Klaus Voormann

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Klaus Voormann
Born 1938
Berlin, Germany

Klaus Voormann (born 29 April 1938) is a German artist, musician, and record producer who was associated with the early days of The Beatles in Hamburg and later designed the cover of their album Revolver.

Voormann (pronounced "foreman") was born and grew up in North Berlin where he was one of six brothers. In the late fifties, he moved to Hamburg to continue his art studies and began dating Astrid Kirchherr. One day, after a fight with her and another friend of his, he wandered into the "bad" part of Hamburg, the Reeperbahn. He walked into a club and heard a performance by a band called The Silver Beetles. He was enthralled by these musicians from Liverpool, and ran back to Astrid to tell her about them. Klaus, Astrid, and a few other friends attended the next Silver Beetles concert. They began to talk to The Silver Beetles after the performance, and a new circle of friends was formed - the Exies. Astrid began dating Stu Sutcliffe, though she remained close friends with Klaus. Klaus Voormann on the other hand became friends with John Lennon (after a night of heavily drinking and waking up at Hamburg harbour) and especially George Harrison with whom he remained close friends until Harrison's death in 2001.

In the early 1960s, Voormann decided to leave Germany and move to London, where he first lived in a flat together with the Beatles. After John Lennon and Paul McCartney moved out to live with their respective wife and current girlfriend, Cynthia Lennon and Jane Asher, Voormann formed a boys´ living community with Ringo Starr and founded the beat band Paddy, Klaus & Gibson, where he played the bass. To earn money, he worked for a London-based graphics company. In early 1965, Voormann moved into his first own flat in London, but he kept in touch with the Beatles, at least as far as their rising fame would let him stay in contact with the world-famous singers.

In 1966, Voormann was asked by John Lennon to design the sleeve for the Beatles´ forthcoming album Revolver. Klaus had a style of "scrapbook collage" art in mind, as it is later shown on the sleeve of Revolver. When showing his efforts to the band and their manager Brian Epstein, the band was excited (although Voormann had put a picture of McCartney sitting on a toilet on the sleeve). Epstein was so pleased by the design that he started to cry. Nevertheless, Voorman's payment for the soon-to-be world-famous album cover was no more than 40 pounds.

For this work, he won the Grammy Award for Best Album Cover, Graphic Arts. The Beatles' next album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band , used a similar collage technique for its iconic cover (designed by Peter Blake).

Voormann became a member of the 1960s band, Manfred Mann, playing bass guitar. After that, he became a session musician, playing on solo efforts by John Lennon (Voormann is a founding member of Lennon's Plastic Ono Band, consisting of Lennon, Yoko Ono, Voormann and Eric Clapton), George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Lou Reed, James Taylor and with a number of other artists. In 1971 he moved to Los Angeles with his first wife and his first son Otto.

In an Interview with EMI about his album Walls And Bridges, John Lennon was asked who is playing bass on this album. John answered with a hard German accent: "Klaus Voormann, We all know Klaus, ja(German: yes)!". He also played in Harrison's assembled band in the 1971 The Concert for Bangladesh; Harrison fittingly introduced him to the audience by saying, "There's somebody on bass who many people have heard about, but they've never actually seen him, Klaus Voormann." In the Concert for George on November 29, 2002, he played bass as part of the supporting band.

After the breakup of The Beatles, there were rumours of The Beatles reforming as The Ladders, with Voormann on bass as a replacement for Paul McCartney. An announcement to this effect filtered out of the Apple offices in 1971, but was ultimately withdrawn before it got very far. This lineup (Voormann, Lennon, Harrison and Starr) did perform in various combinations on Lennon's albums John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970) (Voormann, Lennon, and Starr) and Imagine (1971) (Voormann, Lennon & Harrison) as well as on Ringo Starr's Ringo (1973), and Yoko Ono's Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band (1970) (Voormann, Lennon, Starr, and Ono). Starr's album features the Lennon-penned hit single "I'm The Greatest" which is the only song in which all four musicians appear together, joined by Billy Preston.

In 1979, after sixteen years of musicianship, touring the world and designing for all those famous artists, Voormann decided to move back to Germany, after being told by his brother that his niece drowned in a swimming-pool. Voormann separated from his wife and tried a fresh start back in Germany, where he found an almost dead music scene doing nothing else but imitating trends coming from the UK or the US. But then he discovered a German band called Trio, who later experienced international success, mainly with the hit "Da Da Da." The single, as well as their self-titled album, was produced by Klaus Voormann. In 1989, Voormann eventually decided to retire from the music business. Since then he mainly concentrates on his family (he is living near Munich with his second wife Christine and their two children, born in 1989 and 1991). From time to time he appears in TV shows, mainly when the shows are about the 60s in general or the Beatles in particular, or when he is asked to talk about his famous album sleeve for Revolver.

More recently, Voormann designed the covers for the Beatles Anthology albums (using his scrapbook style) and designed a cover for the Norwegian band Turbonegro.

In October 2003, he published the book Warum spielst du Imagine nicht auf dem weißen Klavier, John? Erinnerungen an die Beatles und viele andere Freunde ("Why don't you play Imagine on the white piano John? Memories of the Beatles and many other friends"), his autobiography with a special focus on the 1960s and 1970s. Surprisingly - and charmingly enough - he does not concentrate too much on his achievements as "Germany's most important contribution to rock and roll history" (Spiegel-magazine) but more on his close friendship with the Beatles and other musicians and artists as well as his private life.

A 2005 BBC documentary, Stuart Sutcliffe: The Lost Beatle featured interviews with Voormann and showed drawings he made of The Beatles in Hamburg.

[edit] External links

[edit] References

Klaus Voorman, Warum spielst du Imagine nicht auf dem weißen Klavier, John ? Erinnerungen an die Beatles und viele andere Freunde, Heyne 2003. ISBN 3-453-87313-0

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