Today's show was opened by the Monks with the original
"Boys are boys and girls are choice". A few days ago they
released their first records with an unusual, new and surprising sound.
Germany, July 1966
In retrospect I don't see a difference between
James Last and the Beatles.
Not to mention the unutterable Rolling Stones.
It was a shock to see them play
among the other harmless bands.
The vitality and the minimalism,
back then I didn't know you could call it minimalism.
That fascinated me, and the hardness. Their style was hard.
There wasn't anything like it.
"The beat is dead, long live the hop"!
"Monks" want to outstrip the Beatles
Learnt beat music in the army
Trench
Kennedy publishes pictures of soviet missile installations
on Cuba and reveals soviet intent to turn Castro's sugar island
into a military base.
The fear of a war terrified the world for an entire week.
After their turbulent American tour the Beatles come back to England.
The following should be considered as an observation,
a study on a manifestation, which hardly can be described as
excitement, ecstasy, or hysteria.
It is phenomenon, something for psychologists,
sociologists, and cultural critics.
Youth organizing "leisure time". Not in Liverpool but in Hamburg.
A genre picture, which was recorded during
the nomination of Germany's best "beatle band".
Folkwang School of Design
Basic Course
"Gestalt" is a fantastic term that suggest no gradation between
cause and effect.
"the art of advertising"
Ulm School of Design
"also tomorrow no experiments"
It sounded different. I thought you have to do this band.
I liked that Remy and Niemann were so much behind it.
The music fascinated me because it was archaic,
some sort of industrial music.
The lyrics indicated something that wasn't the typical love song.
Then we started working.
And both told me they would work even more on the lyrics.
"The inappropriate war"
Trespassing for underaged not allowed
The "Top Ten", formerly the Hypodrome, rebuilt,
Hamburg's 1st beat joint, in 60/61 monthly gigs of the Beatles,
now renovated, compared to the "Star-Club" more refined.
3 important events connect the Beatles to the "Top Ten":
1. Here they had their first loyal fan base.
2. Here they were discovered for their first recordings.
3. Here their trademark was created; the haircut.
Noise, Noise and no melody
The Monks: Fight against soft style of the Beatles
"The beat is dead, long live the hop"!
It was so loud that I left the club.
I couldn't bear it. My ears were blown off.
I said to myself "get out and listen to it from the outside".
There it filtered differently and I thought, "that's it".
"This sound is unmistakable".
"If we can preserve it on tape this way
then we are talking about a turning point in rock history".
You see, back then the term didn't exist. I realized later,
that this was an early form of heavy metal.
Whereas with other bands there is a guitarist, a bassist, a drummer
and each of them had its qualities and somehow they got a sound.
With the Monks you had a concentrated elemental force,
the single instrument wasn't important anymore.
It was the total sound as a group.
For me it was a huge challenge to capture that wall of sound on tape.
We didn't want to lose any of it.
The main microphone was the ambient one,
which reflected the entire band.
For support of each individual instrument we used single mikes
to get the distorted guitar, the electrified banjo
or the shrieking organ. That's what we wanted to transmit.
In 2 days we recorded an entire LP.
There was no time for fooling around. It had to be ready.
Beat-Club, July 1966
From the first beat on I was electrified.
The vitality they transmitted.
Other bands just stood at the microphone, often times blasé
imitating the English, like the Lord of Kensington for example.
You could feel a certain arrogance.
If you watch Beat-Club you see how stiff and neat people went there,
somehow still very bourgeois.
Beat music's origin stems from an old fashioned aesthetic order,
indulging in Bach, the tonic, subdominant and dominant
as the superstructure.
The Monks negated all that.
Ok, it was fun too, what the Monks did.
But it was a bit more than just fun.
In my eyes the Monks were calling upon people for liberation.
We could have had the 68' revolution 2 years earlier
if people just had understood.
"Chancellor Erhard"
It wasn't good business for the boys.
It was too difficult to make the big buck.
Brutal "Monks"
There were two different tracks. The big concerts in large halls
and then there were the clubs.
For example in Hamburg the "Star-Club" or the "Top Ten".
But that wasn't everything.
Especially in the small towns there were guesthouses with ballrooms
and on Sundays and Saturdays they organized a teenage dance.
For very little money young people could go and dance.
Most of the times when the Monks started playing
for the first two songs nobody would join the dance floor.
That enervated the Monks and the club owner.
He would ask me, "hey, what is that? People don't like that music".
The US-Beatles with the sun roofs
Their trademark: Neat bald heads
Complication
People cry People die for you.
People kill People will for you.
People run Ain't it fun for you?
People go To their deaths for you.
After the explosion 4 years ago this sports car was named
"White Orchid".
A work by the pop artist Arman.
In Düsseldorf at Corneliusstrasse 15 the sculpture is an ornamental
piece among other pop attractions for a "creative workshop".
The owner of the workshop paid $3.000 for the "White Orchid".
Charles Wilp, pop fanatic and star of the German ad photographers.
Since my early days I am into space travel, so I knew about
physical weightlessness.
It started in 63 with the launching of the first Apollo.
And I connected that with my idea of the Monks.
If I may complete, which art status the Monks had,
then for me it was the first moment of a weightless group,
not only mentally weightless but also physically
by smashing to pieces everything.
Corneliusstrasse was thrown into turmoil and the young kids
surrounded them because they had the feeling for this music.
They came into the right atmosphere.
I didn't have to change their "world".
The fact that they wore tonsures meant to be blasphemous
like me with my nuns.
It happened through Remy and Niemann. Both saw in me
the right person to promote the Monks, which I couldn't.
But I could help by getting them to perform my advertising music
and trying to cause an overnight success.
That's how I met with the artificial creation "monks".
Musically they stood on a very high platform.
You couldn't categorize them. It was hard rock -
if you could call it rock at all.
They made vibrations, high frequency rhythms,
then low frequency rhythms. Then no rhythms at all.
They made the cuts you need in today's techno
to be able to create those fast TV commercials.
So, they also were the precursors of techno.
The empty F sharp or the empty C sharp,
which they suddenly played.
Then they stopped and Roger hit with his instrument into the gaps.
That was the new phenomenon where I could use my texts.
At each gap I said SEXY and if I wasn't saying it
then it was Marsha Hunt or Donna Summer.
Well of the GODS with the Afri tube.
We didn't record the music. I wanted to use some percussions.
The musicologists and the CEO couldn't agree with me
and the whole thing failed.
Please hand out the notes.
I performed my Afri Cola music with 48 strings, 2 oboes, 2 harps,
4 timpani - classical instruments.
And created this "unreal" sound, which I always wanted to do
and which I could have achieved faster with the Monks.
Then I didn't have to deal with the burden of the conventions.
It would have been easy to work exclusively with ad clients.
You see, 30 years later Germany is still on the Afri high.
If they had have the courage, like I did,
the Monks would still be in the top ten.
Woman turns woman and is liberated.
Girlpower and freedom of men.
Marriage or no marriage - is no question anymore.
What's the benefit of a few gigs in small or big towns
if the spirit is not produced and transferred by the media.
I am not talking about regular media, such as newspapers.
I am talking about real advertising. Advertising, and that's what
Niemann & Remy knew, advertising with the major corporations.
That was a principle back then.
If the first record didn't succeed you got rid of it.
At least I had the chance to produce two follow up singles.
But they failed too.
We were always hoping for a bigger breakthrough.
The first one financially would have been shortly before the break-up
the tour to the Far East, Asia, Saigon, Tokyo... well, Asia.
For 6 months with good pay. Everything was organized,
all visa issued, the band waiting at Frankfurt airport
and one guy didn't show.