Campino is known as the frontman of Toten Hosen, as an actor and media star. On June 22 he celebrates his 60th birthday.
Andreas Frege, better known as Campino, is one of the biggest German stars. On June 22 he celebrates his 60th birthday. The musician is not only the frontman of Toten Hosen, but has also appeared as an actor in theater, film and TV and regularly takes a seat on talk shows.
The beginnings as a young punk
Campino was born on June 22, 1962 in Dusseldorf. Andreas Frege and his five siblings grew up bilingual – thanks to their British mother. The future musician got his stage name while he was still at school. After a fight with his classmates over the sweets of the same name, they are said to have named him Campino. Michael Breitkopf (58), guitarist with Toten Hosen, was in the same class as Campino for a while. The two became friends and even did community service together.
At the age of 16, Campino founded the punk band Zentralkomitee Stadtmitte, ZK for short. Also on board were the later Toten Hosen members, guitarist Andreas von Holst (58) and Andreas Meurer (59) as a roadie. Andreas Frege founded Die Toten Hosen in 1982 with the two of them and his childhood friend Michael Breitkopf, Trini Trimpop (71) and Walter Hartung. Funny anecdote: At their first concert in Bremen in April, some of them were announced as “Die Toten Hasen”, as the band writes on their website.
The great success of the Toten Hosen
Unlike the other members, Walter Hartung did not stay with the band for long and joined Jehovah’s Witnesses. There were also several changes on the drums: Trini Trimpop left Die Toten Hosen in 1985 and worked in their management until 1992. He was replaced by Jakob Keusen (1966-1989), who was replaced by Wolfgang Rohde (1950-2016) in 1986. Rohde stayed for several years, then in 1998 he was replaced by Vom Ritchie (57), who is still the drummer for Toten Hosen today.
But first things first: The Toten Hosen’s debut album, “Opel-Gang” (1983), was the band’s first success and made them well-known throughout Germany. The Düsseldorfers had their final breakthrough with the album “Ein kleine Bißchen Horrorschau” (1988) and the song “Here comes Alex”. The rest is history: Countless hits followed, such as “Wünsch Dir was” (1993), “Alles aus Liebe” (1993), “Bonnie & Clyde” (1996) and “Days Like These” (2012).
Media star and actor
Always at the front: Campino, whether as a frontman on stage and in the studio or as a songwriter behind the scenes. As if being a musician wasn’t enough, the jack of all trades is also on everyone’s lips. Since the 1980s he has been a regular guest on talk shows and discusses God and the (political) world – Campino has become a media star. He swapped places several times and became an interviewer himself: in 1994 he met Angela Merkel (67) for “Spiegel”, for example, and interviewed Paul McCartney (80) for “Stern”.
Campino also tried his hand at acting. He was seen in the films “Loser” (1986), “Long Saturday” (1992) and “Palermo Shooting” (2008) by Wim Wenders (76). In 2006 he was also Mackie Messer in Bertolt Brecht’s (1898-1956) “The Threepenny Opera” under director Klaus Maria Brandauer (78) on the stage of the Berlin Admiralspalast. Campino is now critical of his work as an actor: “From the reviews of my performance as ‘Mackie Messer’ and my role in the film ‘Palermo Shooting’ we all know that I haven’t lost a great actor,” he said at the end of May this year in an interview with the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. “I still enjoyed it.”
Doubts in 40 years of band history
Over the years, the great success has also raised doubts. In the mid-1990s, for example, Die Toten Hosen experienced a concert that brought them to a “dead end”, like Campino in conversation with the “Augsburger Allgemeine” said. “At our 1,000th concert in Düsseldorf’s Rheinstadion, a girl died in the crowd,” he said of the 1997 show. “That evening was incredibly tragic, it was terrible, we were upset for months and we always met again asked: Is our kind of music at all compatible with such large crowds? Can’t something happen all the time? Don’t you have to boil it down?”
With a tour on the other side of the world – in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Hawaii – Die Toten Hosen got used to “a wild audience” again in 1998, according to Campino.
Big anniversary in 2022 – and the future?
The corona pandemic paralyzed the music and event industry in 2020. Die Toten Hosen were also affected: they had to cancel their “Everything without electricity” tour. However, Campino did not lie down on the lazy skin, but became the director of the documentary “Wim Wenders, Desperado” about the famous filmmaker alongside Eric Friedler (51). In lockdown he also wrote his first book “Hope Street: How I once became an English champion”, in which he tells of both his love for Liverpool FC and his German-English family history.
In 2022 Die Toten Hosen celebrate their 40th band anniversary. Big concerts are finally possible again after the long Corona break. Since June, the rockers have been on a big stadium tour under the motto “Everything out of love – 40 years of Die Toten Hosen”, in May a best-of album of the same name was released. The band also broke a record: the rockers are now the band with the most number one albums in the German charts. Die Toten Hosen trump with their twelve number one longplayers The Beatles, Depeche Mode, Rammstein, Die Ärzte and the Böhse Onkelz, all of which only have eleven number one records.
And how does it continue? It wasn’t until June 18 that Die Toten Hosen premiered: they played in the Olympic Stadium in Munich. At the same time speculated about the “Augsburg General” about the band’s possible farewell: “This Saturday evening in Munich’s Olympic Stadium could have been a triumphant premiere and a sad farewell at the same time.”
Campino lets the future come to him
How does Campino see the future himself? “I don’t want to (…) speculate that we could stop next year,” he told the daily newspaper in an interview. “Then there are some headlines that I didn’t mean. But one thing is for sure: I won’t see myself in ten years [in] a situation like this. I just can’t imagine that.”
Campino doesn’t want to commit himself to when it’s time for him to retire: “I’ll continue to take it the way I’ve always taken it: I’ll let things come to me,” explained the 60-year-old.
About his age he said: “If you knew how I feel sometimes in the morning – it’s closer to 80.” But then he restricted: “Anyone who has ever seen an 80-year-old in love who is wide awake in the morning before the alarm clock because he is dying to see his loved one knows how relative this number is. Love for life can keeping us awake inside – that’s what it’s all about. It has nothing to do with age.”