Dieter Bornschlegel, who has been living in Marburg for decades, is top class in guitar technique and style. Practicing for several hours every day and athletic training make this possible. In addition, a nimble hand such as various effects devices driven technology on his electro-acoustic guitar. Placed across the legs, Bornschlegel alias Bornzero also plays it percussively, strikes the strings or plucks very delicately. Breathtakingly fast game, handshakes and shakers on the shoes fade into an almost unbelievable sound experience. When he sings sonorous, it sounds idiosyncratic, philosophical, in “Walks out”, “Ghosts in me” and “If nothing works anymore, maybe everything works?”. In the past year, however, it was difficult for him, as for many other musicians.

Bornschlegel has been setting standards as an excellent musician for more than 50 years.

He started as a professional in an era in which everything suddenly seemed possible: at the end of the sixties and the beginning of the seventies, the still young and structureless German pop culture had for the first time opposed the hitherto Anglo-American supremacy of its potential and a lot of creativity.

Formations such as Can, NEU !, Faust, Atlantis, Kraftwerk, Amon Düül II, Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze established themselves under the term Krautrock, a term that was initially derisively related by the British music press, especially abroad.

An era in which guitarists could also become heroes.

Gifted virtuoso

Dieter Bornschlegel, born in 1954 and raised in Dortmund, was - like Michael Schenker from the Scorpions from Hanover, who was also underage at the time - a gifted young virtuoso. Bornschlegel also performed with his brother in the very early years, in a band called The Dead Cops, then Prestige. Without a high school diploma, the autodidact managed to get a place at the Conservatory in Dortmund because of his talent: The professor in charge was impressed by his career and his “awakening experience,” Bornschlegel told FAZ: “On the cupboard in our children's room of a little one In a miner's apartment in Dortmund's Nordstadt district, I discovered my oldest sister's dusty, out of tune hiking guitar - since then this piece has been my constant companion.“The instrument was a“ bridge to the outside ”from the cramped rented apartment, from which he had run away a few times.

Barely 18 years old, the established Hamburg formation Atlantis around Inga Rumpf knocked on the six-string virtuoso and band member of Dannemanns Traumtorte at the end of 1972. Tours and studio recordings in rock mecca England for the legendary album “It's Getting Better” stay in Bornschlegel's memory forever: “My first LP - and my guitar sound in the oh-so-famous London recording studio sounded awful for some reason. My self-esteem sank to zero. ”At least there were concerts and an appearance on the cult TV show“ Old Gray Whistle Test ”.

Bornschlegel enjoyed being a professional with Atlantis: The band lived and rehearsed together in a Hamburg villa, went on tours and headlined the German Super Rock Festival, which was popular at the time.

On the other hand, Bornschlegel's next station looked far more ascetic: In the hippie commune of the jazz rock formation Guru Guru in Finkenbach in southern Hesse, a different wind was blowing around Mani Neumeier.

This was followed by the New Deutsche Welle with TJA !, the collaboration with the Sri Lankan World Beat representative Ramesh Weeratunga and then Bornschlegel's industrial project Das Ewige Eis - Your shadow at the turn of the millennium.

Since then Bornschlegel has been called Bornzero.

In the past few weeks he was able to realize a few appearances under this name.

But like his international artist colleagues, Bornschlegel wants one thing above all in 2022: a return to normality.