Former drummer and co-founder of the Bavarian cult band Spider Murphy Gang, Franz Trojan, died at the age of 64. The band knew that he died on September 15 in Kamp-Lintfort, North Rhine-Westphalia, said their concert manager Lothar Schlessmann. The Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation (BR) reported about it first.
Trojan was the drummer of the Spider Murphy Gang (“Scandal in the restricted area”) until 1992. Günther Sigl and Barny Murphy (civil: Gerhard Gmell) founded the Spider Murphy Gang in 1977 with Trojan and Michael Busse. It was named after the saxophonist in Elvis Presley’s “Jailhouse Rock”. As was often the case back then, the group began with texts in English. Later she switched to the Bavarian dialect and started her own style.
Schlessmann (concert agency Hello Concerts) said the band had asked him to publish a short mourning text online. In the ad with a youth picture in black and white it says: “The Spider Murphy Gang mourns the loss of their ex-drummer Franz Trojan.” Trojan spent the last few years in Kamp-Lintfort. “May he rest in peace!” According to Schlessmann, no one in the band’s circle had recently had more contact with Trojan, who had long since withdrawn. In the 1980s, the top hits about the “scandal in the restricted area” in clean Munich and about the snooty Munich “Schickeria” made the band known throughout Germany. Today Sigl and Murphy from the original line-up are still there.
“We are world-famous in Bavaria” is one of Sigl’s favorite sentences – and an understatement. The band has fans all over the German-speaking area and beyond. Sigl once said: “Bavarian is the most popular dialect – and everyone comes here on vacation.”
© SZ / dpa / infu