Christian Lorenz

Christian "Flake" Lorenz (born 16 November 1966) is a German musician, notable as the keyboardist for the Neue Deutsche Härte band Rammstein. He is also known for his role in the band Feeling B.

Early years

Christian was brought up and still lives in the former Prenzlauer Berg area of Berlin (now a part of the borough of Pankow), where he still passes his old school building on the way to band rehearsals.

Christian is known to be an educated pianist. Flake says he chose to play the piano because a childhood friend of his played from the age of three. His parents sent him to a music school. Flake "began by painting the keys on a window ledge" and "practiced one-half-year on the window ledge". His parents bought him a piano for one hundred East German marks for his 15th birthday.

Lorenz became "addicted" to rock and roll as a boy. He stopped his lessons in order to play with his father's jazz records. "When I joined my first band", Flake has said, "I noticed that I couldn't play modern music. I still can't!" At the age of sixteen, he apprenticed as a toolmaker, an apparently short-lived career.

He has a brother who is four years older.

Career

Feeling B

In 1983, at age sixteen, he began to play in the band Feeling B with Paul H. Landers and Aljoscha Rompe, a Swiss living in East Berlin. He stayed with the band for about ten years. Feeling B started out firmly grounded in the underground punk scene. Over time, Feeling B's popularity grew greatly and at the end of the German Democratic Republic, it was one of the most respected and influential Eastern German bands despite their underground status.

Flake squatted/lived in an apartment with Paul during their early years. When they weren't playing gigs, Landers and Flake would sell jackets made from cut-up bed sheets and dusters on the black market. Two jackets a month meant as much money as an average salaried worker. "It was quite easy to make a living; not to work and stay out of trouble," says Landers, "You only got problems if you were caught."

The group disbanded in the mid-1990s. On special occasions, the band members would get together for individual concerts at punk festivals, until Rompe died in November 2000 of an asthma attack.

There is a book available about Feeling B.^[1][2]

Rammstein

In 1994, Till Lindemann, Richard Z. Kruspe, Oliver "Olli" Riedel and Christoph "Doom" Schneider entered and won the Berlin Senate Metro beat contest that allowed them to professionally record a four track demo. Paul H. Landers formally joined the band, then finally Flake. He was initially reluctant to join his five bandmates and had to be pestered into becoming a member of Rammstein, as he thought they would be too boring. Eventually, he agreed to join, and the group began work on their first album, Herzeleid ('Heartache').

Flake is probably best known for his part in the controversial live performance of the song "Bück dich" ("Bend down" or "Bend over"), where he and vocalist Till Lindemann engaged in simulated sodomy with a liquor-squirting dildo. On 23 September 1998, in Worcester, Massachusetts (USA) Lindemann and Flake Lorenz were arrested and charged with lewd and lascivious behavior. A statement from Sergeant Thomas Radula of the Worcester Police Department stated that Lindemann was simulating sex with Flake onstage "using a phallic object that shot water over the crowd". They were held and released the following day on US$25 bail. After months of legal debate, they were eventually fined US$100.

His role in "Bück dich" is not the only live act he is known for. Up until 2002, Flake would "surf" the audience in an inflatable rubber dinghy during the performance of "Seemann" ("Seaman"). Ollie took his place in 2002. According to Flake, the change occurred because he was injured too often. Also, during a 2001 concert in St. Petersburg, Flake was tipped out of the boat by the crowd and almost completely undressed. Despite this, Flake has returned to "surfing" the dinghy for Rammstein's 2009 tour during the performance of "Haifisch" ("Shark"). When performing "Mein Teil" ("My part"), Flake is "cooked" with a flame-thrower by Till in a giant cauldron. Flake does a dance, dubbed the "Flake-dance", during "Weißes Fleisch" ("White flesh"). In the video for "Keine Lust" ("No desire" or "Don't feel like it"), Flake is seen in an electric wheelchair. He is seen about to jump off the top of a burning building (trying and failing to land safely on a trampoline) in the video for "Benzin" ("Gasoline" or "Petrol"). In the video for Ich Will ("I want") song, Flake is tied to a bomb that explodes in the end of video. In Rammstein's 2009 video for the song "Pussy", Flake portrays an intersex person named Heeshie. Flake also provided lead vocals for Rammstein's cover version of "Pet Sematary", originally by The Ramones.

During a concert in Gothenburg, Sweden on 30 July 2005, Till Lindemann suffered a knee injury when Flake accidentally ran into him with the Segway he rides during the performance of "Amerika" ("America"). This caused concerts scheduled in Asia to be cancelled.

In 2005, Flake suffered from the mumps, causing concerts in South America to be cancelled.

In January 2012, Flake, along with Lindemann, was interviewed by heavy metal anthropologist Sam Dunn for the VH1 Classic series Metal Evolution, on the topic of shock rock. This is surprising, due to the lack of interviews he, and the band, does in North America.^[3]

Personal life

Flake has been divorced once and has five children.^[4] One known daughter is named Anna.

On 12 September 2008 Flake was remarried to Jenny Rosemeyer, a German artist, who provided the whistling for Rammstein's song "Roter Sand". The marriage was celebrated over a period of 3 days on Flakes property in Liebenwalde. The band Knorkator played there on a temporarily constructed stage.

There is very little information available about his personal life outside of his musical career because he chooses to keep most of it private. He has described the riskier parts being in Rammstein as being like a cold shower. "It doesn't feel too good right then and there, but afterwards you get a good feeling." Flake is an atheist and has stated "I disapprove of religions which are made into rigid institutions. I also think that religious fanaticism and missionary work are dangerous."^[5]

Flake has a certain distaste towards America, which he has reportedly called a "sick and decadent country with no culture."^[6]

He likes to listen to Einstürzende Neubauten, Die Ärzte, Element of Crime, Coldplay, Placebo, Johnny Cash, PJ Harvey, System of a Down, Ministry, The Prodigy and once remarked that he would've liked to have been the sixth Rolling Stone.

Flake is an amateur painter and likes classic cars. He has a Mercedes and is involved in vintage car hire business.^[7] Lorenz used to write frequently in the Fanarea logbook on the official website fanclub, which closed September 2004.

On 5 October 2005 Flake appeared briefly on Deutsche Welle. When asked how he felt about the reunification of Germany, he said he prefers/misses the way things were then. "Even if the GDR survived, I still would've stayed a musician. The increased size of the world also brought the danger of being compared to all of the international acts. The bands which were in the east were the only ones there, and if you were successful there, you were successful. I miss the simplicity. You went into a bar, ordered a beer, and you got a beer!... They didn't ask if you wanted... with a head or without a head, foam top or bottom... It really gets on my nerves having all of these choices I really don't want".

In November 2011 Flake's house was set on fire. The police managed to identify and capture the arsonist, a 28-year-old male with a criminal record. After his escape, he had a fiery car crash near Flake's house.^[8]

Nicknames

Christian Lorenz commonly goes by the nicknames "Flake" (pronounced as "Flak-eh" in German) and "Doktor". "Doktor" came about because at one point he wanted to be a surgeon, but he was unable to study to become one because of his refusal to join the East German military. In a 16 December 2000 interview, he stated "Flake" is his proper name.^[9]

References

External links

• Flake Lorenz at the Internet Movie Database
• Official Rammstein Site (German)
• Official Rammstein Site (English)
• geocities.com