Christian Anders

Christian Anders' career can essentially be split into two distinct halves. Throughout the '60s and '70s, Anders was a teen idol known throughout the German-speaking world for baroque pop confections like "Du Hast Sie Verloren." The following decades found Anders adopting a decidedly new age aesthetic, referring to himself as Lanoo, and devoting much of his time to writing.

Born Antonio Augusto Schinzel on January 15, 1945, in Austria, Anders spent much of his childhood in Italy due to World War II. He started his first band, Christian Anders & the Tonics, when he was in his teens and landed his first record deal by the time he was 21. Anders emerged as a full-fledged teen idol with the release of his sophomore album, 1969's Geh' Nicht Vorbei. The album sold over one million copies within the first five months of its release, paving the way for Anders to start his own label, Chranders, in 1972. A slew of albums and television appearances followed in the next 25 years, establishing Anders as a palpable force in the German pop music industry.

Dissatisfied with his music career, Anders sold his publishing house in 1987 and moved to Los Angeles. His life in America was different, to say the least. He adopted the name Lanoo and purportedly spent a brief period of time living on the streets. Anders released his first American album, Lanoo: Alive in America, in 1991; it was the first of several new age albums Anders would release over the course of the next decade. He also wrote several books during this period, including The Man Who Created AIDS, a controversial book hypothesizing that the AIDS virus was formulated in a lab. Anders returned to Germany in 1994, where he continued to record songs and write.