Did Fabien Mitterrand kill Klaus Harmony? 08/01/2009
It has been claimed, mostly by some, that Fabien Mitterrand did kill Klaus Harmony. Well, it could, of course, be so. But why would he do it? Obvously it is like a Mozart and Salieri thing (God forbid that I should need to say that Klaus is Mozart here!).  Tales of their rivalry - or Mitterrand's bitterness - are well document. First Klaus was in the midst of a breakthrough with the first digitally recorded pop album with Ladies Man in 1977. When Mitterrand found this out he sent a man to be an undercover runner in the studio and wipe jam on the recording heads of the tape machine which Jerrick Vander had invented. What a mess, I can tell you! So Klaus had to start again but on analogue tape. The sad thing is that two years on from this Ry Cooder had the same idea but did it the other way round. This was bad enough (as if it wasn't!) but then in 1980 he stole the master tape of Klaus's Eurovision entry, Sad Funk Lonely. It was a sure fire certainty to win but Klaus, being Klaus, would not fight the fight and let it go instead. Later Amando Ferrari recorded this song at his very emotional birthday concert in Milan and we have a beautiful recording of these on Oeuvre Zwei. And so it goes on. Klaus never paid back these feelings and could never understand why Fabien Mitterrand was as hostile as these. But one could never account for the creative psyche! He was almost certainly a bad man but we don't think he killed Klaus. For one thing, he wasn't clever enough for it! Also Klaus was much more clever and would have outsmarted him if they had been truly against each other (though not so that he was in the KGB like some are saying - crazy!) If FM was alive today he could elucidate it all but for that tragic business with the tractor in Norfolk County, UK (he was annoyed by the noise and hijacked it from the farmer before accidentally driving it into the path of a speeding Smart Car.) Terrible but... you know. We did go to his funeral and, of course, Streef la Belle was there and so was James Last. I counted 57 guns amongst all their bodyguards. They terrify me. Bad men for sure. Peace, Jan Sink |   About Jan Sink
Jan Sink was born in Utrecht, Netherlands in 1944 and, following a largely unsuccessful career as a roadie, became a recording engineer at the infamous Amsterdam recording
studio, The Velvet Glove. In 1969 he was hired by legendary erotik film composer Klaus Harmony to engineer sessions for 'Elektrische Lippen', the composer’s first collaboration with director, Friedrich Wohlfäht. Jan went on to engineer and mix and co-produce soundtracks for classics such as 'Die Sins des Apostles', 'The Ladies Man' and 'Die Sexorcist'. Following the composer’s death in 1984, Jan took the role of CEO of HarmonSink Corp founded with Klaus’ son, Helmut Harmony, to administer the Klaus Harmony publishing catalogue. In 2005 HarmonSink Corp acquired the rights to the complete recorded work of Klaus Harmony which is now being re-released in the form of the acclaimed multi-volume 'Oeuvre' series. Jan divides his time between Amsterdam and London and sometimes lives with his wife, Pupu. CategoriesAll ArchivesAugust 2010 |