Edgar Klüsener

Edgar Klüsener can look back on a long and colourful career in the music business and in the media. The starting point was an apprenticeship at the German newspaper Westfälische Rundschau in 1973. In the years that followed he set up and run an underground paper and also worked as a journalist, promoter, manager and booking agent in Germany before he finally ended up in the chair of the editor in chief of Germany's Metal Hammer magazine. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Metal Hammer was a truly international enterprise with native language issues in the UK, Netherlands, France, Spain, Greece, Italy, Poland, Hungary and even the Soviet Union in its dying days.

After he left Metal Hammer in 1990, he worked for a variety of music - and entertainment magazines, national newspapers and news magazines including Spiegel Online, Financial Times Deutschland and Frankfurter Rundschau, and contributed to radio and tv programmes. 1997 he moved from Dortmund to Manchester, where his partner and he opened a vegetarian Café on Oxford Road on 9/11 2001. The first customers turning up were treated to the sight of a small b/w television whose screen showed dramatic scenes of passenger planes crashing into the Twin Towers.

The Café's proximity to the University of Manchester's Middle Eastern Department tempted him to enroll on a degree course in Persian Studies and Contemporary Middle Eastern History. Once in Uni, he simply continued until he finally got his PhD. The thesis has since become a book that will be published in May 2021. Throughout his years in Manchester, Edgar has continued to work as a journalist (covering music, sports, travel and current affairs) and to collaborate with record companies. The latest product is BMG's 2020 'Iconic Song'- release of the Scorpions' hit 'Wind of Change', for which he wrote the book that is included in the collector's box.

Before he joined BIMM, Edgar also taught 'Politics of Islam' at Manchester Metropolitan University and tutored Sociology courses at the University of Manchester.