Anniversary tour of the Toten Hosen in Cologne
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“Please go full throttle, we need you!”
Die Toten Hosen around singer Campino (middle) in the Cologne stadium.
Photo: dpa/Rolf Vennenbernd
Cologne Die Toten Hosen celebrate their 40th birthday. The band’s stadium tour starts on Friday – in Cologne of all places, in front of a sold-out house. What the fans can expect and how Campino will celebrate his own milestone birthday.
In Cologne of all places. Ironically, in the FC stadium, on the field of football rivals. There the Toten Hosen open their stadium tour on Friday evening. “The anticipation is huge and we calculate that we will get three points,” said frontman Campino on Thursday in Cologne. “I hope it doesn’t get too chaotic in the storm,” he says, and it probably sounds like a promise to fans looking forward to a wild evening. “Everything out of love – 40 years of the Toten Hosen” is the name of the anniversary tour with 18 concerts in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. More than 600,000 tickets have already been sold.
The concerts will be a ride through the band’s history, as Campino says. “But the fact that we’re still here at all is always special.” And how they are: The new album is the band’s twelfth number one record. The Toten Hosen thus leave behind the Beatles, Depeche Mode, Rammstein, Die Ärzte and the Böhse Onkelz, who each brought eleven albums to the top.
And there’s still something to celebrate: Campino turns 60 on June 22. “Like all other birthdays, this birthday is also subordinate to the tour,” he says. They would certainly drink a piccolo. “But that’s it – I want to be fit for Düsseldorf, our two home games.” The Toten Hosen will play there on June 24th and 25th in the arena – both concerts are already sold out.
Preparations are in full swing at the Müngersdorfer Stadium in Cologne on Thursday. 1000 people are busy setting up the stage and all the preparations. The stage has been graphically designed with motifs by Tote-Hosen cover designer Dirk Rudolph. They are artwork motifs from 40 years of band history, including skulls and the state eagle skeleton.
Campino says they had imagined the anniversary year differently. “But Corona still haunts the room as a ghost,” he says. “There’s always an element of uncertainty.” That can be felt within the crew. “But also with the colleagues – with Herbert Grönemeyer, the doctors and the broilers, who had to reorganize their team.” The other thing is the thought of a war not far from here, of which one does not know how it will escalate. “The freedom in which we have lived for so many years is not something that can be taken for granted,” says Campino. “It’s much more in our awareness and that’s why these evenings will be special this summer.”
40,000 fans will be there at the start of the tour on Friday. “We’ve never started a tour in Cologne,” says Campino’s bandmate Breiti. “We’ll definitely find the quarter of an hour to really look at Cologne again, since we’re already here,” says Campino. It is also clear to the people of Düsseldorf: “A bit of diss is a must.” But they have great respect for the people of Cologne. Breiti adds: “I still remember the last concert in Cologne very well – as a rock band in the broadest sense, you can only wish for how the audience loved it.”
25 images Düsseldorf cult band – These are the Toten Hosen
Photo: Endermann, Andreas (end)
The Toten Hosen had a surprise performance at Rock am Ring at Pentecost, where they played two songs with the Donots. The performance and a concert in Flensburg on June 7th was like warming up for the tour. There was no more preparation, as Campino says. “We’ll postpone the fact that we’re ideally prepared to start a tour until the next life.” He has only one request to the fans: “Please give it your all. We need you!”
Tickets are available on the band’s website and at all known ticket offices.
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