Wenn Herbert Grönemeyer Bühnen in Frankfurt betritt, reicht normalerweise kaum das Waldstadion, um dem Andrang gerecht zu werden. Im Großen Haus des Schauspiels Frankfurt mit seinen 700 Plätzen durfte man sich deshalb am Donnerstagabend geradewegs wie der Schriftsteller Wolfgang Herrndorf vorkommen, der auf einer privaten Party einmal eines vermeintlichen Doppelgängers Grönemeyers in einer Hollywoodschaukel sitzend gewahr wurde, bis ihm dämmerte, dort tatsächlich einen der größten deutschen Musikstars mit anderen Gästen plaudernd zu erblicken.
In Frankfurt ist keine Party Anlass für die vergleichsweise unmittelbare Nähe des Publikums im ausverkauften Saal zu dem Sänger und Komponisten, sondern eine Buchpräsentation, die in ihrem Plauderton aber durchaus einem Gespräch zweier Freunde nahekommt, dem man lauschen darf. Der Freund, der Grönemeyer hier auf der Bühne befragt, ist Michael Lentz, Literaturprofessor, Musiker, Dichter, Romancier und als Träger des Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preises quasi auch amtlicher Großschriftsteller, der seit vielen Jahren mit dem Sänger befreundet ist, über den er nun das Buch „Grönemeyer“ (S. Fischer Verlag) geschrieben hat.
It is a biography, but not one that just presents the life of a famous person in nice anecdotes. There are such anecdotes, but Lentz is even more interested in the craft and thus the secret of the musician, who did not come into the limelight as a child prodigy, but rather made his rise through campfire strumming, working at the theater in Bochum ( at least with director legend Peter Zadek) and his first albums, which he himself described as pathetic.
To do this, Lentz measured his friend’s songs using music theory and literary aesthetic methods. This may sound very scientific, but in the dialogue it is simply captivating when the analysis, presented with tongue-in-cheek meticulousness, for example, of the harmony of the song “Mensch” with its extended minor chords, which change to major and then back at the word “sun time” with the amused Grönemeyer , who composed the song, provokes the spontaneous reaction “Aha”.
But he doesn’t write his songs with a music theory approach, but rather according to feeling, according to sequences of notes that come to the enthusiastic singer Grönemeyer via onomatopoeia and gradually combine to form music that will last for him even after he has sung it for the hundredth time , before he gets to work on the lyrics.
Because Herbert Grönemeyer, who seems to speak from the souls of millions of people with his verses, does not set texts to music, but rather texts music, as Lentz’s astonished listeners find out using the funny example of the “banana texts”. This is what Grönemeyer calls the English-language fragments that serve as textual placeholders along which the melody follows.
To the delight of the audience, Grönemeyer also sings such fragments, which Lentz then recites in German translation to great laughter, which even increases the nonsense because he interprets the statements made. The highlight, however, is which lines Grönemeyer ultimately formed from such “banana texts”. They only make the great poet Michael Lentz rave about it and have him praise “Mensch” as the “best piece in German pop history”. Entire stadiums would probably agree with him.
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