Mike Mareen was born in post-war West Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, West Germany

West Germany

West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

, and grew up in Lüneburg

Lüneburg

Lüneburg is a town in the German state of Lower Saxony. It is located about southeast of fellow Hanseatic city Hamburg. It is part of the Hamburg Metropolitan Region, and one of Hamburg's inner suburbs...

. His first musical success was with the band Cemetery Institution who played at Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

's Star-Club

Star-Club

The Star-Club was a music club in Hamburg, Germany that opened Friday 13 April 1962 and was initially operated by Manfred Weissleder and Horst Fascher. In the sixties, many of the giants of rock music played at the club. The club closed on 31 December 1969 and the building it occupied was...

. Mareen later became a merchant sailor

Merchant Navy

The Merchant Navy is the maritime register of the United Kingdom, and describes the seagoing commercial interests of UK-registered ships and their crews. Merchant Navy vessels fly the Red Ensign and are regulated by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency...

, a job which eventually took him to New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 where he played with several American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 groups. Upon his return to Europe, Mareen became involved with the production of Italo Disco

Italo disco

Italo disco encompasses much of the dance music output in Europe during the 1980s. It is one of the world's first forms of mostly electronic dance music and evolved during the late 1970s and early 1980s in Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and other parts of Europe...

 records. During the 1980s, he had some considerable success, with frequent television appearances in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 and Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

. His biggest hits were "Dancing In The Dark" (1985) and "Love Spy" (1986).

Albums

• 1986 - Dance Control
• 1987 - Let's Start Now
• 1998 - The Best Of Mike Mareen
• 2000 - TV Talk 2000
• 2004 - Darkness & Light