Udo Dirkschneider says he was playing shows as Accept for almost eight years before Wolf Hoffmann joined in 1976.
Udo Dirkschneider has pushed the start of Accept back well before the lineup most people picture, telling Sakis Fragos of “Rock Hard Greece” that he had the name and a working live schedule years ahead of Wolf Hoffmann‘s arrival. The singer fronted the band from its beginnings until 1987 and returned for two later spells.
Dirkschneider described a band already on the road across Germany and the Low Countries.
“The Accept name came at the end of ’69 already. And I was on tour already — not on tour, but we did nearly every weekend some shows in Holland, Belgium, stuff like that, a lot in the south of Germany and also around our hometown, Solingen, Wuppertal. So that means before the Accept, let’s say the original one everybody thinks, like Wolf Hoffmann, Peter Baltes, Stefan Kaufmann and Jörg Fischer, they came in ’76. So that means I was already with Accept in a way nearly eight years, doing some shows. And still now with [my current project] Dirkschneider, I play Accept songs again. The name is just now [owned by] Wolf Hoffmann for some reason, but I don’t wanna go deeper,” he explained.
The band’s documented history runs close to Dirkschneider‘s account in outline, though not on every date. He started a Solingen group called Band X in 1968 with Michael Wagener. After completing his military service he reassembled it in 1972 and switched the name to Accept, a choice usually credited to the 1970 album of that title by British blues band Chicken Shack. Most reference sources place the name change in the early 1970s rather than the end of 1969, which would make the gap before Hoffmann closer to four or five years than eight, although counting from Band X‘s formation does produce the figure Dirkschneider gives.
The four names he groups together did not all arrive at once. Hoffmann and Baltes both joined in 1976, Baltes stepping in when Dieter Rubach left. Jörg Fischer came the following year, replacing Gerhard Wahl. Stefan Kaufmann arrived later still, taking over from Frank Friedrich after the self-titled debut album was recorded, and first appearing on 1980’s I’m A Rebel.
The turning point everyone agrees on is 1976, when the band played Rock am Rhein, one of Germany’s earliest rock festivals, and picked up a record deal off the back of it. Until then they had been an amateur outfit with a revolving cast, which matches the weekend-show existence Dirkschneider describes.
Dirkschneider left Accept in 1987 to concentrate on U.D.O., returned between 1992 and 1997, and came back once more for a 2005 run. Accept restarted in 2009 with American singer Mark Tornillo, and Hoffmann, the only member present through every incarnation, controls the name.
Dirkschneider now performs Accept material under his own surname while keeping U.D.O. separate for his own catalogue. He is not doing it alone, either: Baltes left Accept in November 2018 after 42 years and joined both Dirkschneider and U.D.O. in 2023, putting two of the singers’ 1976-era bandmates back on the same stage.
