Rozz

Background

Rozz formed in April 1978 in West Berlin, where three locals ages 21–23 — drummer Christian Brandt, guitarist Wolfgang Müller, and bassist Knut Jens — teamed with keyboardist Jörg Kleine-Tebbe, a native of Tübingen in southwest Germany.

Brandt took up drums at age ten and tool lessons from his father. At nineteen, he commenced rehearsals at Paul-Lincke-Ufer in Kreuzberg with Müller, who started guitar at sixteen after an early interest in jazz, rock ’n’ roll, and The Beatles.

Jens studied piano in primary school and later took guitar and trumpet lessons. He played bass in Antares, an instrumental rock school band formed at Luise-Henriette-Oberschule in 1972 with drummer Hardy Kürbihs and guitarist Uwe Kurzeja. Kürbihs and Jens moved their rehearsal base from Götzstraße in Tempelhof to Paul-Lincke-Ufer, where they met Brandt and Müller. Their early jazz-rock rehearsals used two drummers until Kürbihs shifted to percussion.

Kleine-Tebbe studied classical piano at the Bremen music school from 1963 to 1975 and played keyboards in local jazz and rock groups. He moved to Berlin in 1977 to study medicine at Freie Universität.

Early Activity

The musicians rehearsed three times weekly and formed the name Rozz from “rock” and “jazz” and also incorporated funk and Latin forms. Rozz made their formal live debut on February 9, 1979, at Musikwirtschaft in Wilmersdorf; recorded on two-track and submitted to the Deutsche Phono-Akademie, a record-industry foundation that ran a national newcomer festival.

Rozz spent the remainder of 1979 on the West Berlin alternative concert circuit. They played an April Zitty/Netzwerk Selbsthilfe event at the Taverne am Lützowplatz and returned for a July Humanistische Union solidarity concert. Rozz also joined events organized through the Spandau musician collective Just Friends, including a November two-day festival at Quartier Latin.

Deutsche Phono-Akademie selected Rozz for the jazz final of the second Pop-Nachwuchsfestival at the Stadttheater Würzburg on November 11, where the band received first prize. Bayerischer Rundfunk filmed the finals for ARD, which placed Rozz before a national television audience. Rozz subsequently received several record-company offers and accepted a two-LP contract with TELDEC. The band began sessions for Prüfungsangst at the TELDEC studio in Hamburg in February 1980 with engineer Klaus Bohlmann.