Peter Maffay has released more than 50 albums - his most personal is released this Friday.
Musically reduced to the essentials, the songs on “So Weit” tell autobiographically about his family, the unplanned course of life - and the lockdown blues.
Tutzing - As a musician, at the age of 72 and after more than 50 albums (19 of them at number 1 in the charts), is it possible to release something completely new? Peter Maffay answered this question this Friday with yes - and his album “So far”. With the focus on acoustic guitars and Maffay's unmistakable German-speaking singing voice in the foreground, it is musically intimate, authentic, contemplative. What is completely new, however, is what is strictly autobiographical. That Maffay dedicates entire songs to family members in which he clearly expresses great feelings. “So Far” is by far his most personal album. He also says that himself.
"I wanted to relieve myself, express things that touch me, acknowledge my feelings, allow them to overcome the turmoil and inner unrest," writes the musician from Tutzing in the preface to the new record. In the last song of his new work, Maffay sings about the "really big finale" of his life. "We two" is a gently moving love song for his partner Hendrikje Balsmeyer. “Every end will be a beginning”, is the title of the first song, a straight country number with two western guitars. The cycle of life, the coming and going, the future and the past: Maffay has been dealing with these topics intensely since his little daughter Anouk was born and his father Wilhelm died. "When the curtain falls, someone else opens for it, a hope dies quietly, a new life screams out loud",sings Maffay.
In an interview with Starnberger Merkur, he adds: “The album is already a retrospective, but the thing has not yet been eaten.” The thing is his life.
The man obviously has a lot more plans - and proves it with “Weiter”, one of the few classic rock songs, right in the middle of the album.
Maffay suddenly breaks with melancholy, with reflection on transience.
Then he sings: "My heart is still beating from moment to moment."
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The album cover for “So Far”.
The photo was taken in South Dakota, USA, where Peter Maffay helped set up a language school for Indians.
The vastness of the landscape there “touched him deeply”, says the musician.
© Red Rooster Music Production
They are Maffay's personal songs, without question. Never before has he composed all the pieces on a record himself. But the music colleague Johannes Oerding formulated the lyrics. “Johannes often passed a piece of paper with a few lines into the recording studio and said: 'Try it and say if it's good for you.'”, Reports Maffay. This brings us to the place where “So Far” was created, near Tutzinger Hauptstrasse and in the middle of lockdown. Because of the pandemic, he was unable to get his band together in Studio 2 on Lake Starnberg - this is exactly what the 72-year-old saw as an opportunity. “I have fulfilled a dream,” he says. In the band context, the songs would be far removed from “the original impulse”, from the actual idea. "It's too loud for some, too quiet, too slow or too fast for others," explains Maffay.He has no objection to this dynamic. But he finally wanted to do it differently. That succeeded thanks to Corona, unfortunately I have to say. "Without the pandemic, the album wouldn't exist," said Maffay. But he didn't play the instruments all by himself - but with the Dutch multi-instrumentalist JB Meiers. “Two men at the mixer, a garage situation,” he says.
In the "Lockdown Blues" Peter Maffay sings his frustration off his soul
In the "lockdown blues", however, he sings his frustration about the quasi-professional ban as a musician in Corona times from his soul.
To be condemned to inaction is not his thing.
The driving blues with the clichéd harmonica solo is fun, but it doesn't really fit into the overall concept.
Folk-catchy songs like “Wenn wir wiedersehn” (for his father) and “Wounded Knee” (in memory of the 1890 massacre against Sioux Indians) should not only touch full-blooded Maffay fans.
Apart from the one or two wild runaways (which some fans might expect), this record is a round, warm and soothing thing especially in autumn.
Home is also beneficial for Maffay, as he emphasized in an interview. He has lived on Lake Starnberg since 1983. “I hope that this will not offend anyone. But I think I can say: I am a real Tutzinger. "
