Till Lindemann

	„Kann man Herzen stehlen?“
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Till Lindemann

Lindemann in 2004

Till Lindemann (born January 4, 1963) is the frontman and lead vocalist for Rammstein.

Personal characteristics

Lindemann has a powerful on stage presence and a resonant bass voice. One of his signature mannerisms is to partially squat and pound his fist onto his thigh to the beat of the riff. His vocals are easily recognizable due to his tendency to roll his Rs, and growl his achs. Lindemann is also a qualified pyrotechnician. After an accident at the Treptow arena in Berlin on September 27, 1996, where a burning stage prop fell into the audience, Rammstein began employing a professional pyrotechnical crew and Lindemann has learned from and also trained with them. Each band member is specially instructed on the pieces of pyrotechnical equipment they use on stage. Of Lindemann, band mate Christoph Schneider says, “Till gets burned all the time, but he likes the pain.” He has also engaged in other masochistic acts on stage, such as whipping himself and bludgeoning his head with a microphone until it bleeds, both of which can be seen on the Live aus Berlin DVD. He is also the third shortest member of the band, standing at 6'0" (183 cm).

Personal background

Portrait "Gitta Lindemann and Son Till Lindemann" painted by Manfred W. Jürgens in 2002

Till Lindemann was born in Leipzig, East Germany, on January 4, 1963.  He grew up in the village of Wendisch-Rambow near Schwerin (East Germany). His father, Werner Lindemann (who passed away from stomach cancer in 1993), was a poet, and author of children's books, and his mother, Brigitte "Gitta" Hildegard Lindemann, was and is a journalist.  He has one sister, Saskia, who is six years younger than he is.

At the age of 11 (in 1974) he was sent to a sports school at the Rostock Sport Club where he was trained as a swimmer.  While at the sports school - in 1975 when he was 12 years old - his parents began living separately for career reasons.  They never divorced, and there is no evidence that either Till or his sister Saskia were ever abused.

To get the boy away from the street, he was enrolled to swim team by his parents, which was near the home.There he was discoverd to be talented and Till was sent to a boarding school (Sportschule Rostock) where he was a student and member of the swim team until 1978. The boarding school was the sports school, its same place. In the summer of 1978 he was a participant in the European Junior Swimming Championships in Florence.  In an interview, Rammstein bandmate Christoph Schneider reveals that Till was again involved in misbehavior involving leaving the hotel unattended during this sporting event.  This time he was kicked off the swim team, and sent home from the boarding school.  It is rumored that at some time during his school years he tore a stomach muscle which was the reason for his expulsion from school, but this is unsubstantiated.

According to Lindemann, "I never liked the sport school actually, it was very intense. But as a child you don't object."  He has also stated that he was not good enough to have made the Olympic team, though he was in training for the 1980 Olympic Games when he had to leave the team and the school.

Till's Family

In 1985, when Lindemann was 22, his first daughter, Nele, was born. Lindemann and Nele's mother married after she was born, but they divorced and he raised Nele alone for seven years, until his work with Rammstein began to demand that he spend more time away from home.  At that time, Nele's mother again began taking a more active role in raising her.  He has never remarried, though he has had many liaisons and relationships since.

Lindemann said at the time, "I used to play drums in a punk band and we had our studio in the house where I lived.  Seven years I had been a father raising my daughter, but nowadays I'm sharing the upbringing with her mother, because I'm gone for six months of the year with the band".  He has another daughter, Marie Louise, whose year of birth is given as 1992 or 1993 in various sources.  Her mother is Anja Köseling.  He also has two sons, but their names and other facts are unknown.

Musical career

Lindemann started to play drums for First Arsch: a play on words perhaps meant to distract the authorities. It was a Schwerin-based punk band. They made an album titled Saddle Up.

Till Lindemann also played one song with a German punk band called Feeling B. A song called Lied von der unruhevollen Jugend ("Song of the restless youth") is credited on the album called Hea Hoa Hoa Hea Hea Hoa (1990) saying Till, Paul H. Landers and Christian "Flake" Lorenz all played on the song Lied von der unruhevollen Jugend. Feeling B was the former band of Paul H. Landers and Christian "Flake" Lorenz.

Later in the 1990s, Lindemann began to write lyrics, possibly based on phrases and words from poems that he was beginning to write. He says he "used to drum in a punk band that consisted of bass and drums. We used to work with guest-guitarists, usually Paul and Richard. We did a short tour where I changed instruments with the bassist in the encore, that was such a success, that Richard insisted on starting a project in which I would sing. Other people joined the band but only when I left Schwerin for Berlin did it take serious form."

In 1994, they entered and won a contest in Berlin that allowed them to record a four track demo professionally. Lindemann moved to Berlin. Paul H. Landers formally joined the band, followed by the last member to join, Christian "Flake" Lorenz.

Subsequently, in November 2002 Lindemann's own project, the poetry book Messer, was published. It consists of 54 poems compiled by Gert Hof, who is author of the book Rammstein and has been the band's pyrodesigner for the last seven years. This book was due to be re-printed in 2005 due to a campaign by a fansite.

In a radio interview in 2004, Lindemann stated that he wants to retire at 50 to spend more time with his wife Esperanza, a Spanish designer.

Till is quite skilled at playing the harmonica. An example of this is heard and seen for the song Los, from the Völkerball DVD.

Till Lindemann from Live aus Berlin era.

As guest artist

• Lindemann provides vocals for the track Helden (a cover of Bowie's Heroes) on the Apocalyptica album Worlds Collide.
• Ayreon frontman Arjen Anthony Lucassen has stated on his website that he would love to have Lindemann appear on a future Ayreon album, but he'd "have to write the parts in German" or create an "evil character".
• Lindemann also sings on "Wut Will Nicht Sterben" by Die Puhdys.
• Till Lindemann & Richard Kruspe covered the Aria song Shtil and released it as Schtiel.

Movie appearances

• In 2003, Till made an appearance as a villain, in a made for television movie for children titled Amundsen, der Pinguin. His character tries to steal a penguin who knows the location of treasure.
• Till plays an animal rights activist in a movie called Vinzent.
• Till made brief appearances in the movies xXx (2002) as himself along with the rest of Rammstein, and Pola X (1999).

His band, Rammstein, has contributed to many soundtracks, such as: xXx, Resident Evil, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Lost Highway, The Matrix, Lilya 4-ever, Hellboy 2 (though the song contributed, "Mein Herz brennt" from their third album Mutter, appeared only in the Hellboy 2 trailer and not in the film itself).

Quotes

• Loneliness sometimes gives me a quantity of creativeness - you're drinking another glass of wine and you're feeling even worse. Art doesn't work without pain; art also exists for compensating pain.

• The rolling R's didn't arise deliberately. It originated from itself because in that deep pitch you automatically sing that way. I'm no musician in the actual meaning. I don't know anything about instruments. But I'm supporting our music with my voice and lyrics well. It's a question of illustration, timbre and phonetics. We don't want to - for Heaven's sake - create a fascist-like style.

• Love is like a flower; even the most beautiful kind dies.

• You've got a kind of inner store. When things aren't going well, you just go inside and get a glass of travel preserves for your soul, open it and fill up on it.

• To explain the lyrics would be to take away the whole attraction and afterward perhaps the fans would even be disappointed. I would rather leave things in this area untouched so that everyone can bring their own interpretation and their own feeling to it.