Artist Disillusionment: One of the reasons why Frank Mertens left Alphaville after Forever Young. Even before the band took off, he rarely gave interviews and was absent from most press appearances. Once the first album became a hit, he was totally unprepared for all the attention. He formed another band called Lonely Boys just to record enough songs to honor his contract with the record company, then gave up being a musician. See Reclusive Artist below.
"I am shy and I don't like to talk. I prefer to look and listen. Marian and Bernhard talk quite enough." -Frank Mertens, 1984
"Frank began to show the white feather. He was not ready for all this." -Marian Gold, 1995
Banned in China: Forever Young was banned in East Germany for the song "Summer In Berlin,"note For a reference to the 17th of June, which was a holiday in West Germany commemorating the June 17, 1953 workers' uprising that started in East Berlin. which also resulted in follow-up album Afternoons in Utopia being passed over for an East German release. See No Export for You below.
Contractual Obligation Project: According to Marian, "Sounds Like A Melody" and "Universal Daddy" were written only because the record company wanted more singles. He's come to like "SLAM" over the years, but not "Universal Daddy."
Creative Differences: One of a few reasons Bernhard Lloyd gave for leaving the band. Marian wanted to focus on touring, Bernhard did not.
Marian Gold's solo album So Long Celeste was recorded as a rock-oriented album with members of Albert and the Heart of Gold. WEA insisted on bringing English remix duo The Kid & Jon to produce the album and make it more electronic, as they felt a rock album by the lead singer of Alphaville wasn't marketable. Disc 5 of Dreamscapes features most of the tracks from So Long Celeste in their original form.
Another reason Bernhard Lloyd gave for leaving Alphaville, and probably the principal reason. When he announced he was leaving, Lloyd made vague reference to a former manager who created a "situation that was completely lost."
In Memoriam: Strange Attractor is dedicated to keyboardist Martin Lister, who died during that album's production.
While Alphaville's studio albums are easily available, most of the early singles haven't been released since the mid-80s, and a lot of early b-sides are hard to track down. Considering songs were often mixed differently from studio album, to 7-inch single version, to 12-inch single version, it's difficult to maintain a comprehensive collection, as what rereleases there are are rereleases of just one mix. Even the so-called Singles Collection is very sparse on material. The Dreamscapes box set includes several rare b-sides, but Dreamscapes itself is extremely rare and expensive.
Also applies to their music video anthology, Songlines. Only released on VHS and LaserDisc (and long out of print on both), a DVD of Songlines would be only included in the remastered May 2021 release of The Breathtaking Blue.
A compilation album collecting the band's b-sides and 12-inch mixes produced from 1984-1989 released in October 2014.
Bernhard Lloyd himself, posting on a web forum, once tacitly suggested that anyone interested in listening to Dreamscapes could find a torrent somewhere.
The music from Frank Mertens' Maelstrom project were only available on CDs purchased from his web site, which has been defunct for years.
Late Export for You: The USA release of Salvation came almost a full two years after the European release.
The single "Sensations" was only released in Austria, France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. The 12-inch version contains two mixes of "Sensations," both of which sound very dissimilar from the album version except for the vocals.
The Amiga Compilation was the band's attempt to rectify this for East Germany, where Forever Young and Afternoons in Utopia didn't get a proper release.
Forever Young and Other Hits is a USA-only compilation that was released by Rhino Entertainment under their Flashback Records label, which was a budget label that exclusively released compilation albums of songs that fell under Warner Music Group's publishing rights. Alphaville had no involvement in its release.
The Singles Collection was only officially released in the USA and Canada. Unlike Forever Young and Other Hits this release was sanctioned by the band, though they were not personally involved, leaving it to their then-manager, Ariane Mummert.
Official Fan-Submitted Content: Some of the songs for the web-based Dreamscapes #9 projectnote This eventually became the Crazyshow box set featured lyrics written by members of the Alphaville e-mail mailing list.
The Pete Best: Bassist Marc Simon (real name Fried Gerber), who was a member of proto-Alphaville band Chinchilla Green along with Marian and Bernhard, asked to join Alphaville after seeing them perform at Forum Enger. After briefly taking part in the recording sessions for "Big in Japan," he was "allowed to leave the band." He was long gone by the time "Big in Japan" shot the group to stardom. Some early pressings of the single list him as a songwriter along with the other three members, but the song had already been written well before he joined.
Promoted Fangirl: Janey Klimek was a backup singer on Afternoons in Utopia, and became a fan of the band. She submitted poetry to the band's fan club newsletter. The band ended up adopting some of her poems as lyrics to their songs, where she is credited as Janey Diamond.
Frank Mertens, already media shy while a member of Alphaville, completely left the public eye after the breakup of his band Lonely Boys in 1987. He got an economics degree and lived for a time in France before returning to Germany and settling in Cologne. Since abruptly leaving Alphaville in December of 1984, he has apparently not spoken to Marian Gold at all, and did not speak to Bernhard Lloyd until 1998, and has only kept occasional contact with him since then. His last public appearance was in 2000, at a presentation of his art project, titled Maelstrom. No known photographs of him taken after this presentation exist online. His mother, Edith, gave a short interview to a local Cologne newspaper in 2005, where she discussed his issues with psychosis, which may explain his reclusiveness.
Ricky Echolette, though not as media shy as Mertens while a member of Alphaville, has been just as reclusive since his departure in 1996. Since leaving Alphaville he permanently moved to France, as it is his wife's home country, and dedicated himself to raising his family. Since then he has made no public appearances, and no known photographs of him taken after 1994 exist online.
The lyrics "You need a friend without a doubt, I wonder why you came around / Are you awake or do you dream? You're stuck inside a frozen scene" have been used in three different songs. First in "Cosmopolitician," a song from Marian Gold's solo album United. Second in "Dream Machine," the first track of Dreamscapes. Third in a song recorded for but left off of Strange Attractor.
Much of the second verse of "Flame" consists of lyrics recycled from "Thunder and Lightning," a song that was cut from Marian Gold's first solo album, So Long Celeste.
Some lyrics from "My Very Blood," a song cut from Catching Rays on Giant but occasionally performed live, were reused for Strange Attractor's closing track, "Beyond the Laughing Sky."
The lyrics for the chorus from "Rendezvoyeur" on Strange Attractor are recycled from "Duel" on Klauz Schulze's Tranceland, a song for which Marian Gold provided vocals and lyrics. Some of the lyrics for "Duel" were recycled in turn from "Into the Dark," which was written during the Forever Young sessions but left off of the album.
Recycled Soundtrack: The music from "Universal Daddy" was combined with new lyrics to record a COVID-19-inspired song titled "Mondays for Good," released to YouTube in 2020.
Referenced by...: The titles of a number of works by Irish writer Michael Carroll are references to Alphaville, including the novella She Fades Away,note Track 3 of The Breathtaking Blue. the short stories A Victory of Love,note Track 1 of Forever YoungOn Glory Roads of Pure Delight,note A line from "Jerusalem," track 3 of Afternoons in Utopia. and Angels in Different Shapes,note A line from "Romeos," track 2 of The Breathtaking Blue, although the line is missing from some editions of the album. and the Judge Dredd story The Paradigm Shift.note Track 1 of Prostitute.
Schedule Slip: Strange Attractor was first announced in 2012, then given an initial release date of September 27th, 2014. See Troubled Production below.
Screwed by the Network: The band and their European label, WEA, clashed over the band's refusal to go on tour. Rumor has it that the poor marketing behind The Breathtaking Blue and Prostitute was WEA's quiet way of punishing them. Eventually, Marian Gold went on tour with a backup band that did not include Bernhard Lloyd or Ricky Echolette. Members of that backup band eventually became official members of Alphaville after Lloyd and Echolette departed.
Short Run in Peru: Marian Gold's solo album United was released in South Africa at the end of 1996, more than two years before its May 1999 release in Germany.
According to Marian, he and Bernhard fought a lot during production of The Breathtaking Blue. The album was recorded in a brand new studio which the band designed and financed themselves. The plan was they could record material as soon as it was written without the added process of creating demos, streamlining the production process. Instead, with no demos to fall back on, each band member tried to steer the recordings into their own artistic direction, and since they owned the studio and had no time limits, they developed a long, meticulous process for recording, mixing, and probably arguing. Klaus Schulze, who co-produced the album, intended to work on it for a few weeks, which turned into a year and a half. Additionally, while Alphaville's first two albums had a cohesive direction planned from the beginning, there was little idea of what direction The Breathtaking Blue would take. When the album was finished, none of the band members spoke to each other for two years. Prostitute came about only after Ricky Echolette insisted that they record another album.
Strange Attractor, which was originally slated for September 27, 2014, eventually released on April 7, 2017. The sudden death of band member Martin Lister is likely one factor in the delay, but Marian Gold has said that, like The Breathtaking Blue, recording on Strange Attractor started without much idea of what kind of album the band would create. Strange Attractor is also being recorded in between Alphaville's most active touring schedule in recent memory.
Catching Rays on Giant was delayed from a nebulous 2004/2005 release to November 19, 2010. For this album it seems the main difficulties were in reducing the 25+ songs written during the production period down to a more manageable number for the final tracklist.
Uncredited Role: Alex Merl is credited as bassist on Strange Attractor even though Maja Kim was the bassist for most of the album's four-year production.
What Could Have Been: Marian Gold and Klaus Schulze nearly recorded a full, collaborative album, but work on it was never finished. Two songs from this collaboration did, however, appear on Crazyshow.note "The Opium Den" and the titular "Crazyshow."
The cover for the single release of "The Mysteries of Love" was intended to be a photograph of graffiti on the Berlin Wall, but when the wall came down it was changed to a drawing of a man smoking a pipe in an aquarium.
Marian Gold was supposed to be involved with Klaus Schulze's and Herman Schneider's opera L'Invenzione Degli Angeli, but the project was abandoned when no distributors showed any interest in releasing it.
Another Herman Schneider project, a stage musical based on Alice in Wonderland, had Alphaville commissioned to provide the music, but the production ran out of money and was eventually abandoned.
Working Title: Prostitute started production under the working title Strange Attractor. The latter, of course, eventually became an album title more than twenty years later.
The Strange Attractor album itself was briefly known by the working title Xenolalia.
Before "In the Gods" was released on YouTube in 2020 it was known by the working title "Gallery" going as far back as its first live performances in the late 2000s.
in 2020.