RIP Peter Thomas

The man for big dreams

Peter Thomas set music to hundreds of films and TV productions. The "space patrol" theme became his inescapable classic. Now he died at the age of 94.

Suddeutsche Zeitung

By Tobias Kniebe

May 19, 2020

Peter Thomas, composer for film and television, hit and musical, band leader and sound maker, experimenter, visionary, Berlin wearer and tireless Prussian workhorse, is dead. He died on Monday night in his villa in Lugano, at the age of 94, as his DVD distributor and a friend of mine said. A sad news for everyone who still has his immortal title theme of the television series "Raumpatrouille" in his ear. And yet it is significant that even at this moment one primarily remembers the lightness that he radiated personally, that he celebrated in his music, that he opposed to the serious seriousness that dominates so much in this country.

The world of Peter Thomas, you could think of it as an endless cocktail party that is remote at all times. Elegant location, lots of mahogany and frosted glass lamps in spherical shapes, depending on the season, behind Kitzbühel, the beach of St. Tropez or Lake Lugano lie behind panoramic windows. Brigitte Bardot and Gunther Sachs stand in front of it, he is wearing a white turtleneck, she wears her smile from 1967. At the bar sits a lonely woman with huge sunglasses, it must be one of those great old divas, right: Zarah Leander. And the man there in the crumpled white suit who shoots flaming glances across the room is Klaus Kinski - but nobody pays attention to him, you only know that he is in the cinemaconstantly playing the bad guy. George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino are also there and toast to the future. Because that, everyone feels that this evening, has its best time ahead of it at this moment.

Peter Thomas wrote the soundtrack for this party. From the beginning his music was an assertion that could not be proven, but trumpeted its theses into the world with such verve that there was simply no contradiction: Berlin can swing just like New York or Rio de Janeiro; nothing is as idiotic as the distinction between art and commerce; true coolness is never a question of place, time or origin; and good music goes to heaven, but evil goes everywhere. In this spirit, he set music to hundreds of films and TV productions: Edgar Wallace, Jerry Cotton, Erich von Däniken, Francis Durbridge, Will Tremper - everything that went to the cinema and swept the streets on television. The "space patrol" theme became his inescapable classic.

Thomas was the example of a consistently awkward German artist's existence

The countdown with a vocoder voice that started it in 1966 is one of the earliest testimonials to what later became dominant German electronics engineering - the master himself spoke into a huge distortion device in the Siemens cellar dungeons. The driving bass that then starts is imported directly from America - or rather from the legendary "Tabarin" club in Munich-Schwabing, where black GIs danced their nights through and a brilliant bass player was at work, who Peter Thomas immediately went into Delayed studio. But four unison trumpets are already thundering on the way to galaxies that no one has ever seen before - they are a legacy of family tradition: the grandfather was still the bandmaster at the 4th Prussian Ward Regiment on foot, the young Thomas sucked in winds and marching music with breast milk. The militaristic pathos, however, is immediately broken again, after all, this is the Federal Republic in its teenage years, the trombones give peace and let go of an electric piano that has a magical effect on women in unbelievable bobbed heads: They follow the secret command to move their butts in motion offset...

Peter Thomas was never entirely satisfactory for the taste judges of great art and the bodies of the film academies - the muse who kissed him then seemed too easy for fundamental recognition. It also did not help that his income soon bubbled so steadily that he actually bought villas in Lugano, Kitzbühel and St. Tropez, stared at the sunset with Gunther Sachs and Brigitte Bardot and completely lost sight of the small minds at home. Klaus Doldinger, who was sometimes allowed to blow the saxophone for him in his early years, later became better known. Then others had to come to clarify what kind of a titan had been here among us: Jarvis Cocker from "Pulp", for example, who inquired about a music quote in the nineties and couldn't believe it, how young the person on the other end of the line still sounded; or an archivist like, indeed, Quentin Tarantino, who at the same time came across a few melodies in his infinite vinyl archive, which he then urged his friend George Clooney to make for his directorial debut. It so happens that the whole beginning of the film "Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind" is filled with music by Peter Thomas - exactly in the form it was recorded forty years earlier.

Yes, Peter Thomas was one of the greatest composers of popular music we had - the example of a consistently embarrassing German artist's existence and a role model for all who are determined to dream themselves beyond the borders of this small, safe country and yet not across the pond to try their luck. The immortality of his best melodies carries a lesson that one cannot take to heart enough: that what is really visionary and lasting often does not come from tortured effort, celebrated great artistry and dogged authorship, but also from easy routine.

THOMAS, Peter

Born: 12/1/1925, Breslau, Silesia, Germany

Died: 6/17/2020, Lugano, Switzerland

Peter Thomas’ westerns – composer:

The Last Tomahawk – 1964 (co)

Thunder at the Border – 1966

My Friend Winnetou (TV) – 1979