S.ym

Born in Mannheim, Germany, the very first thing I remember is that I watched my father playing easy Beethoven pieces.......on this cute little masterpiece of rotten wood...and whenever he used to get up from the the piano and go out of sight I would play what I had heard him playing just a few minutes beforehand. I was 3 years old. My parents rewarded me with private piano lessons but I used to drive the piano teachers crazy by being stubborn... I gave my first concerts when I was 6 or 7, playing very easy classical pieces at Christmas gatherings and such like.. I didn't hear my first piece of pop music until I was 5. My father played it on a high-tech piece of equipment which looked a lot like this...As my parents generally "only" listened to classical music (everything else seemed like noise to them), I had never actually ever heard anything like this before and was delighted. I would secretly play and rewind the tape over and over again so that I could listen to those previously unheard sounds - until one day when I caused a tape-jam and therefore managed to erase pop music from my life once again.I don't remember when it was that I came across a drum kit the first time but I remember that I only got the chance to play it once, for around 30 minutes, when I was 10 years old. It was love at first sight but my parents wouldn't let me take drum lessons; classical music does not have drum kits. I ended up agreeing to play the drums in a school band without ever having had access to a drum kit before, nor having had any lessons, but the concerts went just fine...I believe that experience is the only true teacher... I dumped the piano once I was old enough to work, so that I could earn money to buy my own drum kit, at 14, and show my parents how stubborn I really was (they had offered to let me play the drums only if I agreed to carry on with the piano). It was around this time that I starting writing my first songs for my first band.I tried to study classical composition but failed completely, though the professor did like my compositions...I took drumming lessons, singing lesson, learned to play the guitar a bit......and deal with my biggest problem which was not being able to play each of those instruments at the same time.but I always found people to invade a stage with me: