He was very quiet, staring into space through his long hair. Even a “Yes” or “No” answer from him was quite something. But then he had only called me because someone had told him I owned a synthesizer. In a small town like Enger in East Westphalia in the late summer of 1982, it was actually a good reason to call someone, simply because they had such a “funny noise maker” at home, and especially if they owned the thing.

In the late summer of 1982 the time was ripe, not only in Enger. A political era had come to an end; a chancellor had been replaced by a cabbage. But then again, no one believed in positive change thanks to bourgeois politics anymore, anyway. In Spain, the world football championship had reached the height of boredom with an undeserving champion who had not scored once in the qualifications, and even less deserving runner-up whose scandalous match against Austria had silenced even the commentators on public television. People wanted to be successful at any cost. I was disgusted.

As if those were the good old days: records could still be scratched, cars did not have airbags and you still had to go to the movies to see the latest releases. If you did not want to go to the army you had no other choice but to sue West Germany. East Germany was on a different planet and there were just two years to go until 1984. Big Brother is watching you. Everything is under control.

Yet in Enger not everything was under control. We had found a niche, the “Forum”. Without compromises, without any support, and in no time at all, my friends and I had turned the club into the hippest New Wave-Punk-Underground-Whateveryoucallit club in all of Westphalia. “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell was one of our hymns, Bowie’s old song “Heroes” was another one. I was the DJ. A dream had come true.
Frank was actually more into Klaus Schulze (what a shame he missed out on that) but we found a compromise: after I had played “Underpass” by John Foxx, from his solo album “Metamatic”, his eyes turned all gleamy and he uttered a whole sentence: “This is bloody brilliant!” So Frank brought his equipment. Apart from his ARP ODESSEY with a MFB Sequencer and TR 606 Rhythm-box from Roland, his Hohner-String-Ensemble broadened my horizon immensely.

For the first time it was possible to play more than one note at a time, since this synthesizer was not monophonic like the older ones. Finally whole chords. And quite amazing ones at that! C major, G major, A minor, F major … marvelous. We were thrilled. The sequences rattled, the rhythm-box clattered, the light diodes raced. I “tap danced” totally beside myself through the flat, and Frank pushed his hair aside and could not help grinning from ear to ear. Several evenings later, after we had produced some kind of trumpet sound which could be played like a fanfare, we could hardly believe our luck. Yet we realised that something was missing. Well, what we needed was a singer…

Originally I wanted to use my own voice as always, but somehow this was different. We needed someone who could actually sing, a “true” singer. Marian lived in Munster at that time and played in some band with friends. I had known him for three years then and always thought of him as gifted. So I called him immediately and he agreed to join us. He came the first weekend in October, listened to what we had worked on, and demanded a piece of paper and a pen. He scribbled something down, grabbed the mike, said, “Start the tape”, and began to sing after eight beats of intro: “Let’s dance in style, let’s dance for a while…” All three of “knew” that something very special had just happened.

We had our first live performance on the 31st of December 1982 - naturally in the Forum. We called ourselves “Forever Young”, had had some posters printed and stood on stage now, all three of us. Well, actually, we were four. Since we could not play everything live, we had put some stuff from the sequencer and the rhythm machine on tape. The reel-to-reel was placed on top of a table in the centre of the stage that was entirely black and white. Marian was standing on the right, a slide with the logo from our posters was projected on a big screen on the left, and Frank and I stood in between behind our synthesizer. We had been working hard during the previous three months. We had written 15 songs, some were even recorded. We had borrowed instruments and learned how to use them. We also had to get to know each other to be able to communicate in some kind of “secret language”, since none of us could read music. On top of everything, Marian was only available on weekends because he was still making some music back in Munster. But everything worked out well. We could hardly believe it!

That first live performance was a great success. An idea had turned into an actual project. More importantly, we were all sure that the gig was the hour our band was born. Frank moved to Munster. We wanted to work there since we could use a studio there. Now it was my turn to drive to Munster every weekend. I could not move there since I was an “apprentice”. I was a conscientious objector. However, I must not have appeared too credible in the two court hearings and there was still the possibility I might be conscripted. So I had started an apprenticeship as a mechanical engineer in Bielefeld. Hard, precise work.
“No pause, history is being made, it’s moving on.” Yes, it was also the time of the New German Wave, of DAF, of Ideal and Fehlfarben. I also played their music in the Forum but by now people also danced to “Forever Young”. We had finished our first demo tape and were proud to play it in public. We had plans to produce an independent record but we lacked the money. We just recorded one demo after the other. I was quite busy with my apprenticeship, the Forum, Munster, long nights and day far too short. Mostly I had to run on only two hours’ sleep. But we got a lot done.

In Munster then we founded Nelson, a project for artist, democratic, socialist, all for one, one for all, a commune, idealistic, a round table in the kitchen, peace, fun, pancakes, shared pain is half the pain, afternoons in Utopia. Ariane, Bernd, Frank, Julia, Marian, Steffi and Ulli. We dreamed a lot, talked a lot, worked a lot and fought a lot. But at the bottom of our hearts we agreed. The contract to found Nelson was seven pages long. Forming different constellations all members could be creative. All incoming money was shared and managed by the whole group. Everything, except for purely artistical matters, was decided upon by everybody with a simple majority. At that time, there wasn’t so much to make decisions about and most of our income consisted of a stolen piece of cheese that had to be divided into seven equal bits. The only one of us who earned some real money was Ulli who worked as cabby in Berlin. He could sponsor the rest of us to buy our desperately needed equipment. We lived and worked and had fun. The future was happening right now…

Finally in June 1983 I had finished my apprenticeship. We had written a lot of songs then: “Summer in Berlin”, “Leben ohne Ende”, “Blauer Engel”, “Traumtaenzer”, “To Germany with Love”, “A Victory of Love”, “In the Mood”. Before I started my alternative national service, I treated myself to a few days in the Normandy, France, with my girlfriend Karin. I needed some time to breathe. Ten days had to do. One day after my return, on the 1st of July, I started my alternative national service with the Institute of Documentation and Information of Social Medicine and Public Health Care, in short IDIS. The length of the name of the place was however the total opposite to the amount of work there. Thank God. Anyway, just as I returned from my first day there, my girlfriend jumped on me at the door saying:

“BERND, TAKE A SEAT, YOU’RE NOT GOING TO BELIVE IT!”
“Why? What happened?”
“You better sit down first.”
“I am already sitting down.” I replied after I had taken seat on an armchair, ready to face the bad news.
“I just talked with Muenster on the phone”, she said.
“Did somebody break into the practice room?” It would not have been the first time.
“No, no, take it easy”, she said extremely excited.
“I am perfectly calm”, I replied although I was getting nervous now.
“You got a record contract!” she burst out. “Come again? What? Ha?” Gibberish.
“Well, actually, you can take a pick out of three different offers”.
“Stop pulling my leg!”
“Call Muenster then!”
And that was what I did.
“Hi Bernd,” said Frank, bored to death, “How is it hanging?”
“Well, there you are,” I said disappointed and relieved at the same time by Frank’s coolness. “Karin was just trying to take the piss here, telling me we had a record deal”
“No, that’s wrong. We don’t have one yet. But we can choose between three offers”.

I thought my heart had stopped. I still could not believe the whole thing. But it looked like I had to…
As I found out later Frank and Marian had gone to Berlin to play the demo tapes to a few producers and companies. Their reaction had been amazing. To all of us. Suddenly we were in the position to choose our future employer. After a few long discussions at our Round Table in Muenster Nelson decided to make the deal with the Budde-Verlag. That was mainly because Colin Pearson worked there as a producer.

Understandingly we love the idea of working with an English producer. We were all extremely euphoric and worked on more songs. The next one we produced was “Big in Japan”, a song that had been lying around for ages but we had always avoided to dig back up. When the Budde-Verlag listened to the song, they must have felt as if there were church bells ringing in their heads. Immediately they gave us time in the studio to record the first three songs.

Therefore all of us, including our synthesizers, drove to Berlin to the Studio 54 in August 1983. A ‘real’ studio. A huge control panel, of 24-channel tapemachine, meter-high effecttracks. We were truly in paradise. Or that’s how we felt. But at the same time all these unlimited opportunities gave us more problems that we thought. That was a lesson we had to learn quite a few times actually in the following years: the quality of music does not depend upon the technical possibilities but upon the ideas one has. It took us almost a decade to really understand and live this.

After two weeks of hard work in the studio we had made it. “Big in Japan”, “Forever Young” and “Seeds” were finally produced. The biggest surprise had been “Forever Young”. During the production period, it came out that it was actually more like a ballad. We had extreme difficulties in the studio to realize the Dance-Groove we had used on our demo tape. Hours of hopeless fiddeling around had passed until all of a sudden the producer put all the drum and rhythm pots down and all there was left was Marian’s voice and the synthesizer. We could hardly believe it. It was beautiful. And so we decided to keep it that way. We did release a dance version on 12” but much later.

After that the Budde-Verlag organised the actual record deal. Yet again we had a choice between several offers. In the end WEA in Hamburg got the deal, after all sides had agreed to release “Big in Japan” first. It did not really matter to us back then which song was going to be released first. Basically all we wanted was to hold our first own record in our hands. But until then there was still lots to learn.

The most important experience was probably the story about those jumpers. We had totally forgotten that a record always had a cover, and that on the cover there is (usually) a picture, and that this picture is (often enough) one from the band. So now we had to present the band ‘somehow’. Everybody was concerned about this ‘somehow’. At WEA there was a guy who had spent a lot of time thinking about this. He knew exactly what we should look like, and especially what we had to wear: thick, huge, hand-knitted Norway-jumpers. We were not prepared to be confronted with, as far as we were concerned, something so extremely bad taste.

Under no circumstances at all would we have wanted to dress up as if we were on a skiing break.
Everybody tried to talk to us into it, though, and finally we gave in. We thought that our first photo shoot was a real drag. Especially those 1000-watt spot lights were a pain in the ass. It was no fun to sit tightly together on a wooden bench wearing those dreadful jumpers and basically being burned alive. Therefore we were stunned to find out two weeks later that the pictures did not look that bad after all. The Westfaelische stubbornness obviously does not get you everywhere. We were very naïve and idealistic back then. And no matter whether that is good or bad we still are to a certain extent.

The last few days in 1983 really seemed to drag on. We all did our jobs. Marian was an assistant in some kitchen, Frank was studying and I was still doing my alternative national service. Everything was still the same. We met up every weekend in Muenster to work on our music. And we all tried to stay really calm although we were nervous as hell. The 14th of January 1984 was the day the first song of Alphaville was going to be released.

So, where was I? Ah yeah, 17th of January 1984. It was more or less a day like any other. Nothing in particular happen. You drag yourself out of bed, stare at the goods station of Muenster, drenched in fog, you go to the kitchen, read ‘Peace, Fun & Pancakes’ written across the ceiling for the 753rd time, sip coffee that is much too strong, naturally, get some rolls from the bakery shop and behave as if everything is still the same.

And it is. Except for a little, tiny difference: everybody can buy your record in the stores from today on. Well, not everybody. WEA has put out only 5000 for the start. But we already thought that was slightly over the top. 1000 records would have done quite nicely. To sell 1000 was my goal anyway.
Everybody from NELSON sent us off that day with an encouraging slap on the back. And so we went out into the big, wide world of show business. We caught a train to Hamburg to meet promotional team of our record company. We were supposed to go on a weeklong station-tour once across Germany from north to south. Station-tour means that, accompanied by a guy from WEA and his car, we basically visit every town that has a radio station. In 1984 that wasn’t much of a deal: Hamburg (NDR), Cologne (WDR), Frankfurt (HR), Stuttgart (SDR), Saarbrucken (SR), and Munich (BR). We also went to Luxembourg, since Radio Luxembourg was the first (enemy) private station, and had a short encounter with the professional methods of aggressive marketing.

Chris Roberts, a famous singer, told us greenhorns how we could sell more records appearing on television in front of a blue instead of a red background. He had hired some people at the university in Tubingen to academically research that for him. Marian, Frank and I just look at each other in bewilderment for a second and I thought to myself, “Guess we were lucky so far with our Norway-jumpers, but hell knows what’s coming up next”. Anyway, station-tour means first and foremost to talk to radio editors and play along when our promoter tries to sell us and our single to somebody who’s got other stuff on his mind.
But, surprisingly, the reactions were pretty good.

We did our first radio interviews live on the air and had to learn extremely quickly how to give intelligent answers to stupid questions. “How does one from Muenster come about making international music?”, “What made you come up with the idea to wear those Norway-jumpers?”, “Where is the name Alphaville from?”, “Have you ever been to Japan?”, “Are those your real names?” etc.
As far as I remember we were all pretty nervous. Everything was so new and different. Only Frank found his new role quickly: he just didn’t say anything at all. Well, that wasn’t so new to us but it confused some of the radio journalist when they didn’t get answer from him in a live interview but merely a blank stare. Only sometimes he managed a “Hmm”.

We met countless people, whether we wanted to or not, and every single one of the was, of course, extremely important. Many of these important people greeted us saying: “Hey, your song could be a hit.” Until then I hadn’t even thought about what a hit meant. For me there was only music that I loved and music that I had no interest in. That was it. But obviously there was another ‘objective’ aspect that defined the “quality” of a record. And that was a little number written in front of the record or single on a poster of an industry publication called ‘Music Market’. These posters were put up everywhere boasting the latest official German music charts - red for singles, blue for albums. Maybe Chris Roberts chose those colours but I never found out.

Anyway, those posters where I like the bible of the business. Everybody waited impatiently for each Tuesday because at about 11 p.m. the new chart positions reached the record companies. Celebration and disappointment were close together. We didn’t think much of all that hype. We just wanted to sell a few records. The TOP 75 was useless, full of crap. Back then the number one was an old Drafi Deutscher song by Nino de Angelo. And, yeah, there was of course Frankie’s “Relax” next to a big arrow pointing upwards. It was to be number one in a few weeks time. Great song.

At the end of our weeklong tour, we reached Munich. And again, everything we did there was a first for us. We did our first Bravo interview. Well, it wasn’t really an interview but a dinner with the music editor Ulli Weisbrodt to get to know each other. He was quite an intelligent man, slightly clinical. We didn’t really fit his picture of rising popstars since we talked about Nelson a lot (which we did to everybody whether they asked or not) so he got more and more chatty as the evening proceeded. He told us quite frankly that Bravo usually only writes three stories about every band: the ‘rising stars’-story, the ‘they are the greatest’-story and the ‘it’s all over’-story. And everything is planned upfront. So if it doesn’t happen according to Bravo’s plans, they will make it happen. And mostly the succeed. Well, that’s just great.

And then there was our first television appearance. Flashlights. The show was recorded at the Bavaria Studios. For the first time we experienced the great boredom such television studios radiate. We also met Howard Carpendale and Joan Baez.My senses started to go on strike, unable to take in anymore. But nonetheless we had to go on stage. What could happen, really, we had rehearsed after all. Yet we were all quite frozen with fear. In the end everybody interpreted that as coolness. Just brilliant. They had flown in our Norway-jumpers.

After the photoshoot they had taken them away from us and this time again they went into some box after the show. Somebody must be really scared to lose these expensive jumpers. Well, maybe I had been fooled and it wasn’t us that were important on the stage but some skillfully knitted woollies. Just great.
And last but not least there was my first flight. Munich - Dusseldorf. That WAS great. 113 businessman in shirt and tie. Marian had been on a plane before and led us all knowingly through the Dusseldorf airport. And then it was just us again, back in Muenster. It was the first time that Muenster felt like ‘home’ to me. And it wasn’t to be the last time.

Everybody from Nelson was waiting for us, curious to hear our stories but to also pull us back out of the clouds to the ground. There were dishes to be cleaned, food to be bought and rooms to be tidied. After a week of ‘holidays’ I had to go back to my alternative national service. My fellow colleagues there greeted me saying: ”Hey, we’ve heard your song on the radio.” And just a few days later I heard ‘Big in Japan’ being played on the air for the first time myself. Then, at the latest, the fine line between reality and fiction began to blur. Enger had become quite wide and now was somewhere between Hamburg and Munich. Just brilliant.

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From AlphaXpress
1996 - 1997