Biography
In 1993 an SDR employee found out that the total sales of the productions which I was involved with as a guitarist, producer or arranger, totalled 166 million records. By 2021 it will most likely be over 240 million!
Only the PUR and Udo Lindenberg, as well as Donna Summer, Jennifer Rush, Pupo, Umberto Tozzi, Howard Carpendale and of course all Harold Faltermeyer songs and soundtracks are included with all the hits and compilations of individual titles on secondary releases have been more then 100 million sales.
Including the Munich club gigs in the 1970s in the Tabarin and in the Cadillac Club I have already played over 3,800 live Gigs. After my last tour with ‘Frumpy’ in November 1991 there was only one unpaid gig with my old band ‘TAX’ on my 50th birthday party on August 14th, 2006.
There are approximately 15,000 published titles on which I was involved either as guitarist, arranger, composer, producer, singer or otherwise.
When GEMA last counted my own compositions in 2019, I had published around 4,500 songs with all new releases up to 2016 including all titles for Sonoton and Intersound. From 2021 I’ve started my own YouTube channel ‘’Burning Guitars Wesley Plass” with Blues R&B and Soul and a few useful links.
I was born on August 14, 1956 in Herrsching am Ammersee in Upper Bavaria . I was the first son of my Father, namely Wesley Jewell Kennedy. My mother, namely Eva Maria Plass, gave birth to me at a very young age, just a teenager aged 15years. From 1956 to 1962 I lived in Weilheim in Upper Bavaria, and from the beginning of 1963 in Munich in the district of Ramersdorf.
My Grandmother gave me a guitar on Christmas evening 1962, which I immediately began to play at the tender age of 6. For the sake of my Grandmother I completet an apprenticeship in the Musik Markt in Munich.
1960s
Between 1963 to 1965 I had guitar lessons with Mr. Schwaighofer, who resided in the district of Giesing. Immediately after the 5th lesson, Mr. Schwaighofer took me to the legendary bavarian folk music club ‘Zum Grünen Eck’ just a few years later it was a blues bar… what a change.
There , I was allowed to accompany him with my guitar while he was playing the Zither. The encore when we played the “Harry Lime Theme” by Anton Karas from the film “The Third Man” earned us our first big applause! My guitar teacher and mentor Schwaighofer got kissed by all the women from the audience (of his same age around 65years old!) . So that was practically my 1st experience of ‘groupies’ in the folk music business!
Intensive concert visits followed from 1969: Jimi Hendrix, John Mayall, Cream, Rory Gallagher, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Jeff Beck, Led Zeppelin, Santana…
Inspired by this, I went through a musical re-orientation and made my first experiences with various funny cigarettes and blotting papers. Many of my musical heroes such as Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and many more, died a short time later and also some of my best friends and classmates due to their addictions. Many tried & failed to over their addictions, but repeatedly relapsed and thus could no longer make music properly. Of course, all this had a big daunting effect upon me and prevented me from even smoking a ‘Joint’ for a long time afterwards.
1970s
From 1971 to 1973 I’ve been trained as a music dealer in the Musik Markt in Munich and then joined my first really good band “Zeus” and soon afterwards started my first band together with Ali Halmatoglu on drums and Franz Dannerbauer on bass . After the count-in, we usually had a bet to see who would finish first or who could play the most notes on the way there. That was the traditional way in the seventies, in the music style fusion or jazz rock.
After my apprenticeship had ended, I spent a few months in the USA and was able to get to know a wide variety of music styles. These ranged from traditional bluegrass (which I had never heard such virtuoso before) to the electric jazz rock of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, from blues soul and R&B from the cities of Chicago, Detroit, NYC down south to the dixie of Orleans. There was also a rock show on American TV called “Midnight Special” which was hosted by the legendary ‘Wolf Man Jack’ and it was here that I first heard ‘Steely Dan’ with their great song ‘Do It Again’. Moreover, there was also ‘Southern Rock’ with the famous “Allman Brothers Band” and ‘’ Lynyrd Skynyrd” from Jacksonville.
During this decade, young Germans in Munich only had the American radio station AFN and every day except Sunday one hour in the afternoon the program ‘Club 16’ on BR. ‘YouTube’ didn’t come out until 40 years later and there was very little or no information about the equipment used by artists & guitar heroes such as Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck or Duane Allman. Everything was a bit shrouded mystery and we were miles behind technically in Germany mainly due to the cultural delay between 1933 and 1945. That is why everyone still claps much too quickly and only on the 1 and 3 some prefer to take all fours just to be on the safe side.
Between 1974 to 1975, back in Munich, I finally got a daily job as a guitarist at the legendary Tabarin Club, which was music club mostly for black US Army GIs and some ‘open-minded’ women. Five musicians played there for 6 days in a week: Bob Seaberry vocals, Winston on bass, Koni Sotorf on organ and Victor a drummer from Africa who unfortunately couldn’t play a 6/8. Everything was straight in 4/4 time and so we almost always met every three bars on the one . Harold Faltermeyer was one of the frequently changing ‘Hammond and Fender Rhodes’ or ‘Wurlitzer’ piano experts. With the singers constantly changing again and again, we’ve had a really large blues & soul repertoire of many great songs from that time and we were able to work out a good routine, playing some really great music.
During 1975 I had the job at the Tabarin five times a week from 7 p.m. to 1 am and a few month later I got another job on top of that playing from 1 a.m. to 4 a.m. at the Cadillac Club which was very similar & worked a lot like the Tabarin Club) but with the other musicians of higher calibers & there finally got a 6/8 groove worked out even in the blues hour. Among the musicians were my long term future bandmates Eberhard “Ede” Wilhelm and Wally Warning as well as Mel Canady.
In between, I often jammed with Günther Gebauer and Franz Schmucker. We started with ‘High Temper’ and recorded our first and only single ‘Summerbird’ in Giorgio Moroder’s Musicland studio in Munich, incidentally when the ‘Rolling Stones’ took a break on their ‘It’s only Rock´n´Roll’ session. Our sound engineer was Mack, who would later produce ‘Queen’, ‘ELO’, Billy Squier and other superstars. We later used the remaining singles as frisbees.
In 1976 Wally Warning and Charly Boskic decided to free me from the Tabarin club and we founded the band ‘Pazific Coast’ with the Austrian pianist Rudi Mille and Alphonso Gumbs from Aruba on drums. Many live jobs followed & a few times we were booked into studios as a session band. I still remember the African singer Kelly Brown, with whom we recorded countless songs, in this formation in the Zuckerfabrik, which was a very nice recording studio in Stuttgart.
Pazific Coast, 1976 (von Links…)
In 1977 many rehearsal room bands followed, with Ali Halmatoglu, Sabine Rössert and my best friend from those times, Sigi Rössert who unfortunately passed away on November 29th, 2020. I really miss his imperturbable spirit and his musical and human abilities. We rehearsed for 30 days and played one gig, then rehearsed for two weeks and played three more gigs. But the routine on the instrument got bigger and bigger due to the many rehearsals and of course also because we wrote all the songs ourselves in our experimental bands.
In 1978 I joined the band ‘Oktagon’ with the great Hermann Weindorf and his brother Berthold Weindorf and Franz ‘Litschie’ Herdlicka and Harry Buckl, and later Curt Cress joined us to work on our album. It was recorded at ‘Country Lane’ Studios. Our sound engineer was Pit Floss. Through my friend Pit I got to know many of my future buddies and musical partners, for example Hannes Treiber, with whom I founded the ‘No A Studio’ in Vienna in 1991.
During these days I got my first international studio job at ‘Wisseloord Studios’ in Hilversum, Netherlands, and with the funk soul band ‘Cheaters’ their singer was Omar Dupree and my bandmates were Geoff Stradling and Lance Burton, all great musicians.
Soon after my marriage in 1979 Wally Warning, Eberhard Wilhelm, Mel Canedy, Matthias Preisinger and I founded the band ‘Rock Candy’. We played gigs in the Marienkäfer during August 1979 and we were very successful locally. One time, we entered a band competition moderated by Thomas Gottschalk. We won the jury’s prize. However, musically we were too divided & separated into two very opposite factions.
1980s
By 1980 faction- 1 started the band ‘TAX’ and I became a Dad for the first time. My son, namely Marco was now on tour with us & I got to know the luthier Thomas Keller, who has built and repaired many of my instruments. When I was burned down completely in 1982 after a legal dispute with a publishing house and a record company, eventually decided in my favour, Thomas kindly helped me financially with a personal loan of 10,000 DM even though he had to take out the loan in his own name. Because of Thomas, my musical life could go on without a fatal break! I say to him a massive “Thank you”!
In 1981 , after four months with band “TAX” we’ve signed a contract with ‘Weryton Studios’, Jupiter Records and Teldec. But with this strange combination, we were already doomed to fail by 1982.
Although we had played to full houses all over Germany, from the Munich Domicile and the Marienkäfer to the Uncle Pö in Hamburg, the Luxor in Cologne and the Milljöö in Mannheim. In total, that should have been around 350 gigs in 2 years. We were able to ‘dig in’ thanks to the ignorance of our companies and then we all went our different ways. We sold 15,000 albums, but back then it was just another flop… today it would be 3 times gold award, at least in Austria, where I now reside as a new Austrian Citizen.
In 1982 I became a Dad for the second time, my son Christopher joined us and immediatly founded a vocal duet with his 14 months older brother Marco. Afterwards I went on a short trip to the ‘Neue Deutsche Welle’ with our band project GMBH with my friends Christian Schneiderbauer, Jan Zelinka and Tom Krüger. Although our music was rather rocky, we signed a contract with Teldec and after release we received a lot of positive media reviews. However, unfortunately we never made it onto the stage. Looking back afterwards you are always smarter and I have to admit that some of the Fostex 8 Track demo tapes that I made with Christian in my tiny home studio were closer to the ideal of an atmospheric rock production than the disc, which in my opinion was a little too perfect.
In 1983 I reunited with my friend composer and bassist Sigi Rössert & we founded ‘Strinx’. In the beginning, drummer Thomas Simmerl was with us. We rehearsed again & again until we drop . The last line-up of ‘Strinx’, together with me, was the young Hannes Weigend on drums, a great person full of energy, and the singer and guitarist Gerty Beracz, whom we saw & admired earlier at the Schroeder Roadshow gigs. After Rich Schwab, Cologne bass icon and also ex-Schroeder had supported us when writing lyrics another independent concept developed. We also played up and down the scene, but against ‘Grönemeyer’s’ huge success or ‘Wolf Maahn’s band we were just little star-lights. So we had to play & do some kind of tour in order to survive as musicians! Much better than being a taxi driver or get a job stacking shelves at a supermarket. Besides, I had too small children and my wife cared for our boys. So now I had to earn my own money and get paid playing work, but with a guitar in my hands instead of a steering wheel. Today, Rich works as a writer and wrote the culty ‘Büb Klütsch’ series, 4 books, no shit…
1984 was the year of my most beautiful tour of my entire life through the South Pacific Seas with the “Saragossa Band” a newspaper wrote… it’s like selling ice cubes to the Inuit, hmm, well… the job was only there for me because their guitarist Alfred Rudec broke his leg while skiing in Austria and I was apparently the only Munich guitar player who had a valid passport ! Tahiti and New Caledonia were boarded immediately…. I’m still in contact with our ‘Flying Dutchman’ Evert van der Wal… on the mid picture below you can see that I’m smelling the land and Evert is smiling…
In 1984 I received a call from Zurich Switzerland to do a TV show called ‘Jazz in Concert’ as a guitarist and composer. My band members were Richard Tee pianist with Stuff, Simon & Garfunkel, Aretha Franklin etc. Dave Weckl was drummer with Chick Corea and other top jazz artists Lenny Picket saxophonist with Little Feat, David Bowie and Tower Of Power and Dieter Petereit who was bassist with Klaus Doldinger. During all the interviews that followed, I was incredibly nervous, but that was definitely my international breakthrough as a studio musician. It is not so easy learning 15 songs in one rehearsal , to play a 2 hour concert and communicate with all these great musicians who am I was looking up to. After this my phone never stopped ringing and I was in demand. I was invited to record on a lot of tracks all over Europe and sometimes also in the USA.
Dave Weckl, Dieter Petereit,Wesley Plass
On top of that-in 1984, producer Henry Staroste hired me as guitarist for the metal band ‘Warlock’. The producers had booked one of the best and most expensive studios in Germany at that time and they had been doing guitars and vocal overdubs for six weeks but were not satisfied with the guitar tracks. I only had two days to play all these clever fancy ‘riffs’ that the band guitarists had arranged for themselves and I had to be ‘spot-on’ every time. Now, today I couldn’t trust myself to do that demanding work anymore, but in my youthful madness somehow it worked. To protect the bands secret I didn’t get any kind of credit on the album, but in the music industry they knew that I did this work and from now on I was ‘in business’. I got lots of studio jobs that other musicians would kill for just to be there! I was really working on all new upcoming productions from Henry Staroste! In the mean time Harold Faltermeyer returned from Hollywood and we started working together again for his productions with top artists like Donna Summer, Isaac Hayes, Chris Thompson, Roger Chapman and lots of his film compositions like film ‘The Running Man’ featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1984, ‘Fletch 2’ featuring Chevy Chase or ‘Fatal Beauty’ featuring Whoopie Goldberg.
During 1986 Udo Lindenberg entered my artistic life. I was allowed to rock on his albums ‘Feuerland’ and ‘Phönix’. Udo’s biggest hit ‘Horizont’ is also on the album ‘Phönix’ & on which I was hired to play the guitar solo while David Rhodes from Peter Gabriel’s Band was playing the smart arpeggio rythm guitar. Once again a dream came true, and the whole thing was just around the corner from my home in Munich, at downtown studio of Jochen Scheffter, Artur Silber and Uli Ullman.
In 1987 I had my first contact with Sonoton / Intersound, and I produced, composed, arranged and recorded countless songs for them… I see this as a positive hint of fate. If you do it seriously and deliver well made music, you can make a living from it and it’s also fun. The owner of Sonoton Gerhard Narholz and his wife Rotheide are incredibly friendly, helpful and easy going and this spirit comes across in the whole team. It is a great opportunity to produce music in which not every repertoire manager who has owned a musical instrument as a kid, has his own special opinion and must tell you this in every possible way to express that he is a better musician than you are. This is a really big exception in our bumpy business.
In 1988 I enjoyed endless work and started my own recording studio in Munich together with Andy Linse and Armin Pertl. We even had a German Top 20 hit song with our ‘Rapper’ Harold Faltermeyer! Our project was called ‘Bayernpower’ & the song title was “Funky Cold Medina”
1989
During 1989 I met with ‘PUR’ and Pe Werner and also the producer Dieter Falk who had produced both acts at this time. The next few years were very fruitful and our collaboration lasted until 1994. A brief ray of light until we entered a dark period of the real solar eclipse in August 1999 with PUR on the CD “Mittendrin” with the song “Adler Sollen Fliegen” but then followed by only silence… was this a sign of the universe?
1990s
In 1990 PUR and Pe Werner achieved gold and platinum status several times, even triple platinum for 1,500,000 sold CDs of “Seiltänzertraum”. This was followed by many new CD productions and also my first solo album “I’ll Be There” was released on Intersound records. After so many years it is still broadcast on various radio stations all over the world. In addition, more and more artists and record companies began to entrust their productions to me. My real production career started with the bands ‘Lustfinger’ and ‘Boys Voice’ , and the library productions for Sonoton also increased.
During 1991, my marriage ended in divorce so I needed a new start. I decided to relocate from Munich and move to Vienna. There I founded my own recording studio & I was so very busy writing and recording my own music that I had to reduce my session work without offending anyone. The techno and hip hop era was really taking off & going through the roof. So my guitar session work would probably have got less anyway, but it allowed me to focus on simply, writing, producing and arranging my own songs. I founded the first No A studio in Vienna with my best friend Hannes Treiber the Austrian keyboarder, arranger and composer whom I’ve known and worked with since 1983. From 1991 Hannes & I wrote, arranged and produced almost all the following songs together. An album and tour with ‘Frumpy’ the fantastic band from Hamburg came across. Frumpy was regularly recording in the studio and performing live on tour with the same line-up. Inga Rumpf is my personal all-time favourite German R&B singer, Carsten Bohn on drums, Jean Jaques Kravetz on the organ and on keyboards, Nippy Noya did percussion, Ken Taylor on his rocking bass, Bobby Stern on sax harp and of course myself. I hope I didn’t forgot anyone- ah yes ! Bobby Stern (on sax and Blues-harp)-just joking!
During 1992 again there was just a little free time (see discography).
In 1993 I met singer, composer, guitar player, & lifetime friend, Peter ‘Fips’ Fischer. During the next year we collaborated together on a very nice German language pop production and everyone got on great & which created lasting friendships until this day.
1994 for the time being my last production with Pe Werner… by the way Peter “Fips” Fischer sings the choir for the song “Tabu” this was followed by my second solo album “Blow The Blues Away”, which was released by Intersound.
1995 my collaboration started with Erich Virch, with whom I am also very close, and our joint production “Wechlin” for Intercord >with some rockstars such as Willy Weeks, Paul Leim, David Hungate, Dann Huff etc. from the Nashville studio scene. Also engineering with Ronald Prent and Terry Christian, Mix in the Wisseloord Studios. Against the references of my American colleagues, might sound like a cosy amateur jam session, but that’s just the way it is when you opt for the family and not for a tempting offer from the USA. The second offer in 2010 just came a little too late for me.
Wesley Plass & Terry Christian 1995
Between 1996 to 1998 I undertook the revision of all the material by Peter Fischer for a new release and again many Sonoton and other in-house productions.
In 1998, I left Vienna with a big tear in my eye and I moved to Langenlois in Lower Austria. Hannes and I started building our largest music studio.
2000s
From 2000 to 2005 our new studio had been in operation from December 1998 and these were again some solid years of work. We made four monumental productions, each lasting three to six months. Among them was the musical ‘Sisi’ which premiered a little later at the ‘Ronacher’ in Vienna, and also a Christian classic crossover production for ex boxing world champion George Foreman with the great voices of Jose Carreras and Ramon Vargas. After some ambiguities and misunderstandings with a subsequent legal dispute (which was decided in my favour) there was finally something positive that year. This was the recording of some new songs with the great singer Johnny Logan , who worked with my friend Andy Linse on his new songs in our studio.
Our own band project was also being finished: Zenit ‘I0 IT’ ‘The Sound Of Now’ and a Tax Live album ‘The official Tax Bootleg’ that I put together from old recordings. I originally wanted to publish these myself for the 25th anniversary, but that didn’t work out internally as we all originally wanted to do this. So we all wisely agreed that it would be best if we did not all go on the last part of the trip. Now we are waiting for the 50th anniversary!
14.8.2006
14.8.2006
In 2006 I added an Austrian highlight with the ‘Ambros Reloaded’ CD production by Ed Tötzl. Actually, I was booked as a guitarist for one or maybe two tracks but then there were a few more to do. As a result, Hannes Treiber and I were also the sound engineers for the album on which legends like Georg Danzer, Hansi Lang, Wilfried, Andy Baum, Joesi Prokopetz and Konstantin Wecker can be heard.
Thanks to the bass master Willi Langer for mediating Ed Tötzl the producer,cook, book author and Veltliner wine connoisseur. It is my favorite album that I was allowed to work on by myself in Austria. Not least because of the melancholy and morbidity that was coming back now at this time of my personal life again. Also, not least because of the troubled state of the music industry and the bland karaoke singers who appeared in the nerdy casting talent shows and who can only shred the older songs -which Whitney, Mariah & others sang much better many years before. That was okay, but something that really saddened me too, because it was boring & not creative- just endless motto formats through all music channels which really annoyed me as a musician from about November 9th, 2002, which meant a lots of great talented artist went unrecognised & waisted.
2007 was a great library year and also my first encounter with the Viennese duet ‘Solo’. I produced their CD ‘Es ist Zeit’ and doing this I got to know some new friends and very good musicians namely Susanne and Erich Gosch, Krzysztof Dobrek and a few others-all great artists/players.
2008 and 2009 was almost exclusively reserved. Sonoton Library was calling but also I won’t forget the session with Johnny Logan. You can take these songs and release them as they are… but no… after I got the composers okay, I put “Don’t Say It’s Over” onto my website… please listen…what a great voice.
In 2009 there was another highlight for me, when got the opportunity to produce ‘Dennis Jale with the TCB Band’ Bingo! TCB means the “Taking Care of Business” they’ve been working as the original band line up of Elvis Presley with legends like James Burton, Jerry Scheff, Ronnie Tutt, Glenn D. Hardin plus Jason Scheff, Paul Leim and the original choir by ‘The Sweet Inspirations’ featuring Myrna & Estelle Brown and Portia Griffin…
The Austrian musicians where Goran Mikulec, Martin Payr, Willi Langer and blues harp master Christian Sandera.
Ocean Way Studios Nashville 2009
Ocean Way Studios Nashville 2009
Some of the new titles were created in Vienna. On my birthday on 14th August 2009, we flew to Nashville USA and recorded the entire album there at ‘Ocean Way Studios’. Afterwards, Hannes Treiber and myself worked on the lead vocals, choirs and guitars and we mixed the album in our No A studio back in Austria.
2010er
Between 2010 – 2013 our focus was mainly dedicated to the Sonoton Library. But, on 31st December 2013 I sold my share in No.A Studio to my long-time business-studio partner and friend Hannes, so I was out!
Temporarily unavailable throughout 2014… after 43 years in the music business I first needed to take a short vacation for and from myself. I needed a break & wanted to spend this time to think & celebrate my music career. I pened up a barrel now… cheers!
Time passed bye ; 2015 had its ups and downs.
2016 & 2017 passed quickly too.
Then in 2018 I decided to hand in my German passport and took Austrian citizenship. After all these changes in my life I put the cork back in the beer barrel and decided I needed a new challenge but after these years of being absent it was hard long journey back. I was poorly, with depression. Like in the middle of a film already in divorce chaos that was completely unexpected.
During 2020 I continued my struggle wrestling with depression again!
Then at beginning of 2021, most surprisingly, I managed to find my way back to music. Rather than working for other artists, I’m only doing it for my own personal pleasure now. Being totally free to do everything that was never previously not possible for various reasons. This freedom energised me & my new musical life was reborn. So far it is already taking off and my YouTube channel ‘Burning Guitars Wesley Plass’ with some of the nicest and weirdest moments in my career is online. On 1st of February 2021, I relocated from Hadersdorf am Kamp to Purkersdorf in the Vienna Forest. Everything is new now in my life and a new musical future beckons me along a new path. A path I’m walking one step at a time, but don’t know where it goes. Big devastating shit happens here on earth. Everbody could read everything online about ‘The Great Reset‘ the founders have it online, but no one does….