Alphaville History :

1981:
christmas: very first official appearance of the founding members marian gold and bernhard lloyd with the 7-headed nelson community, a collective of artists, from which a little later alphaville will arise.


1982/83:
under the new band name "forever young" and with the new line-up gold/lloyd/mertens a second concert takes place (the last for the next ten years)


1984:
the debut-single "big in japan" is published, followed by "sounds like a melody" and "forever young". in october the album of the same name is released. december:
frank mertens leaves the band. the guitarist and keyboarder ricky echolette takes his place. alphaville write the soundtrack of the film "der bulle und das m?dchen" and take part at the charity project "band für afrika".


1985:
release of the fourth single "the jet set"


1986:
"dance with me" is the pre-release of the second album "afternoons in utopia", produced by peter walsh (scott walker / simple minds) and steve thompson (a-ha, bowie). the cd includes a live-performing-concept, which however never will be realised, because the band decides against live-concerts in order to concentrate for the time being on studio-activities. in june alphaville publish "afternoons" together with the single "universal daddy", in december the single "jerusalem" is released. at the same time the alphaville-music-project "soundtraxx for imaginary movies" gets started which triggers off the coming co-operation with klaus schulze.


1987:
start of the recordings for the third album "the breathtaking blue" with klaus schulze.


1989:
the breathtaking blue" is released. in order to avoid the aesthetics of common videoclips the idea is born to connect the music with a shortcut-film. nine producers, among them godrey reggio ("koyaanisqatsi"), make a film of the pieces of the album under the program-title "songlines". the contribution of christoph and wolfgang lauenstein wins the oscar award in hollywood under the name 'balance'. the cd release of 'the breathtaking blue' is the first enhanced cd+graphics, the forerunner of the dvd.


1992:
the best-of album "first harvest" is released. in the band-owned lunapark-studio the pre-works for the new, self-produced album "prostitute" get started. marian gold publishes his first solo-album "so long celeste". at the same time the recordings of "prostitute" get more and more extensive and time-consuming, so that the release date finally is deferred by more than one and a half years.


1993:
on the basis of an invitation the band decides spontaneously, after 10 years stage-abstinence, to give a concert in beirut.


1994:
release of the single "fools", followed by the long-expected album "prostitute". the cd is a kaleidoscope-like extract of a huge quantity of songmaterial, which arose in the course of the over two years of production work.


1995:
the band betakes itself to south france for starting with the song-writing of "salvation", the fifth alphaville-album.


1996:
ricky echolette leaves alphaville. the alphaville-tourband is constituted in london. there also the recordings for "salvation" with the producer andy richards (art of noise / omd) take place. alphaville successfully launched their official website at  http://www.alphaville.de  which now is their official means of communication to their fans.


1997:
as a first herald of this co-operation the first single "wishful thinking" is released. in september tthe album "salvation" was released.
aftfer this release the contract between the band and their record-company wea ended.


1998:
the band continued touring in germany and easter-europe, they also played gigs in russia and peru while they prepared the release of a new album: their anthology named "dreamscapes" - a set of eight cds covering the complete history from the late seventies to the late nineties, including live recordings and former unreleased songs and mixes. all of the songs featured on "dreamscapes" are in a format which has never been released before. and there's something special about "dreamscapes": alphaville produced both the music and the artwork themselves.
this does definitely not mean the end of alphaville - they already prepare a complete new album.


1999:
'dreamscapes' sells incredibly good and alphaville take the challenge: the song 'flame' is being released in the usa, like 'dreamscapes' it is distributed by alphaville, without a major record company. the single features a remixed version of 'flame', as well as an unplugged version of 'forever young' and a live recording of 'big in japan'.
the first edition of dreamscapes is sold out within three months. alphaville are on the road again - with a new show, a breathtaking light show supports the now nearly perfect band.
june: alphaville play a gig at the 'kieler woche' in kiel, germany for an enthusiastic audience of more than 10.000 people.
the album 'salvation' is being released in the u.s.a. with a complete new artwork and three bonus tracks.
in july alphaville play two big concerts in salt lake city, usa. both concerts were sold out within two weeks, even before promotion started. by the and of july alphaville play in portugal for an audience of 17.000 people.


2000:
the us edition of alphaville's album 'salvation' is sold nationwide in america by metropolis records.
the band is still doing live shows all over the world and is also working on a new studio album which is planned to be released in 2002. meanwhile alphaville released their first official live album 'stark naked and absolutely live' - with this album they were #1 of the german alternative charts for three weeks.
they also did their biggest concert so far:
in szchechin/poland they played in front of an audience of 300.000 people.
dreamscapes continues: besides regular releases alphaville start to publish a new exclusive song on their website every month. later on, these web songs will be available in high quality on cd.


2001:
bernhard lloyd releases his solo project 'atlantic popes' - a virtual project with a specially shaped web site (atlanticpopes.de).
marian gold works - while writing songs for the new alphaville album - together with klaus schulze, effjott krüger (ideal) and two other titans of electronic music on the allstar project 'sputnik roadhouse' for the german tv movie "klassentreffen", broadcasted by sat 1. sputnik roadhouse continues at sputnikroadhouse.de.
alphavilles first dvd is on it's way: fans from america made it possible to capture the 1999 live shows from salt lake city professionally filmed on this future medium.
www.alphaville.info is relaunched and completely redone on august 28, 2001.
while in october the dreamscapes#9 project is successfully finished the remix album "forever pop" is released. it features remixes of many alphaville classics created by de phazz, paul van dyk, mark plati, f.a.f., josé alvarez brill, eiffel65 and others.


2002:
in april alphaville starts the 'miracle healing tour' which lead them not only to switzerland, hungary, czech republic and austria but also through the entire federal republic of germany. after performing at several summer festivals the band is busy working on the new album CrazyShow. this upcoming album announces another change regarding the band's line-up, because it will be the very first alphaville album in which bernhard lloyd hasn't been involved. in december marian gold tours with 'nokia night of the proms' through germany.


2003:
since february 14th CrazyShow is being distributed. the lavishly designed and limited 4-cd box set can be ordered at alphaville's website [moonbase] and [adifferentdrum].
on march 18th bernhard lloyd announces officially that he is no longer a member of alphaville. the nucleus of the band now consists of marian gold, keyboard-player rainer bloss, who has co-composed alphaville's music since the beginning of the 90's and briton martin lister, who has been the musical director of alphaville's tour-band and who contributed 2 tracks (still falls the rain, ways) to CrazyShow.
new songs of the album CrazyShow are presented at the "eurorock" festival in belgium at april 5th for the first time since the release of the new album.
shortly after this event the recordings for the opera 'l'invenzione degli angeli/the invention of angels' written by klaus schulze and hermann schneider, begin. the libretto of this opera is written in italian language. marian embodies the role of the envoy.