March 1986 also brought Falco other joys. On 13 March his daughter Katharina Bianca was born. He loved his child above anything else and hoped she would bring him stability and direct his life onto a safe path. His bachelor pad in Schottenfeldgasse now seemed too small for his family and he bought a penthouse that was still being built in up-market Hietzing at the cost of cost several million schillings. It was to include every conceivable luxury: a studio, library, two balconies, a spa and sauna, all with fittings plated in 24-carat gold. But Falco and family never moved in. For many years he rented it out before selling it to his friend and mentor Ronnie Seunig in 1997.
Falco was forced into a double existence at this time. He was both a family man and an international star, a role that became ever more of a problem for him as time passed and the image of the domesticated Hans Hölzel drifted away from that of Falco. The great professional success and the pressure it brought with it pushed Hans Hölzel once again into a severe crisis that he thought he could overcome with alcohol, drugs and tablets. "I had my midlife crisis at 28. Now you've got millions, though you don't know where's up and where's down and there's a family with a child and you've got no idea where to start," said Falco.
Hans Hölzel, a working-class boy, had great problems coming to terms with his sudden wealth. Falco, who at 24 was already a millionaire, later said: "The most difficult time in my life was when I began to earn money like I had never imagined before. Money ruins people and it ruined my life for a long time. Money spoils your character, you think you are the greatest."
Falco's first contract with GIG Records ended with the Falco 3 album. You couldn't imagine a better starting point for contractual negotiations than Falco had with his international hit and he signed a contract for three studio albums and a live LP with the German company Teldec. A big company such as Teldec could realise Falco's interests globally better than a small label such as GIG Records. Markus Spiegel had to be satisfied with the role of licence holder in Austria. Falco's new contract was certainly the best paid a German-language artist had ever signed. Falco said: "The new contract had such a price tag that I couldn't say no. If someone offers you 40 million schillings, you'll take it. But it wasn't especially good for me." Falco sings about his unconventional relationship with money, wealth and women in the cover version of Rio Reiser's Geld (Money) that appears on the posthumous album Out of the Dark.
In early summer 1986 Falco undertook a short adventure into the film business and played a small role in the comedy Geld oder Leber with Mike Krüger and Ursela Monn in the leading roles. The film was directed by Dieter Pröttel and shot on Lake Wörther. "That was the best-paid holiday of my life," said Falco at the end of filming. Other film projects were planned with Falco but his acting qualities were not up to it and the plans were dropped.
Having worked all spring on his fourth album Emotional, again produced by the successful Bolland brothers, Falco went on a festival tour in summer taking him from Mörbisch via Salzburg to Bregenz. He had the idea of combining pop and classical music and included an appearance by the dancers of the Tanztheater Wien in his concerts. They put on a ten-minute dance show to the music of Tchaikovsky. The highlight of the concert tour was an open-air appearance in front of 20,000 fans on Salzburg's Domplatz.
Straight after finishing this hugely successful summer tour Falco again headed for the studio in Hilversum to finish his new album which was still missing three tracks. It was released in late autumn. Emotional was Falco's fourth album, but the first where, as he said, he was able to communicate everything he had always wanted to say. The title song Emotional is bitter-sweet soul music and Falco sings: "I know the woman who can live with me is not yet born, but I beg you: Come to this world." This closing line goes to the crux: deep inside Hans Hölzel knew that the woman he was looking for and needed did not exist on this planet.
Throughout his life Hans Hölzel longed for a woman like his mother but not too homely. She also needed to have a great sense of humour. Living with Falco was not easy. His mood could change from one moment to the next and was always extreme: either on cloud nine or totally down. For Hans Hölzel there was nothing in between. This made him very unpredictable and often extremely lonely. Loneliness was one of the most terrible things in the world for him as he was a person who could not stand being alone but in reality always was.
He always had a very loving and close relationship with his mother; she was his "life person." Falco says: "What I've never found in any woman of this world and have in her is a unique form of loyalty. But I think you can only find this between a son and his mother."
On several occasions he said to her: "Mum, I'll never cope if you die before me." He was spared this pain.
In August 1986 Isabella packed her things and left the flat in Vienna with Katharina Bianca. Hans managed to convince Isabella to come back to him but the situation was to arise time and time again. Yet, the song Emotional was not written in the wake of the breakdown with his wife, he had already recorded it two months earlier.
The singles taken from the new album, The Sound of Music, Emotional and Coming Home, rose to the top of the German-language charts. With his new album under his wing, Falco set off on his first world tour in autumn. It took him to Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Japan and the USA. The huge public response in Vienna meant the concert in the Stadthalle had to be repeated. In Japan there was an audience waiting for him that exceeded all his expectations. Hundreds of fans and numerous groupies laid siege to the hotels where Falco and his band were staying. At a Tokyo station he was chased by crowds. The Japanese fans turned up to the concerts in evening dress, suits and ties displaying impeccable discipline. On the black market tickets were going for up to 5,000 schillings. Girls threw countless teddy bears on to the stage and some even threw their underwear. Never before, and never again did Falco experience such an enthusiastic audience as he did in Japan.
The USA concerts were planned for January to March 1987 but were postponed and finally cancelled altogether because the promoter considered them too risky.
On 20 November 1986 Falco was awarded a Golden Bambi as the most successful German-language pop singer of the year. The Mayor of Vienna also presented him with a Gold Service Medal from the City of Vienna making him, at age 29, the city's youngest medal bearer.
Falco spent most of 1987 largely out of the public eye. The preceding years and above all the last few months had taken their toll. He needed time to work through everything he had experienced and had to find his internal balance once again.
Hans Hölzel felt he had to introduce his daughter to nature and began looking for a house in the country. He found a beautiful Art Nouveau villa with a 4,000 m2 garden beside the river Kamp in Gars am Kamp, Lower Austria, a good hour's drive from Vienna. Although it needed renovating, it was love at first sight. He bought it on 11 September 1987 and had it lovingly fitted out according to his wishes and with painstaking attention to detail.
At the end of 1987 Falco announced his return with the single Body next to Body. It was produced by Giorgio Moroder who hailed from the South Tyrol region of Italy and featured a duet with the Danish beauty Brigitte Nielsen. The combination was pure scheming, as Falco later confessed: "I never wanted to reach the charts with her, only to get her into bed."
The success of the single left a lot to be desired and Falco called it a "miserable record." "But it was worth it for the time with her. The fortnight in St. Tropez very effective. It was a deal."
Falco was looking for a new producer, having split from the Bolland brothers because of "obscene demands and crummy demos." The production duo Gunther Mende and Candy De Rouge seemed just right for Falco's new album. The record was ready in March 1988 and it was originally to appear under the title Aya, borrowing the last three letters of the single title Himalaya. But Falco, the eternal perfectionist, was not happy with the result. He dumped the majority of the already finished songs, returned dolefully to Rob and Ferdi Bolland and finished the album with them. Its name was now Wiener Blut (Vienna Blood) and contained six songs produced by the Bollands and four by Mende/De Rouge.
The title track Wiener Blut had already been recorded in the days of Rock Me Amadeus but had not made it onto the Falco 3 LP. At that time it had been known as Medizin (Medicine) and had a totally different text. Falco dug out this old number, created a new text and title and recorded it for his latest album in its new guise. The Wiener Blut album came onto the market in late summer 1988, but sales were well below expectations and the scheduled European tour had to be cancelled due to a lack of public interest. In later years Falco was always negative about this album and, of all his work, this was the one he had the least empathy for.
On June 17, 1988, Hans Hölzel and Isabella Vitkovic married secretly in Los Angeles. Not even his mother, the most important woman of his life, knew of the wedding. Falco recalled, "I only married her because of the child."
In November 1988 Falco was at rock bottom, both physically and mentally. His LP was a total flop, his tour cancelled, his alcohol problems out of control and his marriage in tatters. He fled and escaped on a four-month odyssey around the globe, during which no one knew where he was. He wanted to reposition his life and get back on the right track.
After his return Hans Hölzel decided to put a stop to it all. He put 3.8 million schillings into a black suitcase, drove to Graz and asked his wife the crucial question: "The money or the marriage?" The answer was clear and a mutually-agreed divorce followed, ending 309 sad days of marriage.
In 1990 Falco attempted a comeback and, in cooperation with Robert Ponger, the producer of his first two records, put down the Data de Groove album. For the songs Falco developed an artificial language corresponding to the computer age 'I mine: I-me-you-I-mine. You yours so alone, to be alone. And so on." But the success Falco and especially Hans Hölzel were hoping for did not eventuate. "It was a very introverted album and I did get a bit carried away with clever word games," Falco said in retrospect.
After changing from Teldec to EMI Electrola, Falco lifted off for a night flight in summer 1992. The album Nachtflug was again produced by the successful duo of Rob and Ferdi Bolland. Falco said of the album, it "represents the sum of the last decade of my life." The song Titanic was calculated to be a hit and immediately shot to the top of the Austrian charts. It deals with a world society that relies on wings growing when it falls. Nachtflug, Falco's all time favourite song, is a psychograph of Hans Hölzel. "This is me. It's about the relationship between men and women, as I see it at the moment."
The public received Nachtflug well, and it went platinum. And yet, not even this album could reconnect Hans Hölzel with the huge success of his early albums.
In the spring of 1993 Falco was back on the road for the first time in six years. After years of absence from the stage he was not quite certain about his fan following and decided to play in small to medium-sized concert halls, mostly in Austria, although German, Swiss and even Russian towns were on the tour's programme as well. The tour was a big success for Falco and spurred him on. Anyone who sees a film of Falco's concerts soon realises that Hans Hölzel was only happy when on stage, where he felt the love of his fans. On stage he found a new lease of life.
His last, great performance on 27 June 1993, as part of the Vienna Donauinsel Festival was the climax. That evening more than 100,000 people experienced probably Falco's best concert. Fired on by enthusiastic fans, he rose to the occasion and the event left an indelible impression in many people's minds.
In the autumn of 1993 Hans Hölzel received the heaviest blow of his life. He had already been suffering doubts about his paternity of Katharina Bianca for some time and decided to have a paternity test done to establish the facts. And find out he did: Hans Hölzel was not the father of Katharina Bianca. Outwardly he did not let on just how humiliated he felt, "But it was the worst thing that happened to him in all his life," says Billy Filanowski, a friend, "He never got over it." Maria Hölzel said, "If anyone hurt Hans, it was Isabella." This painful experience had a lasting influence on all his later relationships with women.
Unsure of himself and hurt by personal and professional setbacks, Hans Hölzel withdrew more and more to his refuge in Gars am Kamp, his own little paradise, where he thought he would be able to cope better with his crises. Psychiatric medicines washed down with alcohol were the cure for his regular bouts of melancholy. To distract himself he worked grimly on a new album, desperately hoping to make an international comeback. When he presented some relatively unfinished tracks, Push and Dame Europa among them, to his record company, the reaction was, "Yeah, quite nice, but what do you think about techno?" This was a hard blow for Falco, who had high hopes of these tracks and especially because he did not think much of techno at all.
Yet Falco proved that he could hold his ground even against the musical zeitgeist of the Nineties. In 1995, he released the song Mutter, der Mann mit dem Koks ist da (Mother, the man with coke is here) under the pseudonym T>>MA, a pun on the German word Thema. It was a cover version of a Thirties' song and it was put out on a different label. In this song, characterised by fast techno beats, Falco plays with the ambiguity of the words Kohle and Koks, (coal/money and cocaine). Once Falco said, "I'm always trying to find how far I can go and whether I'll get through with it or not. As simple as that. This track is simply a nonconformist provocation." The song brought Falco good chart placings in Austria and Germany and he was put on VIVA's playlist.
Falco had a great love of poetry and on 22 April 1995 he appeared for a good cause when he joined H. C. Artmann, Wolfgang Bauer and Konstantin Wecker in the benefit show "Night of Poetry" held at the Sophiensälen to save the Vienna Poetry School. Apart from that, Falco conducted a workshop far from the public eye as part of the April Academy in 1995 under the title 'Schreibt Falco Texte? Wenn ja, wie?' ('Does Falco write texts? And if so, how?') A quiet highlight in Falco's career.
Hans Hölzel loved the sun, palm trees and the sea. For him the long winters in Austria became increasingly difficult to bear. "I get scared when it turns to winter and becomes dark and cold," he confided to close friends. This was certainly one of the reasons why, in the spring of 1996, he began to move his home to the Dominican Republic. Tax advantages were the prime reason behind this move, but it was clear to him from the beginning that he would not stay there forever: in his heart of hearts he was an Austrian, and above all Viennese. Hans Hölzel moved into a 200 m2 villa with a swimming pool in the Hacienda Resorts in Puerto Plata, at the far north of the island. He also rented a small apartment in Cabarete.
In 1996 Falco released the single Naked produced by Torsten Börger. It was to be the last release during his lifetime. Naked sold well in Austria, but was a flop in Germany, selling just 50,000 copies.
In the summer of 1997 Claudia Wohlfromm, wife of the producer Torsten Börger, became Falco's manager. She wanted to develop a whole new Falco style, one she thought would fit the third millennium. And Falco did not stop her. One day he appeared in public with dyed blonde hair and a diamond in the upper right incisor.
The work on Falco's last album, originally to be titled Egoisten, only added to his lack of confidence and to his self-doubt. Time and again, the perfectionist Hans Hölzel put off the album's release date, discarded numbers, recorded new ones and became confused about the order of the individual songs. By late autumn 1997 he wanted to drop what was more or less a finished album and start afresh. But it was not to be.
On 6 February 1998 Hans Hölzel died in a car accident in the Dominican Republic at around 4.40 pm local time. But Falco lives on more intensively than ever in the hearts of his fans.