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Mysterious Piano Man's Identity Found
They say he is a musical genious who is mentally ill. i want to hear this man play the piano.
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August 30, 2005
THE LOST SON
The Life and Travails of the 'Piano Man'
For four and a half months, the identity of the "Piano Man" remained a mystery to the world. He was found on a beach in England and spent months in the hospital. Now, the details are emerging: Andreas Grassl was a young man who desperately wanted to flee his suffocatingly provincial home town in the Bavarian forest. He was also trying to escape life as his family lived it.
Farmer's son Andreas Glassl: Original, sometimes brilliant, difficult, sometimes petulant.
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Farmer's son Andreas Glassl: Original, sometimes brilliant, difficult, sometimes petulant.
In summer 2000, the newspaper of Robert Schumann High School -- in the Bavarian town of Cham -- started a new column: "Burn - the List of My Enemies." The author, who called himself "Scatman," wrote about his efforts to make it big in television. And with nothing coming of his suggestion for a TV show, the list grew rapidly. "In 1995," he wrote, "I was unfortunately pushed away by (the German public station) ZDF." Even the photo competition in the local newspaper, Straubinger Tagblatts, proved not to be a stepping stone to fame. "Ice cold rejection," was his verdict on that occasion. And so the column went year for year: funny, biting, ironic. Until the series of articles which Scatman wrote the year before leaving school, which suddenly breaks off with the inexplicable sentence: "Please tell me, what am I supposed to conjure up as a grandiose finale for the end of this five-year series?"
Scatman never did write his grandiose finale. But his wish to escape his provincial surroundings and hit the big time became dramatically true last week: Scatman is the "Piano Man," the most enigmatic famous person in the world. Picked up on a beach in Sheerness, England, he had no papers, was soaking wet and was wearing a suit which had all the labels cut out. He then spent four-and-a-half months in various English clinics, without saying one word. Instead he just played the piano. Until, that is, the Friday before last, when he suddenly offered his name and where he was from: a farm in the Bavarian woods, a few kilometers from the Czech border.
For some 130 days, the "Piano Man" served up a riddle to the world. It became a story which offered something for everyone: romantic dreams of genius, innocence, and solitude. Now, though the mystery has been solved, the release of his name, age (20), and his parent's hometown (Waldmünchen in Bavaria), do little more than create more questions about the Grassl.
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