Early Insight

In the late 1960s Giorgio and I started to write songs together. It was pure fun. We were both beginners then,  still waiting for success, and no one tried to dominate the other. Though we had some minor hits, we did not really make it. Soon we both found other songwriting partners. At about the same time I started my career as a producer Giorgio had some success as a singer of his own songs and moved to Munich where I lived. We met regularly, exchanging our hopes, ideas and experiences. I never forget what Giorgio told me one November evening in 1969, when he visited Roswitha and me in our Pasing flat. “Michel”, he said after dinner, “you must become international. I certainly will. Germany is too small for our talents.”

Meeting Giorgio Moroder

The first time I met Giorgio was in Berlin. It was the summer of 1964. I had just finished high school, and not yet started to my studies. A publisher who had heard some of my very first songs had invited me to spend two weeks in his offices. There, Giorgio was sitting in a small walk-in cupboard, huge head phones on his head, an electric guitar on his lap and a ReVox A77 in front of him. His job was to prepare cheap backing tracks for demos of songs that were written by the publisher's staff writers. Although he was neatly ensconced in a closet and I was only kind of a guest student peeping in, we were both underdogs, and that made us natural companions. As we ate our burgers in a near-by gasthaus, he told me he intended to become an international star. My goal was more modest. I just wanted one of my songs to be recorded. At that time I wrote the music to my lyrics myself. Giorgio made a backing track for me, probably out of pity. It was the beginning of a life long friendship.

Flashback

My friend, Sylvester, and I spent the last week in a London Sound Studio to record demos for a new show. In many ways it was a journey back in time. Studios like the Battersea's Sphere used to be our second home for almost twenty years. As I revisited the past, I was amazed how familiar all still was: The engineer, the technical assistant, the singers and musicians (though all a generation younger), the mikes and stands, and even the gold records on the wall of the hallway. Well, the old 24-track-Studer was sadly standing in a corner, of course, because recording went digital long ago. But it was still there. And the Neve mixing console still dominated the control room. In such a studio you forget whether you are in Philadelphia, Munich, Seoul, Tokyo or London. Not only do the studios look alike, the people you meet there resemble each other. Race, language, age are irrelevant. It's all about making good music and getting it well recorded.

Everyday Climbing

To compare mountaineering to our way through life may be commonplace blah. Nevertheless I admit that I learned quite a lot from climbing which was of good use in life's lowlands. Before good climbers start an ascent they spend weeks, months and sometimes years studying the rock face, considering carefully and in detail which way to go. If they are not totally sure they can make it on their own, they select partners who can meet the challenge and whose abilities complement each other. Then they choose the properly fitting equipment, considering all imponderables. And although their goal is the peak, of course, they don't think of it when they are climbing. They just concentrate on what they're doing, and try not to make a fateful mistake as they move up to the next secure slab.

Backward Songwriting

There is no doubt in my opinion that Billy Joel is one of the best songwriters of the last century. In a recent interview he gave Andrew Goldman of the New York Times Billy explained: "I write backward — I write the music first and then I write the words. Most people write the words first and then they write the music. Keith Richards was explaining his method of songwriting. He calls it “vowel movement.” They come up with a riff, and it’s like sounds, and whatever sound . . . like “start me up” — “up” works because it has a consonant at the end of it, but if you go “take me home,” it wouldn’t have worked. I kind of subscribe to that. It has to sound right sometimes even more than being a poetic lyric. It’s a struggle to fit words onto music, and I want it to be really, really good, so I take a long time. I love having written, but I hate writing. So then I go through postpartum depression, and it’s: “Ugh, I gotta start all over again? Where am I going to get the” — what do you call it? Sitzfleisch?"

Eiger North Face

Next to Whymper's Matterhorn ascent the conquering the Eiger's North Face is a story that deserves to be told over and over again. The first to get really high on the face were Max Sedlmayer and Karl Mehringer who in 1935 were halted by bad weather. Their bodies were spotted weeks later. The following year saw one of the most traumatic episodes in the Eiger's history.our young climbers - Andreas Hinterstoisser, Edi Ranier, Willy Angerer and Toni Kurz - made a renewed attempt on the north wall. Hinterstoisser opened up a route to the summit with a brilliant traverse but it could not be reversed without a rope in place. After being caught up in a huge storm they were unable to retreat the way they had come and all four were killed. Toni Kurz perished hanging from his abseil rope only feet from a rescue team. The would-be rescuers tried to reach the stricken climber from a window which emerges onto the face from the railway tunnel running right through the mountain. But a knot prevented him sliding any further towards the outstretched arms and his own fingers were so badly frozen he could not free himself. The rescuers had to withdraw for the night despite the stricken climber's pleas not to be left alone. When they returned the next morning he was much weaker and with the words "Ich kann nicht mehr" (I cannot go on) he died almost within reach of safety. (In 2008 the German movie Nordwand ("North Face") tried to dramatize that story for the big screen, but failed badly.) After more fatal attempts to climb the mountain by its most difficult face, a group of four finally managed to put up a route. Two Germans, Anderl Heckmair and Ludwig (Wiggerl) Vörg, and the Austrians Fritz Kasparek and Heinrich Harrer, joined forces in 1938 to make the first ascent. The dramatic tale was recounted in Harrer's book The White Spider which is named after the distinctive ice field near the summit and has become a mountaineering classic.

What Whymper Learned

“Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are nought without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from the beginning think what may be the end."

Edward Whymper

Matterhorn

In the summer of 1860, the twenty-year old Edward Whymper came to Zermatt. Hired by a London publisher to make sketches of mountain scenes, he was not one of those British mounteneering aristocrats trying to reach the last unconquered summits. Actually he had never been to the Alps before. Maybe the arrogance of his noble countrymen spurred his ambition to do what they tried in vain - climb the majestic Matterhorn. In the years 1861-1865, he made several attempts by the south-west ridge together with an Italian guide from the Valtournanche, Jean-Antoine Carrel. Patriotically believing that a native Italian and not an Englishman should be the first to set foot on the summit, Carrel eventually betrayed Whymper. He had already started the ascent with an Italian rope, when Whymper hurried back to Zermatt, gathered some Englishmen and hired three Swiss guides to try the opposite face of the Matterhorn. His attempt by what is now the usual route was crowned with success (14th of July 1865); but on the descent four of the party slipped and were killed, and only the breaking of the rope saved Whymper and the two remaining guides from the same fate. This is maybe the most dramatic mountain story, still waiting to be told in an appropriate form. I think it would make a great movie, and I always dreamed of writing the perfect screenplay for it. Unfortunately mountain movies went out of fashion many years ago.

The Peak

This clip gives a faint idea of the Three Peaks' beauty and the panorama route's extreme difficulty. To climb that face is an admirable achievement, to watch these guys do it is taking my breath away. You will hear Alex Huber, right now arguably the world's best climber, explain the ascent. He was the first to do it.

An Impossible Dream

You can't follow all your dreams. One of those I knowingly gave up was to climb one of the Three Peaks in the Dolomites (Tre Cime des Lavaredo). When I was twenty I would have been able to achieve the ability to make it, but music, literature and philosophy got the better of me. Instead of traveling to the mountains I devoted my weekends to reading and writing. At 25 I was already spending all of my time at the recording studio in order to climb the hit charts. Since then all I can do is to look from below and watch with admiration and a bit of envy those going up that amazing rock faces .