Even for the band's anniversary, the boys did not resist
Angela Lentzen likes to explain this basement room to all those who are too young to know a party cellar from their own point of view in the newly built single-family house of the 1970s, which was often decorated in wood panelling: "A room that the parents had built specifically to celebrate their parties."
And then she sat there to practice as a 13-year-old. In the parental household without any musical background, Aunt Gisela gave her a guitar. Among the first listeners of her game was Angela Lentzen, the residents of the party cellar, the "fastest mouse of Mexico", Speedy Gonzales and a "Monchichi", a monkey to whom she had crocheted herself a pair of dungarees. "They didn't resist, like the guys here," joked Angela Lentzen, referring to her band, her husband and drummer Guido Meyer, Timo Höhne, bass and guitarist Leander Philipps.
The Bergheim singer and singing teacher Angela Lentzen allowed herself and her guests a retrospective on the occasion of her 50th birthday and the 20th anniversary of her band. Many had come to anniversary concerts in the old Quadrater station building, "Gleis 11", among them Marlene and Günter, their ex-neighbours from the Sandstraße. "Since you moved away, I had to buy a drill," Guido Meyer called them. Or "the Josef", who documents almost every one of her performances without any commission with his camera.
Also present was the guitarist Michael Rick, whom she met for the first time ten years ago at the "Remember Woodstock" Dieter Kirchenbauers in Bergheim and this summer again in Elsdorf. And again it was songs by Janis Joplin like "Ball and Chain" that Lentzen performed together with the guest guitarist.
For the audience, it was above all a re-energizing with the voice of Angela Lentzen. A voice that doesn't leave anyone cold, one that looks reliable, as if the singer is igniting a fire in the fireplace. She succeeds in a haunting version of Clapton's "Tears in Heaven". In 1992, she heard the play in which Clapton mourns the death of his son for the first time, when her daughter was just two years old, since she, who had associated music primarily with party, was able to "compassionateize sounds" for the first time, she says.
Her voice awakened long-suffering like "California Dreaming" to pulsating life, smashed "Come to my Window" with fervor from her tribute to Melissa Etheridge and unleashed in her own German compositions her passion for current, German-language songs, which she summarizes under the title "Turbulentzen". They are as mature as mature songs. It is rock music on themes such as love, change or lifetime, in which Angela Lentzen dispenses with all kitsch.