FHM, November, 2001
Interview by Adam Winer
Your first album, Night Rocker, featured you in leather pants standing on a black car in the rain while playing an electric guitar. Who thought that was a good idea?
It came from a guy named Joe Diamond. Joe wanted to exploit David Hasselhoff and Knight Rider. And it was not good. But it led to my career. I had a girl come and have lunch with me. She said, "You are very famous in my country." I asked, "Where is your country?" She said, "I am from Austria." I asked, "Where's Austria?" So I ended up going to Austria with the Knight Rider car. We drew more than the Rolling Stones.
So you performed with the KITT car. Would it say things like "Michael, my sensors indicate that nobody rocks like Stockholm"?
It was a dog-and-pony show. In Sweden the car said, "Vbalkommen, Michael!" which means welcome. In Spain, it was "Hola, que tal?" We blacked out the car and we had a guy inside it speaking the language. The kids bought it hook, line, and sinker. We made $10,000 per night and it was all cash. I played soccer arenas in Portugal-it was a joke. The car would come on and say, "Sa fala Portugues!"
Two German papers ran front-page headlines about you. One of them said, "Hasselhoff, Not Since Elvis!" and the other read "Hasselhoff, Not Since The Beatles!" Which is it?
Not since The Beatles. You know how that happened? We did a TV show and we did my song "Looking For Freedom." There was a reporter who was good friends with the press agent. The press agent said, "If I drink you under the table, you give Hasselhoff the headline." And he said, "Deal." So I watch these Germans sit and drink Schnapps. Finally, my wife and I went to bed. At four in the morning, I checked on them, and my guy went under the table. But the reporter said, "You know what? I like you so much, I'll print the headline anyway." And the next day, I sold 17,000 records. It was unbelievable. It was No. 1 for eight weeks.
It wasn't a problem that you weren't singing in German?
No, they all speak English. We won the war.
That song "Looking For Freedom" came out at the same time that the Cold War was thawing. Did it help fuel the movement?
No, I was just the Knight Rider. But once they called me and said, "We'd like you to sing." I said, "Only if I can sing on the Berlin Wall." My wife said, "What are you doing?" I said, "I'm calling their bluff." Then they called me back and said, "Yes." I sang on the wall for New Year's Eve 1989 and was the only American in 45 years to sing there. They had to have Helmut Kohl approve it.
So you rocked Germany so hard that you brought down the Berlin Wall?
There was a whole band on the wall. It was really moving, because you looked down and here was the wall, and then there were 500,000 people on this side, and 500,000 on that side. There were a million people there, singing my song in English. It was like Woodstock.
Did you bring some wall home with you?
We did. I had told my high school buddies to come and share the moment with me. We had hammers, and we ended up chopping down the wall until four in the morning. I gave it to my crew on Baywatch with a plaque that said, "A little piece of freedom from David Hasselhoff."
Were you constantly getting European panties thrown up on stage?
I wasn't really a sex symbol. I'm married, I've got kids, and I highly publicize that. When I was in Europe, I was like the Spice Girls. I had a really young audience. Parents would bring their kids and sit them on their shoulders.
Is it true you were trained in opera?
I worked with an opera trainer, but I wasn't really trained in opera. I've got an incredible range. She was blown away.
Have you ever considered branching out into the hip-hop?
Hip-hop? No. Michael Bolton once told me to stick to the ballads. Because I'm an actor, it's difficult for me to get radio airplay. It's difficult for Michael too. But the audience is out there. So if you can't get them through radio you go other ways. I go through television.
You hoped to break onto the American scene with a live pay-per-view concert called "David Hasselhoff and His Baywatch Friends." That was on the night of O.J. Simpson's slow-speed chase. Are you sad you didn't get to see O.J. run from the cops?
Actually, it's been a positive for me because it's been so much fun to talk about. I was talking with the guy who promoted the show the other night, and he said, "You always say we lost half a million dollars on that show. We didn't. We lost a million-and-a-half." We lost a million-and-a-half bucks that night, but it's like, so what? The audience had given us a standing ovation and it was incredible. I go back to the dressing room, and Donald Trump turns on the TV and it's O.J. I say, "Tell me that's not live." It's live. Nobody saw our pay-per-view. Ninety million saw O.J.
Were you riveted by the chase after the concert?
They had a party for me afterward, and everyone was just watching television. I was watching too.
Have you ever given O.J. a stern talking to?
No, but I sent him a note: "For my next pay-per-view, please be in jail." Apparently, he heard about the situation and thought it was funny.
Didn't Donald Trump agree to back that pay-per-view on the condition that Marla Maples could also sing?
Yeah. He said he'd finance the whole thing if we put Marla in the show. And she was good. A sweetheart. We did a duet singing "If I Were a Carpenter." "If I were a carpenter...And I was a lady...Would you marry me anyway?... I would have your baby." It was very sweet.
On your next album, you'll be singing in Spanish. Is that your attempt to conquer the Latin audience, much as you conquered the Germans?
There's an audience out there. I sang in Spanish at a place called Vina del Mar, which is a big song festival in Chile. They call the audience The Beast, because if you're not good, they will boo you off the stage. But we went down, and I did OK. These people love David Hasselhoff. They love Knight Rider. So why not sing in that language?
Has any woman tried to kill you when she realized she couldn't have you, kind of like what happened on a couple of episodes of Baywatch?
I haven't had anyone try to kill me, but I've got my little wacko file. One day my neighbor came over and asked me, "Are you famous in Germany?" I said, "Yes, why?" He said, "Because there are Germans in my trees." I looked up in his tree and there was this man waving and yelling, "Heeellllloooo, David Hasselhoff!" My neighbor had no idea who he had moved in next to, and then all of a sudden, these guys are in his trees.
You've got the gorgeous family, you've got a couple of platinum albums, you've-
I've got 40. Forty gold and platinum albums. Not a couple.Come to my house and count them. It's because gold in Czechoslovakia is like 15,000. The most I sold was in Germany, which is the second biggest music market outside the US. In Switzerland, I sold more albums than Michael Jackson.
OK, well, you've done all that. What's the next mountain for David Hasselhoff to climb?
I'm bringing back Knight Rider. How do I beat Baywatch? I go back. I'm bringing back Knight Rider as a cartoon, a TV series, and as a film.
You work a lot with sick children. What's that been like?
I've got so many stories that I have to put out a book, because no one would believe what's happened to me. I once met a girl who was in a coma, and she looked over at me and said, "Danke." The doctors flipped out. They said, "this girl hasn't spoken. She's basically about to die." But she lived. The doctors said she had had no reason to live, but because the Knight Rider came in out of nowhere, she gained the will to live.