David Hasselhoff turns 70: “Baywatch” star in old freshness in love with Germany

“The Hoff” celebrates its 70th birthday on July 17 and looks back on a successful career. Germany plays a major role in this.

Damn, he’s singing again. What older gentlemen sing when they feel like lonely city wolves. If only seven beers were too many. Or when both have befallen them.

David Hasselhoff is an elderly gentleman. He will be 70 on July 17. Since his TV series “Knight Rider”, i.e. for a good 40 years, he has been known as a lonely city wolf who fights against the injustices of this world with his computer bolide. He is also sufficiently familiar with the struggle with/against alcohol.

So David Hasselhoff sings. But not his usual hit “Looking for Freedom”. For over half a year there’s a video floating around on YouTube, which made him perform the old men’s anthem “Damn, I love you!” indicates. This is the song that made Matthias Reim (64) a hit star – 32 years ago.

This Matthias Reim is an edgy guy. Four wives (five children, plus a daughter from the relationship with pop singer Michelle (50)), a private bankruptcy and a myocarditis have tanned and notched his face. But he still bravely goes on tour with a blond gray head of hair. Then the older gentlemen in particular sing along fervently: “Damn, I love you”.

David Hasselhoff covers German Schlager hit

“Damnit I love you” is what David Hasselhoff now calls it. He’s almost a head taller (1.93 m) and even more angular, a Hollywood warrior. His voice is also clearer, more sonorous, more masculine. And suddenly David Hasselhoff is the natural face of Matthias Reim’s song. That’s how it works.

Hasselhoff has had three marriages (two daughters) and is currently married to the Welshwoman Hayley Roberts (41), who is 27 years his junior. The student who dropped out of a private art school in California was born in Baltimore, in the US state of Maryland. Early on he was drawn to the West Coast to the Los Angeles film studios. “I was a bad actor, but I was good-looking,” he later said.

Starring roles in “Knight Rider” and “Baywatch”

This initially referred to the US soap opera “The Young And The Restless” (“Shadow of Passion”), in which he had a leading role from 1975. He made his worldwide breakthrough in 1982 with “Knight Rider” and his talking robot car KITT And then came “Baywatch – The Lifeguards of Malibu”, which became the most successful TV series in the world – and made David Hasselhoff a sex symbol. Alongside Pamela Anderson (55), he played the lifeguard Mitch Buchannon, who crossed the dream beach in red swimming shorts tiger.

The image of the half-naked Hasselhoff became so entrenched that British scientists named an Antarctic crustacean the Hoff crab. The beast’s bristly belly reminded her of David Hasselhoff’s hairy chest.

Until 2001 he played the lifeguard, who had long had a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In the end he was more popular in Germany than in the USA. This was not least due to the Berlin music producer Jack White. His mother-in-law heard David Hasselhoff sing a duet with Harald Juhnke (1929-2005) on a German TV show and recommended him. And Jack White had another song from 1978 (“On the South Road”) in the drawer…

In the spring of 1989, the American sang in “Wetten, dass…?” the reissued Jack White song, now entitled “Looking for Freedom”.

David Hasselhoff is said to have torn down the wall with “Looking for Freedom”.

The song of freedom sent the Germans into a frenzy of joy. David Hasselhoff was at the top of the hit parade for eight weeks. And on New Year’s Eve 1989 he sang “Looking for Freedom” at the Berlin Wall in front of more than 500,000 reunited people from East and West.

The rumor has persisted to this day that “The Hoff” not only won the hearts of Germans with its song, but also tore down the wall. He has always denied that: “I had nothing to do with the fall of the wall! I just sang a song that gave people hope,” he said in 2019 in the RBB documentary “Being David Hasselhoff”, which was broadcast on Arte this June was repeated.

Actually, the Germans created the Hollywood star “The Hoff” in the first place. Because in the USA, the lifeguard Hasselhoff was initially smiled at. In the RBB documentary, he said that it was the Germans who reanimated his “Baywatch” series.

From then on, Hasselhoff was not only the lifeguard Mitch Buchannon, but also the writer and producer of the series. “Baywatch” was broadcast in 144 countries and had over a billion viewers. The end of the series was a catastrophe for “The Hoff”. He later said that he started drinking after 2001.

After alcohol addiction: “The Hoff” goes on tour again

In 2007, a video was uploaded to YouTube showing David Hasselhoff trying to eat a cheeseburger while intoxicated. His daughter Taylor-Anne recorded the film but did not publish it. A friend had stolen the camera’s memory card. Two years later, Hasselhoff declared that he was curing his alcohol addiction.

The German audience has remained loyal to him, especially since “The Hoff” can refer to German roots. Accordingly, Meta Hasselhoff, his paternal great-great-grandmother, came from the village of Völkersen near Bremen before emigrating to Baltimore in the USA in 1865.

The alcohol problems are over. “The Hoff” released its twelfth album (“Party Your Hasselhoff”) last fall. In 2023 he wants to go on tour with it, primarily through Germany and Austria. Then he sings “Damnit I love you” again, and – damn it! – they will all love him. Yet again.

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