Album release
“What a great time”: Wolfgang Petry with a Christmas album
Wolfgang Petry returns to the audience with a Christmas album. photo
© Manfred Esser/MCS Berlin/dpa
“Schneeflöckschen, Weißröckschen” – Wolfgang Petry is releasing a Christmas album for the first time in 23 years. In the interview, the 72-year-old talks about how he experienced the festival as a little boy.
The chocolate Santa Clauses are already on the supermarket shelves, so it’s no surprise that they are Wolfgang Petry (72) sees the right time for his new Christmas album. It’s the first in 23 years.
The catchy tune specialist from Cologne sings atmospherically about Santa Claus, who has said goodbye to the sun in swimming trunks and plastic slippers (“No coats, no hats, everyone has one sitting here”), and about Santa Claus, who runs away with mom.
Petry (“Wahnsinn”, “White the Vulture”), whose real name is Franz Hubert Wolfgang Remling, has an unreservedly positive attitude towards Christmas. He told the German Press Agency in Cologne that he had a “beautiful and protected childhood.” And of course that also included unforgettable Christmas Eves. “My father played the sight-read piano and we sang Christmas carols along with it.” The best present under the tree for him at the time was a Märklin train: “I felt like Lukas the locomotive driver.”
Christmas classics and new compositions
The new album “Always when it snows” includes twelve tracks, both original compositions and cover versions of classics such as “Schneeflöckchen Weißröckchen” – for the Rhinelander “Schneeflöckschen, Weißröckschen”. “I added my own things to almost every song,” he emphasizes. “It’s just too easy for me to just sing the songs.”
For example, it says: “Merry Christmas – what a great time” and “The doorbell rings – the children scream: “Amazon!””. “The language has also developed further, not just for the kids, but also for the older people,” he says. Several titles address the Christian origins of Christmas. “Rejoice world, your Savior is coming,” rejoices the madman. Is he a believer? The answer is a little evasive: “I think a lot, but by no means everything.”
“Because it warms hearts”
On the cover of the album you can see him standing in the snow with his gray mane of curls and the famous lumberjack shirt, this time with black and red checks. “The image of snow and Christmas is simply inseparable for me,” he admits. And yes, that’s a cliché, but he likes to use it: “Because it warms hearts.” Somehow the graying cover boy is a little reminiscent of the rocker Billy Mac, portrayed by Bill Nighy, from the classic Christmas film “Love Actually”. “Surely you are responding to my age?” he says about the comparison. “But I would also like an aging rock star Wolle P.”
And what about all the negative aspects of Christmas? With consumerism, kitsch orgies, compulsive gatherings and feelings of loneliness? “Of course there are all of those things and it’s definitely not always funny,” he admits. But unfortunately he couldn’t change that. And singing together can at least help a little sometimes. “In most cases, people who sing don’t have bad thoughts,” is his belief. And now: “Merry Christmas! Especially where there is war. And that it ends as quickly as possible.”