This article piece will be different than the other investigative and “shocking” ones we have written here. In this article, we will honor the three men, whom without them, the band Modern Talking would also be half-famous. You’ve read their names many times here on these articles, where we’ve only talked about how they sued the (fake) producer and the (fake) composer of the band, Dieter Bohlen, for copyright infringement and underpayment.
Millions of people have heard their voices singing in falsetto, but only very few of them have seen their faces. Because they worked in the background for Bohlen, while Bohlen mimed to their voices on TV shows, concerts and collected millions. While the others had to be satisfied with pocket money. That was one of many “pretend-to-dos”.
While the entire planet knew Modern Talking as the “duo” of Thomas Anders and Dieter Bohlen, there were three men who silently sang and worked in the background; as three, they faced alone an entire record company that was protecting the most notorious thief in music industry, and won.
The three men are called Rolf Koehler, Michael Scholz and Detlef Wiedeke, the real vocalists behind Modern Talking’s signature falsettos.
They never appeared on stage as musicians and vocalists of Modern Talking. That was the reason why 90% of the time, this band with so many great songs, sang playback, which was also bothering a lot of people. And you cannot blame them. Why is Thomas Anders, this beautiful man with angel voice, singing playback? Why were THEY singing playback?
The bad reputation of being a playback band would’ve never been received, had these three musicians been part of the project and singing alongside Thomas live. It would’ve earned the band extra points and appreciation, and they would perform just like all famous New Wave and Synthpop bands did at the time. Perhaps these three men weren’t handsome enough for the girls.
Or maybe, the snakes just wanted to push Bohlen all the way to the limelight. In 1985, you already might have seen Bohlen’s performance in France, where he did not know that the performances had to be done on live. And there, he sang horribly. It was so bad that they had to redo the performance, but on playback, for the German viewers. Because the live performance was already censored in Germany.
The censorship is already a big evidence which only strengthens the theory that Bohlen is very protected. For him to be protected, untouched and pushed to the heights of fame, a lot of people have and had to be “sacrificed”.
It’s pretty clear, that these men were very essential and important part of the band that they had to be forced to stay hidden for more than 15 years. They played a very significant role not just for “Modern Talking”. Their voices were so unique, and really hard to find for that time. It WAS really difficult to find vocalists who could sing very high and in castrato. That’s why, they were the final touch to the mosaic.
They were a treasure that had to be kept hidden.
The men had long known each other since they were teenagers, and continued to perform together till they became adults. They were really close friends and performed in local clubs as the band “Kentucky” in the 1970s. Even Peter Weihe, music professor and another important part of Modern Talking, who played most of the guitar riffs, was also in this band as a guitarist.
In 1983, Bohlen took notice of the three musicians and asked them to work for him. But everything came at a big price.
At the time, the musicians’ occupations rather revolved around working for other artists as vocalists and hadn’t yet established successful groups of their own. They did create some small projects here and there, such as “Straight Flush” (with Birger Corleis, another vocalist of Modern Talking) or “Boo Who” (a project of Koehler), both Synth-pop and Italo-Disco projects, but the music was a little too obscure. When they joined Bohlen, they were now forbidden to have a career of their own as they did before (establishing bands etc.)
Regardless, their lives would drastically change after their first big collaboration with Dieter Bohlen and Thomas Anders, according to their statements, in September 1984, which was the song “You’re My Heart, You’re My Soul”, where they sang as a choir the second choruses in unison and in head voice.
It’s not known, however, whether Thomas sang the falsetto parts as well, because each member recorded their parts separately, as was the case with everybody at that period, while the voices of the future-named “Systems in Blue”, were recorded as a choir in the studio.
Although “SIB” are contracted not to reveal anything about Bohlen’s participation, somewhere in small forums or interviews on YouTube with curious fans, they do reveal that Bohlen has never sung with them in the studio. But, in some songs of Modern Talking, you can hear Bohlen’s bad “singing”. The reason why SIB claim that Bohlen has not sung the falsettos, is because he never sang together with them. The truth is that Bohlen recorded the vocals separately.
Bohlen’s bad singing can be heard in songs such as Heaven Will Know, where he has a voice-crack and is out of breath, (he skips a few lines) or Cheri Cheri Lady, where he squeaks like a crow through the entire song. His “singing” can only be heard with vocal isolation softwares. And we will show the parts of the “singing” here.
(Watch and listen until the end)
As for Thomas, a very light and soft falsetto can be heard in the “Listen to your heart” of Cheri Cheri Lady. Thomas’ falsettos have been a subject of debate among fans. They think he cannot reach the high note, although his voice qualifies as a male soprano/castrato. This soft falsetto is very similar to Thomas’ falsetto in “Just We Two (Mona Lisa)” chorus. If not similar, then the same.
It is possible though, that the parts where Thomas sings in falsetto, as well as Dieter’s have been lowered in volume so the voices of “SIB” stand out in the forefront. In addition, these voices have been compressed to the extreme and it is quite difficult to separate each of them.
“Dieter promised us that he would feature us as part of the project after The First Album went gold. For “You’re My Heart, You’re My Soul, he only paid us 150 deutschmarks each, that was the end of it. There was no relationship with each other anymore. In the Back for Good album, we were left again. That’s when we decided: with us no more! We should’ve already done that in 1986. But we were too good. Nobody wants to work with stress in the studio and we did not have the intentions to create stress.” – Detlef Wiedeke
Maybe Dieter “sang”, but the voices that he claimed were his, weren’t actually his. In interviews from 1980s, he said that “these are our voices which are recorded hundreds times like layers”. This proves that he wanted the world to recognize him as the one who sang the high parts. And Dieter labelled this kind of singing as “squeaking”. A real producer knows that this is not “squeaking”, but a very difficult technique. But since Dieter is not a real producer or musician, it’s forgiven.
The famous falsettos, which was inspired by the trio of Bee Gees, were continued as a pattern in the next songs of “MT” as well as other Bohlen projects such as Blue System. However, for CC Catch, the “SIB” only worked as backing-vocalists.
The pattern was as follows: The first and second verses were sung by Thomas, the first chorus was sung by Thomas as the lead voice, with backing vocals of Koehler, Scholz and Wiedeke, the second chorus in falsetto was sung by the three men.
Example, please listen until the end:
Sometimes, Rolf Koehler also took the lead. His raspy baritone voice accompanied Thomas as his backing vocal in the first chorus, especially in songs like You’re My Heart, You’re My Soul, Diamonds Never Made A Lady, Do You Wanna or even Heaven Will Know. Although in general, all the three men accompanied Thomas as his backing vocals in the first choruses, while reaching higher octave in the second ones.
Example:
There couldn’t have been a Modern Talking song without Systems in Blue being involved, even as little as possible. Even in songs such as “Stranded in the Middle of Nowhere” or “Lady Lai” where Thomas sings alone, the three men were still involved in the background as backing vocals.
After the break-up of the group in 1987, the three men continued to work for Bohlen and his projects. At Blue System, the horrible copy of Modern Talking music, Dieter sang the verses, but the choruses, it’s Rolf Koehler who finally takes the lead, with Scholz and Wiedeke accompanying him in the background, either singing low, or high.
Koehler could also sing quite high, but most of the time, his task was rather to support the main vocal by singing low, which was Thomas. It was only at Blue System where Koehler took leading role, where he could fully display his vocal abilities.
Examples, please listen until the end:
It also happened, that Dieter sang the choruses without the help of Rolf. Namely “Gangster Love” or “Big Boys Don’t Cry” in the first published album “Walking on a Rainbow”, but also the band’s biggest hit “Laila”. Yes, one has to admit that for someone whose voice was quite bad, he sang the choruses there quite well. Maybe he should have stuck to singing songs where his vocals suit best, instead of doing whatever he did.
Koehler was not simply a backing vocalist of Dieter Bohlen, but a musician who had several years of experience and working in the underground music industry. He was a producer, composer and co-founder of “Karo Musikstudio”, where famous German rock bands such as Blind Guardian recorded their music there. You can say that he was more experienced than Dieter was when they met for the first time in 1983. He also was a supporting vocalist for a lot of famous artists in Germany such as the aforementioned rock-band, another very famous rock band from Germany called Helloween, and Schlager singers such as Matthias Reim, Roger Whittaker and Howard Carpendale.
His work as one of the vocalists of Modern Talking, and the others, has never been credited. Only in 1990, with the album “Obsession” by Blue System, Dieter Bohlen finally gives the three men credit as the choir.
“While I played a supporting role in many productions of Bohlen, I took over around 90% of Dieter Bohlen’s parts in the song. [The song It’s All Over, a duet by Bohlen and American artist Dionne Warwick). He can only be heard in a few lines in the lyrics. It’s a shame I never got to meet Dionne, because I am a big fan of her.” – Rolf Koehler (2006)
The future-named Systems in Blue also performed at the Eurovision Song Contest, just not for Germany. In 1989, one year before they were given credits for their vocals at Blue System, they accompanied the young Austrian singer, Thomas Forstner as musicians, who finished in the 5th place, with a song also written by Bohlen (if it was even written by him).
The guys’ work at Blue System did not just involve singing in choir, but also production and arrangement for artists such as Bonnie Tyler and Nino de Angelo, who at the time worked with Bohlen. In the personal studio of choir vocalist Detlef Wiedeke, the arrangements of the songs were made there.
Although arrangement is not a copyrighted work, Luis Rodriguez, Bohlen’s right-hand man, was STILL accredited as the co-producer and the arranger in the albums of the said artists, as well as Blue System and Modern Talking. Bohlen also named himself as writer, producer and arranger of all songs at the back of the albums.
“Our collaboration with Bohlen wasn’t limited to singing. In my personal recording studio, I made complete arrangements for various projects of Bohlen. It often went like this: Dieter would hand me a CD with a title that was in the international charts as a reference. This implied that I had to organize a similar sound. […] We didn’t see a penny of the income from the still immense CD sales at the time. We didn’t want to be so stupid again and let ourselves be treated off with small amounts” – Detlef Wiedeke (2021)
Bohlen asked a fair question once, how can someone who cannot play piano, compose music? But it was directed at Thomas, who completed 12 years of piano lessons and a degree as music technician/arranger.
Hence this very fair question should be asked to Bohlen, who never had piano lessons, neither studied music. But still credited himself as a producer, composer, and arranger. Has Dieter even done anything in his life, except writing the homosexual lyrics with his broken English and limited vocabulary?
It needs to be said that the future-named Systems in Blue weren’t “just” backing-vocalists, neither were they very cunning to try claim money from Bohlen. In the “Gold Records” their names are registered alongside Thomas as main vocalists. In addition, it took them a long time to come out and speak out about Bohlen’s scam. Who knows what else exists about Bohlen that the public does not know, and the participants do not want to reveal.
In July 2000, Scholz filed a lawsuit against Bohlen and record company BMG on behalf of his friends for copyright infringement, which they won. It was only eight months later that the media found out about it and they created a huge scandal (which was quickly forgotten).
The reason that led to a dispute between Bohlen and the three men in the year 2000, was the fact that Bohlen had never paid the vocalists the money which was promised for their contribution, and not just at Modern Talking but also other projects. In addition, their voices were reused in the album of “Back for Good” without their knowledge, also without getting paid. The intention of Systems in Blue was initially never to defame Bohlen, but rather for him to keep the promise.
“He [Dieter] did not even tell us that there would be a comeback of Modern Talking. At that time we were in the studio with Goetz Kiso [Bohlen’s manager and Polydor CEO], because an idea occurred to him to make three songs. You can already guess which songs they were: They were the new songs that featured in the Back for Good album. He [Dieter] knew that we would have asked him for more money, that’s why he did not tell us anything. I think that was a very smart move” – Detlef Wiedeke
It was the media who created a MEGA-scandal, and you couldn’t blame them this time. Sooner or later, it was bound to be found out. The record company Sony-BMG paid the vocalists 100,000 deutschmarks each (50,000 euros), which compared to the money that Bohlen and the record company received, is a laughable amount.
“Dieter Bohlen barely spent time working in the studio. He was rather very busy giving interviews for the media how hard he works. He only cared about hits, hits, hits. That’s why some songs of Modern Talking sounded very boring” – Michael Scholz
To this day, the “SIB” still do not have copyrights of their own voices, because they gave that right away when they signed the contract with Bohlen. If things were fair, these musicians would have become millionaires. Their participation at Modern Talking, Blue System, CC Catch, Bonnie Tyler, etc. was very, very crucial, and to call them “just backing-vocalists” is disrespectful. The cunning liar aren’t these talented musicians, but the cheery blonde from Oldenburg.
Their last collaboration with Bohlen was in 2000 with the album “Year of the Dragon”. Later on, they were replaced by other choir vocalists, Nino de Angelo, William Billy King and Christoph Bendorff, the last two still work with Thomas to this day.
“With Blue System, we were involved with a small part of the royalties, with Modern Talking, our royalty claims came to nothing. If we hadn’t been so musically versatile, we would have made more money from our income from the Blue System and Modern Talking projects.” – Rolf Koehler
Two years later, in 2003, a man called Thomas Widrat decided to found “Systems in Blue”, a band that would release music in “Modern Talking style” but with the participation of the three choir vocalists.
The enthusiastic fans also wanted in high demand, SIB to call Thomas back, who had just broken up with Bohlen and make an iconic collaboration. Unfortunately, the answer was always no… from Thomas’ management. “They [management] said that they had different plans with him”, said Michael Scholz in an interview.
The latter had confirmed that the group tried to reach out to Thomas many times and collaborate with them, even in the album “History” which was released in 2016 with MT songs overhauled in Schlager/Pop style. But in all the times, there was a resounding “No”, by the management. They called Systems in Blue “too old”. The management in question is Thomas’ wife, Claudia, the cousin of Dieter.
Four years after the group “Systems in Blue” was created, in which during this period saw the release of the album “Point of No Return”, Rolf Koehler suddenly passed away after a cerebral stroke in 2007, two hours after recording his vocals for the second album. This came as a shock to the band, because, of course, they were not just colleagues, they were also a family. They worked together for several years since the 1970s.
After the death of Koehler, there were thoughts of discontinuing the band afterwards. But even 17 years later, they are still active in underground disco scene, with a lot of fans.
At the beginning of the band’s creation, there had been a lot of promotion after the famous dispute with Bohlen. After the discontinuation of Modern Talking in 2003, and after finding out about Bohlen’s scam, a lot of fans quickly switched on with enthusiasm to Systems in Blue, who promised the fans to deliver the sound of “MT”.
The desire to not let such a sound die was very big.
Their first years were pretty successful, with several appearances in Germany’s most watched TV shows as guest artists or simply for interviews. After so many years living in the background, they finally reached their peak of recognition in the 2000s. It came too late, but better late than never.
For a lot of Modern Talking fans, they won massive respect.
The hype which lasted for a few years died down quickly in Germany, but fortunately for the band, they would be invited in several disco tours abroad which took place in eastern Europe or West Asia.
For Koehler, who died in 2007, you can at least say that he died at his peak, while witnessing what he probably always wanted: recognition and admiration from the fans who grew up with the songs of Modern Talking. You can say that he finally reached what he always wanted, without regrets, albeit the feeling lasting too short. You can say that it could’ve been better if he and the boys had world fame… But he still won. Even today, he is still remembered as a legend among the Euro-disco fans. And with right.
Today, the “Systems in Blue” are still active in the Euro-disco scene, their newest album “Aquarius” has already been released. On Spotify, they count almost 150,000 listeners. Make no mistake, they’re doing quite well for “old people”.
I feel sorry for SIB for falling victims to Bohlen and glad that they got the fame they deserved. How much of exploiter and scammer are you, Dieter?