell. And not to forget Bohlen’s 40-year-old girlfriend Carina Walz, whom he now wants to marry after almost 20 years of living together. They all sit on stage during the concert, dance to his hits at the end and answer short questions from Bohlen, the entertainer, between songs. Everyone – except for Evelyn Burdecki, who he forgot, but she gets his birthday bouquet at the end.
Dieter Bohlen is more of a good entertainer than a good singer, and his real talents obviously lie in his immense hard work and his work as a producer. He even once wrote a song for Dionne Warwick, one of the best singers in the world, as he proudly says, with good reason. He even performed “It’s all over” (1991) with her, Whitney Houston’s aunt, and when you watch the video, you can only shake your head at how a man with so little voice dares to do so to perform with such a big voice. But for her it actually became a great song, and Yvonne Catterfeld’s “Für Dich” was also written by Dieter Bohlen. When he sings the song he composed, it’s not even half as good.
The talents are distributed so differently, and Dieter Bohlen has, after 70 years, really gotten everything he could out of himself and others. And in contrast to last year, when he told the Berliner Zeitung in an interview that his family wanted him to slowly retire from the stage, here he gives the impression that he has no plans to do so for a long time.
He has good genes, his father, at the age of 95, struts around the world even faster than his offspring, and he himself would be happy to be able to celebrate his birthday on stage with his fans when he’s 80, says Bohlen. Because they were the ones who always stuck by him throughout his 40-year career, while the press repeatedly trashed him and radio stations blocked his hits. For this reason, in gratitude for their loyalty, he composed a song especially for that evening, “For all your years”, which was only finished at midday.
His bed is too big and he “gives something back”
It sounds a bit like it, but the fans, especially an over-50 audience who have dressed up for their birthday with lots of glitter elements and some with freshly crimped hair, love it. The women are slightly in the majority here, but there are also a lot of couples, and almost everyone pulls out their cell phones at the start of the concert to capture the atmosphere forever, and they stay in the hall almost the entire time to tap along. Every now and then silver confetti rains down from the ceiling and you even get the impression that you are at a really good concert because the crowd is happy and everything is fine. What excites the audience the most is the song “My bed is too big,” and even the last few men are freaking out and shaking their hips.
At the end, Bianca, Simone and Claudia stand in the anteroom and wax lyrical about how they met Dieter Bohlen: over 40 years ago, they were still children and teenagers back then, at the time of Modern Talking. They weren’t interested in this funny Thomas Anders back then, they didn’t shed a tear for him, but Dieter was so “real”. A direct person, “who says what he thinks,” “who doesn’t pretend,” “who stayed the way he was,” say the women between the ages of 44 and 56. The friends from Lutherstadt in Wittenberg were there at his concert in Dessau, in 1991, and again and again since then, and every DSDS is also watched. She is touched by the fact that he wrote his own song especially for his fans on this evening, his special birthday. It is a “nice gesture”: “He gives something back,” says Bianca.
In the summer, Dieter Bohlen goes on an open-air tour under the motto “40 Years of Modern Talking” – in historical squares, in castles, palaces and by the water. Tickets are available from well-known advance booking offices.