My first guitar
Much sooner than my first fuck came my first guitar. I found out that a classmate, a physics crack, had a run-down electric guitar he wanted to get rid of. I talked to him during a school break and we agreed upon a price of 50 Deutschmarks for the used instrument. That was a lot of cash, but I wanted to have a guitar to make some noise. Somehow I raised the money: I don't know if my granny added anything to it. There was even a guitar case and a cable. I picked up the guitar from the physics crack in Schilksee and brought it home to Pries-Friedrichsort. I first connected the electric guitar to a record player via a DIN socket. That wasn't loud enough for me. Later, I risked connecting my guitar to my cheap Hitachi receiver via the microphone input, which was threatened by defects or even total failure. Eventually, the tweeters blew through.
For my parents and my sister my new hobby meant hell. Since I didn't have a plectrum yet, I took a dime and scratched at the strings of the guitar, but I didn't like the sound without the proper sound effects. I got an old sound effect device from a friend of mine, which was equipped with a reverb control, among other things. Ringo also gave me two punk books, Last Exit[1] and Punk – The tenderest temptation since chocolate exists[2]. The latter included instructions on how to start a punk band, including chords: A, E and G. These were also the first chords I ever learned. It was just trashing without having the guitar tuned properly. The chord changes were quite difficult at the beginning. I quickly realized that these three chords could be played in several different combinations.
Later I got hold of several plectrums, but I also had to buy more strings or received them as a present. The strange effect device, that had a power cable, made slight distortion possible. That was of course by far the most important thing for me, because that was the only sound I liked. Unfortunately, I soon lost the desire to play the guitar and the instrument just stood in the corner. After all, I had to admit that I had no talent. I still couldn't even tune it properly. A guitar teacher was too expensive for me, and my parents didn't support my unusual taste in music anyway.
I finally sold the guitar for ten Deutschmarks to Töle and in exchange received Shock Troops by Cock Sparrer, as well as a Crass single and half a Holsten. That was a bitter loss for me, but the guitar was on its last legs and was already rattling. Now at least I owned the "Nagasaki Nightmare" single by Crass, with the semitransparent radioactivity trefoil on the black and white fold-out cover. On the unfolded cover was the flying phallus converted to a cruise missile, which I thought was pretty cool.
We become little forgers of identity cards
When night fell, we hung out at the Bergstrasse and went to the Pfefferminz or later, after the clubs had just opened, to the "Prisma" and soon also to the "Error" in the Holtenauer Strasse. We commuted between the discos to get away from boredom. In the Pfefferminz, some songs ran again and again permanently: "Collapsing New People", "Hand in Glove", "Love Song". Here we got our kicks from dark wave music, that was mainly played by the DJs there. Sometimes we were in "The Exit" behind the town hall. In The Exit, you could always meet Danny, an unsuccessful and broken artist on drugs, who was an old pal of Long Jock. He used to sit alone in the furthest corner and drink his beer. In The Exit I got into a conversation at the bar with a pretty coloured woman. As I tried to explain to her what substances I used to style my hair, she replied,
"Try chicken shit!"
I thought that was funny, but it was a rejection.
In Bergstrasse, at the petrol station parking lot in front of the staircase to the disco Hinterhof, there were always perfectly styled night owls. They looked like musicians, but were in fact only boozing. Every now and then, a car shot past these night creatures, heading for the multi-storey car park.
When we were 16 years old, we faced a huge problem. It was the bouncers at the Bergstrasse. It was told they were drug dealing like hell. They acted like supermen and fucked the best women. Since we were not yet of age, there was no chance of getting into the Pfefferminz after 10pm. Therefore we had to rack our brains to find a way. When it was happy hour in the Flohmarkt, they never checked anyone. The music was unbearable for us, and the shop was dominated by a streetclub "The Tigers". There were usually Turks, sometimes drunken thugs, as well as "Poppers" (fashionable, well-dressed fans of mainstream disco music). I came here once on a Wednesday evening with Zilvana where we drank Escorial which almost burned my mouth. There were a series of underground corridors and connection systems between the individual discos and the multi-storey car park in this discotheque complex. At first, we managed to get into the Pfefferminz for free by someone walking out the Pfefferminz through the emergency exit and opening the door to the street above. So we could get into the disco unhindered and without paying entrance, but soon this was prevented by locking the emergency exits. That's when we came up with something new. At our school, pupils from outside the school district were always issued and stamped the monthly season tickets for the KVAG buses, including our date of birth. Sly as we were, we eliminated the last number in our year of birth and replaced it with a lower number. I changed my year of birth from 1966 to 1964, which required a lot of precision work with a rubber, a scraper and a matching pencil. Suddenly I was 18 years old on paper. From then on I passed the bouncers most of the time without complications, they always watched out for youths like us and on top of everything always took the entrance fee. At that time I still worshiped the beautiful, black-haired Karina from Elmschenhagen-Kroog, who had to leave Hebbel Grammar together with her sister Clio because of poor school performance. The bouncer in the Pfefferminz came from Friedrichsort just like I did. Recently I was allowed indeed to pass the cash desk into the Pfefferminz every time I quickly showed my manipulated school identity card and after paying the two Deutschmarks. I was surprised that the doorman was suddenly in a relationship with my former schoolmate from Elmschenhagen-Kroog, although she was far from his age group. Love between the two. They're still a couple today. That annoyed me for years and years and years. Sometimes he had her in his arms while he took the money at the cash desk. I continued going to the Pfefferminz. She would have known there was something wrong with my school ID card.
To save money we later got used to waiting outside in the parking lot or directly in front of the Pfefferminz until the cash box was taken away. That usually happened shortly after 2am. We would stay until the closedown at 3 o'clock, sometimes smuggled in canned beer and assimilated with the people who were dancing or staring at the dance floor. When the cash box was gone by 2 o'clock at the latest, our forged identity cards were no longer even checked. So we could have spared ourselves the whole operation. We only realized that later.
Ephedrine
We called many of our drinking sessions coma boozing, although a real coma did not occur. Nevertheless, there were regular conditions somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness – a kind of dozy state while walking, sitting or lying down. I blacked out regularly. It was no coincidence that during my coma career on the way home I had to be woken up several times by the bus driver at the final bus station after riding eight to ten stations too far, because I had previously poured too much alcohol into my system. Sometimes when drunk, punks were unable to open their beer bottles and tried instead with their teeth or wanted to rip open the seal by using a wall or a metal projection. Often the neck shattered and splinters got into the bottle. Some of the punks were so crazy that they still drank the beer except for the last sip and hoped not to swallow any splinters. We learnt to gently slurp the beer or chew it in our mouths. It was important not to waste any alcohol, especially if not much of it was available. It was especially funny when one of the punks got the hiccups. We tried to help the affected punk with all kinds of secret recipes up to drinking beer with the upper body bent forward or strong blows to the back.
For a while, small bottles of ephedrine-containing cough syrup were in fashion in parts of the punk scene. Only the most damaged punks got their kicks this way. Now and then they were talking about "Efies". An older punk said that it "kicks well". I remember one day when we tried to get cough syrup containing ephedrine with a small group of punks at the Greif pharmacy at Dreiecksplatz. After the pharmacist briefly inspected us, he refused to dispense the cough syrup. I guess he knew what was going on. I never took these ephedrine drops as a narcotic on purpose nor if anyone asked me to do so. I can't imagine how that evening would have ended if the pharmacist had given us a bottle of ephedrine, because I was already drunk and desolate. We continued focusing on booze that night.
The punks often met at the Muhlius[3] bust, diagonally opposite the Bergstrasse petrol station. Only when unpredictable hard rockers and drunken Flohmarkt thugs showed up, we left that area. There were also hybrid characters – blokes we didn't know if they wanted to represent rockers or punks. Among these blokes was Krake, the multiple drug user and lover of Zilvana. He was a hopeless case, like many in Kiel at the time – dead man walking, pursued by the health department and constantly in and out of jail. Many of them were considered polytoxic and sooner or later ended up in the cemetery, just like Krake in the end. One afternoon we wanted to buy liquor at the Horten department store with Stidi, Mig, Gonnrad and Krake, who had just got out of prison. We took the escalator. Krake stood one escalator step higher than I did. Suddenly he took a rag out of his pocket, blew his nose, took the snotty handkerchief and pressed it under my nose. Of course, it was disgusting and I turned my head away. He laughed diabolically with his snotty and grotty voice. I was trembling all over my body. Afterwards we went to the Ansgar playground and played some football with a leather ball, that had been forgotten about. I was terrified of Krake in his black leather jacket the whole time. I think they later tried to take him out of the group again. I never saw him after that day. Soon the news spread that he had died from a drug cocktail. I never understood why Zilvana was so attracted to him. Well, I guess some people thought he was rebellious because he was always messing with the authorities. We often talked in the group about such guys, about Krake, Hotten, Rotzig and all the others. Some of us talked about these damaged punk celebrities, although they had never seen them in real life. Despite their decayed idiosyncrasies, they were regarded as Kiel punk idols and were a permanent source of conversation. Who knows what was true about these circulating cowboy stories. Anyway, these stories contributed to the creation of the myths about the older punks. Whoever wanted to be immortalized in a comparable form had to behave similarly, and that wasn't particularly difficult when you were drunk. On the other hand, there were also correct actions that could boost the reputation of the punk scene. We once blocked a staircase on Esmarchstrasse. I was there, but I didn't know what it was about. I think it was for a good cause. One day the punks even occupied the JUSOS headquarters (Young Socialists in the Social Democratic Party of Germany) in Kiel. Just on the day I wasn't around. Gonnrad told me about it later. I listened very carefully and was annoyed to have missed this.
I can remember that on another afternoon we went to the "Alte Meierei", that was rotting away on Hornheimer Weg before it was later converted into an events venue. There were again several punk girls with us, who wore their punky matted and woolly hair up, whether blonded or blackened. I had rather little to do with these women, because I had to work constantly on my image and was still regarded as a follower. They were much older than I was. Suddenly there was trouble. Someone must have yelled his head off. I don't remember who we had trouble with or if and why there were already real inhabitants in the Alte Meierei.
Stidi and Mig changed their address repeatedly at that time: they lived on Georg-Pfingsten-Strasse in Gaarden, on Iltisstrasse and Elisabethstrasse. Gonnrad lived for a long time on Jungmannstrasse. He became a father very early. His son with Sally was called Sit-Marvin.
I can't tell for sure if I've ever had ephedrine drops in my drink. With these strange kind of punks I hung around sometimes, it's possible that they might have handed me a bottle containing ephedrine or something similar. I can only remember that I was totally wasted several times, without having drank a lot.
Many of the punks had an endless amount of fun, others, however, were on the depri[4] trip. Others, like the little Strahl, tried to break away from the punk scene via the church. Within the scene, some recommended the Good Templar Youth[5], which were supposed to help you get away from alcohol and lead a normal life. One of the Wik Punks, Lasse, once tried to win me over to join the Good Templar Youth Club, when I was drinking too much with other punks on the road. I made it clear to him with a blunt answer that this club was not an option for me.
We spit into Monko-Rolf’s beer
Monko-Rolf was accepted by everyone – no question. He had a very appealing record collection, he was listening to the early Misfits, anti-Nowhere League, Circle Jerks, and Special Duties. He owned the Skrewdriver LP All Skrewed up. This was the first record of the English band, that was still a punk band at the time, but which had to be classified as a Nazi band due to later releases. We did not foresee this at the time.
We arranged to meet with a couple of punks on a Saturday afternoon in Pries-Friedrichsort. We wanted to drink on the pedestrian bridge over Fördestrasse. This wooden bridge was the pathway for pedestrians who wanted to go from Pries Village to Pries district and vice versa. Even Töle came by bus from Wik for this booze up. We met at the Hohenleuchte bus stop and walked with our little group of punks about 150 metres to the bridge, waddled up the steps and sat on the floor with our backs to the wooden railing. Every now and then one of us leaned over the railing to watch the cars racing under the bridge on the Fördestrasse.
We had a kasi recorder as well. First we listened to a tape of mine by the Lunatic Fringe and The Fits. We discussed the cover of the Lunatic Fringe single "Who's in Control". On the cover was an extremely brutal animal experiment shown with a cat.
While we were boozing here, someone suddenly mentioned the anti-war film Die Brücke (The Bridge) by Bernhard Wicki, whose main characters were our age and all of them were killed one after the other. We sat on the bridge floor and had a serious discussion about the film.
"How pointless is that? The war is over and they still have a bridge to defend,"
said Monko-Rolf.
"Above all, they were exactly our age,"
Töle threw in.
"Cruel, as one man's bowels oozed out..."
I said concerned,
"...just like in Catch-22."
"Children with steel helmets, very crass!"
said Steff.
"Luckily, it was just a black-and-white movie,"
said Brandy.
"There you can see how senseless war is,"
Monko-Rolf declared.
A few beers later Brandy took a tape by the Mau Maus out of his inside pocket. As soon as Brandy was drunk the music made him feel totally giddy. We continued drinking our Karlsquell beer diligently and rejoiced. It was a really cosy afternoon. When an elderly couple came up the stairs of the bridge from Pries Village, I suddenly panicked that my grandparents, who lived in the rural idyll of Pries Village, might come along to visit my parents, or uncle and aunt, who in turn lived in Pries district. I jumped up instinctively and said,
"We have to get out of here before my grandma comes!"
Everybody laughed.
"We'll help you when your grandma comes!"
Brandy replied quick-wittedly, and everyone laughed even more.
I got scared that my grandparents would spot me in my studded jacket with the other teenage punks. As a consequence, my grandmother would probably take away her share of my pocket money. My grandfather without his horn-rimmed glasses might not even recognize me.
We left the bridge and stood for a moment at the next fork in the path when Monko-Rolf, who lived very close by, suddenly wanted to go home. He said he wanted to get some more money. He probably only had to go to the toilet. He put his half-full beer can on the side of the path, so we had to wait for him and look after his beer. He turned left into the narrow path where English teacher Johnsen lived. When he was out of sight, we hatched a nasty plot to spit in the Karlsquell can and leave him in the dark about it. One after the other, each of us took Monko-Rolf's half-full Karlsquell can and spat in the narrow opening of the beer. Although we grinned wickedly when he came back, he didn't suspect a thing. He immediately got back into a conversation and grabbed his Karlsquell. We raised a toast happily. Together we continued drinking, and Monko-Rolf did not notice that we were obviously hiding something from him with great joy. It was our secret for the rest of the day. A stupid thing to do really. This secret hasn't even been revealed until today. In the punk scene there were other kinds of mean tricks being played, and it's probably better if you never learn about them. Soon Brandy borrowed prized punk LPs from Monko-Rolf, that he never returned to him. Even I became a victim of such vicious games. Bürzi once stood at my front door and wanted his Cockney Rejects Live-LP back. I was surprised, because I had received this LP officially by Hecker in exchange for a painted jean jacket with faux tiger fur stitched on it. Bürzi grabbed his property and disappeared. I had to beg Hecker, who fobbed me off again with an average Outcasts maxi-single. His punishment followed swiftly: Hecker had to repeat a year at school. After such petty con games we hated each other for a while. A little later this was pushed aside, since we were dependent on each other as companions in misfortune as outsiders, and so we continued getting pissed together.
Gdansk Gold Water
Töle lived on Prinz Heinrich Strasse in Kiel-Wik. He shared a room with his brother, who was a good year older than him. When I visited Töle during the school holidays to listen to some of his punk records together, all the other family members were out of the house, at work or on the road. Therefore we sat down in the living room, listened to Bad Brains at such a loud volume even the neighbourhood could hear it through the open balcony door. We drank the Gdansk Gold Water belonging to his father, who was doing his service on the nearby naval base. This spiced liqueur contained small gold-coloured particles that slowly trickled down after shaking the bottle like a snow globe, which greatly increased the satisfaction of drinking it. We also had some beer at our disposal. It was possibly the best day. We became drunk quickly and Töle planned to refill the bottle of Gold Water later with cheap liqueur. The first Bad Brains LP was an über-record for us. As the sun was shining, we soon sat down on the balcony and enjoyed the wonderful weather and the loud punk music.
Suddenly Töle went into the bathroom as if remote-controlled and took the mirror from the wall. Visibly buzzed, he held the mirror in the direction of the sun and reflected it to the back of the old buildings in Knorrstrasse. Soon the first angry residents closed the curtains and made wild gestures. We nearly wet ourselves with laughter.
The position of the sun even made it possible to reflect the rays to the front of the houses on Holtenauer Strasse. At that time, several World War II pensioners were out and about on that street. An enraged elderly man suddenly came in our direction cursing wildly and dazzled by the rays. It was amazing how much hatred and energy was still in them. On the way he'd already collected some stones from the flower bed next to the footpath, while Töle continued to dazzle him. Swearing at us, verbally abusing and insulting us – as we knew the world war generation would – he slowly came into throwing distance. These people always seemed to me as if they were unloading on us young people about what had happened to them in the Third Reich. We'd overdone it once again. The World War II retiree now carried several small stones in his hand and threw the first one at us, wanting to destroy the mirror. That was a close shave. More stones hit the balcony railing. Töle immediately stopped the dazzling and put the mirror aside. At first we couldn't believe this absurd joke. He continued throwing small stones at us. Our beloved punk music still resounded from the living room, which probably infuriated the man even more. His no less enraged old lady followed him cursing as well. Other seniors watched the events unfold from a distance. More and more stones knocked against the windows and the walls of the houses. Everything remained intact. Fortunately, there were no large stones in the gardens. Finally, the grumbler forced us to retreat. We had to protect ourselves, so we went into the living room and closed the balcony door. As a result, the World War II retiree ceased fire. The "ex-master race" had won again. His old lady dragged him away from the scene. We laughed, stunned and watched the world for a moment through the curtains of the large living room window. Immediately afterwards we decided to leave the flat and sat down on a bench at Sonderburger Platz in the hope that Barne would pass by, but Barne didn't show up. Later, Töle's older brother accused me of corrupting his little brother.
Early warm up party at Vielmann
With the help of self-made stencils I sprayed a One Way System T-shirt and a UK Subs T-shirt to have something to show on the streets. Sometimes we met up at the weekend in the early afternoon with Vielmann in Pries Village for an early warm up party. Vielmann always hoarded exquisite punk records in his room, but sometimes a lot of trash. His room was right under the roof. We were often in a delirious state there because we played ingenious drinking games, such as pouring beer out of schnapps glasses, chug-a-lug games or drinking contests. In addition, we sometimes tabbed beer cans with a pair of compasses or whatever. To tab a beer can we would put a hole in the side of a full aluminium can, shake it with your finger on the hole and when you release your finger you can spray it into your mouth. However, we were not allowed to play such games in Vielmann's room, because he tried to prevent more beer stains soaking into the carpet and such chaos. Unfortunately, the furniture in his room repeatedly got damaged, which he obviously didn't like.
In Vielmann's room we heard bands like Sham 69, whose LP That's Live sounded like a mix of party music and radio between the tracks. The Exploited's Troops of Tomorrow, the first Terveet Kädet LP and many other hits were also on the turntable. At some point a band called A&P was played. That was the first time a punk band seemed ambiguous to me. Vielmann was mostly wearing his Army Life Exploited T-shirt at the time. We were constantly discussing the bands that were on his turntable and in some cases slammed them. For a while, nothing worked like Black Flag's Damaged. The record came as a bombshell. Screaming refrains at the top of our voices from the song "TV Party" gave us such kicks that we didn't need any drugs – only alcohol.
On Saturday afternoons women in leather jackets soon showed up in Vielmann's room. They wanted to drink with us and have fun. They were often frightened away after a short time by me and what I was saying. Dodo and Sanja also came to Vielmann's room without warning which was a surprise. They wanted to party with us. Brandy managed to get hold of Dodo and started fooling around with her. When the young woman was drunk, she lay down in bed behind the wall unit to regain consciousness. Brandy didn't give up and followed her into the sleeping alcove. Meanwhile we kept boozing and listening to loud punk music. From time to time, Vielmann spotted what was going on behind the cupboard. He then returned to his beer again and gave us a report about what was going on.
Brandy had no mercy with Dodo. We assumed that he at least fingered her that afternoon. Eventually they even started a real relationship. I, on the other hand, was only keen on her leather jacket, that would have fit even me. Meanwhile Sanja sat on the couch and had to get along with unsuccessful attempts from various sides to hit on her. She laughed sometimes, but she'd consumed too much alcohol. Her leather jacket did not appeal to me at all, as she wore white stripes on her upper arms, that made her look too sporty. In the end, Dodo and Brandy reappeared. While Sanja and Dodo went back to Altenholz, we rode into town on the line 44. Somewhere our punk movie continued.
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