TO WHERE I AM NOW

As it was April 1st and I was stuck like everyone else in this damned lockdown, I decided to go to Berlin today, I was back before I left, but whilst I was there I listened to Low, Heroes and Lodger. Then I broke out The Idiot, Lust For Life and New Values (although New Values was not recorded in Berlin). I was first there in 1977 at the same time as Bowie and Iggy, but as a 19-year-old hitchhiker busking with an acoustic guitar and chasing a German girl I’d met in Spain, I was hardly going to run into either of them. I had so little money that I wasn’t able to do much as far as going to see bands. I remember driving outside the Deutschlandhalle whilst Frank Zappa was playing and just knowing he was in there was exciting. I don’t remember the local lad who was driving, but he had something like a Fiat 500 or an Autobianchi, small and beetle-shaped but not a VW. It seems this fantasy of being somewhere I can’t be has happened before.

Earlier this year we were playing in Berlin by request at Marty Kasprzak’s birthday celebration in a Steam Punk club with all his friends there. Our friends Ryan and Tomoko (who have more than once let us stay with them whilst we breathed in the Berlin atmosphere), Jerome Froese and his partner Anja and old All About Eve fan Justin were also there. Justin was at all the gigs we played then (he looks kinda the same) and now he speaks fluent German, lives in Berlin and has done for years. Strange how doing what we do, you constantly meet new people, but then you see someone you haven’t seen for years, someone you didn’t know well but spoke to many times and is so familiar to you from your past. They can turn up anywhere and what’s really strange is when you meet them out of context, in different circumstances, a different city or in a different era with a different band. What is even stranger is when you don’t recognize them and they have to tell you who they are and you completely remember them, but can’t believe how they’ve changed. I suppose if you’ve been playing, touring, travelling and living in different cities in the world and playing in different bands for 40 years it’s going to be like that.

During that stay in Berlin in the seventies I went over to East Berlin to check it out. I still remember some things about it. I remember going into a supermarket and there being lots of empty shelves, rather like here today. I remember that a lot of the buildings that might have been museums or government institutions in the West were still burned out from the war. I remember walking past what seemed to be Russian barracks and all the soldiers shouting and jeering out of the windows at the Western Freaks. I remember that when we crossed the border I handed my passport to a man behind a curtain and a disconnected hand gave it back to me. I remember them confiscating Western newspapers. I remember standing in Alexanderplatz and someone coming up to me wanting to sell me jeans, which seemed odd as I was from the West, but it was all about trying to get Western money.

I suppose around that time Nina Hagen was causing havoc, but not actually doing anything illegal (that she got caught for). I heard that at one point when she left they told her she couldn’t come back. Ha ha, the West can keep her, we happily did just that. I travelled there from Northern Spain, I’d been in Lerida doing the peach and pear picking with Dare and after we were done I think he went to visit some university friends who were on holiday in Northern Spain and left for England when they did. I stayed and hitchhiked to Berlin. It was quite a trip, I remember I was quite sick at one point, ate something bad and was stationery for a few days, I can’t quite remember where. When I was well enough to travel I started North. I’d hitch till dark then sleep rough in whatever town I found myself. I think it was Girona where I awoke with a strange man throwing stones at me. At 19 I had no fear and who knows how many situations I almost found myself in.

I made trips like this around Europe at least three times, first with my friend Lesley who I’ve recently been back in touch with. I worked with her in a Manchester hotel (that’s where I met all the Punk bands, 999, The Adverts, The Only Ones), but that’s another story. Once I went with Dare (or was it twice) and maybe once by myself, but all these trips forty years later have somehow blended into one trip. I met some cool French musicians once and stayed with them for a while. I remember learning The Great Deceiver by King Crimson with them. They picked me up in a Citroen 2CV. Whenever you saw a 2CV coming you knew you were going to get a lift.

The lift I got from France to Berlin was across East Germany. I was picked up by a very lovely unassuming fragile kind of a fellow, he looked like an intellectual. I can’t remember what he did, perhaps he was a teacher. Remember that in those days West Berlin was an island in the middle of East Germany. You had to travel through a ‘corridor’ that ran from France. It was a long trip and somewhere on the way we were suddenly pulled over by uniformed East German police carrying machine guns. They made him get out of the car and made me stay in the car. I’m not sure if he spoke German or if they spoke French, but after a while he came back to the car 500 French Francs poorer. They’d fined him for something he didn’t do. It was for the Western money, who was going to argue.

I could spend a lot of time thinking about those days in Berlin. It was the first time I tried falafel. I also remember going out of the centre of the city to the suburbs and sitting in a cafe by the wall and having an East German border guard look down on us from a watchtower with binoculars. When I finally left I managed to get a lift from Berlin all the way to Amsterdam where I stayed overnight with a cool couple in one of those great Dutch thin houses.

Olivia and I have been there at least three times, once to see Jeff Beck, once to work with Jerome Froese and once to play. We are actually booked to play there again in the summer should we be allowed to travel there. One of the times we were there we went and visited the place where Bowie and Iggy used to live (I love being a R’n’R tourist). Olivia filmed some footage (nothing fancy), just a short homage to our old music heroes. So have a look and then go and listen to your amazing Bowie and Iggy albums from the period, especially Low, Heroes and The Idiot.

 
Song Of The Day today is something dark and heavy, Already Dead from the second Noctorum album Offer The Light (2006). It’s the execution of a man who knew his fate a long time before it was handed to him.

 

Already Dead

I tried to find something inside you

You know there’s something about being alone in a cell
When there’s just you and your thoughts
And upstairs in an austere room they wait for you in court
And they march you in and you can see in their eyes
That they’ve all made up their minds
And that’s when it hits you straight in the face
That you’ve paid for it all with your life

And the Judge looks over in a mocking tone
He asks you how you plead
And you say ‘Guilty’, trying to show remorse
But your tactics won’t succeed
The blood on your hands is so thick and fresh
And everything’s been said
And you’re back in your cell and a voice from hell
Tells you that you’re already dead
Already dead
Already dead
You’re already dead
You’re already dead

I tried to find something inside you
I tried to find something inside you

With the verdict heard and the final word
The date that you will die
And somehow you knew from the day you were born
That you were gonna fry
Then the Priest is drunk ’cause it’s the only way
He’ll hear your confession
Then you realize as they lead you away
This really is your final lesson

As they strap you in you notice that
The leather is quite worn
From the thousand shaking sweaty wrists
Of the killers gone before
And you piss your pants as they lower down
The helmet on your head
And as you die, there’s no reason to cry
Because you knew that you were already dead

You’re already dead
You’re already dead
Already dead
Already dead

Aww already dead
Already dead
Already dead
I’m already dead

I tried to find something inside you
I tried to find something inside you
I tried to find something inside you
I tried to find something inside you

Already Dead

(Willson-Piper / Mason)
Noctorum – Offer The Light (2006)