Al Cook - The Birmingham Jam (2005)

Al Cook was born as Alois Kurt Koch on February 27th, 1945 in Bad Ischl, Upper Austria.

At the close of the second World War, he was brought back to Vienna, where he was raised in a working-class family, where his life went the unspectacular and average way until he was 15.

Al wanted to become a scientist, studying astronomy and physics, but his family could not afford any higher education and he had to take a job as a mechanic in a nearby factory, that left him completely dissatisfied and certainly was not the place to live up to his being as a natural born individualist.

But inside the young boy grew a desirable power to take off from the ground and liberate himself from slaving among blockheaded proletarians and to live a life, he simply did not enjoy.


But the evening of his first day at work resulted in a do-or-die decision, when Al Cook dropped into a local movie-theater to watch Elvis Presley, playing the role of Deke Rivers in „Loving You“, a catchy teen melodram from 1957.

Al heard about Elvis, but at that time, he was still unaware of the singer's meaning in the world of his generation. But when he left the cinema, the idea of becoming a Rock n Roll Star in order to escape social inferiority, changed his attitudes for the rest of his life.