‘A Formidable Character’: Long-Time MLK Managing Director Annelu Keggenhoff Passes

Annelu Keggenhoff, long-time managing director of Marek Lieberberg Konzertagentur, and its founder’s right hand for nearly four decades, suffered a fatal accident while on vacation in Croatia, July 10. She was 73.

Marek Lieberberg himself received the news with “deep shock”, as did Keggenhoff’s many friends, artists and partners she worked with across her remarkable career, and who’ve been sending their condolences.

According to Lieberberg, she was “the first female managing director in the worldwide music industry. Long before we asked for women in this industry to be regarded as equal, she handled all the major tours, from U2, Madonna, Metallica to Sting, Bryan Adams, Depeche Mode,” the list goes on.

He described her as “sophisticated, refined, elegant, modest and humble, yet very clear and precise. A formidable character in a business that did not have many such characters. A luminous figure in a mainly male rock cosmos. If she hadn’t been real, you’d have to invent her.”

Keggenhoff first joined Lieberberg in 1982. He remembers the day well: “She used to work at a bank where I had an account – a very elegant and cultivated woman, spoke French, Italian, English, fluently, and I saw her sitting on the counter. Everybody else was sat behind, she sat on top. I said, ‘Ms. Keggenhoff, I think you’d be more successful in rock n’ roll than in banking.’ The bank director tried to talk her out of it, but she joined us. It was a wonderful moment, and the beginning of an insanely beautiful time working together.”

Her work in rock and roll was shaped by those same qualities, but she also had a natural hang for the job, as Lieberberg recalls: “With her savoir vivre, combined with the quality of her work, she levelled with artists and their teams in a way no one else had done before. In a way, she was one of them, she loved the bohemian touring lifestyle.”

Depeche Mode manager Jonathan Kessler and Bruce Springsteen’s Jon Landau were among the first to send their condolences. Sting wrote, “We all loved Annelu. How utterly devastating.” Bryan Adams wrote, “I’m so sorry to hear this. You know we loved her immensely.”

Lieberberg said he seldomly witnessed the kind of emphatic, heartfelt reactions to someone’s passing. “It felt like the rock world stood still for a day.” He’s not surprised, though, “because the world lost a stellar figure.”

Keggenhoff and Lieberberg parted ways professionally in 2018, two years after MLK had joined Live Nation, but remained closely in touch since, be it at private or business gatherings. She would have turned 74 in November.

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