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About David Soul |
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ABOUT DAVID SOUL GALLERIES WHAT’S NEW SITE STUFF
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From DavidSoul.com; used by permission. David Soul's career spans forty-five years during which he has performed as an actor, director, producer, singer/songwriter, concert performer, and social activist. Born in Chicago, Illinois, on August 28,1943, David Solberg (Soul) spent the first twelve years of his life between the prairies of South Dakota and the divided city of post WWII Berlin. Arriving in 1949 only weeks after the 'Berlin Airlift' was suspended and the Soviets had lifted the ban on road and train travel, David's father, Dr. Richard Solberg — professor of History and Political Science as well as an ordained minister — moved his family to Berlin where he served as Religious Affairs Advisor to the U.S. High Commission and from 1953 as Senior Representative for the Lutheran World Federation, a refugee relief organization. As advisor to the U.S. Commission in Berlin, Dr. Solberg's mandate was two-fold: To help sustain the life and health of the Church in the Soviet controlled East Zone and secondly, as those religious communities were an important source of valuable information for the allies in the escalating Cold War, Pastor Solberg was to gather information that could be useful to the U.S. authorities. Because the Church was so central to the life of the German people, the Soviets, for fear of a severe backlash, could not afford to close them down. Dr. Solberg used his special credentials as a churchman to the gain entry into East Germany and travelled freely. In 1953 Dr. Solberg was appointed Senior Representative for the Lutheran World Federation a position in which his primary function was to oversee refugee relief operations in West Berlin as well as to facilitate the reuniting and relocation of families who had been split apart by the iron hand of Communist controlled Eastern Europe and who had risked their lives to flee into West Berlin. By 1956, when the Solberg family left West Berlin and returned to their home in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, up to 6,000 people a week were defecting into the barbed-wire enclosed "island city." For this reason, the Berlin Wall was finally erected in 1961. Deeply affected by his experiences in Berlin, David's earliest thoughts of a vocation were to follow in his father's footsteps. In 1959 he became involved with the South Dakota Young Democrats in the ultimately successful campaign to elect John Kennedy as President. David was also an avid sportsman and baseball was his first love. Completing high school in 1961, the 18-year-old was offered a professional baseball contract with the Chicago White Sox organization. But, in his second year of college, David opted instead to accompany his family to Mexico City where his father had accepted a professorship at the Collegio Americano, a graduate school for young diplomats. Inspired by his father's work and President John Kennedy's call to... "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country"... young Solberg hoped to join the diplomatic service. In Mexico City he learned Spanish and studied Latin American social/political history. He was fluent in both German and Spanish. The detour into entertainment was purely accidental. It began with a group of radicalized (anti-U.S.) University of Mexico students whose singular aim was to rid Mexico of its internal corruption and reclaim their country from the influences of large U.S. corporations in collusion with the U.S. government. "Mexico for Mexicans" was their battle cry. Befriended by these students, they gave David a guitar and taught him the indigenous songs of Mexico. Hitch-hiking back to the Midwest and in need of work, Solberg auditioned for a job singing folk music at the Ten O'Clock Scholar, a University of Minnesota coffee-house which had recently seen the likes of Bobby Zimmerman, aka Bob Dylan, leave for New York City. He was the only "blond, blue-eyed Norwegian who could sing a Mexican folk song" and thanks to those Mexican students, he won the job. Beginnings in the theatre were also rooted in Minneapolis under equally flukish circumstances. Married at twenty-one and with a wife and child to support, Solberg had a major falling out over a friend's amorous pursuit of his wife. The 'friend' was an actor with the Firehouse Theatre (later re-formed in New York as the famous Cafe La Mama) and was beginning rehearsals for the U.S. premier production of John Arden's Sergeant Musgraves Dance. 'Diplomacy' went out the window and following a confrontation that left David's friend unable to continue in the play, Solberg took over his role as the 'Pugnacious Collier.' |
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