Music
Pur sings warmly at home for the indoor tour
Hartmut Engler is the singer of the German pop band Pur. photo
© Hendrik Schmidt/dpa
Pure, that’s a lot of feeling and closeness to the fans, sometimes also politics in sung words. The band is now going on tour with the new album “Personal” – with a pre-concert in their home country.
Just a few kilometers from home, the Pur group made a start before the official start of their Germany tour on Wednesday in Munich. The band performed in front of a sold-out house and around 4,000 fans, mostly singing along, for a “dress rehearsal” in the MHP Arena in Ludwigsburg.
“Guys, did we miss that?” Pur frontman Hartmut Engler called out to the crowd in the evening. “After five years without a hall, it’s fantastic to finally have a full hall in front of us again.”
It’s not the first time that the band has played it safe before a tour in Ludwigsburg: In November 2018, Pur also played in the arena beforehand, even then to a full house.
Classics like “Adventureland”
Even after four decades, Pur are among the most popular musicians in the country. For the upcoming tour, they have their latest album “Personal” with them, as well as classics like “Adventure Land” and “Funkel Perlenaugen”. The US a cappella formation Naturally 7 will be there as a support act, and they also rehearsed one last time in the evening.
“Personal” is the 17th studio work by the band from Bietigheim-Bissingen near Stuttgart. The friends worked their way up from the basement of the local Swabian church community in the mid-1970s, landing their first single chart success in 1990 with “Lena”.
A few years later, “Abenteuerland” (1995) became one of the best-selling German-language albums with two million copies. “Seseilänzertraum” stayed in the album charts for more than 120 weeks.
The Swabian pop band is still planning an album every three years, followed by a tour. It would have been the same again in 2021, but the virus intervened.
After the start in Munich’s Olympiahalle, ten more shows in Oldenburg, Hanover, Cologne, Mannheim, Stuttgart, Berlin, Hamburg, Leipzig and Dortmund will follow for Pur until May 6th.