Gunther Mende

Gunther Mende (born 4 June 1952 in Wiesbaden) is a German record producer.

He was six years old when he received his first set of drums.^{[citation needed]} From that point on he loved music. After his Abitur in Mainz, his main subjects were germanistics, politics and philosophy, he worked as a mason and sculptor in the family company. After school, he earned his first money playing the drums in bands all through Germany. In 1976, CBS Frankfurt gave him the opportunity to work as a staff producer. He produced Red Baron with the frontman Candy DeRouge, with whom he continued working after the band broke up. He started writing songs for different kinds of groups and solo artists, like Roy Black and Tommy Steiner, before he discovered Jennifer Rush, which proved pivotal for him.

In 1994, he sold his recording studios and moved to Cyprus, where he built his own house. Gunther Mende's main residence is in Cyprus, though he periodically lives in Tirol. He was married to Korean pianist Mee Eun Kim.

He produced stars like Falco, Jennifer Rush and Tina Turner. Other European Groups he produced were Culcha Candela, Jan Vogler, Udo Lindenberg, Mireille Mathieu, Nena, Sally Oldfield, Helen Schneider, Anna Maria Kaufmann, Cassandra Steen, Bonnie Bianco, Bobby Kimball, Samy Deluxe, The Boss Hoss, Peter Maffay, Sabrina Weckerlin, Sarah Connor, DJ Ötzi, Roger Cicero, Aloha from Hell and David Garrett.

He began working with Jennifer Rush in 1984, going on to produce two of her albums with Candy de Rouge. The first of these two, Rush's self-titled debut, included well-known songs like "Ring of Ice", "25 Lovers", "Destiny", and the seminal and oft-covered hit "The Power of Love", all of which became mainstays on the charts, where the songs stayed up to 30 weeks.

By 1985, the Jennifer Rush album had reached the number two position on the German charts. The following year, Rush's follow-up album, Movin' reached number one, later becoming album of the year. Both LPs were on the first and second chart position at the same time and have been successfully published in 16 different countries worldwide. They reached platinum and triple platinum and many different awards.

1994 Gunther Mende produced Nena's album Und alles dreht sich.

1999–2001 he worked as a production adviser and publisher for the "Rilke-Projekt" in which Rainer Maria Rilkes poems were read out loud by Mario Adorf, Peter Ustinov, Jessica Schwarz und Peter Maffay. These records have been underlaid with music and this project received a lot of awards too.