The travels of Ottmar
22.05.12
Forty years ago an unusual boy, born with a faraway look in his eyes, wandered the streets of Cologne, Germany.
Ottmar Liebert, as he would later describe himself, was a mutt. The son of a German-Chinese father and a Hungarian mother, Liebert possessed a restlessness that first found purchase when he put his hands on the fretboard of a guitar at the age of 11. He took more than a casual interest in the instrument and studied classically. By the time he hit his teenage years, he’d made a very conscious decision: he wanted to rock n’ roll.
“Doesn’t everyone? There comes a time as a teenager when a nylon string guitar is just not loud enough,” Liebert recalled in an interview this week.
At 16, he set his mind to it. Liebert took a summer job working in a factory, from 7 a.m. until 4 p.m. every day. He took his earnings, bought an electric guitar, and formed a rock n’ roll band.
The music was strong in him, but it was just something he did. After high school, he intended to go to school and study design. But first he needed to attend to his wanderlust, and took off on a long sojourn – one that he didn’t realize until much later would never truly end.
Source: Easy Reader