Editing Rio Reiser (section)

=== Early years ===
Reiser's father was an engineer for [[Siemens]], and the family moved several times because of his father's work; they lived in [[West Berlin]], [[Upper Bavaria]], [[Nuremberg]], [[Mannheim]], and [[Fellbach]]. Reiser was never really able to feel at home in any of these places. Many of his friends said, when they were asked in an interview broadcast on the TV channel [[Arte]] in 1998, two years after his death, that he started playing music to create a place where he felt at home.

Reiser was known by his friends as someone who had a special mind of his own. For example, he managed to persuade his mother Erika Möbius that he was allowed to stop attending school and start an apprenticeship in a studio for photography, which he then quit in order to join a music conservatory and later to follow his two older brothers to West Berlin at the early age of 17 in order to put the world's first "Rock Opera" onto stage. His mother supported his musical and artistic ambitions since she had soon realized that he was an [[autodidact]]; he never learned things when he was taught by someone else. Thus he taught himself how to play [[cello]], guitar, piano and other instruments, wrote lyrics and poetry and later also assumed jobs as actor in some movies and TV shows or at the theatre.

He was given his nickname ''Rio'' as teenager by an eccentric artist and friend of the family who invented the name "Rio de Galaxis" for him in an "intergalactic youth ordination". He kept the nickname and later decided to change his name from Ralph Möbius to Rio Reiser when he played a leading role in the movie ''{{ill|Johnny West (1977 film)|de|3=Johnny West|lt=Johnny West}}'' and needed a catchy artist name. He took the idea for the name Reiser from his older brother Gert who had occasionally used it as artist name before. The name makes reference to the main character of the 1785-86 autobiographical novel ''{{Interlanguage link|Anton Reiser|de}}'' by [[Karl Philipp Moritz]].

During his teenage years, Rio Reiser first discovered—and immediately became a big fan of—[[The Beatles]] at age 13 who represented the sound—and way of life—of the future for him and also inspired him to learn to play guitar, to compose his own songs and to form his first band. Later he preferred the rough, direct sound of [[The Rolling Stones]]. In reference to John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who were usually credited as "Lennon/McCartney" with respect of the songs they wrote, Rio and his band colleague and best friend R.P.S. Lanrue (real name Ralph Peter Steitz) as composers of most of the Ton Steine Scherben-songs were often credited as "Möbius/Steitz". Besides contemporary rock bands which became the soundtrack of the social changes beginning in the Sixties, Rio Reiser was also influenced by other music styles including orchestral film soundtracks, German "folk songs" and traditional music and German singers such as [[Marlene Dietrich]]. The [[avant-garde]] director [[Rosa von Praunheim]] repeatedly gave Reiser artistic suggestions.<ref name="Rosa von Praunheim">{{cite magazine|title=Wenn die Nacht am tiefsten|url= https://www.rollingstone.de/wenn-die-nacht-am-tiefsten-mit-nikel-pallat-auf-der-ton-steine-scherben-ausstellung-2322157/|magazine=[[Rolling Stone]]|date= 22 June 2021|access-date=2021-12-25}}</ref>

Reiser was unique among German rock stars of his time in being openly gay.  He came out in 1970 and lived openly as gay in his private life.  At the beginning of his career, Reiser sometimes felt like a misfit among the political groups and various movements which, in the early Seventies, did not strongly approve of homosexuality.  He later gained confidence while working with artists who were engaged in the newly forming gay movement of Berlin, including the gay performance group "Brühwarm" which recorded two LPs with music composed by Ton Steine Scherben.  Reiser did not [[Coming out|come out]] publicly until the 1980s.<ref name="riolyrics">{{citation |title=Rock king of Germany |date=23 August 1996 |url=http://www.riolyrics.de/artikel/id:124 |periodical=[[The Guardian]] |first=Denis |last=Staunton |accessdate=23 October 2007}}</ref>  In 1986 he began to discuss being gay in interviews and talk-shows.<ref name="MannFuerMann">Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller: ''Mann für Mann – Ein biographisches Lexikon.'' Suhrkamp Taschenbuch, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-518-39766-4.</ref>

As an adult, Rio soon discovered his musical talents, which opened a way for him to express himself, thus enabling him to overcome restraints he otherwise felt due to a certain, intrinsic insecurity or shyness towards other people. The ability to reach out to others—even to the unknown masses in a concert audience—through his musical performance was later often referred to as being the core of his special talent to touch his listeners, or even to "build a relationship" with each of them for the period of a concert.