Dieter Dierks

Dieter Dierks (born 9 February 1943) is a German record producer, sound engineer, music publisher, studio owner and musician.

His youngest son, Julien Freundt, works as a sound engineer, composer, music producer and management assistant at his father's company.

At the same period of time he also played guitar and bass in various rock bands and started setting up his own studios on his parents' premises in Stommeln.

This way he had created an "all in one" entity as far as music production was concerned: musicians were able to work and live in the same place – a concept that was unique in Germany at the time.

During this phase, in 1969, Dierks produced the successful disco hit Loop Di Love with singer Jay Bastos, which was released in 1971 in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.

Dierks Studios – along with the studios of Conny Plank in Wolperath – became the home of the most important Krautrock artists, first generation German rock bands, and electronic pioneers, among them Ihre Kinder, Ash Ra Tempel, Tangerine Dream, Witthüser & Westrupp, Hoelderlin, Wallenstein, Birth Control, Guru Guru, Embryo, Popol Vuh, Bröselmaschine, the politically-oriented rock bands Amon Düül and Floh de Cologne as well as Krautrock super group Cosmic Jokers founded by music visionary Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser.

During those years more than 40 trend-setting albums were produced which considerably elevated the reputation independent German rock and electronic music was enjoying on an international level.

Another benefit was the fact that Dieter Dierks had continued fitting his studio facilities with the latest high tech equipment, thus turning them into one of the leading German production sites.

Consequently, live performances of renowned international artists such as Al Jarreau, Fats Domino, Oscar Peterson, Harry Belafonte, Michael Chapman, Ella Fitzgerald, The Platters, Brian Auger, Lou Reed, Nana Mouskouri, Santana or Chicago could be recorded.

Dierks succeeded in signing one of Germany's leading rock bands called Atlantis featuring the bluesy-voiced singer Inga Rumpf and to produce them on an international level.

Back in 1973 Dieter Dierks and his wife Corina Fortmann went to a gig at a local sports hall in Essen where they encountered a totally unknown newcomer rock band, Scorpions.

Continuous work experience abroad as well as a highly successful Japanese tour, financed by Breeze Music, the recordings of which later released as Tokyo Tapes, led to the band being signed to the Mercury label (Polygram) in the US.

With the backing of Leber Krebs Management, a company which solely looked after huge acts like AC/DC, Aerosmith or Ted Nugent, the door for Scorpions to debut live in the US was opened wide.

The first Mercury album Lovedrive – featuring an eye-catching chewing gum breast cover, still a controversial issue to date – awarded them their first gold disc (more than 500 000 units) in the US and reaching worldwide sales of 1.5 million copies.

For Blackout Dierks rented a huge mansion in the South of France which provided a cook and featured an outdoor pool and a tennis court to give them a break from the day-to-day studio routine in Stommeln.

With painstaking efforts Dieter Dierks had not only created a unique sound, but also established Scorpions as a solid brand among the leading hard rock bands.

Their 1984 album Love at First Sting featuring the hit single ballad "Still Loving You" catapulted Scorpions to the then zenith of their career at the time: 2.5 million copies (double platinum) sold in the US, gold and platinum status almost everywhere in Europe as well as in Japan and South East Asia, territories where the band had advanced to become the most popular rock band of all.

Thanks to Dierks Studios excellent reputation more international top stars were flocking to Stommeln: Ike & Tina Turner, Eric Burdon, War, The Boomtown Rats, Dokken, and Irish rock and blues musician Rory Gallagher.

Thanks to its mobile camera and lighting rigs as well as its highly efficient air conditioning system it was also designed for film and video recordings and conformed to the standard of American mega studios.

US band Mother's Finest recorded a live album with Dieter Dierks as well, using the audio and video mobile with the mixing being done afterwards at Studio 3.

This mobile featured analogue and digital recording devices, a computerised mixing console, a state-of-the-art auditory system and, a big lounge area.

With the help of experts, an outside broadcasting unit was bought from Westdeutscher Rundfunk (radio and TV channel), fitted with the latest state-of-the art equipment and transformed into a giant mobile.

In 1996 Michael Jackson recorded the song Ghosts at Studio 3, which was released on his Blood on the Dance Floor: HIStory in the Mix album in May 1997 and was later put on the Deluxe Collector Box Set – Limited Edition.

The collaboration with the King of Pop continued during the HIStory world tour with Dierks recording two shows at the Munich Olympiahalle using twelve analogue cameras as well as six digital ones.

This technology produced extremely high-resolution images by using special cameras and was particularly popular with the technology-affined customers from the US and Japan who tended to order numerous classical recordings.

In cooperation with economist Hagen Backhaus, Dierks succeeded in securing a long-term contract with the Schlecker drugstore chain, which at the time had more than 8,000 affiliates in Germany, Austria and other countries.

For the Dierks group of companies Breeze TV's activities meant that the supply chain and the service cycle from the production of sound and image carriers to the sale of such, had turned into a full circle.

[8] In order to ensure the exploitation of this patent, in 1999 Dieter Dierks managed to secure a deal with the biggest CD and DVD manufacturing equipment producer Singulus Technologies.

Meanwhile, several national and international top artists have had DVDplus respectively DualDisc products produced, among them Herbert Grönemeyer, Die Toten Hosen, Michael Jackson (a whole box set), Santana, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Steve Harley, Nightwish, Bruce Springsteen, Destiny's Child, AC/DC (more than 500,000 copies of Back in Black sold in the US alone), Aerosmith, and many others.

In 2013 Christoph Wagner wrote: "Dieter Dierks as well as Conny Plank both made substantial contributions in establishing and consolidating an independent German rock music market.

J. Bastos – Loop di Love
Dieter Dierks
Scorpions – Still Loving You
Ike & Tina Turner – Baby, Baby, Get It On