Wolfgang Niedecken almost resigned ten years ago. Now he is turning 70 and can look back on ten particularly happy years. He also still has plans – but Corona makes him doubt whether they will be realized.
Wolfgang Niedecken leans against the tombstone like a bar counter. Very easy, very relaxed. “Well,” he says. “Mamm and Bapp.” They both lie here: Mama Tinny and Papa Josef Niedecken. She died in 2000, he died in 1980, a few months before BAP took off for the first time. The group bears his name: “Bapp” is the Cologne word for “Papa”, only the second “p” has been omitted. The name came about because the son told so many stories about his father’s frugality while rehearsing.
On Tuesday (March 30th) Wolfgang Niedecken will be 70. That is an occasion to look back on. Although he’s not really the jubilee guy. “I’m not into numbers at all. Sure, at 70 you think: Let’s see how long it goes. “
When you see Wolfgang Niedecken in front of you, he practically fulfills the ideal image of the honorable gray rocker: full white mane of hair, proper beard, mostly dark sunglasses, denim jacket – and no recognizable belly. You can’t tell that he suffered a severe stroke ten years ago. At that time, it wouldn’t have been missing, and he would have left the stage at the age of 60. “I would not have died calmly,” he writes at the end of his two-volume memoirs, which have now appeared together for the first time. “Death would have caught me on the wrong foot.” He regards everything that has come since then as an encore. And that’s quite a lot now.
Songs about the union
The first to appear in 2013 was the solo album “Zosamme alt”, recorded in Woodstock. This was followed in 2014 by BAP’s unplugged tour with the live album “Das Märchen vom Geszugenen Stecker”, in 2016 the BAP studio album “Lifetime” and then the tour to mark the band’s 40th anniversary. In 2017, Niedecken played the “Family Album” in New Orleans with lots of songs about his colorful family, accompanied by the “Strooßeköter” tour. The live album of it entered the charts at number one. “We would not have expected that in our wildest dreams.”
Family is even more important to him than professional success. He says of his wife Tina that she is his guardian angel, his lifesaver. Because it was she who immediately correctly interpreted the first signs of the stroke in 2011 and alerted the emergency doctor. Can’t imagine what he might otherwise have missed. Only a year ago he had two grandchildren within nine days: Noah and Quinn. Both were born in Severinsklösterchen, the hospital in Cologne’s Südstadt district, where Grandpa Wolfgang saw the light of day 70 years ago. “When we wake up in the morning, Noah TV is the first thing to do.” Thanks to the social networks.
The last rays of the afternoon sun fall precisely on the grave. For real BAP fans it is a legendary place, because the best-known line from the band’s remarkable oeuvre is: «Damn it long ago, I dated you ahm Jraav wohr», «Damn long ago that I was with you at the grave was ». The song describes the difficult relationship with his father, who thought nothing of his artistic ambitions.
“A good-hearted person”
“A good-hearted person,” he says of him. “Always worried about me. Everything we clashed with is in principle due to it. ” Since he has been a father himself – for at least 38 years – he can understand that. The mature rocker sees some things in a milder light today. Some things – but not all. When it comes to right-wing extremism, for example, he’s back on the barricades immediately. Last year, the group published the title “Ruhe vor’m Sturm”.
“Hello, Mr. Niedecken!” Greets a woman passing the grave. Just at the cemetery gate he briefly repaired a wheelchair in which sat an ancient man from whom he and his father bought cheese for his parents’ shop as a child in the wholesale market hall. He has such encounters all the time in the Cologne cosmos, he has become a kind of local patron. But he also always had the urge to go outside. That was already the case in the 50s, when the little boy stood on the south bridge and watched the Rhine ships.
The connection to the USA, the home of his great role model Bob Dylan, is particularly close. He has just published a new book in which he describes his meetings with the songwriter and travels America on his footsteps. He’s always busy with something. At the same time, he exudes an inner calm and contentment that some people envy him for. He himself explains it by saying that he has turned his passion into a profession, but at the same time doesn’t have to prove anything to himself.
Will that still work with a tour?
Will he go on tour again? “Maybe August 16, 2019 in Bonn was my last concert,” he says, slightly resigned. “At the end my eyes were wet because I was already thinking: It will now take a long time before I can go again.” What he couldn’t foresee was Corona. Due to the pandemic, he had to cancel the presentation of the 20th BAP studio album “Alles flows” last September, as well as the planned appearance on his 70th birthday in Cologne’s Lanxess-Arena.
A substitute online presence is not an alternative for him, that is not what he is looking for. «Better postpone then. I think we’ll do 70a next year. ” So on March 30, 2022. Then the «finally infinite» tour should start. «I very much hope that it will be possible. But I’m not 100 percent sure, it definitely has to be economical. Tours are now the only thing that an artist can still make a living on. Robber knighthood prevails with the phonograms. “
“Yes, Joseph!”
Farewell to the grave. A representation of Mary is embedded in the stone, because Father Joseph was a great admirer of the Blessed Mother. At home in the stairwell the eternal light was on in the Madonna niche – which he secretly put out every evening: to save electricity. “When my mother had enough of his stinginess, all she said was” Yeah, Josef! ” And then he knew: Now is the end. “
In the afternoon sun we go back via Cologne’s southern cemetery. Ancient trees, weathered crypts … When does he actually end in the sense of farewell, retreat, retirement? “Not as long as I can.” The next anniversary is already in sight: BAP will be 50 years old in 2026. The Stones made it a long time ago. (dpa; photos: above: imago images / Horst Galuschka, below: imagoimages / United Archives)
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