JOHN COLEMAN

The following article is an overview of the career of British pianist, trumpet player, arranger, and conductor. The main source of information is an interview with Mr Coleman, conducted by Bas Tukker in London, February 2012. The article below is subdivided into two main parts; a general career overview (part 3) and a part dedicated to John Coleman's Eurovision involvement (part 4).

All material below: © Bas Tukker / 2012

Contents

1. Passport
2. Short Eurovision record
3. Biography
4. Eurovision Song Contest
5. Other artists about John Coleman
6. Eurovision involvement year by year
7. Sources & links

PASSPORT

Born: August 9th, 1934, Manchester, England (United Kingdom)

Died: July 22nd, 2023, Barnet, Greater London (United Kingdom)

Nationality: British

SHORT EUROVISION RECORD

Apart from being involved as a musical director in the British pre-selection, A Song For Europe, John Coleman conducted five Eurovision Song Contest entries for the United Kingdom in the first half of the 1980s, most notably the winning ‘Making Your Mind Up’ for Bucks Fizz in Dublin (1981).

BIOGRAPHY

John Anthony Coleman was born into a family of Irish and Scots descent. In 1939, he went with his mother for a holiday to visit family members who had emigrated to America. Whilst there, World War II broke out and his father, who was a cotton piece goods salesman, thought it would be best if they stayed there until the war was over, unaware that it would last for nearly six years. Initially, mother and son lived in Lawrence, Massachusetts, with an aunt and later close by in Andover as guests of the Farnsworth family. He received his primary education at Saint Augustine’s School in Andover. 

“One of the nuns there asked me if I would like to have piano lessons. I must have been seven or eight years old at that time. My mum said yes and somehow managed to find the money to pay for them. It was that nun who taught me and it turned out I was a relatively quick learner. As it happened, the piano at the Farnsworth’s house was a player piano and I was the only one in the house who knew how to work it. So on one of their regular soirées, they woke me up, in what seemed to me to be the middle of the night, to go downstairs in my pyjamas and show them how to work the piano!”

John and his mother returned to Manchester in October 1944, where he continued his piano studies with a local teacher. He also got to try his hand at two other musical instruments, as he recalls.

“My father, having discovered my musical abilities and himself being a frustrated brass bandsman, thought it would be good idea for me to learn to play the cornet and join a local brass band. Moreover, my aunt Nora who lived in Blackpool owned two violins and she thought it would be a good idea for me to learn to play that instrument as well. So the violins came from Blackpool to Manchester and my mother found a violin teacher. This episode did not last too long though, because I fractured my left wrist in a traffic incident in which I was knocked off my bicycle. With hindsight, it was a good thing I was given the experience of these instruments, which has been helpful when writing arrangements and orchestrations. Though I played in a brass band for many years, the piano was always the instrument in which I invested most effort, going through many piano examinations.”

The Ivor Kirchin Band, with John Coleman second from right in the brass section (second half 1950s)

Unsure of his future plans, John left grammar school at the age of seventeen, spending a year working at the Manchester branch of the Yorkshire Insurance Company. Between 1952 and 1954, he did the obligatory two years National Service in the Royal Air Force, stationed at Turnhouse Aerodrome in Edinburgh and working underground at Barnton Quarry. During this time he became good friends with the fledgling jazz pianist Alan Howarth, who was at the same station and introduced John to jazz music. 

“Up to that point, my musical education had solely been the classics, both theoretical and practical. What was more, my piano teacher had once told me that, if I ever considered turning to commercial music to earn a living, she would no longer be able to teach me. With hindsight, though, I think this was not so much a threat as more an admission that she had no experience in that field. After my time in the RAF I went back to her for a time, but after the two year break I found it very difficult to pick up where I had left off. It was a different world and I had to get a job. So I went back to the insurance company."

"At the time I wanted to play the trumpet and my trumpet teacher Freddy Barrett, who ran a music shop in Manchester, got me some gigs, playing in dance bands performing in town halls and palais, dance halls. I was second trumpet in the Ken Nelson Orchestra for some time, the first trumpet being Nigel Carter, who later became the lead trumpet with the BBC Big Band. Playing for up to five nights a week eventually began to catch up with me and I was regularly late for work at ‘The Yorkshire’…. I was burning the candle at both ends. Eventually, the branch manager sent for me and told me that, in his opinion, I should decide if my career was to be in music or insurance – a choice I had been carefully avoiding for a year. Although both of my parents were apprehensive about my future, it was obvious to me that I was doing better at music than insurance, so I left the Yorkshire Insurance Company in 1956.”

That same year, John became a professional trumpet player with the Ben Oakley Orchestra on the pier in faraway Southsea. After the 1956 summer season, he passed an audition to join the Ivor Kirchin Band at Sale Locarno, a well known Mecca ballroom just outside his native Manchester and he stayed with the band for almost three years (1956-59). 

“One of the conditions of the contract with Ivor was that I had to write an arrangement each week, for which I got the princely sum of two pounds and that included the copying! I wrote dance band versions of popular American songs such as ‘Diana’ by Paul Anka and ‘Jailhouse Rock’ by Elvis Presley. I had to take down the lyrics of each song simply by listening to the record. In the case of Elvis I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about! “The prison band was there and they began to wail”… not a clue! Learning to arrange was essentially a case of trial and error. Admittedly, the Kirchin Band was not very large, but still – four trumpets, four saxes, a rhythm section, and a singer. It was quite a challenge!”

In 1959, John decided to try his luck in London, where he joined a band with the evocative name André Rico and his Cha Cha Chaleros. 

“André had a regular Sunday night gig at the Marquee when it was in Oxford Street, but we also played all over the UK. After about a year, I heard that Woolf Phillips, whose orchestra played in the Pigalle – a theatre-restaurant in Piccadilly – needed a trumpet player, as one of his was leaving to go work at the BBC… none other than Ronnie Hazlehurst! We did a floor show twice a night… one of the most exciting was a two week stint with Sammy Davis Jr. Meanwhile, with the rock ‘n’ roll revolution going on around us, life for dance band musicians in the early 1960s was not always easy and there were times when I thought seriously about leaving London and going back to Manchester. The Woolf Phillips band was dissolved in 1962. Luckily, I was offered a job as a pianist with a trio at the Arno’s Court County Club in Bristol. Every week, we accompanied a different cabaret artist, such as Bob Monkhouse or Engelbert Humperdinck – who in those days was known as Gerry Dorsey. Accompanying such artists later proved a wonderful grounding when I started working in the television industry.”

In 1965, Coleman returned to London, getting involved in a wide range of professional activities. He continued playing the piano in ensembles in West End restaurants such as The Latin Quarter and The Stable and later worked with quartet leader Ray Ellington on a regular basis. Most significantly perhaps, Coleman managed to get his foot in the door in the film industry. 

“Basil Kirchin, Ivor’s son, was a drummer and we got on well. While I was in Bristol, he used to come down to compose and write arrangements together for his father’s band. His ambition was to write film music and, in 1965, he was commissioned to pen the incidental music for Catch Us If You Can, a film featuring the Dave Clark Five. Basil needed an orchestrator and conductor to assist him – so he asked me! Conducting an orchestra of session musicians in the studio for the first time was a new experience and although I had conducted Ivor’s band when rehearsing my arrangements, I was not at all comfortable standing up in front of the orchestra, albeit fairly small. How would I know when to start? Was there time for a count or did I have to start with a downbeat? “Wait for the ticker, John,” I was told, but nobody bothered to tell me what a ticker was… it took some time to get familiar with the methods used in soundtrack recording!”

Drawn profile of John Coleman by Rolf Harris, one of the performers in 

‘The MDCLXXVII Show’

With Basil Kirchin, Coleman co-composed, arranged, and conducted several more film scores, including Assignment K, The Strange Affair (both from 1968), I Start Counting (1969), and Freelance (1971), as well as signing for the music to the highly controversial documentary Primitive London (1967). On top of all the aforementioned activities, Coleman was successful as an accompanist for various singers, such as Diana Dors, Dusty Springfield, and Lulu. 

“The job with Lulu came my way thanks to impresario Dick Katz, Ray Ellington’s former pianist,” Coleman recalls. “He phoned Ray one day to ask which pianist he was using, the next question no doubt being: “Is he any good?” The answer was probably in the affirmative, because Dick booked me to do a week’s cabaret in Darlington with his wife Valerie Masters. On the Saturday night, Dick turned up and said, “I’ll do the show tonight”, but I replied, “No, I’ll do it, because the musicians in the band are accustomed to me leading them.” Dick backed down and followed the show in the audience. Afterwards, obviously pleased by the performance, he came to the dressing room and said, “I am going to get you a lot of work!” 

"I got to do more gigs with Valerie and some other of Dick’s artists, including Lulu, for whom I led a nine-piece-band touring the country. As a result, I was asked to play piano with the Johnny Harris Orchestra when he conducted for Lulu in the 1969 edition of A Song For Europe. ‘Boom Bang-A-Bang’ was the winning song. Poor Lulu! After that, she ended up singing it in every cabaret performance for many, many years.”

The 1969 edition of Song for Europe was John Coleman’s baptism of fire in the world of television, which became his main working ground for the following 25 years. 

“Lulu really paved the way for me… I worked very closely with her for a number of years as an arranger and musical director. After her Eurovision victory, she did several light entertainment shows with the BBC. As her regular accompanist, I was usually asked to play piano for these programmes. She recorded a series of shows with musical director Alyn Ainsworth, in which I played Hammond organ and wrote some arrangements. More work followed on other programmes and series with the result that gradually, in the course of the 1970s, I became well established in the world of television. Some of the programmes that I worked on regularly were Top Of The Pops, which had a live orchestra at that time with Johnny Pearson as its conductor, and the Benny Hill Shows for Thames Television with musical director Ronnie Aldrich.” 

Coleman conducting Grace Kennedy in the 1979 Intervision Song Contest 

held in Sopot, Poland

In 1977, Coleman conducted the BBC entry for the international Golden Sea Swallow competition in Knokke (Belgium), winning first prize with The MDCLXXVII Show featuring Rolf Harris, Bonnie Tyler, Guys & Dolls and… a real horse!

Away from his TV work, Coleman did the arranging for 'Tom Brown's Schooldays' a musical composed by Chris Andrews, which was staged at the Cambridge Theatre in London’s West End in 1971. Moreover, he worked extensively as musical director with artists such as Dana, The Nolan Sisters, The Three Degrees, and Shirley Bassey. 

“Initially, I was to be the pianist in the orchestra on Shirley’s tour of the UK and Scandinavia in 1977, while MD'ing the support acts which preceded her performance. We had just done a BBC TV series for which Arthur Greenslade was the musical director. Unfortunately he tore a ligament in his right shoulder on the first gig, which was in Manchester. He told me that conducting was too painful and asked me to dep for him for the remainder of the tour. My first show as a conductor was in Brighton. Afterwards, Arthur told me that Shirley was happy and felt comfortable on stage with me behind her, which was a relief, because she could be quite demanding at times! Subsequently, I did the rest of the tour in England and several cities in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.”

A special episode in John Coleman’s career is having been part of the Frank Sinatra London Orchestra for three tours of the United Kingdom and mainland Europe with Ol’ Blue Eyes between 1975 and 1978. 

“Don Costa was to conduct Frank’s European tour, but he had a heart-attack and was replaced by Sinatra’s pianist, Bill Miller. Looking for a replacement for Bill in the orchestra, they turned to me, as I had been booked to be the pianist and MD for the Nolan Sisters, who opened the bill with Frank Sinatra at the Royal Albert Hall. Working with Sinatra proved enjoyable and nerve-wrecking at the same time. The man was such a giant in the industry! At times, he could be intimidating. Once, during a rehearsal, he stopped singing, because he was not hearing what he wanted from the string section. He said to Bill, “No, not like that. I want it like this”. He then turned to the string section and conducted them through the passage in question, technically perfect – and the string players responded magnificently. Turning to Bill he said, “Like that!” He expected high standards, from everyone! These tours are amongst the unforgettable experiences in my working life, finding myself in the middle of an orchestra encompassing the best musicians in the country.”

In a studio session (mid-1980s)

In 1979, Alyn Ainsworth decided to work for director and producer David Bell at ITV, giving up most of his BBC gigs. 

“Much of Alyn’s BBC work had been for director Stewart Morris, a powerful man at that time. Stewart was not the easiest man, but once you had won his trust, he would call upon you over and over again to work for him. Thanks to him, I had been given the opportunity to go to Knokke with Rolf Harris and to be the musical director for a TV series with Les Dawson and Lulu in 1978. Alyn suggested that Stewart should use me as musical director and most of his television work now came my way."

"The 1980 Song for Europe was the first of many programmes that I did with him. By that time, I had learnt a lot about the TV business and about working as a musical director… first of all simply by watching the conductors that I worked for. Johnny Harris was a showman, but a true professional and I took note of everything he did. Like me, Alyn was never trained as a conductor, but he developed a recognisable style of his own and was well-liked by the musicians. Moreover, he brought in a wealth of experience; he had been the conductor of different BBC ensembles and orchestras from the 1950s onwards. Working with Alyn and Johnny helped in developing my conducting skills.”

In the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, John Coleman was one of the most sought-after arrangers, musical directors, and conductors in the world of television. Mostly with director Stewart Morris, he not only conducted five editions of A Song for Europe between 1980 and 1985, but also worked on three BBC series with Grace Kennedy (1980-82), who he accompanied as a musical director to the 1979 Intervision Song Contest in Sopot, Poland as well. Moreover, Coleman did three series of Bob Says Opportunity Knocks with Bob Monkhouse (1987-89), and five seasons of shows with Les Dawson spread over more than a decade (1978-89), while also teaming up with the likes of Lena Zavaroni, Marti Caine, and Bruce Forsyth. 

Being freelance, Coleman also worked on programmes for Independent Television, such as Saturday Royal with Nigel Lythgoe (1983), three series of the Ronn Lucas Show (1990-91), as well as a string of different comedy shows. Coleman conducted the orchestra in several big televised spectacles, such as the Royal Gala in aid of the XIII Commonwealth Games (BBC: 1985), the opening ceremony of these same Commonwealth Games (BBC: 1986), and the Royal Gala to celebrate VE Day (ITV: 1995). For Coleman, this gala was one of the highlights of his TV career. 

“The show went out live from the London Coliseum and I had a marvellous orchestra in the pit. The cast of artists appearing was quite prestigious, with, amongst others, Céline Dion, Darcey Bussell, and Harry Secombe. Really exciting! Another highlight no doubt was working with tenor José Carreras. I did a Bruce Forsyth special for the BBC and Carreras was one of the special guests. The prospect of working with such a world star made me quite nervous. In the days before, I studied the score every free moment to get to know it, even listening to a cassette of his performance in the taxi on the way to the studios. But… everything went well – so well in fact that, when he came to do another BBC programme sometime later, he specifically asked for John Coleman to be his conductor!”

In 1979, Coleman was introduced to film composer Marc Wilkinson by a mutual friend. “Marc was looking for an orchestrator for the film Eagle’s Wing,” Coleman remembers. “He gave me the opportunity to work on that film. As he was satisfied with the things I came up with, we did several more films together. Marc, in his turn, introduced me to other composers, most prominently Trevor Jones, who asked me to write orchestrations for many of his film scores. The function of a movie orchestrator is to get the intention of the composer down on paper correctly. I have been doing this type of work to the present day and have been involved in some American box-office successes. I cannot say I have always liked being an orchestrator, as working in the film industry as a rule involves extreme time pressure, but there is undoubtedly certain kudos in having your name going up in the credits! Over the years, the job has changed due to the computer making its appearance. Nowadays, orchestration is no longer done with pencil and paper.”

Amongst the original soundtracks for which Coleman orchestrated the score are The Fiendish Plot Of Dr. Fu Manchu composed by Marc Wilkinson (1980), Excalibur (1981) by Trevor Jones, and Best Revenge (1984) by Keith Emerson. Moreover, Coleman worked on the orchestrations of TV series such as The Last Days Of Pompei (1984), and TV films including Doctor Fischer Of Geneva (1985), based on the eponymous novel by Graham Greene. Thanks to his involvement with composer John Powell, Coleman also got to pen the orchestrations to some successful American productions, such as Rat Race (2001) and the computer-animated films Shrek (2001) and Kung Fu Panda (2008).

In more recent years, Coleman was commissioned by Martin Yates of West End International to produce new orchestrations for several crossover concerts of pop music standards and film music with classical orchestras (2007-10), whilst he has continued writing arrangements for the radio show Friday Night Is Music Night with the BBC Concert Orchestra.

At home in London (2012)

EUROVISION SONG CONTEST

John Coleman conducted five UK entries in the Eurovision Song Contest between 1980 and 1985, while he also was the musical director of the pre-selection programme A Song For Europe in these same years. It was producer and director Stewart Morris who offered Coleman the job. 

“Stewart had worked with Alyn Ainsworth for nearly all his TV shows in the years before. When Alyn left his BBC work to go to ITV, Stewart chose me as his successor. It was Alyn himself who had suggested me to him. Given that A Song For Europe was one of Stewart’s programmes in those years, he called me up saying he had a nice little fun job for me. I really enjoyed working on A Song For Europe, because as far as I was concerned there was a lot less pressure involved than in a usual TV gig. My only responsibility was to form an orchestra and to rehearse all songs properly with it. There was no writing to do – I was never allowed to arrange any of the participating items, because the BBC could be accused of prejudice and favouritism in case one of the songs I had been involved in won.”

As A Song For Europe was a live show, occasional hiccups were unavoidable. “One time," Coleman recalls, "when I was preparing to count in the orchestra for one of the participants, I noticed my drummer Harold Fisher staring at me with a horrified open mouthed expression The act that was coming on stage was not the one I was expecting. I pushed the button to the control room to ask Stewart if this was right. He said yes, immediately followed by, “Cue music!” At the same time, I was going through my scores like a madman and I found the right one just in time. It felt like a nightmare, though, because one of the last things I used to do at the end of a rehearsal was to go through the music and check that everything is in the right order. To this day, I do not know what went wrong, but we lived through it anyhow!"

"On another occasion, in 1985, all songs for Song for Europe were previewed on The Terry Wogan Show. I was there with a live orchestra on stage. When James Oliver came on to do his song (‘What We Say With Our Eyes’ - BT), something went wrong and his vocal could not be heard by the TV audience at home – in the theatre yes, at home no! From the control room, director Kevin Bishop told me to stop the band. However nothing seemed to be wrong and James could be heard properly, so Kevin had to repeat the order before I reacted. The next thing was to get my musicians to stop playing. My face must have shown the stress. Nobody stops the orchestra in the middle of a live transmission! Therefore, they played on… and on…and James kept on singing. I managed to get the strings to stop, but the rhythm section kept on going. All of this only took seconds, but it seemed to last an eternity. In the end, Terry Wogan came on stage to tell James and the audience about the technical problem. That certainly was a night to remember!”

Prima Donna performing 'Love Enough For Two' on the Eurovision stage in The Hague

The 1980 edition of A Song For Europe was won by Prima Donna, a three girl-three boy group tailor-made for the Eurovision Song Contest, including in their ranks Sally Ann Triplett. They represented the United Kingdom in the international final in The Hague with ‘Love Enough For Two’, composed by Stephanie De Sykes and Stuart Slater, and came third behind the entries from Ireland and West Germany. 

“As this was my first experience at the Eurovision Song Contest, I was nervous going there. After all, it was a very prestigious event and you cannot make any mistake! I took my pocket metronome with me to make sure that I got the tempo right. Standing in front of the orchestra for our first rehearsal, I was extremely tense. What I did not know yet was that Eurovision orchestras were always marvellous and well-rehearsed! It was a matter of prestige for the organizing country to get the best of their musicians together. What was more, the musicians were friendly and all on your side – they wanted to get it right as much as you did! I quickly realized that all I had to do was go and stand there, say, “Ok, here we go”, and count to four. In fact, a conductor could even have counted them in wrongly and they would still have started playing in the right tempo. From that moment on, my nerves subsided.”

As Coleman was never involved in writing the UK entry’s arrangement and was part of the BBC team, he naturally spent more time with the BBC delegates to the contest than with the songwriters and artists. 

“All artists I worked with in the Eurovision Song Contest were pleasant and very friendly when you spoke to them. The songwriters and arrangers were there at the rehearsals and observed, but on no occasion did they interfere with me. The arrangements were usually pretty straightforward and as I prepared the conducting of the score carefully, there was hardly anything to talk over with anyone. Apart from these rehearsals, such a Eurovision week left me with a certain amount of leisure time. My wife Fiesta was always with me and we usually had the opportunity to do some sightseeing, which was nice.”

Short biog of John Coleman in the official Eurovision 1983 programme

In The Hague, John Coleman met Noel Kelehan, the conductor of the Irish delegation. Ireland won the festival with Johnny Logan and ‘What’s another year’. 

“It was only on the night of the broadcast that he introduced himself to me. He had seen me using my metronome. When I went up to the green room after we had done our song, Noel shook my hand and offered me a drink. “Would you mind,” he asked me, “if I borrow your metronome? We are very close to the three minute time limit and I don’t want anything to go wrong.” After the Irish performance, the two of us spent the rest of the evening deep in conversation. Being English and Irish, I guess we naturally gravitated towards one another. We paid no attention to the voting whatsoever. When the Irish won, the floor manager had to come looking for Noel to get him to conduct the orchestra again. “What are you doing here? You have won!,” he shouted out to him. Noel and I had not even noticed the voting was over.”

As a result of Johnny Logan’s first Eurovision victory, the contest moved to Dublin in 1981. At the time, representing the United Kingdom in Ireland was not without its problems, ‘The Troubles’ being very much a fact of life. 

“When the British delegation arrived at the airport in Dublin, we were given a police motor cycle escort to take us to our hotel and throughout the following week the security was always heavy. But I never felt uncomfortable, rightly or wrongly, I made the assumption that no one would be interested in harming musicians.”

The United Kingdom’s entry that year was ‘Making Your Mind Up’, written by John Danter and Andy Hill for the quartet Bucks Fizz. The arrangement to this up-tempo effort was written by a former Eurovision conductor, Nick Ingman. In an exciting voting procedure, Bucks Fizz managed to shake off its competitors and won the festival. 

Bucks Fizz and their winning Eurovision performance of 'Making Your Mind Up' 

“Just like ‘Love Enough For Two’ the year before, this was an excellent Eurovision song – not the sort of the thing that I would put on for an evening of entertainment at home, but very effective and objectively much better than some of the other entries that we heard on Eurovision… and some of the it was excruciatingly funny as well. In a repeat of what we did in The Hague, Noel Kelehan and I spent most of the evening together chatting in the greenroom. I had had a great time all week with him and the musicians of his orchestra, who were very hospitable. When we won, I was delighted – that is, when I was told we had won. Like in 1980, Noel and I had simply not been following the voting procedure.”

As a result of Bucks Fizz’ win in Dublin, the United Kingdom – meaning the BBC with Ronnie Hazlehurst as musical director – had to host the 1982 Eurovision Song Contest which was held in Harrogate. Hazlehurst also conducted A Song For Europe that year.

“Nonetheless, I could have had an involvement in the contest," Coleman recalls. "I was phoned at a very late stage by a member of the production team, asking if I would be able to play synthesiser for one of the acts – I was never told for which country. However, by that time, I had other commitments, which meant I couldn’t accept the offer. A pity, as it would have been quite lucrative!”

In 1983, John Coleman was back as conductor with the British delegation. In the contest held in Munich, West Germany, the United Kingdom was represented by Sweet Dreams, another manufactured group, with the song ‘I’m Never Giving Up’ by songwriters Jan Pulsford, Ron Roker, and Phil Wigger. Sweet Dreams finished sixth.

“We had a great time in Munich with the BBC delegation”, Coleman recounts. “Jim Moir, the head of Light Entertainment was, when he was off duty, an extremely funny man with a great sense of humour. Wherever he was around, especially in the bus taking us to and from the venue, everybody was in stitches. Much later I thought that maybe this was his way of getting us to relax and ease the tension.”

Sweet Dreams winning A Song for Europe in 1983

“The rehearsals and contest were organised with this typical German thoroughness and efficiency, except that, in rehearsals, there seemed to be a very lengthy pause between the moment when the artists were told to come on stage and the cue to start the orchestra. The conductor of the song before ours (This must have been Sigurd Jansen from Norway - BT) and I commented on this; we agreed that it did not seem fair to leave the artists out there roasting on stage. We did not have a clue why this had to be, so we decided that, at the next rehearsal, we were going to start the orchestra as soon as we got up there. This turned out not to be a good idea… there was no doubt a reason why they wanted this delay and the floor manager immediately started blowing a very loud whistle like a football referee to stop the orchestra. “Please start when we tell you to start and not before!,” she shouted. They wanted it done exactly their way.”

In the 1984 contest held in Luxembourg the UK entry, ‘Love Games’, was performed by Belle & The Devotions and obtained seventh spot on the scoreboard. 

“Going to Luxembourg was very pleasant; particularly the day-off which I spent with my wife roaming the Ardennes. We visited the Battle of the Bulge Museum in Bastogne. Unfortunately, it was obvious from the start that the British were not very popular in Luxembourg. A couple of months before some English football supporters had behaved very badly there during an international match. I got the feeling that our hotel was possibly not where we could have stayed had the hooligans not done their damage; it was a little basic. There was also a mix-up with the reservations, resulting in my wife and I being put in a single room. Fortunately, Terry Wogan was kind enough to swap rooms letting us have his double."

The song ‘Love Games’ was surrounded by controversy, as the composition by Paul Curtis and Graham Sacher was deemed by many to be an obvious rip-off of the style of song which Holland & Dozier had penned for the Supremes. 

Belle & The Devotions, the UK entrants in Eurovision 1984

“Though I could not really understand why such a song had been chosen in our country, I was indignant when members of other delegations had a derogatory attitude towards it. Come on, these were simply Eurovision songs, not classical symphonies! To my mind the criticism was not just about the entry, but about our country! We were representing the United Kingdom with a song that had been chosen by the British public. It is always possible to disagree with the outcome of a majority vote, but the bottom line is that you respect it. The nicest thing about all of this was that the country which had been most critical of us did not do well in the voting at all.”

Coleman’s last participation in the Eurovision Song Contest was in 1985, when the festival was held in Gothenburg, Sweden. The United Kingdom came fourth with ‘Love Is…’ by Vikki (Victoria Watson), who wrote the song in collaboration with James Kaleth.

“The contest in Sweden was smoothly organised. We were collected from the airport by our hostess, Margareta, who was most charming and did a good job for us all week. At the rehearsals, there was some discussion with the Swedish production team about certain camera shots, but, with Stewart Morris in the delegation, you could be sure that things would be sorted out in the end – and they were. This edition of the contest must have been the only time I paid any attention to the results, as after each song, the artists with their conductors were seated together… I guess to make it easier for the floor manager to find the winner when the time came.”

Due to an air strike, the British delegation could not fly back to London as scheduled. “Jim Moir came up with the solution,” as Coleman remembers. “He organised a coach, which took us from Gothenburg to Copenhagen from where we caught a plane which brought us to England that same day. For me personally, this was a great relief, because I had to be in East Germany the next day for a show at the Friedrichstadt Palast in East Berlin with choreographer Nigel Lythgoe. It was a special commission – a dance performance for which Nigel needed me to take care of the arrangements. If I had not got back to London that Sunday, I would not have been able to catch the flight via Schiphol to the GDR the day after.”

Vikki Watson with Terry Wogan after winning A Song for Europe

In 1986, Coleman was in Edinburgh with Stewart Morris and choreographer Lud Romano for the Opening Ceremony of the XIII Commonwealth Games. The responsibility for UK entries for Eurovision passed to other BBC producers, who chose their own musical director. In 1991 and 1992 Morris returned to the Eurovision but without Coleman who was unavailable being involved in other projects, making Ronnie Hazlehurst the natural choice instead. 

When asked about Hazlehurst, John comments, “I never got to know Ronnie very well, but he was always most friendly and helpful. He was a talented musician, who had the gift of writing appropriate, effective and memorable music for television. Of course, I would have liked to have done Eurovision again, but it was not to be!”

OTHER ARTISTS ABOUT JOHN COLEMAN

The composers’ team of the 1983 UK Eurovision entry have good memories of John Coleman. Jan Pulsford says: “I am proud to have been associated with him in Munich. John conducted both on and off stage like a true consummate professional." Ron Roker adds: “John did a wonderful job on our entry and was a great help to our three young singers in Sweet Dreams. The 1983 contest was their first major international TV appearance – a big enough test for any performer – so they were rightly nervous, but John’s style and friendly manner helped them produce a relaxed performance. He is an excellent musician and arranger, and great to work with.” (2012)

EUROVISION INVOLVEMENT YEAR BY YEAR

1980 The Hague

Country – United Kingdom

Song title – "Love Enough For Two"

Rendition – Prima Donna (Lance Aston / Alan Coates / Danny Finn / Jane Robbins / Kate Robbins / Sally Ann Triplett)

Lyrics – Stuart Slater / Stephanie De Sykes

Composition – Stuart Slater / Stephanie De Sykes

Studio arrangement – Graham Preskett

Live orchestration – Graham Preskett 

Conductor – John Coleman

Score – 3rd place (106 votes)

1981 Dublin

Country – United Kingdom

Song title – "Making Your Mind Up"

Rendition – Bucks Fizz 

(Jay Aston / Cheryl Baker / Bobby G / Mike Nolan)

Lyrics – John Danter / Andy Hill

Composition – John Danter / Andy Hill

Studio arrangement – Andy Hill

Live orchestration – Nick Ingman 

Conductor – John Coleman

Score – 1st place (136 votes)

1983 Munich

Country – United Kingdom

Song title – "I’m Never Giving Up"

Rendition – Sweet Dreams 

(Carrie Grant / Helen Kray / Bobbie McVey)

Lyrics – Jan Pulsford / Ron Roker / Phil Wigger

Composition – Jan Pulsford / Ron Roker / Phil Wigger

Studio arrangement – Jan Pulsford / Ron Roker / Paul Greedus 

Live orchestration – Bill Pitt

Conductor – John Coleman

Score – 6th place (79 votes)

1984 Luxembourg

Country – United Kingdom

Song title – "Love Games"

Rendition – Belle & The Devotions 

(Kit Rolfe / Laura James / Linda Sofield)

Lyrics – Paul Curtis / Graham Sacher

Composition – Paul Curtis / Graham Sacher

Studio arrangement – Paul Curtis

Live orchestration – unknown

Conductor – John Coleman

Score – 7th place (63 votes)

1985 Gothenburg

Country – United Kingdom

Song title – "Love Is…"

Rendition – Vikki (Victoria Watson)

Lyrics – James Kaleth / Victoria Watson

Composition – James Kaleth / Victoria Watson

Studio arrangement – James Kaleth

Live orchestration – James Kaleth

Conductor – John Coleman

Score – 4th place (100 votes)

SOURCES & LINKS

• Bas Tukker interviewed John Coleman in London, February 2012.
• Many thanks to Ron Roker and Jan Pulsford for their additional comments.
• Photos courtesy of John Coleman, Jan Pulsford, Bill Holland, and Ferry van der Zant

FIORENZO ZANOTTI

Born: November 20th, 1949, Bologna (Italy)

Nationality: Italian

In due course, the short impression below will be replaced with a more extensive career overview

BIOGRAPHY

Fiorenzo ‘Fio’ Zanotti studied at the G.B. Martini Conservatory in Bologna; later, he followed courses in counterpoint, harmony, and orchestration. His career began in the rock band Djudas, in which he played the organ. From 1979 onwards, he has written arrangements for many pop artists, e.g. Loredana Berté, Ornella Vanoni, Vasco Rossi, Adriano Celentano, Fiorella Mannoia, and Milva. He wrote a duet for Andrea Bocelli and Placido Domingo and conducted the London Symphony Orchestra, when Zucchero gave a concert in the Royal Albert Hall, London. Since his debut in the San Remo Festival in 1990 (with ‘Donna con te’, Anna Oxa), Zanotti has conducted the orchestra in this contest on many occasions in this festival.

EUROVISION SONG CONTEST

Fiorenzo Zanotti arranged and conducted the 1985 Italian entry to the Eurovision Song Contest held in Gothenburg, ‘Magic, Oh Magic’. It was performed by Al Bano & Romina Power and finished seventh in a field of nineteen competing entries.

EUROVISION INVOLVEMENT YEAR BY YEAR

1985 Gothenburg

Country - Italy

Song title - "Magic, Oh Magic"

Rendition - Al Bano & Romina Power

Lyrics - Cristiano Minellono

Composition - Dario Farina / Michael Hoffmann

Studio arrangement - Fiorenzo 'Fio' Zanotti

Live orchestration - Fiorenzo 'Fio' Zanotti

Conductor - Fiorenzo 'Fio' Zanotti

Score - 7th place (78 votes)

WOLFGANG KÄFER

The following article is an overview of the career of Czech-German pianist, composer, and arranger Wolfgang Käfer. The main source of information is an interview with Mr Käfer, conducted by Bas Tukker, November / December 2020. The article is subdivided into two main parts; a general career overview (part 3) and a part dedicated to Wolfgang Käfer's Eurovision involvement (part 4).

All material below: © Bas Tukker / 2020-21

Contents

1. Passport
2. Short Eurovision record
3. Biography
4. Eurovision Song Contest
5. Other artists about Wolfgang Käfer
6. Eurovision involvement year by year
7. Sources & links

PASSPORT

Born: October 31st, 1939, Český Krumlov / Krumau an der Moldau, Czechia (German-occupied Sudetenland)

Died: October 3rd, 2022, Hillerød (Denmark)

Nationality: German (1939-1945, 1972-2022) / Czechoslovak (1945-1972)

SHORT EUROVISION RECORD

Wolfgang Käfer took part in the Eurovision Song Contest as a conductor on one occasion, in 1985, when he led the orchestra for Denmark’s entry ‘Sku’ du spørg’ fra no’en’, performed by Hot Eyes (Kirsten & Søren); in the international final in Gothenburg, this Danish entry finished eleventh. Though only appearing on the Eurovision stage on one occasion, Käfer was involved as an arranger in three more Danish festival entries between 1982 and 1990.

BIOGRAPHY

Wolfgang Käfer was born in Český Krumlov (called Krumau an der Moldau in German) in 1939, one year after the town had been forcibly transferred, as part of the Sudetenland, from Czechoslovakia to Hitler’s Reich. Typical of the demographics of the area at that time, he was born of a mixed marriage of a German father and a Czech mother. 

“Germans and Czechs lived side by side in Český Krumlov,” Käfer explains. “It was not until the war that good mutual relations were destroyed. My dad, who was a schoolteacher and a man without strong political convictions, was forced into the German army when Hitler invaded Poland. After five years, he escaped and spent the last months of the war in hiding with friends in Czechoslovakia. I didn’t get to know him until I was six – in the meantime, I was brought up by mother and my mother’s mother, who lived with us. Though as a child I mostly spoke German, I understood the Czech language well.”

“At the end of the war, when Český Krumlov was returned to Czechoslovakia, I was one of the few children in kindergarten able to understand Czech – and our new teacher, a woman who was Czech, didn’t understand any German, so I volunteered to act as her interpreter. Most Germans were driven out of Czechoslovakia shortly after the war was over, but as we were a mixed family, we were given a choice. Father, who was heavily traumatised due to what he had had to go through as a soldier, would have preferred to leave, but, to my mom, Český Krumlov was everything. Out of love for her, he resolved to stay. He made a huge sacrifice, because, being a German, he was heavily discriminated against in post-war Czechoslovakia. We were spat on in the street for speaking German. He wasn’t allowed to take up his old profession, which would have been hard for him anyway as he hardly spoke any Czech. Instead, the communists put him to work in a chemical factory, a paper mill. Circumstances were awful. On average, people working in this mill were transferred after one year, but my father was made to work there for eight full years – and in the end, he contracted a lung disease and died. That was when I was fourteen.”

Wolfgang Käfer’s trio performing in České Budějovice (1964)

“Though he hardly ever spoke about music, my dad, musically speaking, was a very gifted man. I didn’t find out about that until I had been taking piano lessons for several years; I had started studying the piano when I was seven years old. The music school was right around the corner from where we lived. My parents didn’t own a piano, but, thanks to my piano teacher, I was allowed to practise in the music school, using one of the pianos there after the last evening lessons were over. On one of these evenings, my father joined me. There, in that empty music school, he grabbed a violin… and it turned out he could play it really wonderfully! Then, he picked up a guitar – and, once again, I was astonished to find that the instrument held few secrets for him. I never managed to find out who had taught him all that."

"At any rate, he passed the musical gene onto me, because I really loved my piano lessons; and music in general. Every Sunday afternoon, I was glued to the radio listening to a children’s play which was accompanied by the most wonderful music I’d ever heard. Later, I found out these were compositions by Debussy, Ravel, and other classical composers. I remember thinking to myself that, when I was a grownup, I wanted to write that kind of music too.”

“Music really meant the world to me for practically as long as I can remember. My piano teacher felt I had the talent to go to conservatory, but my parents frowned upon the idea. My mother thought all musicians were alcoholics! As I didn’t do badly at regular school, I was sent to a technical secondary school in České Budějovice. After obtaining my diploma there, the communists barred me, the son of a German father, from continuing my studies at university. Shortly after the obligatory two years of serving the Czechoslovak army, I took up working as an electrician in Prague. After two years in Prague, I went back the southern part of Bohemia where I’d grown up. I became the electrical floor manager in the same paper mill where my father had been working, but I was thrown out after a short while. To keep the job, I would have had to join the Communist Party. I refused categorically – I didn’t want to be part of the political system which had killed my father. Thereupon, I joined a small company in České Budějovice which installed antennas. There wasn’t much of a choice in that; it was the only job I could get.”

“In the 1960s, beside my regular job in České Budějovice, I played the piano in cafés and restaurants. Of course, this happened in the evenings and during weekends – some three to four times per week. I joined an amateur big band. Later, I formed groups of my own, a trio and a quartet. In those years, I became very interested in jazz music. In my free time, I loved listening to the Radio Dance Orchestra from Prague. The band leader, Karel Krautgartner had his own radio show. We were also very fond of contemporary American bebop. Friends of mine somehow managed to lay their hands on a music magazine from the United States, Downbeat. Thanks to their connections in America, they were even sent LP records by John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and John Evans – now, that was quite something different… At first, I couldn’t understand how such music could even exist!”

Wolfgang Käfer’s quintet in České Budějovice with singer Arana Klimentová; Käfer himself can be detected on the far right, wearing a suitcase (1966)

“In 1967, Krautgartner’s pianist came to České Budějovice to be the judge in a competition for jazz pianists in which I took part as well – and he picked me as the winner. Now, at this event, a West German jazz band had been invited for a guest performance. The musicians were in awe of my style of playing and invited me to take part in a jam session; and after that, they invited me to come with them to West Germany. I was given permission to leave Czechoslovakia for three weeks, and during that period I played with these guys, who were semi-pros, in concerts in Bonn and Cologne. The musician who offered me accommodation in his house gave me a gramophone player as a present – and all the money I made with the band was spent on jazz records by Claus Ogerman and many others… yes, I really was having the time of my life!”

“Shortly after coming back to České Budějovice, I was given the opportunity to work as a sound engineer at a local theatre which specialised in performances for children. Quite soon, I was asked if I could write the music to one of the plays due to be performed there. I had always dreamt of writing music, so I put in all the energy I could. The score was pre-recorded in a radio studio with a small group of musicians… a string quartet, a flautist, and an oboist. Previously, I had done some arranging for the small bands I had been in, but this was something different. I bought several books about orchestral arranging, voraciously working my way through them. Then, I simply started writing the arrangements. The director was pleased with the result – and I was given several more plays to write music to subsequently.”

“Early in 1968, a five-piece entertainment band from Prague came down to České Budějovice to play in a local café. For some of their performances, I replaced their pianist, who was a good musician but a heavy drinker. At some point, they were due to go on a tour in West Germany – and the kapellmeister, maestro Salzmann, who wanted to get rid of the other pianist, asked me to come with them instead of him. We spent the first month in a club in Heilbronn, but the tour lasted for a full year which took us across West Germany with even a brief interlude in Norway. When the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring, I was abroad, but even so, I returned to my country. For some time, I continued to work with Salzmann in Prague, but, unfortunately, he fell ill and the group disbanded.”

“Having worked as a professional musician for over a year, I didn’t want to go back to having a daytime job – and that’s why I took the decision to form a dance band of my own: the Prague 69 Quintet. As I wanted to go abroad again, I rang an agent from Austria, who booked us for performances in upmarket restaurants and clubs. Later on, we also worked in Germany. Even after Dubček had been deposed, Czechoslovak authorities gave permission for people to work in the West, as long as thirty percent of the revenues were paid to the state upon return. For our performances, I re-arranged material by Burt Bacharach and Sergio Mendes, which we alternated with contemporary German chart successes. We made some 2,500 Deutschmark per month, which enabled me and all four other band members to buy a car. We enjoyed the work we were doing, while it earned us a good living at the same time.”

In the second half of the 1960s, Wolfgang Käfer composed and arranged the music to several children's theatre performances in České Budějovice

“In 1971, when we had been abroad for some two years, we were playing in Lübeck, in Northern Germany. One evening, I was approached by an agent from Denmark, who asked me if we were interested to come to Copenhagen. Well, of course we were! At the start of the summer season and towards the end of it, we played at a fantastic hotel, the Sheraton, with mostly American audiences, people who appreciated good music. In between, we played in a smaller café in downtown Copenhagen and at a venue in the north of Denmark."

"While we were at the Sheraton, I met this girl, an architecture student who worked at the hotel during the summer months. Now, some years before, my first marriage had broken up, as I had fallen in love head over heels with this Danish girl, I decided to stay in Copenhagen when our engagement at the Sheraton ended. My fellow-musicians went back to Czechoslovakia, but I didn’t – which meant I had to stay away for good, as I would have been arrested by the communists for staying abroad illegally. Soon after, my girlfriend and I got married. She continued her studies, but I had to find myself a job urgently. Of course, nobody in the Danish music business knew my name, so I had to start at the bottom all over, working for a small candle manufacturer while playing the piano in bars and hotels in the evening hours. I also spent some months away from Denmark, in Zurich and Munich, performing with various music bands. These were not the best of times for me, because the ensembles I played in were pretty awful.”

“Because I couldn’t cope, I decided I had to come back to Denmark to think of something else. My dream had always been to write and arrange music, so I went to various record companies, explaining that I was an aspiring arranger looking for work. One of the executives I spoke to was Helmer Olesen – and like all the others, he promised to call me back, but never did. It was very frustrating. I didn’t want to go on playing piano bars until 1am for the rest of my life. At some point, I got in touch again with the drummer of the little orchestra in Munich I had been playing in the previous year. He was a guy I had gotten on well with. We soon found out we both had the ambition to write music. Each of us had composed three pop songs we were rather satisfied with. That gave him the idea to lend me 4,000 Deutschmark, commissioning me to record his songs as well as my own with Copenhagen musicians. Having written the arrangements to all six tunes, I hired a studio and a full session orchestra with strings and brass as well as an excellent Yugoslavian vocalist to record the material.”

“Of course, my goal was to sell the material to a record company, but, though I knocked on many doors, producers remained unimpressed. At one company, Sonet, after having been shown the way out by yet another producer, I bumped into one of the executives, a certain Mr Bach. He ushered me into his office. It turned out he had heard my arrangements – and he thought they were really great. He asked me to work as an arranger on some of his projects. Moreover, the session musicians I had worked with for those six songs were in awe of the quality of the orchestrations I had done. They told others about this young arranger from Czechoslovakia who had come to Denmark… which slowly resulted in new commissions from other producers and companies starting to come my way. The music business in Denmark was small and, speaking honestly, the level was rather low. I found myself being a big fish in a small pond in Copenhagen. I don’t think I could have carved out a similar position for myself in Czechoslovakia. The six songs which I recorded with the guy from Yugoslavia were never released, but nonetheless those 4,000 Deutschmark were a good investment. They paved the way for everything I’ve been doing since as a music professional.”

Among the first studio projects Wolfgang Käfer got involved with was the album ‘For The Children Of The World’ by the Olsen Brothers, which was received favourably and sold well. Before long, Käfer became one of Denmark’s most sought-after studio arrangers. Artists he worked with in the 1970s and 1980s include Birthe Kjær, Torben Lendager, Jannie Høeg, Johnny Reimar, and Swedish jazz singer Östen Warnerbring. Käfer’s most successful involvement, however, was with Danish rock group Gasolin’. For this band, he worked on the albums ‘Gas 5’ (1975) and ‘What A Lemon’ (1976), writing the string arrangements to some of their biggest hits, such as ‘Fatherless Hill’ and ‘Sct. Emetri’.

The Prague 69 Quintet on their summer tour in Denmark (1971)

“Those Gasolin’ guys got in touch with me because their regular arranger was unavailable,” recalls Käfer. “They were the best rock group around in Denmark at the time. I wasn’t a particular fan of their repertoire or rock music in general, but I was happy to work with them. I listened to their material, thought hard about the most effective way of putting in some string lines, and wrote the scores to the best of my ability. The group members were satisfied with the way the first album turned out; as a result, they asked me back for their next project. Those albums sold incredibly well. This is music which is still being played on the radio in Denmark.”

Apart from his work as a studio arranger, Käfer quickly made his mark as a composer of so-called ‘library music’, instrumental pieces intended to be used in radio, TV, film, or advertising campaigns.

“The sound engineer who had been in the control room for that very first recording with the singer from Yugoslavia helped me with this. He turned out to know a kapellmeister of a radio big band, Ib Glindemann. Glindemann wrote stock music for several UK libraries – and he told him about me. Not long after, Glindemann called me, asking if I was interested in writing compositions for him. All those pieces were arranged for a large studio orchestra. For each melody which I composed and arranged for him, he paid me 500 crowns – for which he bought the right to put his own name on the work. Glindemann himself recorded the material with an orchestra of studio musicians. I was a ghost writer for him, so to speak – and it was a deal which worked well for the both of us, but after two years, I felt the time was right to continue doing this type of work independently, publishing the titles using my own name.”

From the early 1980s onwards, composing library music became an ever-more important part of Wolfgang Käfer’s professional life. He recorded dozens of albums with instrumental music for the music libraries of Chappell, Warner Chappell, and Carlin in the United Kingdom, and for the Sonaton library in Germany. As such, his music was purchased by a variety of film production companies and other media, including BBC Television; in 2005, one of his compositions, ‘Warlord’, was even included in an episode of the popular American animation series ‘Sponge Bob Square Pants’.

“Usually, libraries commissioned me to write a series of tunes centred around a given subject. Such a subject could be ‘industry’, or ‘hospital’, for example. From my childhood onwards, I had always been dreaming of making a living as a composer – so this opportunity was the best that could have happened to me. Artistically, this type of work offers much more freedom than writing arrangements for pop singers. As a composer, you can sit at the piano and write whatever springs to mind. To make my music as attractive as possible for potential customers, I made a habit of recording each tune in several versions… one of thirty seconds, another one of one minute, the conventional time spans for advertisements. Apart from being an artistically interesting activity, writing stock music has been rather profitable; in fact, it became my main source of income. My compositions were sold internationally to some fifty different countries.”

Wolfgang Käfer’s composition ‘Vision Denmark’, the musical accompaniment to the Danish film shown at the 1992 World Expo in Seville

In 1975, Wolfgang Käfer was asked to write his first arrangement for the renowned DR Underhållningsorkester, the light-entertainment orchestra of Danish Radio. Over the next forty-odd years, Käfer came up with some 200 pieces for the ensemble. 

“At the beginning, Kai Mortensen was still nominally in charge of the orchestra, but he was an elderly man by then, and I was closer involved with his successor, Robert Cornford, a fantastic arranger from England. Neither of them had an easy time leading the orchestra. Even though there was a fully-fledged symphony orchestra at DR, the musicians in the Underhållningsorkester felt they were entitled to play Beethoven and Bach as well… which was strange, because this was an orchestra created to play light music. I found that most orchestra members hated anything that wasn’t strictly classical. One time, while they were preparing for a television show for which I had done part of the arrangements, I was surprised to find that all the players in the rhythm group had put pieces of cotton in their ears. They wanted to avoid having to listen to the very music they were playing. I could hardly believe it. One other time, I had written a score which included a piccolo solo, but, while sitting in the control room during the recording, it struck me that the piccolo couldn’t be heard at all. It turned out the lady who held the piccolo refused to play the solo… and for a very good reason too, because she couldn’t play a single note on the instrument! I liked writing for such a large ensemble, but the mentality of the musicians always remained problematic.”

From the mid-1980s onwards, Wolfgang Käfer became involved in film music as an arranger on a regular basis, writing the orchestrations to various feature films and television dramas, including Jul på slottet (1986), Kun en pige (1995), and Blinkende lygter (2000). In 1992, he received the commission to compose and arrange the music to the film shown in the Danish pavilion of the World Expo in Seville, called ‘Vision Denmark’, featuring six short orchestral pieces fitted onto a film showing aspects of Danish life. 

“It was recorded with a symphonic orchestra,” Käfer adds. “The style is half-way between classical music and an American-style film score. I was asked by the film company charged with producing the film. I was very honoured that Denmark should have asked a Czech composer to do the job for them. Yes, I guess this is one of the music pieces I’m most proud of.”

Apart from films and television programmes, Wolfgang Käfer wrote the arrangements to several musicals as well as a ballet performed at Copenhagen’s Royal Theatre. In the 1990s, in a completely different genre, he penned the orchestrations for several concert programmes given by pop singer Stig Rossen with big bands and even with a classical orchestra, the South Jutland Symphony Orchestra. 

The composer at work at his computer (1999)

“I also arranged two albums for Stig, both of which were gold records. The setlist for those symphonic concert consisted of internationally known songs… I particularly remember writing the arrangement to Billy Joel’s ‘Leningrad’ for Stig. Examining the lyrics of ‘Leningrad’ inspired me enormously. When I read about this son of a Russian soldier who perished in World War II and who grew up behind the Iron Curtain, it was as if I was reading elements of my own life story. I was hugely inspired and wrote a grandiose orchestral intro to the song. Whenever writing an arrangement to a song, I make a point of reading the lyrics first, to see if I can find elements which can be used in the orchestration. Another good example was the song ‘Dachau’, which I recorded more recently with a Danish opera singer called Amin Jensen. When I read the lyrics about the concentration camp, I thought back on my youth and the horrible stories my father told about what he had seen… the atrocities of the war. I wish I had had the opportunity to talk to him about all of this more extensively, but, of course, he was dead by the time I reached adolescence…”

In 1990, shortly after communist rule in Czechoslovakia ended, Wolfgang Käfer was able to travel to his country of origin for the first time in nearly twenty years. Straightaway, he saw the opportunities of working with Czech musicians. 

“Practically immediately when Havel took over power, I drove to Prague and went looking for one or two classical conductors who I knew by name. I asked them, and others, if it was possible to record music with them; and, universally, the reaction I got was that they would be thrilled to do it. This was a moment I had been longing for. For twenty years, I had been annoyed by the lack of dedication of Danish studio musicians. Actually, the first recording I did in Prague was the album ‘Det stille ocean’ with Jørgen Olsen and the Prague Film Symphony Orchestra. My hopes of finding a better mentality among musicians were fully justified. Here were people who knew that, in order to get the best possible result, discipline was a prerequisite. After doing several more pop albums, I also started coming over for my own library music projects.”

In the 1990s and into the 2000s, Wolfgang Käfer wrote the arrangements for dozens of recording projects, mainly working with the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. Among the Danish pop artists who did an album arranged by Käfer and backed up by Czech classical musicians are Jette Torp, Lene Siel, Simone Egeriis, and Birthe Kjær.

Back in Denmark, Wolfgang Käfer taught composition and arranging at the Royal Danish Academy of Music for two years, while he also was an arranging teacher for Koda, the Danish Association of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers, for some time. As an arranger, he wrote the music scores to album releases of, amongst others, Jakob Sveistrup and Birthe Kollo. In 2017, Käfer worked on a very special project with guitarist, songwriter, and singer Søren Sebber Larsen; a vinyl album recorded with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and various vocalists. 

At work with Czech cello soloist Michaela Fukácová (2007)

“Søren Sebber Larsen is one of the few people in the Danish music business who I genuinely think of as a friend. I’ve worked with him on various recording projects over the years, but this one was particularly ambitious, as he wanted all songs recorded with a full symphonic orchestra. Søren’s brother, who made a fortune as a shipbuilder, put a huge budget at our disposal to go to Prague and make it happen. Søren and I chose the repertoire together, a mix of classic songs by Burt Bacharach, Van Morrison, and others, alternated with some new songs written by Søren himself. When the LP was ready, Søren and I were both very happy with the way it had turned out. Unfortunately, not many copies of this album were sold, but that’s the way things go sometimes.”

Wolfgang Käfer continued writing library music until his last years. In 2018, he released his last instrumental record, ‘Orchestral Trailer Music’, which was recorded with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. 

“Composing still is my passion,” Käfer explained two years before his passing. “The music in me simply needs an outlet. I’m so happy that I can just sit down at the piano and create the music there and then. The ideas are still there… sometimes, when I’m watching television, I think of a melody, make my way to the piano, and write it down. Some of these music pieces are ready in ten minutes, others need a lot more time and energy – it depends. Writing the scores to my own tunes has become a lot easier since the arrival of the synthesizer, which is a wonderfully helpful tool to check if a string arrangement sounds right. These days, the most difficult part of the job is finding the budgets for sessions with a full orchestra. The English stock libraries aren’t keen to invest money in large orchestras any longer, which means we usually have to rely on the Danish Composers’ Association to put an advance at our disposal. Nowadays, I sell most of my compositions to a Danish music library co-owned by my youngest son, Daniel.”

When asked about any regrets, Käfer concludes, “Well, perhaps, but just one; I orchestrated quite a few movies over the years, but I would have loved writing a film score myself. Unfortunately, such an opportunity simply didn’t arise. Otherwise, I consider myself really lucky to have been able to work in so many different fields of the music business. I don’t think I could have had the same career as an arranger if I’d gone back to Czechoslovakia in 1971, where the studio world was dominated by a clique of musicians from Prague – and I always would have remained the outsider coming from a provincial backwater. In Denmark, somehow, I never really had to make an effort to make progress, career-wise. You know, I am one of those people who made his hobby his profession. That’s a lucky thing, even more so since my dear wife passed away in 2018. It’s hard getting over losing her, but music is good to me – when sitting down at the piano, I don’t have to think about anything else. At this stage of my life, I couldn’t ask for anything better.”

Wolfgang Käfer passed away in October 2022 at the age of 82 in Hillerød.

With singer-songwriter Søren Sebber Larsen (2017)

EUROVISION SONG CONTEST

Wolfgang Käfer took part in the Eurovision Song Contest as a conductor only once, but he was involved in the festival as well as the Danish pre-selection in other capacities on many more occasions. In 1978, when Denmark returned to the Eurovision Song Contest after not having participated in eleven consecutive editions, Käfer wrote the arrangement to ‘San Francisco’ by the Olsen Brothers, one of the melodies in Melodi Grand Prix, the Danish Eurovision pre-selection. On that occasion, Käfer left conducting the orchestra to someone else, Ole Kurt Jensen. Did he lack the confidence to stand up in front of an orchestra himself?

“It’s not that I’m too modest. No, I’ve always preferred giving way to professional conductors, peopled who studied the subject and gain their living that way. I never studied conducting. Of course, when doing a studio recording where there was no conductor available, I did the job without making a fool of myself, but I’d rather sit in the control room closely listening to every detail of the arrangement while it’s being played by the orchestra. When recording my library music in Prague, I never conduct myself – there are so many excellent conductors available in Czechia, classical conductors who spent years studying to become as good as they are… so why would I ask them to cede their place to me? I know what I’m really good at – I’m a professional composer and arranger, and as such, I’m always very happy when I can work with excellent professionals in other fields, instrumentalists and conductors alike. As for 'San Francisco’, it was a good song and I’m convinced it would have done better internationally than ‘Boom boom’ by Mabel, who beat us and represented Denmark that year. In fact, that song was a catastrophe, wasn’t it?”

From 1978 onwards, Wolfgang Käfer arranged songs for the Danish Eurovision pre-selection practically every year, and in 1982 he also had a hand in the song which represented the country on the international stage, ‘Video-video’ by Brixx. The song itself was very synthetic, synthesiser-oriented – and because that year’s Danish Melodi Grand Prix had been held without live orchestral accompaniment, the need to write an additional live orchestration only arose after Brixx had been chosen. 

“I was asked to jump in by the group itself; not by the front man (Jens Brixtofte – BT), but by two of the guys backing him up. I had worked with them in the studio previously. Now they wondered if I could help out. It was an easy assignment. They wanted have these typical disco string lines added to the rhythm track. For the Eurovision Song Contest, the rhythm was played from a backing tape, while the strings were performed live by the orchestra. The song itself didn’t particularly inspire me. I cannot say anything positive about it, to be honest.”

Single release of Brixx’ Eurovision entry ‘Video-video’ (1982)

The following year, once more, the Danish juries chose a rather superficial dance tune to represent the country in the Eurovision Song Contest, ‘Kloden drejer’, performed by Gry Johansen. 

“The story is rather similar to what happened with Brixx. The three composers of Gry’s song approached me to write an additional orchestration to a rhythm track which they had done in the studio. Because they lacked the theoretical knowledge to write an additional orchestration for the Eurovision Song Contest, they needed someone else to do the job. After Eurovision, a single of the song was released with an arrangement by Jan Glæsel, but the original Eurovision version is mine and mine alone. Again, I didn’t think much of the song. Working on a Eurovision arrangement was never my passion; this was work, a job that had to be done. Eurovision songs never really inspired me in any way, and I did it because I made a living as an arranger. If I had had a choice, I’d never have worked on this kind of repertoire.”

In an interview, Gry Johansen once said that ‘Kloden drejer’ was not the type of song which benefited from being performed with an orchestra – quite the opposite: she feels it would have done better without. 

“I don’t know if she’s right," Käfer comments. "To me, and I repeat myself here, the song itself simply lacked quality. Afterwards, Gry went looking for all kind of cheap excuses. I remember she claimed that, to her, Eurovision was just a job which she wasn’t really interested in. That was a rather silly remark, because, when you take part, you should give it your all, no matter what your personal thoughts are. Later on, I recorded a single with her, but she never really achieved her breakthrough as an established artist in Denmark. She’s a nice girl and we’ve been good friends and colleagues, but something is missing – a little bit of personality perhaps.”

In the 1982 and 1983 editions of the Eurovision Song Contest, Wolfgang Käfer’s arrangements were conducted by Allan Botschinsky. 

“Allan was a very good trumpet player. He did the Eurovision Song Contest because he was the leader of the Danish Radio Big Band at the time. I never had any problems with him, but he was a rather distant guy. It wasn’t easy to get to know him well. When I worked with him, he simply got on with the job in a businessmanlike fashion. Later, Henrik Krogsgaard took over the Eurovision conducting job from Allan. Henrik is a completely different character, very friendly and generous. One time, when he conducted one of my arrangements in a television show – it might have been the Danish Melodi Grand Prix or some other programme –, he was courteous enough to call me, telling me how good he felt my score was. It is not something which is very common in the music business; and I appreciated his gesture a lot. Such a wonderful man!”

Gry Johansen performing in the 1983 Danish Melodi Grand Prix

In 1985, the Danish Melodi Grand Prix was won, for the second year in a row, by the duo Hot Eyes, Kirsten Siggaard and Søren Bundgaard. After the upbeat ‘Det’ lige det’, which had landed them a more than respectable fourth place at the Eurovision final in Luxembourg in 1984, they came up with an equally gimmicky song for the 1985 edition: ‘Sku’ du spørg fra no’en’, which tells the story of a woman meeting a guy in the discotheque and wondering where she saw that face before, only to realise that they were friends in their early childhood – an element in the lyrics which was reinforced by the stage performance, in which Kirsten and Søren shared the podium with Bundgaard’s nine-year-old daughter Lea, who took over for a part of the vocals. At the international festival final in Gothenburg, this Danish entry was conducted by Wolfgang Käfer.

“I had already been contacted by Søren Bundgaard before the Danish Melodi Grand Prix,” Käfer recalls. “The national final didn’t use a live orchestra that year, and he was looking for someone to help him to prepare an effective studio arrangement. Actually, Søren’s first choice was Henrik Krogsgaard, but, for some reason, Henrik was not available; I seem to remember he was ill at the time. At that point, Bundgaard thought of me as a replacement."

"The studio job was straightforward enough; there was no orchestra and we prepared an arrangement using just rhythm instruments and synthesisers. Bundgaard, who had written the song, had very fixed ideas about the harmonies and he wasn’t really keen to take into account my suggestions. As I found out later as well, when working with him on other projects, he didn’t like giving much freedom to others. When I had found some better harmonies for a given piece, he used to say that that was not what he was looking for. He wanted his instructions to be followed, and that was it. Sometimes, he came up with very silly ideas… and when I had prepared an arrangement for him, he wanted to adapt all kinds of things himself because he felt I hadn’t stayed close enough to what he had had in mind. Therefore, my impact on the arrangement of this Eurovision song was actually rather limited. It was a straightforward enough job. I wrote the score and went home – I didn’t even stay in the studio for the actual recording.”

After ‘Sku’ du spørg fra no’en’ won the selection in Denmark, Søren Bundgaard was confronted with a problem: in the national final, the song had been performed by Kirsten and himself using playback, with three children on stage and without a background choir, while the rules of the international Eurovision final, due to be held in Gothenburg (Sweden), stipulated that all vocals had to be performed live – with a maximum of six persons on stage. So, he took the decision to make do with just one child, Søren’s daughter, while adding a choir of three singers to back up the front duo. According to Eurovision rules, this now meant that all music had to be performed live by the orchestra; after all, backing tapes were only allowed provided the instruments included on it were performed in play-back on stage. Now, however, because six vocalists were required to perform the song, there was no possibility of including any miming instrumentalists on stage.

When asked about this, Wolfgang Käfer says, “Be that as it may, but the rhythm for our song wasn’t performed live! After this song won the final in Denmark, Bundgaard saw little reason to change the arrangement – he essentially wanted to keep it as it was. I added a small orchestration of strings, brass, and some minor rhythm elements such as a vibraphone part, but the main part of the rhythm track was put on a backing tape. The backing tape started with a click track, for which I didn’t need to wear headphones, as the click was played over the loudspeakers. It could be heard clearly in the television broadcast as well. Actually, this click was one of the reasons why I decided to accept Søren’s request to conduct the song on stage in Gothenburg. As I already told you previously, I don’t think of myself as an accomplished conductor, but with such a track indicating the tempo, very little could go wrong. Moreover, I thought to myself, if guys like Krogsgaard and Botschinsky could conduct the orchestra in the Eurovision Song Contest, there was little reason why I couldn’t have done it. After all, they weren’t professional conductors either.”

Kirsten and Søren together – photo taken from the press kit of the Danish Eurovision delegation in Gothenburg (1985)

Käfer’s explanation left us a little puzzled, as using a rhythm tape without musicians miming the instruments on stage was in clear breach of the Eurovision rules which applied at the time. Therefore, we contacted the 1985 Eurovision Song Contest’s chief conductor, Curt-Eric Holmquist, to ask him about the matter. 

“The rules were exactly as you describe them,” he maintains. “When using a backing track, there even was a rule which stated that the instruments on stage had to be mimed by the same people who recorded them in the studio. Of course, this was impossible to control, but anyhow; what is clear, though, is that the click which can be heard at the start of the song was on a backing track. Mr Käfer is absolutely right on that. My drummer, Per Lindwall, who I asked about this as well, emphatically denies having used a click himself; he never used any artificial tool to get the tempo right. It’s possible, though, that Per played the drums live over the backing track – I don’t remember anything about this; and neither does Per, which makes this possibility rather improbable.”

As there’s little point in using a click without having a backing track, there can only be one conclusion: Wolfgang Käfer’s memory does not betray him, and the Danish performance in 1985 definitely broke Eurovision regulations. On the one hand, it’s very surprising that the Danes weren’t forbidden to use their tape when the rehearsals in Gothenburg got underway, even more so as delegations were used to watching each other’s performances carefully to look for regulation breaches – but, on the other hand, most attention was usually devoted to the ‘three-minute-rule’, the rule stating that no song should exceed the maximum time of three minutes. The Luxembourg entry in Gothenburg also seems to have employed a rhythm track without miming musicians on stage, proving that control of the applying rules in Gothenburg was particularly lax – more lax perhaps than in other editions of the contest.

Generally speaking, in the 1980s, more and more delegations were competing playing hard and fast with the rules, using a sequencer in the orchestra playing synthesiser sound; and also synthesisers in the orchestra reproducing pre-recorded vocal samples. In 1990, the Swedish delegation in Zagreb went so far as to ask the European Broadcasting Union for clearer guidelines regarding backing tracks in view of the fact that some countries at that year’s contest were clearly using pre-recorded elements not visible on stage – most notably, again, the Luxembourg entry.

Still, Denmark’s song in 1985 broke regulations more flagrantly, in that there was a backing track without any instruments included in the stage performance. None of the blame for this can be laid at Wolfgang Käfer’s door, though; the idea to use the backing track must have been Bundgaard’s – and Bundgaard should have been told by the Danish broadcaster’s delegation leader in Gothenburg, or, failing that, by officials of the EBU, that his playback track could not be used for the performance.

Close-up, taken from the official 1985 Eurovision Song Contest programme

In as far as Wolfgang Käfer was looking forward to taking part in the Eurovision Song Contest, the experience was mainly a disappointing one for him. “I was expecting to meet interesting musicians from other countries – composers, arrangers, instrumentalists – but in Gothenburg I soon discovered that members of each delegation were primarily concerned with their own entry. There was no spirit of togetherness, no people from different corners of Europe hanging out together – as far as I can remember, everyone was jealously looking at the others. There was little mutual understanding; just rivalry. The Swedes had done a good job on the organisation and the orchestra was just fine. The rehearsals were flawless. I had an easy time. As far as I remember, we didn’t do much sightseeing – there were just the rehearsals in the morning, and then straight back to the hotel.”

“Of course, Søren Bundgaard and the others were hoping they could win the contest. All other participants harboured those same illusions, but, frankly, I was never very hopeful. Kirsten Siggaard has a good voice, but the song itself wasn’t good enough. I was just doing the job I was supposed to do there, leading the orchestra, and there were no hiccups in the performance – so I’ve no reason to feel ashamed about having taken part in this Eurovision Song Contest, but I didn’t feel any disappointment on a personal level when we only finished eleventh. Doing Eurovision wasn’t a childhood dream for me, but when they called me and asked me to step in, I did my best to do it professionally. I never felt any nerves either. The atmosphere in our delegation afterwards was subdued. Søren’s daughter was in tears. She believed she would win – and who can blame a nine-year-old? It was a silly idea to go to Eurovision with a child. In those years, Bundgaard enjoyed quite a lot of success with his Eurovision melodies, and he represented Denmark as a songwriter on several occasions, but this song certainly wasn’t his best effort. In fact, it wasn’t good at all.”

Asked about his thoughts regarding the winning entry, ‘La det swinge’ by the Norwegian duo Bobbysocks!, Käfer says, “No, that was horrible too! It wasn’t an interesting composition – a very simple rock-‘n’-roll tune, nothing more. There were other countries’ entries which were better, more interesting to listen to. Unfortunately, in Eurovision, the best songs usually don’t win. Every year, when watching the contest, there are always two or three really good songs, but they hardly ever come first. I must say I liked Johnny Logan’s two winning songs; those were really good compositions and well performed, but such exceptions are really, really few.”

Almost as an afterthought, Käfer adds, “Still, there was one very positive side to my Eurovision participation in Gothenburg! By that time, I hadn’t been back to Czechoslovakia for almost fifteen years. If I had done that, I would have been imprisoned for having escaped the country illegally in 1971. But suddenly, after this Eurovision Song Contest, I received all kinds of phone calls from old friends from Czechoslovakia. They turned out to have seen me on television! Czechs loved watching television programmes from the West – and apparently Eurovision was widely watched that year in Český Krumlov and České Budějovice. People over there must have forgotten about me, but when they saw my face, they remembered who I was. It was all rather unusual and unexpected; after all, Eurovision is about the only time in my life when I stood in the spotlight. Those Czech friends who called me included people I hadn’t met since my days in kindergarten. They must have obtained my phone number through my ex-wife who was still living there. Also, distant relatives of mine living in West Germany contacted me. They were excited to see me in such a television show. It just goes to show that almost everybody watched Eurovision back in those days.”

Single release of the 1985 Danish Eurovision entry

Four years on, in 1989, we find Wolfgang Käfer’s name on the participants’ list of the Danish Melodi Grand Prix as a songwriter; with Jørgen Olsen, the elder half of the Olsen Brothers, he composed ‘Fugle’, a stylish, lushly orchestrated ballad. 

“Jørgen is someone who I worked quite closely, practically from the moment I arrived in Denmark. I had arranged several successful albums for the Olsen Brothers in the 1970s, but we remained in touch in later years; and, sometimes, he called me about songs he was writing, wondering if I was interested to listen and give some suggestions. At some point, he wanted to do a ballad and asked me to write a melody. Jørgen came to my place and, together, we wrote ‘Fugle’. The initial idea for the music was mine, and after I had played it to him at the piano, Jørgen added the lyrics. The arrangement for the studio version was recorded in London with the London Symphony Orchestra. The year after, we recorded several more songs, but by that time, the Iron Curtain had come down – and we completed his new album in Prague. In the Melodi Grand Prix, ‘Fugle’ did not win, but many of the other composers who took part told me afterwards they felt that, musically speaking, it was the best song in the competition.”

The following year, Käfer was involved in the Melodi Grand Prix as an arranger again, first and foremost of Jørgen Olsen’s new attempt, ‘Berlin’, but also of ‘Hallo hallo’, the eventual winning entry, performed by a young girl from Funen, Lonnie Devantier. 

“The two composers of Lonnie’s song contacted me prior to the Danish selection programme. They were Torben Lendager and John Hatting, guys who I had done several recording projects with in the past. They were used to working with me and wanted me to take care of the arrangement. Quite different from what an arranger is usually asked to do for Eurovision songs, I was given few instructions by them. They gave me the demo tape, and, as far as they were concerned, I could do everything I want with it, as long as it was understood that the sound was supposed to be happy, upbeat, and commercial. Contrary to those earlier Eurovision stints I was involved in, this arrangement was played completely live, first in Denmark at the Melodi Grand Prix and later in the international Eurovision final as well. There was no backing track. The two songwriters were happy with what I’d come up with. I remember watching this Eurovision Song Contest while staying in Czechoslovakia. It was a good performance. The girl sang well and the sound mix was good too. No complaints as far as this one’s concerned!”

In the Eurovision final in Zagreb, ‘Hallo hallo’ finished eighth in a field of 22 competing entries. One year later, Wolfgang Käfer had his second try as a songwriter in the Danish pre-selection, taking part with ‘Afrodite af i dag’, an American-style power ballad. Performed by Helle Børgesen, it did not come close to winning the ticket to represent Denmark abroad. 

“Helle was a member of DR’s radio choir. Since she was keen to take part in Melodi Grand Prix, she asked me to write a song for her. My youngest son, Daniel, wrote the lyrics to it. It’s not a song that I’m really proud of. As a composer, I’ve always felt more at ease writing instrumental music. I find it hard to think about lyrics and vocals when composing a melody. Still, this song was picked for the Danish final, but I never had high hopes for it.”

Lonny Devantier after winning the Danish Melodi Grand Prix in 1990, surrounded by the composers of ‘Hallo hallo’, Torben Lendager (left) and John Hatting

Does Wolfgang Käfer’s Eurovision involvement end here? Well, not quite. He wrote several more arrangements – most recently, in 2010, he took care of the orchestration for ‘How Will I Know’, with which Simone Egeriis attempted her chance in the Danish selection programme. This song, recorded with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, finished third, two places behind the duo Chanée & N’evergreen and their ‘In a moment like this’.

Meanwhile, does Wolfgang Käfer still follow the Eurovision Song Contest today? “No, I don’t watch it anymore. Eurovision never was a podium of excellence, but in more recent years it has evolved into something in which show and looks are the only things that count. The music is there, but it’s been put away safely in the background. In such a setup, an orchestra has no place. Most of the compositions taking part nowadays have been prepared electronically in the recording studio. Of course, this type of music can be done with an orchestra as well, but producers and songwriters wouldn’t accept their material being given another sound, inevitably different from what they recorded in the studio. There’s no way the tide will turn back. Nothing we can do about that: the orchestra will never come back to Eurovision.”

OTHER ARTISTS ABOUT WOLFGANG KÄFER

Danish singer-songwriter Søren Sebber Larsen, a close friend of Wolfgang Käfer’s, employed his help as an arranger on several of his albums. Larsen’s admiration for Käfer goes back to his childhood: “Back in 1976, when I was a naughty boy of ten years old, I loved the music of Danish rock group Gasolin’. Their songs appealed to me, but especially one from their fifth album, ‘Sct. Emitri’, had something extra to it. Being so young, I couldn’t figure out exactly what it was… but there was something in the sound – those strings, playing as a counter-melody to the main vocal line. The album sleeve stated that strings and woodwinds were by Wolfgang Käfer. As years went by, I noticed that, whenever my ears and heart were excited by a string arrangement, it was more often than not a score written by Wolfgang. In 2006, about to record my third solo-album, I had a couple of tunes that could use strings and woodwinds. There was only one person I could call. After I had done some demos, Wolfgang and I went to Prague together to record strings and brass in the Rudolfinum concert hall. The result was amazing – and especially the song ‘October’ turned out marvellously. Since, we have collaborated on more than thirty songs. Wolfgang’s arrangements are always stunning to ears and heart alike… they always seem to support and reinforce the tune without getting in the way of it, while somehow succeeding in finding a tasteful way to complete the picture. He just has a way of finding the ‘highlights’ in a melody, using them cleverly and tastefully. There are elements in his jazz background as well as his upbringing in the closed-off country that Czechoslovakia used to be, which have given him a certain pompous, but at the same romantic and melancholic style. His music has the power and beauty of the river Moldau that flows through Prague! If you ask me, Wolfgang Käfer deserves to be up there with the greats: Bacharach, Mancini, Artie Butler, Nelson Riddle, Don Costa, and Ennio Morricone. He is a true craftsman.” (2020)

Søren Sebber Larsen with Wolfgang Käfer (2009)

EUROVISION INVOLVEMENT YEAR BY YEAR

1982 Harrogate

Country – Denmark

Song title – "Video-video"

Rendition – Brixx (Jens Brixtofte / John Hatting / Bjørn Holmgaard Sørensen / Torben Jacobsen / Steen Ejler Olsen)

Lyrics – Jens Brixtofte

Composition – Jens Brixtofte

Studio arrangement – Brixx

Live orchestration – Wolfgang Käfer

Conductor – Allan Botschinsky

Score – 17th place (5 votes)

1983 Munich

Country – Denmark

Song title – "Kloden drejer"

Rendition – Gry Johansen

Lyrics – Flemming Gernyx / Christian Jacobsen

Composition – Lars Christensen / Flemming Gernyx / 

Christian Jacobsen

Studio arrangement – Lars Christensen / Flemming Gernyx / Christian Jacobsen / Billy Cross / Jan Glæsel 

Live orchestration – Wolfgang Käfer

Conductor – Allan Botschinsky

Score – 17th place (16 votes)

1985 Gothenburg

Country – Denmark

Song title – "Sku’ du spørg fra no’en"

Rendition – Kirsten Siggaard & Søren Bundgaard (Hot Eyes) 

Lyrics – Keld Heick

Composition – Søren Bundgaard

Studio arrangement – Søren Bundgaard / Wolfgang Käfer

Live orchestration – Wolfgang Käfer

Conductor – Wolfgang Käfer

Score – 11th place (41 votes)

1990 Zagreb

Country – Denmark

Song title – "Hallo hallo"

Rendition – Lonnie Devantier 

Lyrics – Keld Heick

Composition – John Hatting / Torben Lendager

Studio arrangement – Wolfgang Käfer

Live orchestration – Wolfgang Käfer

Conductor – Henrik Krogsgaard

Score – 8th place (64 votes)

SOURCES & LINKS

• Bas Tukker did an interview with Wolfgang Käfer, subdivided into two sessions: November-December 2020
• Many thanks to Søren Sebber Larsen for his dedication to Wolfgang Käfer
• Thanks to Curt-Eric Holmquist, Tin Španja, and Daniel Beach for sharing with me their insights and thoughts about the ‘backing track saga’ in 1985
• Photos courtesy of Wolfgang Käfer, Søren Sebber Larsen, Bill Holland, and Ferry van der Zant
• Thanks due to Daniel Beach and Edwin van Gorp for proofreading the manuscript