First, it’s important to explain the difference between a cover band and a tribute band. Schorsch Kleesattel is exactly the right person for this, because he was not only a rock reporter for a long time, is not only press spokesman for the Deutsches Theater, which is now plowing exactly this field with the first three-day festival “Rock Memories”. He is also a musician himself, a passionate one. And that’s the explanation for him why he started his project “Tommy Who!” don’t see it as a cover band trying to play every note of a song one-to-one, maybe even for purely commercial, entertaining reasons. “I’m not even trying to copy Roger Daltrey,” says the singer, “I’m already Schorsch Kleesattel. And the focus is always on the song, as a masterpiece, to which I bow.” All six bands of the two-day homage spectacle have this in common, whether they like the first very hard evening, Friday, July 29th BlackPurple their idols Deep Purple pay homage and how The Maidendeads of heavy metal elemental force Iron Maiden. Whether they like on Saturday the stars the work of Rolling Stones let it live up or whatever Tommy Who! of the rock opera “Tommy” and its creators The Who. Or whether they like on Saturday Dylan On The Rocks celebrate the song poet Bob Dylan and how ZEP the blues, rock and folk of Led Zeppelin.
Don’t want to be a copy of “The Who” singer Roger Daltrey: Schorsch Kleesattel, singer of “Tommy Who!”.
(Photo: Susanne Brill)
The role models have earned their legendary status over many decades, and the tributaries have also dedicated themselves to them for many years. Kleesattel, for example, who was more of a metal fan at the time, got hold of a VHS cassette with a recording of the show “30 Jahre Tommy” 20 years ago The Who Guests like Elton John and Phil Collins played along, “It blew me away, I saw it twenty times in a row, the energy from drummer Simon Phillips blow-dried me away.” This awakened the dream of performing this early rock opera myself. Years later when he was with the Munich prog rockers Prognostic helped out, he had finally found a band with which he could do it. First he had to survive the beginning of a pandemic, but when he finally brought the whole thing to the stage in May 2021, also at his own workplace on Schwanthalerstrasse, he had tears in his eyes – the reviews are laminated over his bed.
Like their role models “The Rolling Stones”, “The Stars” and frontman Fritz Wimmer have been playing together for many decades.
(Photo: Deutsches Theater)
He tries to convey this devotion. Just like the other bands, who all have in common that they have already performed in the Munich Rock Museum on the Olympic Tower. This is currently only available virtually, in exhibitions and at events like this – and yet it doesn’t stop watering and explaining the roots of all rock music.
This copy of Leonardo’s “The Last Supper” is true to the original and will be on display in the Silver Hall of the Deutsches Museum.
(Photo: together Promotion)
This fits perfectly with another current project in the Deutsches Theater, which also wants to bring visitors closer to a masterpiece, albeit a much older one of fine art: Leonardo da Vinci’s monumental painting “The Last Supper”. For reasons of conservation, anyone in Milan can only view the original for 15 minutes; the true-to-original reproduction measuring 9 by 4.2 meters in the Silver Hall of the Deutsches Theater can be viewed and enjoyed in peace and quiet by art lovers from July 28 to August 23, 12:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. This show is also more than a copy. Because next to it are enlarged detailed photos and preliminary studies that give visitors a better understanding of this key work by a rock star in art history.
Rock Memories, Fri.-Sun., 29.-31. July, 7.30 p.m., Deutsches Theater