Mark Wirtz
Encyclopedia
Mark P. Wirtz is an Alsatian
born (3 September 1943 in Strasbourg
) pop music
record producer
, composer
, singer, musician
, author
, and stand-up comedian
. As a producer, Wirtz's most famous output is from the mid to late 1960s, when he worked at Abbey Road Studios
with Beatles
engineer Geoff Emerick
, under contract to EMI
. Wirtz is chiefly known for the never-completed A Teenage Opera
concept album, from which only four songs were ever finished before a concerned EMI
pulled the plug on the project. (RPM
, with Wirtz's direct involvement, pieced together all surviving songs from the unfinished project and issued it on CD
.)
His signature style has been described by Mojo magazine
as "Phil Spector
scoring Camberwick Green
", a sound most perfectly encapsulated on Wirtz's masterpiece, "Grocer Jack (Excerpt from A Teenage Opera)
". This 1967 hit single is a densely orchestrated psychedelic marvel, which tells the whimsical and sad tale of an old man ("Grocer Jack"), who dies unappreciated, except by the children who loved him and miss him. The completed Teenage Opera songs all feature similar themes, usually based around elderly craftsmen carrying on with their outdated traditions (a weatherman, a steam train driver) to the ambivalence – and sometimes ridicule – of the community. The project has been likened to a British SMiLE
, due largely to its near mythical status as a "lost" masterwork, but also because of the singularity of its creator's strange and magical vision.
Wirtz was married to singer Ross Hannaman
for a period of time. Together, they wrote and recorded the song "Barefoot and Tiptoe" under the name The Sweetshop, erroneously believed to have been from A Teenage Opera. Wirtz and Hannaman divorced in 1969, at which time Wirtz teamed up with poetry writer Maria Feltham to record Wirtz's concept album, Philwit and Pegasus, for composer Les Reed
's Chapter One label. In 1970, Wirtz left London
for the United States
where, based in Hollywood, he joined fellow UK expatriate producer Denny Cordell
at his Shelter Records
company as associate producer and engineer.
Mark Wirtz began his music career while studying art at London's Fairfield College of Arts and Sciences. A friend, with whom he was sharing a flat in neighbouring Wallington, recalls those days: "Three things already stood out in him at the age of seventeen: his prodigious talent as an artist – he could paint original work in the style of any of the grand masters; his natural ability as a musician – he could pick out any tune on the piano by ear; and his zany sense of humour – he idolized the comedian Jerry Lewis."
He studied drama at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
, when his college rock band, The Beatcrackers, were signed to a recording contract in 1963 as Mark Rogers and the Marksmen by EMI producer Norman Newell
. By 1965 Wirtz had started his first independent production company, releasing records that have since become enduring classics.
In 1967, Wirtz accepted EMI veteran producer/A&R chief Norrie Paramor's
offer to join EMI Records as in-house producer. Working at Abbey Road Studios alongside the Beatles and Pink Floyd
(the latter whom he was instrumental in signing to the company), Wirtz wrote and produced landmark recordings by artists such as Keith West
, Tomorrow
, and Kippington Lodge. Most notably, he reached global success with his production of excerpts from the first ever Rock Opera
, A Teenage Opera. Though never allowed to be completed or released as an entire work, the opera's excerpts "Grocer Jack," "Sam," "Weatherman," and "Theme" became legendary trail-blazers, which have not only captivated several generations of music fans, but influenced and inspired artists and musicians worldwide.
In 1969, his creative freedom restricted by drastic, corporate, A&R
policy changes, Wirtz resigned his post at EMI Records to return to independent production. Associations with Larry Page's
Penny Farthing
label (Samantha Jones
, Kris Ife
and Les Reed's
Chapter One label (Philwit & Pegasus, Roger James) followed, during which Wirtz formed a co-writing partnership with Ife that has endured to the present day with recent collaborations ("Learning 2 Live With Love," MWET/Spyderbaby (2005); "One Night Stand" MWET/Anthony Rivers" (2005), and current works in progress for the Cooking For Cannibals soundtrack album (2007). In 1970, Wirtz left the shores of Britain for Los Angeles
, California
to accept an invitation by his fellow expatriate producer and friend Denny Cordell
to work with him at Hollywood's Shelter Records. In 1973, Wirtz signed a writer/artist/producer contract with Capitol Records
for whom he recorded two acclaimed albums, Balloon and Hothouse Smiles (both released under the name "Marc Wirtz").
In 1975, dropped by Capitol for his refusal to tour or perform publicly, Wirtz signed with ace producer Tom Catalano and veteran publisher Dan Crewe's RCA-distributed TomCat label, an association that was doomed to be a short-lived when the label folded only week's after Wirtz's first single release, "We Could Have Laughed Forever." Having become a parent in the same year, hence home-responsibility-bound, Wirtz dropped his "loose cannon" career pursuits and, under the name of Marc Peters, submerged into the role of "hired gun" session arranger/conductor in partnership with producers including Kim Fowley
and Jimmy Bowen
. Numerous Pop/R&B and Country hit records followed, featuring an array of artists as diverse as Helen Reddy
, Leon Russell
, Vicky Leandros
, Kim Carnes
, Dean Martin
, and Anthony Newley
.
In 1979, signed by Russ Regan
to Interworld Music/CBS Records as writer and producer, Wirtz returned to the studio to produce his third solo album, Lost Pets, sequentially joined by ace guitarists Richard Bennett
and John Beland, keyboard players Alan Lindgren and Tom Hensley, drummers Billy Thomas and Denny Seiwell, and bassists David Hungate
and Les Hurdle. In the midst of a session for the only half-finished production, a medical emergency call from his daughter's kindergarten principal prompted Wirtz to close the piano lid, abort the project and leave the studio. Priority committed to hands-on single parenting of his daughter Nicole, Wirtz vanished into obscurity and a hiatus from the music business that would last for more than twenty years. During those years, after savings had run out and royalties had dwindled, Wirtz took on a gamut of art-alien jobs, including tele-marketer, waiter, maître d', blood-stock agent, interpreter, voice-over artist, undercover agent, seminar leader and eventually sales manager for the prestigious Geneva merger & acquisition firm.
While taking acting classes during off-times and burning the midnight oil in the pursuit of a new career as a novelist, Wirtz also realized a life-long ambition to be a comedian by studying and performing at Hollywood's Groundlings Improv Theater, to eventually take his first steps onto the stages of Hollywood's comedy clubs, including The Comedy Store
and The Improv
. In 1996, his daughter grown up and in college, Wirtz moved to Savannah
, Georgia
, where he kept busy as an award-winning freelance magazine columnist/food- and drama critic, while publishing his first novels, Sisyphus Rocks and Love Is Eggshaped, as well as selling his paintings in a Savannah gallery.
In 2004, giving in to the plea from his by-now Spain
-residing daughter Nicole to produce her rock-band leader boyfriend's debut album, Wirtz flew to Barcelona and returned to the studio for the first time in many years to produce Les Philippes' Philharmonic Philanthropy. Before year's end, the band's album was #1 in the Independent label charts and has since become a 'neo-psych Rock' cult classic. His music appetite re-awakened, Wirtz continued his rebounded studio activities by subsequently producing his own Mark Wirtz Eartheatre solo album Love Is Eggshaped, Spyderbaby UK's Glassblower CD, and Anthony Rivers' Marked Confidential. Finally, in January 2006, Wirtz found a path back to his comedy dream by hooking up with Jacksonville
, Florida's
"Jax Comics" group of working comedian
s, initially working out at the Comedy Zone, then moving on by touring the southeast's
comedy club
s in the development of his stand-up comedy act.
In the Spring of 2010, Wirtz produced an all-new solo studio album, "Lost Pets 2," scheduled for international release bv PoppyDisc Records in October 2010. In addition, in February 2011, Wirtz is publishing his novella, "Dreamer Of Glass Beach," a futuristic fable for all ages
At the current time, Wirtz resides in Savannah, GA, and is workshopping a multi-media project that combines his music, comedy and writing in the form of a one-man show, a new studio CD, and a book – all thematically linked under the collective title, Cooking For Cannibals.
Alsace
Alsace is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km²...
born (3 September 1943 in Strasbourg
Strasbourg
Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,...
) pop music
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
record producer
Record producer
A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
, composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, singer, musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
, author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
, and stand-up comedian
Stand-up comedy
Stand-up comedy is a comedic art form. Usually, a comedian performs in front of a live audience, speaking directly to them. Their performances are sometimes filmed for later release via DVD, the internet, and television...
. As a producer, Wirtz's most famous output is from the mid to late 1960s, when he worked at Abbey Road Studios
Abbey Road Studios
Abbey Road Studios is a recording studio located at 3 Abbey Road, St John's Wood, City of Westminster, London, England. It was established in November 1931 by the Gramophone Company, a predecessor of British music company EMI, its present owner...
with Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
engineer Geoff Emerick
Geoff Emerick
Geoffrey Emerick is an English recording studio audio engineer, who is best known for his work with The Beatles' albums Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles and Abbey Road...
, under contract to EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
. Wirtz is chiefly known for the never-completed A Teenage Opera
A Teenage Opera
A Teenage Opera is a musical project from the 1960s and was the creation of record producer Mark Wirtz.- History :According to Wirtz, he had been working on an idea for a rock opera since January 1966, when he was experimenting in his London studio and produced a piece of music entitled "A Touch of...
concept album, from which only four songs were ever finished before a concerned EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
pulled the plug on the project. (RPM
RPM Records (UK)
RPM Records is a record label founded in 1991, and based in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, England. The label specialises in reissues under the slogan: "Brought to you by collectors for collectors." It forms part of the Cherry Red group....
, with Wirtz's direct involvement, pieced together all surviving songs from the unfinished project and issued it on CD
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
.)
His signature style has been described by Mojo magazine
Mojo (magazine)
MOJO is a popular music magazine published initially by Emap, and since January 2008 by Bauer, monthly in the United Kingdom. Following the success of the magazine Q, publishers Emap were looking for a title which would cater for the burgeoning interest in classic rock music...
as "Phil Spector
Phil Spector
Phillip Harvey "Phil" Spector is an American record producer and songwriter, later known for his conviction in the murder of actress Lana Clarkson....
scoring Camberwick Green
Camberwick Green
Camberwick Green is a British children's television series, originally seen on BBC One, featuring stop-motion puppets. It was one of the first British television series to be filmed in colour.-Background:...
", a sound most perfectly encapsulated on Wirtz's masterpiece, "Grocer Jack (Excerpt from A Teenage Opera)
Grocer Jack (Excerpt from A Teenage Opera)
Excerpt from "A Teenage Opera" is a 1967 single by Keith West, produced by Mark Wirtz. It was a big hit in Europe, peaking at number two on the UK Singles Chart. The single was part of a bigger "A Teenage Opera" project....
". This 1967 hit single is a densely orchestrated psychedelic marvel, which tells the whimsical and sad tale of an old man ("Grocer Jack"), who dies unappreciated, except by the children who loved him and miss him. The completed Teenage Opera songs all feature similar themes, usually based around elderly craftsmen carrying on with their outdated traditions (a weatherman, a steam train driver) to the ambivalence – and sometimes ridicule – of the community. The project has been likened to a British SMiLE
Smile (Brian Wilson album)
Smile, sometimes typeset with the idiosyncratic partial capitalization SMiLE, or referred to as Brian Wilson Presents Smile is a solo album by Brian Wilson, with lyrics by Van Dyke Parks released on September 28, 2004 on CD and two-disc vinyl LP...
, due largely to its near mythical status as a "lost" masterwork, but also because of the singularity of its creator's strange and magical vision.
Wirtz was married to singer Ross Hannaman
Ross Hannaman
Ross Hannaman was a British singer in the 1960s. She was born Rosalind Judith Hannaman and raised in London. Ross signed to EMI in 1967 to pursue a career in pop music. She was initially managed by Tim Rice, and he and Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote both of her singles and their subsequent b-sides...
for a period of time. Together, they wrote and recorded the song "Barefoot and Tiptoe" under the name The Sweetshop, erroneously believed to have been from A Teenage Opera. Wirtz and Hannaman divorced in 1969, at which time Wirtz teamed up with poetry writer Maria Feltham to record Wirtz's concept album, Philwit and Pegasus, for composer Les Reed
Les Reed
Les Reed O.B.E. is an English songwriter, musician and light orchestra leader.-Career:...
's Chapter One label. In 1970, Wirtz left London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
for the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
where, based in Hollywood, he joined fellow UK expatriate producer Denny Cordell
Denny Cordell
Denny Cordell was an English record producer. He is notable for his late 1960s and early 1970s productions of hit singles for The Moody Blues, The Move, Procol Harum and Joe Cocker.-Career:...
at his Shelter Records
Shelter Records
Shelter Records was a U.S. record label started by Leon Russell and Denny Cordell that operated from 1969 to 1981. The company established offices in both Los Angeles and Tulsa, Russell's home town, where the label sought to promote a "workshop atmosphere" with a recording studio in a converted...
company as associate producer and engineer.
Mark Wirtz began his music career while studying art at London's Fairfield College of Arts and Sciences. A friend, with whom he was sharing a flat in neighbouring Wallington, recalls those days: "Three things already stood out in him at the age of seventeen: his prodigious talent as an artist – he could paint original work in the style of any of the grand masters; his natural ability as a musician – he could pick out any tune on the piano by ear; and his zany sense of humour – he idolized the comedian Jerry Lewis."
He studied drama at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art is a drama school located in London, United Kingdom. It is generally regarded as one of the most renowned drama schools in the world, and is one of the oldest drama schools in the United Kingdom, having been founded in 1904.RADA is an affiliate school of the...
, when his college rock band, The Beatcrackers, were signed to a recording contract in 1963 as Mark Rogers and the Marksmen by EMI producer Norman Newell
Norman Newell
Norman Newell, OBE was born in Plaistow, Essex , and was a successful British record producer in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as co-writer of many notable songs...
. By 1965 Wirtz had started his first independent production company, releasing records that have since become enduring classics.
In 1967, Wirtz accepted EMI veteran producer/A&R chief Norrie Paramor's
Norrie Paramor
Norrie Paramor was a British record producer, composer, arranger, and orchestral conductor.Although the term "producer" was not in circulation at the time Paramor started producing records , he effectively began this role in 1952 when he became Recording Director for EMI's Columbia...
offer to join EMI Records as in-house producer. Working at Abbey Road Studios alongside the Beatles and Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd were an English rock band that achieved worldwide success with their progressive and psychedelic rock music. Their work is marked by the use of philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate live shows. Pink Floyd are one of the most commercially...
(the latter whom he was instrumental in signing to the company), Wirtz wrote and produced landmark recordings by artists such as Keith West
Keith West
Keith Alan Hopkins, better known by his stage name, Keith West was the lead singer of Tomorrow, a 1960s psychedelic rock band. West composed most of the band's songs...
, Tomorrow
Tomorrow (band)
Tomorrow were a 1960s psychedelic rock band. Despite critical acclaim and support from DJ John Peel who featured them on his "Perfumed Garden" radio show, the band was not a great success in commercial terms. They were among the first psychedelic bands in England along with Pink Floyd and Soft...
, and Kippington Lodge. Most notably, he reached global success with his production of excerpts from the first ever Rock Opera
Rock opera
A rock opera is a work of rock music that presents a storyline told over multiple parts, songs or sections in the manner of opera. A rock opera differs from a conventional rock album, which usually includes songs that are not unified by a common theme or narrative. More recent developments include...
, A Teenage Opera. Though never allowed to be completed or released as an entire work, the opera's excerpts "Grocer Jack," "Sam," "Weatherman," and "Theme" became legendary trail-blazers, which have not only captivated several generations of music fans, but influenced and inspired artists and musicians worldwide.
In 1969, his creative freedom restricted by drastic, corporate, A&R
A&R
Artists and repertoire is the division of a record label that is responsible for talent scouting and overseeing the artistic development of recording artists. It also acts as a liaison between artists and the record label.- Finding talent :...
policy changes, Wirtz resigned his post at EMI Records to return to independent production. Associations with Larry Page's
Larry Page (British singer and manager)
Larry Page is an English former pop singer and record producer of the late 1950s and 1960s.-Biography:...
Penny Farthing
Penny Farthing Records
Penny Farthing Records was established by UK record producer Larry Page, as a progression from his mildly successful 1960s record label, Page One Records. It did not repeat the top 20 hits of his earlier venture, but signed some artists of note....
label (Samantha Jones
Samantha Jones (singer)
-External links:*...
, Kris Ife
Kris Ife
Kris Ife is an English singer and songwriter, who enjoyed modest success on the British pop scene in the 1960s and 1970s. He is best known for recording a version of "Hush", which inspired Deep Purple's hit cover of the same song.-Career:Ife's father was based at RAF Halton near Wendover. Ife...
and Les Reed's
Les Reed
Les Reed O.B.E. is an English songwriter, musician and light orchestra leader.-Career:...
Chapter One label (Philwit & Pegasus, Roger James) followed, during which Wirtz formed a co-writing partnership with Ife that has endured to the present day with recent collaborations ("Learning 2 Live With Love," MWET/Spyderbaby (2005); "One Night Stand" MWET/Anthony Rivers" (2005), and current works in progress for the Cooking For Cannibals soundtrack album (2007). In 1970, Wirtz left the shores of Britain for Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
to accept an invitation by his fellow expatriate producer and friend Denny Cordell
Denny Cordell
Denny Cordell was an English record producer. He is notable for his late 1960s and early 1970s productions of hit singles for The Moody Blues, The Move, Procol Harum and Joe Cocker.-Career:...
to work with him at Hollywood's Shelter Records. In 1973, Wirtz signed a writer/artist/producer contract with Capitol Records
Capitol Records
Capitol Records is a major United States based record label, formerly located in Los Angeles, but operating in New York City as part of Capitol Music Group. Its former headquarters building, the Capitol Tower, is a major landmark near the corner of Hollywood and Vine...
for whom he recorded two acclaimed albums, Balloon and Hothouse Smiles (both released under the name "Marc Wirtz").
In 1975, dropped by Capitol for his refusal to tour or perform publicly, Wirtz signed with ace producer Tom Catalano and veteran publisher Dan Crewe's RCA-distributed TomCat label, an association that was doomed to be a short-lived when the label folded only week's after Wirtz's first single release, "We Could Have Laughed Forever." Having become a parent in the same year, hence home-responsibility-bound, Wirtz dropped his "loose cannon" career pursuits and, under the name of Marc Peters, submerged into the role of "hired gun" session arranger/conductor in partnership with producers including Kim Fowley
Kim Fowley
Kim Vincent Fowley is an American record producer, impresario, songwriter, musician, film maker, and radio actor. He is best known for his role behind a string of novelty and cult rock pop singles in the 1960s, and for managing The Runaways in the 1970s...
and Jimmy Bowen
Jimmy Bowen
Jimmy Bowen is an American record producer and former pop music performer.Bowen was born in Santa Rita, New Mexico. He began as a teenage recording star in 1957 with "I'm Stickin' With You," originally the flip side of the hit record "Party Doll" by Buddy Knox, but ultimately a Top 20 recording...
. Numerous Pop/R&B and Country hit records followed, featuring an array of artists as diverse as Helen Reddy
Helen Reddy
Helen Reddy , often referred to as "The Queen of 70s Pop", is an Australian-American singer and actress. In the 1970s, she enjoyed international success, especially in the United States, where she placed fifteen singles in the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100. Six of those 15 songs made the Top 10...
, Leon Russell
Leon Russell
Claude Russell Bridges , known professionally as Leon Russell, is an American musician and songwriter, who has recorded as a session musician, sideman, and maintained a solo career in music....
, Vicky Leandros
Vicky Leandros
Vicky Leandros is a Greek singer with a long international career. She is the daughter of singer, musician and composer Leandros Papathanasiou...
, Kim Carnes
Kim Carnes
Kim Carnes is an American singer-songwriter. She is a two-time Grammy Award winner noted for her distinctive raspy vocal style. Some people have called her "The Female Rod Stewart" due to her raspy voice....
, Dean Martin
Dean Martin
Dean Martin was an American singer, film actor, television star and comedian. Martin's hit singles included "Memories Are Made of This", "That's Amore", "Everybody Loves Somebody", "You're Nobody till Somebody Loves You", "Sway", "Volare" and "Ain't That a Kick in the Head?"...
, and Anthony Newley
Anthony Newley
Anthony George Newley was an English actor, singer and songwriter. He enjoyed success as a performer in such diverse fields as rock and roll and stage and screen acting.-Early life:...
.
In 1979, signed by Russ Regan
Russ Regan
Russ Regan is a long-time record executive who was President of both UNI Records, and 20th Century Records. Regan also worked at Motown among other companies. He started with Berry Gordy at Motown and promoted many artists including Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, The Supremes and Smokey Robinson...
to Interworld Music/CBS Records as writer and producer, Wirtz returned to the studio to produce his third solo album, Lost Pets, sequentially joined by ace guitarists Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett (guitarist)
Richard Bennett is a touring sideman, session veteran, and record producer. As a touring sideman, he performed with Neil Diamond for 17 years, and Mark Knopfler since 1994. As a session player, he has worked with artists ranging from Billy Joel and Barbra Streisand to Rodney Crowell and Vince Gill...
and John Beland, keyboard players Alan Lindgren and Tom Hensley, drummers Billy Thomas and Denny Seiwell, and bassists David Hungate
David Hungate
David Hungate is a bass player noted as a member of Los Angeles pop-rock band Toto from 1977-1982. Boz Scaggs's Silk Degrees album of 1976 included Hungate and several other future members of Toto...
and Les Hurdle. In the midst of a session for the only half-finished production, a medical emergency call from his daughter's kindergarten principal prompted Wirtz to close the piano lid, abort the project and leave the studio. Priority committed to hands-on single parenting of his daughter Nicole, Wirtz vanished into obscurity and a hiatus from the music business that would last for more than twenty years. During those years, after savings had run out and royalties had dwindled, Wirtz took on a gamut of art-alien jobs, including tele-marketer, waiter, maître d', blood-stock agent, interpreter, voice-over artist, undercover agent, seminar leader and eventually sales manager for the prestigious Geneva merger & acquisition firm.
While taking acting classes during off-times and burning the midnight oil in the pursuit of a new career as a novelist, Wirtz also realized a life-long ambition to be a comedian by studying and performing at Hollywood's Groundlings Improv Theater, to eventually take his first steps onto the stages of Hollywood's comedy clubs, including The Comedy Store
The Comedy Store
The Comedy Store is a comedy club located in West Hollywood, California, at 8433 Sunset Boulevard on the Sunset Strip. It has a sister comedy club in La Jolla, San Diego, California.-History:...
and The Improv
The Improv
The Improv is a comedy club franchise. Originally, it was a single venue founded in 1963 by Budd Friedman and located in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of New York City on West 44th near the SE corner of 9th Ave. A second location was opened in 1974 at 8162 Melrose Avenue in the Fairfax District...
. In 1996, his daughter grown up and in college, Wirtz moved to Savannah
Savannah, Georgia
Savannah is the largest city and the county seat of Chatham County, in the U.S. state of Georgia. Established in 1733, the city of Savannah was the colonial capital of the Province of Georgia and later the first state capital of Georgia. Today Savannah is an industrial center and an important...
, Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
, where he kept busy as an award-winning freelance magazine columnist/food- and drama critic, while publishing his first novels, Sisyphus Rocks and Love Is Eggshaped, as well as selling his paintings in a Savannah gallery.
In 2004, giving in to the plea from his by-now Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
-residing daughter Nicole to produce her rock-band leader boyfriend's debut album, Wirtz flew to Barcelona and returned to the studio for the first time in many years to produce Les Philippes' Philharmonic Philanthropy. Before year's end, the band's album was #1 in the Independent label charts and has since become a 'neo-psych Rock' cult classic. His music appetite re-awakened, Wirtz continued his rebounded studio activities by subsequently producing his own Mark Wirtz Eartheatre solo album Love Is Eggshaped, Spyderbaby UK's Glassblower CD, and Anthony Rivers' Marked Confidential. Finally, in January 2006, Wirtz found a path back to his comedy dream by hooking up with Jacksonville
Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Florida in terms of both population and land area, and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. It is the county seat of Duval County, with which the city government consolidated in 1968...
, Florida's
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
"Jax Comics" group of working comedian
Comedian
A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience, primarily by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting a fool, as in slapstick, or employing prop comedy...
s, initially working out at the Comedy Zone, then moving on by touring the southeast's
Southeastern United States
The Southeastern United States, colloquially referred to as the Southeast, is the eastern portion of the Southern United States. It is one of the most populous regions in the United States of America....
comedy club
Comedy club
A comedy club is a venue, typically a nightclub, bar, or restaurant where people watch or listen to performances, including stand-up comedians, improvisational comedians, impersonators, magicians, ventriloquists and other comedy acts...
s in the development of his stand-up comedy act.
In the Spring of 2010, Wirtz produced an all-new solo studio album, "Lost Pets 2," scheduled for international release bv PoppyDisc Records in October 2010. In addition, in February 2011, Wirtz is publishing his novella, "Dreamer Of Glass Beach," a futuristic fable for all ages
At the current time, Wirtz resides in Savannah, GA, and is workshopping a multi-media project that combines his music, comedy and writing in the form of a one-man show, a new studio CD, and a book – all thematically linked under the collective title, Cooking For Cannibals.