Christian Lorenz (born November 16th, 1966, East Berlin) is the keyboardist for the band Rammstein.
Nickname
His nickname Flake comes from the TV show "Vicky the Viking". Vicky is living with his parents in the viking village Flake.
Doctor
Flake didn't want to join Rammstein first. He more wanted to become a doctor. But after feeling that this wouldn't work, he joined the band. He carries the title anyway. So now he is mostly called Doctor Lorenz.
Life
Early years
Lorenz was brought up and still lives in the former Prenzlauer Berg area of Berlin (now a part of the borough of Pankow), where he still passes his old school building on the way to band rehearsals.
Lorenz is known to be an educated pianist. Flake says he chose to play the piano because a childhood friend of his played from the age of three. His parents sent him to a music school. Flake "began by painting the keys on a window ledge" and "practiced one-half-year on the window ledge". His parents bought him a piano for one hundred East German marks for his 15th birthday.
Flake became "addicted" to rock and roll as a boy. He stopped his lessons in order to play with his father's jazz records. "When I joined my first band", Flake has said, "I noticed that I couldn't play modern music. I still can't!" At the age of sixteen, he apprenticed as a toolmaker, an apparently short-lived career.
He has a brother who is four years older.
Feeling B
In 1983, at age sixteen, he began to play in the band Feeling B with Paul Landers and Aljoscha Rompe, a Swiss living in East Berlin. He stayed with the band for about ten years.
Flake squatted/lived in an apartment with Paul during their early years. When they weren't playing gigs, Landers and Flake would sell jackets made from cut-up bed sheets and dusters on the black market. Two jackets a month meant as much money as an average salaried worker.
Rammstein
In 1994, Till Lindemann, Richard Kruspe, Oliver Riedel and Christoph Schneider entered and won the Berlin Senate Metro beat contest that allowed them to professionally record a four track demo. Paul Landers formally joined the band, then finally Flake. He was initially reluctant to join his five bandmates and had to be pestered into becoming a member of Rammstein, as he thought they would be too boring. Eventually, he agreed to join, and the group began work on their first album, Herzeleid.
In the band's performances and videos, Flake is often cast as the outsider of the group, possibly due to his relatively unusual presence as a keyboard player in a heavy metal group. This varies from playing the part of a scientific genius, aloof from the rest of the group, to playing a gimp role, to being left alone at the end of the "Keine Lust" video, and being bullied by the rest of the band, particularly Lindemann. These distinctive roles in the band's theatrical presentation have led to him becoming a very popular member of the group among fans.
Flake is probably best known for his part in the controversial live performance of the song "Bück dich", where he and vocalist Till Lindemann engaged in simulated sodomy with a liquor-squirting dildo. On 23 September 1998, in Worcester, Massachusetts (USA) Lindemann and Flake Lorenz were arrested and charged with lewd and lascivious behavior. A statement from Sergeant Thomas Radula of the Worcester Police Department stated that Lindemann was simulating sex with Flake onstage "using a phallic object that shot water over the crowd". They were held and released the following day on US$25 bail. After months of legal debate, they were eventually fined US$100.
His role in "Bück dich" is not the only live act he is known for. Up until 2002, Flake would "surf" the audience in an inflatable rubber dinghy during the performance of "Seemann". Ollie took his place in 2002. According to Flake, the change occurred because he was injured too often. Also, during a 2001 concert in St. Petersburg, Flake was tipped out of the boat by the crowd and almost completely undressed. Despite this, Flake has returned to "surfing" the dinghy for Rammstein's 2009 tour during the performance of "Haifisch". When performing "Mein Teil" ("My part"), Flake is "cooked" with a flame-thrower by Till in a giant cauldron. Flake does a dance, dubbed the "Flake-dance", during "Weisses Fleisch]]". In the video for "Keine Lust", Flake is seen in an electric wheelchair. He is seen about to jump off the top of a burning building (trying and failing to land safely on a trampoline) in the video for "Benzin". In the video for "Ich will", Flake is tied to a bomb that explodes in the end of video. In Rammstein's 2009 video for the song "Pussy", Flake portrays an intersex person named Heeshie. Flake also provided lead vocals for Rammstein's cover version of "Pet Sematary", originally by The Ramones.
During a concert in Gothenburg, Sweden on 30 July 2005, Till Lindemann suffered a knee injury when Flake accidentally ran into him with the Segway he rides during the performance of "Amerika". This caused concerts scheduled in Asia to be cancelled.
In 2005, Flake suffered from the mumps, causing concerts in South America to be cancelled.
In January 2012, Flake, along with Lindemann, was interviewed by heavy metal anthropologist Sam Dunn for the VH1 Classic series "Metal Evolution", on the topic of shock rock. This is surprising, due to the lack of interviews he, and the band, does in North America.
Radio show
Since May 2017 Flake is the host of the show "Die Sendung" ("The Show") on the German radio station radioeins. Every month he will talk about a different topic and play some of his favourite songs, aswell as his own.
Equipment
Keyboards
| Years used | Name | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1983-198? | Weltmeister To 200-5 | Organ | used in Feeling B and side projects |
| 198?-1990 | Roland TB-303 | Synthesizer | used in Magdalene Keibel Combo and side projects |
| 198?-1990 | Roland TR-606 | Drum Machine | used in Magdalene Keibel Combo and side projects |
| 198?-1994, 2016-2017 | Casiotone MT-65 | Synthesizer | used in Feeling B and acoustic version of Ohne dich |
| 1992-today | Ensonique ASR-10 | Sampler | |
| 1994-2004 | Korg M1 | Synthesizer | |
| 1995-1999 | Roland A-33 | MIDI Controller | |
| 1995-2001 | Korg Wavestation | Synthesizer | Only in studio |
| 1997-1999 | Roland JD-800 | Synthesizer | |
| 2000-2002 | Korg X5D | MIDI Controller | |
| 2004 | Korg Microkorg | Synthesizer | Used in Keine Lust music video |
| 2004-2005 | Oberheim MC 1000-76 | MIDI Controller | |
| 2004-2005 | Roland FR-5 V-Accordion | MIDI Controller | Used live in Reise, Reise |
| 2005 | Roland PC-180 A | MIDI Controller | Replaced Roland FR-5 V-Accordion |
| 2009-today | Roland VR-760 | MIDI Controller | |
| 2011-2013 | Alesis QX49 | MIDI Controller | Used live in Pussy |
| 2016-today | Nord Stage 2 EX | MIDI Controller |
Previous bands
Discography
Songs
Main article: Flake's songs
As a guest
- 1985: Happy Straps - What A Pleasure (Keyboard)
- 1985: Happy Straps - Last Pleasure (Keyboard)
- 1993: Bolschewistische Kurkapelle Schwarz-Rot - Hymne der SU (Keyboard)
- 1993: Bolschewistische Kurkapelle Schwarz-Rot - Kasakka (Keyboard)
- 2003: Hanzel und Gretyl - Intermission (Vocals)
Concerts
| Date | Venue | City | Country |
| 11.11.2016 | Columbiahalle | Berlin | Germany |
Books
- 16.03.2015 - Der Tastenficker: An was ich mich so erinnern kann
- 22.03.2016 - Der Tastenficker (Audio book)
- 05.10.2017 - Heute hat die Welt Geburtstag (including a reading tour)