hey fgm you out there? any songs like 'bullet the blue sky' on there? love that tune. classic stuff. guaranteed to be vintage if not already.
- - -
oh great another musician suicide huh?
--
2003 article
Hanks 'meets communist leader'
Hanks is researching a film role
involving the former East Germany
Actor Tom Hanks has reportedly met the
former East Germany's
last communist ruler in order to prepare
for a film role.
Hanks flew to Berlin for lunch with Egon
Krenz, the
Berliner Morgenpost reported, according
to the
AFP news agency.
Krenz, 65, was jailed for his part in the state's shoot-to-kill policy against people who tried to flee to the West.
Hanks, 46, is to play the character of Dean
Reed, a US
country singer who lived in East Germany
until his
mysterious death in 1986.
Krenz was jailed for six-and-a-half years
in January 2000
Reed emigrated to East Germany in 1972 to
pursue a romance.
He was found dead in 1986, slumped in his
car by a lake near Berlin with his throat slit.
East German authorities described the incident
at first as "a tragic accident", and later as the
suicide of a heartbroken man.
His widow, actress Renate Blume, claimed he
was murdered by the Stasi secret police because
he was fed up and wanted to return to the US.
The case has never been solved.
Krenz, who was a close friend of Reed, is serving
his sentence in an open prison and is allowed out
during the day.
Hanks is reportedly due to play country singer
Dean Reed
According to the newspaper, Hanks chatted with
Krenz for an
hour-and-a-half in the wine cellar of the Guy
restaurant.
They talked about Krenz's memories of his
friend, the report said.
"Mr Krenz and Mr Reed were good friends and that
is why Mr Hanks wanted to speak with him about his
life," Krenz's lawyer Robert Unger reportedly told
the newspaper.
"At first Mr Krenz had no idea who Tom Hanks was.
Krenz has nothing to do with (Hanks') film."
Hanks is currently starring alongside Leonardo
DiCaprio in the conman comedy Catch Me If You Can.
---
Rocky Mountain News 18.06.
1986
Heart attack suspected in death of Dean Reed
Dean Reed, the Wheat Ridge High School track star
who became a musical force and film personality in the
Soviet bloc, died yesterday in East Germany, possibly
of a heart attack, friends in this country said. He was 47.
Dixie Schnebly, Reed's U.S. manager, said Reed died
while swimming in a lake behind his Berlin home. She
said a heart attack is probably the cause, but an
autopsy had not been performed.
ALTHOUGH HE recorded 13 albums and made
18 films, including some American-style westerns, he
was virtually unknown in this country.
The tall, handsome Reed was treated with suspicion
in Colorado for his decision to live in the Soviet Union
and, later, East Germany. But friends described Reed
as a man who wanted to promote peace between the
superpowers and said he could influence the East bloc.
"He felt he could promote peace there on an American
scale," said Schnebly, who grew up down the block from
Reed in Wheat Ridge. "He spoke out against the system
just as he spoke out here. He felt change was his forte."
"So many people are threatened by 'communist' as a
word," but people who met Reed thought of him as
"Dean the peacemaker," Schnebly said.
ARRIVING IN Denver last October for the first time in
25 years, Reed told reporters, "I'm with my people, and
the skies are as blue as I remember, and the people are
as friendly as I remember."
But a few days later, he was thrown off a Denver talk
show after an angry exchange over the causes of poverty
in Ethiopa. At the height of the argument, Reed said
KNUS host Peter Boyles sounded "just like the neo-Nazis
that killed Berg."
KOA radio talk show host Alan Berg, one of Boyles'
closest friends, was gunned down in front of his Denver
townhome 2 years ago today.
Boyles later said he should have slugged Reed.
REED WAS born Sept. 22, 1938, in Lakewood. A high
school track star, he made news at age 17 when he
won a 110-mile race over mountainous terrain against
a man on a mule. Reed collapsed at the finish line, but
won the prize - a shiny quarter.
Reed studied meteorolgy at the University of Colorado, but
dropped out after 2 years to seek fame as a singer.
The "Rocky Mountain News" described him in 1959 as
"the brightest new singing star in the recording industry"
after an appearance on The Dick Clark Show.
But while his records poked along in this country during
the early 1960s, he quickly achieved star status in Latin
America, where he was idolized by teen-age fans. He
also achieved fame on tours of the East bloc.
"Newsweek" in 1972 described him as the "Frank Sinatra
of the Soviet Union."
His repertoire was heavily weighted with protest songs,
but included Sinatra's "I Did It My Way." He helped
bring American rock music to Eastern Europe with
renditions of such hits as "Blue Suede Shoes" and
"Tutti Frutti."
Reed lived in Latin America and Italy after 1962,
but was declared persona non grata by Argentina
in 1970.
Reed lived in East Germany since 1972, but said
during his Colorado visit that he hoped to live in
America again because he had a "great fear" of
dying in another country.
Reed retained his U.S. citizenship. He was the only
American ever to win the Lenin prize for art. He
won peace prizes from several East European
nations.
A brief dispatch by the East German news agency
ADN yesterday said the death was caused by an
accident, but didn't describe the type of accident
or when it occurred.
Reed's mother, Ruth Anna Brown of Honolulu,
planned to fly to Berlin late yesterday.
Surviving in addition to his mother, are his wife,
actress Renate Blume of East Germany, and her
son, Sacha Alexander, whom Reed adopted; two
daughters by previous marriages, Ramona and
Natalie; and two brothers, Dale Reed of Washington
and Vernon Reed of Alaska.
Berny Morson
http://www.deanreed.de/presse/rmn19860618.html
--
BBC News
09.09.2004
Hanks to make film about 'Red Elvis'
He was an American rock star adored by millions of people worldwide, but you may have never heard of him.
Dean Reed made his name not in Hollywood or at Woodstock, but in East Germany and the Soviet Union.
An idealist who defected to the Communist bloc in the 1970s, he died under mysterious circumstances in 1986.
Now Tom Hanks is going to make a film about him.
"Hanks said he'd make a fair movie. I'm curious
to see it," says Victor Grossman, another American
defector who was Reed's interpreter.
"He was very sincere in his views. He was not, as they
say he was, misused by the GDR. He had his own
opinions and he expressed them."
Massive hit
With boyish good looks and American glamour, Reed
was a breath of fresh air in the stultified world of the
Communist bloc.
His left-wing views made him the darling of the party
bosses.
He acquired his ideals after witnessing poverty while
touring in Latin America, and first came to East
Germany to present a film about the workers'
movement in Chile.
"I'd met lots of left-wing Americans, being one myself,"
says Grossman, "but not such a cowboy from Colorado
and rock'n'roll-type singer."
Reed soon became a massive hit across the Eastern
Bloc, particularly in the then Soviet Union and
Czechoslovakia.
As well as singing, he also wrote screenplays, directing
and starring in the films.
"He was popular because he was playing Elvis and Beatles
songs when no-one else was playing that stuff in the East,"
says Stefan Ernsting, who has written a biography of Reed.
"But in the West, his material was outdated by the 1970s.
He wouldn't have had a chance in the US."
Hidden note
It was the growing realisation of this, coupled with marital
problems, that led Reed to drown himself in a lake near
Berlin in 1986.
The Communists, fearing a huge Cold War propaganda
embarrassment, said it was accidental death.
Reed's suicide note was found scrawled in German on the
back of a screenplay in his car, but it remained hidden
until the fall of the Berlin Wall.
"Erich Honecker, the East German leader, made the
decision personally, that the letter should disappear forever
in an Interior Ministry safe," says Eberhard Fensch,
the GDR's propaganda chief.
Fensch was also the man the letter was addressed to.
"The reason was to spare his wife's feelings. There was
no other reason. The letter even contained a greeting
to Erich Honecker. Why would we cover that up?"
'Never heard of him'
The letter recently resurfaced.
Published by the German tabloid Bild, it accused his
wife Renate of pushing him to suicide.
But the paradox of Reed is that he continues to
fascinate some people, while being totally unheard
of for the majority.
"Dean Reed, who's that? I've heard of Lou Reed," said
a commuter at Berlin's Friedrichstrasse railway station,
once a crossing point between East and West.
"Never heard of him," added another bemused passer-by.
Out of 10 people we asked, only two had any idea who
he was.
Perhaps Tom Hanks will change this.
But for now, Reed's fate is a tale of idealism,
disappointment and suicide that has become a forgotten
footnote of the Cold War.
Dean Reed's career included acting, singing and directing (photo courtesy of Andrea Witte)Reed chose to live, and die, on the other side of the Berlin Wall - the Communist side
Ray Furlong
BBC correspondent in Berlin
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3631972.stm
--
This all reminds me of a story I have been working on..