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Carlo Karges
From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist
Carlo Karges was a German guitarist and songwriter. He was born in 1951 in Hamburg and grew up there with his mother. As a schoolboy he began playing the guitar and writing his own songs. He played in groups such as Tomorrow's Gift and Release Music Orchestra, and in 1971 he was one of the founders of Novalis, in which he played guitar and keyboards.
Music and breakthrough
In 1981 he formed the band named after her, Nena, with the singer Gabriele Kerner, who went by the name Nena, and with Rolf Brendel, Jürgen Dehmel and Uwe Fahrenkrog-Petersen. The group made energetic, German-language pop music with guitars and synthesizers. Karges wrote the lyrics of the band's best-known song, 99 Luftballons, which was released in 1983. It became a huge hit, also outside Germany, and later also appeared in an English version, 99 Red Balloons.
Influence
He got the idea for the lyrics in 1982 at a Rolling Stones concert in the Waldbühne in West Berlin, where balloons were released into the sky. Karges wondered what East German or Soviet troops would do if those balloons drifted over the Berlin Wall. This gave rise to a song about a great war that begins with a misunderstanding over a cloud of balloons. The song brought the fear of the Cold War into the charts. Karges died in Hamburg in 2002, at the age of 50.
Listening
In School of Rock
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