I don't really expect many people in the UK remember the music of Hans Holzel, otherwise known as Falco. He didn't really hit it big here, infact, he had one number one and a number 10 single. Nothing much else charted.
In 1986, he hit paydirt in the UK with the single Rock Me Amadeus; a quirky song with a very catchy tune and chorus. Many people could only really understand the chorus and odd words from the main lyric as it was all in German. World wide, it was a massive hit, in the UK, it was at number one for a week and then wasn't.
The follow-up, Vienna Calling, managed to get to number 10 in the BBC charts. Not exactly amazing, but for an Austrian, singing in German, it was really good - especially as a few years earlier, Nena had been hounded out of England by the Sun. Nena was the band who gave us the song 99 Red Balloons. A & M released Falco3 in 1986. I bought a bootleg copy from a friend at school and then left it on a bus. A year later, I managed to find the LP version and bought that.
I was well hooked on his music then and attempted to get hold of his first two albums Einzelhaft and Junge Roemer from my local WH Smiths as well as more specialised stores - such as Harrods (they had claimed they could get any album from anyone around the world - they couldn't). All to no avail.
I'd seen in Smash Hits that he had a new single out called The Sound of Musik and that he had also changed from A & M to WEA and that the new album Emotional was due out soon. Needless to say, I bought it (I think I was about the third person in the UK to have a copy!). Not a great album, but not a bad one either.
His last album I bought was Wiener Blut. It was greatly different to both Falco3 or Emotional. A look at the writing credits showed what it was, Falco was no longer with the Bolland brothers, but with someone else. Sure, the Bolland songs were good, but the non-Bolland ones really kicked.
WEA really did nothing to promote Falco in the UK. HMV and Virgin didn't exactly go out of their way to stock his CDs and finding when he had a new single out was a hell of a job - a job I didn't have time for.
All went quiet. I really lost interest. Sure, I'd play my Falco albums in the car whilest going to work, but not much else. Then came eBay. eBay meant I could get hold of all of the CDs that I was unable to get before then. Around this time (2001), I found that Falco had died in 1998. Even though I'd not really listened to much from 1988 of his, I was still saddened by the news as when I was at school, being able to sing Amadeus (and more over, sing it correctly!) was quite an achievement.
So here it is, my couple of pages on him.