The Harley roars. Peter Maffay speeds past the audience on his motorbike onto the stage. With his leather jacket open, he straps on his guitar, raises his fist in the air and off he goes. Thousands of fans were there when the musician was on his big “Farewell” tour this summer, touring the big German stadiums one last time and celebrating three-hour rock masses. Just like you would expect from Bruce Springsteen concerts. But he was considered a “rocker” from the start – a status that Maffay had to achieve first.
His career has already lasted 50 years, and he will be 75 years old on August 30th. With 20 number one albums and more than 50 million records sold, he is one of the most successful German-speaking musicians.
Life story of the artist
He was born in 1949 in Brasov (Kronstadt) in Transylvania, Romania, as the only child of his father Alexander and his mother Augustine, who is of German descent. Peter Alexander Makkay, Maffay’s real name, struggled in Romania with the strict state regulations that also apply to young musicians. He reports on this in his book “Maffay – On the way to me”, published in 2009. In 1963 he moved with his parents to Mühldorf/Inn in Bavaria. In January 1970 his first single “Du” was released.
The song was a huge success, followed by appearances in the ZDF hit parade and other hits with more pleasant lyrics, until Maffay emancipated himself from the “Schlager image” with his 1979 album “Steppenwolf”. It still contained ballads such as “So bist Du” with string arrangements, but also fast rock numbers – recorded with the musicians of his “arch rival” Udo Lindenberg, some of whom are still part of the core of Maffay’s backing band today. And then there is the “Steppenwolf” record cover, which shows a youthful-looking singer in leather.
Development into German rock
“Schlager” is now over – Maffay delivers pure German rock in the years to come. The power ballad “Über 7 Brücken muss du gehen” (You have to cross seven bridges), borrowed from the GDR band “Karat”, is a huge success in 1980. In 1982 he presents “Eiszeit” (Eiszeit), a visionary text that warns of the consequences of man-made climate change. The records sell millions of copies and the band rocks away. In 1982, however, Maffay also experiences a serious setback: at concerts supporting the “Rolling Stones”, the group is even pelted with bottles and eggs.
Musical Tabaluga – Success to this day
In 1983, in collaboration with Rolf Zuckowski, he created the concept album “Tabaluga” – a musical for children, which has been followed by six sequels to date. The title character, a little dragon, is also the namesake of the Tabaluga Foundation, founded in 1998, which cares for around 500 socially disadvantaged, traumatized and seriously ill children and young people every year at locations in Germany and Mallorca. In 2008, a branch was established in Romania. Since 2015, the Peter Maffay Foundation has been managing an estate on Lake Dietlhofer in the Weilheim-Schongau district with a children’s holiday home and meeting house. In 2018, he received the Buber-Rosenzweig Medal for his commitment to fighting anti-Semitism and racism.
Success in the charts
From the end of the 1970s, every new album by Peter Maffay landed at number one in the charts. In 1987, the Maffay band played concerts in the GDR and the band leader himself had his first film role in the crime thriller “The Joker”. But the restless years also left their mark. Maffay drank and smoked a lot – too much. He recently admitted that in the 1980s he drank two to three bottles of whiskey a day and smoked just as many packs of cigarettes a day.
Maffay married his first wife Petra in 1975. With his fourth wife Tania Spengler, the musician had his first biological child in 2003 after adopting his daughter Nina in 1985. “Since I became a father, I have been more concerned with environmental and nature conservation issues than before, because you want to leave your children a world worth living in,” Maffay told the Evangelical Press Service (epd) in 2020. At the time, he described faith in God as a “beacon” and “guidance.”
In 2015, Maffay left Tania for Hendrikje Balsmeyer, who is 38 years younger than him, with whom he has been married since 2022 and has had a daughter, Anouk, since 2018. As managing director of Tabaluga Enterprises GmbH, high school teacher Balsmeyer is close to Maffay’s business activities and accompanies her husband on tours and trips.
So, extended concert tours are now over for his 75th birthday? It’s hard to believe that Maffay was still full of energy on stage during the “Farewell” tour. In the last song with which he ended the tour sets, he sings:
“Even when the final curtain falls, I’m not going away yet, I give you my word.”
So we will probably hear a lot more from him.
