Back

The Untold Story. Kerrang 12-Oct-02 (Issue 925)

The Great Escape

View Original

For Rammstein, growing up behind the Berlin Wall was a matter of life or death. Their incredible story can finally be told...

Words: Catherine Yates

From the outside, East Berlin looks like any other prosperous Western city. Take the road to it from Schonfeld airport and the neon glow of petrol stations, fast-food chains, shopping malls and multiplex cinemas all flit reassuringly by. Near the centre, the glitzy communications tower looks positively sci-fi.
Get closer, and the picture is less pristine. For every sign of new investment, there are as many examples of old. Crumbling buildings - prison grey and rotting from the former Communist regime - serve as a reminder that the Wall, which divided East and West since the Second World War is barely a decade gone. Graffiti covers every surface.
In the Prenzlauer district, this gulf between old and new is particularly striking. Brightly coloured apartment blocks and cafés sit right next to these corroding structures - half of which look like they might disintegrate at any moment. We are warned that the balconies dangling precariously from them have been known to descend into the street without warning.
It's beneath such a balcony that we find Rammstein - a band renowned for reducing things to rubble.
Seemingly unaware of the latent doom scenario above their heads, four out of the six members - that's guitarist Paul Landers, bassist Oliver Riedel, drummer Christoph Schneider and keyboardist Christian 'Flake' Lorenz - are sitting outside a curry house. Second guitarist Richard Z Kruspe-Bernstein is absent, having just moved to New York with his wife, although he literally phones in an appearance later. Press-shy meat-stack Till Lindemann is simply absent and uncontactable.
This is the first time the band have been back in their hometown for any length of time, following their punishing pan-continental touring schedule in support of 'Mutter'. The atmosphere is relaxed. As everyone points out, this rare bit of downtime has allowed the band to focus on some extra-Rammstein issues. These include therapy, fatherhood, holidays in the sun, and a spot of interior decorating.
Still, these men are gathered here today to discuss Rammstein. If the exploits of six Germans and their flamethrowers across stages the world over has been long recognised as being one of the most extraordinary successes in rock, then the story of how they got there is even more remarkable.
Given that a band's genesis is usually a clichéd tale of the unremarkable within the comforts of a Western society, you can't help but wonder just what nu-metal's whiny minions would make of Rammstein's story. As far as band inceptions go, it's one of the most bizarrely uplifting and surreal celebrations of triumph over adversity.

While techno-punk terrorist Alec Empire grew up on the prosperous, west side of the Berlin wall, Rammstein began life on the other side. A side they describe as the "grey" society, where queues were long, fun was short-lived and everything from your haircut to your shopping list went on a secret record somewhere. To an outsider, life itself under such conditions seems wretched and impossible. But where there's a will, there is also a way. If the will is a contrary one with a penchant for mischief, then so much the better.
Indeed, as Paul Landers begins his side of the story you wonder whether, if you were to cut him open, you might find running through him the wording on a stick of rock, the legend 'Adapt, Improvise, Overcome'. Set against the quiet Riedel, the blunt Schneider and the anxious Flake, the voluble guitarist is the animated soul of the band, punctuating all conversation with a flurry of gesticulation and dramatic sound effects.
"We lived like maggots in a piece of meat," he recalls. "We lived in this repressive society, but we used any space we had for expression and doing things differently."
Wowed by the power of the electric guitar, Landers soon found an outlet for expression through punk music and formed a band, FeelingB, with East Berlin natives Flake Lorenz and Christoph Schneider.
Punk was generally frowned upon by the state. Yet there were always legal loopholes to exploit. Since churches were exempt from the state certification process, a band could get gigs by registering as a wedding. Any serious gigging required a licence, obtained by playing in front of a designated committee. The guidelines were narrow and according to the guitarist, most licensed bands "sounded like Bruce Springsteen", but Landers and co remained undeterred. "On the face of it you complied," he says, "but below you resisted."
Cunningly, the band translated any political sensitive material into English so it wouldn't be understood and toned down their sound for the committee. The audition was also to bear a characteristic central to later Rammstein outing: a sense of provocative theatre.
"We dimmed the lights," he says with a conspiratorial chuckle. "And we filled the place with dry ice using a washing machine we'd adapted. But" and here he raises his finger in emphasis, "we wanted the dry ice to descend over everything like fog. So we put the washing machine on top of a ladder."
It paid off. The band was issued a licence even if the committee had no idea what they were awarding it to. "We were given the category 'S'," he grins. "The uncategorized category." When they weren't playing gigs, Landers and Flake, who squatted together in an apartment, would sell jackets made from cut-up bed sheets and dusters on the black market. Two jackets a month meant as much money as an average salaried worker.
"It was quite easy to make a living; to not work and stay out of trouble.” says Landers. "You only got problems if you got caught."
If half of Rammstein were busily subverting the state, guitarist Richard Z Kruspe-Bernstein was suffering under it. Unlike his future band mates living in the city, Richard - along with Till Lindemann and Oliver Riedel - came from the East German village of Schwerin. As a child, Richard would tell anyone within hearing distance that he was going to be a rock star, and sit for hours recording himself singing along to records. As a teenager, he was a troubled runaway, struggling to pursue his musical dream against a claustrophobic background of parental pressure and small town mentality, where one in three people were informants for the Stazi (German secret police).
"It was different in Berlin because it was a city," he explains. "It was more spread out; but in the small towns they knew everything."
While music provided an outlet for life's trials - Richard and Till shared a loose network of bands - the guitarist's patience snapped in early '89 after getting caught up in a demonstration, mere months before re-unification. He was arrested and questioned by the police for three days.
"I had to stand against a wall for six hours at a time," he recalls, "and if I moved they beat me." Richard was so shattered by the experience he decided to escape to the West.
It's worth pointing out that a shoot-to-kill policy was employed by the police against anyone who tried to cross the Wall. Richard is the only member of Rammstein who risked his life for a new one.
"Sometimes you have to do things," he says, with a stunning matter-of-factness. "You have to take the risk."

While Richard fled his hometown, his long-time friend Till Lindemann was enjoying a more prosperous existence. Even then, the imposing front man was something of an enigma, with a curious history. Having already represented the east as an Olympic swimmer, he had retired into that most rock 'n' roll of professions: basket weaving. This was in part to recover from a youth wrecked through steroid abuse.
Lindemann had netted himself a car and a house - unattainable items for most - from his business. It was this house that would be the central catalyst for bringing the six future band members together. One morning, Landers, Flake and Schneider found themselves in its garden, after a particularly heavy night of partying.
"He was one of the 'Silent Village People'," says Flake of his first impression of the stern German who wrote poetry and could lift up his car by the hand. "He was tall and big and did everything alone."
Though they shared little common ground, notes Flake, a bond was forged. Lindemann was impressed with the music Flake and co bought from Berlin, while Lindemann in turn gave them access to something really important: transport. "Till was party centre!" says Landers. "The stereo was always turned up full, and when we went to see bands, we'd all pile into Till's car. There'd be up to 10 people in his car at any time..."

If the US-influenced punk plied by band members was a product of repression in the East, then Rammstein itself was completely a product of reunification. Initially a casual noise project that took place in the basement between the six aspiring musicians, it came to represent the wealth of possibilities the fall of the Wall had released into their lives. Energy, excitement, experimentation.
"It was like anarchy," says Schneider. "For a few years you could really do what you wanted to." So they travelled for the first time, toured the US for the first time and had access to technology (stage lights, sequencers, decent amps) for the first time.
They also realised something for the first time. In the free market, to produce music that had any weight behind it, they have to stay true to their German roots.
Inspired by the drive and discipline of US acts, they returned home and began to concentrate more on Rammstein. Out went screaming guitar solos and in came the sequenced rhythms, guttural vocals and monotonous riffs that were to become Rammstein staples.
"It was completely free," says Kruspe-Bernstein of their new lease of musical life. "We were playing from the gut." Up until this point, Lindemann had still been trying to sing in English - a practice he found restrictive of his more complex lyrical ideas. The band reasoned that if they were going to play authentic, German metal, then they should extend the sentiment to the fullest. Switching to his mother tongue, Till's tales of violence and repressed emotions found a new voice.
"We played hard, we stood still and we had short hair," says Kruspe-Bernstein, "We were different."

Rammstein have spent a career capitalising on this very difference. It's one of life's little ironies that their innate German-ness is the very thing that has seen them embraced in every country except their own.
Although this is their hometown, our day with the band is not interrupted once by any fans, autograph hunters or even any stares from the curious, that you'd expect for a multiplatinum international act. Schneider puts much of it down to the fact that the German media still regard the band as a political debate rather than a music act.
"Fans buy our records and come to the shows," he says. "But we've never had any support from the media here - no airplays, nothing."
Despite this, it's interesting to note that all the members of Rammstein, save Kruspe-Bernstein, still live in the old East Berlin. Spend any time with them, particularly Landers, and you'll feel a marked distaste for the new society. The guitarist's assertion that capitalism has not been the saviour to his hometown is a rarely heard thought in a world where history and media have long decreed that no good can come of Communist regimes.
"I've seen both systems," he says. "And if you compare it to now, life was much easier then. All your basic needs were taken care of. Obviously we're happy the Wall fell, but look at all this, it's so ugly."
He gestures to a row of cafés and bars, which, were if not for the graffiti, could happily pass for a trendy corner of Islington. After Berlin was united, these kind of places forced out all the underground clubs and meeting points, stripping Berlin of its newfound energy and excitement. Landers singles out one culprit in particular - a pretentious looking bar called SODA.
"It's like a yuppie club," he says with disgust. "They're trying to be 'cool' and it's ugly. Whenever I come back here from touring, Berlin seems so flat to me. It's like I have to look for my own city."
"The worst thing is, no-one realises," he sighs. "They think they have everything. But they have nothing."
Not wishing to end on a sour note, the guitarist is keen to show us something East Berlin does have.
The Kesselhaus der Kulturbrauerei is a converted brewery complex that now functions as a gig venue and a museum of memorabilia. Here, Rammstein performed their first ever gig in 1993 - an uneventful performance apparently, that resulted only in six stiff necks the day after. But that's not why we are here.
In the museum next door is a Trabant - a car famous not just for being ugly and made almost entirely from fibreglass, but for being the only car available in the former Communist regime. To say that its awkward, graceless contours place it several rungs below a Skoda on the vehicular evolutionary scale is something of an understatement. It's hideous and you wouldn't be seen dead in it.
A grinning Landers notes that one of these beasts once belonged to Till Lindemann, and as such was responsible for forging the bonds that have kept them together for over 15 years.
Its a surreal notion, particularly since the model in front of us looks like even two people might place an uncomfortable strain on its fragile exterior. However Landers assures us that this one is not to scale.
"Till's car was muchsmaller," he says with a wink. "You could get at least 20 people in this one."
He raps the shell of the car affectionately, and it seems that everything that's heroic, shocking, impressive and just blatantly ridiculous about this band suddenly falls into place.
"Easily."
RAMMSTEIN's new single, 'Feuer Frei', is released on November 3 via Motor/Universal.

© 2005 Sue Lindemann