Music & Numbers

Manfred Lappé can look back on an extraordinary career in the music industry. Born in Hamburg in 1949 and now in his mid-70s, he has retained his enthusiasm for music – and for living in Josefstadt.

“We could do that ourselves.” That was the conclusion of Manfred Lappés fact-finding mission in Austria. Back in the 1970s, the then assistant to the management of Warner subsidiary WEA Music had been sent to see how the local licence holder was doing. The ‘do it ourselves’ job promptly fell to the young business graduate himself. His interest in and talent for music and numbers – and his love of travelling – would form the basis of an eventful life and also led him to Vienna and the 8th district, where he still lives today.

In 2007, Manfred Lappé left his job as Chief Operating Officer with Warner and now offers his expertise in the music industry as a freelance consultant. He has countless stories to tell from his decades-long career, both about the business and the legends he met along the way: from producer Peter Müller, one of the architects of 1970s/80s Austropop to Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegün from Atlantic Records (Aretha Franklin, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones). And he explaints how difficult it is to assess the potential even of a mega hit like Phil Collins’s ‘In The Air Tonight’: The sales team expected the single to sell about 25,000 copies – in the end it reached 250,000.

But Manfred Lappé wasn’t just a manager, he was (and is) also a musician: He played guitar with the German rock band Novalis in the 1970s and with Dibo in the 2010s. The man with the trademark beard is neither arrogant nor naively nostalgic as he looks back on his life in music. A ticket to Led Zeppelin’s one-off reunion concert on 10 December 2007 is not the only piece of music history on the table at Café Hummel – Manfred Lappé just quickly grabbed a few items from his private archive to bring to the interview.

Before we leave, he points out another Josefstadt connection: “My apartment looks out on Tigerpark where the school was that Freddy Quinn went to – and he was the ultimate Hamburg sailor for me: him, his guitar and the sea. That is why I picked up the guitar in 1956-57 and why I wanted to see the world … and since then I have been to over 100 countries.”

Ausgabe 01/2023