Richard Z. Kruspe-Bernstein (born June 24, 1967 as Richard Zven Kruspe) is a German musician, most notable for being one of the guitarists for the German Tanz-Metal band Rammstein. "Bernstein" is after his ex-wife Caron.

Biography

He was born in Wittenburg, Germany. He has two older sisters and an older brother. His parents divorced when he was young. His mother remarried, and he did not get along with his step-father. They moved to the village of Weisen when he was young.

As a child, Kruspe was a fan of Kiss. According to him, Kiss “represented capitalism in its purest sense, and every child was Kiss infected because they were so big. Kids wrote Kiss on their notebooks, and if the teachers saw it they could get kicked out of school just for having it written on their books.” When he was twelve, he had a Kiss poster in his room, but his step-father tore it down and destroyed it, and Richard was up all night putting it back together.

Richard was a wrestler as a teenager.

At the age of sixteen, Kruspe and some friends visited Czechoslovakia, where he bought a guitar. He had originally planned to sell it, because they were very expensive and thought he could make a nice profit. However, once he got back to East Germany, a girl at a campground he was staying at asked him to play. He told her that he couldn’t play, but she kept insisting, and Kruspe got mad and starting strumming the strings. “The harder I played,” Richard said, “the more excited she got. Something clicked in my head and I realized girls like guys who play guitars.” This got him interested in playing the guitar, and as a result, he began playing every day and night for the next two years.

At the age of nineteen, bored with the apathetic music scene in his home town, he moved to East Berlin and lived on the Lychener Straße and "made music all day”. For two years, Richard lived in an apartment with a drum kit and a guitar, and he made music by himself because he did not know anybody there. “It was a lonely time” according to Kruspe, but he used it to explore music.

On 10 October 1989, prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, he was riding through the subway. When he came above ground, he found himself in the middle of a political demonstration. He was hit on the head and arrested just for being there, and thrown in jail for six days. Once out of jail, he decided to leave East Germany. In those days, one couldn’t just leave East Germany, so he entered West Germany through Czechoslovakia. When the wall came down, he moved back east.

Around 1991, Richard started the band Orgasm Death Gimmicks.

In 1992 or 1993, his daughter, Khira Li Lindemann, was born. She is the daughter of Till Lindemann’s ex-wife.

In this year, Richard made his first trip to the USA with Till Lindemann and Oliver "Ollie" Riedel. He realizes that he doesn't want to make American music and concentrates on creating a unique German sound.

The band Rammstein was "born" in January of 1994 when Till, Ollie, Christoph "Doom" Schneider and Richard won a Berlin Music Competition, the prize of which was a professional demo or four songs, presumably to get them a record deal. They asked Paul H. Landers and Christian “Flake” Lorenz of Feeling B to join them. Flake was the last to join. After that, the group began work on their first album, Herzeleid.

Richard married South African actress Caron Bernstein in 1999. The ceremony was Jewish and Richard composed the music for it. Richard took on the named Richard Kruspe-Bernstein during their marriage. They are believed to have divorced sometime in 2003 or 2004.

Richard began work on a solo project around this time, called Emigrate and work continues on it to this day. He has said he wants to record an album in 2005. No other Rammstein band members are involved.

Personal

He speaks excellent English with a strong American accent. Richard is always immaculately dressed.

He lost a large ornate ring while on tour in 2001; it has never been found. One of the more unusual (but ever-increasing) characteristics are his painted fingernails.

When asked if he believes in God, Richard says, "No. I believe in life justice, that everything that you do, you get back. It's justice and it's what I believe in." Still, he is spiritual saying he "practices the 5 Tibetan rejuvenating rites each day."

Richard likes Kiss, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Big Black, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Suicidal Tendencies, and Pantera. He has worked as a cashier and a salesman, and cleaning the apartment for an older woman who had her pet poodles stuffed (one for every year).

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