It sounds like a phone prank played on a music producer. The voice on the phone asked whether he would like to make a “very musical” recording with Helene Fischer. Now Gunnar Graewert knew the caller by name: Uwe Kanthak, actually the manager of the German hit queen. Nevertheless: “I was perplexed,” remembers the interviewee, “I never would have thought that Helene Fischer would even have Hansel on her screen.”
The man from Traunstein doesn’t have to be too modest: he is a multi-instrumentalist, label owner, studio operator, songwriting lecturer, and received his pop diploma with distinction from Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts; He has written, composed and produced for other greats from Edita Gruberova to Mario Adorf, from Andreas Bourani to Max Mutzke, and above all from the beginning for Claudia Koreck, whom he then married. But Helene Fischer, Europe’s most successful singer and number ten globally, is in a different price range – and, above all, musically at home in a completely different world than the folk, soul and blues friend. “I really don’t feel like doing everything,” he says. Until the call, he had only heard “Breathless” at a wedding reception once, he admits. “I would do everything completely differently, but then it wouldn’t be that successful.”
Of course, the challenge appealed to him. He had demos sent to him, two song sketches from “Luftballon” and “Danke für Dich” https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/. “Yes, I like them, I already have ideas,” he said at the Recall. But that wasn’t enough for him. “What is incredibly important to me is: What does the song mean for the artist? For me?” Producing is also psychology, avoiding unsettling words in the studio, he explained, you have to know each other in order to get the best out of each other.
Who really knows Helene Fischer? What reaches the public is staged
And that’s where it gets exciting for everyone who simply can’t or doesn’t want to separate music and people: Who really knows Helene Fischer? In private life it is a mystery, offers no attack surface, only projection surface. Thomas Gottschalk, at whose “Wetten, dass ..?!” Revival she will appear this Saturday in Nuremberg, recently asked the listener at a loss on his SWR radio show: “I don’t know what to ask. Who can help me?” One can assume that everything that the ice queen lets out to the public is staged. Regardless of how emotionally she told it, like recently in the ZDF documentary, which was more of a fee-financed advertising film for the new number 1 album “Rausch”. Whether she plays Uno at home with her lover, plums her employees and changes her socks every day, all that remains hidden behind the hedges of the property on the Ammersee. Gunnar Graewert now got a personal insight.
On the way to the “Schlager-Gott”? Gunnar Graewert in the Downtown Studios.
(Photo: Matti Bruckner)
It began with a two-hour phone call in which he, 48, also found out how she, 38, had come across him: She has been following the journey of fellow singer-songwriter Claudia Koreck (and thus the Graewert productions) since her first albums Graewert says that she thinks the latest, the cover record “Perlentaucher” is great. Then “everything went very smoothly”.
First she wanted to come to them in Traunstein. Then their schedule got tighter, they made an appointment at Graewert’s workplace in Munich. That was very inconvenient for him, because he had recently taken over Downtown Studios from the late previous owner Artur Silber, and it was undergoing major renovations. “Helene didn’t mind,” says Graewert, “she just built it herself, she said.” From the moment she got out of the car (she drove her father’s car herself), Graewert was “blown away by her kind”: attentive, friendly and open. She told Graewert who the deceased person she mourned in the play “Luftballon” and who the declaration of love in “Thank you for you” is for. He doesn’t want to divulge it, official secrecy, but it was important to him that the songs on which she co-wrote, “are not just meant to be”, but also to sing “heart numbers”, central pieces among the 24 on “Rausch” – “because of this they are so emotional too “.
Graewert’s plan: express a lot with little, no orchestra, at most a string quartet
“The voice is the most emotional instrument,” says Graewert, which is why his plan was to elevate it, not to overload it with instruments and effects, as he would have done at the beginning of his career. “To express a lot with a little,” he wanted to say, “I don’t see an orchestra with you, at most a string quartet.” She agreed, had “a strong opinion” on everything, such as demanding that the guitars not reach the height of her voice. Perhaps that’s the biggest surprise: Fischer, who, as with every album, works out a wide spectrum from disco to ballads with a huge team of composers, lyricists and producers, is actually the musical director herself. From the song selection to the last note, she is a classic executive producer, “asserts Graewert.
So they started from scratch: Graewert sat down at the piano with Fischer, he played a rather dull, reserved piano, and he also made drums and bass. Claudia Koreck plucks the guitar, which was better than hiring a session guitarist, because “singer-songwriters who accompany themselves always leave enough space for the voice”. The strings from the Munich scene also proceeded cautiously, including Marlene Schuen from the Ganes.
After a long working day full of vigor, outside the door they “talked for a long time about God and the world”. Then it was quiet for a while. Graewert soon phoned impatiently to see if the finished pieces went through like this. He was asked for patience, Helene had a lot on her mind at the moment. With the same reason, by the way, her manager rejected the request of the SZ that Helene Fischer should briefly describe the work with Graewert from her point of view. Graewert at least received her blessing without complaint: All in all, “a very nice experience”, he says, which friends on Facebook are already raising as “Gunnar, the Schlager-Gott”, and who are now going to the giant concert at the Riem exhibition center in August want. For professional reasons alone, the songs are played live “extremely close as on a record”. And he can live with that now.