Dieter Dierks, who just turned 80 this year, is a German Producer that settled just outside Cologne. His Studios held world class superstars such as Tina Turner, The Scorpions and of course, Michael Jackson.
“I grew up with music as a child. When my father stood at my bedside and practiced with his violin, I was always very calm. That probably trained my hearing even then,” says the musician, sound engineer, producer, publisher and studio operator.
At the end of the 60s, the guitarist and bassist founded the band Hush with Tommy Engel and Frieder Viehmann and built his first recording studio under the roof in his parents’ house. “It was so small that you had to crawl into the control room. The microphones hung down from the ceiling. We wouldn’t have had room for it on the ground.” Later, Dierks builds his first larger studio building on the farm of his parents’ estate in Stommeln. The adjacent residential building becomes a studio hotel, so that the musicians could work and live on site. Even his mother took on her to cook for the stars coming in: “She was the good soul here in the studios. There is probably no mother who has as many credits on albums as she did. So there was thanks for their tight Max and the nightly kitchen for the musicians. When Ike and Tina Turner were here, my mom sat with Tina in the kitchen at breakfast in the morning, while I worked with Ike in the studio. They got along very well, even though my mother couldn’t speak English and Tina couldn’t German.”
He also invested in mobile recording which was used in concerts. The first client were U2 who performed at a festival: “The band later requested the recordings and so they became part of a live album. We have often worked together with WDR. Many musicians like Al Jarreau, Fats Domino, Chicago or Santana warmed up here in Stommeln before the performance.
In 1996, the King of Pop himself came to his studio:
“I worked for Stevie Wonder and had a good contact with his musical director. He later tipped Michael Jackson’s management when he was looking for a studio for his song ‘Ghosts’. He was here in Stommeln and we were totally impressed by his discipline at work and his pleasant charisma… In 1997 I was still with the car at the open airs of the ‘History’ tour in Munich’s Olympic Stadium.”
Michael finished the song “GHOSTS” while touring and setting up his new short of the same name and his upcoming new album “Blood On The Dance Floor”.
While his visit at the Dierks Studios was short and only for one song, the studio was also responsible for filming of HIStory World Tour for SAT1, the two concerts that took place in the Olympic Stadium in Munich.
SOURCE: Dierks Studios
