The momentous but fateful life of Johann Hölzel began at 1.15 pm on 19 February 1957. The birth was as unproblematic as the pregnancy had been difficult. Maria Hölzel - at the time a branch manager of Habsburg Laundry in Vienna's 14th district - was rushed to the maternity hospital in Gersthof three months pregnant and suffering a haemorrhage. She wanted nothing more than a child and was distraught when she lost the twins she was bearing. She was kept in for observation and when, after an examination the next day, the doctor diagnosed a pregnancy she could hardly believe her ears. "You must have made a mistake, I lost my twins only yesterday," replied Maria Hölzel, totally frustrated. Only after a few moments did she realise that she had been carrying triplets. But her joy could hardly take hold as the physician immediately decided "We'll do a curettage. If you've lost two babies, you'll lose the third too." With courage and determination, Maria contradicted the doctor's high-handedness: "No, we won't do anything." Nothing was going to stop her having this child - and so it was to be.
It was a big, strong boy weighing 4.95 kg, 54 cm long and from the first moment he was attracting attention with his loud voice. His mother remembers the prophetic words of the midwife as she put the child in her arms: "There's your little choirboy. When all the babies were quiet and one began to cry, you could be sure it was mine."
Hans was born into petty-bourgeois circumstances. His father, Alois Hölzel, was from Lower Austria. Alois had lost both parents when he was young and along with them, any chance of further schooling. Left to his own devices, he began an apprenticeship as a metal worker and diligently worked his way up to master fitter at an engineering works. The young Hölzel family lived in a rented flat of around 70 m² at No. 26 Ziegelofengasse in Vienna's 5th district. The block of flats where Hans grew up is long gone and has been replaced by a new building. A few years after Hans was born, to be near her grandson Maria Hölzel's mother moved into a small apartment in the block across the street - right above the Altes Fassl inn where Hans was to become a regular.
From early childhood it was clear that Hans had music in his blood. One of his favourite pastimes was conducting the music on the radio. Hardly able to stand, he would wave one hand in time with the music holding on to the bars of his cot with the other. When he was a little older he whistled and warbled along with hits on the radio like Anneliese, wann wirst du endlich einmal gescheiter?
Hans grew up under the watchful eye of three women, his mother, his maternal grandmother and a neighbour whom he affectionately called "Schlintzi." His grandmother was from Bad Tatzmannsdorf in the province of Burgenland. She loved him above all else, anticipated his every wish and let him do as he pleased, a situation that Hans soon exploited with ever greater frequency. On the other hand, his mother kept him on a short rein and this led to the occasional conflict between the two, although she was to remain the most important person in his life. In 1959, to improve the family's financial position Maria Hölzel took over a small grocer's shop in Ziegelofengasse.
His mother recalls, "Hans never wanted to go to kindergarten and so he just stayed at home. He was a very good child. I can't remember him every causing any kind of problems - his behaviour was almost exceptional."
For his fourth birthday Hans wanted an accordion. But a music teacher advised his parents to have him take piano lessons as he could still change to accordion later. So they bought him a baby grand instead, and enrolled him for piano lessons with Dr. Bodem, a music teacher in Fillgradergasse, not far from Ziegelofengasse. Hans had two lessons a week and his teacher was very happy with her charge. She once told a proud Maria Hölzel her son had a musical ear and great talent, in particular for Beethoven. Already at the age of five he could play almost 30 popular hits with two hands though he didn't know a single note. When he heard a piece he liked on the radio he would sit down at the keyboard and play it by ear.
As Hans was about four and a half years old, his parents registered him for an audition at the music academy. It was a preliminary round for a competition that was part of the television show Musik kennt keine Grenzen (Music Knows no Boundaries) where children from various countries competed against each other. Hans was by far the youngest who was invited to audition. The stern professor carried him back in his arms with the words: "Mrs Hölzel, he is a little Mozart. I have never met anyone with such perfect pitch in my whole career." He urged her to have Hans take further training.
In September 1963 Hans began his schooling at the Piarist's Primary School, a respected Catholic private school in Ziegelofengasse. Maria Hölzel was committed to her grocery business the whole day and as she could not devote enough time to her son, she enrolled him as a day boarder.
In December 1963 there was a Christmas party at Hans' school and children who could play an instrument were sought for the musical section. After initial hesitation, Hans joined in and played the Blue Danube Waltz. It was his first performance in front of a large crowd. Wild applause broke out before he had even finished the last bar and he had to give an encore, Vienna Blood, a piece he was to play quite differently many years later. The next day Maria Hölzel's shop was overrun with people who had missed the Christmas party wanting to know where her son had learned to play so wonderfully. The whole school was abuzz with talk of a boy wonder. One of his school friends recalls, "When Hans was asked what he wanted to be his answer was 'pop star'. He didn't say 'musician', but, 'pop star'."
Of course, everybody who came to visit the Hölzel family wanted to hear Hans play. But he could not stand it and even before the guests arrived he would always say, "Mama, I'm not playing today," or simply disappear when guests were due. At most he could be convinced to play one piece, but that was all.
After primary school Hans attended the secondary school in Rainergasse, which he was later to describe as very middle-class. He mastered the first four years without any problems. He got excellent results in German as he had a talent for languages but had difficulties in natural science subjects, especially mathematics.
One of the first turning points in Hans Hölzel's life occurred when his father left the home and family in 1968. Alois Hölzel pressured his wife for a divorce but she only consented many years later. Although Hans never let on that his parents' separation troubled him, he really missed his father very much and always longed for a substitute. Alois never understood his son's ambitious career plans and said to him, several years later, "If I'd stayed at home, you'd never have become Falco." Maybe his conscience was troubling him.
The year 1971 brought the next stroke of fate for Hans when his beloved grandmother passed away. Even if he did not show his grief, it was a long time before he got over the loss of someone to whom he had been very close.
Maria Hölzel's small grocery shop was suffering from the overpowering competition from the big supermarket chains and she had to give it up, taking on a job as an advertising agent for the Columbia company. That, of course, meant that she would leave the house on Monday mornings and not return until the following Thursday or Friday. From this time on Hans was more or less left to his own devices. He moved into his late grandmother's small apartment with its toilet outside in the corridor, and "Schlintzi," who eventually became a kind of substitute grandmother, looked after him.
Hans began to lose interest in school and played truant with increasing regularity. He would leave home on time each morning, schoolbag under his arm to keep up appearances, before heading for the Prater fairground or the football club, the bag hidden in the nearest gravel bin. He scoured Vienna's music shops before using the 1,200 schillings his father had given him to buy a guitar at the Wukitz music shop in Pilgramgasse. He would hardly touch his baby grand again.
In the fifth year in secondary school nine Hans had a total of more than 400 classes missed without permission and it was inevitable he would fail mathematics. School became more and more of a drag: it now seemed pointless to him and he could not understand why he should memorise this or that poem or mathematical formula. Only a few years later Falco expressed his ambivalent relationship to school in his song Nie mehr Schule (No More School).
Maria Hölzel confronted her son with the alternatives: "Either you are going to repeat the year like others do, or you'll have to start working." Without hesitating, Hans replied, "I'm definitely not repeating the year, I'd rather get a job." His mother had many connections thanks to her job and found him employment at the Employees' Pension Insurance Board in Blechturmgasse, with the opportunity of becoming a permanent staff member in the public service at the age of 27 - something that would have pleased his mother. He worked in the archive under the wing of an elderly man for whom it was like a home form home. The mornings they both spent with a hearty breakfast before finishing their work, something that never took more than two or three hours. The rest of the time they philosophised about anything and everything. Hans enjoyed it greatly and was by no means keen to leave this department.
The early Seventies saw rapid growth in the importance in pop music of the electric guitar, and especially the bass guitar. Bands such as Deep Purple and Frank Zappa were revolutionising the music scene. Hans decided to sell his guitar and use the proceeds combined with some extra from his mother to buy his first bass guitar, which then became "his" instrument.
The first band Hans joined as a bassist - he was 17 - was called Umspannwerk (Transformer). Rehearsals were held in the basement of a house in Kaltenleutgeben that belonged to the parents of one Hans' friends. Kaltenleutgeben lies 15 kms from Vienna and Hans persuaded his mother to buy him a moped. Hans could now ride to Kaltenleutgeben for rehearsals as often as he liked. He painted "Umspannwerk" in big letters on his first car.
At the age of 17 he resigned from his job at the insurance board without really knowing what lay ahead professionally. So he volunteered for national service and used the time to perfect his bass playing. Falco later claimed this was when he first learned to play bass properly.
Having finished his national service, he spent three semesters at Vienna's Jazz Conservatorium in downtown Johannesgasse. However, his heart was not in it: he simply wanted to please his mother. And yet his studies gave him the knowledge of music theory he later needed to star as a musician and confirmed his desire to become a professional musician.
The late seventies was a period of great upheaval in the music scene. Punk was conquering Europe from its beginnings in Britain and Hans was fascinated from the start by the new style. The cult star David Bowie, himself influenced by German bands such as Kraftwerk and Can, brought out his pioneering Berlin trilogy Low, Heroes and Lodger and shaped the Berlin of the day. Hans Hölzel decided to move to West Berlin for a while and try and get established in the local music scene there. Many years later Falco recalled: "Bowie was one of the reasons why I was in Berlin. I wanted to bump into him somewhere. Bowie was my idol. He always did a lot for German-language pop music. The Hero album was an initial spark for me."
As a jazz-rock musician Hans played in the widest variety of Berlin bands, earning about 1000 schillings per evening. "That was really a lot, but always less than I was spending. I never had any money in Berlin," remembers Falco. He never really settled down in Berlin but, all in all, spent around a year there. Many of his later songs look back at this time.
At the end of the seventies a group formed around the high priest of the Vienna scene, Wickerl Adam: the First Vienna Music Theatre, which eventually evolved into the Hallucination Company. The concerts of the impromptu big band took place in Bernoulli Strasse in Vienna's 22nd district as part of the Viennese institution Culture in the Outer Districts.
One day, walking through the pedestrian mall in Mödling, Wickerl Adam noticed a good-looking busker playing bass in a band. "There he was in Mödling playing as if he was in Madison Square Garden in front of thousands of people - but nobody was there," Wickerl Adam remembers. He wanted this talented youngster for his band, and Hans Hölzel didn't hesitate.
Already at this time it was becoming clear that Hans Hölzel could not stand any compromises where music was concerned. Meticulousness and perfection were always his first priority. Adam says: "I demanded eight hours of rehearsals per day and Hans enjoyed that. He was always on time, the type of guy you could work with." Hans' musician colleagues at the time described him as very modest, quiet and affable.
The Hallucination Company first went on tour in 1978. In Munich the show titled Hallucinations was a sensation and a complete sell-out. On the third day in Munich Hans approached Wickerl Adam in a silver grey-black striped suit, short hair brushed back with gel and said: "Hey, Wickerl, today don't say 'On bass, Hans Hölzel', say 'On bass, Falco Gottehrer'." A couple of days later he appeared again and said: "Wickerl, let's drop 'Gottehrer,' - just say 'Falco'."
Hans thought of the name Falco because he was very impressed by the East German ski jumper Falko Weisspflog who was enjoying considerable success at the time. He swapped a "c" for the "k" because it was better for the international market.
Falco changed his outfit so radically so that he would stand out from the other band members. The others all had long hair and wore rags while he suddenly appeared on stage in a suit and sunglasses. Wickerl Adam says of this time: "He lived sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll in a Versace suit."
The enormous success of the Hallucination Company inspired Stefan Weber to reform his former "anarchist combo" Drahdiwaberl, that had existed until 1975 and most of whose players were now playing with Hallucination Company. He invited several musicians to play with Drahdiwaberl including the cool bassist Falco. So Falco played with both Hallucination Company and Drahdiwaberl for a year. Drahdiwaberl was a mix of chaos, rock and political cabaret. While the music was rehearsed, the show program was improvised. The group's main interests were chaos, happening, fun and nonsense. The Drahdiwaberl concerts were so excessive that Falco felt he had to protect his designer clothing with a transparent plastic coat during performances. Stefan Weber says of the bassist: "Falco didn't fit in with us at all because even then he was a dandy with short hair. We appeared in rags and he had a Fiorucci pullover on. He was the only member of the band who was solely interested in the pay and that was not in line with the band's ethos, after all we almost exclusively played benefit concerts."
At the beginning of 1979 Falco left the Hallucination Company for private reasons but stayed with Drahdiwaberl even if he could not identify with the ideology of the outfit. Shortly afterwards he joined the commercial group Spinning Wheel as the bass player. Half the band's members also played in Drahdiwaberl. Spinning Wheel covered songs by people including the Bee Gees and Rod Stewart. It was here that Falco first began to really sing and his charisma and individual style came out. He brought his own touch to these covers and a Rod Stewart song sung by Falco was no longer a Rod Stewart number but a Falco song.
His colleagues at the time say that he used the characteristic Falco movements even then, and that they were natural rather than feigned. Falco was not an artificial character, as was often maintained later, Falco was Hans Hölzel, and Hans Hölzel was Falco. A few years before his death he said in an interview, "I do try to show a certain Falco face, because this is what I am to 99 percent."
At the beginning the appearances of Spinning Wheel in discos and hotel bars were less than successful. Only after a while did the band become one of the most successful in Austria. Falco was earning quite good money for the time but increasingly he felt that playing this background music held him back from expressing what he wanted to say.
In May 1979 Falco put down his first single at Cloud One, in Renée Reitz's studio in Vienna's Grünentorgasse. Accompanied by Spinning Wheel he recorded two tracks, Chance to Dance and Summer - both immature early works from which Falco eventually distanced himself.