Falco Biography And Net Worth

Meet Falco

Johann “Hans” Hölze better known by his stage name Falco, was an Austrian singer and musician. He had several international hits including “Der Kommissar” (1981), “Rock Me Amadeus”, “Vienna Calling”, “Jeanny”, “The Sound of Musik”, “Coming Home (Jeanny Part II, One Year Later)”, and posthumously “Out of the Dark”.

“Rock Me Amadeus” reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts in 1986, making Falco the only artist in history to score a number-one hit with a German language song in the United States. According to his estate, he has sold 20 million albums and 40 million singles, which makes him the best-selling Austrian singer of all time.

This article Contains Detailed Information about Falcon’s Biography and Net Worth.

Bio Data

Early Life

Johann Hölzel was born on 19 February 1957 to Alois Hölzel and Maria Hölzel in a working-class district of Vienna. Maria would later recall that she had been pregnant with triplets. As it was a dizygotic pregnancy, she miscarried the identical twins during the third month and Falco, who was conceived via a separate ovum, survived. Falco mused that “three souls in one breast sounds a little over-dramatic, but I do sense them sometimes. In my moodiness. I’ll be really up and then right after I’ll be really down.

In 1963, Falco began his schooling at a Roman Catholic private school; four years later, at age ten, he switched to the Rainergymnasium in Margareten. Falco’s father left the family while he was still a child, and he was raised by his mother.

Falco began to show signs of unusual musical talent very early. As a toddler, he was able to keep time with the drumbeat in songs he heard on the radio. He was given a child’s grand piano for his fourth birthday; a year later, his birthday gift was a record player which he used to play music by Elvis Presley, Cliff Richar, and the Beatles.

Falco wanted to be a pop star from a very early age. At age 16, he attended the Vienna Conservatoire, but he became frustrated and soon left. His mother insisted he begin an apprenticeship with the Austrian Employee Pension Insurance Institute. This too only lasted a short time. At seventeen, he was conscripted for eight months of military service with the Austrian army.

Personal Life

Falco has been described by those who knew him as having a complex personality. He has been called ambitious, eccentric, caring, egotistical, and deeply insecure. Thomas Rabitsch, a keyboardist who met Falco when the aspiring pop star was only 17 years old, said he was a quiet young man and precise bass player, but also arrogant and with a “very high opinion of himself.” Markus Spiegel, the manager who discovered Falco, admitted that the pop star was “an extremely difficult artist” and known womanizer. Peter Vieweger, a guitarist who knew Falco before his success and continued to play in Falco’s touring band and on his albums, remembers Falco as being “scared he would fail or be unmasked and not be as good as people thought he was.”

Through the 1980s and into the ’90s, he became dependent on alcohol and cocaine. When under the influence he was unreliable at best and abusive at worst. Ferdi Bolland recalls that Falco was often so severely intoxicated that the writing process revolved around his “inability to be coherent, to even stand for a long time.” Despite pleas from his manager and collaborators to get help, Falco stubbornly refused.

While Falco was in a relationship with Isabella Vitkovic, she gave birth to a baby girl, Katharina, in 1986. The couple married in 1988, but it was a “love-hate” relationship, as Katharina describes it, and the marriage was short-lived.

Career

Hölzel began his career in the late 1970s as a prominent figure in the Vienna underground club scene. In addition to performing music, he frequently did stripteases and performance art pieces. Hölzel played the bass guitar in various Viennese bands, including Drahdiwaberl. Around this time, he started using the stage name Falco.

Falco had his single greatest commercial success with his single “Rock Me Amadeus,” which came out in 1985 before becoming a global smash in 1986. The song reached number one on the charts in over a dozen countries, including the US and UK. “Rock Me Amadeus” was featured on the album “Falco 3,” the artist’s highest-charting album in the US, at number three. The album also spawned the hit singles “Vienna Calling” and “Jenny.” The commercial performances of Falco’s albums declined from that point on with such releases as “Emotional,” “Wiener Blut,” “Data de Groove,” and “Nachtflug.” However, he managed to have a considerable international hit with the single “The Sound of Musik.

Net Worth

Falco was an Austrian singer and songwriter who had a net worth equal to $10 million at the time of his death.

Falco was known for such hit songs as “Rock Me Amadeus,” “Der Kommissar,” “Jenny,” and “The Sound of Musik.” His most successful single “Rock Me Amadeus” reached #1 in the US as well as in Austria, Germany, Sweden, Ireland, New Zealand, Canada, and the UK. With 20 million albums and 40 million singles sold, he is the best-selling Austrian singer in history.

Death And Tribute

Falco died of severe injuries received on 6 February 1998, 13 days before his 41st birthday, when his Mitsubishi Pajero collided with a bus on the road linking the towns of Villa Montellano and Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic.

In 1998, Rob and Ferdi Bolland (Dutch producers and co-writers on about half of Falco’s albums) released the EP Tribute to Falco under the name The Bolland Project feat. Alida. The title track featured samples of Falco’s music; the other tracks were “We Say Goodbye” and “So Lonely”.

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