Ton Steine Scherben

Ton Steine Scherben were the only band that managed to transplant the idea of rock music into German

(Blixa Bargeld)

Formed in West Berlin in 1970, Ton Steine Scherben were, in all likelihood, the most important band ever produced by the worldwide anarchist cultural circuit, at least among those who remained fully faithful to their political principles. Other bands from the German experimental rock scene also came out of anarchist circles, but to distribute their music they signed with record labels, some of them quite prestigious (as strange as it may seem, Faust released their records on Polydor).

Ton Steine Scherben never accepted compromises, releasing all their records independently (through their own imprint, David Volksmund Produktion), starting at a time when operating without any distribution backing was anything but common, and earning very little from a relentless schedule of live shows, since they tended not to charge for them, staying true to the idea that music was common property.

Even though they were wary of appearing on television and radio stations were afraid to play them, due to lyrics considered particularly aggressive, their albums achieved considerable reach right from the start, especially in universities and communes.

Ralph Christian Möbius was born in Berlin in 1950, but spent his youth in other parts of Germany: his family moved several times because of his father's job as an engineer at Siemens Ag. He took an interest in art from adolescence, studying photography and theatre, but his real epiphany came through the rock of Beatles and Rolling Stones. As he grew older, his preference shifted increasingly toward the latter, whose raw sound and rebellious attitude he admired. Within a few years, entirely self-taught, Möbius learned to play guitar and piano.

His musical activity began in 1966 in Rodgau, Hesse, when he was contacted by guitarist Ralph Peter Steitz, a peer of his. The two hit it off artistically right away: after a brief period playing beat music covers, they started writing their own songs. In 1967 the pair moved to West Berlin and worked for the theatre company Hoffmann's Comic Teater, where they met Kai Sichtermann and Wolfgang Seidel: this formed the founding core of the band.

In 1970 the four officially founded Ton Steine Scherben (in Italian: clay, stones and rubble), with Möbius as singer, keyboardist and second guitarist, Steitz on guitar, Sichterman on bass and Seidel on drums. There are two conflicting accounts of how the name came about: Möbius claimed it was a quote from a piece of writing by archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, and that he liked the presence of the word "stones" as a nod to the Rolling Stones, while according to Sichtermann and Seidel it was actually a play on Bau-Steine-Erden, the name of a construction-industry trade union.

The first album, "Warum geht es mir so dreckig?" ("Why does everything go so wrong for me?") was released on 24 September 1971, with the first side recorded live during a building occupation and the second recorded at the studio of experimental musician and sound engineer Klaus Freudigmann, where "Electronic Meditation", the debut album by Tangerine Dream, had already been recorded.

With a limited budget at their disposal, the sound quality turns out rather poor, but this doesn't stop them from making a considerable impact on the counterculture scene, driven by political slogans over an abrasive backdrop of garage rock and blues.

For the second album the band sets aside a bigger budget, even if it means going into debt, and flies to Hamburg, to Alterstudio, owned by sound engineer Richard Borowski, where most of the material is recorded (the rest is again done in Berlin with Freudigmann's help).

By the end of the sessions the band has twelve songs on hand, for over an hour of music: nothing gets cut, and so on 17 November 1972 "Keine Macht für Niemand" is released, containing two LPs for the price of one (a choice in line with their policy of making their music as accessible as possible, which will nonetheless cause further financial strain for the project, despite the record becoming a huge underground hit).

The lineup that made it is not the same as on the debut: Seidel has left, being more interested in experimental electronic music (he will long be an associate of Conrad Schnitzler, but will remain on friendly terms with the band and return to collaborate sporadically over the years).

Around the three founders gather numerous supporting musicians, who help broaden the scope of the material compared to the previous album. Some come from the world of anarchist activism, experimental theatre and squatting in Berlin, others are simply session players recruited around Hamburg: among the former, flautist Jörg Schlotterer, among the latter Jochen Petersen, an established session musician, multi-instrumentalist and producer, here on saxophone, and drummer Olaf Lietzau, about whom no further information is available besides his participation in the sole album by Panther ("Wir Wollen Alles", 1974), a little-known rock band from Ahrensburg.

To these must be added a large number of backing vocalists, including Nikel Pallat, the band's manager: Möbius felt it was important for his voice to be backed by a choir, especially during the chanting of slogans, in order to make clearer the message of brotherhood and solidarity underpinning the project.

The album opens with "Wir müssen hier raus!" ("We have to get out of here"), which immediately shows a striking improvement in production quality. The sounds are clear and well separated, without losing any of their edge, as shown by the intro, with Sichtermann's harsh descending bassline, electric-piano textures courtesy of Möbius and a guitar solo with a tone all focused on the high end. The structure then locks into a muscular midtempo blues rock, with Möbius's gravelly voice alternating between sung parts reminiscent of Anglo-American garage rock (or simply of the Rolling Stones) and spoken passages halfway between a political rally speech and talking blues.

The lyrics stage all the dissatisfaction of the working class, the pressure of the daily work routine, the problem of overcrowded housing, and the disillusionment of older people (who, seeing no way out, drown their sorrows in alcohol), while in the finale the protagonist's frustration turns into that of an entire people ("we are sixty million"). There is no recourse to metaphor whatsoever.

People don't like lying in bed alone

and in my bed there's still room for you,

but dad's home almost every day

and I think he's got it in for you.

For me the world is no longer in order,

it isn't on a Sunday morning at seven, nor after the evening news.

For me the word to define Sunday is “shit”,

the words for Monday: “Be sad”.

We have to get out of here, this is hell,

we live in prison,

we were born to be free,

we're two out of millions, but we're not alone,

and we'll make it, we'll make it.

My old man thinks the world will never change,

he knows exactly how things stand,

he thinks he can forget all the shit

when he goes to the bar in the evening and gets drunk,

he says: “The bar is always the best place”.

He's right, there's no room for three at home,

that's why I work all day long,

you could say I'm that free.

We need to get out of here, this is hell. [...]

We'll make it, what can stop us? Not money, not weapons,

if we want it, we'll make it. [...]

There are sixty million of us, we're not alone

Although these aren't autobiographical lyrics, since Möbius stopped living with his parents quite early on, and they didn't have financial difficulties anyway, the band's social and political circles repeatedly brought them into contact with that kind of reality, which is therefore portrayed accurately. The band personally lent its support on several occasions to squats set up in empty houses, precisely to ease the conditions of people living in situations like the one described.

After the slow “Feierabend”, still markedly bluesy (though at 3'26" it picks up speed on the strength of a remarkable proto-heavy metal riff), comes the first real charge of the tracklist: “Die letzte Schlacht gewinnen wir” (“We'll win the last battle”). Steitz once again shows off his guitar skills, with solo passages marked by tight, fast downstrokes and rapid strings of blues licks. The track is perfectly balanced between instrumental assaults and choral parts.

We don't need landlords,

because the houses are ours,

we don't need factory owners,

the factories are ours,

get lost, capitalists,

we'll win the last battle.

Throw away your gun, police officers,

the red front and the black front

I'm here,

we don't need a strong man,

because we're strong enough,

we're the ones who know what needs to be done,

our heads are big enough.

Our struggle means peace

and we fight your war,

every battle we lose

is our next victory

These are songs with heavy political messages, but the band never reduces the music to a mere vehicle for them, keeping the melodic element front and center, weaving in constant digressions, taking care over every detail and blending the most disparate influences, as shown by the following “Menschenjäger” (a verse in the style of a little march, psychedelic funk saturated with guitar effects during the chorus) and “Allein machen sie dich ein” (frenzied folk rock driven by piano and acoustic guitar).

“Schritt für Schritt ins Paradies” (“Step by Step Towards Paradise”) develops its song form over the first couple of minutes: a soft rock verse with arpeggiated electric guitar and percussion in the background, then a chorus where hard rock distortion is set against crystalline piano chords.

At 2'17" everything comes to a halt, only to start up again in a swelling jam marked by a tangled guitar solo and delicate vocal harmonies, mixed far back. At 4'00" there's then the illusion that the structure is falling back into line, with a reprise of the chorus, but right there the jam starts swelling again, building to a cathartic finale. The density of the layering and the intensity are no less than those of genre classics like “Dear Mr. Fantasy” by Traffic and “Ramble Tamble” by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

The lyrics here are perhaps the most abstract of the bunch, but no less utopian for it:

You hear me singing, but you don't know who I am,

you don't know who I sing for, but I sing for you,

who will build the new world if not you and me?

And if you want to understand me now, then understand me.

I woke up and saw

where we come from and where we're going

and the long road ahead of us

leads step by step toward paradise.

I've waited and thought for a long time,

I've had so many dreams and now I'm awake,

if we look for it, we'll find the new land,

nothing separates us from paradise, except our fears

“Der Traum ist aus” represents the album's most ambitious moment, a nine-minute odyssey akin to the space rock of contemporary acts like Hawkwind, with the sound of a Clavinet and bass glissandi acting as a guide, while flute and electric guitar trade off as lead instruments. The difference is that here it's not intergalactic journeys being told, but a finger pointed at a tangible reality: that of a Federal Republic of Germany which, after the war, never seriously purged the Nazis below the top ranks, and which, despite having settled into the norms of liberal democracy, remains a society with largely reactionary values, marked by numerous cases of police abuse of power and violence.

I dreamed that winter was over,

you were here and we were free,

and the morning sun was shining,

there was no fear and nothing left to lose,

there was peace among people and among animals,

it was paradise.

The dream is over,

but I'll do everything to make it come true.

I dreamed the war was over […]

all the doors were open, the prisons were empty,

there were no more weapons and no more wars […]

Is there a place on earth where the dream is reality?

I really don't know,

I only know one thing and I'm sure of it:

not in this country.

The dream is just a dream right now,

but not for long, get ready

for the fight for paradise,

we have nothing to lose but our fear.

It's our future, our country,

give me your love, give me your hand

“Rauch-Haus-Song” is the best-known track on the album, as well as the band's anthem and perhaps that of the entire German counterculture. The arrangement is spare and unusual: Möbius replaces the bass line with a hammering piano, Sichtermann stands in for the electric guitar by vigorously strumming a banjo, and Steitz sits at the drums, laying down a genuinely rudimentary pattern.

Over this ramshackle folk march, Möbius and the choir throw themselves into passionate call-and-response exchanges, recounting the occupation of the Bethanien dormitory (starting on December 8, 1971), an abandoned hospital located at Marianneplatz, in the Kreuzberg district.

In the end, despite clashes with the police, the occupiers managed to hold their ground and their position was ratified by the local authorities. The story is told from the point of view of Meier, an imaginary working-class Berliner, father of one of the occupiers.

Mariannenplatz was blue, with all the police officers there

and Meier was crying, probably from the tear gas

and he asked someone: “Tell me, is there a party here today?”

“Something like that,” said one, “Bethanien has been occupied.”

“About time,” Meier replied, “it's been empty for too long.”

How lovely life would be if there were no more police,

but the squad leader shouted: “Clear out Mariannenplatz,

so the truncheons have more room to strike.”

And the occupiers shouted: “You can't throw us out of here,

this house is ours,

Schmidt & Press and Mosch out of Kreuzberg!”.

The senator was furious, the CDU was outraged

because the kids were taking back what belonged to them,

but to show the world how generous they were

they said: “We'll clear out [the building] later, for now we'll leave them there”,

and four months later they wrote in Springer's newspaper

that there's a bomb factory in the Georg von Rauch House

and the clear proof was ten empty wine bottles,

and ten empty bottles can quickly become ten Molotov cocktails,

but the people at Rauch House kept shouting:

“You can't throw us out of here” […]

Last Monday Meier ran into his son on the subway,

who told him: “They want to clear out Rauch House, I think I'll have to move back home.”

“It's crazy,” Meier replies, “we'd be back with one more

in our luxury two-room flat, while Bethanien would sit empty.

Tell me something, do they have shit for brains up there?

They live in the finest houses and we're stuck in the last hole left.

If they really do clear out Haus Rauch, I'll be there,

cracking the heads of the first cops who show up

and I'll shout loud:

you can't throw us out of here"

For a fuller understanding of the lyrics, a short glossary might help: Schmidt & Press was a well-known real estate company, Heinz Mosch the most powerful German building contractor of the time, [Alex] Springer's paper is the tabloid “Bild-Zeitung” (unsurprisingly conservative in outlook), the CDU the centre-right party that had governed until 1969 and was at that point in opposition, Georg von Rauch House one of the occupied buildings at Bethanien, renamed in honour of the anarchist of the same name, a key figure in the local student movement, killed in a shootout with police on 4 December 1971.

The title track, a pulsing garage rock number complete with a saxophone riff, takes its title from the band's best-known slogan (“No Power for Nobody”), which still occasionally turns up on the walls of German cities today. It's the album's most anarchist, most confrontational lyric:

I'm not free, I can only choose

which thieves rob me and which killers give the orders.

I've died drained of blood a thousand times and they forgot me,

I've died of hunger a thousand times while they were well fed.

In the south, in the east, in the west, in the north,

they're the same everywhere, and they're killing us.

In every city and in every country,

write the slogan on every wall:

no power to no one.

Let's tear down the walls that divide us,

unite, people, make friends.

You're no better than the one next to you,

no one has the right to rule the people.

In the south, in the east, in the north, in the west,

they're the same everywhere, holding us to ransom.

In every city and in every country,

this is the slogan of our struggle:

no power for anyone.

Come, brother, get in line,

come sister, you're not alone,

come, mother, we're with you,

come, friend, we want the same thing,

in Augsburg, in Munich, Frankfurt, Saarbrücken,

they're the same everywhere, and they're oppressing us.

In every city and in every country,

close your hand into a fist:

no power for anyone

The closing track is “Komm schlaf bei mir”, the only love song, though still shot through with the ideas of freedom and equality typical of the rest of the album. The verses unfold over a bed of acoustic guitar, percussion and bass, but the arrangement is dominated by an insistent melody that sounds like it's played on a glockenspiel (though the instrument isn't credited on any of the album's numerous editions, so it could well be an electric piano played in its upper register). The almost spectral atmosphere seems to incidentally anticipate Eighties neofolk.

The sun is coming and you are here,

I can feel you, I'm part of you.

Do you know now that you're free?

Do you know now who you are?

Do you know now what you want to do?

I'm not beneath you, I'm not above you,

I'm right beside you,

come sleep with me.

I have time, because I love you,

I have strength, because I love you.

You make me stronger,

you give me energy,

you make me great,

only now do I know for certain what I was born for

In the Italian translation the adjective “free” was rendered in the masculine form, but in German it is neuter, and the song isn’t addressed to a specific sex. However, Möbius was gay and, at the time, was already open about it within the circles he frequented, though he never spoke of it in his songs, nor in debates or interviews, partly because of the hostility to the subject within the extra-parliamentary left.

In his diaries dating back to the early 1970s (some passages of which would be published starting in 2016, twenty years after his death, at the initiative of his brother Gert), the artist writes: “My illness is not that I love men. Fear, that is my illness, and it is fatal.”

These words are very close to the lyrics of songs on the album such as “Schritt für Schritt ins Paradies” and “Der Traum ist aus”: it's therefore reasonable to believe that, in those tracks, fear as an obstacle to self-realization symbolized Möbius's need to express his own sexuality, as well as to come to terms with it, having experienced it in a conflicted way as a teenager because of his religious faith (specifically, Lutheranism). He began speaking about it publicly only in 1986.

Afterwards

After the release of “Keine Macht für Niemand”, the band went on hiatus, both due to financial difficulties and the pressure the countercultural scene had placed on them (even then, the first baffling accusations of having become too commercial and of pandering to the system started to arrive). They would however resume activity in 1975 with the release of another double album, “Wenn die Nacht am tiefsten…” (“When the Night Is Deepest…”), perhaps even more varied. From that point on, Steitz would adopt the stage name R.P.S. Lanrue (that is, his initials followed by a twist on the French expression “de la rue”, “of the street”).

Towards the end of the decade Möbius too would adopt a stage name, the one by which he is universally known today: Rio Reiser, a tribute to Anton Reiser, the protagonist of the eponymous novel by Karl Philipp Moritz. Indeed, a German reader of this article might find the continued reference to the artist's birth name misleading, but it has been preferred so far for the sake of historical accuracy: at the time of the album under discussion, the stage name was not yet in use.

The band, once again plagued by financial troubles, would break up in 1985, and Reiser would go solo, with Lanrue continuing to accompany him as guitarist.

His first solo album, “Rio I.” (1986), was released on Cbs, reaching number 26 on the charts and selling around 100,000 copies, thanks to a more radio-friendly sound and a cult track like “König von Deutschland” (“King of Germany”).

The most uncompromising fans would not forgive him for this turn and for the decision to sign with a major label, but with the earnings from that project Reiser managed to fully pay off the debts of Ton Steine Scherben, securing himself a measure of peace of mind for the future after fifteen years of antagonism that, however admirable ethically, had left him in complete financial ruin.

After several more solo albums, Reiser died on 20 August 1996, at the age of forty-six, from an esophageal hemorrhage caused by prolonged alcoholism.

Since then his figure has taken on an even greater aura of sanctity, to the point of becoming institutionalized: today even members of the Cdu celebrate his memory (an interesting development, considering that in the 1970s they accused him of sympathizing with the Rote Armee Fraktion). Since 2013, the city of Unna has hosted a festival in his name, while in 2022 a large square in central Berlin was named after him.

Lanrue, for his part, continued his musical activity, reviving Ton Steine Scherben in 2014 together with Sichtermann, before dying of cancer on 14 July 2024, at the age of seventy-four, leaving the bassist as the last standard-bearer of the historic band.

The influence

It's not so much the number of covers of Ton Steine Scherben songs, or of Reiser as a solo artist, that demonstrates their impact on the German scene, although the sheer variety of artists who have tackled them is at least telling (from punk rock giants Die Toten Hosen to historic names of the Neue deutsche welle such as Joachim Witt, Nina Hagen and Fehlfarben, from more or less commercial hip hop artists like Clueso, Jan Delay and Freundeskreis to schlager singer Marianne Rosenberg, from metal bands like Samsas Traum and Mantus to singer-songwriter Klaus Lage, but the list could go on): if anything, it's the fact that the term deutschrock (German rock) was coined specifically for them, a distinction they share only with their contemporary, singer-songwriter Udo Lindenberg.

Their music marked a before and after for German culture: at last rock found its own identity in the local language too, and, as we've seen, it did so with a strikingly original approach that resisted easy classification. It's no coincidence that "Keine Macht für Niemand" is often filed under progressive rock databases, given the shape-shifting structures of some of its tracks and the diversity of styles it covers, and yet it's steeped, for almost its entire length, in fairly raw proto-punk sounds. A contrast that its grooves reconcile with harmony, without any contradiction.

Beyond Germany's borders

Kraut-rock bands, which outside Germany are considered the most representative expression of the country's music of that era, actually had a rather limited impact within its own borders, particularly because, when they weren't playing instrumental music, they sang in English, thereby bolstering Anglo-American cultural hegemony.

Conversely, the language barrier prevented Ton Steine Scherben from gaining an international cult following, but in Germany their fan base is far larger than that of any krautrock band.

On this point, it's curious to note the attitude shown toward them by English critic Simon Reynolds, precisely because of the fact that they never found an audience outside Germany. In 2020, interviewed by Michele Piumini for Minimum Fax, Reynolds recounted that the translator handling the German edition of one of his books tried to get him to listen to what she considered the best German artists, and he observed: "She particularly despised the German bands loved in England and America. [...] The krautrock bands were just boring hippies, and in her view the most important German band of the Seventies was Ton Steine Scherben, whom I'd never even heard of. To me their music sounded like fairly orthodox hard rock, but apparently the lyrics are powerful and original".

A band with as complex a proposition, both conceptually and musically, as Ton Steine Scherben, dismissed as fairly orthodox hard rock — and despite being aware of the importance of their lyrics, he showed no interest whatsoever in looking into it further, effectively letting his contact with the band die right there. Would he have shown the same indifference if the band had been enshrined in the untouchable canon by Anglophone critics, as happened with krautrock?

To add insult to injury, a few lines further down in the same interview, he states: "On a political and personal level I can't stand Ted Nugent, but his 'Stranglehold' is an exceptional guitar track".

Well, what is "Stranglehold" if not the most orthodox of hard rock tracks? And yet, since it's a classic of American rock, he doesn't hesitate for a second to reach for a superlative to describe it: would he have shown the same reverence had it been a track on "Keine Macht für Niemand" (which, incidentally, came out three years earlier)?

This kind of imperialist, dismissive, snobbish attitude toward anything that doesn't come from Anglo-Saxon culture — held, no less, by those who are supposed to represent the intelligentsia of their own field — explains better than any sociological treatise why rock music in languages other than English, even in the internet age, struggles so much to gain recognition even among enthusiasts (without even getting into the mainstream audience, where entirely different commercial dynamics come into play).

The words

In closing, a note on the lyrics. The lack of metaphor, the constant reliance on slogans and such overt idealism, might lead one to consider Reiser's verses rather simplistic; however, it's worth remembering that the notion that singer-songwriters ought to craft elaborate compositions dense with figures of speech is tied to the success and influence of a few key figures in the development of Western popular music, such as the French chansonniers in Europe or the artists who emerged from Greenwich Village in the United States: and yet, in traditional folk music — the politically militant genre par excellence — the lyrics were often free of that kind of sophistication and went straight to the point with slogans, manifestos and ideals proclaimed without mincing words.

From this standpoint, Reiser simply carried that tradition forward, applying it to rock music with great dignity — a tradition that began precisely within anarchist circles toward the end of the nineteenth century.

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10/11/2024