Being Conchita Read online

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘Our time clock.’

  A time clock? That’s what they used to have in factories. When the workers turned up for the start of their shift, they inserted their time card into a kind of box, which then stamped the card with their time of arrival. They did the same before going home. At the end of the month, the card was sent to the accounts department, which calculated the number of hours worked. Although the time clock has survived in electronic form, I wouldn’t have expected to find a place like the Crazy Horse still using a machine from such a bygone age.

  ‘Our girls would revolt if we got rid of the time clock,’ smiled Andrée.

  ‘Do I get my own time card?’

  ‘Of course you do. With your stage name on it.’ Andrée pointed to a rack next to the clock, in which all the cards were neatly arranged. ‘Afterwards you put your card in there. But you won’t need an extra name like Baby Light or Mika Do – you’re Conchita. Why bother changing it?’

  ‘That’s fine with me, as long as I get my card.’ I’d never had a time card in my life, and in all probability, I’ll never be given one again. I liked these little idiosyncrasies of the Crazy Horse, which recalled the great days of revue theatre.

  ‘The era of the nightclub began in the twentieth century,’ explained Andrée. ‘The Kit Kat Klub in New York. The Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas. The Palladium in London, and, of course, the Lido in Paris. We’re keeping a tradition alive, and our guests appreciate that.’

  She showed me the ballroom, in which I sensed an atmosphere of sensually provocative shows, a place that was made for the night. Intimate, yet not vulgar. Comfortable armchairs around narrow tables, lacquered wood and red velvet. My heart, which is in love with night revues, started to pound.

  ‘There are two shows an evening, aren’t there?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s right. It’ll be marvellous, I promise you. But also exhausting.’

  She wasn’t wrong. I travelled frequently to Paris to rehearse with the dancers. Each time I was fascinated by their musicality, movement, litheness and sensuality. What had Andrée said? ‘We show that women are art.’ These dancers were the living proof of her words. And there was I in their midst, a man who loves women, yet doesn’t desire them – that was something really exceptional, for the girls as well. They put their body on display, and even though it’s always artistically illuminated, subtly veiled in vital places, with more being hidden than shown, it’s still a naked body. I admired their beauty without allowing myself to be seduced by it. We had a lot of fun together, totally free of any deeper meaning. I learned a lot, and I got to collaborate with two legends: Pierre and Gilles.

  The photographer Pierre Commoy and the painter Gilles Blanchard are the talented men responsible for the stage sets at the Crazy Horse. Having long been an admirer of their work, I would never have dreamt I’d one day be collaborating with them. For more than forty years, they’ve been surprising the international art scene with their lavish portraits in front of a three-dimensional backdrop. Be it Marc Almond from Soft Cell, Khaled, the King of Raï, the French superstars Catherine Deneuve and Serge Gainsbourg, Madonna or Paloma Picasso, they’ve all posed for Pierre and Gilles. And now it was my turn.

  I’d been standing in the same pose for almost an hour, with wide-outstretched arms, which were by now burning like fire. ‘Ne bouge pas!’ don’t move, commanded Pierre for the umpteenth time. Millimetre by millimetre, they arranged every single strand of my hair, while I distracted myself from the pain by letting my eyes wander around the fabulous cave the two of them called their studio. I was allowed to move my eyes, and what they saw would have delighted little Tom, too. Pierre and Gilles live in a house on the edge of Paris, and on entering, you walk straight into a museum. It’s not one that specialises in contemporary art or the Old Masters. Instead, it’s a museum of unusual everyday art, an oasis of trashy cultural phenomena from past and present. Marvel Comics action figures are lined up alongside Mexican chandelier advertisements. Popeye can be seen making himself comfortable on a Mayan Sun-patterned tablecloth. In the corner, a life-size Michael Jackson in synthetic resin is flirting with Batman. Jade elephants, musical instruments, monstrous Dino-Riders from the 1990s, Surmese lip plates, trumpet alarm clocks from the 1920s. What struck a neat freak like me, of course, was how everything was so nicely arranged and in perfect condition – including in the cellar, down into which this orgy of rarities seamlessly continued. This was a bit of luck, since all of my looking around and marvelling enabled me to survive the crucifixion scene.

  ‘Bouge pas!’ This time it was Gilles. Don’t move! He manipulated the sash on my dress into precise shapes, with the accuracy of a man accustomed to meticulous craftsmanship. He then took each of my fingers and placed them in the desired positions. ‘Un centimètre à gauche, s’il vous plaît. Seulement un, Madame, pas deux!’ One centimetre to the left, please. Not two, just one!

  Despite the pain – my arms were now trembling – I’d immediately taken to both of them. I love people who are passionate about what they do. That should be our goal. Not doing things because they need doing. But doing them with enthusiasm, zeal and commitment. Of course, Pierre and Gilles are successful. Their work adorns front pages, they have exhibitions in Seoul, Shanghai, Berlin and Paris, they work for the Crazy Horse and the fashion industry – but they’d still do what they do even if no-one was interested. They do their work because they enjoy taking their art to a deeper level. For me, that’s the key to success. My experience with Starmania and the manufactured band jetzt anders! taught me to be suspicious of success that’s planned out in advance. The organisers might get lucky and create something that really does contain a spark of passion, in which case it might be successful. Usually, however, that isn’t the case. You can’t plan success in the same way you plan a journey. Success happens when we follow our heart, and that means finding out what we enjoy doing. And then designing a strategy. How can I do more of what I enjoy doing? How can I build on what I enjoy doing? How can I get good at it? When I say ‘good’, I mean better than the rest.

  That’s what Pierre and Gilles did, and they became legends. Pierre loved photography, while Gilles loved illustration. He began to overpaint Pierre’s portraits. Together they turned it into an art form. I find this sort of dedication both motivating and inspiring. That day, as I spent half an eternity in the same pose, with outstretched arms and moving my fingers centimetre by centimetre – ‘un, pas deux’ – it became clear to me that, at that moment in time, there was nothing, absolutely nothing in the world I’d rather be doing. That’s how I managed to maintain the same uncomfortable posture, despite my body’s protestations. When it was all over, I knew: you can always do a little bit more than you think. During the week I spent doing the shows at the Crazy Horse, this realisation was a great help to me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CRAZY HORSE

  ‘The French are glad to die for love’

  FROM THE MUSICAL GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDS

  I couldn’t have chosen two more dissimilar sets if I’d wanted to. On Saturday evening, I took to the stage on the German TV show Wetten, dass..? for the world premiere of my new song ‘Heroes’. Less than twelve hours later, I was on another stage, this time in Paris at 12 Avenue George V, wearing a skin-tight Gaultier dress, surrounded by the city’s most beautiful dancers. It was a magical moment. Pierre and Gilles had created a set to die for, the dancers were in top form, and I could sense the energy that always runs through my body whenever I’m on stage. A ‘stage hog’ is a somewhat disparaging term for an artist who exists for the moments they’re performing live in front of the world. That’s me. The live show is the king of gigs. Anything can happen, nothing can be depended on. When we’re used to a world where seemingly nothing is left to chance, the live show is both a challenge and a thrill. Of course, we’d practised and rehearsed over and over again. Yet when the curtain goes up and the audience collectively hold their
breath in anticipation, the only thing that counts is the moment at which we all give it our best. That’s the point at which I sense life coursing through my veins, feel the energy I can give, and the energy I get back in return.

  Without a doubt, the applause of the audience is our greatest reward. ‘Dedicated to amazement’ are the words emblazoned in gold letters on a dark blue background in Berlin’s Jardin de Plaisanterie, today’s Wintergarten Varieté. Spectators at circuses are greeted with the motto ‘Your favour is our striving’, and that’s the magic of the live show: no tricks, no playback, no false floor and no safety net, yet still giving the audience an experience they’ll remember for a long time to come. Seen in this light, my week at the Crazy Horse was incredibly exciting. Like at Kitty Willenbruch’s burlesque revue in Vienna, I returned to being a night worker on the late shift. I loved it! The night’s not just there for sleeping – it’s also there for partying! After all those weeks of work on ‘Heroes’, all the long hours in the film studio, political appearances and interview marathons, it was a joy to finally get back to where it had all begun: on stage, the place that opens up a whole new universe for us.

  Live!

  Pure adrenaline!

  Curtain up at the Crazy Horse!

  We played two shows a day, and any of us whose muscles weren’t aching afterwards must have been doing something wrong. Our last performance of the day behind us, the evening was still far from over. We partied and discussed the things we wanted to get better in the next show. By the time I got to bed, it wasn’t long before dawn. I’d often reflect on what the Paris of the 1920s and 1930s must have been like, a time when the live show was one of people’s main pleasures. A time when, evening after evening, thousands used to flock to the Casino de Paris or Théâtre des Champs-Élysées to celebrate the golden age of French variété. To see the great clown Grock, or Josephine Baker, who used to shock all the visitors to the Folies Bergère by wearing a skirt made entirely of bananas. As is often the case, past times are forgotten times. So I was aware that, with our show, we were helping to keep alive the tradition of a golden era.

  On entering my hotel at the crack of dawn, I would look out towards the Champ de Mars, where the Eiffel Tower was reflecting the sun’s first rays. For me, that iconic structure is a promise that Paris will always remain Paris, a place where, even in the twenty-first century, a revue show can still captivate an audience. I could already sense the thrill of those hours before a performance reawakening inside me. On my way to the hotel, someone had sprayed ‘Pour l’éternité’, for all eternity, on the wall of a house, and the words were still imprinted on my mind. I could stay here and play on forever, they seemed to be telling me. But then I closed the hotel door behind me and rested before my next show, and then the next one, and the next one – and so it went on for a wonderful week, but alas not for all eternity. Because there were new challenges awaiting me, relating to a video with a simple title: ‘Heroes’.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  HEROES

  ‘Gonna fly now, flying high now’

  FROM THE MUSICAL ROCKY

  Six months isn’t a long time in terms of the history of the world. Yet my fans, thinking in terms of the history of Conchita Wurst, were beginning to demand: When are you going to bring out your new song?

  I could only ask them to be patient, because I wanted the best song for them, plus a wonderful video. For someone like me, born in the late 1980s, song and video belong inseparably together, even though the age of the music video had begun only a few years before I was born. I’d grown up watching MTV, and took a big interest in hit lists such as MTV’s 100 Greatest Music Videos Ever Made and TMF’s Ultimate 50 Videos You Must See by The Music Factory TV channel. I can remember one of the first masterpieces, ‘Sledgehammer’ by Peter Gabriel, which involved the people from Aardman Animations, who were later to become world-famous with the Wallace and Gromit movies. And Madonna’s ‘Papa Don’t Preach’, which was made by Hollywood director James Foley with one of the best ever cameramen in the business, Michael Ballhaus. Music videos like these were milestones and have rarely been surpassed by any that came before or after them.

  I was clear in my mind that, if I was going to sing about dancing in the eye of a hurricane, I wanted to see a shot of it. So I met up with Gerhard Gutscher’s video artists at the Vienna Sound Vienna Light studios, who had already done work for Cher, Jermaine Jackson, Anastacia, John Cleese, Grace Jones and Nigel Kennedy. I told them about the images I had in my head. A synaesthete is the name given to people like me, people who see pictures when they listen to music. The more emotional my reaction is to a piece of music, the stronger my synaesthesia becomes. That’s because emotions add to the visual response. Although it’s essentially a positive thing, it can sometimes also be stressful, as the pictures are always extremely vivid. And that’s how it was when my inner eye visualised the first sequences of the video. Intensely realistic pictures shot through my brain as I was going down the steps at an underground station. Once again, I had to be careful not to stumble. On the other hand, I never have to worry that the pictures in my head will suddenly go away, like ideas that have scarcely appeared before they disappear again. The pictures stay on, yet they also present themselves as an obligation: work with us, they say. Make something out of us.

  I used to listen to music while sewing. It allowed me to transfer the pictures directly from my head to the design I was creating. The images that surfaced in my mind were never ones I’d seen before. Likewise, there are generations of people who can all remember exactly the same picture. This phenomenon was illustrated years ago at an exhibition by the artist Michael Schirner. His ‘Pictures in our Minds’ series showed photos that everyone knew. The trick was that not one of the photos was actually on view. Instead, visitors were presented with black panels and white writing: ‘Willy Brandt kneeling at the monument to the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising’, ‘East German policeman jumping over barbed wire into the West as the Berlin Wall is being built’, ‘Footprint of the first man on the moon’. Every visitor to the exhibition immediately had the picture in their head, because they’d seen it so often. A similar exhibition today would offer us pictures with titles such as ‘Collapse of the World Trade Center’ or ‘Russian President Vladimir Putin topless while fishing’. These are pictures that have become common property. Yet if your aim is to create a stand-out video, they’re pictures you’d do well to avoid.

  So I rely on the images from my synaesthesia, even if they do cause me to take the odd fall. The pictures I see are ones that have never been seen by anyone before. So how am I supposed to communicate them? The director Steven Spielberg once spoke the following words about the art of filmmaking: ‘It’s twenty per cent imagination and eighty per cent presentation’. And the creator of E.T., Jurassic Park, Men in Black, Indiana Jones and Schindler’s List is someone who really ought to know. I spoke in depth to the people from the Vienna Sound Vienna Light studios about all the things I’d seen, and we discussed how to transfer my mental pictures to the screen.

  Ultimately, ‘Heroes’ is about how each one of us can be a hero in our own day-to-day life, and about freedom of choice: we ourselves choose the path we take and whether that path is paved with hate, violence and hostility, or with love, acceptance and joy. I often hear how it’s circumstances that turn a person into a murderer, a criminal, a homophobe or a corrupt politician. Yet aren’t these just convenient excuses we use to hide from our own responsibility? All those who post messages like ‘Rot in hell’ on my Facebook account have made their decision. I’ve made mine, too, and I’ve chosen not hate, but love. I’ve chosen ‘we can be so beautiful’. And I’m certain that, at the end of the day, it’s the only option open to humankind. The world is home to over seven billion people, and that number is set to rise much higher in the coming years. The day is likely to dawn when no wall is high enough to separate rich from poor, black from white, homo from hetero. If we can accept each other in a s
pirit of love, we’ll make it. Until that day comes, the warlords and the dictators, the oppressors and the despots will fight their last battles. Ultimately, they’ll have no chance. No-one can stop us. Our love is stronger than their hate.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  OF CHANCELLORS, PRESIDENTS AND SECRETARIES-GENERAL

  ‘The overture is about to start,

  You cross your fingers and hold your heart,

  It’s curtain time and away we go!’

  FROM THE MUSICAL KISS ME, KATE

  We are unstoppable, wir sind nicht zu stoppen, nous sommes imparable, somos imparables – my dream has become a reality. My words, our slogan, went out into the world, found an audience, spread like wildfire. Those words gave hope to unheard voices, they woke the sleeping, united the strong. They also annoyed the homophobes, the misanthropes, the egoists. On the evening of 10 May 2014, I had no time for them, but that’s now changed. We reach out our hand. We’ll take everyone on board. It’s never too late to feel love.

  When I close my eyes, I dream of a Europe of friends. So far, the Union is just an association of states in which the people from one country still know little about the people from the other countries. Of course, it would be wrong to believe that friendship is something that can happen overnight. It would be wrong to believe that the process can proceed without setbacks. It would be wrong to believe that the diehards won’t resist. That’s why, at a time when others wanted to see me in a music studio, I was embarking on a journey to carry my message out into the world. Just days after the Eurovision Song Contest, I met with the Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann and Culture Secretary Josef Ostermayer. Once again, I asked myself: how is this possible? How can someone from Bad Mitterndorf debate with those in power?