This shop here is the ideal meeting point for someone like him to talk about passion and the meaning of an artist's life: André Tolba stands in "Red Hot And Blue" on Theklastraße in Essen and is surrounded by shirts featuring the likenesses of Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley. Heavy blue jeans hang from the rack for several meters. Shirts with leopard print collars are not an exception here but rather the norm. And on the walls, on what feels like every poster or metal sign or magnet sticker, that word can be read which is the center of everything in this shopping paradise for an eternally youthful youth culture – and which is the focus of André Tolba's life: "Rock’n’Roll." He is the primordial slime of modern, popular music. And André Tolba is one who delights in stirring this primordial slime: He is one of the best Rock’n’Roll guitarists in the country. It had to happen.
André Tolba was born in 1972 in Mülheim an der Ruhr. He is a child of the Ruhr area. Here, where all the clichés of work, sweat, and the rough charm of the people – if they were music – have always leaned more towards the distorted guitar riff than the opera aria, Rock’n’Roll lurks around every corner anyway. And in all its variants, from punk to metal – just think of the internationally renowned trash icons Kreator from Essen. It lurks in clubs and concert halls and rehearsal space bunkers and record stores. Or wherever André Tolba happens to be hanging out.
"I had no choice," he says, laughing. Growing up with his mother's record collection, he was already listening to Rock’n’Roll songs at kindergarten age. "Especially Elvis," he says. "Elvis up and down." This made him stand out in school since everyone around him was listening to Neue Deutsche Welle while little André was at home holding an imaginary guitar in front of the mirror, dancing to the songs of the King, Chuck Berry, Shakin' Stevens, or Peter Kraus. And at some point, Rock’n’Roll became so all-encompassing that it turned into a life concept. Away from the mirror in the children's room, out into the world. This music became a question of existence and, alongside passion, a profession.
Since then, André Tolba has quite a bit to tell. Preferably with the guitar in hand. In his case, it's a Gretsch 6120 from 1959. Or: "The Holy Grail," as he says. First seen in a London shop window and immediately bought for not a small sum of money. With it, he pays tribute to rock’n’roll: "This rough energy that feels like surfing on a wave." And the playing technique, "which sometimes isn't so far from jazz." He emphasizes that. "Jazz." This is very important to him as a musician. It means: Rock’n’roll is not primarily an external thing for André Tolba. Not just a pure fan existence with a room full of clothes from the fifties and sixties and Elvis-inspired cuts and other memorabilia. And he is not about the hunt for minimal three-chord arrangements with maximum effect. "Then it would be punk." No: For him, rock’n’roll is the fusion of wildness and skill.
The stories he can tell on this topic are certainly diverse: André Tolba studied jazz guitar at the Amsterdam School of Arts. He is a co-founder of the legendary Backbeats – the band with which pop singer Sasha lived out his rock’n’roll passion as Dick Brave, and which made it to the main stage at "Rock am Ring" and into the charts. He started his own large rockabilly project with the Adriano-Batolba Orchestra. He toured with Peter Kraus, who played a significant role in introducing rock’n’roll to people in Germany. Currently, André Tolba is touring again with his trio for the first time after the long lockdown. And: He has been producing music for other artists in the genre for several years – including The Baseballs, Boppin‘ B, and the Silverettes, whose new album titled "Risky Business" was just released on September 24th.
Anyone who experiences André Tolba live, most recently at the open-air stage in Wattenscheid with Bernie Weichinger on drums and Falko Burkert on double bass as the Adriano-Batolba Trio, sees that rock’n’roll, even 67 years after the Big Bang – the first Bill Haley album "Rock With Bill Haley And His Comets" in 1954 – still touches people. This is no surprise to him, who has been thinking in arrangements, hook lines, vocal lines, and solo runs for virtually his entire life. "Rock’n’roll," says André Tolba, "is not backward-looking." It is not a retro thing. Rock’n’roll continues to evolve. "It is alive." And that’s what makes it: timeless."
