My first glance at the world was on April the 6.th of 1952, exactly at 1.pm, in the beautiful town called Wuppertal. As the years were passing by, at the age of 12, I received as a gift from my parents the Beatles record, From then on I was obsesed with music. Then the Rolling Stones came into my life, and from that momment on the Beatles were only wimps.
I got my first portable Recordplayer for Christmas. All my teachers hated me, because I took it always with me to school, my schoolmate was the world famous producer Michael Wagener and together with him I started my music carrier.
At this time I was not interested in using my voice I was more into keyboards, and so my parents made me a gift at the age of 14. Of course a keyboard! At the same time Michael got his first electric guitar and the radio of his parents becames the amplifier. Of course they didn't liked it! From this time on the route was marked. Michael was working hard on the guitar and I was trying to play the keyboards propper. More and more I got into singing, and the result was, that I liked it more then playing .
I created the first Band "BAND X", when I was sixteen. We played 3 years in Clubs and in the year 1971 Michael and I changed the name of this Band. From this time on we were "ACCEPT". At the same time Michael faced himself with the fact that he was not a good guitarplayer, and he changed to studio work. It needed 4 years to find the right Line up which gets the break through under the name "ACCEPT".
On a competition in Dџsseldorf we reached the third place, and we got our first record deal. 1978 was the year of our first Album called "ACCEPT", and at this time our music was a revolution. In the end of 1979 the second album was out under the title "I`m a rebel", it was a work of research for a style. In 1980 with the release of "BREAKER" the music scene was shocked by the sound of this album, surprised with this kind of agressive music from Germany, and this was also a breakthrough for the band all over europe, and also it was the first time that we did a big headline tour in Germany and the european tour with "JUDAS PRIEST", and so we decided this would be our profession.
Whit the next album "RESTLESS AND WILD" for the first time America was interested in us, but in our opinion it was to early. During this time togheter with Michael Wagner I made a production company, called "DOUBLE TROUBLE" and produced bands like RAVEN, FAITHFULL BREATH, STREET FIGHTER, and ECT.
At this time there were rumors that I would quit ACCEPT, but it was not true. Then in 1983 with the realese of BALLS TO THE WALL we had world wide succes and than the time for america was right.
