London Calling

  Kraftwerk have done it, Rammstein too – their music is trendy in Britain.  Now Wir sind Helden dare to do it; a sly beginning.

  ‘How many of you speak English?’  Cheers.  Loads.  ‘And how any of you don’t speak German?’  Yet more cheers.  ‘You want us to speak English?’ Judith Holofernes asks her audience.  She speaks in an exaggerated accent, although she can speak better.  When she continues, it sounds something like this; ‘You want us to make complete fools of ourselves?!’  Although no one wants this, there was still a ‘Jaaaaaaaaa’ as a response.  Being part of a mass of people doesn’t make one clever.

500 people came this evening, to a gloomy club kept at a subtropical-temperature, the Garage, to see Wir sind Helden.  The place isn’t .  Yet the German pop group, who released their second album in the spring, were advertised as the ‘Top German Indie Band.’  For those who stood in front of the stage last Tuesday, predominantly students, school pupils and other ‘refugees of the business world’, like bassist Mark Tavassol jested, the Helden certainly are much more.  Namely, a piece of home.  For them, the Wir Sind Helden concert was a homecoming concert.  The tickets sold out so quickly that the band added a additional concert to their plan.

  'Ich tausch nicht mehr, ich will mein Leben zurück/ Guten Tag, ich gebe zu, ich war am Anfang entzückt’, blared the quartet at the rollicking crowd, ‘aber euer Leben zwickt und drückt nur dann nicht, wenn man sich bückt.’  Everyone in the room, which is so packed that its ceiling will soon drip with condensation from all the body heat, knows this song from the debut album ‘Die Reklamation.’  Two years ago it became a surprise hit after the band, without having had a record deal, produced a cheap video and unleashed it on MTV. ‘What’s the point of this whole consumption binge?’ the song seemed to ask—which is why the 4 musicians have been seen as a conscience for Generation Golf. In the small club not far from the Shoreditch scene, the message sounded different once again.  The woman we know as Judith Holofernes doesn’t seem to have to run after a missed life anymore.

  The circumstances were never better for German pop music to attract listeners in England.  For a decade German artists in the Electro-scene have been very accepted there.  The avant-garde music of Kraftwerk, Can and Neu! enjoyed cult status.  Chart toppers like the Scottish band Franz Ferdinand cited the neopunk of the Neue Deutsche Welle (New German Wave—of the 1980s)   In addition, home grown acts’ share of the German music industry has risen 40% in the last year.

  ‘We don’t want to conquer abroad’ says Holofernes, putting an end to any hopes of an international career.  In London they now ‘have the urge to start from scratch one more time – and it happens to be in front of exchange students.’  That is not meant as derogatively, as it sounds.  Guitarist and Keyboarder Jean-Michel Tourette jumps in: ‘Of course we have instincts towards development and conquering. We want to come back.’ But they know their market; small in England.  During Holofernes and Co’s tour in Germany, in the first week of their tour they played in front of 3000 to 55,000 people – in the summer festivals there were even more – and since their debut they’ve sold half a million records, yet they are still virtually unknown in the second-hardest pop market in the world (the USA is the first).  But not totally.

  ‘Hey look, that’s Wir sind Helden!’  Holofernes, Tavassol, Tourette and Pola Roy suddenly heard thrilled voices before their entrance.   Two girls mobbed the band who were looking for a decent restaurant near the club.  The English admirers had a huge German flag with them, complete with eagle, and offered it to the band to sign.  Pola Roy was uneasy about the nationalistic appearances of signing such a thing.  He looked around for a bit of paper in his bag that might do the job just as well., They ended up scrawling their names on the crumpled bit of paper from an account statement.  Slightly relieved.  At home the same scene would provoke mass hysteria.

At home, one would certainly not expect them, to hold out in a 2x3 room with blue-whitewashed walls and no windows, called the “dressing room.” The coat hooks have been broken off, there aren’t enough chairs, and there’s just a few cardboard-sandwiches on foil trays and boiling water for tea in a kettle.  ‘I am more worried about the clubs than the audience’ admits Mark Tavassol.  How he would be treated by the people who welcome a different band every night.  ‘The staff lock the back-door, ‘ he continues, ‘show you the outlets and the showers, if there are any, and that’s it.”’

  Why do that to yourself?  A magazine recently reported that Wir sind Helden have now brought out songs in English, French and Japanese.  And, that the band’s record company would send them around the world.  A statement that particularly annoys Judith Holofernes. ‘They haven’t sent us anywhere yet, ’ she says, ‘How anyone could believe we’d start now is just incomprehensible to me. What is it then?  A return to their roots, after they’ve reached everything possible?  ‘That sounds so presumptuous, ’ says Jean-Michel Tourette, ‘because our roots only go back two years. But for a band who had such a sharp ascent in such a short time, it’s beneficial to seek direct contact with their public.”  Only drummer Pola Roy suffers from the crowded club-atmosphere.  He sits behind them, alone, can’t grab hold of anyone or hand out ice-cubes, like the others.  ‘All I get to see is three arses,’ he gripes. 

  The four sit in the tour bus, behind the tinted windows, and go through the order of the set list.  In principle, everything is settled, but since there is still a little bit of time until the concert, Mark Tavassol pulls our another list, a list of prices.  The band wants to expand its range of merchandise.  They think they are big enough to add sweaters and hats to their selection, not just T-shirts.  The only problem: How much should a sweater cost? Is 30 Euros too much? And is it more expensive to send a sweater than a T-shirt? The moral scruples have to be dealt with.  What do other bands do, Holofernes wants to know.  “We don’t have fans anymore,” says Roy reflectively, “we only talk about ‘customers’ now.” It is supposed to be a joke.

  Two girls stand in the rain in front of the bus with books of poetry in their hands.  The bouncier of the two says she became familiar with the Helden as an exchange student in Holzminden.  The other one is silent.  She doesn’t understand any German.  Nevertheless, she thinks the music is „great,“ although she says it more as if she means „okay.“  She doesn’t know which of the four she likes best.  The exchange student raves about Judith: “A great lady,” she says, “so confident.”

  Judith Holofernes is often seen as the central figure of the band.  She has, however, the rare gift of making herself invisible.  Her comrades-in-arms are different.  The soft teddy bear, the brawny pragmatist, and the light-footed surfer.  They never lose those qualities.  Only the lead is an inconspicuous presence away from the stage. The long hair that hides her face when she’s at the microphone are tied up, and her head is hidden by a hood.  Once, when she was spoken to by a man in Vienna who introduced himself as a celebrity photographer, she waved him aside.  “Rolling Stone”  reported that she doesn’t allow herself to be photographed without the others.  The photographer didn’t understand that.  He told her she was too famous to act that way.  She ought to relax a little and be a bit more American.

She has ventured to take the first step in that direction.  Instead of singing, “ich weiß nicht weiter, ich weiß nicht, wo wir sind” (I don’t know what’s ahead, I don’t know where we are), it’s now, “I can’t get further”.  However, that isn’t more than a trifling matter.  She still sings the end chorus in her mother tongue.  “I think even people in England should hear our lyrics in German.”

Such statements cause “industry experts” to shake their heads.  If you want to “break” the Anglo-Saxon market, in the industry lingo, you have to sing in English.  And often, even that isn’t enough.  The biggest international hit from Germany was one by two imaginary characters: a crocodile named “Schnappi” and a frog named “Crazy Frog.”  The cuteness factor helped along the process of cultural transfer.  At Universal, one of the biggest record companies, we were told, “It was a phenomenon, that really never happens.”  Usually, attempts to make an act that is successful at home successful in the English-speaking world are coldly shot down.  A common accusation by German music managers of their British colleagues? “They just don’t listen.” You come up against an “arrogance that is hard to break down.”  Nevertheless, optimism still prevails in the local corporate offices.  Since it already worked with Nena and Rammstein, the Teenie-bopper group Tokio Hotel and the Reggae group Seeed from Berlin will be marketed through partnerships in Britain next year.  What can the Helden aim for? Should they become more international, by hiding their German origin? Or should they influence their Germanness? Either one or the other.  Nothing else seems to make much sense.

'It would be best to send the Band to London every 4 weeks, find a label there that will market their albums locally, and create sustainability in that way,“ dreams Peter James of German Sounds.  “It isn’t any use to anyone, just to have one concert.”  Swiss-born Rene Renner, manager of Grönland, the label founded by Herbert Grönemeyer with an office in London, says, 'When a market hasn’t produced any innovative developments from a while, it disappears from the public’s radar.“  Techno was the last German bastion.  Renner thinks that since the English invented pop music or at least believe they did, they don’t see any reason to bother with anybody else’s version.

But the Helden are lucky.  After the concert, a reporter from the “New Musical Express,” the most important music magazine in the UK, appears suddenly backstage.  He liked the concert.  He asks if he can talk to the musicians.  He hears that he needs to wait because the band is currently in a meeting.  So he waits, but not for long.  He leaves empty-handed.

”In Germany, an artist buries himself in a basement for 6 years, practices every chord, until he can play perfectly from memory.  In England, you start off after two months and with just a few chords,” is Rene Renner’s summary of the differences between the cultures.  If you want to make it in London, you have to live there.  The costs would go up by a factor of 3 and the earnings would be less.  But, says Renner, music has a very different significance on the Island.”

On the way to the hotel in the taxi, Mark Tavassol recounts what happened to him that morning in the breakfast room.  He gave his room number, but the staff couldn’t use it.  So they went through the list of occupants, and he saw how “Famous German rock band” was written after his name and the name of his companions.  That amused him.  He indulges himself in tourist activities.  He’s already canvassed Notting Hill, King’s Road, Whitehall and Westminster Abbey. “The tourist route will mess up your ethic,“ taunts Holofernes.  The popstars themselves are surprised at how uncool they are.

  The next night, Holofernes will sing, “Du erkennst mich nicht wieder/ Unerkannt, die halbe Nacht bin ich durch Chelsea gerannt.“ (You don’t recognize me...unrecognized, I ran around Chelsea half the night). 

Original article can be found here

Translated by Kaleen and Kristabel

© wirsindheldenuk.com 2005