London Boys – Requiem

Video #1 = BBC 1 broadcast on 11 May 1989. Video #2 is their official video from 1988.

Requiem was the first single from the 1988 album The Twelve Commandments of Dance. It reached number 4 on the UK Singles chart and #8 in Ireland. London Boys were German-based English dance-pop duo composed of Edem Ephraim and Dennis Fuller.

Although Edem Ephraim (born in London) and Dennis Fuller (born in Jamaica) had both once lived near Hamburg, Germany, they actually met whilst at school in Greenwich, London.

The pair, who both worked as roller-blade dancers, formed London Boys in 1986 along with the songwriter and producer Ralf-René Maué.

The duo originally released Requiem and London Nights in 1988, but it wasn’t until April 1989 that Requiem became London Boys’ breakthrough hit, reaching number four on the UK Singles Chart.

Embed

Copy and paste this HTML code into your webpage to embed.

London Boys - Requiem

London Boys - Requiem (Official Video)03:50

But whilst we remember the start of their career being full of success and optimism, what we didn’t know until recently was anything about the incredibly sad tragedy that took the lives of both Ephraim and Fuller when they were far too young.

Tragically, on 21st January 1996, whilst driving to a ski resort in the Austrian Alps in bad weather conditions, Fuller, Ephraim, Ephraim’s wife Bettina and a mutual friend from Hamburg were all killed when a drunk driver hit their vehicle.

The Swiss drunk driver, who was attempting to overtake a car, and whom it later transpired had been performing dangerous overtaking manoeuvres for a number of miles beforehand, hit the car head-on and also died.

Edem Ephraim and his wife left behind a son called Stevie who was just three years old at the time, and Dennis Fuller left behind his 10-year-old daughter Laura.

Views: 6