Peter Maffay on his addiction "I drank like a hole"

Peter Maffay allowed himself to be followed for months for a documentary film. The rock singer takes stock, talks about his moods and says how the consumption of alcohol changed him: "I was shouting in the studio."

Peter Maffay has more than 50 decades of music career under his belt. No one has had more number one albums in the German charts (20). But at the age of 75, he wants to retire.

"I think it's absolutely right to say that after 55 years in the fast lane, it's now time for a few side trips," the singer explains in the documentary "Maffay" (now available in the ARD media library).

Family instead of stadium concerts: the "late dad", whose daughter Anouk was born at the end of 2018, wants to "intensively fill" his "small window of time" with his youngest daughter.

Son Yaris about father Maffay: "He wasn't around much"

Peter Maffay allowed Andreas Heineke and his film team to get very close to him during the year-long shoot. He has become "much more sensitive and empathetic" in recent years, says wife Henrikje about her husband. "He wears his leather jacket like protective armor, and at home he takes it off."

Even if Maffy intervenes protestingly at this point, the empathetic 90-minute film gives you the feeling that you are getting closer to the music icon as a person, away from the tour preparations for the last big concerts.

We accompany him to his family roots in Transylvania, Romania ("His childhood was reduced by material circumstances, but it was rich in human warmth") and witness his long and difficult relationship with his son Yaris.

"In my childhood, my father was not around much in terms of fatherly moments," recalls the 20-year-old, who is now a permanent member of his father's band.

The 75-year-old also wants to make up for "the time I missed out on due to my vanity and ambition". According to the film, the two seem to be well on the way to leaving behind the "strange relationship where we didn't speak much to each other" (Yaris).

Maffay: "For me, music is like eating, sleeping and drinking"

As much as Peter Maffay is now a family man, he is still passionately devoted to music ("Music is like eating, sleeping and drinking for me") - even at the age of 75.

Quitting completely is out of the question for him. "It would annoy everyone if he stopped doing it," quips his wife Rike at one point in the film. "He reacts to the music."

Peter Maffay in Zermatt"Beatrice Egli has a wonderful, positive nature"

This was also the case in the past, although back then his band colleagues and studio musicians often served as bruisers for Maffay's moods. "All alphas. Of course, that can sometimes go wrong," guitarist Mark Keller puts it in a nutshell.

Today, Maffay is aware of his former shortcomings: "Sometimes I chose a path that was unreasonable for everyone. I lived very excessively for a while."

The drug alcohol did the rest, as the singer bluntly describes: "I drank like a hole." According to Maffay's sound engineer, there was shouting and throwing things in the studio: "He only had a very short fuse."

Michael Kunze: "The door slammed shut and it was over"

The insights that the documentary "Maffay" provides into the beginnings of Maffay's career, how he met and fell out with hit producer Michael Kunze are also extremely exciting. By chance, Kunze's wife heard Maffay singing in a pub and brought him together with her husband.

The hit single "Du" (two million sales) catapulted the duo into the limelight shortly afterwards. They also got on in private, as Kunze describes: "I think it was a close, friendly relationship."

But when Peter Maffay made the acquaintance of Frank Dietz, the "best guitarist" of his career, the desire grew in him to emancipate himself from his previous Schlager image as a permanent guest on the "ZDF Hit Parade".

"I couldn't get out of my skin," says Peter Maffay in the film, looking back on his turn to the rock genre. "That was a shock for me," says Kunze about the end of the collaboration.

"He left our apartment that day. The door slammed shut and it was over. That was brutal. The human aspect didn't matter, he didn't care."

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