Georg Danzer stood for decades among Austria’s most popular and influential singers and songwriters, addressing both intimate and political themes through the biting humor that defines the shared Viennese outlook.
Born in Vienna on October 7, 1946, he took up the guitar at thirteen. The appearance of the Beatles’ landmark Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967 prompted him to compose his own songs, and the following year he released his first solo single, “Vera.” Although his initial releases found few buyers, fellow musicians held him in high regard and frequently recorded his material. By the close of the 1960s he had become a central force in the German-language liedermacher movement and would later be acknowledged as a founder of the style known as Austro-pop. In the early 1970s Danzer fronted the Madcaps and notched a run of cult successes such as “John Wayne,” after which he returned to solo work with the 1974 album Der Tätowierer und die Mondprinzessin. Singles including “Jö Schau,” “Wixer-Blues,” “War das Etwa Haschish?,” and especially the enduring classic “Morgenrot” propelled him to national stardom while simultaneously drawing the ire of broadcast regulators; the ensuing airplay bans and public boycotts only heightened his visibility. At the decade’s end he relocated to Germany, which caused his domestic popularity to wane. While shooting a music video in Spain in 1984, he sustained critical injuries in a motorcycle crash, and Polydor dropped him from its roster the next year. His 1992 return to Vienna sparked both commercial and artistic renewal. A lifelong smoker, he succumbed to lung cancer in St. Pölten, Austria, on June 21, 2007.
